Will you turn please to Matthew, Matthew chapter fourteen. I'd like to read three verses that sound very similar. In fact, they are almost identical. Matthew chapter fourteen is the first one and verse eighteen. He said bring them hither to me you might want to hold that place and now look at matthew seventeen matthew seventeen and verse seventeen then jesus answered and said o faithless and i'm let's see the last part of that verse is all we want to read now bring him hither to me and then chapter twenty one of Matthew and verse two the last part of verse two loose them and bring them unto me what is it that the Lord can use in His service to His glory? What kind of a vessel can He use? What kind of a person? What kind of qualifications do you have to have in order for you to be a vessel for God? What does He use? Well, these verses tell us what God uses. The first one we read in Matthew fourteen is insignificant ability. The little boy's little lunch, insignificant ability, and the Lord used it. In the second case, Matthew seventeen, we had the case of no ability. the disciples could not, it says. And yet the Lord said, Bring Him hither to Me. And in the third case, it is still worse. It's contrary ability. First case, insignificant ability. The second case, inability. And the third case, contrary. ability and yet he said bring him to me and the Lord used even that this is what the Lord can use let's look at Matthew again chapter fourteen here we have the Lord with this multitude they had The disciples had been on this missionary journey, their first one, and they came back just almost hilarious, reporting what had happened. The demons were subject to them, and they were amazed at the power they had. And then the Lord heard the message that John had been beheaded by King Herod. John the Baptist. And so the Lord says, Come ye apart and rest a while. Apparently they needed a rest, and it was as if the Lord were going to start a new tact in his ministry now. And it was as if he were retreating for the moment to set things in order. And they were all tired. And so they got in the boat and crossed the sea, this large lake, and they went to the other side to rest. But the crowd saw that the Lord was going. They guessed just what he was doing. And so they ran through all these little communities on the way to the other side and said, Jesus is going on the other side of the lake and published the news so that when he got to the other side, there was a great multitude. I would have thought the Lord would have said, get rid of that crowd. We came here for a vacation. But instead, it says, when he saw the multitude, He had compassion upon them. And He spent the whole day teaching them. And when evening came, this crowd were by now hungry. And the disciples saw the situation, and they said to the Lord, Send the multitude away. Because they don't have any food. And they'll have to go into these communities around here and buy food. And the Lord Jesus said to them, in verse sixteen, they need not depart. Give ye them to eat. And that was pretty ridiculous, wasn't it? Telling those disciples to give that vast multitude food to eat when they didn't even have it to start with. Is the Lord playing games here? Is He making fun of the disciples? He says, You give them to eat. And I'm putting these four Gospels together on this. It says He sent them to find what food they had. Philip, who seems to be more of a practical sort of fellow, he said, Why, two hundred penny worth of bread. would hardly be enough to buy enough if each one had a little to eat. Just a little. That would be tantamount to a man's wages for a year, that much two hundred penny worth of food. So they went to see how much food they had. And when they came back, Andrew reported, and he said, there's a little boy here with his lunch. Little boy, and in fact, he uses the Greek word for boy, and then he makes it diminutive, so that he says a little, little boy is here. And he has five barley loaves, and barley was the poor man's food. He has five barley loaves and two small fish. A little, little boy, with a little lunch. And the Lord says, Bring it here to me. Can't you imagine when they approached that little boy and said, The Lord wants your lunch? That was a smart boy. Do you realize he had hung on to that lunch all day long? He surely must have been tempted to eat it during the day, but he hung on to that little lunch to the very end of the day. And now they want to take it away from him. And I imagine he thinks a few times before he says, well, I guess so if he wants it. But can't you imagine as that little boy counted out those five loaves that he must have counted them very carefully. One, two, three. And just slowed down a bit as he got toward the last ones. and the disciples were standing there waiting, so he chants four. And then I can almost imagine him saying, well, certainly I can keep this one. After all, it was my lunch. I can keep this one. His fifth loaf, I remember a preacher from Beeman with his collar on backwards, Bella Doleman. He's written a book on the tabernacle. He preached one time on this scripture, and my what a blessing he was to us, even if he did wear his collar backwards. And he preached on that fifth loaf. And my how he could describe how much that fifth loaf must have meant to that little boy, his last loaf. And there was a brother in the church there that I was attending at that time, a Baptist church. He came forward after the meeting and he said, I've given my fifth loaf to the Lord today. In his case, it was cigarettes. He smoked cigarettes and he couldn't give them up. But that day he gave them up. It was like the last little reserve in his life that he had held up against the Lord. And now he was giving it up. And it really transformed the man. It was as if he gave himself when he gave up that last bit of resistance in his life. What's your fifth loaf, Christian? What is that thing that's still yours that you haven't given over? My soul, my life, my earth. So the Lord takes that lunch, and the Lord looks up to heaven. You know, I like that. I'm so glad you looked up to heaven. We've got a lot of smart people today, you know, even among Christians who want to intellectualize everything. One of my brethren told me that he didn't think heaven was up there at all, that heaven is just another dimension. And that the Lord is right here, and you can touch him, but you just don't see that dimension and all that foolishness to me. The Lord Jesus looked up to heaven, and he prayed. And time and time again he looked up to heaven. Yes, he went up into heaven, and he's coming back out of heaven. The Lord Jesus could have performed this miracle without that. But all how He always gave the Father that place, that honor, that glory. And He gave God thanks for this meal He was about to serve. How many times the Lord Jesus shows His humanity and then you see the flesh of His deity. Oh, how wonderful to see that. As he slept on that boat that day, so weary, so exhausted, he fell asleep, and the storm didn't even awaken him. And when the disciples waked him and said, Don't you care that we perish? He stood up, and that exhausted man spoke to the waves and the wind, and they obeyed him. the humanity and the deity are seen in that same blessed person. And here in his lowly humanity, he looks up and thanks God for the food. And now he breaks that bread. And he was giving it. He broke it and he just kept on giving it to the disciples. We don't understand that. We can't fathom that. He broke those little loaves and he just kept on giving it to the disciples. Do you know who it says, fed the multitude that day? It doesn't say the Lord fed the multitude. It says the disciples did. It says he gave to the disciples and they gave to the multitude. He told them in the beginning, You give them to eat. And now they do exactly what He said. They, by His power, give that multitude to eat. The Lord used this little boy's little lunch to do this great miracle. And my friend, this is God's principle. This is what He's tried to teach you and me over and over and to encourage us and at the same time to show every believer that He has an obligation to be of service to the Lord, to give Himself and all that He is and has to the Lord, for the Lord to use it as it pleases Him. because no matter who you are, no matter what your ability, the Lord can use it, and he means to use it. And the only ignorance to hit using you is yourself, is that you will not bring it to him. Look at that in so many cases. Moses there at the burning bush. And God says, Moses, what is that in thine hand? And I imagine Moses looked all around his hands, you know. He'd carried that old shepherd's staff so long that it was part of him. And he couldn't figure, sure, he didn't mean that old stick. But finally he said, you mean the stick? And God says, yes, I mean that stick. Throw it on the ground. And you remember what happened? And then in Exodus four, verse twenty, we read, And Moses went into Egypt, and he took the rod of God in his hand. It was Moses' stick before, but now that it had been cast before God, it was the rod of Almighty God. And he split the Red Sea with it. And Israel walked over on dry land, and he closed that mighty sea over the top of the flower of Egypt's armies, and wiped them out with just that stick. It was the rod of Almighty God. Nothing but a stick, but it was God's. It was brought to him. And again and again he used it in those mighty miracles to bring water, to perform great miracles in Egypt with that insignificant shepherd's stick. You see it in Gideon. In Judges seven we read about Gideon and his army. He had only thirty-two thousand men. And it describes there the army of the Amalekites and the Midianites and all these Arabs that were going with them against Israel. It says that the people were like locusts. The armies of the enemy were like locusts. If you've ever seen locusts, you know it's like a cloud. You can't count locusts. There's so many, and they look like a cloud. And it says that their camels, the camels of the enemy, were as numberless as the sand of the sea. A vast horde of soldiers against just thirty-two thousand. And God said to Gideon, you've got too many men. He says, I'm afraid that Israel will vote themselves and say, we won the victory ourselves. So he says, I want you to get rid of them. He says, tell the army anybody that doesn't feel like fighting today, you can go home. Imagine telling an army of thirty-two thousand men that when they are faced up against countless, hundreds of thousands of soldiers against them. And so, twenty-two thousand went home. And he's left with just ten thousand against that mighty host. And God says, The people are still too many for me. He says, Take them down to the water to drink, and I'll help you to sort them out. So he had him separate those that went down into the water and just got down on their knees and wallowed in it and saturated themselves with it and didn't look for the enemy, put them on one side and then put on the other side those that kept their faces toward the enemy and left the water up with their hands. And he said, just take those that left the water up with their hands. and let the rest go home. He was left with three hundred men. And God used that insignificant, ridiculous little army of three hundred to slaughter and put to flight the countless hosts of the enemy. Again and again, God is telling us he can use insignificant, ability. That little maid in Syria are captive at that. God used her faithful witness to bring about glory to God in Israel and in Syria. God uses insignificant ability to work his own honor and glory. He uses no ability as well. That poor, afflicted boy who went into fits and would throw himself into the fire or the water anyway to destroy him, and came to... The Lord, the Father said, Your disciples can't cure him. They were unable. And the Lord said, Bring him to me. And the Lord healed that little boy. What a picture of you and me, Christian. For in us, Paul says, there dwelleth no good thing, naturally, no good thing. And you and I have no ability. The Scripture says in Romans eight, twenty-six, we know not how to pray as we ought. Imagine that. We don't even know how to pray, Christians. It says so. and the Holy Spirit has to pray for us, it says, with groanings that cannot be uttered. First Corinthians twelve says that no man can say, Lord Jesus, but by the Holy Ghost. We have no ability, but if we'll bring what we have, if we'll lay it at his feet, he can use it to his honor and glory. But we not only have insignificant ability, we not only have no ability, but we also have contrary ability. That was a donkey. And Mark tells us it was a donkey on which never man sat. And you can imagine what a time you would have if you tried to sit on that donkey. Never broken. But they brought him to the Lord Jesus. And he sat upon that donkey, and he rode peaceably into Jerusalem. What an honor that donkey had, for he was used to fulfill the word of God. Behold, thy king cometh unto thee, meek and lowly, riding upon an ass, and upon a coat the full of an ass. What an honor, contrary ability brought to him. was used to honor him, to fulfill the word of God, to officially proclaim the King of Kings before all Israel on that great day. And God can take your contrary ability, my contrary ability, that sinful habit, that weakness which all of us has in one way or another. Bless God, he can take it. And He can break it. And He can change you and Me. No matter how helpless you may feel, my friend, and I believe there are many Christians who have battled in their life that no one knows a thing about. Oh, my friend, take courage. I don't care how many times you've been defeated. The Lord Jesus takes a while, don't you? And He breaks it. and makes it his instrument for his glory. Mary Magdalene was a woman that I would have given a wide birth to. I'll tell you that. She was possessed of seven demons. What a woman she must have been. And look what the Lord did to that contrary person. He changed her into one of the most devoted saints we've seen. It was that Mary that was at the cross when the disciples had fled. It was that Mary that was first at the tomb of the Lord, and he wouldn't go see his father until he comforted her heart. And it was to that woman that he gave the highest revelation of all the New Testament. For he said to her, Go to my brethren, not my disciple, my brethren, and say unto them, I ascend to my Father and to your Father, to my God and to your God, the greatest, highest revelation of all the New Testament, the highest position that one could ever have. He revealed it first. to Mary Magdalene. Ephesians four, verse twenty eight is one of the most beautiful verses in all the Bible to me. It says, Let him that stole steal no more, but rather let him labor with his own hands, working that which is good, that he may have to give to him that lacks. What a beautiful thing. Here he takes a thief and he converts him into a man that cares for the needs of others. What a transformation. The man that stole is now the man that's working with his own hands that he may have to give to others. Oh, that's our Lord Jesus Christ. He just says, bring it here to me. Oh, Saint of God today, have you ever really obeyed God's word and made it a decision, a definite, crucial decision in your heart? Father, I surrender my whole life, my being, my everything to you. Have you done that? I hope. that if you haven't, you'll do it today. For God says, I beseech you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your body a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God, which is your reasonable service.