Stretch Me

It's good to be in the house of the Lord.

Amen.

Hey, it's so good to be with you guys.

It's an honor to be here.

I text Jason, I said, Man, y'all are packed up in here.

Praise God.

This church is growing and reaching people, and you've purchased land.

And I mean, that's something to give God praise for.

Amen.

Yeah.

So it's good to see your beautiful faces today.

I got here just, I was like five minutes early.

And as I'm pulling into town, I see my phone ring and it's Jason.

And I answered, and I immediately just said, They're freaking out, aren't they?

He said, Yeah, they're freaking out.

I said, I can see Casey's right now.

I said, I'm going to be there.

Just everything's going to be just fine.

So it's an honor to be here.

I'm the executive director of Reach Network.

We're a church planting ministry.

We help start churches all across Missouri.

And we got to be a small part of helping to start this beautiful church.

And just an honor and a privilege to be here.

If you have a Bible, go with me to John's Gospel, chapter number six.

John's Gospel, chapter number six.

We'll get there in just a minute.

There was a pastor, he was out on the street, he was doing ministry, and he ran across a homeless guy that looked really dishelved and like maybe he had been on drugs.

He looked really rough.

And he walked up to him and he handed him a New Testament Bible.

He said, I want you to do me one thing.

He said, I just want you to read this and it'll change your life.

And a few months later, the pastor was back out and he sees the man.

He's in his right mind.

He looks like he's cleaned up, like he's not on drugs anymore.

And the pastor said, Man, I gotta ask you, he said, Did you read that Bible that I gave you?

And the guy said, Pastor, I gotta be honest with you.

I ran out of rolling papers.

He said, I smoked Matthew, I smoked Luke, I smoked Mark, but John smoked me.

And uh, okay, well, I thought it was funny, but hey, anyway.

The title of my morning, this my message this morning is You Need to Stretch.

Look at your neighbor, tell him, You need to stretch.

You need to stretch.

Look back at your neighbor and tell him, mind your own business.

How many of you like to work out?

This guy does right here.

I can see this guy right there.

He likes to work out, doesn't he?

Uh, you know what?

I've been working out, I've lost 56 pounds, man.

Yeah.

But I don't like to stretch.

Amen.

And really, fitness has never really been my thing.

Uh, I can remember being a kid and they had the president's physical fitness exam.

Do you remember that in school?

And they'd prep you, man.

The president's physical fitness exam is coming up, and you're gonna have to climb a rope all the way to the top, and you're gonna do this and that, and we're gonna send this to the president of the United States to let him know how we're doing here in Missouri.

And I can just remember thinking to myself, the president is gonna be very disappointed in me, right?

But if you're gonna get a good workout, you need to stretch.

And I had a friend when I was a kid who was good at stretching.

I brought him here today, a newer version of him.

He is not dressed for church, y'all.

And I know this is cowboy church, but he's even inappropriately dressed for that.

But I brought him anyway.

And this is my friend Stretch Armstrong.

Now, this when I was a kid, he was much bigger, okay?

But this is what you can get nowadays, Stretch Armstrong.

I have already put this Stretch Armstrong through everything that it can pretty much handle.

But what I loved about Stretch Armstrong is, you know, he was flexible, and you could take him and take his arm over here and tie him to something, and then stretch him all the way over here and tie him to something.

And and Stretch had uh something on the inside of him, I didn't know what it was, that helped him to stretch until one day I stretched him beyond his limits.

Come on, somebody.

And I found out he's got some kind of a glue-like substance on the inside that gives him the ability to stretch.

And what I want to propose to you today is this as followers of Christ, God has placed something special on the inside of you that gives you the ability, if you'll allow God, to stretch you further than you could on your own.

This walk with Jesus, this Christian life, is not just about praying a prayer and coming to church and being saved from hell, all of those things are good.

But in this Christian walk, it is about learning to trust God, to yield to the voice of his Holy Spirit, and to be stretched beyond what your natural limits are into what God wants to do through you.

Amen.

The quicker, and I told y'all this last time, and somebody said amen real loud.

It the more you say amen, the quicker I'll preach.

Amen.

There we go.

We're going to be looking at the story of Jesus feeding the 5,000.

It's a very popular miracle in the Bible.

You know the story.

And just to give you some context, before we pick up in John chapter 6, Jesus has been stirring things up.

John 6 · chapter mention

I love Jesus.

I love Jesus because he's not like the religious leaders of the day, and he's not real churchy.

He's just being himself, and he's just God in the flesh, and he's making noise everywhere he goes.

And so he's stirring things up.

He's upsetting the religious.

And we pick up here in John chapter 6, beginning in verse 1.

John 6 · chapter mention

It says, After this, Jesus crossed over to the far side.

Everybody say the far side.

The far side of the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Sea of Tiberias.

A huge crowd kept following him wherever he went because they saw his miraculous signs as he healed the sick.

And then Jesus climbed a hill and sat down with his disciples around him.

It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover celebration.

Now, John here is painting a picture for us.

We're not Jews that lived in this particular time, but if we were, we would understand this is a Passover setting.

It's about to be Passover time.

And if you think back to the time of being on the mountain, you think about Moses when Moses received the law, and you think about what happened during Passover.

And John is painting this picture.

He's letting the Jewish people know there's someone here that is greater than Moses.

And they would soon find out that who this person was was actually the Passover lamb himself, Jesus Christ the Son of God.

Verse 5, Jesus soon saw a huge crowd of people coming to look for him.

Turning to Philip, he asks, Where can we buy bread to feed all these people?

He was testing Philip, for he already knew what he was going to do.

And Philip replied, Even if we worked for months, we wouldn't have enough money to feed them.

And then Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up.

There's a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish.

But what good is that with this huge crowd?

Tell everyone to sit down, Jesus said.

So they all sat down on the grassy slopes.

The men alone numbered about five thousand.

And then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks to God, and distributed them to the people.

And afterward he did the same with the fish, and they all ate as much as they wanted.

And after everyone was full, Jesus told his disciples, Now gather the leftovers, so that nothing is wasted.

So they picked up the pieces and filled twelve baskets with scraps left by the people who had eaten from the five barley loaves.

Father, your word is good.

Lord, truly it's a lamp to our feet and a light to our path.

God, I'm praying this morning that the anointing of your Holy Spirit would come upon me.

God, may I speak words that you want me to speak that are pleasing to you and that will be beneficial to your people.

God, open up our hearts and our minds and our ears to receive what it is you have for us, and may you be glorified.

We give you thanks and praise in Jesus' name.

And everybody said, Amen and amen.

Three ways today that Jesus wants to stretch us.

The first one is this.

Number one, Jesus wants to stretch our faith.

Jesus wants to stretch our faith.

The Bible says this, that without faith, it is impossible to please God.

Did you know that?

That if you don't have faith, you can't even please God.

You say, well, I don't have much faith.

That's okay.

You only need the grain of a mustard seed, right?

Just a little bit.

It says, without faith, it's impossible to please God because first you have to believe that he is, that he exists, and that he is the rewarder of those who diligently seek him.

And so Jesus is looking in the earth in this time and even today, he's looking for people that are filled with faith.

And we see this scene where Jesus is teaching and there are thousands of people.

Really, there were probably 15 to 20,000 people.

The Bible only records the men that were there.

It doesn't count the women and the children.

So you've got this scene of the first megachurch meeting with 20,000 people, and Jesus is teaching, and you're wondering, how in the world is Jesus able to be heard where there's 20,000 people?

I've been to the place where this happened, and everybody was down, y'all are gonna understand this real good.

Everybody was down in a holler, okay?

And Jesus was up top on the mountainside, and literally I've been there.

You can have somebody go to the very bottom, and if you stand at the top and you talk just like this, hello, they can hear you at the very bottom, just the way that it's all put together.

And so picture this beautiful scene, they're down in the holler.

Jesus is up on the top of the mountain, he's speaking, and he looks to Philip, one of his disciples.

And I love this because Jesus involves Philip in the problem.

Now, the scripture clearly says this.

Jesus asked Philip, where can we buy enough bread to feed these people?

Not because he didn't have a plan, because the scripture clearly says he already knew what he was going to do.

He did this to test Philip.

How many of you know God never tempts us, but he does test us?

And man, I want to be able to pass the test that Jesus has given me.

I'm not very good at tests.

When I was a kid, you had to take your pencil and fill in those little things all across there.

And if you got out of the lines, the machine would mark you wrong.

Come on, somebody.

I failed many tests like that.

But Jesus is testing Philip.

He says, Philip, where can we buy enough bread to feed these people?

And here's the interesting thing about Jesus: Jesus doesn't need Philip's help, but he wants Philip's help.

And here's the cool thing about the Lord: He doesn't need you.

He wants you.

Amen.

Jesus doesn't need you, but he wants you.

And man, I would much rather be wanted by the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords than to have to be needed by him, because if he needs me, we're both in trouble.

Amen.

But he wants to involve Philip.

And he says, Philip, where can we find enough bread to feed all of these people?

And I see Philip in my mind.

He gets his iPhone out, he opens his calculator app, and he just starts adding up.

He's like, okay, 20,000 people.

Okay, Walmart bread prices.

He's putting that all in.

He says, Jesus, another uh portion of scripture says, even if we had half a year's wages, now you think about what you make in half a year.

Some of y'all don't want to think about it.

It may not be very good.

Some of y'all it may be great.

Think about what you make in half a year.

And he says, Lord, even if we had a half a year's wages, there's no way that we would be able to feed all of these people.

But the interesting thing that we need to understand about Jesus is he's not asking you, do you have enough?

He's asking you, how much do you have?

Amen.

He's not asking you, do you have enough?

Because the truth is this, you don't have enough.

Amen.

He wants to know what do you have?

And we'll get to that in just a second.

And Philip replied, even if we worked for months, we wouldn't have enough money to feed him.

And look at the two places that Philip places the emphasis that are wrong.

He says, even if we, which means what?

Putting his dependence on himself and his fellow disciples, even if we, and then he says, worked.

Even if we worked for months, we wouldn't have enough.

And that's where we get off so often in our Christian faith is we say, God, in my strength, I cannot do this.

No matter how hard I work, no matter how hard I try, I'm never going to be able to accomplish this.

Hey, I want to tell you the beautiful thing about grace.

Guess what?

You can't earn it.

You can't deserve it.

You can't do good enough for Jesus to love you.

The beautiful thing about Jesus is he accepts us right as we are, where we're at, and he says, My grace is sufficient for you.

And our involvement in the mission of Jesus is not about what we can produce through our own efforts, but rather it's about what Jesus can produce through our faith in him.

Many of us are just like Philip.

We want to believe that Jesus can do amazing things, but what we see in the natural causes us to doubt.

How many of you are like that?

God, I want to believe you can do the impossible, but I'm sick.

My family members are sick.

Our financial situation is terrible.

Our marriage is on the rocks.

There's something wrong in my relationship with my parents.

Whatever it is, Jesus, I want to believe you can do incredible things, but I'm struggling to believe that you can actually do it.

Later on, we see Philip again with the disciples when Jesus is telling the disciples, he says, Hey, I'm leaving and I'm going to the Father.

And they start freaking out, Lord, where are you going?

We don't have directions to where you're going.

And Jesus says, I'm the way, the truth, and the life.

And no one comes to the Father except through me.

And Philip pipes up and he says, Lord, show us the Father, and it will be enough.

And Jesus replies and says, Philip, have I not been with you so long and you still don't know me?

He's saying, Philip, just stretch your faith a little bit.

The good news is that Jesus specializes in things thought to be impossible.

The second church I pastored was in St.

Robert, Missouri.

Anybody know where St.

Robert is?

It's in between uh Lebanon and Rahla on I-44 outside of Fort Leonardwood.

When I got to that church, there were about 40 people.

They had a mountain of debt.

It was the first month that the bank was requiring them to start paying their mortgage again.

They had put it on forbearance.

And I showed up.

And I remember after I got there, we lost a few people from 40 down to 30 something.

And afterwards, one of the old ladies in the church came up to me.

She said, Pastor Chris, I think I know why we lost those people.

I said, Why, Sister Betty?

She said, Well, our last pastor was very handsome.

And I think and I think some of those people were coming just because of how handsome he was.

She said, Don't be discouraged.

I thought, so I'm ugly and the church is shrinking, but I don't need to be discouraged.

You know, over time in five years, that church grew from 30 something to 200 people.

We paid the mortgage with no problem.

We did additions to the church.

We grew, we expanded, we reached a lot of people, not because of what I had to offer, but because of what Jesus could do through our faith.

Amen.

Number two, Jesus wants to stretch our resources.

Could anybody use your resources being stretched?

Amen.

I could.

Verse 8.

Then Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, spoke up.

There's a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish.

What good is that with this huge crowd?

I love Andrew because Andrew has just enough faith that he's been trying to figure this out.

Philip says, this is impossible.

Andrew says, let me at least survey the crowd.

And so I can see Andrew going about and walking amongst these 20,000 people and looking for somebody who has something.

And amongst them, he finds one little boy with five barley loaves and two fish.

And I admire the faith of the little boy to say, hey, I've got something that I'm willing to share.

Now, I grew up in southern Missouri in the Ozarks.

And so when I read this as a kid, all I could ever think about is five giant loaves of French bread from Walmart.

You know the kind.

Really good with spaghetti and butter on them.

Amen?

And I'm thinking, what is a kid doing with five giant Walmart loaves of bread out in the middle of nowhere?

And then I'm thinking about two giant big catfish.

Why is this kid carrying around five giant loaves of bread and two giant catfish?

This doesn't make any sense.

But the Bible says he had barley loaves.

And a barley loaf is a cracker bread of the poor that's about this big.

So he had five pieces of cracker bread.

And if you look in the original language for fish, they were like small little pickled fish, like what we would call sardines.

And so this kid had five pieces of cracker bread and two sardine fish.

He had a lunchable.

Come on, somebody.

Minus the Oreo and the Capri Sun.

He had a lunchable.

And I love Andrew because he's willing to come to Jesus and say, Lord, I hate to even mention this because it really doesn't seem like anything special, but we got this kid over here.

He's poor, you can tell.

He's got two sardines and five pieces of cracker bread.

And me, I wouldn't have had the guts to go to the King of Kings and Lord of Lords and bring that to him.

I'd have been scared to death.

But Andrew has enough faith to say, I'm willing to get laughed at or be embarrassed by my friends to present what I have.

And that's what Jesus wants to do with you and your resources.

Did you know some of you, you don't even give to anything, whether it be the church or something else in the community, because you feel like what you have is not even enough.

I understand that.

When I pastored in St.

Louis, we had a gal every Sunday.

She would walk to the back during offering where we had our offering boxes, and she would put a ton of change in the offering, and you could hear it.

Clink, clang, cling, clang, clink, clink, clang, clang, clang, clang.

Everybody could hear it.

And I used to think, I bet she's so embarrassed.

She was not embarrassed at all.

She didn't care what it sounded like.

It didn't even cross her mind.

All she thought was, I'm giving everything that I can to Jesus.

And here's the beautiful thing about Jesus: when we give him what we have, he takes it and he multiplies it for his good, for his purpose, and for your benefit.

Amen.

So we see Andrew's willingness to bring it.

We see the boy's willingness to say, hey, I'll share everything that I have.

What a cool thing for that kid to say, Oh, I don't want anybody to go hungry.

I can share.

He's got enough faith to him, he's thinking, I've got enough to feed everybody.

But there's one other thing I want you to notice about this.

How many people were in the crowd?

15 to 20,000.

Are you telling me that out of 15 to 20,000 people, nobody else in the crowd had any food?

I find that very hard to believe that a mom didn't have some goldfish and a half a stick of gum at the bottom of her purse.

Come on, man.

There's just no possible way.

But only one boy had enough faith to say, I'll share what I have.

What are you willing to do with what you have?

What is God asking you to do?

And getting involved in the mission of Jesus means willingly contributing our resources because we know and believe that God will multiply it.

It doesn't have to just be money, it could be money, it could be your time, your talent, your treasure.

Whatever it is that Jesus is asking you to give, it may not feel like enough, but God wants to do the miraculous.

Now, this sermon is not to get you to give money, but I do want to tell you this cool story.

My friend Dylan, who's coming to see me today in Springfield, was a youth pastor in a small town.

This has been a number of years ago, and he had a brand new newborn baby.

Now, youth pastors, I don't know if you know anything about youth pastors, but they don't make much money, okay?

They get paid in baloney sandwiches, okay?

They have they have cracker bread and sardines, and he was the youth pastor, and the youth were raising money to give to missions, and so were the kids.

And so there was a competition between the youth pastor and the children's pastor on which group could give more money to missions.

Is it going to be the teenagers, the youth, or is it going to be the little kids?

And so Dylan, you know, he loves it and he wants to raise all this money for youth.

Now, on a personal side, he has been storing away his birthday and Christmas money, trying to save money to buy the first generation iPad.

And he's got$250 saved.

And one day he's mowing the grass and he stops to get a drink of water, and he drinks the water, and he says that the Lord speaks to him and says, I want you to give water to thirsty people.

Now, the kids in the church were raising money to do water wells in another country.

And he said, Lord, I'm the youth pastor.

I can't give any money towards the kids' ministry.

We've got to win this competition.

And the Lord spoke to him and said, I want you to give that$250.

And I want you to give that to the kids' ministry to build those wells in another country.

And so he did.

And two months later, a guy that he didn't know popped into the church office, walked up to him, and handed him$2,500 and gave it to him.

And Dylan bought an iPad, sent$500 to another missionary, put$1,000 in a matching fund for the youth, and his$250 ended up turning into$500, an iPad,$2,500 more for missions, and$500 in his pocket because you can't outgive God.

Now, what's the point that I'm trying to make?

Jason didn't bring me here to talk about money.

The point I'm trying to make is this whatever it is that God has gifted you with, don't ever say that it's not enough.

Don't ever say that God can't use it because he can.

Amen.

Number three, Jesus wants to stretch our dependence on him.

Jesus wants to stretch our dependence on him.

Verse 12, after everyone was full, Jesus told his disciples, Now gather the leftovers so that nothing is wasted.

So they picked up the pieces and filled 12 baskets with scraps left by the people who had eaten from the five barley loaves.

Isn't it awesome that you can go from having no food to having leftovers?

That's what happens with Jesus.

You can go from having not enough to having more than enough.

And Jesus doesn't waste anything.

He tells them, gather the leftovers.

Now, not everything in the Bible that has to do with numbers means something super significant.

You don't want to become one of those guys that has a giant whiteboard with the strings all over the place and revel in the book of Revelation, and you're like, I'm telling you, the number seven times this, it means America, and it has something to do with 9-11 and 2026 and Fauci and everything.

You know, you don't want to, you don't want to do that, right?

But there is something interesting here that I want to point out to you.

How many baskets does the Bible say were left over?

12.

How many disciples?

How many tribes of Israel?

It's as if Jesus is saying to his disciples and to all of Israel, I am enough for you.

I am the great Passover Lamb.

I am enough for the 12 tribes of Israel.

I am enough for the 12 disciples.

I am enough for all of Jerusalem.

I am enough for all of Israel.

And if you'll get involved in my business, I'll get involved in your business.

And if you'll have total dependence on me, there's nothing that you cannot do.

And I believe what Jesus is saying to you today, Generations Cowboy Church, is this I am enough.

I am everything you need.

I am your all-sufficient source.

If you come to me, you'll always have what you need.

And you can search for that fulfillment in relationships on this earth, and I'm telling you, they can be good, but they'll never truly fulfill you like a relationship with Jesus will.

And you can search for it in money and cars and houses and clothes, and it will never be enough.

There's only one fountain that flows continuously that can bring enough into your life, and that comes from Jesus.

In Exodus chapter 16, go back to Exodus.

Exodus 16 · chapter mention

The people are grumbling.

They're complaining to Moses.

They're hungry.

You know, you're not yourself when you're hungry.

That's why you gotta grab a Snickers, amen.

I mean, I get hangry.

I turn into a different person.

It's not a pretty thing.

And the people are hungry, and they've been freed from captivity from Egypt, and they look at Moses and they say, Moses, way to go, dude.

When we were in Egypt, we sat around pots of meat.

We had tons of meat, we had plenty to eat.

And now here we are, you've brought us to a desert, and we have absolutely nothing.

Moses tells this to God, and God says to Moses, You tell them this.

I will rain down bread from heaven for you.

I will rain down bread from heaven for you.

And then we see God provide manna for the Israelites.

If you keep reading later on in John chapter 6, you'll see that the day after the fish and the loaves miracle, the people came back to find Jesus again.

John 6 · chapter mention

Where is this guy?

And even after seeing the multiplication of the fish and the loaves, they come to Jesus and they say, Hey, if you want us to believe in you, show us a miraculous sign.

How many times do we do that to the Lord?

If God's really real, he'll do this for me.

If God's really real, he'll come through on this miracle.

Who do we think we are?

If I'm gonna believe in God, he has to do exactly what I tell him to do.

And then I'll finally believe.

The true bread of God is the one who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.

Sir, they said, give us that bread every day.

And Jesus replied, I am the bread of life.

Whoever comes to me will never be hungry again.

Whoever believes in me will never be thirsty again.

The natural bread, the miracle of the fish and the loaves, was just a picture of the spiritual bread that Jesus was offering.

And here's what I want you to realize today there is a bread that you can eat that will cause you to never be hungry again.

There is water that you can drink that will cause you to never be thirsty again.

Jesus is the all-sufficient offering for everything that you need.

And if you'll take what little you have and place it in his hands, he will multiply it for you.

I want you to bow your heads and close your eyes on me for just a moment this morning.

And I want to give you an opportunity today, as you sit here this morning, it's possible that somebody in this room does not know Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior.

And this morning, if that's you and you don't know Jesus, I have good news for you.

He said, Whosoever will may come.

The Bible says, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

This morning, if you need to confess your sins and be saved, I want you to raise your hand.

I'm not gonna embarrass you, but I need to know who I'm gonna pray for.

If that's you, you say, Pastor Chris, I need to accept Jesus Christ.

Just slip it up so I know who I'm praying for.

That's all right.

I'm not gonna call you up front, just slip it up and I'll pray for you.

All right.

Thank you, Jesus.

Can we all just pray this prayer together?

Father, I know that I'm a sinner.

Lord, I need your grace and forgiveness.

God, I ask you to forgive me.

I believe that Jesus is the Son of God, and that he died and rose again for me.

Lord, come into my heart, and from this day forward, I'll never be the same.

In Jesus' name.

I want to invite everyone to stand and let's remain in an attitude of worship.

And here's what we're gonna do.

The prayer team is here.

The worship team is gonna lead us in a song.

And this morning, if you need prayer for anything, I want you to come forward.

But specifically, maybe this morning you need some help stretching your faith.

You've heard this message this morning.

You know God is calling you to do something, whatever it may be, and you're saying, but I just need my faith stretched.

I just need God to come through.

I want to invite you as the worship team's playing and the prayer team's here.

Jesus is the all sufficient offering for whatever you need.

So please come and let us pray for you.