Men's Luncheon - Pastor Greg Addison - October 20, 2026

So, how's everybody today?

Man, I I gotta talk to you Sooner fans.

I mean, y'all know I love football, right?

And so Saturday was on the verge of being one of the greatest football days in history.

And if the Sooners would have pulled that out, Mattir wouldn't have thrown that interception at the end, I could have bragged on all of our schools all on one Sunday.

And I was really looking forward to that.

Because the Vols laid a whipping on the on the tide.

That was a pretty low tide Saturday.

And then the Hogs got their first win and an SEC win.

It was that was really good, and I thought the Sooners were driving.

And since we're on the border, we got a lot of Oklahoma folks, which we love coming, but you guys gotta cheer harder, like for the Sooners or something.

We almost had an incredible day in college football Saturday.

So just that's just a word, right?

So it was fun, but that was a great day, wasn't it?

It was really good.

I think five of the top seven lost, and the other two that didn't lose, one on last second play, kind of a deal.

I mean, it was a pretty incredible day.

So let's pray.

Lord, thank you for today.

Thank you for the chance to be together and a chance for us to be an encouragement to each other on Tuesdays.

I pray that you'll be our teacher today.

We thank you for the folks that made lunch for us, and we ask your blessings on them as they blessed us.

And we thank you most of all for the gift of salvation that comes through Jesus.

In his name we pray.

Everybody said?

All right, fellas, here we go.

I'm in Nehemiah.

I'm not skipping Nehemiah, but Sunday I had four sermons and only time for one.

And so there was some stuff that ended up on the cutting room floor, so to speak, that I wanted to spend some time with today.

And uh and so uh I'm gonna put a parentheses on Nehemiah, and I'm gonna jump back into the chapter from last week.

As you guys know, at here at First Baptist, we're doing the chronological reading of Scripture, and last week uh we had we were working through this period in Luke chapter 9, and it's interesting as uh as you're reading a chapter like that and you're trying to pray through what do I need, where do I come from, what do I need to speak to?

Luke 9 · chapter mention

And I try to share this a lot.

When you're doing your quiet time, sometimes God just knocks you upside the head with a verse.

I mean, he just grabs you with it.

I mean, that's part of how you know, okay, God's speaking to me, number one, and number two, it's part of how you know I need to spend some time here because Jesus wants to do something in my life, because he popped me with this verse.

And uh, and so last week, you know, we were playing with that singing Bible thing, y'all got that, and we were, and I'm listening to it in all these different versions and all this deal.

And it didn't matter what version I listened to, I kept strangling over a phrase in a verse.

And so the passage we're looking at is what we refer to as the feeding of 5,000, right?

And so here's where I got the title from because in that passage I kept getting stuck on this phrase, and as many times as I've taught feeding of the 5,000 in different versions and different gospels and all that, I could not get past this one phrase, and it was the first time I could remember that I hit this in a way that I hit it, and it just was fascinating to me.

So I want you to want you to read with me and see if it doesn't hit.

Here's what I want to talk about.

Jesus is always our source.

Jesus is always our source.

And it doesn't matter what's going on, it doesn't matter whether it seems it's going well or it seems it's not going well, Jesus is always our source.

So here's what he says, Luke chapter 9, as he's telling this story.

Luke 9 · chapter mention

Now you know what's happened.

In chapter 9, verse 1, he sends the 12 out.

He trains them, he sends them out to do evangelism.

Verse 1 of chapter 10, he sends the 72 out two by two.

And so what you're getting in this period right here is the context of Luke telling us how Jesus is accomplishing this training of preparing his followers to be the evangelists.

And we talked about that here at this campus on Sunday.

So here's what you get in that context after he sends out the twelve, and they come back, then you get to this story.

When the apostles returned, so they're returning from their going out two by two, sharing the gospel.

When the apostles returned, they reported to Jesus all that they had done, and he took them along and withdrew privately to a town called Beth Seda.

When the crowns found out, they followed him.

He welcomed them, he spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and cured those who needed healing.

For about five thousand men, or no, when late in the day, I'm on the right screen.

Yeah.

When late in the day, the twelve approached and said to him, Send the crowd away so they can go into the surrounding villages and countryside to find food and lodging, because we are in a deserted place here.

And that's where I got stuck.

We're in a deserted place here.

And I don't know how I ever hit that particular phrase before.

You go on and read, and he says, You give them something to eat.

Now think about this.

Their response is, We have no more than five loaves and two fish.

They said, unless we go somewhere else and buy food for all these people.

Verse 14.

Because there were 5,000 men there, and you know, there are wives and children and everybody else.

So there's thousands of people here.

Now I want you to keep in this mind.

Thousands of people have come to Jesus.

He has been preaching to thousands of them, and they have stayed all day long.

Now, clearly, these are not Baptists.

Because at 30 minutes we'd all left Jesus and gone and found a restaurant because there wasn't any food there.

And they're all day, they're hanging on every word.

They're bringing him people in faith because of what he's teaching them, and he's healing people.

You got all this going on, and then they respond and go, Well, we've got to send everybody away because we don't have any food.

Like, why is that a problem if you can raise the lame and make the blind a sea?

But what they see is we're in a deserted place.

Send everybody away because we're in a deserted place.

Jesus says to his disciples, have them sit down in groups of about fifty.

They did so, and he had them all sit down, then he took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he blessed and broke them.

He kept giving them to the disciples to set before the crowd.

Everyone ate and was filled, and they picked up twelve baskets of leftover pieces.

Now, you think that's a pretty incredible thing.

And here's what I want you to see first.

This context tells us about what's going on in this moment, I think.

The context is you have Luke chapter 9, verse 1.

Luke 9:1

He sends out the 12 and he tells them, I am going to give you the power to heal when you go preach the gospel and the kingdom of God.

And they come back and they're telling them all this, and all this stuff happened.

And then we have these series of stories in chapter 9 that lead to chapter 10, where he now says, Okay, 12, we're going to go at 72 others.

I'm going to teach y'all how to teach them, and we're going to send them out.

And he tells them, here's what I want you to do.

I want you to go out and I want you to preach, and I'm giving you the power of the healing, and I've given you this authority.

But when you're out there, I want you to see that the harvest is plentiful and the workers are few, and I want you to start praying for the harvest.

So he is pointing out to them, you can do this and you're going to be a part of the gospel, but he's also pointing out there is a need that has to be filled.

And you need more people to share the gospel because there are more people that need the gospel.

And in between, we have a series of events where Jesus is building on the lessons.

So, for example, you have, after the feeding of 5,000, you have this mount of transfiguration that we call.

So Jesus calls aside Peter, James, and John.

And Elijah appears and Moses appears, and Jesus is there, and Peter completely doesn't get it yet.

He says, let's build a temple type structure thing to honor one for Elijah, one for Moses, and one for Jesus.

And Jesus is like, you don't understand why we're here.

You've missed the point.

You're wanting to worship this moment that we have, and I'm trying to teach you there are all these people out here that need to be saved.

And I came to be the Savior and the gospel, not for you to come in here and enjoy this deal.

You also have this argument where Jesus catches them arguing about who's going to be the greatest and who's going to sit on the right hand of Jesus, and well, I've done more than you have, and I'm going to get that seat.

No, I'm going to get that seat.

You got brothers chewing on each other because somebody wants to sit on the right hand of Jesus and the left hand of Jesus, and he has to rip through that and go, What are you guys doing?

This is not how this works.

I'm teaching you to be a servant.

So in the midst of this kind of training, you ask, why are we here in the 5,000 and what is Jesus doing in this moment where he forces them to be confronted with this lack of food in this incredible moment?

And so the key of that, you've got to understand, the Bible says very clearly that when they returned, Jesus withdrew them to that place.

So they are in this deserted place because Jesus led them there.

The crowds all showed up.

Jesus knew they were going to follow him because they follow him everywhere he goes.

But he is worried about the twelve, and we are in these series of lessons, and he leads them to this place where they now have a loss and they have a lack because they're in a deserted place.

He has been teaching them all these lessons, and so here's what I think is going on, and I think why God draws me to scriptures like that.

Here's the first lesson.

It is never a deserted place if Jesus is working there.

It is never a deserted place.

We always hit these places in life.

We hit them in church life, we hit them in our personal lives, we hit them at times in our professional life, and we're thinking, what's going on?

And I'm drying this deal.

You know, life has got these seasons and it flows up and down, and you go through these things.

And we hit these moments just like the disciples, it hasn't registered to them yet.

Jesus has been doing all this right here in front of us.

There's these thousands of people.

People are getting saved, they're repenting, they're getting healed.

All this is going on, and they think we don't have any food.

We have a lack.

And there's no food around us, we've got to send them off somewhere else to go get food.

And what they see is a deserted place that doesn't have what they think they need in their physical life moment.

And Jesus is trying to teach them it is never a deserted place when I am here.

And when I am working, there is always more than enough.

If you follow these trainings, when he sends the 12 out at the beginning of Luke chapter 9, it says very explicitly, he gives them his authority, he gives them the power to heal, and he gives them the power to add that imprimatur of God's work onto their sharing of the gospel.

Luke 9 · chapter mention

When he sends the 72 out in chapter 10, it's the same thing.

I am telling you, you're going to have this power.

It is my power that I am giving you.

When you go to preach the gospel and you go to prepare the way for me to go to those places, you are going to heal, you're going to do those things because it adds God's thumbprint on the teaching that's happening.

And he is trying to teach them who he is and what he brings into their lives in this moment.

He's trying to teach them that.

And they don't get it here.

It is a deserted place.

They're looking around physically instead of understanding.

Jesus is the Jesus of all life.

He's the Jesus of spiritual life.

He's the Jesus of our human life.

He is the Jesus of provision in our lives, in whatever we need and whatever's happening.

He is the God of direction.

He is the God who provides.

He is all of those things.

And they need to understand this is not just the exercise of him teaching, but he handles all of life in these moments.

And as we walk through life and as we walk through being examples of the gospel, we have got to be an example of it is never a deserted place when Jesus is there.

And I think that that is a lesson that we are constantly confronted with because we're human people living in a human dimension and we're dealing with spiritual matters.

But it is important that we always have to learn, it is never a deserted place when Jesus is there.

It is just not.

And yet we continually have moments because of our humanness where we hit these times and we think, where is Jesus, or he's not here, or I don't have this, or we've got to go do this because we're in a deserted place instead of first turning to Jesus.

Him being the first place that we turn rather than turning to some other way to meet the needs that are happening in these moments.

And you think, what will be happening in our spiritual lives, in our evangelism lives, what will be happening in our church lives, if we first approached, it is never deserted when Jesus is here.

He's always got everything we need.

He is at work in this, and so there must be a plan.

I do not have to panic over what's happening in this moment because Jesus is at work and it's never deserted when Jesus is there.

The second thing that happens, he leads them into this lesson of faith.

Jesus doesn't get on to them, Jesus doesn't immediately fix it.

What he does is he makes them sit in the stress and try to come up with what the plan is.

So they come and they go, here's the problem, Jesus, we're in a deserted place, we can't feed all these people, we've got to send them away so they can go eat.

And what does he do?

What do we have?

Like, what's here?

Like, you guys are telling me there's a problem, then what do you see?

Another version of it, we understand that he sent them out into the crowds, and it's implicit in this.

He sends them out there to go find out where there's food and what's going on.

He makes them struggle in the moment.

He makes them wrestle with this deal.

Why is he doing that?

Because we're in a training model, and we're in a training moment where he is teaching them what happens.

And he has sent them out with this power, and they come back telling them all this great stuff happened, but they haven't all learned quite the lesson yet.

So now they get into this moment and they go, we're in a deserted place.

And Jesus has to help them understand.

And so he requires them to walk through a classroom where they are asking and struggling and searching and they're trying to figure it out until they finally come back to Jesus and He teaches them in the moment.

And I think we have to understand, Jesus leads us into these lessons of faith.

It is a part of the walk.

He allows us to get in these moments, and even times when we think this is deserted, he's like, but Greg ain't gonna figure it out unless I let Greg struggle with this song.

And so he lets us wrestle in these moments and puts boundaries around them because he is clearly at work, but it is designed to have us exercise these faith muscles.

And you see that taught throughout scripture, requiring us to struggle, requiring us to find answers, requiring us to do that until we finally turn to him and begin to pray over that, is part of the faith lesson of us learning who we are in Christ and the authority and the power and the provision and the love and the guidance and the presence that is always there in our lives.

Because when Jesus is at work, we're never in a deserted place.

It's never deserted when Jesus is there.

And sometimes in our lives, man, we push against these classrooms that we're in.

I had a guy I used to serve with one time.

We were in a time church and it was kind of a struggle or whatever.

And he goes, you know, Pastor, somebody told me one time the best prayer you can pray in a moment like this is, Lord, please make me a fast learner.

And we see times they learn quickly, and we see times that they don't learn quickly.

And so I think that prayer was really good.

And it reminds me I'm supposed to be learning in this struggle.

It can't be deserted because Jesus has not deserted us.

He's got to be doing something, and I need to search for him and place faith in him and struggle in what he's doing in that moment.

And then ministry lesson number three.

Ministry happens when we quit looking at the place and we start looking at the person.

Ministry happens when we come to him rather than trying to figure out on our own what we're doing.

So you take this moment, Jesus, we don't have any food, and we're a long way from Bucky's or McDonald's or whatever, and like we got all these people, and what are we going to do, and all this kind of stuff.

And he's looking at them like, I just held 472 people who couldn't walk until they came up here.

And you guys are worried that we can't handle the food.

Like, what are we doing?

And so he says, go out in the crowd, figure out what we got.

He's like, and like me or some of us who hadn't learned this lesson yet, they turn from Jesus and they start going out in the crowd looking for stuff.

We have 5,000 people and their families, and all of them here, and they're listening and they're hanging on every word and they're repenting and they're getting saved, and people are getting healed, and Jesus is right here teaching them.

And what do we do?

We head off looking for whatever the stuff is.

Like one of them, at least you would hope, would have enough sense to take a step or two and go, what am I doing?

Jesus, what's the plan?

Isn't that true?

Somewhere, somebody ought to respond, Jesus, what's the plan?

Instead of planning, we come to him because we know that it's never deserted when Jesus is at work.

And what he's trying to do is teach them to come to him.

What's the plan?

What are we doing?

Trust in him for the provision.

And I think it's a part of our human journey.

We have the same thing.

I mean, you think about it.

We're all the churches are represented here.

We're in good churches, God's doing stuff.

I love hearing from the other guys and churches, and God's doing stuff in your churches.

We love doing all this together, man.

We're all on the same team.

God's doing all these things.

These are happening, all this stuff's going on.

We know we're saved.

God's speaking to us in our quiet time.

All these things are happening around us, and we hit this spot and we go, I can't find Jesus.

And so we go looking for something else.

When we should be looking for him first and going, Jesus, what are we doing and what's the plan?

Not waiting till we're desperate, but coming at the beginning when we know this is what I'm doing here.

And the other thing is, we've got to bring him whatever we find.

At least when they found the fish, they didn't just look at it and go, eh, we can't do anything with that, and start dismissing everything.

At least they knew enough to know this is Jesus and he's doing stuff, so let's take him that and see what happens.

So they bring in the five loaves and the two fishes.

They brought him what they had and they brought it back to him, and they didn't just dismiss what was out there.

And I think that's important.

I think we have to learn.

Turn to him first, reach into what he is doing, rest in the lesson that he's allowing us to wrestle through, so we learn to turn to him first, to see his provision first.

And we learn instead of dismissing what we have or being negative about what's going on, or you know, I don't have this, I don't have that.

You know, I love it.

People in church come up and tell me all the time, well, Pastor, we don't have this, we don't have that, we don't have that.

Yeah, but we got Jesus, who's the Alpha Omega, who was once dead and now is alive and conquered death and sin, and he owns a thousand cattle on a thousand hills.

Tell me again what we don't have.

Tell me again what we're lacking.

You know, somebody help me with that.

It's never deserted when Jesus is at work.

In these moments, the faith lesson he wants us to get is to turn to him and just give him what we have.

He gave it to us anyway, give it back to him.

And let's see what he can do with it.

Let's watch what he does with it.

Let's learn the lesson of that.

Let's see the power that he brings into our lives as his people.

In the context of Sunday, if you think about your love list and who you need to invite to church, who you need to share your testimony with, you think about how many times we think, ah, they're not gonna get saved.

Ah, they're gonna reject what I've got.

I've asked them before they're not gonna come.

Ah, you know, they want to go to lunch, and Greg's gonna preach too long.

They're not gonna like that.

They're not gonna like our music, you know, they've got all this kind of, we got all this stuff we got is lack.

When we need to understand that Jesus brings everything we need.

And it is never a deserted place when Jesus is at work.

I hope that's an encouragement to you.

Let's pray.

Lord, we love you and we thank you for today, and I thank you for this lesson.

I thank you for the power of your word.

I thank you for how you speak to us of your word.

I thank you for sticking that in my life and the lesson that I needed to learn and the things I needed to see in that passage of Scripture.

And I pray, Father, it's a blessing to these guys, and I pray it encourages them in their walk as well.

Father, I thank you that that no matter how often we need to come to this lesson to learn it, the truth is always real, that it is never deserted when you're there.

And I thank you that you always bring your presence, hope, love, forgiveness, your power, your movement.

All of those things are there.

And I pray, Father, you'll help us to keep learning the lesson.

I know you want to teach us, and I know you were teaching your followers in this passage of Scripture.

Bless these guys, keep them, give them a great week.

Encourage them as they go about their day and their week.

And Father, I pray that you'll bring somebody in their life that needs Jesus, that needs to come to church.

And Father, you will draw them to you and use them to bring that person.

In Jesus' name we pray.

And everybody said.