Luke
9:17 So they all ate and were filled, and twelve baskets of the leftover
fragments were taken up by them. NKJV
Every day while watching television we are
constantly introduced to the next best product or service or form of
entertainment or some vacation spa/retreat that assures all watching that
theirs will be the best of the best and everyone can be sure to be satisfied guaranteed
or they will get their money back or some other compensation. The world is
always hard at work to come up with something that will so captivate people
that everyone will want to buy it or try it. You can’t ride down the highway
today without a huge billboard in your face trying to draw you into some
business establishment. We have made idols out of anything and we seem to
create new ones at a rapid pace. The Apostle Paul confronted those many idolaters
in Athens, Greece about 30 to 40 years after our Lord Jesus had been raised
from the dead and ascended back to Heaven. We tend to only consider an idol to
be some statue made of stone in the image of some person or animal, but in
reality an idol is anything a person loves more, trust more, serves (spends
time in or with) more, worships more, or fears more than Almighty God.
In this 9th Chapter of Luke’s gospel we
find him recording the account of our Lord Jesus feeding the 5,000 men plus
women and children that followed Him and the disciples as our Lord took them to
a deserted place outside the city of Bethsaida. The multitudes were always
looking for our Lord wanting to hear more of His teachings about the Kingdom of
God and surely even more than that they wanted to receive healing of their
diseases from His hands as others were so healed. The glorious thing about our
Lord was that He knew the majority of these people would be no where around at
His crucifixion or even after He was raised from the dead. Remember only 120
souls were in the upper room with one accord united in prayer as the Holy Spirit fell on them during
Pentecost. Yet our Lord healed those in need of healing anyway.
This miracle was done at the time to satisfy a need
for physical nourishment for the men, women, and children, but it has an
everlasting spiritual implication for our Lord’s spiritual children today. The
eternal spiritual lesson and blessing is that when you daily eat from the table
of our Lord Jesus Christ and eat of the Bread of Life (Christ Jesus) you will
always be satisfied. Today as I got to this 9th Chapter of Luke, I
wondered what my Lord Jesus would direct me to write about for His Glory out of
this Chapter, because I have written on most of the other things covered by
Luke in this Chapter already in the past. But when my Lord directed me to watch
a message by His son Francis Chan about temptation, I knew He wanted me to
write on this one verse Luke 9:17. I had made several notes in my Bible about
this verse years ago about how our Lord satisfies or fills us up so much when
we are in His presence the hunger or thirst for things of this world appear
foreign to us and we are even repulsed by them compared to the excellency of
knowing and loving Jesus Christ our Lord. The Apostle Paul said of all the
things about himself that he held in such high regard before he was knocked of
his horse and saved by our Lord Jesus Christ that they became to him like dung.
Psalms
107:9 For He satisfies the longing soul, And fills the hungry soul with
goodness. NKJV
Like these thousands of people received a
continuance supply of fish and bread until everyone was full to the point that
there were 12 baskets of leftover food taken up, so is every true regenerated
born again son or daughter of the King of Kings supplied with a continual
stream of grace to overcome any sin, any persecution, any poor health, any
grieving heart, any financial matter, any marital issues, anything that would
cause us separation from our intimate love relationship with our Precious Lord
Jesus Christ. The English word filled
Dr. Luke used in verse 17 comes from the Greek word chortazo, which means to gorge (to supply food in abundance), to
fill, to satisfy. This is what our Lord Jesus wants to do for His spiritual children;
He wants to gorge us full of His grace that we may be overflowing with Him and
in need of nothing from the world to satisfy us. Unlike what the world, the
flesh, and the devil has to offer us that brings a temporary high our Lord
Jesus Christ supplies us with an unending river of living water that never deceives,
disappoints, or diminishes. As the Psalmist King David wrote saying, “Oh, taste
and see that the LORD is good; Blessed is the man who
trusts in Him!” We were dead in our trespasses and sin and now we are alive to
our Father in Heaven through our Lord Jesus Christ and we must eat His flesh
daily and drink His blood every day and when we do we will find no desire for
sin and the things of this temporary world, but instead sin and the things of
the world will be as dung or as gravel in our mouths.
Psalms
17:15 As for me, I will see Your face in righteousness; I shall be satisfied
when I awake in Your likeness. NKJV
Psalms
22:26 The poor shall eat and be satisfied; Those who seek Him will praise the LORD.
Let your heart live forever! NKJV
Psalms
36:8 They are abundantly satisfied with the fullness of Your house, And You
give them drink from the river of Your pleasures. NKJV
Psalms
63:5 My soul shall be satisfied as with marrow and fatness, And my mouth shall
praise You with joyful lips. NKJV
Psalms
65:4 Blessed is the man You choose, And cause to approach You, That
he may dwell in Your courts. We shall be satisfied with the goodness of Your
house, Of Your holy temple. NKJV
“Those whom Christ feeds He fills;
to whom He gives, He gives enough; as there is in Him enough for all, so there is enough for each. He replenishes every hungry
soul, abundantly satisfies it with the goodness
of His house.” Matthew Henry
“When you become satisfied with God, however,
everything else so loses its charm that He can give it to you without harm.” A.
B. Simpson
“God has set Eternity in
our heart, and man’s infinite capacity cannot be filled or satisfied with the things of time
and sense.” F. B. Meyer
“The essence of faith is
being satisfied with
all that God is for us in Jesus.” “Sin is what you do when you are not satisfied in God.” John Piper
“To be holy is to be
wholly satisfied with
Christ. Above all, it is to reflect the beauty and the splendor of our holy
Lord in this dark world. In pursuing holiness, you will fulfill and experience
all that God had in mind when He created you.” Nancy Leigh DeMoss
“The Christian is the
most contented man in the world, but he is the least contented with the world.
He is like a traveler in an inn, perfectly satisfied with the inn and its accommodation, considering it
as an inn, but putting quite out of all consideration the idea of making it his
home.” Charles Spurgeon
“After a person has
forsaken his natural longings he obtains a genuinely restful life. Formerly he
had many desires. To satisfy them he planned, plotted and contrived, exhausting
every ounce of his wisdom and power. His heart was in constant turmoil. But
that child of God who purely follows the Spirit and seeks not his own pleasure is satisfied with what God gives to
him: and his restlessness immediately ceases.” “This is none other than a satisfied life. The Christian
cherishes nothing but God; henceforth he is satisfied with His will.” Watchman Nee
If
you do not know the Lord Jesus Christ and His amazing healing power, pray this
from your heart to the Lord Jesus Christ (you speaking directly to Him), Dear
Lord Jesus, I confess to You that I am a sinner and I need Your forgiveness. I
believe You shed Your Blood and died for my sins. I believe that You rose from
the dead proving that You alone are God. I repent of my sins. I want to turn
from my sins. I ask You Dear Lord Jesus to come into my heart and take control
of my life. I want You to be my Lord, Savior, and my God. Amen...
Sincerely in Christ,
Clifford D. Tate, Sr.
Author of “Silent Assassins of the Soul - Are you
Broken by Pornography and Masturbation? You can be Restored by the Lord Jesus
Christ and brought into Deliverance, Freedom, and Victory! A Guide for Men and
Women in the Enemy’s Crosshairs” e-book available now @ Amazon Kindle, @ Apple
I Bookstore for IPod, Barnes and Noble for Nook, Reader Store for Sony Reader,
Kobo, Copia, Gardners, Baker and Taylor, and eBookPie…
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