When the Lord had all the five loaves and both of the two fishes in His hands, He blessed them. The Lord blesses all that He receives and He receives only that which is given to Him in totality.
He never blesses the efforts of dishonest people who, out of their divided hearts, keep part of what they ought to have given.
Spiritual fruitfulness depends very much on the blessing of the Lord. Without the Lord’s blessing, there can be no real fruitfulness. There can be no success in accomplishing God’s command to take the gospel to all nations without the blessing of the Lord. Everything hinges on the blessing of the Lord. When you look at the ministries of the people whom God has used in a most remarkable way, you will find many reasons in their persons and in their work that ought to have caused the work to fail completely, yet you find that it was blessed by the Lord.
What does it mean to be blessed by the Lord? Let us look at the example of Isaac. The Bible says,
“And Isaac sowed in the land, and reaped in the same year a hundredfold. The Lord blessed him and the man became very rich, and gained more and more until he became very wealthy. He had possessions of flocks and herds, and a great household, so that the Philistines envied him” (Genesis 26:12-14).
God blessed Isaac. He sowed in the land where he was a sojourner and in that same year he reaped one hundredfold. Let us take for example that Isaac sowed ten yams, ten plantains, ten groundnut, ten beans, etch. It means that he reaped one thousand yams, one thousand plantains, one thousand groundnut, one thousand beans, etch. It means that if he started with ten sheep and ten goats, at the end of that year, he had one thousand sheep and one thousand goats. There was also a great multiplication in his household.
Can you imagine it? One yam gave a hundred yams! One maize plant produced multitudes. This is what blessing means. There was no way of accounting for it on the basis of hard work. Hard work could perhaps produce a two, three, five and perhaps a tenfold increase, but not more! It could not be explained on the basis of the fertility of the land. Only God could have done it. That was the only explanation that made sense. He was blessed by the Lord.
Isaac was a sojourner. He came into the land of the Philistines without anything much; for there was famine in his own country. You do not have much to carry when there is famine and you are fleeing. Maybe all that he carried was the seed that he planted. It could even be that his seed was received as a gift from someone who had pity on him. He had the seed. He sowed it and in one year he became inexplicably rich. So rich was he that the rich farmers of Philistine became jealous. They had seen him come in, totally in need. He had been with them for just one year. They had seen him sow in an ordinary way, but they could not understand the extraordinary harvest. They were jealous. Even their king was superseded by a large margin; for he said to Isaac, “Go away from us; for you are much mightier than us” (Genesis 26:16). When a person who had nothing much sows, and in one year he reaps a harvest that makes him not only mightier but much mightier than the king, he has been blessed by the Lord.
Isaac sowed and was blessed in the harvest. He did not remain idle and then was given a hundredfold increase. He first had to sow and then he could reap. The miracle was performed on what was sowed. In the feeding of the five thousand men and a multitude of women and children, there was a sowing and a reaping process. When all the five loaves and two fishes were placed in the hands of Jesus, the sowing process took place. Jesus, having in His hands that which was sowed, looked up and in a special way, God the Father and God the Son became one in the act of blessing the five loaves and two fishes – an act being carried out by God the Son. By blessing it, the Lord imparted a capacity to the five loaves and two fishes that they did not possess before. He imparted to them the capacity to multiply in an unusual way. We say with strong emphasis that sowing must precede blessing.
Sowing is placing all that one has and all that one is, actively and practically, into the hands of the Lord Jesus so that He can do with what one is and what one has, whatever pleases Him. Blessing is the impartation to what one is and to what one has, the extraordinary capacity to meet the most impossible needs.
The Bible says,
“Give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For the measure you give will be the measure you get back” (Luke 6:38).
The first thing has to be done by you. You are to give. The Bible says that there will be a fivefold measure of receiving.
Measure one is indicated by the words: It will be given to you.
Measure two is indicated be the words: Good measure
Measure three is indicated by the words: Pressed down.
Measure four is indicated by the words: Shaken together.
Measure five is indicated by the words: Running over
If someone gave 10 francs to the Lord,
Measure one means that he will receive 10 francs.
Measure two means that he will receive 10 x 10 F
Measure three means that he will receive 10 x 10 x 10 F
Measure four means that he will receive 10 x 10 x 10 x 10 F
Measure five means that he will receive 10 x 10 x 10 X 10 F
This means that the Lord has promised to bless the one who gives 10 francs so that he receives 10 X 10 x 10 x 10 X 10 F = 100.000 F.
If the person, instead of giving ten francs, gave 100 francs, he would receive 100 x 100 x 100 x 100 X 100 F = 10.000.000.000 Francs.
If the same person, instead of giving one hundred francs, gave 1000 francs, he would receive 1000 X 1000 X 1000 X 1000 X 1000 = 1,000,000,000,000,000.
If the person decided to give ten thousand francs, he would receive 10.000 x 10.000 x 10.000 x 10.000 x 10.000 F = 1.0000.0000.0000.0000.0000 Francs.
So the one who gave:
one ten francs coin received 100.000 francs
one one hundred francs coin received 10.000.000.000.francs
one thousand francs received 1.000.000.000.000.000 F.
ten thousand francs received 100.000.000.000.000.000.000 Francs.
If a person was able to give ten thousand francs but he gave only one thousand francs, he would have done himself great harm. By holding the nine thousand francs back, he would have deprived himself of 100.000 francs.
I want us to look at the person who gave 10.000 instead of one million. The one who gave 1.000.000 would receive
1.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000.000 francs.
The difference in what is received is 10.000.000 francs.
