I.　In the performing of the miracle of feeding five thousand people with five loaves and two fish, the Lord trained His disciples to learn from Him—Matt. 11:29:

A.　To see the miracle of feeding five thousand with five loaves and two fish is easy, but to know the deeper and greater lessons of life, which we have to learn from the Performer of this great miracle, requires revelation—cf. v. 25.

B.　These lessons are intrinsic, deeper, and of life; we need to learn these living lessons from the Lord so that we can enter into the God-man living.

C.　Matthew 14:19 says that He took the five loaves and two fish, and when He was going to bless them, He looked up to heaven:

1.　Looking up to heaven indicates that He was looking up to His source, His Father in heaven:

a.　This indicates that He realized the source of the blessing was not Him; the Father as the sending One, not the sent One, should be the source of blessing—cf. Rom. 11:36.

b.　Regardless of how much we can do or how much we know what to do, we must realize that we need the Sender's blessing upon our doing so that we can be channels of supply by trusting in Him, not in ourselves—cf. Matt. 14:19b; Num. 6:22-27.

2.　His looking up to the Father in heaven indicated that as the Son on earth sent by the Father in heaven, He was one with the Father, trusting in the Father—John 10:30:

a.　What I know and what I can do mean nothing; being one with the Lord and trusting in Him mean everything in our ministry—cf. 1 Cor. 2:3-4.

b.　The blessing comes only by our being one with the Lord and trusting in Him—cf. 2 Cor. 1:8-9.

3.　The Lord did not do anything from Himself—John 5:19; cf. Matt. 16:24:

a.　We should deny ourselves and not have the intention of doing anything from ourselves but have the intention of doing everything from Him.

b.　We need to continually exercise our spirit to reject the self and live by another life by the bountiful supply of the Spirit of Jesus Christ—Phil. 1:19-21a.

4.　The Lord did not seek His own will but the will of Him who sent Him—John 5:30b; 6:38; Matt. 26:39, 42:

a.　He rejected His idea, His intention, and His purpose.

b.　All of us should be on the alert for this one thing—when we are sent to do some work, we should not take that chance to seek our own goal; we should just go, seeking the idea, purpose, aim, goal, and intention of our sending Lord—cf. 1 Tim. 5:2b.

5.　The Lord did not seek His own glory, but the glory of the Father who sent Him—John 7:18; 5:41; cf. 12:43:

a.　To be ambitious is to seek your own glory—cf. 3 John 9.

b.　We need to see that our self, our purpose, and our ambition are three big destroying "worms" in our work; we must learn to hate them.

c.　If we are going to be used for the Lord always in His recovery, our self has to be denied, our purpose has to be rejected, and our ambition must be given up—Matt. 16:24.

II.　After performing the miracle, the Lord went up to the mountain privately to pray—Matt. 14:23; cf. Luke 6:12:

A.　The Lord did not remain in the issue of the miracle with the crowds but went away from them privately to be with the Father on the mountain in prayer:

1.　The word privately is very meaningful; this means He did not let people know He was going to pray:

a.　The Lord compelled the disciples to leave Him in order that He might have more time to pray privately to the Father—Matt. 14:22-23.

b.　He needed to pray privately to His Father who was in the heavens, that He might be one with the Father and have the Father with Him in whatever He did on earth for the establishing of the kingdom of the heavens.

2.　The Lord told us, "When you pray, enter into your private room, and shut your door and pray to your Father who is in secret; and your Father who sees in secret will repay you"—6:6:

a.　When we pray with others, we cannot enjoy the Lord as deeply as when we pray to the Lord privately.

b.　The kingdom people must have some experience of prayer in their private room, contacting their heavenly Father in secret, experiencing some secret enjoyment of the Father, and receiving some secret answer from Him: (1) The self is most visible in the fact that it enjoys doing things in a public way, in the presence of man; the self loves to be glorified, and the flesh loves to be gazed upon. (2) If you pray every day without telling others or letting them know about it, it means that you are healthy and that you are growing. (3) If you always tell others how much you pray, you will not only lose your reward but also not grow in life or be healthy—cf. 13:6.

3.　We have to learn to leave the crowds, our family, our friends, and the saints in the church to go to a higher level on a "high mountain," separated from the crowd, to be with the Father privately and secretly to have intimate fellowship with Him—cf. Exo. 33:11a.

B.　His going up to the mountain privately to pray indicated His asking the Father to bless all those who had participated in the enjoyment of the issue of the miracle that they would not be satisfied with the food which perishes, but that they should seek for the food which abides unto eternal life—John 6:27.

C.　His going up to the mountain privately to pray also indicated that He wanted to receive from the Father some instruction concerning how to take care of the five thousand people fed by His miracle.