Turn It Over to Jesus
By Robert Wright — Ludden Chapel Baptist Church
Rev. Mariko Billups stood in for Rev. Marcus Davis Sunday and preached from Matthew 14:13, with John 6:9 for the barley and the boy. He called it “A Little Is All You Need.”
He opened with Jesus grieving John the Baptist, trying to withdraw, and the crowd following Him into His sorrow anyway.
Then the disciples and their arithmetic. Five loaves, two fish, five thousand mouths. Their trouble was never the portion, Billups said. It was the placement. They stood counting fish beside the One who made everything.
He preached the boy who turned loose the lunch he needed, and the barley — cheap bread, bread they fed to animals — taken up anyway. Then the order: blessed, broken, bestowed. The blessing comes first so the breaking will not destroy you. Breaking is preparation, not punishment.
He landed on hands.
Now let me tell my fellow musicians what was happening on the bench.
Songs came. Six of them. “Long As I Got King Jesus.” “Silver and Gold.” “Give Me Jesus.” “I Surrender All.” Daryl Coley’s “He’s Preparing Me.” And when he said a thing must change ownership before it can multiply, the Florida Mass Choir — “All In His Hands.”
That last one nearly got it.
A sermon will hand you a stack of songs. Only one of them answers where the preacher put the period.
But “All In His Hands” is testimony. I put it all in His hands. “Turn It Over to Jesus” is instruction. You turn it over. He had just spent forty minutes telling that congregation what to do with what they were holding. The invitation needed the imperative, not the report.
So we closed with the Georgia Mass Choir. Milton Biggham wrote a chorus a whole house can carry without a hymnal.
The other five were faithful. They were my notes. They were not my answer.
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| CLOSING SONG | “Turn It Over to Jesus” — Georgia Mass Choir, written by Rev. Milton Biggham |
