We can find out more about the Lord's training of His disciples in the feeding of the five thousand and then the four thousand. On one of these occasions, He took His disciples with Him and preached to a large crowd of five thousand, not including women and children. Toward the close of the day the disciples came to Him and said, "This place is deserted and the hour is already late. Send the crowds away that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves. But Jesus said to them, They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat" (Matt. 14:15-16). The disciples had hoped that the Lord would send the crowds away to get their own food. But the Lord said, "You give them something to eat." When one disciple heard this, he was shocked, and said, "Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that each one may take a little" (John 6:7). While they were counting the two hundred denarii, the Lord said, "How many loaves do you have? Go and see" (Mark 6:38). When they brought Him five loaves and two fishes, the Lord performed a miracle and fed them all. Brothers and sisters, all those who are counting their two hundred denarii are not qualified to work for the Lord. If money means so much to us, we cannot touch God's work. The Lord shows us in these verses that every worker should be glad to give away what he has. If money means a great deal to us, we will always calculate profit. A worker should be delivered from the power of mammon. Money should not exert any power or influence upon a worker of the Lord. During the three and a half years the Lord was with the twelve disciples, He gave Himself to them. This was the way He trained the twelve disciples. He showed them that what should be spent should be spent. God's work has nothing to do with profitability. It is wrong to view God's work with a commercial eye. Those who are always counting their money are not God's slaves; they are mammon's slaves. We have to learn to rescue ourselves from the power of mammon.

The disciples did not learn this lesson immediately. In Matthew 15, we see another occasion with four thousand people, excluding women and children. This time the condition was more serious. The crowd had been there for three days. What could the disciples do under such circumstances? The Lord told them, "I am moved with compassion for the crowd, because for three days now they have remained with Me and they do not have anything to eat" (v. 32). The word "and" means that the Lord Himself was also without food for those three days. He went on, "And I am not willing to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way." But the disciples had not learned the lesson. They wondered how they could get enough food to feed the people. Man's concern is always where food will come from. But the Lord asked them, "How many loaves do you have? And they said, Seven, and a few small fish" (v. 34). They brought Him the seven loaves and the few fish, and the Lord performed another miracle and fed the four thousand.