Time to eat

 

John 6:1-14

Time to eat!

Tonight’s message is entitled time to eat. Admit it! Most of you got a little excited when I said the title just now. You are already thinking about what you are going to eat when you get home or your thinking Oh, I’m still full from “fill in the blank.” Look at this picture from back in the day. Now look at this belly, this is my cheese baby. I regret nothing, the end.

Food is why we go on vacations as adults. Hey, let us eat something and then go get something to eat. Then we can go see the thing, I bet it has a snack bar. Food is how you get people to help you move furniture! Dad once needed help moving a heavy couch when I was first in the youth here. I asked my buddies in the youth group after church one night “ Hey guys. My dad needs help moving a big heavy couch on Friday.” Everyone was busy! Then I added “Dad will buy you lunch from wherever you want if you help.” Then Jared Compton perks up and says “My schedule has suddenly opened!”

 Food and the promise of it is a highly motivating factor! Food and the pursuit of it is a global historical constant. Tonight, we discuss one of the more famous stories in the gospels, the feeding of the multitudes.

After these things Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. ² Then a great multitude followed Him, because they saw His signs which He performed on those who were diseased.^[a] 3 And Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat with His disciples.

The gospel of John ends with the following verses in John 20:30-31 “ And truly Jesus did many other signs in the presence of His disciples, which are not written in this book; ³¹ but these are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in His name.”

This means we don’t have the whole picture Jesus life, nor do we even have the whole picture of His roughly three years of public ministry. This means we need to pay special attention to the things that are included in the gospels. The feeding of the multitudes is one of only 10 things that happened in Jesus life that is spread across all 4 gospels.

8 of those 10 events deal directly with the Crucifixion. One of those is mentioning the fact that His ministry began in Galilee. That means that in three years of ministry, with all that was said and done, this is the one event that made it into all 4 gospels. If God says something once, it is important. If God says something 4 times, listen up.

This takes place sometime after John 5. I’m pretty sure it’s a short time frame day more so than weeks or months since John 5 ends with people wanting to kill Jesus. He decides to go to the next thing. A great multitude follows Him.

Fantastic we think! All these people following Jesus. We know it’s a big number also roughly 5000 people. When we factor in women and children as only men were part of the headcount back then the number could easily be between 10-15K. Let me give you some perspective on that number. That means they could fill every single seat at Charlotte Motor Speedway.

Why are they following Him? Because they heard his words and were convicted? Because they saw the miracles and realized This man is the son of God? No. They saw the healing and wanted to get in on it. I don’t blame them.

I’m 41. I’m on three different long term prescription meds, my right twitches uncontrollably and requires multiple shots to my face 4 times a year. Which is not as much fun as it sounds. This is all related to a piece of my skull I had to have removed in 2001. If there was a person standing outside that could permanently make all that go away with just a touch or a word. I’m interested.

Have you ever wondered about the people that Jesus didn’t heal? He didn’t heal every single person He came into contact with. He could have. Why? I wrestled with this for years and then came to the conclusion that I was being selfish. Jesus wasn’t crucified to heal us physically, to improve our physical condition and circumstances. If that is all you want from Jesus you will end up disappointed and disillusioned. Jesus, as we discussed at length in John 5, is here by the Will of the Father, to the Glory of the Father.  We are going to see this pan out as we go through this chapter.

⁴ Now the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near. ⁵ Then Jesus lifted up His eyes, and seeing a great multitude coming toward Him, He said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” ⁶ But this He said to test him, for He Himself knew what He would do. ⁷ Philip answered Him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may have a little.”

Poor Phillip! Jesus is picking on him! He already knew what He was going to do and how. He wanted to see how Phillip would respond. Phillip had seen the miracles and the healings. Phillip would have known the stories of how God provided of Israel in the wilderness with Manna from Heaven, and water from a rock. How does He respond?

He had already done the math! He saw it was impossible! We don’t have the money Jesus! Even if we did who around here is going to have that much bread to sell? There was no Costco back then folks. We read this and we know how this story ends. We think sad silly Phillip! Don’t you know God Incarnate is standing right next to you! He brought all of creation into existence with a few words and you are worried about bread? How foolish!

How are we any different? We see tasks set before us, often by the Lord and we think this is an impossible task. We don’t even start before we make that declaration. We have this huge list of reasons why it will never work. The Lord asks both great and small things of us and our response is almost always “Two Hundred Denarii isn’t enough.”

That’s true. We don’t have the resources or the ability. We have something better. The Lord. Phillip’s response (and ours) should be “I don’t know how you are going to do it, but I know you can. Just tell me what you where you want me to go and what you want me to do.”

⁸ One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to Him, ⁹ “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two small fish, but what are they among so many?”

Andrew shows up bringing another person to Jesus. This little boy has some food. He has roughly enough for his lunch. Each item described here would have been smaller than my hand. It’s enough for one person, maybe two.

¹⁰ Then Jesus said, “Make the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. ¹¹ And Jesus took the loaves, and when He had given thanks He distributed them ^[b]to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down; and likewise of the fish, as much as they wanted. ¹² So when they were filled, He said to His disciples, “Gather up the fragments that remain, so that nothing is lost.” ¹³ Therefore they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves which were left over by those who had eaten. ¹⁴ Then those men, when they had seen the sign that Jesus did, said, “This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world.

Look at how much Jesus does with so little! Can you imagine the perspective of the disciples? Of Phillip especially? How many loaves was He given? 5! How many disciples were there? 12! Even if he broke them in half there’s still two disciples without. The miracle starts right then! He divided 5 tiny biscuits and two small fish among 12 men and said hey go pass those out! I have zero proof of this, but I feel it’s in line with how Jesus does things. I bet as Jesus was dividing out the food between the disciples Phillip was last in line. There in the back doing the calculations wondering why they didn’t run out of food 5 disciples earlier.  If that’s me I’m thinking “Well this won’t take long.” Expecting to run out at any moment, then it never happens.

Only Jesus can do Multiplication by Division and Addition by Subtraction!

One of the problems we've had in 2020 is this. We have been full for so long that we have forgotten what it's like to hunger, to do without. To not have everything we wanted immediately available to us. To have to decide between being with the people we love, and keeping them and ourselves safe/healthy. These are not easy decisions with a clear cut answer. We can only trust in the one who provides our every need in Christ Jesus.