Sermon Cloud

TEXT

 

Luke 9:10-17: "On their return the apostles told him all that they had done. And he took them and withdrew apart to a town called Bethsaida.  11 When the crowds learned it, they followed him, and he welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God and cured those who had need of healing.  12 Now the day began to wear away, and the twelve came and said to him, ‘Send the crowd away to go into the surrounding villages and countryside to find lodging and get provisions, for we are here in a desolate place.'  13 But he said to them, ‘You give them something to eat.' They said, ‘We have no more than five loaves and two fish--unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.'  14 For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, ‘Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each.'  15 And they did so, and had them all sit down.  16 And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing over them. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.  17 And they all ate and were satisfied. And what was left over was picked up, twelve baskets of broken pieces."

 

INTRODUCTION

 

We're looking again at the parties or feasts of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke.  There are nine such feasts that Luke gives us, and as we've been saying, these meals teach us much about the ministry and message of Jesus.  To understand these meals is to understand the very heart of God-the communion with us He desires, and the cost to bring us to His coming Kingdom feast.

 

Eating is an activity all of us do.  It is a basic human practice.  Yet when Jesus came, He transformed the ordinary meal into an encounter with Him.  He sets Himself in the midst of these meals and invites all to come and taste the grace of God.  Jesus demonstrates to the world His mission through welcoming sinners at the table with Him. 

 

The context of our passage this morning is very important.  It centers around the identity of Jesus Christ.  In the beginning of the chapter, Jesus gathers the twelve around Him and gave them power to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal those in need.  They went out and did as their Lord told them and have now returned to tell Jesus everything they did.

 

Herod Antipas, the son of Herod the Great, who was a prince and now a tetrarch (a ruler of a quarter), heard what was happening and raised the question about Jesus' identity.  Herod was confused because he knew he had beheaded John the Baptist and wanted to know who this man Jesus was (v.7). 

 

After the story of the feeding of 5,000, Jesus asks His disciples what the crowds, who had just enjoyed the feast Jesus provided, say about Him.  "Who do the crowds say that I am?" (v. 18)

 

What a great question.  Who do we say this man Jesus is?  It is a question we must all wrestle with.  It is a question that has profound implications.  Every one of us, whether we are followers of Jesus or not, has some opinion, some idea of who we think Jesus is. 

 

What Jesus does for us in this passage is show us through this miracle who He is and why He came.  That's the context of the feeding of 5,000.

 

This particular miracle is in Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.  It is a significant miracle and sign of God.  The meaning of this passage is simple, but incredible. 

 

STUDY

 

I.  A Revolutionary Feast

 

Verses 10-11: "On their return the apostles told him all that they had done. And he took them and withdrew apart to a town called Bethsaida.  11 When the crowds learned it, they followed him, and he welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God and cured those who had need of healing." 

 

Now, at first pass, you may not see that this passage is about a revolutionary feast.  Most of us, if we're honest, simply think it's a nice story about Jesus at a picnic.  You can almost smell the potato salad and see the red and yellow plastic containers of ketchup and mustard can't you?  All the ladies are wearing their summer dresses which oddly enough match the table cloths.  This is a warm picture, but it's not really accurate.  Jesus is doing something far more outrageous than having a picnic while everyone listens to Will Smith's song Summertime.  So what is it about? 

 

When Jesus left from Galilee he went out to a place called Bethsaida.  This was sort of on the outskirts, and we know historically this was the breeding ground for the zealots who wanted to overthrow Roman rule through military conquest.  It was a place where the revolutionaries would gather to meet and discuss how they were going to defeat their enemy.  This was the hotbed of freedom fighters and Jesus was ministering in their midst.

 

If you look at v. 2 you'll see that Jesus sent His disciples out to proclaim the Gospel of the Kingdom and to heal.  They were traveling through the Galilean region and preaching a message about God's Kingdom breaking in.  Again, after they return from their journey, Jesus takes them and withdraws even deeper into the rural areas to a dumpy little town called Bethsaida.  

 

Yet, we see when Jesus does this that a whole region turns out to follow Him.  It says in verse 14 there were 5,000 men, which means that when wives and children are included, there were some 15-20,000 people who came out to hear what Jesus had to say about Himself and what He came to do.  This was a huge number of people considering the population in these cities and towns was so small compared to our day.  This probably was everyone from the town and the surrounding villages who came out.  You can imagine, because they were probably all related to or know revolutionaries, that Jesus had excited their interest. 

 

John's Gospel tells us the reason they all came out. 

 

John 6:15: "Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king..."

 

They were just waiting for a reason to make Jesus King.  They heard about His signs and miracles and knew that God must have sent someone to free them.  They want the revolution to begin now!

 

John the Baptist had just been beheaded and they were tired of living under such fear, injustice and oppression.  So Jesus goes to the very center of their revolution to show them what kind of revolution God has in mind.

 

When Jesus looks out and sees the crowds coming, He is well aware of why they're there.  He knows they're looking for a leader promised in the Old Testament, a leader like Moses and Joshua, a leader that will establish them as a national power and restore their military might so they can defend themselves from such injustice.

 

Jesus knows their hearts; He sees their pain and suffering and has come to give them what they really need.  So what does He do?  He begins by speaking to them about the Kingdom of God and cures those who have need of healing, or literally translated the "weak ones." 

 

He does this all in the disposition of a host.  In v. 11 it says He welcomed them. 

 

Verse 11: "When the crowds learned it, they followed him, and he welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God and cured those who had need of healing."

 

The word used for welcoming in the passage literally means to accept with a warm and friendly heart.  Jesus' heart is going out to them and He receives them as His guest. 

 

Now, what would normally take place in this kind of meeting would be a speech to incite the crowds.  The leader would proclaim their agenda, say a prayer to bless their efforts, and the people would be grouped according to their particular military strength and weapons would be handed out to each respective group according to their task.  The chief revolutionary, who would have been made king, would have his generals organize the disbursement of their weapons and begin to train them with those weapons.

 

Yet, in this scene, what is so striking is that Jesus begins to proclaim God's true agenda, heals those in need to show His authority, and instead of handing out weapons He gives them His word and bread. 

 

This is Jesus' response to their desire to make Him the kind of king they want Him to be.  This is Jesus' demonstration of the kind of revolution God has brought into the world through Jesus.  Jesus completely overthrows their model of overthrowing.  Jesus revolutionizes their model of a revolution! 

 

But Jesus still is about revolution.  Jesus is still about liberation-just not like they or we expected.

 

His answer to the revolutionary question is to give bread. 

 

Jesus gives them His Word and He gives them bread.  Why?  He's showing how the true revolution of God will overthrow this world.  He's showing them how true liberation will come.  He's showing them how God is bringing life into this world through His Kingdom. 

 

A Revolution of Word and Deed

 

Again, v. 11 says that Jesus preached about the Kingdom of God and healed the weak ones.  Then in vv. 16-17 Jesus miraculously multiplies bread and feeds everyone there, so much that there is 12 baskets left over. 

 

When Jesus sent out His disciples in v. 2, He sent them out to proclaim the Kingdom of God and to heal.  Now, Jesus has a large crowd around Him and He does the same.  He proclaims the Kingdom of God and heals and feeds them.  In other words, Jesus brings both word and deed.  His deeds clarify His word.  His word is demonstrated in His deed.  His deed proves that His word is true and also demonstrates the power of His word.

 

Jesus is showing them that all of their planning, all of their working towards liberation, all their hunger to be free is far greater than just physical circumstances.  Jesus is showing a deeper kind of hunger and He uses their physical and social hunger to prove His point. 

 

This hunger is a hunger for something permanent, something that will last.  Jesus says this in John 6 in the parallel passage of this miracle:

 

John 6:27-35: "‘Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.'  28 Then they said to him, ‘What must we do, to be doing the works of God?'  29 Jesus answered them, ‘This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.'  30 So they said to him, ‘Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?  31 Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, "He gave them bread from heaven to eat."'  32 Jesus then said to them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.  33 For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.'  34 They said to him, ‘Sir, give us this bread always.'  35 Jesus said to them, ‘I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.'"

 

Did you hear that?  He's telling them not to labor for a food that spoils, or in other words, something temporary.  He wants them to desire a food that endures forever which only He can give.  Only He can satisfy that deep hunger in us. 

 

John-Paul Sartre, the famous French, atheist philosopher says this in one of his works:

 

"That God does not exist, I cannot deny.  That my whole being cries out for God, I cannot forget."

 

The hunger that Sartre believes has no cure, Jesus can cure.  The hunger for freedom that everyone longs for, Jesus can give.  The real hunger we all have, Jesus can satisfy.

 

Look, we all pursue various kinds of revolutions to satisfy our hunger.  Sartre was trying to satisfy an intellectual hunger and launched a revolution of thought called existentialism.  The 60's tried to satisfy a political hunger for peace and launched a sexual revolution.  We're all trying to satisfy some kind of hunger so we launch our mini-revolutions through work, family, money, politics, drugs, sex, relationships of all kinds, etc.  We willingly give ourselves to the promise of freedom and believe that if we only had this or that we'd be liberated.  But as Jesus said, we're hungering for that which perishes and never satisfies.  We're pursuing revolutions that are not intended to fill us and we're left empty.

 

True revolution comes in His Word and through His deeds.

 

Word (Kingdom of God)

 

So Jesus gives His word.  Why is it so important that His word is proclaimed?  Because it's news to be heard, not simply advice to follow. 

 

When Jesus speaks about His Kingdom, when His disciples preach His Kingdom, they're preaching the good news about God breaking into this world to fix and restore what has been broken by sin.  It's an announcement that anyone who has sought after other revolutions can lay down their arms and come to the true King to find peace, joy, and true freedom. 

 

It is a call to turn from our past revolutions and follow the True Revolutionary, the very Son of God who has come to overthrow the kingdom of this world.  It's an announcement of how this King has brought His healing power into this world through His own death for us.

 

The proclamation of the Gospel, the Kingdom of God, is not advice to follow; it's news to be believed.  If it were advice to follow, we'd be back on the hook to work out our own victory.  If it's an announcement of what God has done and is doing for us, then it's news to be believed. 

 

Jesus didn't come to simply be an example, though He is an example; He came to be our substitute.  He came to exchange His life for ours, His righteousness for our unrighteousness, His love for our hatred, His peace for our turmoil, His grace for our labor, His purity for our impurity, His dignity for our shame, His innocence for our guilt. 

 

This is news, not advice.  Every other religion gives you advice of what you must do but Jesus brings another revolution, the true revolution of God and dares to claim that the only way God has chosen to right His world and free us is by what He's done for us, not what we can do for Him.  This is grace!

 

Deed (Bread)

 

He proves this by feeding the crowds through the miracle of multiplying the fish and loaves. 

 

Why does He do this?  What does He perform these miracles?  Are they to prove His raw display of power? 

 

We live in a time when power is used to show off power.  We naturally assume when Jesus performs a miracle that it is to show how powerful He is.  In other words, "look at how great I am!"  But that is missing the point.  If Jesus wanted to display His great power, this wouldn't be the way to do it.  This miracle, and the miracles prior and after aren't really that impressive, if that's only what they're intended for.

 

C'mon, He feeds people, He heals lame people, He turns water into wine, and does all these other Kingdom things.  But if He really wanted to impress people, why doesn't He show off some power like in Heroes.  You know, fly around, freeze someone by touching them, look at them and have them fly across the room, choke someone without touching them, snap His fingers and a ball of fire rests in His hand,  run at the speed of light around the world, something like that!  That would impress.  That would show off His power.  But He doesn't, does He? 

 

He gathers this group, proclaims the Kingdom to them and then feeds them.  He doesn't do these things for a raw display of power.  The purpose of His miracles is to prove the redemptive power of His miracles.  It's to show what the Kingdom of God looks like and what this world will look like when it comes in fullness.  It's to show what God is like by redeeming and healing you, me and this world from the decay and death of sin.

 

We think miracles are all about some kind of supernatural spectacle.  But this actually misunderstands miracles.  It isn't a suspension of the natural order.  Jurgen Moltmann sums it up best.  He says:

 

"Jesus healings are the only natural things in a world that is unnatural, demonized, and wounded." 

 

God made the world perfect.  The way this world was before the fall was natural.  When God crated this world, there was no hunger, no blindness, no poverty, no sickness, no wars, no need for revolutions, no death. 

 

When Jesus performs what we call miracles, what He's doing is showing us that Jesus is just as unhappy about these things as we are and He's showing us that He's reweaving all of creation back together again.  Miracles aren't a suspension of the natural order; they are a demonstration of what the natural order is supposed to be like.  Jesus is showing us what this world looked like before sin.  But more importantly, He's pointing us forward to what this world is going to look like again without sin, when His Kingdom comes in fullness.  And the revolution began when He came to this world.

 

If any of you are here and aren't quite sure what you believe, but realize that something is broken in this world and needs to be fixed, how can you have any moral outrage, any anger, or any hope if all you are is a bag of molecules and nothing more.  It's just the survival of the fittest and the strong eating the young.  It's simply the circle of life and there's nothing to be angry about.  In this view it's only natural the world has so much death and decay, so much pain and suffering.  But not in the natural world of Jesus.  He is ultimate reality and is outraged at all of it because it's not supposed to be this way.  He came to fix it.  And only with a view of the world that believes that the way things are is broken, with a standard of what it's supposed to look like, can you have any ground to stand on in outrage to hunger, injustice, suffering, disease, wars, etc.  The gospel teaches us that this is not natural.

 

To know this, to believe this, to hear the proclamation of the Kingdom gives us hope for today.  It strengthens us.  It gives us the energy to be revolutionaries like Jesus today: to proclaim His gospel and labor in deed, to heal the various kinds of brokenness in our day-emotional, physical, social, economic, spiritual and cultural. 

We may not be able to feed 5,000 the way Jesus did, but Jesus' call for the disciples to feed them was a way of waking them up out of their lack of faith.  He wanted them to be stretched beyond their abilities.  He wanted them to rely on God for the task, not simply to look at their resources and shrug their shoulders.

 

The gospel is bread for our souls now. 

 

II.  This Revolution is Led by Unqualified Revolutionaries

 

Verses 12-13: "Now the day began to wear away, and the twelve came and said to him, ‘Send the crowd away to go into the surrounding villages and countryside to find lodging and get provisions, for we are here in a desolate place.'  13 But he said to them, ‘You give them something to eat.' They said, ‘We have no more than five loaves and two fish--unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.'" 

 

They make a reasonable suggestion for them to be fed and Jesus says, "You feed them..."  This is a reasonable suggestion with an outrageous response from Jesus.  But that's the point.  Until you see that what God's called you to is absolutely impossible in your own strength, it will never be possible.  In other words, until you see you're unqualified, you're not qualified. 

 

Jesus wants them and us to understand our small visions, our meager expectations.  He wants us, like these disciples, to see the needs and realize we're not able to meet them without Him. 

 

It's when they realize they aren't able to feed them that Jesus then responds and supplies all they need.  Jesus desires that we rely solely upon Him.  If we only accept the tasks that we're able to meet, we'll never really be doing what God calls us to.  He desires we live a stretched life!  This is the prerequisite to follow Christ.  To know with men, nothing is possible, but with Him, all things are possible.

 

III.  This Revolution is initiated by a Shocking Act 

 

Every revolution begins by a shot being fired.  Every revolution begins with a death, with violence.  God's is no different.  Someone has to die.  A shot has to be fired.  The difference is that Jesus is the one lined up to hear the crack of the rifles.   He's the one with the noose around His neck.  Jesus is the one who is nailed to a cross as a traitor and villain.

 

He blessed and broke

 

Verses 16-17: "And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing over them. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd.  17 And they all ate and were satisfied. And what was left over was picked up, twelve baskets of broken pieces."

 

These were the same words used at Jesus' last meal with His disciples.  Jesus blessed the bread and broke it.

 

Jesus is telling them, "You want another military prophet.  You want a revolutionary to lead you into battle.  You want another Moses.  But I'm a better Moses." 

 

On the cross, as Jesus' enemies mock Him and spit upon Him, He looks down at them and prays for them by asking God not to hold their sins against them.  Then He dies.  In other words, He blessed them and was broken on the cross.

 

When we see that Jesus blessed us and was broken, we'll be able to be broken and still bless others. 

 

If the loaf of bread stays whole, we'll be broken by starving, but if the loaf is broken we live.  Jesus says, I am the bread of life broken for you!   

 

 

 

 

Much help from Eating Your Way through Luke's Gospel by Robert J. Karris, Contagious Holiness by Craig Bartholomew, Welcome to the Party series by Tim Chester, and "The Bread of Life" message by Tim Keller.