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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, the text for this morning comes from the Gospel reading about the feeding of the 5,000. You’re very familiar with the feeding of the 5,000, I’m sure. But did you notice the very first few sentences of the text? You might have kind of quickly gone over it, but it says, “He withdrew to a desolate place by himself.” Now, it’s only mentioned a few times in all of the scriptures. It’s mentioned twice in this 14th chapter of Matthew about him withdrawing to a desolate place by himself. Now, why? Why would our Lord, the King of heaven and earth, the one who can feed 5,000 that we’re about to read? The one who has raised people from the dead. Why would there be a need to withdraw to a desolate place by himself?
Well now, whenever you and I withdraw to a desolate place by ourselves, what is it that we’re focusing on? We’re usually ruminating about things. We’re usually self-focused as opposed to outwardly focused. Why did Jesus withdraw to a desolate place by himself? If you notice in the text, in brackets, it talks about him when he heard about the news of John, John the Baptist. He heard about the news that John the Baptist had been beheaded, that John the Baptist had died as a martyr for the faith, that John the Baptist, who had been faithful to his Lord, had now died for his Lord. And now his Lord withdraws to a desolate place by himself.
Now, if that’s not the only reason, then there could be another reason that happened just previous to this event. Jesus had gone to his hometown, Nazareth, where he had lived for 30 years of his life, almost. And the people there in Nazareth knew him well. And yet the text says that the people of Nazareth, most of them, rejected Jesus. Most of them said, “Is this not Joseph and Mary’s son?” A Lutheran Christian sermon. Growing up with this young man, only six months older than Jesus himself, growing up with him, and now he knows, why did he die? Satan’s going to poke him. And where’s he going to poke him? Oh yeah, Lord Jesus, he died. He died because of you. Why did the people reject you in Nazareth? Because of you.
So whenever we withdraw to a desolate place by ourselves, it’s a different reason than why Jesus withdrew to a desolate place by himself. We can’t even make the comparison. Where we can compare is that Jesus, when he withdrew to a desolate place by himself, had been poked and prodded and set upon by Satan and kept reminding him, “Yes, Jesus, the reason your cousin died was because of you, you who claim to be the son of God. If you really were the Son of God, could you not have protected him? If you really were a loving cousin, could you not have prevented him from being decapitated?”
And yes, Jesus, you who claim to be the Son of God, go to your own hometown, the very people who know you. Oh, so well! Why would they reject you, Lord? Because you claim to be the Son of God. Oh, you know Satan was right there, pouncing upon Christ at this moment. And what did Christ do? The text says something very important. What did Christ do as he withdrew to a desolate place by himself? He saw the crowd.
I don’t know about you, but whenever you’re inwardly focused, you don’t see things outside of yourself. And then it adds an addition. Not only did he see this crowd, but he had compassion on them. Whenever you withdraw to a desolate place, whenever you ruminate over yourself, you don’t have compassion on anybody except who? Yourself. Just like me. Oh wow. What our Lord must have fought against before he saw this crowd. Satan getting him to look only at himself and not at God the Father. Satan reminding him of his failures and his problems and not of what he has done, that is the Father promised him.
When Jesus went away to that desolate place, I can tell you one thing that he remembered and continued to call upon: What the Father said of him at his baptism. What did the Father say of Jesus when he was baptized? He said, “This is my beloved Son with whom I am well pleased.” That’s not where Satan wanted Jesus to go, but I bet he went back to what God had proclaimed about him as his assurance and his confidence.
But not you and me. No, no. We go back to what we should have and could have and ought to have done but didn’t. Or what we shouldn’t have done and couldn’t have done and ought not to have done and yet we did. That’s what Satan leads us down that rabbit hole. And we go willingly because nothing feels better than beating up ourselves. When Jesus was overwhelmed with all of this, he had compassion on other people. This crowd who came to him in search of… Now, when Jesus had compassion for him, was he selective in his compassion? Did he say, “Well, some people that are coming to me are sincere, so I’ll let them have my compassion, and these others, they’re not so sincere, so I’m not going to give them compassion”? He had compassion on all of them.
And you know who was picking the scab while he had compassion on all of them? Satan. Oh, Jesus, look what you’re going to do. You’re going to heal their sick. They’re not going to turn to you on their death; they’re going to go to hell. You know Satan was saying that to Jesus. But Jesus did not let that stop him from having compassion on all of the people that came to him. The ones who received his compassion and by faith trusted in that compassion, were they fully aware of all the compassion that he had for them? No. They were aware enough by faith, but that’s it. They had no intellectual or rational ability to grasp all of that compassion that God was giving them through Christ.
And yet they still received it, did they not? Some received it sadly to their damnation. Others received it to their salvation. All received his compassion. Not his judgment, his compassion. So here he is healing these people and has been all day long. Well, when you think about 5,000 men, you’ve got to throw in the women and children. You’re talking about 10,000 to 15,000 people. I don’t know how big of a town you grew up in. I grew up in a town of about 13,000 people. And I’m telling you, that’s a lot of people. That’s a lot of people. So he’s healing a lot of people, and he’s been doing it all day.
The disciples, fat, dumb, and happy, come prancing along, and they look at this situation, and you know what they think? They think, “Oh, we have a problem.” Meaning who? They themselves. Since we have a problem with all these people here, and the expectation is probably that we’ve got to do something, then we need to come up with an answer. Well, in all their infinite wisdom, they came up with only one answer. Isn’t that interesting? Talk about narrow myopia. But that’s like you and me, though. When we think… and struggle with something, we see only one way out. Because we’re not looking as to whose problem it is and who’s the answer to that problem. We, like the disciples, are ignorant and unaware of God’s mercy that he’s showing to us new every morning.
So they say, “Lord, this is a desolate place, and the day is now over. You’ve been out here all day. Send the crowds away.” That solves my problem. Send the crowds away. You need to know that they have to go buy food for themselves. We can’t provide it. You’ve been overwhelmed. And when you’re overwhelmed, we only see one answer to our problem. And is it really our problem? And do we really have to have the answer? I’m not talking about consequences here. I’m talking about deeper, bigger things.
So look what Jesus says. He says, “They don’t need to go away, all 10,000 to 15,000 of these people. They don’t need to go away. You give them something to eat.” Well, now they come to Jesus with their one answer. “We’ve got only five loaves and two fish here.” And their one answer says to them, “There is no way in God’s green earth that this is going to be fixed.” How narrow and how myopic. Whose responsibility is it to feed those people? The disciples? God’s. Whose responsibility is it to come up with the answer? The disciples or God?
Here’s what Jesus does. “Bring the five loaves and two fish.” In your myopia, I will show you that this is something greater than just five loaves and two fish. He orders the crowd to sit down on the grass. He takes the five loaves and two fish. He looks up to heaven, says a blessing. He breaks the loaves. Listen carefully. He gives them to the disciples. Listen carefully. And the disciples distribute what God gave. Jesus gives the disciples what they need for their problem. Jesus gives them the answer to His problem, which is the feeding of these people. And He allows the disciples to distribute the answer, His answer, to His problem.
Satan loves for us to get wrapped up in things that are not our problem. So, for example… Is it your problem whether someone rejects you or accepts you because of your faith? Is it your problem and your responsibility to bring someone to faith? It’s never your problem. It’s God’s. But he does provide the answer. Where is it that you have learned about God’s love? Here, where he loves you in very concrete ways. Where is it that you have grasped and beheld His forgiveness and mercy? It’s here, in this place, where He has done so.
He then allows you to take what He has given you, the answer for you, and allows you to distribute that answer to those things that are His responsibility, other people. Okay, so here’s a thought. Do we work for God? Because if we work for God, how do you ever know you’ve done enough? If you work for God, what’s your performance report going to look like? If you work for God, is that law prodding you on with its sharp points, or is that gospel leading you? It sure ain’t gospel, brothers and sisters.
Look at this text. The disciples are not working for God in this text. They are working with God in this text. By Jesus’ great power, he allows them to work with him in feeding these people, which are his responsibility and his problem, and feeding these people in the manner he chooses to feed them. Here you have bread and wine. You have flesh and blood. And God does his miracle here and allows it to be distributed to us here. That we can take what it gives, forgiveness of sins, life and salvation, so that we can distribute it to those people he’s placed in your life.
That’s working with God, not for God. He has chosen to distribute his forgiveness, his love, and his mercy through you to those people. Each time you invite them to come with you to church, he’s distributing it through you. Each time you encourage them to come to Bible class with you, he’s distributing it through you. Each time you introduce yourself to somebody that you don’t know when you see them in church, he’s distributing it through you in a very small, minuscule way, mind you, but he’s doing it through you.
He’s working with you. You don’t work for him. Only one worked for him, and he was faithful in all things. He never ruminated, never felt sorry for himself. He always did the right thing for all the times when you ruminate and feel sorry for yourself. When you don’t have compassion for other people or forgiveness or love for them, he loved and forgave. And then he invites you back here to be refilled with his love and forgiveness that you may then go and share that. That’s working with him.
Wow. When you and I consider how God works, it is an amazing thing indeed. And if you just thought that the feeding of the 5,000 was satisfying their bellies, we were woefully mistaken. It’s about satisfying souls and God using you, who have first eaten and drank His forgiveness, to share it with others as He works with you to feed them as He used the disciples.
In the name of Jesus, who has chosen such a marvelous manner and fashion to work in this world. Amen.
