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Grace, mercy, and peace be unto you from God our Father and from our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. Amen.
Dear brothers and sisters in Christ, a text for this morning comes from the Gospel reading, The Feeding of the Five Thousand. You may be seated. There’s probably not one of you who have not heard of The Feeding of the Five Thousand. Part of the reason is that it is the only miracle that’s recorded in all four Gospels: Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. And it is the great miracle of the feeding of five thousand, but if you remember the text at the end, it said five thousand men. If you add the women and the children, the number could easily increase between twelve thousand and eighteen thousand. Just to give you an idea, that would be like the Irwin Center completely full of people, and all those people fed by five loaves and two fish. It’s like a small town around here.
Twelve to eighteen thousand people gathered at an event fed by five loaves and two fish. But more importantly, if you heard the text, not only were their bellies filled, but more importantly, their souls were filled because Jesus taught them. He taught them until late in the afternoon and early evening. He taught them as one who has authority. He taught them by feeding their souls.
Now you and I, who have not the Old Testament background that the apostles would have had, see this miracle through pretty narrow vision. Let me show you some beautiful points that a Jew who knew his Old Testament would think about as he heard this proclaimed to him, or more importantly, as he reflected upon it happening to him in that place.
First of all, where does Jesus have the crowd gather? Not in a village, not in a town. The words of the text say, a desolate place. The wilderness. And where did God gather his people of old as they left Egypt for the promised land, but always in the wilderness? Set apart from the rest of the world, different than the rest of the world, fed by the one who led them, who was teaching them—Jesus, who taught the people of the promised land—Moses, and he fed them with what? Not food that you can find at the supermarket or a nearby village. Bread from heaven. Did Jesus, did Moses feed the people?
So when Jesus feeds the people, that also would be in their heads. Here we sit in a desolate place, and God is feeding us. I say God because they would have put two and two together. The very famous Davidic psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd.” Now, why would they think of Jesus being a shepherd? Jesus thought of himself as being a shepherd from the Old Testament text and from himself saying so in the gospel reading.
But in the gospel reading, there is a two-word phrase that you could have just right passed, but you need to hear it again: “He made them sit down,” and the two-word phrase is, “in the green grass.” You see, that part of the world is a lot like California. The green grass in California is in the spring. Come summer, it’s all dried up and crusty. Well, wait a minute, that’s kind of like Texas normally, too, but right now it’s not because of all that great rain. But typically, that would be green grass, soft, and that’s exactly where he had them sit down in this desolate place.
Surely that would have been in the back of their mind as they sat down in the green grass. It would probably take a little boy or little girl to go, “Look, mommy and daddy, we’re sitting down in the green grass, just like David saw them.” But not only did he feed them with the bread and the loaves, but he also fed them with his teaching. In fact, that’s what most of the time was spent on. The amount of time feeding them was pretty minuscule compared to the amount of time that he taught them. Very important.
That’s the primary mission of Jesus. Because there’s a lot of people who will go to hell with full bellies, and there’s a lot of people who will be in heaven having left the earth with empty stomachs. This meal that he fed them was not just a truck stop kind of a meal. Pick it up and go, like a drive-thru. In the Greek, when it says he made them sit down, “sit down” sounds to you and me like just sitting down. The Greek there means to recline. He was saying, “Get comfortable, it’s going to be a while.” This is a banquet. That’s banquet language, to recline at the table.
It’s also banquet language to be filled to the brim with your food. At a banquet, you cook more than enough food so that you eat to your full. And then there’s always what? Oh, there’s always stuff left over, isn’t there? In fact, it’s interesting. Elisha performed a miracle where he fed a hundred people in 2 Kings 4. And after he fed those hundred people with a minimum amount of supplies, there was stuff left over. They would have thought the same thing when they saw this.
And isn’t it interesting that the people were like sheep without a shepherd? And in that Old Testament psalm, “The Lord is my shepherd,” whenever Jesus referred to himself as the Lord, as you remember in Wednesday night Bible class, that’s always a code word for the same thing as God—that Jesus is God. One final thing. The order of the verbs in the latter part when he actually feeds them is profoundly interesting. Listen. He took bread, he gave thanks, he broke it, and he gave it to them. Sound familiar? It is almost verb for verb identical to the Last Supper: he took bread, he gave thanks, he broke it, and he gave it to them.
Now what’s the point of all this? The point is this: you and I need to see this miracle beyond our eyes of this society and see it through the eyes of the Scriptures. All of those points that I just made to you are important points to see this miracle so that this miracle transcends just something being done to make more of out of nothing. Because you and I struggle with this miracle. Oh, we have no trouble explaining it to other people. We have no trouble reciting it to other people. Where you and I struggle with this miracle is applying it to ourselves.
The disciples, before this miracle, were exhausted, the text says. They had just gone out two by two. God, through Christ, had given them the power to drive out demons and heal people. They saw the miracles of demons being driven out. They saw the miracles of people being healed. And they come back, and they’re sitting on the sand by the seashore. It’s getting late. And having witnessed those miracles, they actually are concerned about feeding these people. Sound familiar?
Every Sunday, you see a miracle here. You see bread and wine joined to the very body and blood of Christ, your God, every Sunday. And yet you and I leave here with worries and concerns and anxieties. We’re just like those silly disciples. They had witnessed miracles and they start asking Jesus, “You better send these people home because we don’t have enough food for them.” Jesus even encourages them, “Give them something to eat. Step out in faith. Step out in faith.” And then the disciples are fearful, and they give the answer that you and I give: “I don’t know if I can. We don’t have enough.” This is you and me.
And though we know this miracle so well, we have a hard time applying it to our life because we snap at people due to our stress. We’re sassy with people because of our worry and anxiety. And we don’t dwell upon the miracle that we see performed before our very eyes Sunday in and Sunday out. You see a sinful man raise his sinful hands and say, “I forgive you all your sins.” A miracle has just been performed—not by me, but by God, through my voice.
That’s just religious trappings. It’s a part of a religious service. It has no substance or application to me. Neither does this miracle, then. Neither does this miracle, then. It’s the application of this great gift that God is showing us through these eyes that we see he is the good shepherd who tends his sheep and leads them, feeding them along the way, but not only with their bellies, but with their souls.
You see, the important part of this miracle that we blow by was that he taught them. He taught them. He spent hours teaching them, so much so that the disciples got all bent out of shape, and they begin to act like Martha. “We’ve got to do something about dinner. We’ve got to cook. We’ve got to take care of these people.” And not about Mary, who sat down at Jesus’ feet and listened. How often do we concern ourselves with day-to-day operations and not about the feeding of our soul?
“I’ll have my devotion later on today. I won’t do it right now. I’ve got to get ready to go to work. I’ve got things to think about. I’m tired now at the end of the day. I’ll do it tomorrow morning.” And so it goes on. But boy, we don’t skip a meal, you and me. No. We don’t skip shaving. Well, unless you probably don’t want to feel like shaving. But we don’t skip all the things that we do on a daily basis, do we? And it’s the feeding of our souls that’s the most important.
Think about this. The disciples had just had their bellies not just full, but filled to the brim. And what do they have at their feet that they’ve got to be accountable now for? A whole other basket full. Well, we know what we’re going to have for dinner tomorrow night, don’t we? Yep, fish and bread. And yet, you know what? I know they did the same thing that you do and I do. “Okay, now let’s see. How much do we have and how many days will it last?” And so I’ve got to think about… Yeah, you and I are planners. We’re all worried about that and planning.
We ridicule the Marys of the world and say, “Well, they need to be thinking about these important things of this world, or how else are they going to know?” That’s us. That’s us. And isn’t it interesting? We worry about the convenience of when it’s a good time to be fed, when it fits our schedule, when it satisfies our other needs, or really when our other needs are satisfied first.
So we who know this beautiful miracle so well, we have a hard time applying it to ourselves. Do you like to be shepherded? Is it hard for you to be shepherded? Do you trust him to shepherd you? Because to be shepherded means you’re led, not you leading. To be shepherded means he takes you when you may not be ready to go down through that valley of the shadow of death. To be shepherded is to trust someone more than you trust yourself.
Hard to be shepherded because we are proud and willful people, you and me, and yet we’re not the ones being fed with our own abilities, are we? We’re being fed by Him because He invites you to recline here, to sup at His table. Not just enough to get satisfied, but more than satisfied. And then he gives you, before you leave here, a basket full. Not so that you can parcel it out day by day, but so that you can give it away day by day and share it. Because there are many people that God has placed in your lives who need it—who yearn for it and they don’t even realize it.
This is the still waters that he brings you to. Open up your hymnals in the front. All of the psalms are in the front part of your hymnal. Go to Psalm 23, please. As we read this together, think of this great miracle of the feeding of the five thousand with the bread and the fish in light of this psalm, which would be one of the many ways that those people viewed what was being done to them by their shepherd.
“The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake. Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil. For you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies. You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life, and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever.”
Glory be to the Father and to the Son and to the Holy Spirit, as it was in the beginning, is now, and will be forever. Amen.
Yes, the miracle that Jesus did on this day was an amazing miracle indeed. But it was a picture of this feast, which in and of itself is a picture of the feast to come—a foretaste of the great banquet in heaven, of which Scriptures write prolifically to you and me. Now truly, this is an amazing miracle of grace. And truly, this is the food that really satisfies your soul. In the name of Jesus, Amen.
The peace of God, which passes all understanding, keep your hearts and your minds on Christ Jesus to life everlasting. Amen.
