More than You Will Ever Need

 

John 6:1-15

After these things Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee (or Tiberias).  And a great multitude was following Him, because they were seeing the signs which He was performing on those who were sick.  And Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat with His disciples.  Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.  Jesus therefore lifting up His eyes, and seeing that a great multitude was coming to Him, said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread, that these may eat?"  And this He was saying to test him; for He Himself knew what He was intending to do.  Philip answered Him, "Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them, for everyone to receive a little."

One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to Him, "There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are these for so many people?"  Jesus said, "Have the people sit down."  Now there was much grass in the place.  So the men sat down, in number about five thousand.

Jesus therefore took the loaves; and having given thanks, He distributed to those who were seated; likewise also of the fish as much as they wanted.  And when they were filled, He said to His disciples, "Gather up the leftover fragments that nothing may be lost."  And so they gathered them up, and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, which were left over by those who had eaten.  When therefore the people saw the sign which He had performed, they said, "This is of a truth the Prophet who is to come into the world." 

 Jesus therefore perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force, to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.

Sermon for Laetare Sunday                                         03/14/21

More Than You Will Ever Need

My Brothers and Sisters in Christ:

One of the challenges of this time in history is that, as a Christian, we have trouble understanding what we can trust in God for, and how much we dare to trust in Him.  It has always been a challenge, I suppose, but, in our day and age, we are far removed from the magical and mystical and miraculous.  We have centuries of "modern" men telling us that the miraculous is not possible and cannot touch our lives.  When people talk earnestly about trusting God they usually mean something ephemeral and distant, like salvation.  Most of the time, we tend to make that shift in meaning in our own minds too.

Our Gospel lesson stands as a testimony against such thinking.  It means to tell us what we can trust God of and how much we can trust God.  The answer is, of course, everything - we can trust God for everything He has promised which is everything we need.  Add to that thought that we can trust Him absolutely – as long as we are trusting Him and not trying to make Him be our concierge.   When you trust in God, our text illustrates for us that you will have more than you will ever need.  And that is our theme this morning.

The Gospel tells us that Jesus was healing - and we might presume teaching, as well.  A great crowd was following Him.  Some probably wanted to be healed, or have a relative healed.  Some probably came to see Jesus do miracles.  Others followed Him to hear Him teach, and believed that He was someone worth listening to.  

Our text tells us that it was the season of the Passover, not so much to tell us what time of year it was but to connect the events of this account to the Passover theologically.  Passover was, of course, the great rescue by God from slavery in Egypt.  He rescued His people with signs and miracles and great power.  God brought them out of Egypt into the wilderness and provided for them - for forty years, but that time factor isn't significant here.  God fed His people with Manna - and He demonstrated Himself to the nation, Israel, as their God, the One whom they could trust.  He made a covenant with them in the wilderness, and it all began with the Passover.  And it is this connection with caring for the people and feeding them miraculously, and showing Himself to be their God and giving evidence that they could trust Him and depend on Him, that probably warranted mentioning that "the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand."

Anyway, Jesus feeds the crowd, much to everyone's amazement, with five loaves and two fish.  The loaves were probably about the size of a small tortilla, and about an inch or less thick.  Matthew gives us no information on the size of the fish, but I am guessing that the young boy was not carrying a pair of twenty-pound Northern Pike or eighty-pound Sturgeon with him.  Even if he had been, they would have been woefully insufficient to feed the roughly five thousand people who were fed that day.

Jesus probably began with less food than it would have taken to satisfy the Twelve disciples.  And when they were all done, the disciple gathered up the leftover pieces - the ones big enough to bother saving, and they ended up with twelve full baskets of bread pieces.  The baskets were somewhere between the size of a five-quart ice-cream pail and a five-gallon bucket, but the point is that when everyone had eaten all that they wanted and were satisfied, they had several times more in leftovers than when they started in the first place.

The people there were so impressed by what Jesus did, that they decided to seize Jesus and force Him to be their king.   They knew a good thing when they saw it, and they reacted to free food the same way we do - get it while the getting's good.  Jesus perceived that they were planning this action, and He slipped away without them noticing His departure, and went up on the mountain alone to pray.

Now we know the details, we have to ask ourselves, what does this tell us?  I imagine that depends on how much you want  to see.  Jesus was facing an insurmountable task.  He was going to feed five thousand people with little or no food.  The situation was huge and the resources for it were extremely limited, and yet Jesus did it.  He fed those five thousand people and He had more left over - many times more - than He had when He started.

What needs or troubles can we imagine that Jesus cannot handle for us?  

What tasks are we facing that we feel we lack the resources to accomplish?  

How much of our doing what Jesus gives us to do actually depends on us?

Now we know the details, we have to ask ourselves, what does this tell us?  I imagine that depends on how much you want to see.  Jesus was facing an insurmountable task.  He was going to feed five thousand people with little or no food.  The situation was huge and the resources for it were extremely limited, and yet Jesus did it.  He fed those five thousand people and He had more left over - many times more - than He had when He started.n piously say that this is the thing that the Lord has made while thinking that we actually did it.

The truth is that we tend not to start anything even as a congregation we don't think we can finish.  It isn't that we don't think we should do it, it is just that we want to be confident we have the resources to do it before we begin.  Well, with Jesus, we have the resources.  We have more than you will ever need.  If Jesus gives us the task, He will see it through to completion.

Does that mean that we don't count the cost, or plan, or try to be wise about what we do and how we do it?  No.  We have to think, and Jesus calls on us to act - you know, do the things that need to be done.  We are to do what we believe we have been given to do, and approach it with confidence that Jesus will bring us through to success if what we are doing is what He wants done.  The disciples were asked to prepare the people for food.  They did not have food, nor did they know how they would feed all those people - and yet Jesus did it.

This miracle is not the only time Jesus did the impossible.  It is surely not the most impressive time.  The most impressive example of that is when He rescued us from our own sins.  The verdict of God from the very beginning was that when one sinned, that one died.  "The soul that sins, it shall die."  That was the judgment of God.  Sin simply earned death - and that death was more than just physical.  It included eternal torment and suffering.  That was what God wanted to rescue us from.  He couldn't just ignore our sins and pretend that they did not happen, however.  That would have made God unjust and an accessory to our sins.  He had to punish them, and punish them with death, as stipulated originally.  But His goal was to preserve us alive and rescue us from our condemnation.

He did that by sending Jesus.  He sent the Second Person of the Trinity, true God and yet, not the Father.  He was incarnate - that is He took on flesh and blood, and became a man as Mary heard the Word of God with faith and bowed her head and said, "Behold, I am the handmaiden of the Lord, Let it happen to me just as you have said it would."  With that, Mary became pregnant, conceiving in her womb the child who would be born nine months later and be named "Savior", or literally "God is Salvation" - Jesus.

He kept the Law which man failed and refused to keep.  He lived without sin, just as God required of Adam and Eve and all of their children.  They did not obey, but Jesus did.  He obeyed God, as Scripture puts it, even to the point of death on a cross.  Having fulfilled all righteousness, He deliberately gave up what He had earned and now deserved - life without end in the favor of God the Father - and took in exchange our guilt, our shame, and our condemnation, and our death.  

Every step of the way He endured the taunting and tempting of the devil and resisted.  When a word would have set Him free He kept silent.  When silence would have served Him, He spoke.  Everything He said was true, but it was also spoken with the full consciousness that it would ignite their anger and cause them to continue to march Him to the cross.

He died deliberately for us.  Because He is God He is of greater value than all of us combined, so His one death redeemed us all.  Because He has taken our death, He now has the right to give to us the life eternal which He has earned.  And He pours that treasure out upon all people everywhere, without consideration of their worthiness or holiness.  He has appointed faith as the means by which we receive and hang onto this treasure of grace.  He that believes and is baptized shall be saved.

Further, He knows that we are, by nature, not able to trust Him or love Him by virtue of our own corruption in sin, so He sends His Holy Spirit out through the preaching of His Word to work faith in the hearts of those that hear the good news of this Gospel.  Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.  Now, all who hear have the Holy Spirit at work in them.  Many reject that work and deny God's goodness, grace, and mercy.  They are those represented in the Parable of the Sower by the soil of the hard-trodden path upon which the seed falls, and the birds of the air eat the seed up.  They had the treasure delivered to them, but they rejected it for something or someone else.  But anyone that believes, which is accomplished only by the very work of the Holy Spirit within them, has life everlasting, and resurrection from their graves to come, and God is with them even now, day by day.

The feeding of the five thousand reminds us that we can trust God in Jesus Christ in all things, and that He will provide abundantly.  That provision isn't just for in the sky, bye and bye.  He provides for us now, each according to His good plan for our service for Him.  He provides food and clothing and the needs of this life, and lots of our wants as well.  He feeds us with His holy body and precious blood in this Sacrament, to strengthen us, and to cleanse us, and to teach us to trust in Him and in His love for us individually, personally.

The feeding of the five thousand reminds us that we can trust God in Jesus Christ in all things and that He will provide abundantly.  That provision isn't just for in the sky, bye and bye.  He provides for us now, each according to His good plan for our service for Him.  He provides food and clothing and the needs of this life, and lots of our wants as well.  He feeds us with His holy body and precious blood in this Sacrament, to strengthen us, and to cleanse us, and to teach us to trust in Him and in His love for us individually, personally.

So, let us look to the future and work while it is still day, as we say in that old prayer, "before the night comes when no man can work."  Let us do what we believe the Lord would have us do with faith and confidence and trusting that we will have more than you will ever need.  As it is true for salvation, it is true for all that God would have us to do in Jesus Christ.  He is our Source and He is our Shepherd.  He feeds us, and He will guide us and grant us everything we need to serve Him faithfully, and more than you will ever need.

In the Name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.
(Let the people say Amen)