Matthew 14:13-21
Discussion questions
Sermon
Intro
How did it go loving your neighbors this week?
I had some failures and successes. I somehow missed that our water heater was out for, o, 3 days. I got myself in a situation where I had to apologize. But I got to ask for forgiveness and enjoy the reconnection. I got to help a few people serve the community through Peace. And I met a neighbor for the first time.
I think the hardest thing ... someone asked for some help. They wanted gas, utilities, some medical payments, that kind of thing. I couldn’t do it. Even after last week’s message – love your neighbor…spend. For some reasons, I couldn’t justify it.
That is so hard. We’ve got so much stuff. So much money. We might be the wealthiest people ever. We might be pretty materialistic.
But we’re stuck in this moment where this decision to help people, to do something about their physical needs, is so hard. Some people tend to say, look, this is America. There are lots of opportunities. The only things that hold people back are a failure to work hard or a failure to make even semi-reasonable decisions.
Many other people say, systems have failed. The family system, justice, and education system – they’ve all failed so much that a lot of people never have a chance.
We’ve got to find ways through this to love real people. To love the person who says, I could use some help. Can you help me? There needs to be a way to uphold individual responsibility and corporate compassion when we have so much.
Call to adventure
There has to be a change. There has to be a change to handle out physical needs. It’s supernatural. There needs to be a supernatural change to handle our physical needs. That’s what Jesus gives us in the feeding of the 5,000.
This is a simple yet profound event. It is so profound that each writer of the story of Jesus records this story. Depending on how you count, there are about 200 events from the life of Jesus recorded by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. This is the only event outside of the suffering, death, and resurrection that shows up in all four Gospel writers. We know the Bible thinks it is important. Should it be important to us?
Development
Jesus gets the message John has died. That matters. John was his cousin. He goes off to process what happened. He goes to a deserted, lonely place. People follow him.
You might feel like this is a picnic, out in the wilderness. You might picture red, checkered tablecloths. Beautiful green grass. The lake is next to you. The waves gently lap on the shore.
Don’t! That’s not it at all. Jesus has gone to this remote hill country. History suggests this is a hotbed of revolutionary resistance. This is where the revolutionaries get together because the hills make it an easy place to hide. As many as 20,000 people came out. It says 5,000 men, besides women and children. That means you have to add women and children to the 5,000.
They weren’t well. Many people needed healing. They were hungry. We like to imagine that they were just hungry because they listened to Jesus preach for most of the day. That’s probably not the case.
In ancient Israel, like much of the ancient world, just having enough food was a constant problem. One common estimate is that “some 90% of the population were living in continuous problems of sustenance” (Sakari Häkkinen, http://www.scielo.org.za/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S0259-94222016000400046). 90% of the people were hungry regularly. There was an incredibly small upper class – about 1%. Then two or so groups of people that were high class – merchants and landowners. They were about 7 or 8 % of the population. Look at all the hunger just in Jesus’ times. First, there is the son who ran away from his father. When he took care of pigs, he longed to eat the pigs slop! Second, when the early church converted, people sold their houses and land. They brought the proceeds to feed the needy among them. None of us have needed to sell our house or land to feed the poor and needy. $50 here, $100 there. Maybe a few thousand in taxes. They must have had MANY poor and hungry to need to sell everything they had. Or third, the woman who begged Jesus to heal her daughter. She said she would have been satisfied with the dogs food! I feel it’s safe to say you don’t eat dog food.
Jesus fed them all. He fed 15,000 people with food for a few thousand left over.
The miracle is an absolute marvel. Each miracle is different. Some of them deal with biology – sight, sound, the ability to walk, and even life itself. Some of them deal with meteorology – calming the storm, earthquake. Many are spiritual – demons, evil spirits. And this miracle, this is not like any of them. The stories after Jesus love to make up magical events where he makes something from nothing. This is the only one in the Bible. This is not so much a suspension of the laws of nature. This is a restoration of the universe to the way it will be for all eternity.
Think about this. When Jesus pictures eternity, one of his favorite pictures is a wedding banquet (Mt 8, Lk 14, Rev 19) where everyone gets to feast. Isaiah says that people in eternity will get to eat from the vineyards they plant. Jesus says there won’t be any more hunger or thirsting (Rev 7) in eternity.
Matthew says, “They all ate and were satisfied”(Mt 14:20). Did you catch that? You think, with all of our wonderfully rich, amazing food. Alaskan salmon. Grass fed beef. Lobster from Maine. How many times have you eaten and been satisfied? He actually satisfies them. 15,000, maybe 20,000 people. He satisfies them. He makes it like eternity.
Can you imagine how awesome this experience was? How amazing it must have been?
This was a first hand experience where the God of the universe was saying, your body matters. Your physical well being matters. Your health matters. All this stuff, this mundane, down to earth, every day stuff matters more than you ever imagined to your God.
This is big deal. Jesus drags a little bit of eternity into the present. In eternity, you will be satisfied. You will eat to enjoy. You’ll drink to enjoy. You’ll feast. You’ll celebrate. And Jesus, in those hills, says, I can give you that eternity.
I know I’m kind of hitting on this point a little extra. I don’t think we really feel the promise here. We don’t sense how beautiful, how wonderful this is. Why?
Because we think, I can tell food is important. I can tell my body is important. I can tell my house is important. These are basic things I need for life. My parents have always provided them for me, or I work so that I have them. And if I’m a person who believes in a God, I think that he guides the universe in such a way that I’m taken care of.
Jesus is saying it first. He doesn’t want you to be materialists. He wants you to like stuff and believe he is greater.
We're materialists if our happiness comes only from a new job. We’re materialists if our contentment only comes from a better house, car, or boat. We’re materialists if is the next phone makes us satisfied.
In contrast, they were satisfied.
In the ancient world, there were plenty of people saying, the body is bad. The way to enlightenment is denying your physical body and all its desires. If you want to be a truly good person, don’t rely on your body so much.
And then Jesus comes along and he says, I can satisfy you. This is sustenance that satisfies.
This world is so broken and so corrupt. I’m not saying you’re awful or nature is awful. Literally, the universe is imploding. The second law of thermodynamics tells us the world is running out of usable energy. Everything is slowly breaking and falling apart. Just like the house that you spend so much money on maintaining keeps on falling apart, this whole universe is slowly falling apart.
So Jesus says, Verse 19, “taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves.” Why does he break the bread? “broke”, that word. Do you realize what he is saying?
He goes on later to say, “I am the bread of life” and I will be broken for you.
He is telling us that as broken as the universe is, he will be more broken. I’m the bread that breaks on the cross and if you eat of this bread you will never be hungry again. If am the blood that pours out on the cross and if you drink of me you will never be thirsty again.
Let me give us an illustration.
Imagine if you will that we are all diamonds. Nice, right?
But we’re millions of tiny, almost worthless diamonds. Just barely bigger than powder. Then one massive, gorgeous, beautiful, almost priceless diamond is set down right in the middle of us. Something like the Hope diamond.
We would stare at that diamond. Adore it. Prize it. Value it more than everything.
Then that diamond gets smashed. It gets crushed into millions of little pieces. I don’t know, something fell on it. Smashed into a million pieces.
Now each piece of that big, beautiful diamond is barely bigger than the millions of us.
What does that mean for all the other diamonds? The instant that massive diamond showed up, their relative value plummeted. In a moment, they looked like nothing. In fact, there was so much diamond on the market that they really did lose all their value.
But when that massive diamond was smashed, the market was still just as filled with diamond. Each diamond was worth immeasurably more.
That’s what Jesus has done. He has said, look I will be broken like your universe so that you are worth more to my Father. I will die on the cross so that you can be presented to him with infinitely more valuable.
A lot of you think, I’m not worth very much. I’m not worth it. I’ve messed up a lot of things in my family. I struggle to keep a job. I can’t hardly do anything right. I’m a real sinner.
Jesus was broken for you. You. Your body and soul matter so much to God.
This is real food. Give this food. Share satisfying sustenance.
Call to action:
Will you join me in this? Jesus says, “you give them something to eat”. Let’s share satisfying sustenance.
If you say, I believe in Jesus as my Savior and Lord, here is what you do: We care deeply about physical health. We care about reducing world hunger as best we can. We care about feeding school age children who don’t get decent meals or any meals at home. We care about feeding the hungry people who call church – people who haven’t eaten in days.
And we have an unrelenting, unyielding, unending conviction that Jesus is our Lord. That’s it.
Do you realize how radical that is? Do you know how profound that is? Let me share an example that shows it.
There is an old story told about a Christian named Polycarp. He lived about 150. He was chased, reportedly, because of his faith in Jesus. The story has some hyperbole in it, so it’s kind of hard to tell. It seems pretty clear he was betrayed by his friends, likely because they were tortured. The officers came to the house where he was staying. They were going to arrest him and take him to his execution. They found Polycarp lying down on the top floor of the cottage. He was saying, “God’s will be done.”
Then he did something remarkable. He did not fight the arrest. Instead, he called for food and drink for the men and asked for an hour to pray. Afterwards, he was arrested and led away to die.
Bread that has been crushed for you means you have sustenance to satisfy anyone.
Christians aren’t materialists or spiritualists.
Materialists only care about the body. Christians care about souls.
But we aren’t spiritualists. Spiritualists say, the soul is the only thing that matters. Christians care about body and soul.
Believers in the man who fed 5,000 can say with good confidence, “I have never seen the righteous forsaken, nor his children begging for bread.” The psalm writer is talking about hunger. He says God doesn’t forsake people. He remembers them with food. And what kind of people? The righteous. People who believe that even though they’ve messed up and they keep messing up, God not only forgives them but also chooses them because of Jesus.
That’s satisfying sustenance. And that is food, or sustenance, we can share. (Let’s share satisfying sustenance.)