MIRACLES
JESUS FEEDS THE FIVE THOUSAND
DR. JIM DIXON
JOHN 6:1-15
MAY 1, 1983
He was tired and He wanted to retreat from the crowds of people. He needed to be alone. He needed to rest. He needed time for prayer, time for contact with the power in the presence of His Father. And so, Jesus withdrew from the little village of Capernaum. With His disciples He got into the boat He took a 4-mile journey across the Sea of Galilee to the northeast shore. There they found a grassy place with beautiful hills in a region called Elbitya near the village of Bethsaida. There on the grassy slopes, our Lord Jesus with His disciples sat down. But in the distance, they could see a great multitude coming. The Bible tells us that our Lord Jesus, though He was tired, was “moved with compassion for them” and He said to Philip, “How are we to buy bread that these people may eat?” Now, He already knew the miracle that He was going to perform. Philip said, “200 denarii, six months wages would not buy bread enough for each of them to have a little.”
But Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother said, “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish,” a seemingly irrelevant observation. Jesus said, “Have the people sit down” and Jesus took the bread, and He took the fish, and He began, after He had prayed, to distribute it to the people. And as the food was passed, instead of decreasing, the food increased. It was multiplied so that everyone ate until they could eat no more. From one boy’s lunch, Jesus Christ made a feast for thousands and thousands of people. It was a miracle and is oftentimes called the “Feeding of the 5,000.”
From this miracle, this morning I have three teachings. The first teaching is this. Jesus Christ is the Creator. He is the Creator of all things. There are many men and women in this world and in this room who can multiply numbers, but you see, only Jesus Christ, only God can multiply matter, and Jesus Christ IS God. “He didst found the earth in the beginning and the heavens are the works of His hands. All things were made by Him and for Him and through Him, and in Him all things are held together. He can bring something into existence when once there was nothing and He can take something which is very small and offered to Him, take something which is very small and make of it something which is great. And He delights in that because He is the Creator, and He is the Multiplier.”
This past week, Barb and I and the kids went to a McDonald’s restaurant. I wanted to get a Big Mac or a Quarter Pounder. We got in there and the lines were long. It didn’t bother me. It was just good to see that America’s eating so well. You know, McDonald’s is an amazing success story. You might think hamburgers are old. Of course, they did make ground meat in Hamburg, Germany centuries ago. The first hamburger, however, was not really served until 1904 at the Louisiana Purchase Exposition in St. Louis. McDonald’s began in 1955 at Des Plaines, Illinois. It began with those golden arches, a little tiny, small hamburger stand. A humble beginning. Nobody could have looked at McDonald’s at that time and known what it was going to become. Today, 28 years later, McDonald’s is coast-to- coast as you well know and it’s in much of Europe. It has spread.
When Barb and I took our vacation to England, after three weeks of meat and potatoes, we saw a McDonald’s in London. We were just dying for junk food, so we went and got a hamburger. McDonald’s has spread to Japan. It is the leading fast-food restaurant in all of Japan. McDonald’s Corporation today sells more than a billion hamburgers every three months. They have sold so many hamburgers in the past 28 years that they could create 30 piles, each pile the size of the Sears Tower in Chicago. They have their own university—Hamburger University in Elk Grove Village, Illinois. There they train their employees. An incredible success story, it began very small, and it grew to greatness. And you see, there’s a sense in which God wants to do exactly that for you through Jesus Christ. Though you are small, in the hands of Christ, He wants to make you great. Perhaps not in this world’s eyes, but in the eyes of His Father, Jesus wants to multiply you and He wants to make you great. He wants to raise you up.
Many years ago, hundreds of years ago, there was a Berman school master. Every day he would go to school, and he would stand in front of the little boys and girls. He would take off his hat and he would bow low before them. He was asked why he did that He said “I do it because I don’t know who is in my classroom. They are boys and girls, but I don’t know. Some of them may become great. I might be in the presence of greatness.” Little did he know that Martin Luther was in that class. There’s a sense in which Martin Luther did become great. He was very little in a time of his beginning, but at the age of 21, in 1504, in the midst of a great thunderstorm, Martin Luther had a spiritual experience, a mystical experience wherein he encountered the presence of the Risen Christ, and his life was never the same. You see, Jesus Christ multiplied him, and his life grew, and he began to have a ministry to many, and he was the very founder of the Reformation through which millions of lives have been touched. Jesus Christ raised him up. He took him because he was offered to him like a boy’s lunch. Jesus took him and though he was small, Jesus made him great.
Many of you may have heard of Sir Wilfred Grenfell, the British medical missionary, who, in 1892, went to Labrador. He spent more than 40 years—until 1940. He spent those years ministering for Jesus Christ in Labrador, Newfoundland, Northeast Canada near the Artic Circle. When he first arrived in Labrador, the people were very sick. Some people had beriberi. Some people had tuberculosis. Grenfell had been trained as a doctor at Oxford University. He went to those people, and he gave his life for Christ’s sake. He became their surgeon. He became their physician. He became their missionary. He became their friend. Grenfell often said he was nothing, he was simply a servant of Jesus Christ, but he offered his life to Christ like five barley loaves and two fish. He gave himself to the Master, and Jesus Christ did incredible things through his life in Labrador. Through Sir Wilfred Grenfell there were hospitals, orphanages, nursing stations, churches, stores, many, many ministries founded in Labrador, thousands of them. Jesus Christ multiplied him, and He raised him up. Christ wants to multiply you.
Some of you, I know, have heard of Dean Wolf. You know him over at Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora. I know Dean wouldn’t mind me sharing this with you. Dean served for many years as a chaplain in the military. When he got out, he became a pastor at Silver Lake Presbyterian Church in Southern California. It was a church of about 600 people. Through tremendous talent and awesome planning, Dean managed to convert that church from a church of 600 to a church of 400. It was a very hard experience for Dean, and he was very frustrated. He was broken. He felt like a failure. He left the church under a certain amount of pressure. By the Spirit of God, he was led here to Colorado, to Aurora. He became pastor of Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora more than 10 years ago. It was a church of about 500 people, but Dean was different now. He was a broken man. He knew that he was nothing. Christ was everything and that in Christ, all things are possible. Christ multiplied his ministry. Christ did what only He can do as the Creator, and over these past ten years, Faith Presbyterian Church in Aurora has grown from 500 to 4,200 people. It’s not really so much the growth in numbers that’s important but the many, many men and women who have come to know and love Jesus Christ.
One thing Dean has learned is that it had nothing to do with him. You see, it was the power of Jesus Christ. He is the multiplier. He is the Creator. He can make of you a new creation. If you offer your business, your finances—if you offer everything to Him as a boy’s lunch—if it’s truly His, He can multiply it. If you offer your children to Him… If you’ve truly relinquished your children to Him, He can multiply them. More than anything else, the longing of His heart is to multiply your heart, that He might change your character, that you might grow into the very image of His likeness, and He wants to multiply your ministry. He can use you in the lives of people in your neighborhood. He can use you in the lives of people at work. He can use you wherever you are because He is the Creator and He is the Multiplier, and He can make of you a new person.
Jesus said “I am the true vine, and My Father is the vine dresser. Every branch of Mine which bears no fruit, He takes away. Every branch which does bear fruit, He prunes it that it might bear more fruit. You have already been made clean, that is to say, you have already been pruned by the Word which I have spoken to you. Abide in Me and I in you. As a branch cannot bear fruit by itself unless it abides in the vine, neither can you unless you abide in Me. I am the Vine. You are the branches. He who abides in Me and I in him, he it is who bears much fruit. For apart from Me, you can do nothing.”
Jesus Christ is the Creator, and He wants to create something great in you. This miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 gives us a second teaching and that teaching is this: Jesus Christ is the Provider and He wants to provide for you. There was a multitude before Him, a multitude of 5,000 men and perhaps their families as well, and Jesus was moved with compassion, and He wanted to provide for them and so by the power that was within Him, He made bread. He was concerned even about the physical needs of their bellies and so He provided physical nourishment for their bodies, and He wants to provide for you. The Psalmist says “Oh Lord, our Lord, how majestic is Thy name in all the earth. Thou whose glory is chanted above the heavens by the mouths of babes and infants. When I consider the heavens, the works of Thy fingers, the sun and the moon which Thou hath established, what is man that Thou art mindful of him, mere man that Thou carest for him.” Jesus Christ is the living proof that God does care for us, that God wants to provide for us, and He has power to provide for us. He has power to meet our every need.
There are many creatures in creation that have abilities beyond the ability of man. If we had the ability to jump like a flea can jump, proportionately to the ability of a flea, we, as people, would be able to jump 600 feet. We would be able to clear the Washington Monument by 80 feet. That would be a lot of fun. If we had strength like an ant has strength, we would be able to lift a half-ton and carry it with ease to the top of the Washington Monument. All the weightlifting in the world could not do that for us. We simply do not have that strength. People speak of being busy as a bee. Bees are awfully busy. They visit 3,360,000 flowers for every quart of honey. Nobody’s that busy! We simply do not have the energy. As human beings, we have many weaknesses. We have many frailties. We need a provider. We are weak, and yet, God has given us dominion over the creation. In His love for us as humankind, He has created us in His own image and likeness. He has given us domain over the birds of the air, over the fish of the sea, over the beasts of the fields. He has given us dominion over everything and crowned us with glory and honor. He has made us in His likeness. He has given us a mind and a spirit like unto His own, though, of course, the mind and Spirit of God are infinitely higher than our mind and spirit as the heavens are above the earth.
Unfortunately, many people in the world today are arrogant and prideful in their humanity. They feel like somehow, they have power to provide for themselves. They think that they can take care of themselves, that they don’t need a provider. When Heather and Drew were born into the world, Barb and I were amazed at how helpless they were. We had to feed them. We had to diaper them, change them, clothe them, burp them. We had to do everything for them. They are 5 and 8 years old now. We still have to do most things for them. We still wouldn’t leave them home alone. They still need a provider.
The Bible tells us that God views people like that. We are like children before Him, and we need a provider. A Christian is one who has understood that and has acknowledged that. The Bible tells us that unless we become like little children before God, we cannot enter the kingdom of heaven. The Christian is one who has said, “Lord Jesus, come into my life. Be my Lord. Be my Savior. Provide for me. I cannot provide for myself.” And He can provide for us as He provided for the multitudes. God has always provided for His people. He gave mane in the wilderness as the Israelites ate the bread of heaven. Our Lord Jesus tells us, He reassures us as Believers. He says “Look at the birds of the air. They neither sow, nor reap, nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them all. Are you not of much more value than they.” He provides for us. Jesus said, “Look at the 1iIlies of the field. I tell you that Solomon in all of his glory was not arrayed like one of these, and if God so clothes the lilies of the field which are here for today and tomorrow are burned, how much more will He clothe you, oh ye of little faith.” You see, Jesus Christ has power to provide for us, but there was something that the multitude didn’t understand.
Jesus Christ does not simply want to provide for us physically. He wants to provide for us spiritually and He has power to do it. There are needs that we have as men and women that are far greater than the needs of the stomach. The miracle performed by Christ of the feeding of the 5,000 like all miracles was a sign, and it pointed to a deeper reality that Jesus Christ was the source of spiritual food. Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, all the gospels tell us, that after Jesus had fed the multitudes, they followed Him and Jesus said to them, “You seek Me, not because you understood the sign, not because you discerned the meaning of the miracle, but you seek Me because you ate your fill of the loaves.” He said “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but labor for the food which endures to eternal life. Your fathers ate mana in the wilderness, and they died. I am the True Bread, come down from heaven. He who partakes of Me will never die.” Jesus said “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me will never hunger. He who believes in Me will never thirst.”
You see, He is the source of spiritual nurture, and He wants to provide for you and me. Without food for our souls and spirits, we die. There were many Romans who were rich, many Greeks who were rich, many Jews who were rich. They had ample physical provision. Plenty, the historian tells us that there were actually Romans who ate feasts that are beyond our comprehension. They actually sat down to table and ate peacock’s brains, and they ate nightingale’s tongues. They would spend $4,000 on a single meal, so rich were they, and then they would take drugs to induce vomiting that they might enjoy their next course. It’s hard to believe they needed drugs after eating peacock’s brains and nightingale’s tongues. There were Romans who wore $2,000,000 jeweled outfits at weddings. There was a lot of wealth in the ancient world. Many people had ample physical provision and yet they were dying inside. All the hedonism, all the materialism, all the quest for things, the quest for pleasure did not satisfy, and they were dying inside. They needed food for their souls, food for their spirits, and we have people in the world—millions of people in the world—just like that today.
There’s a lot of doctors today who are concerned about the problem of anorexia and nervosa. Apparently, it’s a tremendous problem. One out of every ten women today, we are told, has anorexia where she literally, for a variety of complex reasons, starves herself. Physical anorexia produces a loss of weight. It produces a loss of enamel on the teeth, an eroding of the lining of the stomach. It produces damage to internal organs. It leads even toward physical death, though that is rare. It produces emotional, relational stress. It’s a tragedy but there’s a far bigger problem in the world today, and that is spiritual anorexia. There are billions of people in the world today who are starving themselves spiritually and it just doesn’t make any sense. They have no joy. They have no fulfillment. They have no contentment, and they don’t know why. They have all the things. They have everything they think they need, everything the world says gives meaning and purpose and life, but they are starving inside. They don’t realize that Jesus Christ is the Bread of Life, that God made us, and we only have joy. We only have meaning. We only have purpose in life when we conic into fellowship with God and that is not possible except through Christ. He is the Bread of Life come down from heaven. He is the source of life. There is no other name under heaven given among men whereby we may be saved. He is food for our souls.
Some of you believe in Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior and yet you still deny yourself spiritual food. Maybe you do not spend time in the word, time in prayer, time in fellowship with believers, and you wonder—you wonder why life is not quite as meaningful, as purposeful, as joyous as perhaps it should be. Jesus Christ is the answer. He is the source of life. We sang a song today “Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me. Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me. Melt me, mold me, fill me, use me. Spirit of the Living God, fall afresh on me.” It’s Jesus Christ who gives the spirit. It’s Jesus Christ who is the source of filling. He said, “I have come that you might have life, that you might have it abundantly.”
We have a third and final message from this passage of scripture and it is this: Jesus Christ is King. All four gospel accounts tell us that Jesus Christ, after He had fed the 5,000, the multitudes sought to make Him King. There was no group of people, no race of people more desperate for a king than the Jews. They had lived under 600 years of political oppression. Six hundred years before Jesus Christ, the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar had run their armies over Palestine, and they had swept through Jerusalem, and they took men and women captive, and they deported them to foreign lands. Five hundred years before Christ the Medo-Persians under Cyrus the Great conquered Israel and made of them a vassal state. Three hundred years before Christ, it was the Greeks under Alexander the Great that controlled Palestine. One hundred and eighty years before Christ it was the Seleucid Empire with Antiochus Epiphanies who raped, pilfered and desecrated the Holy Land.
And of course, 100 years before Christ, there were the Romans. Even in the days of Jesus Christ, Caesar ruled Palestine through his provincial governors. Six hundred years of political oppression and the Jews were tired of it. They were tired of living in a country that was occupied. They were tired of being a pawn in the war games of other nations. They wanted to be free—politically free—and they wanted to become a great nation in their own right, and they knew the scriptures. They knew the prophecies. They knew that a Messiah was coming. They knew that a King was coming. Every single child in Israel had memorized Isaiah 1:1, “There shall come forth a stump from the stump of Jesse. A branch shall grow out of his root. The Spirit of the Lord shall rest upon Him. The spirit of wisdom and understanding. The spirit of counsel and might. The spirit of knowledge in the fear of the Lord. His delight shall be in the fear of the Lord. He should not Judge by what his eyes see nor decide what his ears hear, but with righteousness He shall Judge the poor. He shall decide with equity for the meek of the earth. He shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth. With the breath of His lips, He shall slay the wicked. Righteousness shall be the girdle of His loins, and faithfulness shall be the girdle of His waist. In that day the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard and the kid shall lie down together. The calf, the lion and the fatling together and a little child shall lead them. The cow and the bear shall feed and their young shall lie down together. The lion shall eat straw like the ox. The suckling child shall play over the hole of an asp and the weaning child shall place his hand in the adder’s den. They will not hurt or destroy on all my holy mountain, for the earth will be filled with the knowledge of the Lord as the oceans cover the sea. In that day the root of Jesse will stand as an end sign to the nations. Him shall the nations seek and his dwellings shall be glorious.”
The multitudes knew that Jesus Christ was the Messiah. They knew that He was from the stump of Jesse. They knew that He was descended from David, that He was descended from Jesse, that He was the Messiah, that He was the promised King, that He was the deliverer, the one who would one day rule the earth, and indeed, Jesus Christ will rule the earth and He will rule the heavens above. The Bible tells us that at the close of the age, the Son of Man shall descend from heaven in power and great glory and all of His angels with Him and He will sit on His glorious throne. Before Him will be gathered all the nations and He will separate them one from the other as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. The Bible tells us that in that day, the kingdoms of this world will become the kingdom of our Lord and of our Christ and He shall reign forever and ever. The Bible tells us that He is Lord of Lords and King of Kings, the Wonderful Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace and of the increase of His kingdom and of its peace, there will be no end. Jesus Christ will rule. In that day, at the name of Jesus, every knee will bow in the heavens and on earth and under the earth. Every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord.”
But there’s one thing the multitude didn’t understand. They didn’t understand that His kingdom was not yet of this world. They didn’t understand that in this age of the world, His kingdom is spiritual. It has not yet come to earth. They didn’t understand the other prophecies—that Jesus Christ had to first come as a suffering servant—that He had to first come and die for the sins of the world. They didn’t understand that it’s only those who receive Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of Life, that receive Him even row as their spiritual king—it’s only those that will one day enter His future and glorious kingdom.
In 1960 a 17-year-old girl in Memphis, Tennessee managed to get a street named after Elvis Presley in a suburb of Memphis. It meant a lot to her because Elvis Presley was everything in her life. She had watched the movie “Love Me Tender” 117 times, an Elvis Presley movie. She’d watched the movie “Loving You,” another Elvis Presley movie, 110 times. She’d watched the move “King Creole” 91 times, If you’ve ever seen that movie, you know that it’s incomprehensible. She watched the movie “Jailhouse Rock” 79 times. She had spent thousands of dollars on watching Elvis Presley movies. She had pictures of him—not just 100 pictures, not 200 pictures. She had 40,000 pictures of Elvis Presley and she had a life-sized statue of Elvis Presley at the foot of her bed. She worshipped him and she called him her “king.” There were many people who called Elvis Presley “king,” some seriously and some not so seriously. What a mortal king he was. He died in 1977 after a tragic life of drugs and gluttony. What did he ever have to offer his people? A little music. A few movies. A little entertainment. I marvel at what people in this world will give their life to. Some people give their lives to materialism. Some people give their lives to hedonism. Some people give their lives to fame. Some people give their lives in service to people that they idolize.
You see there’s only one person and only one cause in all the universe worthy of your allegiance and that one person is Jesus Christ. That one cause is the kingdom of Christ. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. This church is affiliated with the Evangelical Presbyterian Church but that means very little. Some of you are Baptist by background. Some of you are Methodist, some Lutheran, some Episcopalian, some Presbyterian, some Catholic, some Pentecostal. All of that means very little. The one thing that matters more than anything else in this world is who is Jesus Christ to you? That’s all that matters. He is King of Kings and Lord of Lords—the Lord of Glory. It’s only Jesus Christ who can provide for you. It’s only Jesus Christ who can conquer death for you. It’s only Jesus Christ who has spiritual food for you. It’s only Jesus Christ who is the Creator. It’s only Jesus Christ who is King of Kings and Lord of Lords. Shall we pray?