Finding Jesus … in the Feeding of 5,000
Friday, October 9, 2009
FILLED FULL
He was just trying to get back home … Roy Harris, a minister from Nashville. All he remembers is waiting for his plane in Chicago, checking his e-mail and the next thing he knows … he’s there in a hospital.
Swell
Roy Harris took off his coat, pulled out his Blackberry and the next thing he knows, he wakes up in a hospital bed with a woman he didn’t know at his bedside. It’s one of those too good to be true stories of the Lord taking care of us. You see, Roy Harris had a heart attack just as Southwest Flight attendant Rachael Jacobs who saw what was happening and called loudly for someone to grab a defibrillator which saved his life. Harris woke up and there was Rachael Jacobs, sitting by his side in a Chicago hospital. Rachael says “I knew he was somebody’s somebody and he didn’t deserve to be by himself. I just go in a taxi and went. She stay with him for eight hours before he eventually had quadruple-bypass surgery. Now Harris is out talking about his miracle in Chicago.
I’m CM and welcome to HAVEN Today, telling the Great Story that’s all about Jesus and this is a program about serving others called “Finding Jesus … in the Feeding of 5,000. In a few minutes, we will be joined by a Christian actor, David Suchet, most well-known for his portrayal of Hercules Poirot on the PBS Mystery series. He’ll be sharing the story from the just-released Deluxe Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones. You can find out more about that at haventoday.org.
When you visit our website, why don’t you also listen to the words of Jesus from the final words of Revelation with Karen Heimbuch and the London Symphony Orchestra. Haventoday.org.
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Roy Harris – a minister from Nashville – talks about his miracle in Chicago. A passing flight attendant doing more than serving sodas and handing out pillows. The Lord takes care of us – sometimes through a good Samaritan.
I think there’s a lesson here. God has provided us with good food to eat. He’s spread a table before us and it’s loaded with completely free life-giving bread. There’s a story that’s the only story in all four Gospels that gives us a picture of how Jesus takes care of his children. It’s the story of Jesus feeding a great multitude of people in the wilderness. They were all extremely hungry. The meal was entirely free. Everyone ate until they were full. But Jesus made it clear that this physical bread wasn’t the true bread and their physical hunger wasn’t their true hunger. It was just a picture. A sign pointing to something much better he wanted to give them. Just as Rachael Jacobs brought life back to Roy Harris, Jesus brings real life to us.
David Suchet has played bad guys all his life. He also is best known as Agatha Christie’s Hercule Poirot. He’s only publically professed his faith in Christ the past two years. He shares this story with us form the Jesus Storybook Bible by Sally Lloyd-Jones.
Suchet clip
“This is what God had been doing from the beginning, taking the nothing and making it everything. Taking the emptiness and filling it up.” God wants us to see his hand in this and in all the miracles Jesus performed – and recognize that this is the Creator at work.
He also wants us to see -- in this story in particular -- the hand of the One who led Israel out of Egypt. This is the hand of the One who fed the people manna in the wilderness. In John’s gospel he gives us a big clue that this is what we’re supposed to be thinking. In John 6:4 he says, “Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was near” and then he says in the very next verse:
John 6:5 Therefore Jesus, lifting up His eyes and seeing that a large crowd was coming to Him, *said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these may eat?”
John is telling us “think Passover.” All Jewish people celebrate the Passover – it’s one of the ways their identity has been maintained over the centuries. That was also true in the first century when Israel was under the control of Rome. The difference is that back then the people celebrated the Passover with a great sense of anticipation. They were looking back but they were also looking forward to God’s deliverance that they expected to happen any minute.
At Passover they would look back to what God had done for their ancestors when he delivered them out of slavery in Egypt and provided food for them in the wilderness. They would read texts like this from Exodus 16: 14 – 18:
“When the dew was gone, thin flakes like frost on the ground appeared on the desert floor. When the Israelites saw it, they said to each other, “What is it?” For they did not know what it was.
Moses said to them, “It is the bread the LORD has given you to eat. This is what the LORD has commanded: ‘Each one is to gather as much as he needs. Take an omer for each person you have in your tent.’” The Israelites did as they were told; some gathered much, some little. And when they measured it by the omer, he who gathered much did not have too much, and he who gathered little did not have too little. Each one gathered as much as he needed.”
The Jews in Jesus’ day would read those portions of scripture and remember what God had done for them. But they weren’t just looking back.
Israel was energized at the time of Jesus with a great messianic hope. In Deut. 18:15, Moses told the people, “The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your countrymen, you shall listen to him.”
They were expecting that new Moses to come and deliver them. They might have been freed from Egypt and later brought out of exile in Babylon but they were still in bondage and they felt it every day. They were occupied and controlled by Rome. But it wasn’t just Rome. The Herodian line of kings were sitting on the throne of Israel and the people distrusted them and disobeyed them as much as possible.
There was a great sense of anticipation that God was about to send the great Prophet and finally bring in the messianic age and put a real king on David’s throne.
John tells us in John 6: 14-15 that “After the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.”

They thought Jesus was the guy. Here it was Passover and Jesus had fed them miraculously in the wilderness just like in Exodus. He must be the one, this is it, God is doing it again.
Now listen to how Jesus corrects their misunderstanding about what God is going to do. He had crossed the lake and the people had found him on the side. John 6: 26-35:
“Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, you are looking for me, not because you saw miraculous signs but because you ate the loaves and had your fill.
Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. On him God the Father has placed his seal of approval.”
Then they asked him, “What must we do to do the works God requires?”
Jesus answered, “The work of God is this: to believe in the one he has sent.”
So they asked him, “What miraculous sign then will you give that we may see it and believe you? What will you do?
Our forefathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”
Jesus said to them, “I tell you the truth, it is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven, but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
“Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread.”
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Jesus was explaining to them that there is another bread that God is going to provide for his people. Unlike the manna in the wilderness that spoiled, this bread will not spoil.

Jesus was shedding fresh light on the Exodus. That bread wasn’t the true bread because that bread spoiled. Things that spoil are still part of the spoiled world that is subject to decay and death. You are right to think that God is going to do a new thing but you don’t understand just how new this new thing is.

The Son of Man – Jesus – is going to give you bread that endures to eternal life. It isn’t part of the old spoiled world – it’s bread that will take you all the way into a new world. God is doing a greater exodus and he’s providing true bread for you as you pass through the wilderness into the new creation. This bread will endure past death into life and those who eat it will receive eternal life – a life that will never spoil or fade or die.
Wow, those are big claims.
They want it. They want to know what they have to do to earn it. What is the work of God we need to do to get this bread? Jesus answers that the work of God is to believe in him. You don’t have to work at all, in other words, it’s free, just put your faith in me and you will have this bread.
Jesus is making this all about himself. Believe in me. God has sent me.
The people hear what’s he’s claiming and they ask for a sign—they want him to prove it. The sign he’d given them was multiplying loaves of natural bread – it wasn’t bread from heaven like the manna. It wasn’t as miraculous as what Moses had given the people.

Jesus has to correct their misunderstanding again. It wasn’t Moses who gave you the bread, it was my Father who NOW gives you something better – not the loaves I fed you back on the other side of the lake, and not the manna God gave in the wilderness, but . . .listen to Jesus words:
“My Father NOW gives you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
“Sir,” they said, “from now on give us this bread.”
Then Jesus declared, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will never go hungry, and he who believes in me will never be thirsty.”
Jesus is the true bread. He is not a luxury. He’s not dessert. He’s the essential life-giving food we need to live. Jesus is saying, “You need me more than your next meal.” You need me even with heart attacks.
We can refuse to eat. Or we come and eat and be “filled full.”
If we eat the bread of life, Jesus says, we will never go hungry.
But we do get hungry don’t we? That’s because Jesus wasn’t talking about just eating once. The verb in the Greek is in the present tense – which means Jesus was talking about a continuous action – keep on coming, keep on believing keep on eating.
In other words, we need Jesus every day.
One more thing about the Great Story.
We can read ourselves into the stories in the Gospels. We are the crowd sitting on the grass eating our full with great joy. We are also the disciples handing out the bread to the crowd. As the God’s people, we are meant to be both -- to not only eat the bread of life but to offer the bread of life to the world.
The world was very much on Jesus’ mind when he explained to the Israelites about the bread. It wasn’t just for them. He said, “For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
When he went to the cross he went full of compassion for a hungry world that has no bread. And he has sent us out into that world to bring this bread.
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Suchet clip if needed on what Jesus means to him.