More Than Enough

June 07, 2020
Pastor Clint Ziemer

Audio of the service for June 7, 2020, for Cable Community Church, Sherrard, IL

Episode Notes

More Than Enough

John 6:1-14

    It was on the television just the other day, and though I only got to see the end of it, I put it “on my list” as a movie that I need to watch again.  I have a confession to make.  While I'm shopping at Wal*Mart, I like to paw through the $5 movie bin.  Yes, ...now you know.  I have my price.  For movies, it's $5.  The same movies that you may have paid $15 or $20 for three years ago, I wait and pick up off of the discount pile.  And that’s how I purchased and why I need to re-visit Forrest Gump.      And as far as this confession goes, "That's all I have to say about that..."

    I bring that up because the first scene from today's passage from the 6th chapter of the Gospel of John reminds me of a scene from Forrest Gump.    John's text says, "a great multitude followed Him, because they saw His signs which He performed on those who were diseased."

    I’m convinced that people today are looking for someone or some cause to follow.  When Forrest began to run and run and run, people began to follow him.  Perhaps they thought he knew where they were going.  But Forrest ran and he ran and the people followed.  Well, soon Forrest stopped running and said it's time to go home.  But I will never forget what one of the people in the crowd said - even though this is art imitating life, it is so appropriate here.  The people asked when Forrest left, "What will we do?  What will we do?"

    The difference in today's text is that the crowds followed Jesus because they saw that Jesus knew what He was doing.  They saw the miracles that Jesus was doing.   They heard His teaching and declared it was unlike any of the other teachers they had heard.  Crowds followed Gump just because he was running.  One day he decides he's ran enough, and he just stops and walks home to Alabama.  The difference is that Jesus never stops.  Jesus never stops healing.  He never stops teaching.  He never stops discipling.  The crowd kept following him.  The people are following Jesus because they saw something in what He did.  And as we come to the story in today's text, we see Jesus performing one of His most amazing miracles of all.  So much so that this is recorded in all four of the Gospel accounts.

    Truth is, today's text on the feeding of the five thousand is so well-known and is taught so often that we may think that we've learned all there is to know from this portion of scripture.  When I said "Feeding of the 5,000," some of you may have thought, "Oh, yeah.  Little boy.  Five loaves, two fish, and all were fed.  Next?"  But this is more than a story about hungry people getting enough to eat.  Today's story cuts right across the essence of faith in God, the good news of God's Kingdom and the sign of God's plan.  From today's story, we will see   ..."

The Impossible Is Possible  (vv. 1-7)
The Forgotten Find Fellowship  (vv. 8-11),  and
From Little Comes Much  (vv. 12-14) 

Body

  1. The Impossible Is Possible  (vv. 1-7)
        1. This is the essence of faith in God.
    1. The overwhelming poverty and the scarcity of food
      1. Where did all of these people come from?
      2. Growing cities put difficult demands on the food supply in the region and contributed to an upswing in hunger around these areas.  This trend was in turn worsened by the pro-city economic policies of Herod Antipas, which forced rural farmers to either give up some of their produce to feed the cities or pay a tribute on what they did not give.  So, the more they grew the more they had to pay in tribute to the powerful urban centers.  Farmers could lower the amount of tax they paid by not growing as many crops, but that would also lower the amount of food they had for their own personal consumption. So, they lost either way. 
      3. Biblical scholar Obery Hendricks, describes the economic life of first century farmer this way:
        Most peasant farmers had land holdings of less than six acres, of which on average only 1.5 acres was available for cultivation, hardly enough to support a family.  That is, if they were fortunate enough to have saved their farms from outright seizure by the Romans, or from dispossession for tax default, or from the machinations of the Herodians and their cronies who, it is estimated, owned one-half to two-thirds of the land in Galilee.  To make ends meet, most farmers either had to hire themselves out for wages to supplement their meager crops, or go into debt, which was usually a worse alternative.  Tenant farmers and share-croppers often fared even worse, ending up in prison or enslaved by their creditors.
    2. The little we have is shared
      1. It's not that the people FORGOT to bring food that day.  They likely didn't have any!  Except for that little boy with his fish-sandwich lunch.
      2. Phillip's faith is tested --  Andrew doesn't fare much better.
      3. Put in historical context, the "loaves" were more like pancakes and the fish were probably pickled. What good would that be to this huge crowd?  You could probably make about five people a snack with this resource. But there were a thousand times five to feed - and that’s just counting the men! (Verse 10)  With women and children present (and we know they were present because of the mention of this little boy with his food) the crowd could have swelled anywhere from ten to twenty five thousand!  Into the midst of this hungry crowd, Jesus brings the power of God.

    3. There was a man in England during the 1900’s who also saw the power of Jesus to feed a group of people.  The man was George Muller and he founded several orphanages which cared for as many as 2,000 children.  One night Muller was informed that the supply of food was gone at one of the houses.  The next morning he joined the children at the breakfast.  There was a bowl, and plate and glass in front of each of the several hundred children, but all were empty.
      1. Mr. Muller asked the children to bow their heads as he prayed.  His words included "Father, we thank Thee for what Thou art going to give us to eat."
      2. After he ended the prayer there was a knock at the door.  A baker was standing there who said, "I couldn’t sleep last night.  I felt you didn’t have any bread and the Lord wanted me to send you some, so I got up at 2:00 this morning and baked some fresh bread for you."
      3. George Muller not only thanked the baker, but also said a prayer of thanksgiving to God.
      4. Within a few minutes there was a second knock at the door.  There was a milkman standing at the door.  He explained that his milk cart had broken down right in front of the home.  The milk had to be unloaded and he wanted to give it to the home for the children.  "Could you take it?’’ he asked.
      5. George Muller had faith that if he would turn over to the Lord the problem of the hungry orphans, the Lord would provide. There is a lesson in this for us.  When we turn over to the Lord the resources he has given us, he will use those resources to further his kingdom in ways that we cannot understand. 
    4. There is so much going on around us today that we cannot understand; from the physical toll of a virus to the economic cost of a shutdown; from systematic racism to organized riots.  When I weigh the immensity of these problems against the little that I have to offer, I’m like the young boy standing before a hungry crowd holding a few fish and some loaves of bread.  What can I do with resources so few against problems so large?  It seems impossible.
    5. And yet, I remember that through faith in God the impossible is possible.The Forgotten Find Fellowship  (vv. 8-11)
        1. This is the Gospel; the Good News of God's Kingdom.
    6. Welcome to God's Family
      1. Look again at the four acts described before the actual feeding itself: he “took,” “gave thanks,” “broke,” (from the other gospel accounts) and “distributed.”
      2. Think about the first two words, “took” and “blessed.” These are welcoming acts, and in a typical first century Jewish family, these are the acts of hosting. They bring you into the family. 
    7. Where the servants are served
      1. The last two, “broke” and “distributed” are acts of serving and they are acts that are done by a slave (or a wife.)   
      2. Notice too that before Jesus either welcomes or serves, he has everyone in the crowd "sit down" or “recline” (anepeson), which is the posture that rich people take at a banquet, not at an ordinary meal.  To recline means that the host has to lean down to serve you.  It is also the posture that Jesus takes later in his last supper, when he also serves.  
      3. In doing this, Jesus in a subtle, almost radical, way has symbolically taken on the role of both master and slave, husband and wife, and welcomes everyone to the table.  
      4. What he's telling them is that all of you here are at a banquet.  All of you are very important, and that something very special is about to happen.
    8. Come, Eat at the Messianic Banquet
      1. What Jesus is doing is bringing to bear the prophetic vision of the Messianic Banquet.  These prophets were in turn envisioning the Jubilee, when all of God’s creation — All that has been broken and disfigured by human corruption, sin and greed, would be returned back to the order of harmony and justice that God had originally intended.  The prophets believed that in the days of God’s restoration of all things, a celebration of oneness and equality would break out all over the land, and it would be symbolized by the one thing that most common people lacked: food.   There will be a great and glorious banquet on the mountain tops, which will be attended by all who can walk or crawl (and some who can do neither).
      2. On this mountain the Lord of hosts will make for all peoples a feast of rich food, a feast of well-aged wines, of rich food filled with marrow, of well-aged wines strained clear.— Isaiah 25:6
      3. As John, and the other gospel writers, looked back upon this story, they naturally linked it to Jesus' Last Supper in the Upper Room.  This was where Jesus connected the Jewish Passover meal with all of its echoes of Exodus from bondage and slavery to His work on the cross:  His body and blood.
    9. This is the Good News of God's Kingdom, the news that the forgotten find fellowship.  Too many around us today feel like they are forgotten and disfellowshipped.  They need to hear this Good News.  Will you tell them?From Little Comes Much
        1. This has always been God's plan.
    10. The insignificant becomes more than enough
      1. They who were empty were filled
      2. One man, Noah and his family are told to repopulate the earth.
      3. One man, Abraham, founds a nation to bless us all
      4. One man, Jesus, despised and rejected, was lifted up and glorified.
      5. Isaiah 53:3 -- He is despised and rejected by men,
        A Man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.
        And we hid, as it were, our faces from Him;
        He was despised, and we did not esteem Him.
      6. Jesus told the parable of the mustard seed.  - Matthew 13:31-32 --- Another parable He put forth to them, saying: “The kingdom of heaven is like a mustard seed, which a man took and sowed in his field, which indeed is the least of all the seeds; but when it is grown it is greater than the herbs and becomes a tree, so that the birds of the air come and nest in its branches.”
    11. These, who were servants - insignificant, and lowly, are honored
      1. Who were the twelve baskets full of leftovers for?
      2. According to custom in Christ’s day, the residue of the meal was the property of the server. Just like our custom today is to tip waiters and waitresses for serving us.
      3. You don’t have to use up very much mathematical ability to figure out what’s going on: 12 baskets of leftovers; 12 apostles...This blessing was for the servers!
      4. This is a principle of Jesus' teaching
        1. Luke 9:48b -- "... he who is least among you all will be great."
        2. Matthew 20:26b -- "... whoever desires to become great among you, let him be your servant."
    12. Lately, amid the pictures of violence and taking we’ve also seen images of sacrifice and self-less acts of service.  Look around you today - to your neighbors, to your community - who might you serve?  Where can you serve?  
    13. God doesn’t need much more from you than a willing heart.
    14. This is the essence of God's plan:  From little comes much.D. Conclusion
    15. Forrest Gump's momma told him that "God is mysterious,"  but Jesus told His followers that if they wanted to understand God, they should look after His Son.  Today we've seen that no matter the circumstance, God is more than enough.
    16. We've witnessed Jesus testing His disciples and come to the essence of faith.  Don't let a big problem overshadow a bigger God
      1. Much of the time our faith mirrors that of Philip and Andrew, who could not see past the six months' wages or the meager five loaves and two fish.  We tend to base our living, giving and service on our own scarcity or even on our own fears of insufficiency.  So we hoard and save and worry - We cower, trembling with fear but secure in our homes - and end up living life in small and safe measures.  We pull back when we should push forward.  We give in to our fear of a shortfall rather than exercising faith in God's abundance.  But Christians are constantly on call to go places where we have never been, to do things that we have never attempted and to be things we have never envisioned.
      2. The key for me is that the little boy surrendered his meager gifts to Christ, and  his meager offering became the Lord's banquet.  At the heart of the story today is the implied invitation for each of us to surrender our little gifts, the gift of our little lives to Christ, and then see what mighty miracles God can do in and through us.  That’s what God wants from you and me, to surrender, to give the gifts of our little lives to him and then watch in faith as He blesses that surrender.
    17. We've seen Jesus still a ragged mob, bid them to sit down and then serve them, and we've witnessed the core of the Gospel.  Never allow status and power, or the lack of those, keep one from the presence of God.  
    18. The least of these find
      1. a place at the King's banquet.
      2. A welcome into God's family.
      3. A place at the table for "the least of these."
    19. We've counted broken bread and fish - before and after - and noted the sign of God's plan.  Don't despise the day of small things.  The person or project, small and overlooked by the world, is often greatly used by God.  
    20. Gal. 6:9 -- And let us not grow weary while doing good, for in due season we shall reap if we do not lose heart.
    21. To which hungry mob is God calling you with your few loaves and fishes?  Do you see a need?  Will you answer?

Content Copyright Belongs to Cable Community Church
6631