You Give Them Something

Luke 9:10 – 17

 

Have you ever found yourself put in a position to do something without knowing how to do it? I remember when I learned to drive a tractor.

 

I was young, I couldn’t tell you exactly what age, but I was young. We used to feed loose hay to our cows by tossing flakes off the back of a flatbed trailer pulled by a Massey-Fergueson 175.

 

One day our feeder decided I needed to drive so that he could toss the hay. His instructions were simple. Put the throttle at this level, put it in gear and hold the wheel straight.

 

Yeah, I had no clue what I was doing, but I did eventually get really good at driving tractors and trucks and pulling implements and trailers, and especially at backing up with them.

 

Jesus sent out the Twelve on their short mission, preaching the gospel and healing people. He gave them power and authority to the things Jesus Himself had been doing, but somehow, they still didn’t know what they were doing.

 

When they come back, we get to see one of the greatest miracles recorded in Scripture, the feeding of the 5,000.

 

This is one of the only two miracles recorded across all four Gospel’s, the other is the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit deemed this miracle worth recording four times, pay attention.

 

Let’s read God’s Word together, beginning with Luke 9:10.

 

The Twelve return from their mission and tell Jesus all that they had done. Luke doesn’t give us the report, just the summary of it. We know from v.6 that they preached with authority and healed and cast out demons with power.

 

Here is the second time the Twelve are called Apostles in Luke. This mission served to further their transformation from disciples sitting under Jesus’ teaching to being sent ones who will carry on Jesus’ ministry after His departure, once they’ve been filled by the Spirit.

 

Jesus takes them and withdraws apart from whatever surrounding crowds to find rest in Bethsaida. No rest is to be found though, when the crowds find out they follow Him.

 

But Jesus doesn’t turn them away, instead He welcomes them and continues His mission by speaking/preaching to them of the kingdom of God, and He healed those who needed it.

 

Notice how Jesus Himself does the very thing He sent the Twelve out to do, preach the gospel and heal. The Apostles’ ministry is continuation of Jesus’ ministry, and our commission to take the gospel to the ends of the earth is a continuation of this.

 

But look at how even in seeking rest, Jesus doesn’t turn anyone away. Come to Jesus in faith who always meets your needs.

 

Now the Twelve, ever the pragmatists with a penchant for pointing out the obvious point out to Jesus that the day is getting late and they’re in quite the isolated place and they have nothing to give the crowd in the way of lodging and food.

 

Now to their credit, they recognized the very real need of the people for a safe place to hole up for the night and for food. Further to their credit, they approach Jesus for the solution. Jesus is always the solution.

 

But nonetheless, there’s something wrong with their proposed solution to the problem. Instead of asking Jesus to meet their needs, they ask Jesus to send the people away.

 

Jesus, however, responds in a surprising way. He doesn’t want to send the people away. They’ve come to Him to find help, why would He send them away? Would a good doctor send away his patients without full treatment? Would a good shepherd send the sheep off on their own?

Instead, Jesus presses further into discipling and growing the Twelve. Jesus’ answer is that they give them something to eat.

 

One day they’ll face the more challenging calling of feeding people’s souls, so they need to learn how to handle the less challenging calling of literally feeding people now.

 

Their response, however, shows just how much more they have to grow still. They’ve watched Jesus do absolutely amazing things.

 

They themselves just got back from doing amazing things themselves. But they keep on thinking about things from the perspective of this world. They only see problems, not solutions.

 

Have you ever been there? How are you going to pay that medical bill? How are you going to put food on the table, pay off that credit card, keep the lights on? How are you going to get to work when the car breaks down? We’ve often found ourselves only seeing problems and not solutions.

 

They’ve seen Jesus cause a miraculous catch of fish; they’ve seen Him calm the wind and the waves. How is this problem so great?

 

So they respond that they only have five loaves and two fish, nowhere near enough food to feed all these people, unless they go and buy food for them.

 

Mark records the Apostles adding that it would cost two hundred denarii to buy enough bread for everyone. A denarius is a day’s wage for a laborer.

 

This isn’t a small crowd either. All four Gospel writers record that there were 5,000 men, that count doesn’t even include any women and children that were likely to be present too.

 

But shouldn’t the Twelve be prepared for this? Weren’t they empowered for this? They just performed miracles of healing and casting out demons, they preached the gospel with authority and power given them by Christ. Why couldn’t they do it?

Too often we think that we’re not enough, even after being taught and empowered for ministry, we’re not good enough to do the work Christ has sent us out to do.

 

A key lesson in discipleship is set up here, when the Twelve are pushed to the limit, when they can only see what they don’t have, they have no choice but to rely on Christ and His power.

 

Often, we don’t learn to rely on Christ until He’s allowed us to reach our limit, to hit rock bottom with nowhere else to turn except to Him. Truly, we should turn to Him long before that. You must learn to rely on Christ in all situations.

 

But the Twelve have frustratingly gone back to their old ways of not understanding and weak faith when they can’t see how to resolve the people’s hunger.

 

Jesus steps in, doesn’t give any explanation or a rebuke like He did in the storm, He doesn’t just go off and do it on His own, but He patiently and deliberately invites them to take a step of faith and involves them in the miracle.

 

Jesus never stops teaching His followers because they’re gonna have to figure out how to feed His sheep after He’s gone. (John 21).

 

But also, He reinforces how their ministry is entirely dependent on Him and His empowerment of them. This is so often the challenge in discipleship.

 

We teach and we learn, we walk it out, but then we quickly lose sight of what we’ve learned, how we’ve been living it out, of the power that comes from Christ. We take our eyes off of the prize and suddenly it feels like we can’t overcome challenges anymore.

 

But Christ is always there, to remind us of the truth that we belong to Him and that with Him we can endure anything.

 

Jesus directs the disciples to have the crowd sit down in groups of fifty each. The disciples obeyed and had the whole crowd sit down like this. Often obedience has to come before understanding.

 

Food related miracles were not uncommon in the OT. Look to Moses and God providing manna in the wilderness. In 1 Kgs, the prophet Elijah miraculously multiplied flour and oil. In 2 Kgs 4, his successor Elisha miraculously multiplied twenty loaves to feed a hundred people and still had leftovers. Sound familiar?

 

Jesus repeatedly performs amplified miracles of his prophetic predecessors. The prophets consistently pointed to Jesus, who perfectly fulfills the office of Prophet.

 

At this point, Jesus takes the five loaves and two fish, looks up to heaven, and blesses, breaks, and gives the food to the disciples to distribute to the crowd.

           

Notice the three verbs, bless, break, and give. Sets a pattern that we see in the Last Supper and post-resurrection dinner with the disciples on the road to Emmaus.

 

While the Last Supper is the most important of these three examples because it established an ordinance based on the death of Jesus, the centrality of Jesus as the divinely empowered provider to and through His disciples connects all three of these events.

 

This action in blessing, breaking, and giving, repeated at these later meals is especially important in understanding who Jesus is (Luke 24:30 – 31).

 

Christ’s provision here points to our greater need for spiritual nourishment from Him. This is how Jesus works in our lives. He takes the very little that we have, and He blesses it, breaks it, and gives it out.

 

He takes your little faith, blesses it, breaks it, and multiplies it so that you can share it. He takes what resources you have, little or a lot, and blesses it and breaks it so that you can give it away. He takes what little you have of yourself, blesses you and breaks you to give out.

 

He keeps on doing it too. The imperfect verb used for gave in our text is better understood as began giving them, implying that the Apostles kept coming back for more and Jesus just kept providing.

 

 

Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 9:8, God is able to make every grace overflow to you, so that in every way, always everything you need, you may excel in every good work.

 

Christ’s grace doesn’t just meet the bare minimum of your needs but instead it overflows.

 

God provides, always provides, with a purpose determined for you by God: to give Him glory and to make Him known.

 

Now, this miracle in our passage is only truly witnessed by the Twelve, the crowd is none the wiser about the source of food, just that there’s food. Jesus performs this miracle for the disciples, but the benefits of them are shared with the people through the disciples.

 

Now, we really have no clue how this miracle worked itself out, that’s kind of the qualifier of miracle. Did their baskets keep getting full every time they went back for more? Did the fish and bread all just poof at once? Did it fall from the sky like manna? No clue.

 

And I bet these fishermen were dumbfounded wondering where all this fish came from on dry land. I wouldn’t even know how to begin to process that information.

 

But this much is certain, Jesus had a kingdom truth to reveal and it’s a truth that all who profess to follow Him needs to take to heart. Full and complete satisfaction is found only in Jesus.

 

So today, I want to encourage you to find your complete satisfaction in the only One who can truly satisfy: Jesus.

 

As the Apostles fed over five thousand people in groups of fifty over and over again, they could see Jesus meeting everyone’s physical needs. It was Christ’s way of saying, “I supply for you, trust me.”

 

But He doesn’t just meet your needs, He satisfies. When God gave manna in the wilderness, the Israelites complained, they weren’t satisfied. Now, that’s not a testimony against God, rather it’s a testimony against God’s chosen people.

But here with Jesus, everyone ate, and they were satisfied. What the Twelve thought was too little, was not only enough for everyone to eat something, but to be satisfied.

 

And just like when Jesus turned water into wine and it was the best wine at the wedding, I bet this was some of the best fish and bread these folks ever had.

 

One biblical commentator put it this way, “Jesus wouldn’t perform a miraculous fish fry and burn the fish. This fish was cooked in heaven.”

 

Not only was it enough to be satisfied, but it was more than enough, so much so that there was leftovers, twelve baskets worth of broken pieces.

 

Jesus takes the little we have and He multiplies it to overflowing for His mission, His kingdom, and His glory. He is indeed the Lord of an abundant harvest.

 

Jesus is our satisfaction. True contentment is found only in Jesus. When you’re discontented it often boils down to the truth that you’re not fully feeding on Jesus.

 

So, what is the implied answer here to Herod’s question from last week’s sermon, “Who is this?”

 

It is that Jesus is the all sufficient Christ, who came, lived, died on the cross for your sin, was buried, and raised to life on the third day.

 

Look at John 6:33 – 35. Jesus is the bread of life; He is the true bread from heaven. Christ’s body had to be broken on the cross, so that you and I could live. In the same way, you will not truly live until you’re broken upon your own crosses in life, and give yourselves for others.

 

Come to Jesus today, only when you feed on Christ, believe in Jesus and feast on what only He can offer, can you then answer His command of “you give them something to eat.”

 

It is your job to make Him known, to give the world something to eat, the pass out the invitation to the messianic banquet.

The age of the messiah arrived with Jesus on earth, it is now, it is urgent, the kingdom of God is a present reality as well as a future hope.

 

Do you believe that Jesus is able to meet all your needs and satisfy you completely? Are you listening to Him?

 

Then expect Christ to meet you right where you are, in your brokenness, to meet your needs and to fully satisfy your hunger.