Matthew 15:29-38 | "Emphasizing the Point"

This sermon was recorded at Faith Evangelical Free Church in Grand Forks, North Dakota.

Matthew chapter 15.

Matthew 15 · chapter mention

We're beginning this morning in verse 29 and going all the way through the end of the chapter.

So we continue following Jesus as he responds to the challenge from the Pharisees about his disciples.

They were walking along one day, and the disciples picked up some grain and ate it without washing their hands, which made them ceremonially impure.

From there, Jesus goes on some travels, a short travel north to the region of Tyre and Sidon to demonstrate that God's grace can come to the unclean.

We follow again then as he leaves that region.

It says in verse 29, Jesus went on from there and walked beside the Sea of Galilee.

And he went up on the mountain and sat down there.

And great crowds came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others.

And they put them all at his feet, and he healed them, so that the crowd wondered.

When they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing, and they glorified the God of Israel.

Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat.

I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.

And the disciples said to him, Where are we to get enough bread in such a desolate place to feed so great a crowd?

And Jesus said to them, Well, how many loaves do you have?

They said, Seven, and a few small fish.

And directing the crowd to sit on the ground, he took the seven loaves and the fish, and having given thanks he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds.

And they all ate and were satisfied, and they took up seven baskets full of the broken pieces left over.

Those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children.

And after sending the crowds away, he got into a boat and went to the region of Magadon.

Amen.

You need to understand what's going on in this account if you have ever heard someone question the accuracy or the truthfulness of Scripture.

How many of you have had or heard somebody question whether or not Scripture is really true all the way through?

Okay, most of your hands went up, so most of you need to know this passage.

If you've ever questioned whether or not this book is accurate all the way through and what's here is supposed to be here, then you need to know this passage.

The reason for that is over the last 150, 200 years or so, there have been a lot of people that have questioned whether or not this account really happened.

Because we just heard just a few weeks ago about the feeding of the 5,000.

And there are so many similarities between these two that it just seems like it got repeated somewhere along the line and somebody just eventually wrote it down.

And so it didn't really happen because the one that really happened is the feeding of the 5,000.

And so we really shouldn't be including this section in our Bibles.

In spite of the challenges throughout the years, this passage has survived the challenges.

And it may be familiar to you because of its similarity to the feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew 14.

And there are many similarities, but there are also some differences.

And it's the similarities that bring doubt to some people who want to question the Bible's accuracy.

And when people question whether or not this passage actually should begin here, they often ignore a couple of significant points.

The first point that they ignore is that Jesus himself says that there were two different feedings from small portions of food.

Look over in chapter 16, verse 8.

Jesus, aware of this, said, Oh, you of little faith, why are you discussing among yourselves the fact that you have no bread?

Do you not yet perceive?

Do you not remember the five loaves for the five thousand and how many baskets you gathered?

Or the seven loaves for the four thousand and how many baskets you gathered?

So Jesus himself, right after this, refers his disciples back to him and says, Listen, there were two different feedings.

How do you not know this?

So if we're going to question whether or not the Bible accurately includes this, then we have to also question whether or not Jesus knew what he was talking about.

Jesus spoke of two separate and two unique miracles where thousands were fed, and he bases his teaching to his disciples on that fact.

So maybe we shouldn't be too quick to question whether this happened if Jesus said it did.

The second point that is often neglected is Matthew's intent in including this miracle.

Why did Matthew put this miracle in his book in this place?

What's happening here?

Why are there two separate events that are so similar?

The looming question for us is why are there two miracles with such similarity?

I think there are two answers to that question.

First, disciples need regular reminders of the Lord's person and his power and his provision.

And second, they tell us that disciples need reminding, that our motivation in life, our motivation in ministry, is God's purpose as he has revealed it in Scripture, not our traditions.

So if Matthew's intention is to remind us, to remind his disciples, then we need to at some point personalize those reminders.

So together as a group of believers that gather on a Sunday morning at Faith Evangelical Free Church, we need these reminders.

And each of us who claims the name of Christ must humbly say, I need these reminders.

We might know all there is to know about Jesus' identity as God in the flesh.

You might have sat in Scott and Jeff's fellowship group and worked through the deity of Christ and the humanity of Christ, and you understand the coming of God wrapped in the flesh of his creation.

You might know all of that.

We might know his power to act, his power to heal, his power to raise the dead, bring restorative power to his creation.

We might know that he meets all of our needs.

But friends, never let your knowledge of the Lord Jesus turn into such pride that you refuse his reminders.

Rejecting reminders of biblical truth, even simple biblical truths like Jesus loves me.

Refusing reminders of the simplest biblical truths out of pridefulness, out of arrogance in our heart, only leads to an arrogant and powerless form of godliness.

Now, after the last two sections in Matthew chapter 15, we should know that Scripture must reign supreme over any human traditions.

Matthew 15 · chapter mention

But the fact that there are three consecutive sections, and we're going to see next week, four actually, four consecutive sections in this gospel about this truth, that scripture trumps tradition, tells us that we some, for some reason, need to hear this multiple times.

We get stuck on repeat.

So we need to hear God's word on repeat.

So let's think then about the first answer.

Why are there two feeding miracles, one for 5,000 and this one for 4,000?

Well, the first answer is that disciples need regular reminders of who Christ is.

We need regular reminders of his person, that is his identity.

Who is he?

We need regular reminders that he is powerful.

Not someone who can just do magic tricks.

We need regular reminders of his provision for us.

How many reminders do you need to have something ingrained within you so that it becomes second nature?

How many times do you need to be reminded?

Experts tell us that you need to spend about 10,000 hours doing something before you become an expert at it.

I question the experts, but that's what they say.

Let's go back to your childhood.

How many times did your parents need to remind you to brush your teeth before it became second nature and you just did it?

Once?

How many of you just got one reminder to brush your teeth?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

How many times did your parents have to remind you to make your bed, Pastor Jeremy?

What?

A lot.

How many times did our parents have to remind us to clean our room?

Now you would think, right, that as we grow older and we mature, that Pastor Jeremy would need fewer reminders to make his bed.

We would think that as we grow into adulthood, that we we grasp truths of life much more quickly and we need fewer reminders.

Do any of us still need reminders not to whine when things don't go our way?

Yeah, that's what I thought.

We all need those reminders, don't we?

When I first began participating in track and field as a sprinter, we would practice starts out of starting blocks every single day.

We needed to develop muscle memory, to have our bodies be comfortable in the spot down in the blocks, then raised up.

So that your muscles are ready to react without tension at the sound of the starting gun.

Guess how often we needed to remind our bodies and our minds of that effort?

Every day.

Every day.

Every day for four years of track and field.

How many times do we need to hear God say, I forgive you, before we really believe it?

How many times do we need to experience God's provision before we genuinely believe that He's going to provide exactly what we need at exactly the right moment.

Maybe you've not experienced that.

Let me tell you a story.

Goodness, I don't know.

20 years ago, Allison and I were at church one Sunday morning and we had just been talking about a utility bill, I think it was, that we had received.

And I don't even remember all the details now how it happened or what happened, but somehow we had a utility bill that we needed to pay, and we didn't have any money for it.

We were at church on Sunday morning, didn't tell anybody about it, didn't talk to anybody about it.

When we came out of church, last one's out of church on that Sunday morning, we got into our car, there was an envelope on the dashboard with an amount of money in it that was within pennies of what we needed for that bill.

How many times do we need to experience God's provision of what we need before we really get to that he's trustworthy?

How many times do we need reminders of his sovereignty before we are able to trust him moment by moment, day by day, so that the worry and anxiety slips entirely away?

How many times do we need to be reminded that obeying him is the very best thing?

We need reminders, don't we?

Never grow so spiritually bold that you despise reminders about simple truths.

Jesus heals routinely.

Wherever he goes, there are miracles of healing.

He raises the dead.

He demonstrates his power over distance, over creation while he's on the Sea of Galilee with the disciples.

He demonstrates his sovereign power over sickness and over disease and over death and its destruction.

He demonstrates his sovereign power over creation to create real bread to feed thousands of people.

But how often do the disciples need reminders that Jesus is a prophet like Elisha, who feeds many people with merely a small amount of food?

How many times do the disciples need to be reminded that Jesus is the new Moses who feeds God's people in the wilderness?

How often do the disciples need reminders that Jesus has compassion for the hungry, the hurting, and the lost and the rejected?

The answer, it seems, is one more time.

It's always one more time.

Matthew details for us what it was like as they left the northern regions of Tyre and Sidon, returning south back to where they came from, not though directly into the area occupied by Israel, but more on the eastern side of the Sea of Galilee, the modern region of the Golan Heights.

And as they did so, Matthew records for us that great crowds came to him.

Notice the emphasis on crowds three times.

Great crowds, verse 30, the crowd in verse 31, and the crowd in verse 32.

And not just small crowds, great crowds.

They came to him, bringing with them the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute, and many others, and they put him at his feet.

And he healed them.

Matthew says he healed them instantly, on the spot.

There was never a question about the genuine nature of the healings, nor of who did the healings.

And the disciples were part of that.

They were there.

They probably functioned as some kind of crowd control.

Who knows?

They experienced it.

They lived it day after day, hour after hour.

Why did they need another reminder?

Chapter 14, in the first feeding account, there were 5,000 men.

Depending on how the people were counted.

If there were men, women, and children, the total number could have been upwards of 10,000 people.

There were five loaves in that account and two fish.

How many baskets of leftovers were there?

12.

12 baskets of leftovers.

Here there are 4,000 men, he specifically says, besides women and children, and they are hungry.

They followed Jesus for three days without eating.

That's commitment.

They followed Jesus for three days without stopping at a gas station or a restaurant to fill up on snacks.

It's miles and miles to the closest bakery, and all they can scrounge up are seven loaves of bread and a few smoked fish.

What's that in the hands of Jesus?

We should think it's more than enough, right?

If five loaves and two fish fed more people, then surely seven loaves and some fish, more food, can feed fewer people.

But that's not how Matthew presents it.

Look at how the disciples responded to this situation.

Remember, it's not been too long since the 5,000.

Look how Matthew presents this situation.

And the disciples said to him, where do we get enough bread?

The poor disciples sound like their ancestors following Moses in a desert place 1500 years earlier.

Hey Moses, where's the water?

Moses, where's the bread?

Why'd you bring us out here?

For us to die?

You know the strong hand of God can't reach into the desert places.

Why did you bring us here?

Doesn't that sound like us?

Strong hand of God can't provide for me here.

He can't give me exactly what I need.

Not much has changed, has it?

We struggle to remember what is true.

That's the bottom line.

We struggle to remember what is true.

The disciples have grown up and have lived a lifelong life of religiosity.

They grew up hearing the stories of their fathers.

They knew their Old Testament better than we do.

They could recite to you how God provided for the people of Israel through Joseph.

They knew of the miracles in the times of Moses and the prophets, but here they are in desolate Gentile areas with no food.

And Jesus says, Hey guys, give the people some food.

Jesus?

Do you see these people?

There's an inherent danger of becoming comfortable with Jesus.

Being comfortable with Jesus lulls us into thinking that he's like us.

In a way, he is.

But when we think and act like he is like us, just like us, we fail then to remember how unlike us he is.

Our tendency can be to forget that Jesus is the one who made all things, who sustains all things, and without whom nothing would exist.

It's good to be reminded of this.

But that needed reminder is a byproduct of Matthew's main point in this miracle.

The main point can also be expressed as a reminder, and that is that disciples need reminding that our motivation for life and ministry following Jesus is found in God's word.

Our motivation is what God says our motivation ought to be, not traditions that we develop over time.

All of Scripture is tightly bound together.

It fits together tightly.

It's not a hodgepodge of ideas and stories, but it's a divinely inspired work of God to restore his sin-cursed world to himself.

And that's what we see here in chapter 15.

Look at what's happening.

First is the encounter with the Pharisees confronting Jesus about their traditions in verse 1 through verse 20.

The disciples were, in the Pharisees' minds, disregarding the traditions, right?

That's exactly.

What the Pharisees asked.

They said, why are your disciples disregarding the traditions?

They were making themselves impure.

So, Jesus, why do you do that?

A good rabbi doesn't allow his students to become impure.

Well, Jesus allowed it because the traditions had been built up like fences around Scripture that kept people from coming to God.

You see, impure people, unclean people, were unable to approach the holiness of God.

So if you wanted to be able to go to the temple to offer a sacrifice or to worship with the temple choir or to walk in God's ways, you had to remain pure.

You had to be clean.

But Jesus corrects that and says that, you know what, if you do that, you're leading to worship only from the lips, not from the heart.

Tear down the traditions and let scriptures rule, he said.

So immediately after that, Matthew shows Jesus going on a little day trip.

They go north to Tyre and Sidon, where Jesus was approached by a Canaanite woman of all people.

A pagan of pagans.

At least the woman at the well in John chapter 4 was half Jewish.

John 4 · chapter mention

This is a Canaanite woman, impure to the core, banned from Israel in the mercy of God.

But we saw that Jesus carried out the commission given to Abraham and to all Israel, where God said, Through you all nations of the world will be blessed.

Wait a minute.

You mean you mean those Ninevehes?

Those ancient people who glorified skinning their enemies alive by carving it into rock so that we could read of it thousands of years later?

Yeah.

No thanks, said Jonah.

Sorry, God, not gonna bless those guys.

I'll go to Tarshish instead.

Let people come near to God when they haven't washed their hands?

Never! Why would we do that?

Allow the preacher to preach in genes?

Sometimes.

A Canaanite?

Retire and sighting?

Those things shouldn't even be whispered.

A drug addict?

An alcoholic?

What if someone came into church on Sunday morning smelling of alcohol?

Reaking of it.

What about a recent divorcee?

What about someone who's crushed by their sin and they need desperately redemption?

The Pharisees would want them cleaned up first.

But Jesus says it's not a matter of what's on the outside.

It's a matter of the heart.

It's a matter of faith.

That Canaanite woman had great faith that came through hearing about Jesus.

And so now leaving Tyre and Sidon, we return south, but not directly south into Jewish territory, but eastward through Syria.

Mark tells us that it's the region of the Decapolis, the area governed by ten major Roman cities, Gentile cities.

This is the region of the Gentiles.

That's why it says in verse 31.

Wrong chapter, wrong page.

Verse 31, they glorified the God of Israel.

These are non-Jewish people, these are Gentiles receiving the blessing of God through the Son of God, and as a result, they return praise to the God of Israel.

This is what this is what God's people are supposed to do.

Bit of a problem when those that we consider sinful, drug addicts, alcoholics, murderers, adulterers, whatever you want to put in that list, it's a bit of a problem when they give greater praise than we do.

But how ironic is it that the Pharisees rejected Jesus while the Gentiles praised the God of Israel?

Which group do you think is closer to God?

The clean Pharisees or the unclean Gentiles?

I mentioned that the similarities of the feeding of the 5,000 and of the 4,000 can cause people problems.

What we need to recognize is that there are some differences, important differences.

The feeding of the 5,000 is primarily to Jewish people.

The feeding of the 4,000 is primarily to non-Jewish people.

It's to Gentiles.

Two completely different groups of people, proving a completely different intention.

This is a feeding of the Gentiles.

God is glorified now through the nations.

The unnamed woman, up in Tyre and Sidon, believed in the saving power of crumbs from Israel's table.

And now thousands of Gentile people are being satisfied with the crumbs.

There were only seven loaves and a few fish.

Look at verse 37.

And they all ate and were satisfied.

The word means to be fattened.

The Gentile peoples are like the Canaanite woman said, waiting for the crumbs to fall off of the children's plates.

And there's so many crumbs that they're fattened by it.

So this short excursion outside the borders of Israel demonstrates tearing down the fences of tradition to bless others, and God is glorified by it.

Did this crowd of people come to saving faith in Jesus like the unnamed woman?

We don't know.

But they recognized the power of God and the person of Jesus, and they gave praise and honor to God as a result.

That was far more than the religious leaders were willing to do.

So Matthew shows us the pagans giving more glory to God than the Jewish leaders.

You know that sometimes God uses other people, even those we inappropriately think are lower on the class rung than we are, who are lesser than us or are unworthy to shame us into appropriate belief and action.

Yes, shame is sometimes a good thing if it moves you closer to Christ.

The Jewish traditions didn't bring about the fulfillment of God's promises.

The Jewish traditions didn't help bring people closer to God.

Instead, it set up fences and said, you can't come beyond this.

And the disciples needed to be reminded of the scope of God's promise.

Yes, he chose Israel.

He chose Abraham out of all the nations on the earth.

He chose Isaac, not Ishmael.

He chose Jacob, not Esau.

Yes, God chose them.

The Jewish traditions, though, didn't give aid to that.

God chose Israel as the means, the vehicle through which he would bless the world by undoing the curse of sin and death through the restorative power of the Lord Jesus Christ.

And Jesus is demonstrating for his disciples the command that he would soon issue to them.

As you are going, make disciples of how many nations?

All nations.

Do you think they learned the lesson and no longer needed to be reminded?

How many times do we need reminding?

The answer is always one more time.

Do you remember when Peter was on the rooftop and he saw that vision of the sheet being let down and there were all kinds of animals on the sheet, all kinds of unclean animals.

That was to get him ready to go to unclean Cornelius' house.

Sit down in his house and have a meal with him.

That wasn't acceptable.

Later, Paul confronted Peter about falling back into old patterns.

He needed another reminder.

Now the context here is ritual purification, the kinds of things that you need to do, that your church says, that your religion says you need to do to be able to fall in line to be acceptable to God.

It began with eating with unwashed hands.

And it continues to unclean Gentile regions, and now thousands of unclean Gentiles are glorifying God.

The Judaism of the Pharisees said these people were defiled.

They were to be kept away from God at arm's length.

But Jesus desires that we reach all kinds of people.

Going to people of other ethnicities and sharing the good news of Christ with them does not make one impure.

Rather, it fulfills the command of Scripture.

To take the blessing of the gospel to all peoples.

And if we have traditions that keep us from doing that, they need to be dismantled.

Yes, God's program was first to the Jews.

They have a special place in God's program.

There's a chosen people, and we must never forget that.

They continue to be God's special people, and God will one day complete his work with them.

However, in his perfect program, God uses their rejection of Christ to gather in a people of whom the scripture says they were not a people.

Jesus came for the children, for the Jews.

He came to give them the bread of life.

But the Canaanite woman astutely and in faith proclaimed that Jesus, as the Jewish Messiah, yes, can provide bread for his people, but there are enough crumbs, even for the dogs around the table, to benefit.

The miraculous provision of food to the 4,000, Jesus amplifies that truth.

Yes.

Indeed.

There is enough for the children.

And even more.

There's enough for everyone who comes to him.

And more besides that.

There are five loaves, two fish, and twelve baskets of leftovers in the first account.

There are seven loaves, a few small fish, and seven baskets full of leftovers in this account.

These baskets, though, are different.

Maybe it's because they're in a Gentile region, but in the feeding of the 5,000, the baskets that collected the pieces left over were smaller baskets.

They were a Jewish type of basket.

The baskets listed here are Roman baskets, and they are much larger.

You can see in Acts chapter 9, verse 25, that they were large enough, the same kind of basket was large enough for the Apostle Paul to lay in and be let down from a city wall in.

Acts 9:25

No matter how small of a space an adult man can get into to be rescued, that's a pretty big basket.

That's seven large baskets of crumbs.

And the point is that there's a substantial amount of food left over, much, much more than there was initially.

So in the first feeding, Jesus provided amazingly to the Jews and showing them that he is the God of the Old Testament.

And here Jesus provides in abundance to the Gentiles, also, showing that he is the fulfillment of God's blessing to all nations.

This means that a significant implication of this miracle is that God's grace has come to you and me.

Most of us are not Jewish by ethnicity, but Gentile.

And this feeding is an illustration that the crumbs of the bread of life have come to us.

We've received them not in meager amounts, but with great satisfaction and overabundance.

And we too must glorify the God of Israel.

Disciples need reminders that it's not the Jewish traditions that drive ministry, but God's purpose as revealed in Scripture.

From the very beginning, God promised Eve that there would be a redeemer who would fix the sin problem.

Not just for her, but for all of her descendants, including us.

God promised to bless all the peoples of the world through Abraham.

And so God spoke through the prophets repeatedly that his power and his grace would impact even the pagan Gentile peoples.

That's why in Revelation chapter 7, verse 9, John would say that he saw a great multitude that no one could number from every nation, from all tribes and peoples and languages standing before the throne and before the Lamb, clothed in white robes with palm branches in their hands, and crying out with a loud voice, Salvation belongs to our God who sits on the throne and to the Lamb.

Revelation 7:9

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus.

Give us even the crumbs.

Let us be satisfied fully with the overabundance of your provision.

Open our eyes to see and give us ears to hear that you are the bread of life.

You are the bread that satisfies.

Give us eyes to see and ears to hear that you are the living water that sustains.

Lead us to see you, Lord Jesus, as the provider of all things.

You are compassionate.

And in your compassion, you see us day by day, moment by moment, encountering our sin-cursed world.

Enable us to trust that you are able to provide completely and wholly.

So that we don't need to be anxious, we don't need to be worried.

We don't need stress to overwhelm.

We need to see you.

But most of all, enable us to understand and to grasp that you provide for eternity.

That through you we have the bread of life that satisfies forever.

So we come to you, Lord Jesus, trusting in your provision of salvation.

May no one leave here this morning without food, without the bread that gives life, by trusting in you, giving your life for us.

We ask this in your name, Lord Jesus, so that we might give praise to the Lord of Lords and the God of gods and the King of Kings.

Amen.

That concludes this sermon from Faith Evangelical Free Church.

Our mission is to declare the Word of God and disciple believers into mature, devoted followers of Jesus.

You can learn more by visiting our website at faithfree.com.