Questions for God | John 6:1-15

John chapter 6, we're continuing our series on an introduction to Jesus as the Son of God.

John 6 · chapter mention

And the first four weeks were really this really, really high Christology, right?

Really deep theology, the wonder of wonders, right?

What you're gonna see over the next few weeks is we're gonna zero down.

It's gonna become more and more practical as we begin to see Jesus and how this really high Christology was lived out in real life.

So we're gonna be in John chapter six.

We'll begin in verse one and read through verse 15.

It says, After this, Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias.

And a large crowd was following him because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick.

And Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples.

Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.

Lifting up his eyes then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, Where are we to buy bread so that these people may eat?

He said this to test him, for he knew himself what he would do.

Philip answered him, Two hundred deneri worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.

And one of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?

And Jesus said, Have the people sit down.

Now there was much grass in the place, so the men sat down, about five thousand in number.

And Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated.

So also the fish, as much as they wanted.

And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.

So they gathered them up and filled twelve basket baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.

And when the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.

And perceiving then they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

Let's pray the Lord together.

Heavenly Father, this morning, Lord, we desperately want you to feed our souls.

God, we come in here this morning with a scarcity mindset, trying to cling to all that we have.

I pray, O Lord, that instead today we would leave entrusting the little that we have into your hands, whom we have.

Lord, we we we come this morning worried about the deprivations that we experience in this life.

I pray, O Lord, instead we would see the fullness of what we have in you.

I pray, Father, that you would allow us to live our lives, not trying to look within and find some strength that isn't there, but to look up and to look to you and to look to how you've provided and to know that your strength is always sufficient.

Lord, I offer this message to you, I offer your people to you, and I ask that you would do a great work here and among us.

In Jesus' name we pray.

Amen.

You may be seated.

So research shows that 15%, or even less than 15% of Americans trust their politicians.

Now, I don't think this is because they're all bad people.

I genuinely don't.

There are bad eggs in every profession, right?

Even yours and even mine.

But I do think it's because we've kind of gotten fatigued with the way things often go.

That often we're told the things that we want to hear, and promises are made that they think are the promises that we want them to make.

But then when they actually get into office, it seems like very often they forget the promises that they've made and they forget all the things that they've said to us.

And after that's happened enough times over enough years and enough election cycles, it's hard for your heart to love again, isn't it?

You start to doubt and to distrust what they're telling you.

I think that you can generally boil down the message of most politicians into three tensions, three statements that typically, if you think about it, the what they're they're telling you is they're saying, I know what you need, I know how little of it you have, and I have the answer.

I know what you need, I know how little of it you have, and I have the answer.

And what they try to do is they build a message around those realities.

Why?

Because those are the things that get to the stressors of life, aren't they?

Those are the issues that cause us anxiety for ourselves, cause us, cause us anxiety for our children, cause us anxiety for our community, for our world, for our nation.

And they know that if they can get to the heart of those tensions, that they can have a message that will resonate with us.

And that message, whether I think often they believe they're going to do it in a good way, some probably to advance their own agenda, but if they can develop a message that resonates with us, then they can be elected.

Well, I think wherever it is, or to whomever it is, that we go to seek to resolve those tensions.

What I need, what I have or don't have, where I'll find the solutions, have a lot to say about the durability and the sustainability of the joy that we have in our lives.

And I think that this is a real reason why John is here putting forth Jesus as the solution to resolve those tensions in our lives.

The Gospel of John is really built around seven miraculous signs of Jesus.

He'll use that word sign over and again throughout his gospel.

And he tells us explicitly that the reason that he gives us the seven signs in his gospel is so that we can know that Jesus actually is the Son of God, and so that we can know that Jesus actually is the Savior of the world.

That is, so that we can be confident that Jesus is being upfront with us, that Jesus is being genuine and authentic with us, that Jesus is being honest with us, that he is an actual and real solution to the actual and real problems that we have in our lives.

And so here in John chapter 6, we're picking up with what we would call the fourth sign in the Gospel of John.

John 6 · chapter mention

And I believe that it's in the fourth sign of the Gospel of John that John is putting forth Jesus to resolve these big tensions, these big questions that we have in our lives.

And so I want to go and this morning to John chapter 6, and I want us to ask the big questions that we have for God.

John 6 · chapter mention

First, I want us to ask, does God know what I need?

Does God know what I need?

You know, to need is human, isn't it?

All of us were engineered, designed, and woven together by God with needs in mind.

None of us are sufficient in of ourselves.

All of us have weaknesses, all of us have vulnerabilities, all of us have shortcomings, all of us have inadequacies.

That if it were not the Lord providing for us, none of us would make it more than one second in this world, right?

And it's our ability to cope with the this neediness that has been that is intrinsic to human nature that will determine a lot about the complexion and the tone of our lives.

Think about how the different ways that we relate to this neediness.

Some people they resent their neediness.

And so all of their life, they're angry and they're jealous because they don't have the strength that they want to have, they don't have the strength that somebody else has, they don't like the vulnerabilities that they've been given to.

For other people, they don't resent it, they revel in it.

So all of their life, they do what?

They live as a victim.

Every situation, every circumstance, they're always the victim.

Now, some people don't revel in it, some people don't resent it, some people just reject it outright.

They say, I don't have the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of other people.

They like to convince themselves that they're stronger than they really are, they're more capable than they really are, they're smarter than they really are, so that they don't have the issues that other people have to deal with and other people have to face.

They classify everybody as winners and losers, and they are in the winners category all of the time.

But here's the reality: at some point in your life, whether at the beginning, the middle, or the end, at some point in your life, you will be faced by the reality of your own vulnerability.

You will be faced by the reality of your own neediness.

It may come when you're diagnosed with cancer.

It may come when there's an issue with one of your kids that you can't fix.

It may come when all of a sudden you've had a successful business for 15 years, 20 years, 25 years, and then out of nowhere there's no work for you to do.

It may come, it may come at the moment of death, when you're staring down the barrel of the ultimate judgment.

But in some way and at some time, you will come to face the reality of your vulnerability, the reality that you don't have everything that you need to have in and of yourself, that you were made insufficient.

Now, those are the moments when you start having big questions for God, aren't they?

Those are the moments in which you start asking these huge, enormous questions, the kind of questions that we're asking this morning.

And one of those questions inevitably be Does God not know what I need?

Does God not know what I need?

Does God not know that I need my wife?

She has to be healed.

Does God not know that I have to have that my kids are okay?

Does God not know that my business is the means by which I provide for my family and provide for my church and provide for my community?

Does God not know what I need?

Well, I actually think this question is at the forefront of what John is answering here.

That part of the simple message of John's gospel here in John chapter 6 is so that we can resolve this tension in our hearts.

John 6 · chapter mention

The fourth sign that we see here in the feeding of the 5,000, it's the only one of Jesus' miracles that's actually mentioned in all four Gospels.

So we know that it must have made quite an imprint on his disciples.

It must have made quite an impact on the apostles.

Every single one of them said, I've got to write this down, I've got to take note of this, let's pass this on for the future.

And I I believe that part of the reason that it made such an impact is that what John wants to show us is that Jesus sees us.

That Jesus sees us.

Think about how beautiful it is when it says lifting up.

This is in verse 5.

Lifting up his eyes and then seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him.

You know, I don't know why all of you are here.

I don't know if your wife drug you here, I don't know if your parents drug you here, I don't know if you stumbled in and you don't even know why you're here.

You might be here this morning and you're not really sure that Jesus really is the Son of God.

I would bet that even if you're skeptical as to whether or not Jesus is really the Son of God, that you would at least concede that Jesus is the most consequential figure to have ever walked on the face of the earth.

That there has never been a person that has impacted the future past his life more than Jesus Christ when he dwelled on the earth more than 2,000 years ago.

And so what we would say, especially at the point of ministry, he's kind of in what I would call like the Justin Bieber phase of his ministry, where huge crowds are always gathering.

He's the rock star of Nazareth, where everybody's coming to come and hear everything that he has to say all the time.

So especially at this season in his ministry, you can imagine there was nobody that had more demands on his calendar than Jesus did.

There's nobody that was in higher demand than Jesus was.

There's nobody that would have been tempted more toward self-importance than Jesus would have been.

But what do we see here?

That even though he's the most consequential man in history, that even though there were great demands on his time, that even though he would not have been, he could have been tempted toward self-importance, that Jesus doesn't look past people, he doesn't look above people, he doesn't look through people.

No, Jesus sees people.

Deism is a belief system that believes that there is a creator God, that God has come and he has made everything that there is.

But though he has made everything, he is holding it at a distance, that he's impersonal with his creation.

A great deist illustration is the deists typically believe that God is like a divine clockmaker.

He came and he built the world and he built the clock and then he wound it up, and now he's got a bowl of popcorn sitting back in a lazy boy watching this thing tick without any desire or intentions of intervening in the midst of it.

Well, you know what?

We as Christians can at times be guilty of a functional deism.

That maybe we believe that God is gonna help us one day.

God's gonna help us when we die, God's gonna help us when he returns, God's gonna help us when we're in eternity, God's gonna help us when it comes to the judgment.

But we tend to believe that in the here and now, with the struggles that we face today, with the vulnerabilities that we have today, with the hardships that we have today, that God's holding us at arm's length.

That we just have to kind of figure all of this out, that we have to figure out what we're supposed to do, that we have to get the wisdom that we need, we have to get the strength that we need, we have to get the answers that we need, that we are responsible for bearing the weight of the life now.

Jesus is one day.

And here's John saying, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no.

No.

That is not at all who Jesus is.

Jesus sees you right now.

And Jesus doesn't just see you, Jesus actually cares about what he sees.

He cares about what's happening here in your life.

That the temptation can be.

That we believe that Jesus is in charge, and we believe that Jesus is sovereign, we believe that Jesus is on the throne.

But here in the in the here and now, he's kind of absent.

He's kind of distant.

What's interesting about this is it's really a pretty trivial need, isn't it?

It's really a pretty trivial need.

Not many people that are walking and living on the face of the earth can't withstand the loss of a single mill in their life, right?

Most Southerners I know could probably withstand the loss of a few mills.

You know what I'm saying?

Like they're gonna be just fine.

And yet, here is Jesus.

And even though the need is small, even though we might consider the need to be trivial, Jesus sees them.

And Jesus cares about that need.

How comforting is that, y'all?

How comforting is that that Jesus doesn't just see what's happening in your life, Jesus cares about what's happening in your life.

Jesus doesn't just see the big things that everybody else sees, the big problems that everybody else sees.

Jesus sees the small problems, the small worries, the minute concerns.

That Jesus sees every single one of those, and Jesus actually cares.

Think about this.

Jesus cared as to whether or not their blood sugar was high or low.

Jesus cared whether or not they needed the Snickers.

They were a little bit hangry, right?

Not starving to death, hangry.

Like Jesus cares that they have something in their stomach that will enable them to be able to focus on the message and the teaching that he has for them.

Jesus cares that being in the crowd with him, that they have a good and a positive experience with him.

Like these are the minute things, aren't they?

This isn't life and death.

These seemingly are trivial.

And yet Jesus cares about every single one of them.

It's easy for us to believe that Jesus probably cares about the big things in our lives, or maybe he doesn't have time for us because he's so wrapped up in the big things in everybody else's lives that he would be dismissive when our children are being bullied, when we are facing stress at work, when we are having difficulty in what's going on.

But what we see is Jesus in his sovereign grace and in his sovereign kindness and in his sovereign might sees every minute struggle that you and I face and he cares about every single one of them.

Y'all, that's the hope that we need to be able to carry into the chaos that is Monday morning, isn't it?

As we step into the midst of a culture that is confused and wrapped up in all sorts of things, like we need to know that Jesus sees us and Jesus cares about us.

We live in a world where it feels like the unborn is too small to care about anymore, doesn't it?

We live in a world in which it it seems like these precious babies that have been woven together in the womb of their mothers don't have a voice.

But you know what?

Jesus sees them.

And Jesus cares about them.

You send your children out, you're sending them out into a culture filled with gender dysphoria.

You're sending them out into a culture that that has people that are put into positions of authority that that prey on them as predators.

You don't know who to trust anymore.

It's it's overwhelming, it's terrifying, it creates anxiety in the hearts of moms and dads.

And you're like, what am I supposed to?

Here's the hope that we have, y'all.

Jesus sees them.

And Jesus cares about them.

You're gonna go to the workplace tomorrow.

And in some people's workplace, people are gonna be tempted to look down on you because your accent is a certain way.

People are going to be tempted to not like you because your skin color is a certain way, to not trust you because your skin color is a certain way.

You know what?

Washington, Washington may ignore you.

Your neighbor may resent you.

The media may confuse you.

But John is here to tell us that Jesus sees you and Jesus cares about you, and that's enough to make it through until we get to the end.

So if that we're gonna ask the question, does God know what I need?

Jesus is here to say point blank, I see every single need.

I know needs that you have that you don't know that you have.

First question Does God know what I need?

The second question that I want you to see this morning is Does God know what I have?

Does God know what I have?

Last year I read Steve Jobs' biography by Walter Isaacson, loved it, highly recommend it.

And it interviewed several of his colleagues, people that had been close to him throughout the years, and many of his colleagues would talk about what they called the reality distortion field of Steve Jobs.

And what that meant was that Steve Jobs believed that he could decide what was real and what wasn't real, that he could determine and establish reality.

So he would come in, and if something wasn't true, he would tell you that it was true.

If something wasn't possible, he would tell you that it was possible.

If it was something that you couldn't do, he would work to convince you that you could do it.

And he was so charismatic that he would make you doubt your own reality.

And so he would go to his engineers, and Steve Jobs was famously not an engineer, knew very little about engineering, but he would go into his engineers up against hard deadlines, and he would change everything and demand that they do things that were completely physiologically impossible, right?

And then he would demand that they do it on a time schedule that made it doubly impossible.

So they would be taken away from their families weeks, months, even years at a time where they would work around the clock and even sleep and live in the office until they could try to attain what Jobs had put in front of them.

So what ends up happening is most of the people that had been close to Steve Jobs end up burned out, broken down, and not thinking very highly of him.

I think sometimes we wonder if God operates that way.

I think sometimes we wonder if God has some kind of reality distortion filled.

Where God is making demands on us.

We read the scriptures and he says, Be holy as I am holy.

He says, Be generous with what you have, be a cheerful giver with all the things that you have.

He calls us into commitment to our church family.

He calls us to teach and to raise our children.

There's all these things that we're called to do.

Love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your mind, all your strength.

Like, does God know what all means, right?

And so we come and we think of all of the call, all of the callings of scripture and all of the standards of scripture, and we're tempted to wonder: does God not know how little he has given me?

Does God not know that what he is calling me to do based on what he has given me to do it with is a virtual impossibility?

Feels like a reality distortion field.

We see that, something of that here with Jesus.

That Jesus is here, and most scholars estimate that there would have been, after you count women and children, there would have been 10 or 20,000 people in the field that day.

And Jesus looks at these 12 disciples of meager means and he says, Hey guys, I'd like y'all get a plan up to feed this crowd.

Can you imagine the way they would cut their eyes at each other?

They're like, fool, this fool is crazy, right?

I mean, like, can you imagine Andrew looking at Peter and being like, you have gotta be kidding me, right?

Like there it feels like a reality distortion field.

But John gives us, he tips his hand a little bit in verse 6, and he says that Jesus did this to test them.

To test them.

That is, Jesus is putting this out there.

He's asking this of his disciples because he's got some questions of his own.

And the first question that Jesus has is do they recognize who they have?

Do they recognize who they have?

You see, wherever or to whomever it is that you turn when your resources don't add up to your responsibilities, to whomever or wherever you turn when the math doesn't math, that has a lot to say about what you believe and who you trust.

And so here is Jesus, and he's putting this in front.

He knows the deficit that they have, he knows that they don't have the strength and the capacity and the capability and the resources to be able to meet the need.

And yet Jesus is calling them to do it.

Why?

Because he wants to know where they will turn, to who Whom will they trust?

Will they turn within, or will they recognize who it is that they have?

And I love that Philip speaks up on behalf of the disciples, and you feel bad for the guy because he's been memorialized in all of history.

And he looks around at what they have and he says, Jesus, if we had seven months' salary, we wouldn't be able to give this crowd so much as a communion cracker.

Like we have we have no ability to meet and to fulfill the demands that you are playing.

You are living in a reality distortion field.

And if this is how it's gonna be, man, you're gonna burn every one of us all out, right?

But Jesus is wanting them to recognize there wasn't enough wine in Cana either.

But guess who was in Cana?

Jesus was in Cana.

And since Jesus was in Cana, there was more than enough wine for everyone.

In fact, John again tips his hand in verse 6.

He says, For he himself already knew what he would do.

That Jesus goes to the disciples and he says, Hey, y'all get a plan together, but John is tipping his hand.

The original disciples wouldn't have known this.

He's tipping his hand for those of us reading.

He's like, but Jesus kind of already knew what the plan was.

Jesus already knew what he was gonna do about it.

He's asking the disciples because he's trying to draw it out of the dust.

See, what Jesus is doing is he's trying to build in his disciples the reflex that's gonna sustain them through their ministries.

The only way that they're gonna be sustained through their ministries is if they have a reflex, not to look within when times get hard, not to look within when they find the deficits, not to look within when they experience the deprivations of life, not to look within, but to look and to recognize who it is that they have, because if they recognize who it is that they have, now they're gonna be able to be sustained through things that are far beyond their own limitations.

Where do you look?

Where do you look when the math doesn't math?

Where do you look when it seems like you don't have the resources at your disposal to do what it is that God has put in front of you to do?

Where do you look when all of a sudden the balance sheet on the family budget is imbalanced?

Where do you look when you feel like you're being buried underneath the demands of your boss?

Where do you look, mom?

When you feel like you're being crushed by the expectations that your family has for you.

If you look within, if you try to find more grit within, if you try to pick yourself up by your bootstraps, if you do, you might get by with that once or twice, but if you do it long enough, it will be death to your soul.

No, no, no, no, no, no.

Here's what John would say don't look within.

If you look within, you'll panic.

Recognize who you have, recognize the resources that you have, recognize what he's capable of.

Look to yourself and panic, look to him and find rest.

But he wants you to recognize.

And there's a second question that I think Jesus has in mind as he's testing them, as he tells us there in verse 6.

He doesn't just want to ask, Do you recognize who you have?

He also wants to ask, will you give what you have?

The boy that's brought up here in verse 9, uh, it John is the only one that tells us about the boy.

And and the boy with the little sack lunch has been, has captivated the imagination of the church for 2,000 years, hasn't it?

We all love to think about the little boy that comes up and he's trembling and he offers up, here Jesus, here's my little sack lunch.

And I think that's all beautiful.

But I think we're missing something here in most of our conversations about the little boy.

The word that the ESV here has translated as boy, and a lot of them have translated, it's probably more accurately translated as servant or as attendant.

That it's probably a young man that Jesus and the disciples are bringing along with them to be able to help them run some errands and kind of manage the day-to-day operations of what it would have been like for the rabbi and the disciples.

The significance of this is that when Jesus says, Hey, go get me the little boy's lunch, he's not saying, We are you willing to take this little boy's lunch and offer it to me.

He's saying, Go get your lunch and bring it to me.

The little boy is the one that's carrying around the supplies and the resources that the disciples have.

And so he's saying, You go, you tell him to bring what you're planning to eat, and let me see what I can do with that.

Now, it's not very much.

The word that's translated here is barley.

Now, what you would need to know about barley bread is barley was the food of peasants and prostitutes.

In fact, the Mishnah prescribed that prostitutes could only eat the barley bread because they were not worthy of the bread of normal people.

They had to eat the bread of beasts.

And then the word that's translated here as fish, okay, we're not talking about a 70-pound grouper here, okay?

The word that's translated as fish would be the word that would, it would equal a fish about the size of a sardine.

So the supplies, the rations that the disciples had at their disposal to divide among themselves for lunch that day to help their blood sugar not spike, was five loaves of peasant prostitute bread and two sardines.

And Jesus saying, that doesn't seem like it would do very much, does it?

It seems like you've been short-handed, doesn't it?

Would you be willing to take the little bit that you have, the small resources you have, the small gifts that you have?

Would you be willing to take the little bit that you have and entrust them into the hands of who you have?

Do you see the question here?

Do you see how this confronts all of us, brothers and sisters?

All of us are tempted to hold white knuckled to the little bit of resources that we have because we think this can't amount to anything.

This can't accomplish anything, this can't do anything.

But Jesus is not coming to each one of us and asking, How much do you have?

Do you have enough?

Do you have enough?

No, he's saying, Will you take the little bit that you do have and entrust it into the hands of the one that can do something with it?

Will you take all that you have, that which may be your lunch tomorrow?

Are you willing to potentially not eat because you so fundamentally trust the provision of the Savior that you know that when you wake up in the morning, his mercies will be fresh for you again?

In your life, in your life right now, what are you tempted to hold on to?

What is it that you feel like you don't have very much of?

What is it that you feel is so small and so so precious in your possession that you're tempted to cling to it and to hold on to it and to make sure that you never let go of it?

That's probably what the Lord is asking you to trust him with this morning.

Could it be your kids?

Could it be your kids?

Man, our kids.

To other people, it just seems like another family, doesn't it?

To other families, it just seems like other people's kids.

They seem like nameless, but for us, they are our world.

It feels like we have to hold on to them, especially in the world that we're living in today, with both, with both hands white knuckled.

Will you entrust what you have into the hands of who you have?

Are you willing to entrust your hands, your your children honestly into the hands of Jesus?

What about your money?

What about your money?

Man, if we are tempted to cling to anything, it is to cling to it because we know that the we're living in volatile economic times and the market's up and down and inflation is rampant, like it's terrifying.

Salaries are not matching the rate of inflation, and so we even if you're making more, you can actually be making less than you were just a couple of years ago.

And so it's hard.

We want to cling to it.

But here is John saying, no, no, no, face the idols in your life.

Are you willing to entrust what little you have into the hands of who you have?

What if it's it?

What if it's your time?

What if you you say, I'm just so busy?

I just, I just I have so much going on, like I have no time to spare.

I can't give up the small amounts of time that I have.

And here is Jesus saying, Yes, yes, I know that when it comes to your time, you have the equivalent to five barley loaves and two fish.

But would you entrust your time, that time that you're clinging to, would you hold on to it?

What if it's your health and energy?

What if it's your health and energy?

I know what that feels like.

I've been through seasons like that myself.

Where you feel like, man, I have so little health, I have so little energy, I've got to make sure I spend all of it on myself.

I've got to make sure that that I cling to every second, that I actually feel like some kind of human being, that I I go and do something fun.

What what what if Jesus is saying, no, no, that little bit of help that you have, that little bit of energy you have, would you stop clinging to it?

Would instead you offer all of yourself as a living sacrifice to me, that all of your health and all of your money and all of your family and all of your children would be an acceptable offering of worship to me.

Will you trust what you have into the hands of who you have because you recognize who he actually is?

Does God know what you have?

Yeah, God knows what you have.

He gave it to you.

And what you have, however much or however little, are meant to be instruments through which you bring glory and honor to him, through which you demonstrate your devotion to him.

The last question that I want us to ask this morning is does God know what he's doing?

Does God know what he's doing?

You know, it's not hard to find a politician that sounds really impressive.

Most politicians are filled with charisma, most politicians have a lot going on.

It's much harder to find one, not that can articulate problems and solutions, it's much harder to find one that can actually do something about it, isn't it?

And the stakes are really high.

I mean, we're talking about the difference in poverty and prosperity, we're talking about the difference in freedom and oppression.

We're talking about decisions that are being made today that we're gonna pass down and our kids are gonna have to deal with, aren't we?

These are these are weighty things.

The stakes are high.

But you know, I think we have the same question sometimes when it comes to God.

And the stakes are actually much higher.

You can you can vote out a bad president, you can impeach a bad congressman, but but God is seated upon the throne.

What are you gonna do about that, right?

Like, what if God is all powerful?

And what if God really is a nice guy, but he's just not very wise?

He just doesn't actually know what he's doing at the will.

If we're honest, that's how life feels sometimes, isn't it?

That's how life feels.

Like, like God, this is not the direction I thought my life was going.

This is not the dream that I had for my life, this is not the expectation that I had for my life, this is not what I anticipated for my life, this is not how my health is supposed to be, or how my marriage is supposed to be, or how my church is supposed to be, this is not how it's supposed to be.

Do you not know what you're doing, man?

And here is John putting forward Jesus.

So one more time we can have confidence that God actually does know what he's doing.

And he shows us this by showing us three mills.

First, he shows us a past mill.

In the Gospel of John, the Jewish festivals are a major emphasis.

He's over and again showing Jesus to be the fulfillment of these Jewish festivals.

He's just done this in John chapter 5.

John 5 · chapter mention

In John chapter 5, he's just put forward Jesus as the Sabbath.

John 5 · chapter mention

He is the fulfillment of the Sabbath.

That you don't find rest by not doing work, you find rest by knowing Christ and coming to Christ and trusting in Christ by hoping in Christ and by knowing Christ.

Now, as we turn to chapter 6, he's talking about the Passover.

Now, the Passover, there was no event in Israel's history more significant than the Passover.

And I want you to think about what was taking place in the Passover.

The Passover was another time in Israel's history in which it looked like God didn't know what he was doing.

God comes to Moses, he tells Moses, I'm gonna deliver the people out of Egypt with you.

He goes and Moses goes and confronts Pharaoh, and plagues begin to come.

Pharaoh begins to relent and allow them to go, and then the plague goes away, and then Pharaoh's heart would harden, wouldn't it?

And Pharaoh would clamp down and then he would double down on the burden that he placed on the people of Israel, and Israel would say, Oh, Moses, I wish you would have just shut your face.

Like life is harder now than it was when he started talking.

And this happens over and again, and you're like, God, are you weaker than Pharaoh?

Like, what on earth are you actually doing here, man?

Like, what is going on?

Until when?

The Passover.

And what happens in the Passover?

In the Passover, the judgment comes over the land of Egypt.

And there is Israel living in the midst of Egypt when the judgment is coming.

Except, what does God do?

He delivers Israel from the judgment.

How?

Through the judgment.

He paints over all of their doorhand, over their door frames, the blood of the Lamb, so that those who are covered by the blood of the Lamb might have the judgment pass over them and not fall upon their house.

And because the judgment falls upon every other house, the people of Israel will be set free and released to go and to live in peace.

And so God shows, yeah, yeah, it didn't look like I knew what I was doing.

It didn't look like I knew where this was headed.

I didn't, it didn't look like I had any plan for this.

But the plan that I had was a plan that you couldn't anticipate.

It was a plan far more glorious than you could have authored, so that you can know it was all me all the time.

It was to establish for his people as a commemoration year in and year out in the Passover that God is not asleep at the will.

And that brings us to the present meal, the second meal that's in view here.

That Jesus sits down and he begins to break the bread of the little boys' lunch or the disciples, however you interpret that, and he hands that out.

And not only is there enough, but there's so much, it's it's laid on the ground, like there's extra.

And Jesus says, I want you to go and I want you to collect all of that.

Why?

So that nothing may be lost.

Now, why is it that Jesus gave a rip?

Jesus literally just made bread from nothing, okay?

He can have as much bread as he wants.

Like, it's obvious that Jesus is not concerned whether or not he's going to be able to have uh enough bread for a hoagie later, right?

Like, that's not a concern.

So why does he care about going and the bread being lost?

He's making a point, isn't he?

Did you know the word lost comes up ten times in the New Testament?

Ten times.

Three of those are in John chapter six alone.

In fact, it comes up more, it's a theme throughout the whole gospel of John, and it comes up in the most famous verse that we have from John, John chapter 3, verse 16.

John 3:16

For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.

In the original language, these are the exact same words.

He's making a point here.

Here's what he's saying.

The way that I just provided the bread for you is the way that I will provide salvation for you.

The way that I just multiplied grace for you, I have come to multiply grace for all of your sins.

So much so, so much so, that we're gonna gather up twelve basketfuls, that the grace that I have, the salvation that I bring, the life that I bring, is sufficient enough to cover all of Israel, the four corners of the earth, that I have come, that not one person would believe in me and be lost.

In fact, he'll make his point even more graphically later in John chapter 6.

John 6 · chapter mention

It's like anyone who eats my flesh and drinks my blood, not one of them will lose eternal life.

All of them will have eternal life, none of them will be lost.

John is saying right here, Jesus is the fulfillment of the Passover.

He is the one that will deliver us from judgment.

How will he deliver us from judgment?

He will deliver us from judgment through judgment.

That on the cross, the judgment of God will fall upon the Son of God.

And it was the judgment of God that was owed to every single one of us.

But because we are covered by the blood of the Lamb, because we are covered by Jesus Himself, his judgment will pass over us because it landed on Christ.

That in other words, that when Jesus goes to the cross, what we're learning is that God has been in control of this thing the whole way.

It looks like it's in the hands of men, it looks like it's in the hands of a betraying crowd, it looks like it's in the hands of Jerusalem, but all of it has been pinned by the hand of the Almighty.

He is riding the end from the beginning, and if he does it for Jesus, brothers and sisters, he does it for me, he does it for you, he does it for us, that we have the hope of knowing that God is sovereign, God is reigning, and all of this is gonna be fine.

So, in other words, he's setting the table for the future meal that we talked about earlier.

You'll notice something interesting.

Verse 4 when the people saw the sign, there's that word we were talking about, that he had done, they said, This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.

See, Israel had waited for Elijah's return.

Elijah, who could call down the judgment of God to convince the people of God that he was the true, that the Yahweh was the true Lord and to serve him.

And do you remember what Elijah was given and how God provided for him in the wilderness?

What did God give him?

Gave him bread.

Gave him bread.

And do you remember how Elijah left this earth at the end of his ministry?

He left how?

Riding on a cloud.

Do you know how John will open the revelation in Revelation chapter one?

He says that the Son of Man will return, riding on a cloud, and he will come to vanquish all of his enemies, to establish all good, to renew the creation, so that all things have been made new, so that there is no more death, and there is no more pain, and there is no more suffering.

And at that moment there will be an invitation given to all of the people of God, all of those that so that none are lost, will receive an invitation to the wedding supper of the Lamb, where we will come, and on that day we will not be eating the bread of peasants, we will not be feasting on barley, we will have the best bread and the finest wine and the sweetest honey, because all of it will be Jesus in his glory, us in his presence.

And what we will know, what we will know is that forever and always God had provided, God is providing, and God will provide.

That's the significance of these three mills.

And brothers and sisters, we're about to come and we're about to join at the Lord's table.

And it's all three of those mills that are in our minds.

And whatever you're facing, whatever you're struggling with, this table proclaims to it God has provided.

God is providing, and God will provide.

Let me pray for us.