"Jesus Ends World Hunger" Matthew 15:32-39 Sunday Morning Worship Service

This morning we're rejoining our study in Matthew's gospel.

We've taken a few weeks off through the month of July.

We paused.

We'll jump back in in verse 32.

So Matthew chapter 15, verse 32.

Matthew 15:32

Jesus called his disciples to him and said, I have compassion on the crowd.

Because they've been with me now three days and have had nothing to eat.

I'm unwilling to send them away hungry lest they faint on the way.

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

Jesus said to them, How many loaves do you have?

And they said, Seven and a few small fish.

Directing the crowd to sit down on the grounds, 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.

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.

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

This is the word of God.

When Washington, D.C.

was originally founded, George Washington had surveyed it, and it was supposed to be about ten square miles, with more or less half of it in Virginia and half of it in Maryland.

Each of the states had agreed to give some lands to the district.

The goal of it was that it would be governed by Congress, perhaps in Congress's fair spare time, I guess.

What happened instead was that Congress found themselves occupied by other things.

And so two different governments grew up because really two different cities grew up.

When Washington had set the boundaries for Washington, D.C.

And again, you probably know all this.

I didn't grow up here.

This is like new for me to learn.

I'm I'm excited to learn this.

I can lead your eighth-grade tour next week.

When Washington had surveyed it, his goal was to have two ports inside of the district, the port of Alexandria and the port of Georgetown, neither one of which were really flourishing at the time.

But when the district did get off the ground, so to speak, when the Capitol moved here, both of those ports exploded.

But both of the sides of the river here, both halves of the district, took on kind of the laws and culture of their respective states.

Georgetown was a place where blacks could move freely around.

And so it became kind of an epicenter of African American culture.

It became probably by the mid-1800s the largest and most thriving center of African American life in the United States.

Meanwhile, on the Virginia side, which was a slave state, blacks were not allowed to move freely around.

In fact, the Port of Alexandria became probably the second leading slave port in the country.

The cultures and the governments began to reflect both of those until eventually two very distinct cities grew up, but they supposedly had one government, and Congress just gave up trying.

I know that's hard to believe, isn't it?

When the Mexican-American War broke out, Congress just told the people in DC, you guys figure this out yourself, pass your own laws.

And so business leaders from both Georgetown and Alexandria got together and decided to actually try to do that.

It did not work.

What they found is that they had to present everything twice.

Every new law, every new tax, every new zoning code, every new anything, they had to present to the Georgetown government first, get it passed there, and then cross the river and come present it on the Alexandria side.

And as you might imagine, the kind of presentation that works in Georgetown does not work in Alexandria and vice versa.

It basically became impossible.

And finally, at the end of the Mexican-American War, Congress just gave up and gave Alexandria back to Virginia, where we find ourselves at this very day.

I hear that and I think a lot about the story in front of us this morning.

As you read the story this morning, I'm sure it had echoes in your mind of a different story that we had read only a couple months ago, when Jesus fed the 5,000 up in Jerusalem, or up in Galilee, up in Israel.

And now, just a few paragraphs later, in my Bible, it's two pages later, Jesus feeds the 4,000, only this time it's out in Gentile lands.

Remember, Jesus was chased out of Israel by the Sadducees and the Pharisees, and he went on kind of a world tour.

He went through Tyre and Sidon and Lebanon and Jordan and Syria and Arabia, even, and then back down through into the wilderness.

He's going to enter into Israel again through the Decapolis, which is like Pompeii.

It's the center of kind of Greek culture in that world.

That's where Jesus is now at this part of the story.

On his way in, he feeds the 4,000.

We just read it a moment ago.

He miraculously multiplies the fish and the loaves and feeds a massive number of people.

And there's so many echoes in this that there are commentaries that even argue that this is the same event that Matthew described just a few paragraphs earlier.

I don't know if they would say he forgot that he wrote it or like an editing mistake or something like that.

As if Matthew's there writing, like, did I mention the feeding of the 5,000?

Let's call it 4,000 to be safe.

There's so many similarities between those.

I jotted down just 10 similarities between these two feedings.

She probably noticed most of them as I was reading it.

Both of them take place in deserted places.

Both begin with Jesus telling the disciples to get food.

And in both cases, the disciples respond by saying, I don't know what to do.

In both cases, Jesus asks them, How many loaves do you have?

And in both cases, they provide a meager amount.

In both cases, Jesus sits the crowd down.

And in both instances, Jesus gives thanks for the bread, breaks it, and then miraculously multiplies it.

In both stories, it's an impossible miracle.

Jesus takes a small quantity of something, multiplies it miraculously so that when you're done, you have more than when you started.

But there are a few differences as well.

In the first story, there's five loaves and two fish.

In the second story, seven loaves and two fish.

You're not going to be quizzed on it later, don't worry about it.

I just thought you should know.

It's different kinds of fish in the two feedings.

The word for the fish in the first feeding is the fish that's in the Sea of Galilee.

It's tilapia.

And if you were a fisherman, you would tell me, like, there's four differences between St.

Peter's fish and tilapia.

Whatever, they're tilapia.

The second feeding, it's a small word for fish, it's like sardines.

And that's because it's out, it's in the Gentile world and it's far away from water, and that's the kind of fish that they have.

The first feeding was probably around 20,000 when all is summed up.

The second feeding closer to 4,000.

The first time was on the green grass by the Sea of Galilee, the second time is on the hard ground in the middle of nowhere.

And you might say the sitt difference between sitting on grass and ground isn't that big, but that's because you're not the one doing the sitting.

The first time Jesus splits them into groups of 50, not the second time.

The first time the word for basket that's used is like a little bread basket, is what it is.

It's like the size of what we have our communion elements in.

This is a little bread basket.

The word that's used for the basket in this story here is like a laundry basket, a big bushel, like for storing a bunch of fruit in.

The first feeding was initiated by the disciples.

Do you remember?

They said, hey, send everybody home, or we're going to be stuck here with a lot of people to deal with.

The second feeding was initiated by Jesus when he said he has compassion on the crowds.

So these two miracles have as many differences as similarities, of course, but I want to kind of zero us in on one key difference and then one key similarity.

And I think if you understand this key difference between the two feedings and the key similarity between the two feedings, you'll get the whole story and you'll understand what Jesus is teaching us.

The key difference is Jew versus Gentile.

The first feeding was to Jewish people.

It was thousands of Jewish people that had been following Jesus.

The Jewish identity of them was key.

Jesus was in Israel.

Remember, he crossed the Sea of Galilee, he was moving around the Sea of Galilee.

His disciples had come back from their healing journey.

It was a massive crowd of Jews.

They had begun gathering from Khorazin and Besseda and all of those cities around the Sea of Galilee until there was this momentum on the far side, the desolate side of the Sea of Galilee.

There were thousands of Jews that didn't have food, and Jesus ministered to them.

It's out on Jesus' Gentile route, where he's going through the Gentile nations.

Now, distance-wise, it's not that far.

It's just across the river, basically.

Across the Jordan River, head off into Lebanon.

That's where Jesus went.

That's where the second feeding takes place.

He is out in the Gentile world.

Again, it's not that far, but it is a different group of people.

Do you remember the last miracle before this was the Syria-Phoenician woman?

And do you remember what she had told Jesus?

She needed healing for her daughter, and Jesus said, You know, I didn't come for the Gentiles, I came for the Jews.

And that statement was given more to the disciples than to the woman.

And you remember how the woman responded?

She said, Yes, Lord, but even the little dogs can eat the crumbs off the floor.

Even the chihuahua can get fed if it sits under a three-year-old.

Even a Gentile can have healing from the Lord if the Gentile has faith.

And remember, Jesus says, I haven't seen this kind of faith in all of Israel.

That's amazing.

In Matthew's version, she says in verse 28, O woman, your great is your faith.

Be it done for you as you desire.

The point of that miracle was to demonstrate to the disciples that Jesus ministers to both Jew and Gentile.

And you can say the moral of this story is the same: that Jesus is the Savior of the world.

By reenacting this feeding of the 4,000, by reenacting the feeding of the 5,000, this time with the 4,000, Jesus is doing the same thing he did for the Jews, except now he's doing it for the Gentiles.

It's like you're passing one set of laws in Alexandria and then heading over to do it in Georgetown.

It's the same law.

They might be separated geographically, they might be separated by culture, they might be separated by traditions and customs and ethnicity and all that, but it's the same miracle in both places.

The point is obviously that Jesus is the bread of life that was promised to Israel and is now given to the world.

And the disciples knew this.

They knew that Jesus was the Savior of Israel.

That much had been clear to them.

But Jesus, remember, kept trying to demonstrate and teach them that he's also going to the nations.

He's not the savior of the Jews only, but of Jew and Gentile.

The Davidic covenant was a promise given to David that one of his descendants would always reign on the throne of Israel.

At Psalm 89, that covenant, it seems, is broken off as Israel is sent into captivity.

They've returned from exile.

They do not have a Davidic line.

They don't have a Davidic throne.

They don't have a Davidic king.

They don't have a Davidic family.

The messianic hope for the disciples was that God would raise up somebody from the line of David, put him on the throne, and that person would rule over Israel.

He would get rid of Roman rule, or at the very least, mitigate it.

He would reform the Roman system, return temple worship back to Israel, and all of that.

They had a very political and cultural and ethnic-centered focus on who the Messiah would be, because remember, the promise for the Messiah would be that he would be reigning from the throne of David.

So that was their natural inclination.

It's a poor analogy, but it would be like if somebody said, you know, there will always be somebody from with the last name, you know, Bush or Clinton in the White House.

You know, you would immediately hear that and you would deduce that's a political prophecy.

It's like somebody on the other side of the river, right there, as the president of our country, so to speak.

That's the way the Jews understood the Davidic promise that there will always be somebody from the line of David reigning on the throne in Jerusalem.

So here comes Jesus, remember, and he goes to Galilee, which is the place where the Gentiles, the nations come together.

It's called Galilee of the Nations, is where he came.

And he starts ministering to Jew and Gentile.

He heals the centurion's servant.

He ministers to the Gentiles.

And this was at the very least unsettling to the Jews.

They accused him of lots of different things, like not ceremonially cleaning the fish that he multiplied out of nothing.

That's my favorite example.

They accused him of plucking grain on the Sabbath.

They didn't like that he wasn't following the Jewish traditions if he was claiming to be the Jewish Messiah.

And Jesus consistently says, I have sheep in this pasture, but not only in this pasture, I have sheep in other places that will hear my voice also.

In other words, he's going to the nations.

Well, now he's literally gone to the nations, and he's reenacting this healing there.

The point of it is that Jesus is the savior of Jew and Gentile together.

Now, this difference accounts for all the other differences too.

The different fish, the different kinds of baskets, the different, you know, Jesus has the Jews break into groups of 50 and sit on the hill because he's reenacting Moses to them.

They knew that that's how Moses gave the law, and that's how Moses led Israel.

He had them sit by 50s out in the wilderness, gave them leaders over the fifties.

So when Jesus does that out in the wilderness, he's demonstrating to them he's the new and better Moses.

He doesn't do that with the Gentiles because the Gentiles don't know what a Moses is.

They wouldn't recognize that he's reenacting this, so he doesn't divide them by fifties.

All the other differences kind of can be under the same heading that one is Jews, one is Gentiles.

But the point is that Jesus is the savior of both.

He's the savior of both.

Next, a key difference.

I mean, a key similarity.

Jesus provides through his disciples.

The point of both of these stories is that Jesus provides the food needed through the twelve.

Which he did not need to do, by the way.

If you can multiply fish and loaves and create food out of nothing, you don't need to use waiters to serve it.

Agreed?

But he does.

And the first one with the Jews, it was crystal clear what he was doing.

Remember?

They said, How can we feed so great a crowd?

They wanted the crowd to be sent away.

So Jesus answers the question by multiplying the food and giving the baskets to the 12 to serve.

And when they're done, he makes them collect the leftovers.

Do you remember?

And when they're done collecting the leftovers, there's 12 disciples holding 12 baskets.

It's not very subtle.

Each one is set there holding what they have, and Jesus says, This is how you're going to care for the world.

You're going to feed them what I give you.

Let's jump into our story this morning before we get to the moral.

Verse 32, Jesus called his disciples and said, I have compassion on the crowd.

Because they've been with me three days and have nothing to eat.

That word compassion is a great Greek word spelankta.

It's a word for your spleen hurts so bad it feels like it's broken.

It's an emotional feeling.

You have such a profound emotion you feel like your spleen burst.

I don't even know what a spleen is, much less what it would feel like if it broke, but the Greeks have a word for it.

The closest English version of this word might be heartbroken.

We have the word heartbroken.

You have such grief that you're heartbroken, but it's not the best comparison because heartbroken in English is like a romantic love or unrequited love.

This word splankton in Greek, it's not romantic.

It's more like suffering.

You see somebody suffering or in pain, and it moves you so much you feel like you got punched in the gut.

They have a word for that.

That's this word.

It's translated here as compassion.

But Jesus feels, he feels sick over how afflicted the crowd is.

Now he's been healing them.

You see that in verses 29 through 31.

Uh they had been, he'd healed the deaf mute, he had healed the crippled, the lame.

They're just bringing people to him all the time.

He's healing them.

The crowd is growing over the course of the days.

They've been with him now three days.

They don't have anything to eat.

It doesn't mean they haven't eaten in three days.

It means they've been with him three days.

They've been following him around.

The crowd has been growing for three days, and now on this third day, they don't have anything to eat.

And he feels sorry for them.

I mean, he, on one hand, they could have gone home and eaten, or they could have peeled off, but they're so magnetized by what Jesus is doing here.

They're going to stay with him, and now they don't have food.

It is very similar to the Jewish feeding.

The Jews, though, remember it wasn't three days.

The Jews had snowballed in one day.

They had followed him that one day.

Here you have people three days into their journey with Jesus.

And Jesus feels sorry for them.

He doesn't want to send them away hungry.

He doesn't think they have enough strength to get home even.

The disciples in verse 33 say, Where would we get enough bread in such a desolate place to feed so great a crowd?

The disciples focus in on the reality that there is not, in fact, any food.

No.

I don't think the disciples are making the connection at this point between here and what happened with the feeding of the 5,000.

And I don't hold that against them.

That was several months ago, you know, perhaps, you know, even half of a year ago, six months ago or so.

They've eaten every day since then.

They've had crowds every day since then.

So you know, Jesus saying there's a lot of people, and I wish they had food, and the disciples saying, Well, we don't have any.

That would be a normal conversation.

The light bulb probably hasn't gone on in their minds at this point.

But it's going to change here, I believe, in the next verse.

Jesus said to them, How many loaves do you have?

That question is the same question he had asked them earlier.

So at that point, I think at least one or two of them were probably like, huh, light bulb.

Andrew's gonna go steal some kids' lunch again.

They said seven and a few tiny fish.

So Jesus then has the crowd sit down on the ground, and then he multiplies the fish and the loaves.

He gives thanks in verse 36, gives thanks for the fish.

That word gives thanks.

Euphoristo is the Greek word.

We get our word Eucharist in English from it.

It's just the word for giving thanks.

Jesus lifts up the bread, gives thanks to God for it, and then breaks it and scatters it.

He doesn't give the traditional Jewish prayer that he did in the earlier feeding.

He gives a more generic prayer, just thanking God for what he's got and hands it out.

And then everybody eats.

In Matthew's gospel, I mean in Mark's gospel, the disciples say, Where could we get enough food to satisfy so great a crowd?

Well, here in Matthew's gospel, it answers the question, if you notice verse 37, they ate and were satisfied.

Where can they possibly satisfy a crowd of thousands of Gentiles?

The answer is with Jesus.

Sunday school answer, and it works.

They end with seven baskets filled with broken pieces left over.

Twelve, of course, one basket per disciple represented that they had what to go to the nation.

Seven baskets here, seven is the number of completion or perfection.

They have seven giant baskets filled with food.

In other words, they have more food than they know what to do with, is the point.

They started with seven loaves, and now they have seven baskets.

He literally multiplied it.

One-to-one correspondence.

It's incredible.

What's the moral of this?

Well, that Jesus is the savior of the world.

It's the same moral as earlier.

I just underlined a different word so it sounds more profound.

The difference Jew and Gentile shows you that Jesus saves the whole world, both Jew and Gentile.

But the point of the similarity that is coming through the disciples is to show you that Jesus is the source.

Jesus is the fountain.

The only people in the whole world who saw both miracles were the disciples.

Jesus is reenacting it deliberately for them, and then by extension for us, because we read about it.

We have an advantage.

We get to this, we open our Bibles and we see the heading there, Jesus feeds the 4,000.

We're like, we know what's going to happen.

The disciples didn't have that heading.

They hadn't read the script ahead of time.

So as they're reenacting this, the lights are coming on one at a time until everybody has figured out wait, this is just what he did before.

And do you remember the moral before was that the disciples were going to get what they needed for ministry from Jesus.

It was Jesus who was the source.

They don't have it in them.

A loaf in their pocket, they don't have enough to take to the nations.

They can't bring the good news to the world.

But if they rely on Jesus, he gives them what they need.

He told the disciples to feed his sheep.

They said, We don't have anything to feed them.

Jesus' response to Jew and Gentile is, Feed them what I give you.

That's the point.

Jesus is the bread of life.

Do you remember after the first feeding, the crowd follows him around to the other side of the lake and ambushes him again and wants more food again?

And Jesus tells them, You're not here because you love God or anything.

You're here because you want more bread.

And they say, Amen.

And Jesus says, You have no part in me unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, and they all get out of town.

And Jesus looks at Peter and says, Are you going to go also?

And Peter says, Where else would we go?

You alone have the words of life.

Peter understood that Jesus alone gives you what you need in terms of spiritual life.

When Jesus says he's the bread of life, he means by that that you need to rely on him for all things pertaining to your spiritual life.

Peter says it this way: that his divine word has given us all things pertaining to life and godliness.

So ask yourself, does something pertain to life and godliness?

If the answer is yes, it's in his word.

All things pertaining to life and godliness are in the Bible.

Do you need something to help you spiritually?

It is in this book.

It is nowhere else.

It is in this book.

Jesus is the bread of life and he feeds us through his word.

Now he feeds us through his body, laying it down on the cross to die.

He gives his own physical body up.

He's punished for our sins.

His perfect life is then credited to us as our sins are given to him.

He then resurrects from the grave and ascends to heaven.

His body physically is in heaven, but his spiritual body is on earth in all of the churches.

We are the body of Christ.

We are united together through our faith and our trust in his body.

He is the source.

Now he's the source in different ways, of course.

He fulfills the Mosaic law given to the Jews.

The Jews were under the Mosaic law.

Jesus keeps it perfectly, fulfills it perfectly, fulfills it in the place of the Jews, so they then can rely on him for his obedience and they give their sin to him.

His perfect life atones for their sin as he dies on the cross, and his perfect life is then credited to them.

So they have fulfilled the law through the Mosaic law through Jesus.

The Gentiles are not under the Mosaic law.

The Gentiles are under the moral law of God.

Their consciences convict them when they lie, when they lust, when they steal, when they're lazy, their consciences convict them.

Jesus, who had never done any of those things, he never lied, he never lusted, he was never lazy, he did all the work God had him to do, fulfills the moral law in our place.

So that our sins can be given to him.

He, having led an obedient life, can take our sins on himself.

The disciples don't invent the gospel, but they carry it to the world.

In fact, the very next part of the story here is the Sadducees and Pharisees confront Jesus when he re-enters Jerusalem.

And then Jesus asks Peter, Who do you think I am?

And Peter says, You're the Christ, the Son of the Living God.

And Jesus tells Peter, on that confession, I'm going to build my church.

That's next.

This feeding sets that up.

It's telling Peter over and over and over again, I am the bread of life.

There's no hope for you spiritually unless you get your spiritual nourishment from me.

Man does not live on bread alone, but on every word that comes from the mouth of God, Jesus is the bread of life.

For you to have a saving relationship with God and be forgiven of your sin, you have to eat his flesh, meaning you have to give yourself to him, take him inside of you, give your life to him, be united to him through your faith.

He is the Christ, the Son of the living God.

Through that confession, you're joined to him and he builds his church.

His disciples then take that to the nations.

The last conversation Jesus has with Peter in the Gospels.

Do you remember Jesus appears on the shore, Peter's on the boat, Peter has a meltdown or a breakdown or a bold act of faith, depending on what mood you're in when you read the story, jumps into the water and swims to Jesus.

And Peter has some questions to answer when he gets to Jesus.

Do you remember?

Jesus, first of all, making a bunch of fish, 150 or whatever, way more than there are here.

He feeds thousands of them.

He's got, you know, a hundred odd fish on the shore.

And Jesus asks Peter, Do you love me?

And Peter says, Of course.

And Jesus says, Feed my sheep.

And then asked Peter a second time, Do you love me?

And Peter says, Of course.

And Jesus says, then feed my sheep.

And then Jesus asks him a third time, Do you love me?

And Peter says, You know I love you.

Cut me a break, will you?

And Jesus says, Then feed my sheep.

Jesus probably asked him three times because Peter denied Jesus three times.

But the response to all of it is, feed my sheep.

This time Peter gets it.

He doesn't say, How can a hundred fish feed the world, Jesus?

No, he's got it now.

But the word of God is the hope for the nations.

It is how you feed the sheep.

Jesus' perfect life is given to the world through the good news of the gospel that is brought to the nations through those who preach it.

You received a basket in your hands.

You have good news to take to the world.

That's facing externally.

Facing internally, it's this bread that binds us together.

The body of Christ physically is in heaven, the body of Christ spiritually is on earth in the church.

That church has all kinds of physical manifestations, this Emmanuel Bible Church being one.

You're joined to his body through baptism.

That's the front door.

And then communion tethers you each to each other, binds you together.

It keeps you from wandering too far away.

So that every month you hold the bread in your hands.

This isn't some fanciful story.

It's not some editorial slight or anything like that.

It is a depiction of the reality that Jesus' body is the hope for the nations.

It is your only hope.

Your spiritual life depends on Jesus Christ giving his life up for you.

And then he feeds you, he nourishes you spiritually.

Jesus gave his body so that you can live.

That's what he meant when he said you have to eat his flesh.

But it's living.

Your life is spiritually dependent upon Jesus for your spiritual food.

We are sheep, and sheep like to eat, and we eat the word of God, which is the very word of Christ.

And we are all dependent on the same spiritual food.

All things pertaining to life and godliness are given to us through the word of God.

Jesus is not on earth, like I said, but his body is the church.

And so he is the bread that we eat.

As we take the bread in our hand, we remember this: that Jesus is the Savior of the world.

There is no salvation outside of him and his death, his surrendering of his body in our place.

And it's not just about his death, it's about our life now.

Our life is hidden in Christ.

As Jesus multiplied the bread, he is not done multiplying today.

He has taken his one body at one place and one time in Jerusalem and multiplied it and scattered it around the world.

And so that every church that is united to Christ through faith is united to his body.

Lord, we're thankful that you are the fountain of salvation, the source of good news.

You are the gospel.

Your body, the bread, your blood, the wine given for us.

You laid your life down so that we might live.

We are thankful for that.

We give you thanks for the picture of your provision in this bread.

What happened in the wilderness happens now on a Sunday morning.

We are drawn together.

We will faint if we don't eat.

Of course, we don't draw nourishment from this little cracker.

That would be silly, but we draw spiritual nourishment from this, and we will faint if we don't draw our spiritual nourishment from you.

We're thankful that you gave your body for us.

It's in Christ's name that we pray.

Amen.

And now for a parting word from Pastor Jesse Johnson.

If you have any questions about what you heard today, or if you want to learn more about what it means to follow Christ, please visit our church website, ibc.church.

If you want more information about the Master Seminary or our location here in Washington, D.C., please go to tms.edu.

Now, if you're not a member of a local church and you live in the Washington, D.C.

area, we'd love to have you worship with us here at Emmanuel.

I hope to personally meet you this Sunday after our service.

But no matter where you live, it's our hope that everyone who uses this resource is involved in their own local church.

Now may God bless you this week as you seek Jesus constantly, serve the Lord faithfully, and share the gospel boldly.