Gospel Driven | John 6:1-14 (Aug 14) Dave Grant

Hello and welcome to the Redemption Church Podcast.

We're a church in Newmarket, Ontario, Canada that exists to glorify God for the fulfillment of the Great Commission and the spirit of the Great Commandment.

Thanks for joining us today.

Well, welcome.

Good morning.

I am not Miles Holmes, but I'm just happy to see you guys.

Thanks for joining us.

I'm just going to start with scripture.

Will you just stay standing with me and we'll just honor reading God's Word?

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 he was doing on the sick.

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 exactly what he was going to do.

Philip answered him, Two hundred deneri of bread would not be enough for each of them to even have a bite.

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

Jesus said, Have the people sit down.

Now there was much grass in that place.

So the men sat down, about five thousand in number.

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 the disciples, Gather up the leftovers.

Leave nothing left over, nothing may be lost.

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

When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, This is indeed the prophet who's coming to the world.

Let's pray.

Father God, we just thank you.

We sang about you being the Lamb of God in our place.

And today we thank you for that.

And today we picture ourselves as sheep that so desperately need a shepherd.

Lord, use my uh words that you've given me, speak through me, in spite of my weaknesses, in spite of whatever think might be my gifts.

May you work and give the message to your people this morning.

In your precious name.

Amen.

All right, thank you guys.

Great worship.

Amen.

All right, so yes, I'm not Miles.

My name's Dave Grant.

I'm one of the elders here at Redemption Church.

If we haven't met before, come meet me afterwards.

I'd love to meet you.

We'd love to meet anyone that's new.

Pray with you, tell you more about our church, tell you how you can get plugged in here.

But I'm Dave.

I have been, I guess what we would call a fully commissioned elder here for about 18 months, maybe a little bit longer, but there's a little caveat on that.

I think 18 months during COVID translates into about 18 years, so I'm a seasoned, experienced elder in church leadership.

Not.

Somebody's leaving.

You know, God forbid someone's sick, and we're gonna hand that to Jesus, but it's always been like a difficult time, and it seems like that's the only time I come up.

So, in keeping with that pattern, I'm really sorry, but I have to tell you guys, it's mid-August and winter is almost here.

It is, I'm sorry, and I apologize for that transition, but I had to get to a story.

Today we're talking about service, and we're talking about meeting needs, and we're talking about how God can call each of us and use each of us in mighty ways, in spite of what we think we're capable of achieving.

But today we're talking about service and how a gospel-driven service model looks like.

We're keeping in path in path with the series that Miles has been working on.

But I want to tell you a winter story that gives a cool um uh demonstration of service and what it can kind of look like.

So back to January 4th, just last year.

I've been traveling with my new job a lot in the US, and I was um down in the US when this happened.

But January 4th in Virginia, there was a massive storm.

It was up and down the entire East Coast, pretty much.

But Virginia got particularly hit hard.

And there was one stretch of highway, the I-95.

A lot of people have taken that, traveling on vacation, you've driven on that I-95, but that I-95 was shut down.

Shut down solid.

Nobody could move, there were no shoulders to drive on, there was no way out of this, there was no getting support in trucks, anything, any kind of food, medical care.

These people were stranded, they were really isolated.

You can see the backup.

I can feel the tension in my body forming as I picture myself sitting in one of those cars.

But many of those people were there for over 20 hours.

People with um people with medical problems, people with children, people that were just like me and not used to going more than a couple hours with a snack, were stranded and feeling pretty hopeless.

So there's a real cool story.

Uh, one, like one man said, I had an orange and a Dr.

Pepper, and I ate one slice of the orange every hour.

I rationed it, and then I thought, once I was done, okay, that's it.

I'll just die.

John and Casey know.

So there was a couple, John and Casey know, a young couple, you're gonna see them in a bit.

Um they were stuck in this mess, too.

About 16 hours into this, Casey looks up and sees up the road a bread truck, Schmidt Baking Company delivery truck.

So Casey thinks to herself, man, could you imagine?

Before you get in the back of that truck, Casey picks up her phone and she calls the customer service line.

And they go, um, yeah, okay.

She tells him what she wants to do.

And uh 20 minutes later, the owner of the company calls him back and he's excited.

He's so blessed, he says, Okay, I'm gonna call that that owner, that the driver of that truck.

He's gonna open it up, take whatever you need, pass it out to whoever you want.

So John and Casey spent the next several hours walking up and down the highway passing out bread.

They went from car to car, hundreds of people were blessed.

They passed out bread till they said they couldn't feel their feet anymore.

Um, I know one elderly woman I saw her interviewed, she said that it was one of the most moving acts of kindness that she had ever experienced.

And that that's that's a touching thing, right?

Um she said like to be scared and alone and hungry, and then to see a friendly face just with something as simple as bread.

So John and Casey, they really were able to participate for those people in a bit of a miracle.

And there they are.

Just just like you and I.

Two average people stuck in an impossible situation.

But today we're gonna focus on this miracle where Jesus fed a large, hungry crowd that were stranded to, very isolated.

Um, this so we're I'm gonna cover from the book of John.

This is the fourth of seven miracles that John writes about in his gospel, and these all for the purpose of pointing to Jesus being the Son of God.

John's gospel was written pretty much the last of the four.

And that gave him the benefit of, first of all, knowing what the other three had written, what part of the story had already been told.

But he also had the benefit of some added time to reflect, to be led by the Holy Spirit.

And that's a great little point of application.

This is a freebie, it's not part of the sermon.

But I thought when I read that, isn't that how God works in us?

He's not the same to me today as he is tomorrow.

Something new will be revealed every day and will grow.

So he had the benefit of insight, and he could be led by the Spirit.

And his book, as a result, ends up being really different.

So when we look at the book of John, 90% of what he wrote about is not covered in the other gospels.

Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John wrote what we often refer to, not someone like me, but someone scholarly would refer to them as the synoptic gospels, right?

Sin, synergy, we use that word a lot.

Um, optic, optics to see, so seeing together, they were called the synoptic gospels.

This is what we saw together.

It gave credibility, it gave different perspectives.

And when we read them, we see different vantage points and different ways that the Holy Spirit moved in that individual's life of what they wanted to share.

But John took a very different tack.

In fact, if you look at what he's left out, it's actually pretty strange.

Um He records nothing about Jesus' birth, not mentioned at all.

Um, nothing about Jesus' early life, nothing about his baptism, nothing about his time of temptation and testing in the wilderness, nothing about the transfiguration, very little about his travels, where he went, nothing about his pressure and testing in the Garden of Gethsemane, nothing about the ascension.

Doesn't cover one of the parables.

So what what do you write about then?

So a few things to consider.

One one word that comes up a lot with John is the word love.

He uses it 80 times, in fact.

You can you can search it.

U version's great.

He uses the word truth 25 times.

He uses the word believe a hundred times.

But what he's really trying to get across is kind of summed up in John 20, and I don't know if this is gonna go up on the screen.

Uh I was not as prepared as Miles.

Y'all, how much do we appreciate that guy?

Last week my brother gave a sermon on worship that went from Genesis 1 to the end of Revelation.

How much more of a complete job could you do?

I'm gonna try and fill his shoes.

John 20, 30 to 31, John tells us the purpose of his book, why he wrote it.

Now, Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book, but they are, but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

It's clear John had this evangelistic intent with language like that, you know, but he he also wanted people to grow in strong, rich, well-informed faith as well, uh, on top of that initial saving faith.

So John had a very comprehensive book, just a different strategy writing it.

He really deliberately and carefully chooses certain key events, signs, encounters, and then crafts this beautiful argument that Jesus is a long-awaited Messiah and Son of God.

And it's, I mean, this is the foundation of our faith.

So, John, so um, as he groups these events together, um, we see some patterns.

So, um, just on a bit of a side path here, I'm gonna just go down a little bit of a rabbit trail here.

You're gonna get a little bit of a glimpse of how my mind works when I study a passage and the things that I like to get as background.

Background and understanding of an author, of their writing styles, and more importantly, who they were kind of their intended audience was, and understanding those people's vantage point and what was significant about this at the time can help me frame it for my own life and can help the Holy Spirit speak deeper truths about the passage into me.

So, this is how I get down.

This is me kind of geeking out a little bit, so I apologize.

One of the cool things that that was meaningful to the um Jewish people at the time was numerology.

Numbers, I mean, we think of numbers, they're there's ways to measure things and identify things, but they're they're symbols too.

And to uh to a um to an early century um Jewish person, the number seven was really significant.

In our scriptures, I'm counting words again here, the number seven appears over seven hundred times in our modern scripture.

And I'm not talking for between verse six and eight.

The word seven is used in in the text, in the narratives, over seven hundred times.

Seven to a first century Jewish person was like saying 100%, I got this covered, complete.

Seven is a number of completion and perfection.

There's seven days, just listen to some of these examples.

There's seven days in the creation story.

When they asked Jesus how they should pray, our famous Lord's Prayer, count them up.

He has seven specific petitions that are grouped together.

Jesus gave seven metaphors about who he is, the what we call the I am statements.

I am the bread of life, I'm the light of the world, I am the door of the sheep, I'm the good shepherd, I'm the resurrection and the life, I'm the truth, the way, the truth, and the life, I am the true vine.

There are seven recorded statements of all that must have gone on that day, but we have seven recorded statements that Jesus said on the cross.

Father, forgive them.

He said to the robber beside him, Today you'll be with me in paradise.

Um he said to Mary, Woman, behold your son.

Then he said to John, Behold your mother.

Uh he said, My God, why have you forsaken me?

He said, I thirst, and he said, It's finished.

And into your hands I commit my spirit, pardon me.

So there's our seven things.

Another grouping is seven.

Another pattern of seven.

Seven's a number of exoneration, it's a number of healing.

In Deuteronomy, the Israelites were instructed that every seventh year they were to cancel the debts that they had made with each other.

You know, our society is one that cares a lot about what we call social justice, you know, and the right way to treat people, the right way to do things.

The Bible invented that.

Jesus invented it.

The answers to everything that anyone you know cares about issues of social justice is in our world, is in our word.

So when people look at church and think, oh, that bigoted group, everything they care about that God's put in their hearts, those those tiny little tender things, caring about other people, people that might be marginalized people, people that we perceive as being disadvantaged, God cares about it.

It's in his scripture.

Remember when Peter asked Jesus how many times we should forgive someone?

Seventy times seven.

He wanted to indicate to the Jewish audience he meant you are to forgive wholly and completely.

I'm not very good at that.

Seven's a number of fulfillment of promises.

In Genesis, after the flood, God promises not to destroy the earth again and memorializes that covenant forever with the rainbow.

Seven colors.

Joshua and the Battle of Jericho, they were told to walk around.

Just walk around.

God will call you to do simple things to achieve mighty tasks.

But they just walked around six times, and on the seventh, they blew their trumpets and the walls fell.

Seven's a significant number.

I got more.

Are we okay?

Are we good?

Here are a few observations just about John's book.

Okay, now this stuff, listen, don't get don't get upset with me.

Some of this may be a little crazy, but I just I have to do it.

John is the 43rd book in our Bible.

Four plus three is seven.

There are 21 chapters in John, three times seven.

John tells us of seven eyewitness accounts of impressive things that Jesus did, the seven miracles.

He tells us about seven acts of the Holy Spirit.

He tells us about seven key conversations that Jesus had with unique people that shaped the disciples' lives and their view of the kingdom.

He gave seven I am statements.

He performed seven miracles in the book of John.

Okay, so what?

Lots of sevens.

I'm moving on, trust me.

I think it certainly would be suggested that God ascribed something sacred, something significant to the number seven.

We've got to balance this, of course.

Not every occurrence of the number seven has divine implications, and it really has nothing to do with this message today, but I wanted to share this with you.

It's a pattern, and as humans, we love to spot, recognize patterns, we respond to them well.

And I think the God who made us knows this, and clearly he inspired the biblical authors to use this technique in communicating to us.

I don't want anyone to go crazy, run out and get the number seven tattooed this week.

But it is reasonable to make a mental note when seven comes up, maybe even draw a few inferences and see what other points in the Bible it's pointing to.

It can be significant in what it can tell us.

But it's critical most of you to remember what Isaiah told us, the things we think we know.

Our thoughts are not like God's thoughts.

Just as the heavens are higher than the earth, the Lord's ways are higher than our ways, his thoughts are higher than our thoughts.

Scripture is designed to be revealed continually over time.

It interprets itself through the Holy Spirit.

Years of study, memorization, meditation.

So the real message of all those sevens is just don't stop.

Get in a small group if you're not in one.

Okay.

Our message today is based on one of the most famous miracles, arguably, that Jesus performed.

I think if you were to ask someone who maybe didn't go to church or didn't go to church regularly what miracles they know of Jesus, I think for sure this would be one of the ones they would mention.

Um I think they might say, oh, Jesus healed a lot of people, I think.

He might have raised the guy from the dead.

Uh oh, he turned water to wine.

So they might remember that.

But this would be one of the more famous ones.

It's definitely a favorite in terms of backyard Bible clubs.

Does anyone remember going to those when you were a kid?

My mom used to run them in our neighborhood.

And so I remember this story being told on the green felt board, sticking up the little characters and the little tiny loaves of bread and whatnot.

This miracle outside of the resurrection is the only one that's told in all four of the gospels.

I think I don't know how well a known fact that is, but of all the things Jesus did, and to have those four different perspectives of it, this and the resurrection are the only two miracles that are told by all four authors.

Something about it left a mark so deep that all four gospel writers had to include it.

John had something to say that the other writers had left out.

So as we go along, I'm gonna make some comparisons to where we can find other little tidbits of context in the other gospels, but we're gonna focus on John.

Sound good?

In terms of timelines, this story is timing's important here too, right, for context.

So this is what scholars would call the late Galilean period.

So this is near the end of Jesus' ministry.

Most people would say it was in that third year, or about a year away from his crucifixion.

And he's trying to prepare his disciples to take over for him.

There's not much time left.

I think things are getting serious, and Jesus knows time is short.

You know, one of the most frightening consequences of Israel rejecting Jesus was the prospect of Jesus having to turn his church over to his disciples.

Hold on with him for a second.

We're going to take comfort in that statement.

These men were simply not ready to assume responsibility.

So none of these guys had trained as ministers or rabbis.

None of them had been seeking for that role at all in their lives, at least not before they met Jesus.

Jesus will change what your goals are.

Amen.

And most importantly, none of them could possibly appreciate what would be required of them in the service to the kingdom.

Nevertheless, that's the plan.

Hand over the leadership of the church to this group.

Now, listen, obviously, Jesus is the head of the church, and by his spirit, he will direct his church.

And every leader over it.

And I say a big amen to that.

And that's why it really didn't matter whether these guys were what we might call competent or not.

In time, the Lord's going to make them equal to the challenge.

It's been said that the Lord will call unqualified people to serve him, but he will not leave you untrained.

God will train you.

And we're going to see a training session in action today in this passage.

The training may not come the way you expect, or in ways you could fathom, or at times you could fathom.

And today was a key lesson for the disciples.

Alright, so I'm going to go back to the very first verses and we're going to start to unpack this, alright?

I believe that Jesus' purpose for this miracle, among other things, just caring for those people there, was to give us a foundation for ministry and service in our church.

He was trying to prepare his disciples to take over, changing their views about what ministry looked like.

So let's dive in.

John 6, verse 1.

John 6:1

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.

You know, sometimes people will want Jesus first for what he can do, not who he is.

It's part of our sanctification, and that's okay.

You'll have people that you'll minister to, and you'll serve that maybe necessarily don't want everything you're offering, and that's okay.

Jesus still had compassion on these people.

They just wanted him for what he could do at this point.

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

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

Okay, there's a lot in there.

And I I love context.

I've done a lot here to try and set up some context, but one of the things I like to do is consider the characters in the story and try to imagine what they were thinking at the time.

What do we know about their current circumstances or their past experiences that can help us relate and understand what's going on, maybe get a deeper glimpse of what the authors are trying to tell us.

So, like I said, reading through the other gospels, we give a lot of context.

So, first of all, let's look at the context of where we are, and I think we got a map here.

So John simply says the other side, referring to the Sea of Galilee.

Um, the Sea of Galilee and the surrounding areas are the setting for a huge majority of Jesus' ministry, and I somehow find it just so cool.

This is another aside.

This is a freebie, you can write this one down.

I find it so appropriate to know that the main stage for Jesus' ministry on earth also happens to be the lowest point of fresh water on the planet, this tiny little lake.

That was the stage for almost his entire ministry.

And the application there that God gives me is just that he just uses the small to do the impossible, and that's encouraging to me.

So, according to Mark's account, though, so we know a little bit more about where they're coming from.

So, according to Mark's account, Jesus is traveling from his home near Capernaum.

That's the northwestern um coast of the Sea of Galilee.

So this is not a big lake, right?

It's not a big lake at all.

Um they're gonna sail about three miles, just kind of cutting across that northern tip.

Um the winds probably were blowing from west to east.

So it probably took them about an hour, roughly.

So assuming um, yeah, that's so that sorry, pardon me.

That so that puts Jesus just ahead of the crowd, likely.

I'm sure the disciples kind of must have wondered what why they were going to such a remote area.

There's lots to think about in terms of geography of what would have been considered Jewish territory up in that sort of northern western corner, and what would have been considered Gentile territory, and places that were Jews would go, and places where Jews wouldn't go.

And a lot of times when Jesus was trying to get away or do something unique and different, they will still the Bible say he went to the other side.

And often that was going to the other side into non-Jewish territory.

Kind of a really significant point to consider.

But that's where they were.

They were going to this real isolated place, and we're told that people are walking and following.

So if you kind of do the math and calculate the speed people can walk, that crowd that saw him at Capernaum could have followed and gotten there, maybe about a half an hour, 45, half an hour, 45 minutes after them.

So Jesus had a little bit of time with his disciples just to withdraw.

So one thing that we don't get to cover, in that first verse, it says in verse 1, after this, Jesus went to the other side.

So whenever I read something like that, I always kind of want to go back.

If you go back in John, John does not follow everything chronologically.

So that after this, he's not talking about what had just happened in chapter 5.

And one of the clues is that he mentions the Passover is at hand, this coming up.

In chapter 5, he's in Jerusalem for the Passover.

So we know it's not that.

So we got to look at the other Gospels to find out what that after this meant.

It's really significant to know the mindset that everyone was in.

So Matthew says that after hearing of John the Baptist's death, Jesus withdrew from there.

So we see this with Jesus a lot.

At times when he wants to get away, he's very good at, he gives us an example of how to recover, how to reconnect with our Father, get away to pray.

He did this often.

But this wasn't his goal today because he's got this large crowd following him and he knew it was going to happen.

So Jesus is taking some time to withdraw with his disciples.

An important thing to think about is just the relationship in my mind, anyways.

I think about how sometimes I can see an opportunity to serve or meet people's needs as an inconvenience.

Can this happen?

Does anyone have that friend who texts them because you have a truck and they want you?

Something like that?

And you can just kind of roll your eyes, and it's an inconvenience.

And I know Jesus didn't think this way, but I do.

When I think of the relationship he had with John the Baptist, how close they were, how much they meant, this divinely set apart relationship.

Isaiah prophesied the relationship the two of them would have 800 years prior that John was going to prepare the way.

They had a divinely appointed relationship.

When Jesus' mother was pregnant with him, she went to see her cousin.

And John was in the womb just a few months ahead, and it said the baby leapt.

They had this supernatural connection.

They were close, and it hurt.

It had to hurt Jesus, and he wanted to get away.

But there was a lot going on with our disciples, too.

So our disciples had just gotten back.

We learn in Matthew chapter 10 that the disciples have just been really busy.

Matthew 10 · chapter mention

And Jesus had sent them out on what's often called the limited commission.

We know about the Great Commission.

Well, Jesus was just getting them started.

He's going to want you to take baby steps when you serve.

He knows.

He knows that we need time to be prepared.

He sent them out, and in Matthew 10, verse 5, it says, These twelve Jesus sent out, instructing them, go nowhere among the Gentiles.

Matthew 10:5

Don't go over to that east side.

And enter no town of the Samaritans, but go rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel and proclaim as you go, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, cast out demons.

I don't know why we call it a limited commission, because that was a big laundry list of things he commissioned them to do.

Clearly, the limited commissions part was where he was going.

He was preparing them.

It was all part of his plan.

So they did that, and they had some success.

And so I think this is part of the crowds.

You can imagine he would have sent them out in pairs.

And you can imagine when you see someone being healed, when you see demons being cast out, you're going to follow.

And so these guys were kind of trending on Twitter.

They were a happening thing.

There was a buzz.

And I think that's part of what drew the crowds.

So when I think of the mindset that the disciples are in when they go to this isolated place, they're excited.

They want to share with Jesus all they've done.

You should have seen it.

We did it just like you did.

He touched some guy, and his leprosy went away, and another one was having a seizure, and he stopped it, and he healed this woman.

They would have been so excited.

They would have had so much care.

There might even have been a bit of a bit of a pride.

File that in the back of your head.

Can we get proud feelings of the things God accomplished through us, forgetting who is the real author of it?

So these are some of the things that I see going through the disciples' minds.

And they get this chance to be alone with Jesus.

They know he's hurting because of John.

They were close to him as well.

They want to share their whole stories.

They want to debrief what went on.

And here comes this crowd.

Here comes this crowd.

And I can imagine them thinking, guys, really?

Yo, leave us alone.

We just spent the last couple months with y'all.

Haven't we given enough?

But Jesus has taken this journey for far more than an opportunity to mourn and far more than debriefing.

He knew everything they had done.

He knew the stuff he was going to cover.

He had a different purpose.

He was going to perform this miracle.

Okay, one last character.

There's one last major character in this story, and this is the crowd.

So I want to just get thinking about the crowd, the mindset of the crowd.

Because these are the recipients of the miracle here.

The crowd and maybe even the soul at large societal, political kind of environment at the time.

We have to consider that.

First of all, I don't know how many of you have been involved in big crowds.

I think we've all had opportunities.

There's the crowd at the mall in late December.

We all know what that feels like.

But have you ever been in a big, big crowd?

Have you been in Times Square New Year's Eve?

Have you been downtown for a Stanley Cup parade?

Okay, that was a bad one, sorry.

Of course you haven't.

You'd have to be older than me.

This is a massive crowd.

One of the gospel accounts tells us, well, a couple of them do, that there were 5,000 men were gathered.

Now, in this patriarchal culture, they counted the men.

A lot of reasons.

Don't get offended by it.

They were counting the heads of household.

They were counting people that were gonna go to war.

They were counting assets, resources.

It was part of the culture at the time.

So we're told there were 5,000 men.

But a couple of the other gospels account fill us in that there were women and children present, and they ate as well.

So I'm doing a lot of math in this.

Math was my worst subject too, by the way.

But the people actually probably numbered 15, maybe even closer to 20,000.

That's a big crowd.

I believe the Scotia Center seats, depending on the venue, if it's hockey, basketball, I think it's in the neighborhood of around 20,000, 19, 20,000.

So imagine that place emptying out and everybody following one group of 12 dudes and the guy with a beard.

It's a massive crowd.

Imagine what the authorities in Jesus' day, whether we're going to talk about the Roman authorities or the Jewish leaders, imagine what they were thinking.

Either way, you're going to start feeling threatened by such large gatherings.

A man that could bring together a crowd of 20,000 people could command an army.

And that was a threat to the current rulers.

It's an interesting context to think of this story of what this crowd would have meant.

This actually was potentially a very dangerous situation.

We see in our society crowds that gather for good causes and bad stuff happens.

This is a potentially very dangerous situation.

And everyone's aware there was tension here.

So they're not only growing big, but this crowd, there's one more context here, and it's the time of year.

Why does John suddenly mention, oh, by the way, Passover's at hand?

Just kind of random.

It seems like a random line.

It's really significant at the time.

This crowd, so they're they're they're all amped up, healing, they're trying to get closer to Jesus, but it's also the Passover.

What did the Passover mean?

This crowd is growing increasingly what we would call nationalistic.

Everyone knows when we say nationalism.

Nationalism isn't necessarily a good thing.

It's when a group of people deeply identifies itself so much with its own nation and ideology and support for their own interests that it's particularly to the exclusion or even detriment of others.

We've seen this happen in society.

We see it happen today.

We can become very nationalistic.

So we have this large crowd.

They're growing more restless and increasingly nationalistic.

The time of the Passover was a very nationalistic time for the Jewish nation.

Imagine if the United States was taken over by Russia.

Imagine the sentiment, and they were occupying the country, the United States.

Imagine the sentiment that would brew every 4th of July.

That's a little bit of what it was.

And the Jews were constantly waiting around the Passover.

Maybe this is when the promised prophet would come and free us from our oppressors.

They had the idea of the kingdom upside down.

Jesus was turning their concept of what the kingdom of God was upside down.

But this is the sentiment that's growing.

So John tells us that that sentiment was growing in the crowd.

We see this at the end of the passage, there's actually a weird little verse that I didn't read.

And I've always kind of wondered, I've always puzzled over what this meant.

Verse 15, at the end of this, after they said, Surely this is indeed the prophet who's come into the world, then there's this verse 15.

Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king.

Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

That's a weird verse.

That's a strange verse.

Why is that included?

And when we think about the context of this nationalistic fever that was brewing, and that they wanted this king to come and free them, they were more concerned about their current circumstances that they couldn't see what Jesus was really trying to teach them about the kingdom.

So lots going on here.

So one more reason.

Why do I spend that much time on this?

The idea of the Passover and the story of the Exodus is just dripping off every word of this story if you consider this fact.

It's the time of year, the crowd, the nationalistic sense.

Jesus crossing a body of water, a large crowd of needy people following him.

He leads them into the wilderness with no apparent way to sustain them, away from their oppressors in the town.

And then he retreats up a mountain, leaving the people below.

All these things happening at the time of the Passover, which is a memorial of Israel's exodus out of Egypt.

Bells are ringing in your mind here, and bells would have been ringing in the mind of the people in the crowd.

It's like, oh man, this is it.

We are relieving Exodus, reliving Exodus.

This is the new Moses.

This is it.

We're going to overcome our oppressors.

All our problems are going to be gone.

We're going to have victory.

So there's quite a momentum happening here.

And that's really sets the story for what um, sets the background for really understanding this story.

Okay, back to John 6.

Verse 5.

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?

And I love verse 6, because John does this, and a couple of the other other uses do this, but this verse 6 is kind of really just John whispering in your ear from the past.

He says, He said this just to test them, because he actually knew what he was gonna do.

So he just puts that little verse in there, just to kind of whisper in your ear and give you a little bit of a look ahead.

Jesus knows what he's gonna do.

And I love the fact because I can hold on to that in my own life all the time, whatever situation I'm in, Jesus already has the solution.

He knows what he's gonna do.

It's great.

It's great.

But a test, really, Jesus, who gives a test before the lesson, first of all?

Honestly, did anyone ever have that?

Like, teacher, did we cover what's on number four here?

I don't think so.

And you know, you go up and argue because you don't like your mark.

I don't think you covered this.

Like, can you really look my answer again?

How many people did that?

I never did because one mark was never gonna help me, but I had friends that did.

I got a little bit of Phillip in me.

I don't know if anyone else can relate to him, but I'm really good at quickly analyzing something and saying, can't be done.

Long gonna happen.

And I might even have a little more of a passive aggressive tone.

When I was giving my answer back to Jesus, I might have put a little sauce on my response to him.

But he says, if I had eight months' wages, I couldn't buy enough food.

Much less if you'd have let me known, I could have made some plans.

Jesus, we could have opened up the Grubhub app or Uber Eats and made arrangements to have some catering here.

You've got to share the plan with this man.

I just can't help but thinking, though, when Jesus was saying that to Philip, that he was looking around and saying, Dude, we're in the wilderness here.

There's no provision at all.

He says, Where are we gonna buy bread?

And I can't help but think that he might have just kind of smirked and kind of just nudged his eyes upwards, hoping that Philip would clue in.

Philip, I did this before.

Your ancestors, my father, fed your ancestors out of nothing in the wilderness.

How can you not see this?

But he didn't.

And we don't in our lives too.

One phone call, one text can spiral, spiral what you think is together in your life as you try to think, how am I gonna deal with that?

How will I get through?

It's not possible.

I feel bad for Philip because he was kind of set up.

We just see that in that verse six.

He was just testing them.

It was a bit of a setup, and I would have fallen into that too, and you all would have too.

One of the things that could have been, so Phillips was a local boy, by the way.

I don't think I mentioned that.

Philip was from Beth Seda.

So I can kind of picture him walking along, maybe talking with the guys, going, hey man, we won the senior high football game over there that year.

If the coach had put me in, we would have had an extra touchdown, but uh that's beside the point.

I think he would have been saying, you know, maybe that's where he kissed his first girl over there, the other side of that rock.

That's crazy.

I'm adding to the text, so I apologize.

But Philip was a local guy, and so I think maybe Jesus was actually trying to bait him even more by kind of saying, Hey Philip, you know what a good place is where we could get something for these people to eat?

So that was tough.

I feel bad for him.

Okay, so John tells us that Jesus was always preparing to feed the crowd.

He knew he was gonna perform a miracle.

Why doesn't he just say to his disciples, guys, do what you were doing on your limited commission.

I got this, I'm gonna feed them.

You start getting people over there, and uh, you do some healing, and then have them walk past here.

Why does it not do it that way?

Jesus could have sneezed, and a Chick-fil-A sandwich could have dropped in everybody's lap with an iced lemonade.

He was clearly using this moment to pose a test for the disciples.

We just don't quite know what the test is yet.

The test with Jesus often comes before the lesson.

Purpose was a bit deeper.

You see, they likely don't even think it's their responsibility to feed them.

That's one of the first things.

What does real ministry look like?

If we think of a religious leader in the day, ministry didn't look like it was today.

The religious leader of Jesus' days didn't see themselves as shepherds.

That was a lesson that Jesus gave us about being the good shepherd.

They didn't see themselves as that.

They were typically men of authority, men of prominence, men whose job was to teach, instruct, care and feeding.

Uh uh.

And this was the example that our boys had.

So their response is not that bad when we think of it in light of that.

They hadn't seen that Jesus' pattern for the church and ministry was.

Completely different to what they thought it was.

Jesus trying to show them that ministry was about meeting people's simple practical needs as well as their spiritual needs.

Philip was thinking in human logical terms.

There's no way we can pull this off.

Jesus, let us know that plan next time.

I'd love to have got the plan from Jesus in certain seasons of my life ahead of time.

Alright, so we're up to point one though.

Finally, point one.

I only have two.

I only have two.

So point one.

As a gospel-driven Christian, I am required to serve.

I've been told to serve.

When Miles' first week on the job, this is just a joke, by the way.

He might even be watching now and he'll be going, what is he going to say?

Miles' first week on the job, we had an elders' meeting and we went through the preaching calendar.

And which is what we do, because that's planned out.

It's not random, it's intentional.

There's a plan to it.

And we plan these breaks that our pastors get as well.

But Miles looked at this week and we're like, oh, who's speaking in that week?

And Miles says, Oh, I was thinking you would.

So there's nothing crazy about that.

If you look at my job description as an elder, it's my responsibility to teach.

It's one of my responsibilities.

But at the time, I kind of felt like, man, I just got voluntold.

And Jesus voluntoled them.

First, he throws shade at Philip and says, Hey, where are we going to buy enough bread?

And he says, It's not possible.

We couldn't get enough.

We got to send these people away.

And he says, No.

You feed them.

They got voluntold.

And that's one of our first things we can take home about should we serve?

Am I called to serve?

Do I have a role in the kingdom?

Do I have a role in sharing the love of Christ?

Yes, yes, and yes, we are all fallen told.

That's a harsh term.

I'm using it as a bit of a joke, but we're all compelled to serve, we're all instructed to serve, we're all designed and built to serve.

Rather than being on top of the people lording over them, which is what the Pharisees did and the religious leaders of the time, Jesus was going to call upon his disciples to be under the people, serving them, supporting them.

Here was a perfect opportunity to show how that looks.

Jesus wanted his disciples to know that the people he brings them, they're going to need to care for in other ways.

Ministry is about meeting practical needs as well as the spiritual needs.

Okay.

When it comes to serving in our local church, we've been voluntold.

I think the book of James, James picked up on this theme.

So in James 2, verse 15, this is harsh, I apologize.

James 2:15

It's hard to hear this.

If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking daily food, and one of you says of them, Go in peace, be warmed and filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that?

You're gonna get roasted on Twitter.

If all you say is, hey, feel better.

Thoughts and prayers.

We're thinking about Jim.

What good is that?

James says.

So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.

Well, wait a second.

I thought by grace I was saved.

James expands on the concept here.

And Jesus is given a masterclass in it too.

James's point is simple.

If our faith motivates us to do nothing more than merely speak words of comfort, then it's no faith at all.

I'm not talking about there's seasons in your lives, there's moments you can't stop at every minute and sacrifice the responsibilities that you're given to do everything.

But we're talking about my overall worldview of how I see the people around me, how I see inconveniences, how I see needs, how my eyes are even open, what filters do I put in place where I block those needs and just don't even pay attention.

Somebody else's responsibility.

True faith bears fruit in the life of the individual in the form of love, mercy, forgiveness, charities.

Galatians 5.22.

Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.

True faith is gonna produce these things.

We can't help but do the good works if these things are growing in our lives.

These are gonna be the hallmark of the Christian, and Jesus is working even at this early point to teach them that caring for people in ministry, it's not easy.

It's not a matter of convenience, it's not dependent on my own personal abilities.

This one is so tough.

So maybe if you come up and sing on the worship team, there's a little bit of a personal ability.

But there's a million other steps we can take to serve the kingdom.

And the last thing God wants is my own personal abilities.

He wants me to tell the people to sit down.

Sit down on the green grass.

The green grass, by the way, did anybody else catch that?

There's lots of green grass on the hills.

What other verse passage comes to mind?

We're talking about a shepherd feeding.

The Lord is my shepherd.

I sound I want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures.

I love that.

They worked this through.

John was brilliant.

These are the hallmark of the Christian.

God will routinely give us greater demands than we can meet in our own power.

Why?

Because how else could he gain glory?

If that Chick-fil-A sandwich had dropped on everybody's lap, we would have worshipped the special sauce.

When we're in situations that are completely beyond our ability, we have no choice but to acknowledge the source of the miracle, the source of the success, the source of what we needed to get through it.

We gotta understand and accept that as God gifts us and calls us to minister to others, that calling brings the burden of caring for others.

I'm not talking about ministry in the capital M sense, vocational, full-time ministers, vocational, full-time staff.

If we're counting on the full-time staff of our church to do the entire work that God has planned for Newmarket in this area, we will fall woefully short.

We'll send the people away.

I'm talking about the kind of ministry that you may have had the benefit of experience.

I'm talking about the teaching, counseling, prayer, encouragement, visitation, kind acts of service that you may have been experienced from another person that you may not even have known when you were in need.

And you think about how that touched you, how it changed you, how it ministered to you, how it got you through a tough time.

That's the love that Jesus is trying to show.

The disciples didn't get it yet.

They just assume that it's time to send these people away.

Are you willing to put in effort to serve others whatever Jesus puts before you?

Jesus expects us to be a servant.

So I'm going to kind of rapid fire a couple verses here.

You can play it back on the YouTube if you want to look them up.

Matthew 20, 26 to 28.

Whoever would be greater among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave.

Even as the Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

Short, short.

It's a family chat, but like I said to the gang in the back room before the service, it's like a family chat with your weird creepy uncle and your one cool nephew.

It's me and Joel.

So it's it's that kind of family chat.

Post-COVID and even before, many churches were already critically low on levels of people serving.

Alright?

So there's some reasons people don't serve.

I'm sure we can kind of think of some of them.

I'm gonna read through fast here.

I'm realizing the time's slipping away.

I'm too busy with work.

I'm too busy with family commitments.

I've got family problems.

I got stuff I gotta deal with.

Too busy with other things.

Here's an interesting one.

I'm married to an unbeliever who doesn't like it when I go out.

My spouse and I don't get to spend much time together, so the weeknights and weekends are precious to us.

Ugh.

No, I'm sorry.

That's all.

What a beautiful thing.

Our marriages are important.

But my point is there's lots of excuses.

The staff at this church are paid to do this.

Why am I doing it?

Everything's under control.

I'm not needed.

I offered to serve and no one followed up.

I offered to serve, but wasn't really needed.

I was told the ministry was full.

I served for a while, but I kind of felt unappreciated and no one thanked me, and so I kind of just didn't go back.

I don't get anything out of it.

I just don't want to.

One phrase that I heard that really spoke into my life, and we're gonna wrap up here.

I heard a Baptist preacher say once, son, God doesn't want your abilities, he wants your availability.

And that's kind of corny, but that spoke to me in a deep way.

I remember when I was first approached by Mike Armstrong to take over the leadership of our small group.

All I thought about is, nope, it's not for me.

I love our small group.

I love the learning I get.

I love how I'm fed, I love you know getting more from you, Mike.

I don't want to do it.

That was my first instinct.

Ministry is not gonna look the way we think it's going to look.

But what's our response to this?

I just skipped over about four pages, by the way.

I'll come back next week.

What's my response?

So, okay, so I took one one phrase from one of the verses, and it's when it said that Jesus looked up and saw the crowd.

So my first part of our response is look up.

In verse 5, Jesus looked up and he saw the crowd.

So my point is lift up your eyes, look around you.

There's needs everywhere.

And if you don't see them, pray this.

God, what can I do for you today?

What a flip.

What a flip that would be.

What can I do for you today?

Show me.

Show me things.

Second, lean in.

Lean into those uncomfortable situations.

Lean into that difficult conversation with your kid or a friend that you know is not going to go to a good place and you may not be prepared to have.

Lean into a word from a pulpit that maybe makes you a bit uncomfortable and knocks off a scab or exposes an area that you know needs to be given into the hands of Jesus.

Get involved in areas where you know difficult things are gonna come up.

Get involved in things that you really have no interest in doing.

And finally, trust the process.

We sing a song called Waymaker, but trust the process of Jesus who's going to make the way.

Jesus is the author and perfecter of our faith, but we gotta be willing to give him a blank page to write on.

I feel I write my whole story.

I play the movie over and over in my head of how my day is gonna go, how my week's gonna go, how my family's gonna turn out, what my retirement's gonna be like.

I don't give Jesus a chance to be that author of my faith.

So finally, I want to read one last thing here, because it's an important thing.

If you when you're thinking about serving, it is a sacrifice.

Trust the process, knowing that you'll be provided for while you're caring for others.

Verse 12.

When they had eaten their fill, he told the disciples, gather up the leftover fragments, don't let anything be left over.

So they gathered them up and filled 12 baskets with fragments of the five barri loaves.

Twelve, 12 baskets, 12 disciples.

There's math for you.

Everybody got a doggy bag to take home.

While they were toiling, I can imagine what was going through their head.

Oh, this is great, Jesus.

When am I gonna give to you?

What am I gonna get my prediction?

Here you go, guys.

Here you go.

They cared for them.

The last thing he did when the miracle was over, I got one more.

You guys all get a doggy bag to take home.

It's a beautiful part to the story.

When you step out and you take that lead and you give something of yourself in the service of the kingdom, God's gonna meet your needs.

He's gonna give you what you need to achieve the task at hand.

I had one last crazy thought.

Where did the baskets come from?

This is what went through my head last this past week as I was preparing this message.

It's silly, right?

Where'd they get the baskets?

They're in the middle of nowhere.

I did a little digging.

I actually spent probably a ridiculous amount of time.

I had an incredibly busy week.

I didn't I started a new job.

It's it's so hectic.

But, anyways, there are no scholarly articles written at all on the source of the baskets of where the disciples got the baskets at the end of the message.

Go figure.

Am I the only person on the planet that cares about this?

Then it suddenly came to me.

And this is this is my this is it, this is the wrap-up.

They were fishermen.

The baskets were likely a regular part of their fishing gear that they already had on the boat.

God used something they already had that they had set aside, thinking it had no purpose anymore, to do this miracle.

And he says, all you gotta do is have the people sit down.

Those baskets were empty.

They had them all along, but God used them to provide the miracle.

Empty baskets achieved nothing until they were put in the hands of Jesus.

So, my question is: who's got an empty basket in their life?

Something you've got and you don't use anymore.

A gift maybe you think you have, someone mentioned it to you once.

There's a bit of an inkling, but it's really never been fostered or brought to light.

Something you sense is there, but you've never really had a chance or tried to use it.

Church, we have a God that loves empty baskets.

So my wrap-up is get yours out, dust it off, bring it to Jesus.

Let's pray.

Lord, we thank you for your love.

We thank you for your word.

We thank you for your demonstration of ministry.

We thank you for our local church.

And we thank you for this word picture of empty baskets.

God, show us those areas.

Show us those areas that maybe we're filling up with other things.

Show us the pages of our storybook where we're trying to write the narrative instead of you.

Just pray you just touch hearts and lead us to new ways to serve, new ways to use our gifts, new ways to discover deeper the richness and fullness of life in your family.

In your precious name.

Amen.

Alright.

So we're done.

My um uh, you guys are loved, by the way.

Thank you so much.

Maybe the next time I'll do this, I'll just compress it just 10 minutes and we would have time to talk.

Um the the truth is um we are going to be talking about service in upcoming um uh services.

And the reality is the the needs are great.

The needs are great on your street at home, the needs are great in our ministry here.

And what we wanted to do was just have a chat, Joel and I, and just share some of the opportunities, the what, what's available, and how you can get involved.

The ministry looks a lot different than just serving here, but we have lots of ways here, and this is our local church, this is where we're commanded to be a part of.

So we want to start sharing that in the weeks to come.

There are ways through our connection card QR thing to sign up to uh to get further information.

If you're interested in certain areas of service, we'd love to have you bring those empty baskets.

Guys are loved.