Jesus Feeds 5,000 Series

Good Morning, Cross Church and NRHBC church families! Easter Sunday was a great experience and thank you for inviting others. It was one of the largest one-day attendances in our church’s recent history. God is good and gracious!

As we started with the resurrection (last week) and over the course of the next few weeks, we’re introducing you to both ancient miracles and modern ones. There are basically two kinds of people in the world: those who believe in miracles and those who don’t. Of the first kind – those who believe in miracles – oftentimes a pastor encounters a well-meaning person who believes everything is a miracle! We, pastors, don’t usually say it, be even we have trouble believing everything little thing is a miracle. Of the second type of person – those who don’t believe in miracles – I often find the kind of person who believes miracles happen back then …back then they were naive enough to believe they happened. This second group says that miracles never happened, but gullible people thought they did. Perhaps we find the idea charming and think ourselves generous for having it. But that is a tremendously patronizing view of other human beings. Maybe you grew up thinking miracles happened a long time ago, if at all.

Today, we continue a series that looks at four miracles Jesus performed. A miracle is simply, “A supernatural event.” And the Bible is a book of miracles. Luke alone includes some twenty miracles stories in his Gospel. Today we read of Jesus feeding the 5,000 - a famous story in the life of Jesus. And it’s a miracle story…

“On their return the apostles told him all that they had done. And he took them and withdrew apart to a town called Bethsaida. 11 When the crowds learned it, they followed him, and he welcomed them and spoke to them of the kingdom of God and cured those who had need of healing. 12 Now the day began to wear away, and the twelve came and said to him, “Send the crowd away to go into the surrounding villages and countryside to find lodging and get provisions, for we are here in a desolate place.” 13 But he said to them, “You give them something to eat.” They said, “We have no more than five loaves and two fish—unless we are to go and buy food for all these people.” 14 For there were about five thousand men. And he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” 15 And they did so, and had them all sit down. 16 And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing over them. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. 17 And they all ate and were satisfied. And what was left over was picked up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.” (Luke 9:10-17)

This is the only miracle that is reported in each of the four gospels. This miracle story shares a direct tie-in to Old Testament miracles going on behind the scenes of this story. The most important one and you easily can think of Moses’ day where the Hebrew people were fed manna and quail as it appeared daily with no effort on their part (Exodus 16; Numbers 11). It’s not just the Bible that tells us Jesus did miracles. But history tells us that Jesus did miracles — He was a miracle worker. He walked on water and calmed storming waters at a moment’s notice. In fact, Jesus was so associated with miracles that years later, in the first sermon after Jesus was gone, the apostle Peter said this about Jesus and miracles: “Men of Israel, hear these words: Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested to you by God with mighty works and wonders and signs that God did through him in your midst, as you yourselves know…” (Acts 2:22). So it is well established that Jesus did miracles.

There have been many different attempts to explain this down through the years. There have been all kinds of efforts down through the years to explain this miracle away. One theory is Jesus hypnotized the people into thinking they were full. Another theory is that rich people provided the food though none of the eyewitnesses’ accounts say anything about this. My favorite is this one: Jesus simply broke the pieces into really small amounts so everyone could have some.

Do You Believe in Miracles? Again, there are only two kinds of people in the world – those who believe in miracles and those who don’t. Naturalism presents nature as a closed box with everything being explained by natural cause and effect. Supernaturalism, by contrast, sees nature as an open system, operating by natural law most of the time, but open to intervention by God. So we can say the following: your openness to believing the miracles is contingent on whether you believe in an all-powerful, altogether good, God. If you doubt God, then you will doubt the miraculous. But if you believe in God, then you will believe in the miraculous. I believe in miracles.