Bread from Heaven

In the feeding of the five thousand, Jesus meets us in the wilderness, receives what little we have, and feeds the hunger nothing else can satisfy. We need the Bread of Heaven.

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With me to the Gospel According to Matthew, chapter 14. The gospel of Matthew, chapter 14. And if you've been with us for the past few weeks, you'll know that we've. Well, we've been stuck really in the lectionary readings in chapter 13, which is filled with parables. And I know last week that particular section that was given to us last week to read is really Jesus like rapid firing.

So he gives like these bigger parables. And all of a sudden, you know, that's the way I envision it in my head is he's like rapid firing at us about the kingdom of God, right? And so, well, we don't get a parable today, but we do get a miracle. And these are always important to look at to also make sure we understand the miracles spiritual significance. Jesus is not just fulfilling some physical need only, but teaching us something spiritual.

So let's be attuned to that. Let's all stand as we have found Matthew chapter 14. And we'll start reading here with verse 13.

This is the word of God. Jesus withdrew in a boat to a deserted place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd and he had compassion for them and cured their sick. When it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, this is a deserted place and the hour is now late.

Send the crowds away so that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves. Jesus said to them, they need not go away. You give them something to eat. They replied, we have nothing here but five loaves and two fish. And he said, bring them here to me.

Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass taking the five loaves and the two fish. He looked up to heaven and blessed and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples. And the disciples gave them to the crowds. And all ate and were filled. And they took up what was left over of the broken pieces, 12 baskets full.

And those who ate were about 5,000 men besides women and children.

Jesus, thank you for your holy word. We need your Holy Spirit today to quicken our minds, lift our spirits to you so that, Lord, you can make the connections you want this morning. So that we just as we just sang, so that we can love your voice today as we hear it and obey it. We pray in your name. Amen.

And you can be seated.

Well, our story today and this miracle begins not on a mountaintop where sometimes certain miracles have happened. Think Mount Sinai, think the Transfiguration right Think Golgotha. Yes. You know, these. Even a little hill becomes a mountain in this sense, where it's a high place where God is meeting with his people and he is doing a miracle.

That is not what we have here. Instead, we're actually told right up front. And it's a little shocking if you're following the text, but it does make sense that Jesus withdrew. Oftentimes he's going into the crowds. This time he withdraws.

And it seems quite clear that there's probably one or two reasons for this. And it's because of the beginning here of 14. Herod hears that Jesus doing these miracles. He says, john the Baptist is risen from the dead. What is this?

And we are also told that the reason he's saying this is because John is already dead. In fact, he was beheaded. And so we're given that story. And it's either because of Herod's thing here going on that he might be looking for Jesus, perhaps, or his rejection of everything by his rejection of John the Baptist, who's the forerunner. It's not exactly clear, but it's one or the other here.

Or maybe it's both. Maybe it's the fact that Herod and all of Galilee, because we're told right before this that he was a prophet that was rejected in his own hometown, which is around the area of Galilee, right, where he did most of his ministry. Now he's going to withdraw from Galilee, not because he's scared of Herod. No, Herod's nobody to him, but just a ruler put in place. But instead he withdraws because of the rejection.

And what he's going to end up doing shortly is setting his face to Jerusalem in order to go to the cross. Okay? That's the sequence here. And so there's a reason he's withdrawing, perhaps even to mourn, because this was his cousin, after all, and the forerunner of the Messiah. And so we have here, rather than a mountaintop experience, we find Jesus in a deserted place.

Notice the language here. He withdrew to a deserted place. And this is a type of desert, which, again, like I've said before, sometimes we read right through this, just, oh, yeah, you know, Matthew's just trying to fill in some words here because he needs to get his paper to 500 words. That's not happening here. Okay?

Now, some of us that are students, we do that, but this is the word of God. So we want to take note that everything that's being told to us here is deliberate and is for our understanding. If we have eyes to see and ears to hear. Like the people remember, they went on foot to follow him. So too we must do some grunt work in order sometimes to follow Jesus.

And. And where we find him, interestingly enough here is not just on the mountaintop experiences, but rather in the desert, in the wilderness, dare say in the valleys of life. All of us know that up and downward continuum and we all don't like it. But we find ourselves sometimes on top of things and other times down in the valley, down in the dumps, down in a deserted place. And we feel alone.

And if we follow Jesus carefully, he too is in those deserted places. And that's something that we need to remember when we drop down into those times in life that are hard. When it seems like his voice is scarce, when it seems like help is just not happening. You have to do a lot to get a little in the desert. Okay.

You know, I mean, if you ever go camping, you know this, right? We always set out on a our on our road trips across America saying we're going to camp a lot on this one to save money. But after a night of camping, you realize a couple hundred bucks is really worth it. You know, it's hard to get everything just to cook a meal takes an hour and a half. And it's like, man, you know, just everything is harder in the wilderness.

That's kind of the point here. When things get scarce. It's not that God isn't there. We find Jesus, our Lord, our master. He went there himself.

And you'll remember. You remember just like, you know, and making connection as well. As soon as he was baptized, beginning his ministry, okay. Beginning the spiritual life, okay. Stepping out from the ordinary carpenter life now into the extraordinary call of God as Messiah.

At 30 years old, he's baptized, and where does he go? Up to the mountain? No, sir. He goes into the wilderness led by the Holy Spirit to be tempted for 40 days, just as Israel was before him. They too pass through the waters of the Red Sea as a type of baptism.

Leaving Egypt, that's that slavery, that's that no identity sort of place. Now moving in the identity of Yahweh, they pass through the waters, which Paul says is a type of baptism. In fact, he even says the cloud that they were following is a type of baptism. This whole pouring over or sprinkling upon is legitimate ways to be baptized because Paul actually makes that identification in the Old Testament that that is exactly what happened when they passed through the Red Sea. Now they enter into what though?

Yeah, they go to the mountain but it's in the desert. And then they spend the next 40 years in the desert being tempted, tested. And what they realize in this testing is that although they are completely physically out of Egypt, Egypt is still in them. They still think Egyptian was. Remember, that's the whole golden calf point is, how do we worship Yahweh?

Well, how did the Egyptians do it? Oh, yeah, they used images. This is Yahweh. I mean, they had it right that they wanted to worship Yahweh. What they had wrong was the means.

They were using an idol as the means to worship Yahweh. Yahweh says, no, no, no. There is no image that you can make that is like me. And I think kind of the subterfuge here is this. He's already made an image of himself.

And Christ as man, incarnate of the Holy Spirit by the Virgin Mary is the exact image of God. There is no difference, no fallenness, no nothing. He is exactly Yahweh. That's the whole point here. So when, when we.

When we. You know, I had somebody at camp meeting, you say, man, it just seems so. Like, I read the Old Testament and it's just tough because it just seems like a different God. And I said, it may seem that way, but Yahweh in the Old Testament is Jesus. Now, I know people don't.

I mean, people are shocked by that. They really are.

Can't be. There's got to be like somehow the Father. Well, Jesus says this when you've seen me. What? You've seen the Father, Thomas, Remember?

Doubting. We're doubting Thomas. That's the point. We doubt that the God of the Old. We're reading the Old Testament wrongly, quite frankly, and we're probably reading the New Testament wrongly.

All right, well, that's just an exhortation to strive to enter in. It does take footwork on our part to follow God to who he really is. It's not enough just to trust what I say now. I want you to be able to trust what I say. And I want to be like guardrails for you to find God.

But you must walk that path. You must search for Him. You must ask, you must knock. I cannot do that for you. I can show you the door, show you the way.

I can reason with you. But at the end of the day, you've got to walk the walk. Okay, so there's a principle here for us, and it's this.

Sometimes, maybe, oftentimes, Jesus is found in lament. Jesus is found in the Valley, because he is the good shepherd that goes even there with us. He came down. We just said it. Literally just said it.

He came down. Not telling us to come up first. He comes down. Okay, that's a, that's a very important. And here's the other principle here at work.

And for Matthew, when you, when you read Matthew, and we've again year A always has us inundated with, with the Gospel of Matthew. Matthew's very keen, more than the other four, three Gospels. He's very keen on this point. Jesus is the new Moses. So in other words, he opens up the scene here with what, the Sermon on the Mount.

That's a new mount. Horeb, mountain of God, Sinai. That's a. So he. So here's Yahweh draws the people up the mountain and reveals himself.

Now Jesus draws the people upward and then reveals himself as the Word of God. Remember, the word comes down. Now the word comes down in the flesh. That's why Jesus equates himself to the law. He doesn't just say, the law says this.

And then, you know, but now he goes, the law says this. I say this. Hold on. Are you equating your word today with the law of moat? Yes.

And then there's also five discourses as you study through Matthew. Well, guess what? There's five books of Moses, the law, okay? Lots of symbolism here. We get that same thing here in our story today.

All right, in the desert, what do they need? Food. What does God give to the Israelites? Bread from heaven called manna, which is basically like meaning. I don't know what this is.

That's what manna means. I don't know what this is other than it came from heaven. Okay, and what do we have here in our story today? Well, here's the new Moses in the desert with the people. They're hungry.

And what does God provide? Bread from heaven. Now it's fascinating that this is the only miracle in Jesus earthly life that makes it into all four gospels. Now that's significant. That's like really important because, you know, typically most of the similarities stop when you get to the Gospel of John, because 90 something percent of the gospel of John is unfounded in the other three gospels.

So it's like all of it's new and hardly anything, almost nothing is repeated. But this is the one miracle. Notice earthly life, because the resurrection is also a miracle. But that's beyond the earthly life. Okay?

This is the earth earthly ministry miracle that Jesus does that is found in all four. That is go and Read them today. Just, just look it up. Ask Chat to put it on there, do a little study on that. I mean, we have so many resources to study the Bible.

It really is a sin not to use those resources for good. It is a sin. Brothers and sisters, I'm just telling you, like you have, if you could see on your phone the digital library that you have access to. No one in human history has had access to that many books about the Bible and studies about the Bible. Now you have to be careful in what you look up, please.

But understand at our fingertips and I think to whom much has been given, what much is required, let's do our work. If, if we study statistics for the braves or the saints, who that, you know, then I want to study the Bible. More than that. I want to be ruminating on that. Like what?

How do we put that view of the Old Testament and New Testament together? It's one God.

All right, good. Hopefully you get that love for the. I mean, because we should have a love for his Word and if we don't, that says something about us.

Well, Isaiah says it quite plainly here, doesn't he? In our, in our Old Testament range says, look, you that don't have money, come on, buy and eat. Think about that. You that don't have money, buy and eat, come on, go. And then he says, without money, without price, you spend your money on all these other things, but you won't spend your stuff on the word of God.

That's really what he's talking about here. Bread is another way to talk about the word that came down, the bread of heaven. And so here, Jesus, he sees that people are hungry. And listen, in our own time at, as in every generation, every iteration of humanity that comes through all the epochs of mankind, every single one of them have hungered for one thing, and that is the word of God. This is why Jesus comes and he says what he says, well, man does not live by bread alone.

That's what he tells Satan. Remember, man does not live by bread alone. Have you found that to be true in your life? Like you can physically. We can, I mean, we can.

In just a few minutes after we're done here, you can go and have a beautiful meal, and I mean an expensive one. But guess what? You'll be hungry by the time it gets six o' clock tonight, we need it again. And I don't know if you found this to be true. You get.

I had never owned a new car until, you know, the truck that Jessica's business afforded for me. To drive in. I'd never driven a brand new truck, just kind of off the lot. And I was like, man. And I rode.

I felt pretty good about things for a long time, you know, but now when I get in it, it's just like any other experience. Like, I don't get that giddy feeling. You're like, ooh, new smell kind of thing, you know, it's not there anymore. You see that? Every bit of what we pursue in this way, we get to it, we get it, we reach that goal and we say, is that it?

You get that job, Is that it? You get that respect, Is that it? You get that wealth. And then you say, is that it? That's all there is.

I mean, I'm convinced that that's why many of the billionaires today in the world, like, once they retire, they just go around giving away all of their money. Why? Because they find more joy in that than just simply having. Having money does nothing for you. It's the spending that's the fun part.

But even in that, have you spent yourself into happiness yet? Of course not.

Have you been able to get enough honor to be happy yet? Of course not. That always depends on others.

Have you gotten enough pleasure in your life to just be satisfied for the rest of your life? You say, man, that trip to Greece, that just did it for me. I'm done now. Nothing else. No, of course not.

I'm seeking new things now. It's like, that's old. That's in the past. We can. But listen, his word can sustain our soul.

That's what we need. We all know this. It's just we forget it because we're constantly being advertised. We're probably the most advertised to generation ever in human history as well. So we're so distracted, we forget first things.

And when first things are put first, everything else follows. But if we pursue the lower things, we'll never find happiness, never find fulfillment. It says here they were filled from this meal, and there was a super abundance where that came from. They took up leftovers. That's what Jesus Christ is offering today in a meal like this.

He looks out, he sees the hungry. Do we see the hungry?

Now look, we do the physical thing here with a food pantry. And you know, even this week, I had the opportunity to take a family over here to Walmart and buy them, I don't know, $170 worth of groceries. Okay, we all did that. I was the tool to do that. But it was all of us who did that.

And, you know, we do that part, because Jesus tells us to do the physical. He heals physically, but he also wants to heal spiritually. So that when we give the food, we're not just giving food by itself, but food. Food in the name of Jesus. That matters.

That matters. Do we have compassion as Jesus did? The term here in the Greek is actually. It means his guts were moved. It's like.

It's like visceral, okay? It's the innards that are moved. Bothered by all these. Remember, he had withdrawn, but. But then once he sees them, he's bothered by this to the point that he invites them in.

And even when the disciples say, hey, man, it is time to let them go, because, you know, Matthew is a tax collector. He's done the calculations. No way. We have enough food for all these people, and we sure don't have enough money.

He says we need to send them away. The hour is late. It's very interesting how he actually puts this piece together. Send them away. The hour is late.

We're in a deserted place. Sounds like our own culture, doesn't it? It's a desert. The word of God should be just, I mean, flowing through our streets, and it is not. It should be surging through government, and it is not.

It should be surging in our workplaces, and. And it is not. It's like a desert place.

Yeah, that's the point. And we might say, well, we just need to give up, because there's no way we're ever going. Listen, that is not the trajectory of the Bible. That is not the trajectory of the kingdom of God, is it? The kingdom of God is always growing from what is small to what is great.

And there's a. There's a beautiful principle here that I want to share with you. And it's this. When they say this, Jesus says, you give them something to eat. Don't send them away.

You give them what? And he goes, we have nothing. But. And they. You know, we learn in one of the different iterations of this story, we learned that it was a little boy that come forward with his lunch, okay?

And these fish, by the way, like, sardines, okay? They're like salted sardines. So they're like this big. So don't think like, you know, tilapia or big slab of crappie or something like that. That's not what we're talking about.

Little sardines, okay? Got two fish, and we got five loaves. And loaves are like little buns, okay? Not. Not even as big as what we've got.

Today, okay, they say, this is all we've got. It's important what Jesus says next. Bring it to me.

Now think about this. Moses was in a similar situation. Jesus knew Moses. So I was thinking, you know, this more like. Hold on.

I remember this because, remember at the burning bush, Moses gets into an argument with God. I mean, we kind of remember the good part of the burning bush. You remember this, like, oh, yeah, Yahweh, he reveals his name. But Moses did argue with God. And God does get mad at him in that whole argument thing.

And you remember he said, I can't do this. I'm a stutterer. I can't do this. He says, what is in your hand? You know, staff.

Throw it down. And you remember, he shows him miracles through that staff. And he's going to use that staff. But it's just a staff. It's like a dead piece of wood used for walking.

I mean, at this point, he's older, he's probably using it to prop himself up. Throw it down. What's the spiritual point here? Bring it to me. Throw it down.

Whatever you have it, it might not be much. It might be something little. You're like, I don't really have a whole lot. I don't have a big bank account to give. I don't have a lot of gifts.

Maybe that's how you see yourself. I don't have X, Y, like, give God your excuses. Sure, go for it. But when it comes time, he's going to say, then bring it to me and watch what I can do in the breaking of the bread. Watch how I multiply it.

That staff was multiplied to. To be way more than a staff bought at Walmart.

The Red Sea opened, the water came out of the rock. The staff were told it was there every single time. Now, it was emblematic of what. What little bit that Moses had to offer, but he was able to throw it down and use it because God, God sanctified it, blessed it, and multiplied it. Guess what?

You can complain like I do often. Lord, I don't know what to do in this. I don't have the gifts to do right. Yes, but you have something. You got a voice.

Give it to me. You've got an artistic ability. Give it to me. You've got something that your job trains you for, like you make money for doing. Give it to me and watch me multiply that.

What if that became our missionary outlook, brothers and sisters? I think that's exactly what God is doing here as the new Moses. And then lastly, here it's fascinating to me. And this is. This is wild.

Like this. This blew my mind this morning.

The language is extremely specific here, and we're about to rehearse it in a moment in the liturgy, but just take a look back. He takes the five loaves and the two fish. He blessed them, he broke them, he gave them. That's the four critical parts of the Eucharist. This Eucharistic meal, this Holy Communion.

That's the four. You take it. I mean, I'm about to say it in a moment. Taken, blessed, broken, given. And it matches his entire ministry.

He came, he lived, he died, he rose, he took on human flesh. Think about that. He blessed every aspect of human development. Think about that. From a zygote to a fetus, to an infant to a toddler to a teenager.

Yes, a teenager. He blessed it, being a teenager, all the way to an adult male. He blessed the whole thing by being sinless, and he sanctified human nature in that way. And then he gave of himself, broken for us. He was given out then to the whole world.

And the particular way that he is given out, we're told, is through two sacraments. Water, entrance into the faith done one time, one baptism, one Lord. Okay. And then the meal of Holy Communion, which we are to do until he comes again as often as we would remember him, so that he doesn't diminish like the manna.

It is the bread. Come down from heaven. And just hear me, brothers. This is a. This is big right here.

Just as this was a miracle of God, from what is natural grace came and perfected this nature, to multiply it, to feed over 5,000 people, roughly 10,000, 5,000 men. Here, we're told he blesses it to be a miracle. So too, in the taking of the bread, in the blessing it, in the breaking of it, and the giving it out, so too, there's a miracle that happens every time we approach the table. This is a great mystery. But it's a mystery because it's miraculous.

It becomes for us not bread bought at Publix, which is where I'm assuming this came from, or wine that came from Publix, made by Welch's non alcoholic for us Protestants. But now when it's taken up into his grace and sanctified, it becomes a holy mystery, a holy miracle, where his grace is intrinsically in the. These elements of bread and wine and water.

In other words, we're sitting on the grass today. He says, be seated and let the disciples feed you. Ordination is an apostolic succession from these disciples so that when I stand before you as ordained, ordered in Christ's church, I am one of the successors of these very first apostles who he gave the bread to, to give to the people. He could have done it himself, but he always incorporates us.

In other words, we get to witness a miracle of the feeding today, of the crowds. So I ask again, dear brothers and sisters, are you hungry? Come. Do you see hungry people outside these walls? Be moved in the gut, viscerally inside, to have compassion, as Jesus did, to invite them to this family meal.

It's not an exclusive family, no, it is open to all because he opened it up not just to a particular group, but to all of humanity. Because he sanctified all of humanity as the new Adam, the last Adam. So if you feel like you're in a wilderness today, here's what Psalm 23 says. He sets up a table in the presence of his enemies for us to feed on him. I feel like that this week.

I'll be honest with you. I got a lot of things that's coming against me in some ways that it's wild. And I'm saying, lord, I need this meal. I don't live by my wisdom alone, I don't live by others wisdom. I need your word, your bread from heaven.

Do you need that today? Come and dine. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Spirit. Amen.