WWUTT 2363 Jesus Is the Christ (Luke 9:10-22)

The crowds came to Jesus, they grew hungry, and so he fed them just using five loaves and two fish. But the thing that they needed most was not physical food, but spiritual food. When we understand the text.

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Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand and Reveals the Kingdom of God

Thank you, Becky. In our study of the gospel, according to Luke, we come back to chapter 9, and we're going to pick up where we left off yesterday. So let me begin reading here in verse 10, and let's go through verse 22.

Hear the word of the Lord. On their return, the apostles told him all that they had done, and he took them and withdrew apart to a town called Bethsaida. 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.

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.

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. For there were about five thousand men.

And he said to his disciples, Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each. And they did so, and had them all sit down. 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. And they all ate and were satisfied, and what was left over was picked up, twelve baskets of broken pieces. Now it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him, and he asked them, Who do the crowds say that I am?

And they answered, John the Baptist, but others say Elijah, and others that one of the prophets of old is risen. Then he said to them, But who do you say that I am? And Peter answered, The Christ of God.

And he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one, saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.

Now, if you listened to the lesson yesterday, you'll notice some obvious parallels here. We had the section where Jesus was telling his disciples that they were going to go and proclaim the message of the kingdom of God.

And what do we see here? That Jesus did that very thing. The people followed him to Bethsaida, and he preached to them the message of the kingdom of God. He told the disciples that they were going to go and heal.

And what did Jesus do for the crowd? He healed them. Then we had the section where Herod kind of puzzled about everything that he heard going on with Jesus and his disciples. And he had heard the people saying that Elijah had come back, or that John the Baptist had risen from the dead, or maybe one of the other prophets had risen from the dead.

And Jesus asks his disciples here, Who is it that the people say that I am? And it's that very same answer. The disciples say what the people had been talking about, same as what Herod had heard. But then Jesus asked the disciples, Who do you say that I am?

And Peter answered the Christ of God. As I mentioned yesterday, this chapter kind of has this back and forth going on in which we have Jesus telling the disciples to do things. And then we have something that reveals something about Jesus.

So knowing who Christ is and what he has told his disciples to do. So in the section that we're looking at today, it's Jesus commanding, instructing his disciples in verses 10 through 17. And then knowing that Jesus is the Christ of God, verses 18 to 22, that we may know who Jesus is.

And even knowing who Jesus is, what are we to do in light of that? So let's come back to verse 10, Jesus feeding the 5 ,000. By the way, this is the only miracle that is in all four Gospels. Some of you might fact check me on that, but I think you'll come to the same conclusion.

Apart from the resurrection itself, of course, because all four Gospels lead up to the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus. That is what this is pointing toward. That's where we're going here as we're reading through Luke.

But of the miracles that are written down in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the synoptic Gospels, and then in John, the feeding of the 5 ,000 is the only one that's in all four. John doesn't have that many miracles in it.

It only has, I think, seven apart from the resurrection. And each one of those seven miracles showing something about Jesus feeding the 5 ,000 has that particular context in mind when we read it in John.

We'll get to that later, but a few months from now, something like that. Here is how Luke presents this narrative. Verse 10, on their return, the apostles told him all that they had done. So remember back to yesterday, Jesus had instructed the disciples to go out.

They were going to preach the message of the kingdom. They were going to heal diseases and cast out evil spirits. So now they're reporting back to Jesus, here's what we accomplished on our mission. And as I said, it wasn't going to be a very long mission.

It may have been, you know, a few weeks as they went to these different villages. And Jesus even told them which villages to go to. We had the details about that in Matthew's gospel, not as much in Luke.

But this was just kind of a quick around the region. And it was only to the children of Israel. They did not go into any Gentile regions. Jesus doesn't send the apostles out to the ends of the earth until we get to the great commission, end of Matthew, beginning of Acts.

We'll see some of that even at the end of Luke's gospel also. So they're telling Jesus what they had done. Jesus took them and withdrew apart to a town called Bethsaida. I mentioned yesterday that most likely the action that we read regarding Jesus healing a woman and Jairus's daughter.

I didn't say this yesterday, two days ago. So Monday's lesson, when Jesus had healed Jairus's daughter, this was likely somewhere on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. It could have been Capernaum. That was a big place.

And it does seem like Jesus is in a pretty crowded place there with the crowd that is pressing around him. So that may have been where that particular miracle happened. Bethsaida is still in the region of the Sea of Galilee, but it's a little bit to the north, slightly to the east.

So a smaller town than Capernaum, of course. So he comes to Bethsaida. And when the crowds learned it, they followed him. And we've seen how Jesus and the disciples will go different places and they get no peace.

Mark had demonstrated that in his gospel as well. The crowds are following him everywhere. But here, Jesus welcomes the crowd. And he spoke to them of the kingdom of God, just as he had instructed the disciples to go out and speak of these things.

And he cured those who had need of healing. This would have been thousands and thousands of miracles that Jesus did in all the different kinds of healing that he performed. You think of at the end of John's gospel, it says that if all of the things that Jesus did had been written down, there wouldn't even be enough books to contain all of his incredible works.

So we will have these places through the gospels where it will say Jesus stayed there and healed their sick. This is thousands and thousands of people that he ends up healing. Just think that Jerusalem at this time is something like a half million people or something like that.

There are estimates that are all over the place. And I mean all over the place. There are some places where I've read that Jerusalem was only like 25 ,000 people. I think the number that I see most consistently is about a quarter of a million.

And I think I've used that one. And that may have been the regular population of Jerusalem. Could have been a quarter of a million. But then at the time of festivals, when a bunch of people come in for the festivals, then it climbs up to like half a million, 600 ,000 or something like that.

It was during the Jewish-Roman War that happened in 70. The historian Tacitus had estimated that the population of Jerusalem at the time of that war was about 600 ,000 people. And I think that would have been counting the number of people that come in for festivals.

That may not have been the regular everyday population of Jerusalem. But nonetheless, a very popular city, a lot of people coming there because, of course, the temple is there. Temple of God, it would have been known at this time as the Temple of Herod because it was the temple as Herod built it.

So the reason why I mentioned that is because this is how many people, it gives you an idea how many people were living in the region at this particular time. Even though Capernaum may have been several tens of thousands of people, Bethsaida a little bit smaller, but you think of how many people lived throughout the region.

It was not sparsely populated. It had a lot of people that lived there. The majority of Jews alive at that time still lived in Israel and especially around Jerusalem. So Jesus, when he heals people, he's healing thousands of people and not everybody got.

Healed.

And there may even be some people that got healed more than once. Who knows? But of course, with the healing that Jesus gave, they eventually would get sick again. And they would eventually die. But in the miracles that Jesus performs, he shows compassion on them, his love for the.

People.

And then it also authenticates that he is the one who is sent from God to do his will and to preach his word. The healing that Jesus performed was unlike any healing that had ever been done. None of the prophets had ever performed miracles the way that Jesus had performed them.

The most number of miracles that we had seen in the Old Testament would be done by Moses and then his successor, Joshua, and Elijah and his successor, Elisha. Those are the most number of like when you see a mass number of miracles happen, it's in the time of those prophets.

That doesn't mean that miracles happen only in the time of those prophets or even only in the time of Jesus and his disciples. But when you see like a big explosion of miracles that are happening all at one time and through one or a few persons, it's because God has a message to speak to that people at that particular time.

So Jesus healing many people and speaking the message of the kingdom that they may know through these miracles that he is doing, that he is the one who has been sent from God. So verse 12, now the day began to wear away and the 12 came to him and said, send the crowd away to go into the surrounding villages and countryside and find lodging and get provisions for we're here in a desolate place.

So at least at this point, they're not in Bethsaida proper. They're a little bit more outside or it could have even been that Bethsaida was just such a small place. There's no way that Bethsaida could accommodate for the number of people that had come looking for Jesus, may have had a small marketplace.

It would not have been enough to feed this crowd of people. If you've ever seen festivals, music festivals or something like that, that might gather in a wide open space that can accommodate a huge crowd of people, but it won't be next to a very big town.

Sometimes those music festivals that attract all kinds of people are the gathering itself is bigger than whatever town is nearest. We even see that in a sort of a modern setting. So it's the same sort of thing here.

Bethsaida would not have been large enough to accommodate the number of people that came looking for Jesus. It would have been smaller than the 5000 men that are here to hear Jesus and be healed by him.

So the disciples are saying, it's getting to the end of the day. We need to send these people away somewhere. But Jesus says to them in verse 13, you give them something to eat. And it's quite a thing for Jesus to say, where are the disciples going to get this?

I kind of wonder here. This is a theory of mine, of course, but I kind of wonder if with Jesus saying that to the disciples, he gave them authority. Previously, we saw this at the start of chapter nine to go and cast out demons and cure diseases.

So they've just come back from a mission in which they've performed these incredible signs and wonders. And we see even at the start of this section that we're reading, verse 10, they come back to him reporting all that they had done.

And so having done these incredible things, I just have to wonder if Jesus is challenging them to have faith in the authority that he's given to them, and they might provide the people with food. Was that Jesus intention when he says to them, you give them something to eat, you take the five loaves and two fish that you have divided up and feed all these people?

I don't know. The narrative doesn't tell us that. That's just my theory, that that was what was behind Jesus instruction there. And what do they do? They're like, you got to be kidding me, right? They said, we have no more than five loaves and two fish.

And we know from Matthew's gospel that they got those five loaves and two fish from a boy who was there. And then after the em dash, unless we are to go and buy food for all of these people. And I have to wonder after one disciple said that another disciple pipes up, but where are we going to go find food for all these people?

And that disciple says, exactly. We can't feed these people. That's exactly why we have to send them away so that they can go find lodging and something.

To eat.

For there were about 5 ,000 men, and it doesn't include the women and children. So this could have been 10 ,000 or more people. We don't know. And so Jesus says to his disciples, have them sit down in groups of about 50 each.

So now they have to go through this crowd of thousands and separate them out into groups of 50 each, creating rows and paths that they can all kind of walk through and do what they're going to what Jesus is going to assign for them to do.

So they did.

So they had them all sit down and taking the five loaves and the two fish, Jesus looked up to heaven and said a blessing over them. And then he broke the loaves and he broke the loaves and he broke the loaves and he just kept on breaking these loaves and this fish until he had enough to give to the disciples to set before the crowd.

Everybody ate thousands of people that Jesus has just served this food to. They all ate and were satisfied. And what was left over was picked up 12 baskets of broken pieces. I won't dwell on that too much because I've talked about this in previous gospels, but the 12 baskets representing the 12 disciples that Jesus was going to send out and feed the children of Israel.

Peter Confesses Jesus as the Christ of God

So then we get to this section of confession. So we've just seen this instruction that Jesus gives to his disciples. So telling them to do something. And now next, we're going to learn something about Jesus.

So this is verses 18 to 22. Now, it happened that as he was praying alone, so different scene, different scenario that's going on here. We don't have any idea how much time has passed or even if this was successively right after the event that we saw here with Jesus feeding the 5 ,000.

It could be that Luke is putting these events together to fit the pattern that he's laying out here in chapter nine, but doesn't necessarily mean that this event as we see it come up next was the immediately next event right after the feeding of the 5 ,000.

So it happened that as he was praying alone, the disciples were with him and he asked them, who do the crowds say that I am? Now, like I said, with regards to this not being the immediately successive event, it's not immediately following the feeding of the 5 ,000.

In Matthew's gospel, it's as they are walking at Caesarea Philippi, which is quite a distance away from Bethsaida. So this is Jesus with his disciples at another location. And again, Luke doesn't paint it that way because he's got a context in which he's setting this.

But that's what we know from Matthew's gospel. So again, Jesus praying alone, the disciples were with him. He asked them, who do the crowds say that I am? And they answered, John the Baptist. But others say Elijah and others that one of the prophets of old is risen.

And then he said to them, but who do you say that I am? And Peter answered, the Christ of God. Now, remember in Matthew chapter 16, Peter's answer is you are the Christ, the son of the living God. Same answer.

Just because Luke uses fewer words doesn't mean that it's a different answer than what Peter gave in Matthew 16. But remember that in Matthew 16, Jesus says to Peter, blessed are you, Simon Barjona, for flesh and blood did not reveal this to you, but my father who is in heaven.

And I tell you that you are Peter. And on this rock, I will build my church and the gates of hell will not prevail against.

It.

Now, the Roman Catholics, of course, and even the Eastern Orthodox to a certain degree, will take that statement that Jesus made to Peter and they will make it into more than what was really being said there.

Or they don't even make it into more. They make it into something less because they take the statement about Peter being the rock. You are Peter, which means rock. And on this rock, the Roman Catholics especially will take that statement and they make it to mean that Peter's the first pope and it's upon him that the church is built.

But the scriptures consistently say that Jesus is the rock, Old Testament and New Testament. He's the rock. So on this rock is the confession that Peter made that on this rock, I will build my church.

That again, that is only in Matthew where that is said, if that was supposed to be the emphasis that upon Peter, Christ would build his church. Why doesn't Luke include that? What does Luke include? The most important part of that exchange, that Jesus is the Christ.

He is the rock upon which Christ would build his church. Peter was certainly a stone in that process. He's a little rock. We read about in Ephesians chapter three that it's or chapter two, rather, it's on the foundation of the apostles and prophets that the church is built with Christ as the cornerstone.

He is the rock and the disciples are little rocks. And then you have Peter saying in first Peter two, that all of us are like living stones being built up as a spiritual house unto the Lord. So that's the understanding of that picture.

Again, the most important part of that exchange is recognizing that Jesus is the Christ, a word meaning Messiah. He is the Savior. He is the one whom God was going to send, fulfilling everything that was said in the Old Testament.

Now, when the disciples make this confession about Jesus being the Christ, as I've said before, they believe that the Christ is going to be a political emancipator. So he is going to ascend to the throne and he's going to set everybody free from the the oppression of the Herod's, the oppression and deception of the Herod's.

And that could be another reason why Luke includes that little narrative from Herod there in verses seven through nine. So now we have that contrast between Herod and between the Christ. But Jesus is not going to ascend to an earthly throne.

He's going to be raised up on a cross and then after rising from the dead will ascend to a heavenly throne. That's something the disciples don't understand yet. So in making this confession that he is the Christ of God, they still have in their minds an earthly emancipator who's going to be a conqueror like David was.

And so then going on in verses 21 and 22, Luke says, he strictly charged and commanded them to tell this to no one saying, the son of man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes and be killed and on the third day be raised.

So he tells them exactly what it is that he's going to do. We know from the other gospel accounts that was a message that just was not getting to the brain between their ears. They were clueless about all of this.

That's not what's going to happen with our Messiah. He's going to come and he's going to kick every one of these tyrants out. That's what the Messiah is going to come and do. So they're confused about this now.

But this is setting the stage for what will come later on in Luke 24. When Jesus explains to them the scriptures and their minds are open, their hearts are open to understand everything that was said about him in the Old Testament.

So here we have, once again, an instruction that Jesus gives to his disciples in the feeding of the 5 ,000 and then a revealing of something about Jesus in verses 18 to 22, understanding that he is the Christ.

And my friends, we likewise, knowing that he is the Christ, we are his disciples. We who believe in him and follow him. Disciple is a word that means learner. So we learn from him. And even as his disciples now, we follow these instructions that we might go out and feed others.

And there may be a need for us to physically feed somebody else, providing for those who don't have for themselves. But especially we spiritually feed them with the message of the gospel and the truth of the word of Christ.

Only that word has the power to save. It's less about healing somebody who's eventually going to get sick again or providing for their physical needs. They're eventually going to get hungry again. It's more about preaching the message of the gospel, which saves all who believe that they might live again in glory forever with God.

Prayer for Holiness and the Gospel of Christ

Heavenly Father, we thank you for what we have read again. I ask and pray that it would be upon our hearts to seek Christ, who is the holy one. And knowing that we follow a holy God, that we would desire holiness in our lives, putting away every sin and everything that clings so closely that entangles us.

And we desire the holiness of Christ and to walk in that righteousness that he has given.

To us.

Also sharing the message of the kingdom with others, showing love and charity where we have opportunity, but also using that as an opportunity to share the real good news. And that is the gospel of Christ, which saves.

It's in Jesus name we pray.

Amen.

Program Sign-Off and Upcoming Schedule

You've been listening to When We Understand the Text with Pastor Gabe Hughes. Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday, Gabe will be going through a New Testament study. Then on Thursday, we look at an Old Testament book.

On Friday, we take questions from the listeners and viewers. Tomorrow, we'll pick up on an Old Testament study, When We Understand the Text.