John 6:1-13 (Jesus and the Exodus)

The Shepherd's Church

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Well, welcome everybody. Honestly believe that this is the most people that we've had in a worship service since the very first day that we planted the

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Shepherds Church back in September of 2019 and with everything going on in the world, it's amazing to see that God is still going to build his church.

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He is still going to grow his kingdom and the gates of hell is not, will not, that's Southern, are not. I'm still being redeemed.

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I will not stand against it. Now one of the ways that Jesus declares himself to be

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God is through the works that he does. See, Jesus doesn't primarily just use words and sermons and theological treatises in order to communicate who he is.

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Instead, often, more often than not, he uses words or he uses works, actions.

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He does things that actually prove that he is God. He doesn't stand in the middle of the temple and say, here I am,

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I'm God. He does things that showcase the fact that he's God. For instance,

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John 1 is a beautiful theological treatise. I'm going to give a little bit of a recap because it's been a couple months since we've been in John. John 1 is a beautiful theological treatise about who

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Jesus is, but in John 2 we see Jesus acting. We see him turning water into wine because he is the

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Lord of creation. We see him standing in the middle of the temple, not saying,

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I'm God, everybody needs to worship me. He's turning over tables. He's chasing out the money changers.

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Why? Because he's God. This is his house. He showed up to the building that was supposed to be dedicated to his name.

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He is God and yet there's squatters there who do not love him, do not worship him, and he's doing things that God would do.

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He demonstrates it. He proves it. He proves that he's the true temple by the fact that he says, it's in verse, what's going to be on your screen, destroy this temple and I will raise it up again in three days.

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He proves that he's the temple, not in that moment, but three years later when they crucify him, the true temple.

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And as soon as he dies, the temple curtain is torn in two, rendering that old building useless from there on out, because from there on out, no one will meet with God in a temple like that.

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They will meet with God through Jesus Christ because he is the true temple. He shows it through his actions, through his death, burial, and resurrection.

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Same thing's true in John 4. He showcases supernatural knowledge when he speaks to the woman at the well.

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He goes from there and he showcases supernatural ability to heal the nobleman's son in the region of Galilee.

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In John 5, he heals the man who's been sick for 38 years, puts him on a collision course with the

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Jewish establishment. It's going to get him betrayed. It's going to get him killed. But he's doing works.

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He's not just saying things. And his works announce who he is.

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He is God. There's plenty of people who will say to you, Jesus never declared to be God. Look at his works.

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He declared to be God on every page. John 5, he explains to us how this happens.

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He says, See, John the

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Baptist came speaking and teaching and preaching. He was an amazing communicator. John the

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Baptist preached probably some of the greatest sermons that you and I could have ever listened to. But yet his works were not greater.

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His works look beyond himself to Christ. Jesus's works look to himself.

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He is God. His testimony is greater. Now, Jesus probably had better sermons than John.

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We would think so. He's God. He probably had a bigger vocabulary than John. He created language. He's God. We get it.

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But it wasn't his words that what made Jesus who he is. It's his works that testified about him.

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So I would even say it this way, if you want to know Jesus, don't just look at the black and white or if you've got a red letter

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Bible, look at that. Don't just look at the words on the page. Look at his works. It's kind of like an art critic.

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I think that we've got to stare at the works of Jesus like a fine art critic looks at a Mona Lisa. So that we can see every detail and all the richness and all the beauty.

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I think we're supposed to see and savor how good the works of Christ are like someone at a

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Michelin star restaurant tasting something that they've never tasted before for the first time in their life. I'm going to stop because I don't want us to get hungry.

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This might go a while. To the degree that we know Jesus's works will be to the degree that we know him.

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You cannot know Jesus and you cannot grow in Jesus if you don't know the works that Jesus did.

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The whole gospel is about that. John 20 31 is a purpose statement. It says, but these things have been written so that you may believe that Jesus is the

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Christ the son of God and that by believing in him you may have life in his name. His works were recorded specifically by John to teach us about his humanity.

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He's relatable because he's human. He's just like us. He suffered like us. He got hungry like us.

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He slept and ate and did all the things that we do. And we can believe that he's relatable to us because he's human but he's far more than that.

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He is God in the flesh who's come. His works reveal his divinity and his works also give us life.

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We have life in God because of the works that Jesus Christ did culminating in all of its fullness at the cross.

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Without the cross there is no life. His works testify to who he is. Now, what

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I want us to do today, that's a little bit of a preamble. What I want us to do today is

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I want us to dive deep into this text. I don't want us to wallow in the kiddie pool of this text.

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I don't want us to skim the surface. I want us to put on the scuba diving gear and I want us to get down into the depths and see the richness of this so that we will know him and so that we will enjoy him.

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I want us to take the fine art critic approach and stare at this passage for a little while because I'm telling you when you see what's going on inside this passage, it is breathtaking.

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I want to do this for the first reason because I want you to have an encounter with Jesus Christ. I don't want you to have a surface level experience with Christ.

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So we're not going to have a surface level approach to the word of Christ. The second thing, the reason

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I'm hitting this so hard is because in modern evangelicalism,

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I have heard far too many pastors, churches, bible teachers do great injustice to the passage that we're going to be talking about today.

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And maybe you're like, I didn't read ahead. I don't know what passage we're going to be talking about today. It's John 6.

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It's the miraculous feeding of 5 ,000 people where Jesus takes five loaves and two fish and he multiplies that so that 5 ,000 men along with their wives, their children, their widows, their single women, their single men, roughly 20 ,000 people are going to eat based off of a single snack.

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Again, it's very likely that if you counted up the number of people who are going to eat this meal with Jesus, it's 20 ,000 people.

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And as we will see, Jesus is not just feeding them so that they can be uncomfortably full, the kind of full that we get on Thanksgiving, you know, where you scratch your belly and you can't even do two plus two because your brain isn't working anymore.

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I didn't feel that until I was 32. When I was in my 20s, I could eat and I could eat again. It's like Chinese food, eat 10 minutes later.

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Not anymore. Jesus doesn't just feed them until they're full.

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He feeds them until there's an overabundance. 12 baskets additional are going to be gathered.

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This is an awesome story of God's amazing grace to some hungry people. Yes. It's an incredible story of Jesus multiplying physical elements.

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Yes. It's one of the most recognizable miracles in all the gospel. It is the only miracle that shows up in all four gospels.

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It's the only one. But too many pastors have abused this text. And they've made this text about you and I getting out our fish and chips and praying

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God will multiply it or that God will take our happy meal and turn it into a catered feast. This passage is not about us.

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This passage is about the revelation of who Christ is and not about us trying to manipulate

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Jesus into doing some sort of miracle at will for us. This passage is testifying to who

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Christ is. And if we have the wrong exegesis, if we have the wrong hermeneutic, if we have the wrong lens on which we're looking at this text, we're going to miss it.

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We're going to miss it. We're going to have a shallow reading of it. I don't want that for us. We're not the point of this miracle.

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Jesus is not looking past his 12 disciples 2 ,000 years into the future to a church in Chelmsford, Massachusetts and saying, you guys are the point.

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No. The point is Christ. He's the point of this text. To do or say otherwise can be one of the most disrespectful interpretations that I could imagine of this text.

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I've actually heard pastors say, don't worry. If all you've got today is your five dollars and your two shiny coins, just like the five loaves of bread and two fish, put it in the offering plate because God will multiply it and he'll send you a blessing.

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That's evil. That is wicked. That is not what this passage is about.

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The Bible is not a hammer to beat the people of God over the head with. The Bible is revelation of Jesus Christ.

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Now, I hit this really hardly because I don't think

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I've ever heard a sermon like I'm going to preach today. That's okay. I'm not special. It's everywhere in the evangelical church.

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The Bible is about me. Every passage is about my situation. I want to show you a different way today.

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Okay. I want to show you how this passage is all about Christ. So now if you will turn with me,

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John 6, 1 through 13. After these things,

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Jesus went away to the other side of the sea of Galilee. A large crowd followed him because they saw the signs which he was performing on those who were sick.

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Then Jesus went up to the mountain and there he sat down with his disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of the

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Jews, was near. Therefore Jesus, lifting up his eyes and seeing that a large crowd was coming to him, he said to Philip, Where are we to buy bread so that these people may eat?

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This he was saying to them to test him for he himself knew what he was intending to do.

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Philip answered him and said 200 denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them for everyone to receive even a little.

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

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Jesus said, Have the people sit down. Now there was much grass in the place, so the men sit down and number about 5 ,000.

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Jesus took the loaves and having giving thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. Likewise also of the fish as much as they wanted.

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And when they were filled, he said to the disciples, Gather up the leftover fragments so that nothing will be lost. So they gathered them up.

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They filled 12 baskets full of the fragments from the barley loaves which were left over by those who had eaten.

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This is God's word. Let's pray. Lord, I pray that this passage today will give us a vision of who you are.

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Lord, I pray that you will allow us to look past ourselves, past our situations and our brokenness and our sin and our failure, our momentary fleeting joys.

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Jesus, I pray you would allow it to let us see you. Lord, I pray that you would allow us to let us see that you are holding all of scripture from Genesis to Revelation together.

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And that Lord even beyond that, the cord of your grace extends out from scripture to us and connects us to the redemptive story of God.

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Lord, I pray that we would see you today, that we would see that your works reveal who you are and that Lord we would rejoice in who you are.

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It's in Christ's name we pray. Amen. We're going to see four wonderful truths today in this passage.

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We're going to see that Jesus is the God of the exodus. I'm talking about the book of the exodus and I'm also talking about the event of the exodus.

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We're going to see that Jesus is the God who tests his people. We're going to see that Jesus is the

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God who feeds his people. And we're going to see that Jesus is the God who always overgives to his people.

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Now before we do that, we got to set the scene. John says after these things. After these things means after the events of chapter five.

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And when John does this, he means to tell us that there's a gap in time. I'm not going to spend a ton of time here, but there's a gap in time that happens between John 5 and John 6.

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And for a moment, we'll just explore about how much that is because John is not attempting to tell us everything about Jesus.

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If he did, there wouldn't be enough room in all the books in the world, he says. He's telling us specific things about Jesus. He's hand -selecting things about Jesus that are so important that he has to tell them to us.

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So John 5. We heard, sorry, I'm going to start with John 2. John 2 was

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Passover. We know that Passover happens once per year. John 6 says that there was the second

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Passover. So at a minimum, from John 2, 3, and 4, which are a unit, to John 6, there's a year gap.

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John 5, though, tells us that Jesus had to go back to Jerusalem. The only reason a

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Jewish male would have to go back to Jerusalem is because they would have to go to one of the high feasts.

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And John doesn't mention that it's Passover. So that means that it's a feast in the middle of the worship calendar.

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You have a Passover in John 2, a Passover in John 6, and one of the feasts in the middle is where John 5 happens.

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So about six months is the gap that is between John 5 and John 6. Does that make sense?

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You're not going to get to heaven and your salvation hinge on this fact, but it's interesting information, right?

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Maybe. I think it's interesting. Now, a lot can happen in six months with Jesus.

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John doesn't record any of it. If you want to look at some of the things that happen, go to Matthew, Mark, and Luke. They record it. It's likely the

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Sermon on the Mount happened in this particular time frame. There's other things that happen. John's not telling us about it.

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He wants us to see this. And he wants us to see it with such clarity that we see the depth of it.

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You guys remember? I'm a child of the 80s. There's these things called audio stereograms.

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A better way to say it's the magic eye books where you stare at it. These it's an audio stereogram.

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It'll give you a you get to win a a bet with that word. It's a great word. But it has two -dimensional patterns.

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And if you stare at it long enough, I was never able to do this. I felt like I broke blood vessels in my temple trying to do this, but I was never able to do this.

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But if you apparently if you stare at it long enough, a three -dimensional image will show up.

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Maybe someone can testify to this. I don't know. It's real then. This is the same kind of thing that's happening in John 6.

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There's a picture within a picture here. And if you stare at John 6 long enough, you'll get to see how

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Jesus is the God of the exodus. The events of John 6 are not just the events of John 6.

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Jesus is reenacting the story of Israel in the book of Exodus in this passage. Now, maybe you're saying the word exodus doesn't show up here.

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Pharaoh doesn't show up here. Slavery doesn't show up here. Water's parting doesn't show up here.

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How can you possibly tell me that this passage is about Jesus being the God of the exodus? Well, I would say just because those terms aren't mentioned doesn't mean that the theme isn't there.

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So if you will, I'd like to go through the story of the exodus and I'd like to show you the theme.

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We'll talk about a general theme of the exodus, then we'll point it to John 6, and I think you'll see it. The exodus started.

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It was kicked off by the first Passover, Exodus 14. After that Passover, God struck down the firstborn son of Pharaoh.

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The people left Egypt. They followed Moses, the miracle working prophet that God raised up to deliver them. And they followed him to this massive body of water called the

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Red Sea. The water parted, they walked on dry land, and they walked to the mountain of God.

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And when they got to the mountain of God, Moses sat down and taught them the law of God. That's Exodus 20 all the way through the first part of the book of Numbers.

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And he taught them what it means to be the people of God. After they learned about the law,

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Moses and the people set off on a journey. And that journey was supposed to take them to the border of the land of promise.

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They were sending spies. The spies were to come back and then they were to go in and take over the land. But we know that that did not happen because the people refused to believe in God.

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And they refused to trust God. They refused to trust him with water. They refused to trust him with bread.

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And they refused to trust him that he would help them go into the land. They said these people look like giants. And we look like grasshoppers.

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They were thinking about how big the people were, not how big their God was. And as a punishment for their sin and their failure, they had to wander.

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I don't know how to say this word. You can ask Derek what I'm actually trying to say. I'm using the one with the A. I'm from the south. I'm saying wandering around the wilderness.

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They're not thinking in the wilderness. They're wandering. Derek makes fun of me. I don't know how to say this word. And they had to wander in the wilderness for 40 years.

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And every single one of them perished there in the land. None of them got to enter the promised land.

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Now God in his amazing grace did not abandon them. He did not forsake them.

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He rained down bread from heaven called manna. He gave them water.

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He provided every single step of the way in some of the most beautiful ways for this sinful people.

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Now, of course, there's elements of the exodus that we could elaborate on. Maybe there's parts that I haven't mentioned, but that's a general story of what happened in the exodus.

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Now, let's look at John 6. John 6 is kicked off of the Passover, just like in the book of Exodus.

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It says the Passover was near. We see the people released from the city where the tyrant king was serving.

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Not Pharaoh. This is in Egypt. But it wasn't the Davidic king. It wasn't the son of David.

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It was Herod, the one who tried to kill Jesus when he was a child. This is now his son. Just like Pharaoh tried to kill

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Moses when he was a child. You have a tyrant king that the people are leaving in John 5 and they're heading towards a mountain, just like the people did in Exodus.

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What does it say? It says that after these things, Jesus went away to the other side of the sea.

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The miracle working man that God raised up to free his people from their sins is leading them away from the tyrant king past the sea to a mountain.

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This is not coincidence. Now, maybe you're thinking, okay, that's circumstantial evidence. Okay, that's fine.

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I'll continue to prove it to you. I thought that was funny. I wasn't being aggressive with you.

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I love you. The people who are following Jesus are just like the people of Israel.

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They're not following Jesus just like the people weren't following Moses because they knew God. They were following based off the signs that he was performing.

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These people are the same people who are going to turn on Jesus and crucify him. Same people, same kind of people like Moses was leading where they grumbled against him.

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All the basic elements are there. John 6, 3 is where Jesus leads them to a mountain. In the Sebonoptic Gospels, Matthew, Mark, and Luke, Jesus sits them down and he teaches them the law of God on the mountain.

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Just like Moses. If you're keeping score here, in both events, the

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Exodus and John 6, Passover happens. They leave a tyrant king. They pass by a sea.

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They follow a chosen leader by God who performs miraculous signs and wonders. They're led to a mountain of God's own choosing and they're taught the law of God.

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I think John is telling us something here. But if that's not enough to convince you, that's okay.

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I'm going to give you three more lines of evidence and that will be our three points in this sermon.

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That Jesus is going to, like God in the Exodus, test his people. That Jesus, like God in the Exodus, is going to feed his people.

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And that Jesus, like God in the Exodus, is going to out give his people. So let's look at the first point. Jesus is the

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God who tests his people. Now, I don't know if you know this, but God is the one who tested his people in the wilderness.

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They tested him 10 different times and because of their testing, they were not allowed to live in the land of promise.

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It says in Numbers 14, or 22 through 23, Surely all men, all mankind, who has seen my glory and has seen my signs, which

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I performed in Egypt and in the wilderness, yet you have put me to the test these 10 times, and you have not listened to my voice.

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You shall by no means see the land which I swore to your fathers, nor shall any of you who spurned me see it.

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They tested God. They put God to the test. And like I said earlier, we don't put God to the test because we are not in the position to test

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God. Testing God is considered one of the most wicked things that you can do in the Bible because we who are so frail are looking to the infinite and holy

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God and questioning him. We have no right. But the same rules do not apply to God.

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God who is infinite and holy and awesome and perfect can look at you and I who are broken and frail and he can test us.

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It says that he tests the people of Israel. He explains this to them in Deuteronomy 8.

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He says after all of those wicked generation had died and after all of them were buried in the sand,

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God explains to the new generation why he tested them. And I think it's beautiful. Deuteronomy 8, 11 through 17 says,

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Beware that you do not forget the Lord your God by not keeping his commandments and his ordinances and his statues, which

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I am commanding you today. Otherwise, when you have eaten and are satisfied and have built good houses and lived in them and when your herds and your flocks multiply and your silver and your gold multiply and that all that you have multiplies, that's a sign of God's blessing, then your heart will become proud and you will forget the

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Lord your God who brought you up out of the land of Egypt out of the house of slavery. He led you through the great and terrible wilderness with his fiery serpents and scorpions and thirsty ground where there was no water.

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He brought water for you out of the rock of Flint. In the wilderness, he fed you manna, which your fathers did not know that he might humble you and that he might test you to do good for you in the end.

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Otherwise, you may say my heart, my power, my strength, my hand have made me this wealth.

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You see the natural proclivity, the untested human heart is to seize glory for ourselves.

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When we go untested, we end up looking at our money, our possessions, and everything that we own and we say that's mine.

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I did that. I accomplished that. I worked hard. I got that. We end up believing that our power, our strength, our ability, our creativity, our might is what got us the things that we have and it is

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God's unbelievable grace in our life that he would break that cycle of foolishness and pride and he would test us.

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The defect in our personalities cannot handle blessing. This is why the word faith gospel cannot work because the assumption is that in the atonement of Jesus, you will live every day blessed, every day healed, every day wealthy, every day successful, every day happy.

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We have record of thousands of years of failure where every time Israel was blessed, they fail.

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And every time you and I, when we live in perpetual blessings, we end up turning the focus off of God and turning the focus onto ourselves and we end up worshiping us.

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So God puts us through the ringer. God wounds us because he loves us.

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God uses his testing of us for his glory and for our good. Now, let's see what

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John 6 says because God we see tests his people. What does Jesus do?

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Just like God tests the 12 tribes of Israel, Jesus is testing 12 disciples.

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It says in verses 5 and 6, This Jesus was saying to what?

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Test him. For he himself knew what he was intending to do. That word's not accidental there.

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We've seen the theme. God tested in the exodus. Jesus is testing now because he's

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God of the exodus. This is intentional. His works are showcasing who he believes that he is and he believes that he is

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God. So he is testing his people as God. Look again at what

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Moses says in Deuteronomy 8. In the wilderness, he fed you manna, which your fathers did not know that he might humble you that he might test you and then he might do good for you in the end.

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Jesus is testing his disciples so that they would not believe that they can do his work in their flesh.

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Jesus did not want his disciples to believe that they could do the things that he had called them to do with their creativity and their might and their strength.

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They have to rely on the spirit of God. We cannot serve God in the flesh. The things that God has called us to do we cannot do unless Jesus, unless God helps us do those things.

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He creates a problem that none of them could fix. 20 ,000 people. He has a crowd of people so massive no one could feed them, so expensive no one could have afforded it.

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Philip is kind of like the banker of the group. He responds, he's the first one to respond.

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Only two actually respond. And they're the two that really don't usually talk in the gospel. So you can tell

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Peter was really bummed out because he didn't say anything. That's very rare for Peter. I identify with that.

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I can be impulsive. Philip says 200 denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them for everyone to receive a little.

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200 denarii is 200 days wages for a minimum wage worker who worked in the field. In America, roughly $24 ,000 so everyone could get a medium -sized bite.

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Think about the fact that every single one of them were not only fed, they were full and there were 12 baskets left and you come up with a meal that's over $100 ,000 maybe in modern money.

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These men had pennies to their name. They were thinking this is ridiculous,

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Jesus. Why would you even suggest this, Jesus? We can't do this.

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That's exactly where Jesus wanted them to be. He didn't want them to be thinking, okay, we can figure this out. He wanted them to come to the conclusion that you can't figure this out.

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If you're going to serve me, you've got to rely on me. Second man responds,

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Andrew, and he says there's a lad here. We're going to stick with that interpretation, but that could mean young man who's not married.

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He could be in his 20s. He could be in his teens. He could be pre -teen. We don't know. The word lad just means a young man who's not married.

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He has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are these? For so many people.

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Now because of the crowd of preachers who have preached this text and said Andrew is having faith. Andrew is bringing this offering to Jesus.

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He's saying, Jesus, here we have a happy meal. I know that you can do something with it. I know that you can multiply it.

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I know that you can do this. And he gives it to him and he trusts him and he multiplies it. I don't think that's where Andrew's at because Andrew is looking at the absurdity of the situation and saying we have five loaves of bread.

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Not loaves, cakes. We have two little fish. What are these for so many people?

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That's what he's saying. He's not coming with faith. He's not saying, I'm going to say this in my

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King James language and voice. Lord, I knowest thou my portion that I bring to thy hand so little, but yet I know,

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Lord, thou mayest multiply it for thine own glory. No, that's not what he's saying. He's saying, are you kidding me?

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We have five pieces of bread. We have five crumbs and a couple minnows. What are we going to do with that,

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Jesus? We have a five dollar box from the Galilean fried chicken. That's it. Maybe, maybe less than that.

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Andrew, like Philip, was stunned that Jesus would even ask the question. You know, it seems prudent.

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Why not send them home? Why not just send them home? Jesus had fasted for 40 days and he didn't die.

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What's it going to be if they skip a meal? You know what I'm saying? Like, just send them home. They've got food in their cupboards.

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Why does Jesus have to do this? Now, I know like if I keep going on long enough, we will get to a level of hangry that I can understand.

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Maybe Jesus is being practical here, but I don't think so. I think that he's doing this to showcase his glory. His works showcase who he is.

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He doesn't want his disciples living with the fact that they had a great idea where they sent everybody home and they figured it out.

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He wants them to live in the fact that they are incapable of doing what he's asked them to do unless he provides the power of God.

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Their natural can only take them so far and he is going to have to meet that with his supernatural. That's what

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God is going to try to show these people today. He has to do this. John has to include this because we cannot live with the assumption that we can serve

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God without God's help. And Jesus is doing this because he's acting like God.

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He's the God who tests his people just like God in the exodus. Jesus is testing them.

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He's showing them that they cannot do it without his help. Now, let me just say a word about testing really quickly.

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The point of a test is not to pass it. I wish that's how it worked in middle school.

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I wish that's how it worked in college. It doesn't. The point of God's testing is not for you to pass.

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The point of God's test is for you to realize where you are leaning on your own strength.

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The point of it is for you to fail so that you can get your focus off of you and get your focus on to God.

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The point of God's testing is to reveal to you where you need repentance. If you fight it, you're just going to prolong the lesson.

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You are meant to see that you are incapable and unable and turn to God and say, I've been making this all about me,

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God. It's not about me. It's about you. That's what a biblical test is meant to show us.

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It's not about bringing your two fish and your two loaves and he's going to multiply it like you've got a mortgage payment due and if you just donate 25 bucks to the church, you're going to be able to make your bills.

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It's not that. I mean, I hope you give to the church. That's great, but that's not why you do it.

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God brings testing to elicit an awareness of our limitation. That's it. Now, this is especially relevant for us today.

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I think for a long time in America, the church of Jesus Christ has had to focus on God.

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You think back in the days of Jonathan Edwards and the days of George Whitefield and the days of the great missionary endeavors where William Carey and the

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Baptist missions and the Hudson Taylors and all of these great men who were sent out to evangelize the world for Christ and God gave

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America a lamp stand in those days. God did give America a place to be a beacon of light to the nations.

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But at some point, I'm not going to give you a year, at some point we turned in on ourselves and we started making it all about us and I think that we're entering into a season of testing.

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And I think that we're entering into that season of testing for God's good, for our good, for his glory.

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We are not meant as the church to adopt every pagan practice of the world in order to reach the world.

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Our posture towards God is to know that we can't do this without him and to know that only

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God can do the things that he's called us to do and we must not make this about us. We must not make this about what we can do because if we do, that's when we will fail.

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I believe that the American church is being awakened out of their slumber by testing.

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It's not hard to look and find it. We just walked through a pandemic. We just walked through a crazy election year.

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I don't care what side of the aisle you're on. It was crazy. He's winnowing us.

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God is sovereign. There is nothing that happens. God's not up in heaven saying, Huh? I'm surprised that that happened.

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Where was I on that one? God's in control.

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Everything that we're going through today is because God has allowed it to happen. And he's allowed it to happen for our good and his glory.

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It's okay that we're being tested. I want to reframe a Christian who gets upset when bad things happen to them.

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Bad things happen to you because God's sovereign. He's allowed it to happen to you and maybe it's so that you will focus on him. And maybe it's for your good.

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You walk into a doctor's office and you get diagnosed with cancer. That doesn't feel good. But at least you have a diagnosis so that you can now work towards your healing.

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God allows bad things to happen to us for our good. So we won't make it about us.

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So we'll make it all about him. Jesus is testing his disciples for that purpose. I think

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God is testing us for that purpose today. Now, spend more time on that. That's only a fourth out of six points.

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I think we should maybe we should move forward. The next point is that Jesus not only tests his people, he is the one who feeds his people.

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He's like God in the exodus who feeds his people. I'm not going to cover this for very long, but Jesus is just like God who rained down bread from heaven and fed his people.

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This is Jesus who is recreating this miracle for his disciples and for these 20 ,000 people.

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I want you to take this into consideration. Jesus fed the entire population of Wilmington, Massachusetts with a snack.

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He is showcasing who he is. He is showcasing what his works are telling about him is that he is

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God. This is how John describes it. Jesus said, have the people sit down.

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And now there was much grass in that place. So the men sat down in numbers about 5 ,000. And remember, we said that there's about 20 ,000 total people.

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And then Jesus took the loaves and having given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. Likewise to the fish, he did the same.

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I want you to imagine the scene. The same God who spoke and the oceans were filled with fish is the same

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God who spoke over these fish and they were multiplied in order to feed these 20 ,000 people. Jesus is showing us that he is

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God. The same God who rained bread down from heaven is the same

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God who multiplied bread on this plate so the 12 baskets were left over. Jesus is showcasing that he is

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God. The final point I want us to see is that Jesus is like God in the fact that he outgives his people.

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He outgives us. In the Exodus story, they didn't have too little.

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They didn't have too much. They had just enough. It says in Exodus 16, 18. When they measured it, that's the manna, the bread from heaven, the one who had gathered much did not have too much and the one who had gathered little did not have too little.

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Everyone gathered as much as he would eat. That is showing us a character trait about God. He loves his people enough to where he gives them exactly what they need.

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It even says in another passage in the Sabbath that God told them to keep the Sabbath holy, which means don't work on the

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Sabbath. So here's the problem. They can't eat on the Sabbath because they can't go gather bread. So what does

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God do? He could have told them, you're all right. You don't have to eat every day.

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I went through a phase of my life where I did a weekly fast. I lived. I could have fasted more.

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I don't think that was the point. The point was God was going to show them his grace, his mercy.

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What did he do? On Friday, right before the Sabbath, he gave them a double portion. They went out and they were able to gather two days worth of bread because God overgives.

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He outgives us. He gives more than we could ever ask or imagine and he did it with regularity every

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Friday. There was a double portion of bread. In the same way,

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Jesus is not giving too little. Jesus is out giving these men, these women, these children who don't deserve it.

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He gave them so much that they were so full that they couldn't eat another bite and 12 baskets were full. This is

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Jesus showing us that he is God, the same God who did all these miracles in the exodus.

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When they were filled, he said to the disciples, gather up the leftovers so that nothing will be lost. So they gathered up 12 baskets.

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Now, we've covered a lot of material. I want to apply this now to us because what

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Jesus is doing, if you think about it, it's kind of like a beautiful carpet. You turn it around and it looks ugly on the back.

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There's all these strings that are mangled together and they're connected all over the place. But on the front you see this beautiful picture.

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What Jesus has done is he has just told us in John 5 that God has given him works to do, meaning

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God told Jesus to come and reenact the exodus story for his people. And from our perspective, because we're just trying to figure it all out, there's some over here in Exodus, there's some over here in John, there's some in Deuteronomy.

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It looks like strings all over the place that are connecting the entire biblical narrative together, but he is creating a picture of his redemption and his plan that will ultimately spill out of the pages of the

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Bible and will work its way down to you and I. And this passage does have relevance to our life, not in the way that I've heard it preached my entire life, but it has relevance in our life.

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And I want to share that with you now so that we can revel in the God that we're seeing in these pages. He's the

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God of the exodus, meaning that just like God rescued his people from their taskmasters, you and I served a far worse taskmaster than Egypt.

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You and I were enslaved to a far worse enemy than Pharaoh. From the moment we were born, we were enslaved in our sin.

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Our taskmaster was Satan himself, and Jesus is the greater Moses who comes and frees us from our slavery.

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That's how this passage has relevance to us because he's the same yesterday, today, and forever. He's the God of the exodus for them and he's the

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God of the exodus for us. He rescues us from our sin. And what does he do? He leads us to the waters of baptism.

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So when the waters part and you and I go down into the water, we come up new creations. We walk on dry ground and we follow the

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Spirit of God to where? The promised land. In the Bible, there is a theme that happens that the people of God who've been indwelled by the

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Spirit of God are walking to where? New Jerusalem. The new heavens and the new earth.

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Just like the people of Israel were led by the Spirit to Canaan, we're being led by the Spirit to heaven.

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There's no wilderness that we can't face. There's no desert that we can't cross because we have the same

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Spirit of God that led them, not external to us, now internal to us. Jesus has deposited the

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Spirit of God in you just like he did for the people in the exodus. He led us to a mountain.

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What mountain did he lead us to? He led us to the mountain of Calvary. Instead of like Moses did where he stood on the mountain and he taught the people the law of God, Jesus walked up the mountain.

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And he was crucified on the mountain so that the law of God can now be written in here in my heart.

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Jesus accomplished redemption for us at a mountain, mountain of Calvary. And along the way,

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Jesus is going to test us. We're in a season right now, I believe it. It's a season of testing.

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Jesus is going to test us because he wants good for us. And Jesus is going to feed us.

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Jesus has not left us hungry. Jesus has outgiven us. What do we have that Jesus did not give us?

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What have we earned that Jesus didn't infinitely do more on the cross? Jesus is the

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God of the exodus who frees us, who leads us, who feeds us, who tests us, and who outgives us with his grace and his mercy.

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And we now are the people of God because of what Christ has done. That is how we apply this passage.

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And here's the way I want to charge you as we leave. Do not let this life get you discouraged.

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It's easy. Information is being pumped into your homes faster than I've ever seen it before in my lifetime.

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Last night, I was given over a little bit to frustration because of what's going on in this country. I'm going to be honest with you.

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Do not lose heart. Do not. God is in control.

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He's done all this for you, and he's not the God who's going to forget you or abandon you. Walk out of here with your head held high because Jesus Christ is for you.

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He's proved it and demonstrated it on the cross. Amen? Let's pray. Lord Jesus, thank you so much for this passage, for all of its richness, for all of its beauty, for all of its complexity, for all of its depth.

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Lord God, thank you by your spirit that as I was studying this passage you you showed these things to me.

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Lord, I didn't just look at it and get it. You had to show it to me, and I know you showed it to me because you wanted to show it to your people.

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Lord, I pray that this would not just be an exercise in academics. It would not just be an exercise in futility.

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It would not just be an exercise in morality where we come and we sit and we do our church thing and we go home. Lord God, I pray you would write this message on our hearts that you are in control and that if you test us, it's for our good.

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And that we can trust you and that we can love you and we can follow you because you have good plans for us.

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And there is no one here who is, if they are in Christ, that they're ever going to be separated from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus.

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Neither height nor depth nor anything in all of creation can separate us from the love of God.

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Lord, write that message on our heart. Give us confidence in that message and Lord, let it make our hearts sing.