Jesus Feeds Far More Than 5,000

Mark 6:30–44 and the Feeding of the Five Thousand

Welcome to the teaching ministry of Kungsvinger Lutheran Church. Kungsvinger is a beacon for the gospel of Jesus Christ and is located on the plains of northwestern Minnesota. We proclaim Christ and Him crucified for our sins and salvation by grace through faith alone.

And now, here's a message from Pastor Chris Roseberg.

The Holy Gospel according to St. Mark, chapter 6, verses 30 through 44. The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to Him all they had done and taught. Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, He said to them, Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.

So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place. But many saw them leaving, recognized them, and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When Jesus landed and saw the large crowd, He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

So He began teaching them many things. By this time, it was late in the day, so His disciples came to Him. This is a remote place, they said, and it's already very late. Send the people away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.

But He answered, You give them something to eat. And they said to Him, That would take eight months of a man's wages. Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat? How many loaves do you have? He asked.

Go and see. And when they found out, they said, Five and two fish. Then Jesus directed them to have all the people sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties, taking the five loaves and the two fish.

And looking up to heaven, He gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then He gave them to the disciples and set before the people. He also divided the two fish among them. They all ate and were satisfied. And the disciples picked up the twelve baskets full of broken pieces of bread and fish.

False Explanations of the Miracle and the Claim that Jesus Is God

The number of men who had eaten was five thousand. In the name of Jesus. Amen. Alright, so the liberals are flat out wrong in their explanation of the text that we just read. So notice I'm coming out swinging.

Yeah, the liberals, they tell us that the reason why Jesus was able to multiply fishes is because, well, John gives us this little detail in John 6, verses 8 -9. One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, There's a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish.

But what are they for so many? So we learn from the Gospel of John that there was a little boy who brought a sack of lunch. And the way the liberals explain this, and by the way, liberals deny that miracles are possible, which is ridiculous.

But they deny, they know for sure God can't perform miracles because all the philosophers say that natural law, there's these laws of the universe and they can't be broken. Really, how do they know they can't be broken?

Is somebody going to give God a speeding ticket for performing a miracle? Will he spend time in prison if he breaks the laws of physics? But they claim miracles are not possible, so their explanation goes something like this.

Well, you see, there was this little boy who brought his sack lunch. And unbeknownst to Jesus' disciples, everybody also brought coolers and picnic baskets, and they were hiding them. And you see, they were hiding them because they didn't want to share.

And so here comes this little boy with his sack lunch, and he says something like, Hey, Mr. Apostle, I've got five loaves and two fishes I can share. And then everybody felt so guilty because this little boy gave up his sack lunch that out come the coolers, out come the picnic baskets.

And it's the miracle, not of Jesus multiplying loaves and fishes, it's the miracle of everybody learning how to share, which is not a miracle at all. And then they go on to say, oftentimes, and this tells us that we need to reject capitalism, which is all about selfishness, and embrace communism instead.

Yeah. I wish I was making that up. And I will not ask you to raise your hand, but I know there are some in this congregation who have heard this text preached that way. So I won't out you, though. Now, let me point you to our bulletin.

In our bulletin, I have reproduced for you a 4th century hymn on the Trinity, which was written by Prudentius, a Latin poet and hymn writer. And I want you to see what he does with this text in so many verses.

Five loaves and fishes, two he orders placed, as food before the people thronging round their master, by their hunger undeterred, who, mindful not of food, forgot their towns, their forts, their markets, hamlets, trading posts, and cities glad to feed upon his words.

The fest of gathering swarms upon the plain. By hundreds they recline in friendly bands, and round the countless boards they arrange themselves to dine on two small fish and scanty crusts. He multiplies.

Know now that he is God. Know now that he is God. This miracle proves that Jesus is God. It absolutely does, because remember, who was it that fed the children of Israel in the wilderness? Ah, yeah, that guy.

God, right? And we learn from Paul in 1 Corinthians that it was Jesus himself who fed the people of Israel in the wilderness. So this takes place in a desolate region, in the wilderness, if you would.

And so Jesus feeds the 5 ,000, and that proves he's God. So all the liberals out there who deny that miracles are possible, by saying that Jesus didn't multiply the fishes, that nothing miraculous happened except for a bunch of people took out their coolers that they were hiding and started sharing their food, well, they're in a sense denying that Jesus is God in human flesh, but that's exactly who he claimed to be.

Jesus, by the way, was not a Galilean boy scout who liked to help little old ladies walk across the Sea of Galilee. He was none other than God in human flesh. Now, there is another way of reading this today, that evangelicals who do not deny the miraculous rob Jesus of his divinity, and the reason why they do this, or how they do this, is they take this text, and it's not about popularity, if you would.

Their explanation is that, well, Jesus divvied up, broke a little bit of the five loaves, put them in baskets, cut up the fish, made it into sushi or something, I'm not sure, put that in the baskets, and then told the disciples to go out and distribute the food.

And, of course, they were looking at the baskets going, well, this is not enough to feed 5 ,000 people. What are we supposed to do here, Lord? And so they would go up, and they would go up to one guy in the crowd and say, here, take some.

Don't take a lot. This isn't going to go very far. And no sooner does the person grab a piece of bread or a piece of fish that it begins to multiply in the baskets. And so the reason this happened was because, well, the apostles stepped out in audacious faith, and it was their audacious faith that caused this miracle to happen.

To which I basically say, did you people take basic reading comprehension in fourth grade? Because those details are found nowhere in the text. That's all hogwash. So the text says, and we just read it, and he, Jesus, divided the two fish among them all.

Who did the dividing? Miraculously, Jesus did. So Jesus gets all the glory. Not the little kid with the sack lunch, not all these people who secretly brought their coolers and shared with each other, and not even the apostles who supposedly stepped out in audacious faith and as a result of this miracle happened.

No, Jesus is the one who gets all the credit. And I would remind those who would twist God's word in this way and to rob Jesus of his glory, that the Lord, Yahweh, through the prophet Jeremiah, had some pretty strong words to those shepherds who scatter Christ's sheep.

Here's what it says. Woe to the shepherds who destroy and scatter the sheep of my pastor. And how do they do this? Through false doctrine. Woe to them, declares the Lord. Therefore, as thus says Yahweh, the God of Israel, concerning the shepherds who care for my people, you have scattered my flock.

You have driven them away. You have not attended to them. Behold, I will attend to you for your evil deeds, declares the Lord. Word of warning for those shepherds who don't want to shepherd God's flock, who want to twist his words and rob him of his deity.

By teaching false doctrine, you scatter Christ's sheep. By denying that miracles are possible, you end up literally teaching people not to trust Jesus but to doubt him. And that's a very terrible thing to be teaching people.

And so I would warn them. Christ here, through the prophet Jeremiah, says that God will attend to them for their evil deeds. And if they do not want to have to give an accounting for their false doctrine, they need to repent and to be forgiven.

And then bear fruit in keeping with repentance by teaching God's word straight and proclaiming Christ from every passage. By the way, this miracle, we're going to now kind of go back to our text. All of that was preface.

We're going to go back to our text. This miracle, there's one very similar to it in the Old Testament, a little known, a little heralded miracle. It's found in 2 Kings 4, verses 42 -44. And so you'll notice here, if you haven't read this about the prophet Elijah, here's what it says.

A man from Baal, Shalisha, bringing the man of God bread of the first fruits, 20 loaves of barley and fresh years of grain in his sack. And Elisha said, give to the men that they may eat. Elisha had a company of prophets that he kept company with, if you would.

And there were a hundred of them. But 20 loaves of barley and some years of grain, that's not going to go very far between a hundred men. So his servant said, how can I set this before a hundred men? Elisha repeated, give them to the men they may eat.

For thus says Yahweh, they shall eat and have some left. So he set it before them, and they ate, and they had some left, according to the word of the Lord. Notice, with God, there's always leftovers, which is great.

Because, you know, don't you guys love leftovers? Like Chinese food leftovers. Pizza leftovers. I mean, cold pizza, that's just fantastic. So God is always giving you abundantly more, in a sense. If you think of it, we read in our psalm that our cup runneth over.

What a wonderful thing. So God is the one who not only takes care of our needs, but he gives us leftovers to boot. And we see this in the Old Testament, parallel, if you would, to this miracle, which again is pointing to Christ's deity.

Because who can multiply food except for God himself? So let's return to our Gospel text. I'm going to be reading it from the ESV. You can follow along with your pew Bible. Here's what it says. The apostles returned to Jesus, told him all that they had done, and taught.

Remember, Jesus sent the apostles out on a training ministry mission, if you would. Gave them authority over demons and over sicknesses, and they went out and preached repentance, performed miracles, and if anyone wouldn't receive them, Jesus said, shake the dust off your feet and move on to the next town.

You're not going to waste your time changing the message or trying to continue to talk to those who have hardened their hearts against the Spirit in his word of repentance. So the disciples come back and they report everything to Jesus.

And of course, after spending that time doing ministry, they're tired. And notice that Jesus cares for them. He said to them, come away by yourselves to a desolate place, is what the text says, a desolate place, and rest for a while.

For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate, it says, desolate place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and so they ran there on foot.

They could figure out, it's like, okay, Jesus got in a boat with his disciples. They're heading that way. Oh, we know where they're going. And they ran on foot to get there first. So they ran there on foot from all the towns.

They got there ahead of them. When they went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. The Greek there for compassion means his guts were wrenched.

He literally had a gut-wrenching compassion for them. And it says because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Now keep in mind, they had a governor. They had a Roman emperor. They had synagogue rulers and leaders.

It's not like they were leaderless. But despite the fact they had political leaders and synagogue rulers and even Pharisees teaching them, it says they were like sheep without a shepherd. And so Jesus, the good shepherd, tends to them, which recalls our psalm, The Lord is my shepherd, and I shall not want.

He makes me lie down in green pastures. Notice how the text from the psalm says he makes me lie down in green pastures. This, in a sense, the psalm prophetically points to this miracle that we're looking at.

So Jesus began to teach them many things, the text says. By the way, this is what shepherds do. They teach. And remember, man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

So the way in which God's shepherds tend to God's sheep is through preaching and teaching God's word because man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God. So Jesus, the good shepherd, what does he do?

He teaches. He feeds them God's words. How so? Well, he's God in human flesh. When Jesus speaks, everything he says is the word of God, is it not? And so notice here that Jesus doesn't tend to their bodily needs first.

He tends to their spiritual needs first. There are a lot of people today who embrace what's called the social gospel, and they are of the mistaken opinion that you can't preach the gospel to somebody who's in need, physical want, unless you first meet their physical need.

Jesus did this all backwards. Clearly he wasn't listening to the guys out there promoting the social gospel because not only did he not tend to their physical needs first, he preached, and he preached for a long time.

You think my sermons are long? Oof, yeah. Jesus' sermons, well, he went on all day. Here's what it says, and when it grew late. So Jesus starts preaching, and the sun starts moving, and it gets lower and lower, and the shadows get longer and longer, and he's still preaching.

What's wrong with you, Jesus? People have to use the restroom. We need some fellowship time here. Well, it grew late, and so his disciples came to him and said, Jesus, this is a desolate place. The hour is now late.

Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat. Perfectly reasonable idea, is it not? Notice it says villages. It doesn't say send them to the closest village.

I mean, these guys had thought this through. I mean, it's not like you can send a crowd of 5 ,000 people to the local olive garden. Yeah, you've got a table for 5 ,000. Oh, plus men and women too. Yeah, no you don't.

Can we make a reservation for next week? No, it's not going to work, right? So the disciples thought this through. Send them to the villages. Send them back. Send them away. Spread them out, right? This is a perfectly reasonable thing to be proposing.

Jesus answered them, and boy, his answer is anything but reasonable. You give them something to eat. I've got to admit, this is one of those parts of Scripture that I wish there were videographers recording this because I'm sure at this point the disciples were going, What?

You want us to what? Really? He's lost his mind. You give them something to eat. So you can almost hear kind of the snark. Shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread to give it to them to eat? Good question.

Jesus is clearly preaching all day long, and the sun has clearly baked his brain. He said to them, How many loaves do you have? Go and see. And out comes the little boy's lunch, right? So when they had found out, they said, Five and two fish.

Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups. Watch this. On the green grass. Hear, Jesus, the good shepherd. Not only has fed his sheep with the very word of God, he now will tend to their physical needs as well.

Because keep in mind, it's our spiritual needs that are clearly more important than even our physical, but our physical needs are important. But keep in mind, this body of yours, I don't know if you've noticed, take a look at your high school graduation picture.

Things are not looking good for you. Not for me either. These physical bodies of ours are wearing out. Things are heading south. Gravity is having its effect upon us. Hair has gone from wonderfully colored to, well, white.

Right? I've almost got the whole Santa thing going on here in my goatee. And my daughter lets me know this all the time, to which I basically let her know that she will never look as good as she looks right now.

Right? We're all heading to the grave. And these are the wages of our sin. But remember, Jesus has compassion. True Splognizamai. Gut-wrenching compassion for his sheep without a shepherd. And so, he feeds them with his word, and then he takes care of their physical needs.

And so, how many loaves do you have? Go and see. Five and two fish. And I'll have them sit down in the green grass. Now remember, Jesus, who when he was tempted in the wilderness, in the desolate place, he was tempted by the devil to turn stones into bread.

He refused to use his miraculous power to serve himself. Gregory of Nazianzus, the church father, he writes, as man, Jesus was put to the test, but as God, he came through victorious. Yes, he bids us be of good cheer because he has conquered the world.

He hungered, yet he fed thousands. He is indeed living, heavenly bread. He thirsted, yet he exclaimed, whoever thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Indeed, he promised that believers would become fountains of living water.

But here, Jesus, the good shepherd, he has the sheep whom he has compassion on sit in the green grass, and then he prepares a table for them in the presence of their enemies. So they sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing.

Or you could say he gave thanks. He said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples and set them before the people. Now, if you look in your Bible, the section heading in this portion of Scripture, it might say Jesus feeds the 5 ,000, right?

A good friend of mine and a colleague, Pastor Todd Wilkin, he was musing on this text earlier this week, and he pointed out what a ridiculous thing to say, Jesus feeds 5 ,000. And the reason why he was saying that is because do you not understand that Jesus feeds every single one of us every day?

Now, granted, my wife, who is a good cook, whom I in part blame for what's going on here, she is a wonderful cook and she prepares breakfast for me every morning. This morning I had eggs and I had a muffin and I had a banana, and I also had some little cherries to go along with it and a little glass of pineapple juice.

It was fantastic, right? But I would say even though my wife did a fine job of preparing that, my wife did not make the chicken that made the eggs. She did not make the plants that made the wheat that she turned into a muffin.

I guarantee you my wife has never made a banana tree. God is the one who's made all these things. God made the chicken. God made the cow. God made the animal that gives us bacon. Ah, bacon, right? He gave all of that to us.

He's the one who made them. In other words, there isn't a single meal that you can point to that God didn't feed you, not one. And so here in this miracle, Jesus, who feeds the 5 ,000, shows through his miraculous power that he is the God who not only fed them, but he's also the God who fed us.

Because he's the same God who can speak the universes into existence merely by his word. And he did so, because you remember back in Genesis, let the earth produce seed-bearing plants. And it was so.

See, God feeds us to this day, and that's the interesting thing about it, is that we all, when we recognize this, realize, well, wait a second, that means that God is feeding people who believe in him and people who reject him.

Believers and atheists, idolaters, and the unrighteous and sinners. He feeds them all, which tells us a lot about God's great love for humanity. That despite our rebellion, God sent his only begotten son so that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have everlasting life.

And we read in Scripture that God causes the rain to fall on the just and the unjust alike. And so food itself is a mercy. Food itself is grace. It's tangible grace. And these texts reveal that to us by revealing who Jesus is and what he does.

And when we contemplate that and ponder on that, then we realize that it is appropriate for us before every meal to bow our heads and to thank the Lord for the food that we are about to eat because it truly comes from his bountiful hand.

It is a grace. It is a mercy. It is a gift. So the text says, he divided the two fish among them. Notice it says, he divided. No one pulled out coolers or picnic baskets. And they all ate, and they were satisfied.

And they took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. One basket for each of the disciples who were, well, if you would, waiters that day. You know, Jesus was the cook. He's back in the kitchen ordering up fish, multiplying it out, giving it to his runners, and his disciples go, and they divvy it out as well.

Which tells you something a little bit about ministry because remember Jesus, he said a blessing and he broke it. Sounds like the Lord's Supper, right? Well, those in ministry are a lot like waiters. Each Sunday I have the privilege of preparing a hot meal of God's Word.

And once a month we have the opportunity for me to also be a waiter here at this table as I feed you the very body and blood of Christ for the forgiveness of your sins. So Jesus feeds us physically. He feeds us spiritually with his Word.

And he feeds us spiritually also with his body and blood for the forgiveness of our sins. What a great and wonderful shepherd we have who cares for us so deeply that he cares that we are like sheep without a shepherd, and he gives us shepherds to preach the Word to us, to deliver his body and blood, and to hear and proclaim the absolution of the forgiveness of sins so that we do not faint in this wilderness while we await the new heavens and the new earth.

Let me read to you a verse from a great hymn. And yes, it's old, and I apologize for that, but it's still wonderful. It's a stanza two of Lord Jesus Christ's life-giving bread. Here's what it says. To pastures green, Lord, safely guide.

To restful waters lead me. Your table well for me provide. Your wounded hand now feeds me. Though weary, sinful, sick, and weak, refuge in you alone I seek to share your cup of healing. So remember this, that Jesus tends to us, his sheep, because he has great compassion for us.

And now, today, he feeds us with his nail-scarred hands and comes to us walking on his nail-scarred feet because he had such great compassion for you, knowing your sinful condition. He did not desire to send you to hell.

Instead, he came and served you by taking all of your sin away from you and placing it upon himself and then going to the cross and bleeding and dying for you. What a merciful and great Savior that we have who doesn't give us what we deserve, but instead gives us grace upon grace.

And even while we were still shaking our fists at God and doubting that he believed and persisting in impenitent sin, he still continued to cause the crops to grow and the grain to be harvested and made into bread so that every single meal that you had, he was the one who was truly feeding you.

And now we, because we have been raised from the dead spiritually, given eyes that are no longer blind but can see, we see the truth of that, and we receive with thanks God's spiritual food as well as his physical food, knowing that everything we have all truly comes from the hand of a gracious and merciful Lord who not only gives us what we need, but also gives us leftovers.

In the name of Jesus, amen.

Support, Distribution, and Closing Remarks

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