Prophet, King Or Messiah? - [John 6:1-15]

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Well, I would invite you to take your Bibles and open them to John chapter 6,
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John chapter 6. You know, if you're like me, my household, we like mysteries.
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We like to try to figure out what's going on. Now, just imagine if you're watching a movie, you're watching a
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TV show, you're reading a book, you just go, you know what? I know everything that's going to happen.
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This is completely predictable, and I can tell you exactly what's going to happen next, then after that, etc.,
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etc., etc. If you came across that kind of thing, you might do it once or twice, but if every single show or every single movie or every single book or whatever form of entertainment it is that you're engaged in, if you could predict everything that was going to happen next,
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I don't think you'd find it very entertaining. In fact, I'm sure you wouldn't.
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You just kind of go, yawn, move on. Now, in the real world, away from entertainment, if you could figure out exactly what was going to happen next in some things, that would be great.
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If you knew exactly where the stock market was going to go, you'd be pretty happy. You could make a killing.
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The problem you run into is when you think you know what's going to happen next, and you're wrong.
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When you think you have everything all sorted out, and things turn out entirely differently, when there's a plot twist or a real -life misunderstanding on your part that leads to a different outcome, we're going to see that tonight in John 6.
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Now, just by way of review, the purpose of the Apostle John in writing his gospel was to demonstrate to his readers that Jesus is the
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Christ, the eternal Son of God, the second person of the Trinity who came to earth, veiled in flesh, and came here to save his people from their sins.
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He was the Christ, the Messiah, the Chosen One, the Sin Bearer, the Lamb of God who takes away the sins of the world.
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And as his ministry unfolded, Jesus would perform signs, miracles, things that only
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God could do, things that could only be done by the power of God. And the first was turning the water into wine at the wedding at Cana.
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Now, that was a bit of a private miracle, and I call it a private miracle because not everybody saw it. It wasn't like, you know, the big reveal where there was the...
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I guess there's going to be a magic show coming up here pretty soon on TV, and they're going to, you know, shock people with the way they do things.
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That wasn't Jesus' purpose. He didn't go up to the water and say, OK, everybody, look, it's water.
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Let me show you. He didn't do any of that, because that wasn't the purpose. The purpose was simply so that those closest to him might understand what he had done.
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But as his ministry progressed, as he became more and more public, more and more outspoken, people saw more and more of his miracles, of his wonders, of his signs, of his power.
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And in chapter 5, we saw how the Lord healed the man who had been incapable of walking for 38 years.
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And really what ensued was nothing short of mind -boggling. We would,
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I think, I would hope that we would rejoice if we saw something like that. If we saw somebody who had been crippled and invalid for 38 years, we would have rejoiced with this man.
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We would have been thrilled that God had seemed fit to remove such a burden from him, that he had changed his life like that.
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But the Jewish leadership, the Pharisees, were more concerned with this man violating the
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Sabbath by carrying his bed. After all, that was work.
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It was work to carry your bed, and the Sabbath was for resting. And during their interaction with Jesus, while the
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Pharisees were talking with him, they came to the determination, the decision that they had to kill
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Jesus. Look at John 5, verse 18, for a moment. And this is all on account of this healing of this man and him,
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Jesus, telling this man to pick up his bed and walk. And finally, Jesus says in chapter 5 that he's only doing what he saw the
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Father do, and he refers to him as his Father. And the Jews' response to all this is in verse 18, this was why the
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Jews were seeking all the more to kill him. Because not only was he breaking the
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Sabbath by ordering the man whom he'd healed to carry his bed, but he was even calling
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God his own Father, making himself equal with God. Now, it's interesting because if you talk to a
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Mormon, a Jehovah Witness, a Muslim, they will tell you that Jesus never said he was
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God. Never said it. But the original audience, not just here, but also in John 8 and in John 10, they understood it very well.
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And their response wasn't like, well, you know what, he's just mistaken, he doesn't know what he's talking about.
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Their response was, we're going to kill him because he makes himself out to be
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God, equal with God. You can't be equal with God and not be God. Jesus was the one who had commanded this man that he'd healed to carry his bed.
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So it was Jesus who had broken the Sabbath. But again, worse to the
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Pharisees and almost, well, it was unforgivable to them, was Jesus identifying himself as the
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Son of God. They knew what this meant. They knew what his claim was. And they hated him for telling the truth.
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I'm going to read John 6, verses 1 to 15. After this,
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Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias.
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And a large crowd was following him because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick.
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Jesus went up on the mountain and there sat down with his disciples. Now the
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Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Lifting up his eyes then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him,
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Jesus said to Philip, Where are we to buy bread so that these people may eat?
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He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him,
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Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little. One of his disciples,
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Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?
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Jesus said, Have the people sit down. Now there was much grass in the place, so the men sat down, about five thousand in number.
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Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated.
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So also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples,
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Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost. So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.
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When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, This is indeed the prophet who has come into the world.
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Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
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Now tonight I have really kind of a weak outline.
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I have five W's, five kind of way points along the way. But I want you to see not only the power of the
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Lord Jesus Christ, but the futility ultimately of trying to have him on your own terms.
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What we will see tonight is a mass of Jewish people thinking that they know how the story is going to end.
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And they are willing to use force, as we just read, to make it happen. But their goals and the plan of God were not aligned.
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Previously we'd seen why the Jewish leaders hated Jesus enough to want him dead. Tonight we're going to see really why the
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Jewish people would eventually turn against him, because he would not do what they wanted.
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The first W really is several W's. It's when, where, who and when again.
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I'm just setting up the scene here. There's a lot to go through just to set up where we are and what we're doing.
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For example, just here at the beginning of verse 1, two words after this. That's the when.
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Well, when is that? Where did it take place in chapter 5? Where were we? We were in Jerusalem.
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We're obviously not in Jerusalem anymore. That little phrase there, after this, is an indefinite period of time.
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It is not like, you know, immediately, a week later, a couple days, an hour.
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It's an indefinite period of time. It could be months, and it probably is months. Some say as much as six months.
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But a lot happened in between chapters 5 and 6. In fact, we know some of those things because the other
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Gospels give us those facts. In fact, other than the resurrection, this is the only miracle to occur or to appear in,
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I guess it occurs in all four Gospels, but it's the only one to be recorded in all four Gospels other than the resurrection.
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So we could say it this way. It is the only miracle of his ministry that appears in all four
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Gospels. So what's happened in the interim? What's happened in the meantime?
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Well, one thing that happened is John the Baptist has been put to death. We know that from reading the
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Gospel of Mark, and we'll get to that a little bit later. But let's move on here. That's when.
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So several months, probably six months or so later. Now where?
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Again, look at verse 1. Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the
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Sea of Tiberias. You might say, why does it have two names? It's not that big of a deal. There was a village nearby called
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Tiberias, named after one of the Roman emperors. And so it picked up later on.
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At the time of John, it picked up the second name. But we're not in Jerusalem. And he crosses the
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Sea of Galilee. Why? Well, why did he go from one side to the other? Well, the text immediately tells us.
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We get who, part 1. Look at verse 2. And a large crowd was following him because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick.
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Our Lord didn't cross the Sea to just get to the other side. He wanted to get away from the crowd.
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It's like the paparazzi, you know, following him around. And what would you expect when he's been performing miracles?
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They've seen him do these healings. They know about the man in Jerusalem. And he has picked up a sizable following.
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We don't even have all the healings recorded. But we know that it's created quite a hubbub, a furor.
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The talk of the town is about Jesus and the miracles that he's doing. Now, the second part of our who is in verse 3.
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Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. He wanted to get away from the mob, the crowd, to spend some time with the disciples.
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So he crossed the sea with them. And it's likely that they went into what we would call the
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Golan Heights, the mountainous area just north of the Sea of Galilee. If you've ever been there, you can...
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We stayed, when we were there in 2000, we stayed in some condos right along the shore. I mean, you can walk out of the condo, and it's just not very far, 100 feet, 200 feet to the shore of the
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Sea of Galilee. And right behind you is the mountains, the Golan Heights, which, if you know anything about the geography over there, that's the high ground, and it goes up a few thousand feet, that used to belong to Syria, and that Israel took during the 1967
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Six -Day War. But anyway, that's outside the Bible. But the text says that he sat down.
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What does that mean? Why would he sit down with his disciples? Are they going to have lunch? Well, sitting down would be typically indicative that he's going to teach them, that he's going to spend some time instructing them.
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That's what rabbis, that's what teachers did when they were going to teach their students, their disciples, their followers.
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What does it mean to be a disciple? It means to be a learner, and they were going to be learning from him. But again, we come to this question of when, in verse 4.
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Again, just trying to understand the setting here. Now, the Passover, the feast of the
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Jews, was at hand. Now, why is this significant? I mean, it doesn't tell us that we're at Passover, it just tells us that it's very close.
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We're right in that window of the Passover. Well, it's important for us to understand just what the
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Passover is all about. It is a celebration, a remembrance of how
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Yahweh delivered Israel from Egypt. They were in slavery, they were in bondage in Egypt. And it's easy for us to just intellectually say, well, obviously they were happy, it's a time of celebration, when they think of, you know, here they were in slavery in Egypt, and things were miserable, and God delivered them.
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And we think, well, that's really great, and that's worthy of a celebration. It's not really great, it's better than that.
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If we could somehow combine the nationalistic zeal of maybe the
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Fourth of July, Memorial Day, Veterans Day, however many other, you know, George Washington's birthday, whatever.
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If we could get all the patriotic holidays, and then we could combine those at the same time with Christmas, Easter, and we could put them all into one celebration, we'd have some kind of idea.
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Because this isn't just a religious holiday, this is really a national holiday.
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It is their national identity and their religious identity all bound up in one celebration. But it also, especially at that time, would create an era of religious and national anticipation.
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They're not just celebrating, they're excited. Why? Well, because if they think back and they think, you know what?
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God delivered us, Yahweh delivered us from Egypt, which didn't seem possible.
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And look at all the things that He did, parting the Red Sea, destroying the Egyptian army, all the steps that were taken there.
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Why would He not deliver us from the clutches of Rome? They'd been invaded by Rome, they'd been occupied by Rome, so why shouldn't they hope?
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Why shouldn't they think that God might deliver them from Rome as well? Now our second, that was our first W, just kind of setting things up, our first one.
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Now our second one, why? And really there's kind of a problem, a crisis that comes up, and the miracle is in response to this crisis.
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Let's look at verse 5. Now He had crossed the lake, the
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Sea of Galilee. I mean, it's really just, it could be either one, but it's pretty big.
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To get away from the crowd, but they weren't easily dissuaded. Remember, they're enthralled with all the miracles that He's doing.
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They are really... Wouldn't you be excited if you saw somebody who could just heal the sick and do all manner of marvelous things that people didn't do?
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They're very excited, so excited that some of them ran approximately the 8 miles that it took them to get around the
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Sea of Galilee to get to where He was. Some of them were so fast that they probably got there before the
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Lord and His disciples and then they waited for the rest of the crowd to show up. It was about 4 miles across for them to sail across and 8 miles to run around.
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So He sees them all coming towards Him. He sees this crowd starting to gather and come toward Him. Now we come to verse 5, the second part of it.
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Jesus said to Philip, Where are we going to buy bread so that these people may eat?
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Now we might think that the Lord might get annoyed, but we're not talking about Alec Baldwin versus the paparazzi here.
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We're talking about the Lord, the sovereign God of the universe. And He's not annoyed.
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He doesn't ask Himself questions like, Why won't they leave me alone? Why won't they just back off? Instead, He is concerned for them.
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He wants to be hospitable to them. And that's a very different attitude than that of the disciples.
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You don't have to turn there, but I'm just going to be referencing some of the other Gospels. Matthew 14, verse 15.
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Listen to what the disciples say. Now when it was evening, the disciples came to Him and said,
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This is a desolate place and the day is now over. Send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.
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Let them fend for themselves. Look, when we look around here, it's desolate. This is a desert.
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There aren't even any... There's no wheat field here. There's no farm here. There's certainly no shahs here.
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What are we going to do? We can't just feed these people. Let them go take care of themselves. If we try to feed them, what's going to happen?
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We're going to have a big problem in our hands. Major problem. But in contrast to His disciples,
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Jesus had compassion upon the people. It's reasonable if we just think about His nature.
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We say now it's easy for us to reflect anachronistically, to look back in time and just think,
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Well, we know that there's only one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus. And in His mediation, because He is between God and men, certainly
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He would want to intercede for the people here. Certainly He would have compassion on them.
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He's certainly one who would identify with the people. Don't turn there, but listen to Mark 6 .34.
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Again, one of the other accounts of this situation. Mark 6 .34.
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When He went ashore, He saw a great crowd, and He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
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And He began to teach them many things. Now, one writer says it this way.
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He says, In His mind, and talking about His compassion for them,
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He says of Jesus, In His mind He probes their sorrows. He understands them. On His heart,
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He takes their burdens. He loves them. With His will,
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He removes their affliction. He heals them. With His sympathy, or with Him's sympathy, is not just a feeling.
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It is a tender feeling transformed into helpful action. It is, as far as possible, an identification.
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It is not just an emotion, but a deed. Better still, a whole series of deeds.
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He teaches them, heals them, feeds them. That's what compassion is.
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Compassion isn't just, you know, I feel their pain, and then there's no action.
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Jesus took action. Compare that with the Pharisees, the religious leaders of the Jews. Remember how they cared for the healed invalid in chapter 5?
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They didn't do anything for Him. What was He doing before He got healed? He was in, He was by that pool, just kind of waiting, hoping to get down there because of the legend that there were healing powers in the pool.
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What did the Pharisees do for Him before He was healed? Did they go visit Him? Did they go bring
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Him food? I mean, none of those things were recorded, but the truth is, they wouldn't have had anything to do with Him. Why? Because He wouldn't have been seen as worthy of their time.
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He wouldn't have been seen as clean. He wasn't somebody who went to the temple. He wasn't somebody who did all the right things.
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It didn't matter that He couldn't do them, He didn't do them. He was not a soul to be concerned about.
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Their mentality would be, if God cursed Him in this way, then He deserves what He gets.
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That's not how the Lord saw Him. Nowhere in the
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Gospels is the Lord more severe than He is in dealing with these heartless
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Pharisees. Listen to just a couple of verses here from Matthew 23, famous for the way
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He just excoriates the Pharisees. Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites!
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For you tithe mint and dill and cumin and have neglected the weightier matters of the law, justice and mercy and faithfulness.
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Just think about the lack of mercy that they had towards that invalid. These you ought to have done without neglecting the others.
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You blind guides straining out a gnat and swallowing a camel, which I think perfectly describes how they treated that whole situation, worried about the man breaking the
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Sabbath when he'd been miraculously healed. A little bit later in Matthew 23, you serpents, you brood of vipers, how are you going to escape being sentenced to hell?
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Can you imagine talking to the religious leaders like that? The people, though, were truly sheep without a shepherd.
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The Pharisees were kind of the self -appointed and self -approved leaders. They should have been the shepherds, but they weren't.
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All they were concerned with was the outward appearance, the outward obedience to the law, and not the welfare of the people that they should have been caring for.
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So now back to our text. Why did the Lord ask Philip where to procure food?
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Why him, in other words? Why was he selected? Why him out of the 12?
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Why not one of the other ones? Most likely it was because he was kind of the hometown boy.
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You know, if I want to know... Well, let's put it this way. You come out to Shepherd's Conference. We go to L .A.
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You might ask me where to go because I can get around at least. I know the freeway system.
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If I'm going into Boston, I have no clue. And my GPS will take me to some random place.
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It did that when I went recently. It took me to some housing project. I was like, this is not where I want to go.
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So why Philip? Because Philip would know. If there was a place to get food, Philip would know it.
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Now let's look at verse 6 here.
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Why did he ask him? Well, logically we would say that. It was because Philip would know, but that wasn't his purpose.
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He said this to test him. Now the word for test doesn't mean that he was tempting him, didn't want him to sin.
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He just wanted to see if Philip would respond to the crowd the same way he was, the same way
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Jesus was. He wanted to know if Philip had compassion for them. He also wanted to know if he would try to solve the problem on his own strength or did he have faith that the
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Lord Jesus Christ himself would solve it. Now look at verse 6. For he himself knew what he would do.
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Jesus was not worried. He wasn't in a panic. He wasn't like, okay guys, let's pool all our money together and see what we got.
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What can we come up with? Is there a 7 -Eleven close by? He wasn't worried at all.
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But Philip did not have the faith that Jesus was willing and able to resolve this crisis.
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But Jesus did. He knew exactly what he was going to do. Look at verse 7. Philip fails.
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Philip answered him, 200 denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get, listen, a little.
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In other words, if we had 200 days worth of salary, basically 8 months worth, it wouldn't even be enough to give everybody a little crumb.
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Are you kidding? Look at that crowd. Look at the size of this crowd. If we had a lot of money, more than we have, a lot more than we have, it would not be enough to give everybody something.
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These people are not going to be happy if we try to feed them. We need to send them away. We need to tell them to fend for themselves.
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Then Andrew comes up. Verse 8. 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?
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Now, courtesy of Mark, Mark 6, verse 38, we know that Jesus had asked about this.
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Listen to Mark 6, 38. And he said to them, Jesus to the disciples, how many loaves do you have?
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How much bread is there? Well, by natural reasoning, if we just look at this, five loaves of bread, two fish, the situation is hopeless.
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There was no way to feed this massive humanity with the physical resources Jesus had available to him.
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And it gets worse before it gets better. These loaves were quite small.
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In fact, the word really means, instead of loaf, it means a relatively small loaf of bread, and it would be more like a roll or a bun.
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One dictionary puts it. The fish, the word indicates that they were more like tidbits.
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In fact, one man said that they were basically like little tiny pickled fish.
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I mean, what we have here is what we used to call in the jail a happy meal, which means that when you got it in your brown paper bag, you were very sad.
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We call them happy meals because they were just pathetic. This was a pathetic lunch. This is malnourishment on an epic scale.
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This is not enough for an adult, let alone 20 ,000 people.
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So we've seen two Ws. First, when, where, who, etc., etc.,
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the situation. The second one, why, the crisis. And our third
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W is the wonder. Look at verse 10, the wonder meaning the miracle, the sign that he's actually going to perform.
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Verse 10, Jesus said, have the people sit down. He just kind of takes control of the whole situation.
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Tells his disciples, look, just have them sit down. Look at the text again. Now there was much grass in the place, so the men sat down, about 5 ,000 in number.
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Now when he orders them to sit down, it's interesting because they did it in a very orderly fashion, so they would be easily served and, by the way, easily counted.
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And only the men are mentioned. It's pretty typical. But it also gives us some kind of idea, and we'll see this later, that if you had 5 ,000 men,
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I mean, just put it this, let's just look at it this way. If you could give them all muskets and they marched on Jerusalem, that would be pretty significant.
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Now, obviously, muskets, again, that's anachronistic, but the idea is they could be a pretty potent militia if they were to march, and we'll see why that's important in a moment.
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But this is not some small gathering. Again, 5 ,000 men, so it means by the time you add in the women and children, we're likely talking somewhere in the vicinity of 20 ,000 people.
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Could be more, could be less, but we're talking about a lot of people, and you've got five little buns and two little fish.
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Now, what does Jesus do? Well, first he prepares, I mean, this is, I call this little section the
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Lord's Supper. I mean, I have notes that you guys won't hear, but there, you just heard it. Look at verse 11.
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Jesus then took the loaves, these little buns, and when he had given thanks, now,
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I think this is kind of amazing. Why? Because he gives thanks for these five little cakes, these five little bits of bread, and these two little fish, and he does that before he multiplies it.
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He thanks God for it before he does anything, and it's just, it's feeble.
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It's just a little amount, but that's, again, because he knew exactly what was going to happen.
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Then he goes on and he serves, he really serves the food.
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Verse 11, second part of it, he says, or the text says, he distributed them to those who were seated, so also the fish as much as they wanted.
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Now, in other accounts, in the other gospel accounts, we get more detail here how he broke the food into pieces before it was distributed.
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Our Lord multiplies the bread and fish as he breaks it up, and he takes what was very little, and he makes it into a lot.
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Not so that everybody gets a little, as Philip was originally saying, look, if we had all this money, then what would we do?
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We'd still only have enough, we wouldn't even have enough to give everybody a little bit, but now they don't get enough, they get it to eat until they're entirely full, until they could eat no more.
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What began as something that could not satisfy the hunger of a grown man, that unhappy meal, the
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Lord miraculously transformed into enough to more than feed 20 ,000 men, women, and children.
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Now, liberals, Bible deniers, deists, that is those who deny the miraculous in the
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Bible, and unbelievers hate this, they deny it, they deny this miracle. They try to explain it away.
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I remember Pastor Mike talking about this, it makes me laugh. Here's one of the explanations, well, Jesus really just talked the people into sharing their lunches.
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They just all kind of, you know, they became generous with one another, and that's how it happened.
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We know that's rubbish. Again, if we just think about it this way, we know that they could have had, picked up nothing in the area right around them, all there was was grass, there was no food, there was no way that they could forage, go pick up the food.
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This was no church picnic, everybody hadn't come, you know, with a nice big basket full of food, why?
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Because they'd come running around the lake to get to Him. They had no time to prepare, to think, you know what, we better take something to eat, they just took off running.
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They didn't want to miss the next sign, the next miracle He was going to do. What all these people, these so -called scholars, dislike so much is the deity of Christ, which is precisely what
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John is demonstrating right here. Only God could do what He did.
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Only God could take this miserable little amount of food and turn it into what it became.
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So we see the cleanup after the meal, verse 12. And when they had eaten their fill,
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He told His disciples, gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.
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Now we live in a time of conspicuous excess, and I don't care how much everybody says, you know what, we have
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X number of poor, and this, that, and the other thing. Well, what's poor today? Poor maybe means, you know, no
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Xbox One, you know, in the front room. But back then, survival was pretty critical.
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Getting your next meal, you had no idea where it was going to come from. Everyone had enough, so why gather all the excess?
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Because food was very precious. What was extra today would be needed tomorrow.
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It's not speculative at all to simply say that this heightens the demonstration of the power of God.
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Not only was it enough to feed everyone, but it was excess. They brought 12 baskets back.
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Look at verse 13, all the leftovers. So they gathered them up, all the extras, and filled 12 baskets.
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These would be wicker baskets, pretty good size, with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.
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I mean, it's like the old adage. I mean, my mom used to say this all the time, take all you want, but eat all you take.
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But they didn't. They took more than they could eat. Their eyes were bigger than their stomachs. Now look at the wild response, our fourth
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W, the wild response of verse 14. When the people saw the sign that he had done, the multiplying of all this food, they said, this is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.
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They saw what he had done and they thought, Jesus must be the one prophesied of in Deuteronomy chapter 18, verses 15 to 18.
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I'm going to read that. Moses says, and it'll make sense,
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Moses writing this, the Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me, like Moses, from among you, from among the people, the
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Jewish people, from your brothers. It is to him you shall listen just as you desired of the
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Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly when you said, let me not hear again the voice of the
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Lord my God or see the great fire anymore, lest I die. Too much God, we need somebody to mediate for us.
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And the Lord said to me, they are right in what they have spoken. I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers and I will put my words in his mouth and he shall speak to them all that I command him.
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So they're saying, we think we've got this, this new prophet, this one who's going to be really greater than Moses.
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One to intercede for us, to mediate for us. One who will transmit for us the divine revelation to them.
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But they didn't just want a prophet. They just didn't want somebody to tell them what God wanted them to know.
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They were after a deliverer. If Moses had delivered them from Egypt, they wanted somebody who was going to deliver them from Rome.
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After all, had Yahweh not delivered Israel from Egypt and from Assyria and from Babylon and from the
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Philistines and many other threats along the way, God is a deliverer.
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He's a savior. Rome, if God had taken care of all these other enemies of Israel, he could take care of Rome too.
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And they thought this is the time when God is going to send this strong man to us, this new
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Moses to us. This crowd saw in Jesus that strong man, that one that they've been waiting for.
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After all, he performed great signs, including many healings. Now they knew that he could provide for their physical needs.
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Again, in our society, we've just kind of lost track of how important this would be. But to them, this was literally life and death.
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Somebody who can meet their needs for food, invaluable. So the first W, when, where, who, and when again, the situation, why, the crisis was the second one.
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The third one, the wonder, the miracle. The fourth one, the wild response.
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They're overtaken. They know who this is now. They're sure. They know how the story is going to end.
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They've got this greater than Moses prophet with them and they're going to take advantage of it.
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But our fifth W is the wise retreat. The wise retreat. Look at verse 15, perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king.
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Now, how did Jesus know that? How did he know that they were going to come and take him by force to make him king if that was necessary?
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We don't know exactly. The text doesn't tell us. But whether it was the Holy Spirit, whether it was some supernatural means, whether it was, he heard the murmurings of the crowd.
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He knew that this group of 5 ,000 men, which again would represent a serious force if it marched on Jerusalem, was ready to urge him or even kidnap him if that's what it took and take him to the capital of Judah to Jerusalem and establish the kingdom.
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Now, were they trying to usher in the millennium? Were they really trying to restore
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David's throne? Again, think about this. They're close to Passover.
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They've got all this religious and nationalistic fervor. And here's this man in front of them that can do all these things.
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They're fired up. They're ready to go. They know that this is the time. And as I said a few weeks ago when we were in John, there were several
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Jewish rebellions in the decades that followed the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus. One resulted in the destruction of the temple.
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Another resulted in further destruction of the temple. And then eventually, I think it started in 132, if I remember correctly, and then ended at about 136
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A .D., the Roman Empire had had enough and they sent five legions down there and they took literally every
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Jew either captive, they killed them, or they drove them out of the land. They were done with the
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Jews. And that's when Israel was renamed Palestine. This was the end of it.
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But they didn't know that yet. They were determined to make
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Jesus king. Why? Because they knew, they saw in him the power to overthrow
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Rome. That's what they believed. I mean, a man from God who could do these things, he was more than a prophet.
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He was worthy of being king. He was the kind of Messiah they thought that they wanted, or they wanted to turn him into that kind of Messiah, let's put it that way.
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But look at what Jesus did in verse 15. Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
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Now, how did he escape the mob? We're told in Mark 6 that he simply dismisses them.
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He withdrew. He said, I'm done with you guys. Have a nice evening. Talk to you tomorrow, whatever.
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I don't know. It's not recorded for us. But what we do know is he withdrew and he went up to the mountain by himself to pray.
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So what do we learn from all this? First of all, I think it's important to note that Jesus is filled with compassion, and it is a compassion that takes action.
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Again, he doesn't just sympathize. He responds. He wants to meet the needs of the people.
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Secondly, he's able to meet the needs of any given situation, regardless of how hopeless it seems.
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Now, does that mean that we should look at this and go, well, you know what? If God could multiply the loaves, these pathetic little buns and feed 20 ,000 people, then
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I don't need to work. I don't need to do this. I don't need to do that.
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God will just take care of me. I can presume on the grace of God. That's not what it means. It means he is able.
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We understand from the Sermon on the Mount, God is able to take care of our needs, that he cares for the bird of the air and all these things.
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It's the same picture we see of the Lord Jesus Christ. He's able to care for us, and he will.
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We should trust him. Third takeaway, God is never held hostage by the emotions and fervor of men.
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No matter how much the Jews wanted God to throw off the yoke of Rome by granting them this kind of national deliverer,
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God's plan was not going to change. They were not going to rush God's timing.
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Fourth takeaway, this is just really a complete mismatch of desires.
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Two different plans. It's kind of a repeat, but they wanted deliverance from Rome. Jesus was offering what?
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Deliverance from their sins. He never talks about Rome. If you read all through the Gospels, when does he ever talk about them?
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Only rendering to Caesar. What is Caesar's? He's not concerned with politics. He's not concerned with the
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Roman Empire. It's immaterial. Fifth takeaway, the
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Pharisees hated Jesus for telling the truth about who he was. The people would come to hate him because he would not do what they wanted, namely make their physical lives easier.
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People have a lot of expectations about Jesus. They want him to be what they want him to be, not who he is.
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We need to believe in the Jesus Christ of Scripture. As one man wrote, he said, there's a lot of irony in the passage.
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He who is already king has come to open his kingdom to men. But in their blindness, men try to force him to be the kind of king they want.
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Thus, they fail to get the king they want, and they lose the kingdom he offers.
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He offered them the kingdom of God. They wanted the kingdom of Israel. They wanted a lesser kingdom.
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They just couldn't see it. Let's pray. Father, we thank you tonight for the
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Lord Jesus Christ, for who he is, for what he has done, what he has promised us, what he has accomplished, what he will do, and the fact that he is compassionate, one who is able, willing, desirous to help us to meet our needs.
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He is the mediator between God and men. He pleads for us. Father, we thank you for sending your son, the
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Lord Jesus Christ, to live a perfect life, the life you've commanded us to live, that you would send him to the cross, that he would willingly go to bear our sins, to pay the price for us, that you would now look at us, those who are in Christ, and say, not guilty because of his perfection that you've accounted to us.
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Father, what a blessing that you would confirm him to be who he claimed to be, the son of God, by raising him from the dead.
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We just give you all the praise and all the glory and all the honor. Father, for each one here tonight, we would just pray that you would affix, just fix in our minds,
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Scripture is trustworthy, true, that it bears witness to who
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Jesus Christ is and who we are. Father, would you strengthen each one here, that we might come to love the
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Lord Jesus Christ as he appears in Scripture, because that's who he is. We pray in Jesus' name.