Again, a good morning and welcome.
We're in our continuing Bible study in the book of Luke. We're in chapter 9. It's been
a couple of weeks since we were together. And last time we were together
we were dealing with Herod and the last message was, no way
out. Herod was perplexed. He heard
of all the miracles that Christ had done. And yet, if he admitted
that he was really the Christ, then he was in trouble in one
way. And if he denied him, he's in
trouble the other way. And we learned that there's just,
there really is no way out except through Jesus, who is the way
the scripture tells us. And so now we come to this part
in in Luke where the feeding of the 5,000, the five
loaves and the two fishes. And we're going to begin in reading
in verse 10. And as we go through this, remember
the question that Herod said, who is this? I beheaded John and they said,
who is this? Well, some people say he's a
prophet. Some people say he's Elias. And so as we go through
this next section here, and the apostles in verse 10, when they
were returned, remember the Lord had sent them out. And part of
our lesson today deals with this very thing. He sent them out
and he says, take no script, take no bread, don't take two
coats, don't take a stave. to go out and preach the gospel.
And now they're back. And the apostles, when they were
returned, told him all that they had done. It's interesting that
he called them disciples up until then, and now they're called
apostles. They were learners before, and
now they're messengers. And they told him all they had
done. And he took them and went aside
privately into a desert place belonging to the city called
Bethsaida. If you're looking at a map, you
would look at the Sea of Galilee and Bethsaida would be kind of
in the upper right corner of the Sea of Galilee up on the
northeast area. And that was part of Herod's
jurisdiction up there in Bethsaida. And the people, when they knew
it, they followed him and he received them and spake unto
them of the kingdom of God and healed them that had need of
healing. And when the day began to wear
away, then came the Twelve, and said unto him, Send the multitude
away, that they may go into the towns and country round about,
and lodge, and get victuals, for we are here in a desert place. And he said unto them, Give ye
them to eat. And they said, We have no more
but five loaves and two fishes. except we should go and buy meat
for all this people. For they were about 5,000 men.
And he said to his disciples, make them sit down by 50s and
accompany. And they did so and made them
all sit down. And he took the five loaves and
the two fishes. And looking up to heaven, he
blessed them and break and gave to the disciples to set before
the multitude. And they did eat and were all
filled And there was taken up fragments that remained to them,
12 baskets. And it came to pass as he was
alone, praying, his disciples were with him. And he asks him
saying, whom say the people that I am? And that's the area that
we're going to cover today through verse 17 there. And, uh, So he had called his disciples
together, gave them power and authority over devils and to
cure diseases, and sent them to preach the kingdom of God
to heal the sick. And we noted in our earlier lessons
how the Lord was instructing them concerning Himself and the
kingdom of God and how things were in this world. Remember
the parable of the sowers. He said, you're going to go out
and sow the seed. Some of it's going to fall on
ground rocky, it's not going to sprout. Some of it's going
to fall on in the thorn patch, and that's not going to grow.
And some of it's going to be trodden under, and some of it's
going to be eaten by the birds. He says, but some of it is going
to fall on good ground. And so he wanted them to know
what they were going to expect when they went out into the world
there. And he gave them that valuable lesson
about when they were on their way to Gadara and the sea came
up into a raging storm and he calmed that raging sea. And then
they get to Gadara and he calmed the raging soul of that maniac
there in Gadara. And again, we mentioned earlier
that when he sent them out, he said, take nothing. Don't make
provision for yourself, take nothing. Total reliance on Christ
for everything. And today's lesson, we look at
that again. And we mentioned earlier about the
lesson concerning Herod, how everyone's attention was brought
to a question concerning who everyone thought Jesus was. And
this lesson today begins another segment
which amplifies that question and reveals the importance of
the answer. Today's lesson contains the miracle
of the feeding of the 5,000 with five loaves and two fishes. You know, this is the only miracle
that's recorded in all four of the Gospels. It's the only one.
And they each have a little different perspective on it. Each of them brings us back to
the fact of Jesus being the true bread of life. John, the gospel
of John gives us probably the most detail about everything
that went on there. Luke kind of just skims over
it in just five verses. He's on to the next thing, you
know. So, but John gives us quite a lot more detail and we'll borrow
some from that today, but mostly we're gonna stick with Luke's
narrative here and how that applies. But each of these narratives
of the five loaves and the two fishes brings us back to what
was demonstrated in the Old Testament in a type and a shadow. And we
find that in Exodus chapter 16, verse one through eight. And
we could turn back there and read that real quick in Exodus
chapter 16. And of course, we're in the book
of Exodus, they've left Egypt and they took their journey from
Elam and all the congregation of the children of Israel came
into the wilderness of sin, which is between Elam and Sinai. And
on the 15th day of the second month after their departing out
of the land of Egypt and the whole congregation of the children
of Israel murmured against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness.
Isn't that just a telling verse there? And the children of Israel
said unto them, Would to God we had died by the hand of the
Lord in the land of Egypt, when we sat by the flesh pots, and
when we did eat bread to the full, for you have brought us
forth into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with
hunger. Then said the Lord unto Moses, Behold, I will rain bread
from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather
a certain rate every day that I may prove them, whether they
will walk in my law or no. And it shall come to pass that
on the sixth day they shall prepare that which they bring in, and
it shall be twice as much as they gather daily. And Moses
and Aaron said unto all the children of Israel even, then ye shall
know that the Lord hath brought you out from the land of Egypt.
And in the morning, then ye shall see the glory of the Lord, for
that he heareth your murmurings against the Lord, and what are
we that you murmur against us? And Moses said, this shall be
when the Lord shall give you in the evening flesh to eat,
and in the morning bread to the full. For that the Lord heareth
your murmurings, which you murmur against him. And what are we? That your murmurings are not
against us, but against the Lord. So in the morning flesh to eat,
or in the evening flesh to eat, in the morning bread to the full.
And that's just a description of what we're seeing right here
on the shore of the Sea of Galilee. this multitude. Now, as we mentioned
earlier, some of the other gospels gives us different details. One
of them says it was five, I think it was Matthew says it was 5,000
men besides women and children. So there was a lot more people
there than just the 5,000. And that's, by any stretch of
measurement, that's a lot of people to take care of. And John
tells us that it was barley loaves. There's a young lad here, he
has five barley loaves and two fishes. And if you maybe remember
from, I think from Mark and John in our Bible studies there, we
kind of spent some time looking at the barley loaves and how
they were the first fruits and kind of the poorer kind of grain
that we would find there. So, Each of these gospels that tells
us about this miracle here, they all bring edification to the
church. They bring light about the Lord
himself and his dealings with his people. And it begins in
verse 11, it says, with Christ spake unto them of the kingdom
of God. That's the most important thing.
And it was interesting when we were reading in Exodus there,
it talks about proving the people. And we run into that in one of
the scriptures here in the New Testament gospel where he, I
think it's in John, where he says, Philip, where are we gonna
get the money to feed all these people, to buy bread for all
these people? And it says, he said that, to
prove him because he already knew what he would do. Because
he'd already done it in Exodus. He'd already done it before the
foundation of the world. He'd already, this was just another
picture. So again, Luke doesn't devote
much attention to the miracle, and he just spends five verses
on it, ending with the question to the disciples, whom say the
people that I am, and whom say ye that I am? And as we read in the Old Testament,
the people didn't see God in the very works of miracles which
he displayed. They murmured. They said, oh,
it's just crazy. But that is a serious effect
of the fall. Remember last lesson, we talked
about how pernicious the fall is, how destructive it is, how
it just impacts every bit of our nature and every bit of the
world that we're in, and how destructive and killing it is. You know, now as in then, people
just don't see God in miracles. It reiterates to us the absolute
necessity of divine revelation, of being born again from above. The Lord told Nicodemus, if you're
not born again from above, you can't see the kingdom of God.
It's not visible to you. You can see it in a physical,
you can see things in a physical way, but you cannot see the spiritual
application. You cannot see the spiritual
things of it. And a side note here that they
didn't believe then is now, and none of them, after being blessed
with the bread of heaven, entered the promised land. Not one of
them. And so then as now they did not
behold the glory of the Lord. I'd like to have you turn over
to Psalm chapter 78. And the psalmist is kind of summarizing
what went on in Exodus chapter 16. If you turn over to Psalm
78. And Psalm 78, verse one, Matthew
of Asaph. Give ear, O my people, to my
law. Incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open
my mouth in a parable. Isn't that interesting how he
says that? I will open my mouth in a parable. And a parable is
a physical truth that has the spiritual application. And he
says, and I will utter dark sayings of old. And boy, what a description
of the results of the fall. I will utter dark sayings of
old, which we have heard and known, and our fathers have told
us, will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation
to come, the praises of the Lord, and his strength, and his wonderful
work that he hath done. For he established a testimony
in Jacob, and appointed a law in Israel, which he commanded
our fathers, that they should make them known to their children,
that the generation to come, and you know, that comes down
to us. The generation to come. That
the generation to come might know even the children which
should be born, who should arise and declare them to their children,
that they might set their hope in God, and not forget the works
of God, but keep his commandments. Set their hope in God, total
reliance on Christ. And might not be as their fathers,
a stubborn and a rebellious generation, a generation that set not their
heart aright and whose spirit was not steadfast with God. The
children Ephraim being armed and carrying bows turned back
in the day of battle. They kept not the covenant of
God and refused to walk in his law, forgot his works and his
wonders that he had showed them. Marvelous things did he in the
sight of their fathers in the land of Egypt, in the field of
Zoan. He divided the sea. Now that
should have been a hint. He divided the sea and caused
them to pass through dry shod. And he made the waters to stand
as a heap. In the daytime also he led them
with a cloud and all the night with a light of fire. He claimed
the rocks in the wilderness and gave them drink as out of the
great depths. Boy, it just reminded me of our
launch out into the deep. You know, all these things speak
to so much more than just the physical act. And we find that
there's just so much more with the Lord than we know. He gave them drink out of the
great depth. He brought streams also out of
the rock and caused waters to run down like rivers. And they
sinned yet more against him by provoking the most high in the
wilderness. And they tempted God in their
heart by asking meat for their lusts. Yea, they spake against
God and they said, can God furnish a table in the wilderness? Behold,
he smoked the rock that the waters gushed out and the streams overflowed. Can he give bread also? Can he
provide flesh for his people? Boy, what a thing that we find
in the Old Testament that describes the very circumstances that were
in Luke chapter nine and Mark and Matthew and John chapter
six. In John's account, it tells us
that the Passover was nigh, it was coming right up. And he's
the one that tells us that it was barley loaves. And he spends
a lot more time on it. The other gospels kind of move
right along to the next thing. But John spent some time because
they were up in Bethsaida. which is very interesting because
Bethsaida means house of fish. And who was there? But the Lord
God Almighty, born of a woman, born under the law in Bethlehem,
house of bread. Isn't that two interesting facts
that we find here? And after he fed the 5,000 on
the Bethsaida side, then everybody moved over to the back toward
Capernaum, which was on the northwest side. Remember the disciples
in John's account, in Matthew I believe, the disciples took
ship, and they said, well, Jesus isn't with us. And then there
was another little bit of a raging storm, and they saw him out walking
on the water, and he kind of caught up to them. They'd been
rowing all night. They'd only gone like three furlongs,
a couple of miles. in the widest part, it's like
eight miles wide, that Sea of Galilee. And they saw Jesus walking
on the water and they were a little bit afraid of that. And he said, in the English translation, it
says, fear not in his eye. But if you look those words up
in your Strong's Concordance, And in your Greek interlinear,
it says, the translation is, I am, fear
ye not. Isn't that wonderful? I am, fear
ye not. And then it says, immediately,
they were where they were supposed to end up. They were moved through
time and space immediately over to Capernaum. An interesting
part that we learned from John's account. Again, as we look at
what we read in Exodus, and then we look at what John record about
Philip, where he said he asked Philip, when shall we buy bread
that these may eat? He said this to prove Philip,
because he himself knew what he would do. That word prove
is really an interesting word, and it means to pierce through.
And it gives you the idea of piercing through the merely physical
aspects to perceive the spiritual. You have to look beyond, and that's what it is in parables.
You have to look through the physical to lock onto the spiritual, to
perceive the spiritual. He knew what he would do. He
would do what he had showed in the wilderness when they came
out of Egypt. Same thing. I showed you what
I was going to do then, I'm doing it now. Luke moves on to another saying
of the Lord in verse 22 through 27. in Luke chapter 9, and then it
goes eight days later to the narrative of the Mount of Transfiguration. John follows the Lord a bit longer
and reveals the true motive of those who followed after him.
Geez, all this multitude of people that followed after him. their
true motives were revealed. And they were after the bounty
of free food. And if you think of it in terms
of the time and the era and the conditions and the politics of
the time, they were under Roman rule. They were looking for a
king to come and throw off that Roman rule. And boy, it says
they were gonna take Jesus by force and make a king out of
him. That's what the scripture says. They had said, jackpot! We got a guy that can feed us
out of nothing. We got a guy that can heal us
if we get sick or injured or if we go to war with the Romans
and we get cleaved. He can just touch us and we're
well. And he's our king. He's like the trifecta. But they were only looking at
the physical aspect of it. They weren't piercing through
to the spiritual kingdom that he talked about all the time.
It's my kingdom, not of this world. I don't care about the
Romans other than the fact that they are here by the determinant
counsel and foreknowledge of God to do what he is before determined
to be done, which is kill me. I might pay the penalty of sin
for my people. So again, they were looking at
this thing in purely physical means, and then John, he says,
when they followed him over to Capernaum, he didn't feed them
anymore. He said, you seek me not because
you saw the miracles. You just seek me because you
ate the bread and were filled. It's all you, and you were healed,
and all those things. Matthew and Mark follow pretty
closely the same narrative here as Luke. And again, Matthew added
that there was women and children there besides the 5,000 men. And Matthew and Mark take us
from the feeding to the miracle of the walking on the water. With that kind of background
as we're going through here, let's look back to Luke 9, 10
through 21 with the idea that eventually, they're going to
be faced with the same questions. Whom say ye that I am? The same thing as Herod. Well,
you saw the miracles, you heard of all the miracles. Raised the
dead. healed the sick, made the lame
to walk, deaf to hear, blind to see. Well, if I recognize
those as divine miracles from God, then where am I? I have
no way out of this. I don't like the outcome of that
because it goes against what I want. And if I don't believe
them, how can I not believe them? Because we saw them happen. And so, the sloves and fishes,
flesh in the evening, bread to the full in the morning. Isn't
that pictorial in the Exodus there? The first thing we note
is then, as now, in the wilderness of Moses, there was a lot of
people of attendance. Boy, there was a big crowd come
out of Egypt. Evening was drawing on. there
in the Northeast shore of the Sea of Galilee in the area of
Bethsaida. And we mentioned that was the
fishing house or house of fish. It's translated. And again, we
find the Lord born of a woman, born under the
law in Bethlehem, house of bread. All these things arranged by
perfect providence, the determinate counsel of almighty God And all
the lessons that the disciples learn up to this point about
the total reliance on Christ. All the things that were foreshadowed
in Exodus and again reiterated in Psalm 78 that we read. The
disciples being proved by Jesus for them to pierce through the
merely physical aspects and perceive what was going on spiritually.
And the Lord says, give ye them to eat. And they're saying, how
am I going to do that? I've got nothing. I've got five
and two. That's not enough. And we only
have 200 pennies worth of money in our bag. That's not enough
to buy bread for all these people. Well, remember what He told them
in Luke, when He sent them out, in the last chapter, and then
we read ahead, we skipped ahead in time to Luke chapter 23, when
he's still educating them, and he says, well when I sent you
out with nothing, did you lack anything? And they said, nothing. We were well taken care of. The weather was good. We had
places to stay. He said, if people don't accept
you, just shake the dust off your feet and move on. There'll
be a place for you. So he controlled the weather,
he controlled the circumstances, he controlled their food, controlled
everything so that they would have everything required that
they needed. The same as those people in the
wilderness. They marched around for 40 years and didn't even
wear their shoes out. Yeah, we got to replace shoes
every six months or so, because the soles get all warped, crooked,
and they wear out. So applying the physical, they
had no resources, no ability. We don't have enough for so many. And isn't that something that
applies to the church, to us in every age? So often we only
look to our own resources and we say, well, we have five and
two. How do we see things? I believe,
we all say that, but we're like that man said, I believe help
thou my unbelief. We need that. And only through
Christ can we pierce through the physical aspects of things
and perceive the spiritual. The natural man just can't do
that, can't see the kingdom of God. The natural man receiveth
not the things of the spirit of God and their foolishness
to him. Well, those people out there,
5,000 plus women and children, Neither can he know them because
they're spiritually discerned. Well, he's feeding us somehow,
but I don't know how. In John, they said, when they
got over to Capernaum, he told them he was the bread of life.
And he said, evermore give us this bread that we don't have
to work for. Evermore. And Jesus said, I am
the bread of life. He that cometh to me shall never
hunger, and he that believeth on me shall never thirst. Give
them water out of the rock, give them flesh, give them bread to
the full in the morning. But I said unto you, you also
have seen me in the physical aspect, and believe not. They didn't pierce, they weren't
able of themselves to pierce through and see the spiritual
aspect of it. All the Father, and then he says
this, he gets right down to the core of the matter with them.
He says, you believe not, because all the Father gives me shall
come to me. They're all going to come. Not a single one will
be left out. And he that comes to me, I will
in no wise cast out. They're in Christ. You have to
be in something before you can be cast out. He says, I'll not
cast them out. They were my father's. He gave
them to me. He says, unless a man be born again, he can't see the
kingdom of God. Even though all these miracles
happen in front of them and all these things that have physical
characteristics, They can only see them in a one-dimensional
form, and they can't see it. You know what the disciples said?
Send them away. We don't have enough. Send them
away. And the word of the Lord was,
make them sit down by companies, by fifties. And they did so,
and they made them all sit down. Now if you can picture in your
mind, If there was the equal number of women and children
as there were men, there'd be about 10,000 people there. And
you have 12 disciples, well, going out there and making them
sit down. And just try to visualize kind
of what's going on. You have all these people standing
out there waiting to see the next miracle. Who's he gonna
heal now? And what's he gonna do? And the
disciples go out there and say, okay, you 50 sit down here and
you 50 sit down there. And the people are gonna be saying,
why? What's gonna happen? And they said, well, Jesus said,
he's gonna feed you. I don't know how, I've only got
five and two. But Jesus said, he's gonna feed
you, sit down. And so they did so, it says,
and they made them all sit down, it says in verse 15. Now, there
must have been some conversation, like we just mentioned, and all
these people are out there, and I just think back to what it
said in Psalm 78, verse 19, they spake against God and said, can
God furnish a table in the wilderness? How's he gonna do that? Remember, he just healed all
that needed healing. They had evidence of that. He
raised the dead, healed the lame, gave sight to the blind, caused
the deaf to hear, and to the poor the gospel was preached. Killed the Egyptians, parted
the sea, led them by a cloud by day and a fire by night, brought
us streams of water from the rock, gave them flesh to eat
and bread to the full. And yet they say, can God furnish
a table in the wilderness? That's just by nature. That's
just what we're up against. And in all of this, they were
perplexed. As we found Herod was, there was no way out. If we believe, then we're wrong.
Everything that we've decided upon in our own selves, our self-righteousness,
all of our works, all of our, well, I'm not so bad, or I've
never really done anything worth being sent to hell for. I'm okay. We have no excuse. But in spite
of all the evidence, because of the fall, we have this wonderful
thing that's given to us in the fall, it's called rationalization. We can rationalize it away. Well,
it's some trick. Or it doesn't really mean anything. We come up with a lot of things.
We say, well, it's just a phenomena. Or nowadays they say, that's
just a myth. It never really happened. There
is no God. In all this, There's nothing
new today. It's the same thing that we had
in Exodus. It's the same thing the psalmist
was up against. It's the same thing that went
on the shore of the Sea of Galilee where Jesus was. Without divine
revelation, you're not going to be able to pierce through.
And if we go to Psalm 132, we're kind of getting low on
time. I want to read the whole thing. in verse 15 says, I will abundantly
bless her provision. I will satisfy her poor with
bread. He's talking about the church.
But boy, if you go through there and if you get some time later
on to read that, it's another one of those chapters where you
can just circle or underline all the I wills of God. And there's
quite a lot of them in there. I will, I will, I will, I will.
And the church is benefits from all that. The church gets the
blessing. So can the people say, out there on the shore, the 5,000
and the men and the women, can God furnish a table in the
willows? And can you imagine you're like way back in the nosebleed
section, and you see the disciples are coming. You say, is there
gonna be enough for me? But you know what we always find
out is, is anything too hard for the Lord? God is not hindered
by the quality or the quantity of our faith. It's the faith
of Christ. And He says, make them to sit
down. Make them to cease. Make them
to enter into my rest. That's what he's making them
sit down, like that maniac in Gadara. He was clothed where
before he was naked. He was in his right mind. He
was able to pierce through and see the spiritual. And he was
sitting at the feet of Jesus. He was resting. He was relying
totally on Christ. And he just said, I wanna stay
with you. He said, no, go back to your
home and show what great things the Lord has done for you. Show
them the spiritual. So, you could go into Hebrews
chapter 4, and it talks about entering into the rest of the
Lord. Make them sit down, cease from your own works, And you
know what he's talking about there in Hebrews chapter 4 is
he's talking about the people in Hebrews chapter 3 that we
talked about in Exodus chapter 16 and Psalm 78. They all died
in the wilderness. The gospel was preached unto
them as same as unto us, but unto them, not being mixed with
faith, it was not effectual. And they all died. And Jesus
said, your fathers ate manna in the desert and they're all
dead. You need to eat the spiritual bread. So if you get time, you can go
back and read Hebrews 4, verses 1-10. Make them sit down. Rest
in Christ. Where sin abounded, grace did
much more abound. Is there enough for me? 5,000? Is there enough for me? He said,
you know what? When they got done feeding everybody,
they were all full, it says. They had as much as they wanted.
And there was 12 baskets left over. And I think that's an interesting
thing too about this. He said, don't leave it laying
around. Go pick up the fragments. This
is just, for the intended purpose of who I sent it to. It's not
for, don't leave it laying around. Is there enough? He blessed the loaves and the
fishes, gave thanks to God for it. And then the next thing we
see is then he gave to the disciples and they gave to the people. I have received of the Lord that
which I also delivered unto you." That the same night in which
he was betrayed, Jesus took bread. And when he had given thanks,
he'd break it. And said, take, eat, this is
my body, my spiritual body. It's not actually a piece of
me. It's a spiritual picture. And you need to pierce through
from the physical to the spiritual aspect of it. As often as you eat this bread
and drink this cup, you show the Lord's death. It's a spiritual
picture. 1 Corinthians 15 says, I delivered
unto you that which I also received, how that Christ died for our
sins according to the scripture. Jesus took the bread and blessed
it and break it and gave it to them and they gave it to the
people, the same spiritual principle. And they gave to the people,
and they did eat, and were all filled, it says in verse 17.
And not only were they filled, there was plenty left over. And
in John's account, he says, I am that bread of life, the bread
sent down from heaven by my father. So next, We finally come to that
question that we've been working up to for several weeks now.
Whom say ye that I am? The most important question.
So we'll stop there for today and thank you for your attention
and as always, be free.