Bread That Outlasts the Miracle

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[0:00] So, let's go now to our sermon, and our sermon text is the Gospel of John, chapter 6, verses 1 through 15. And we are starting a sermon series on miracles. So, five weeks in May, five Sundays of miracles. The first Sunday today, miracles of nature, so we're going to see the feeding of the 5,000. Next Sunday, miracles of healing. The following Sunday, miracles of power over spiritual darkness.

[0:31] May 22nd, miracles of resurrection, and there are several resurrections in the Scriptures, not just Jesus' own. And then finally, May 29th, the Holy Spirit and the miracle of faith. So we have five Sundays of miracles coming up, and I hope you're ready for them. Before we start, I want to ask if anyone knows this old Finnish, it's kind of a saga, kind of a fairy tale, kind of a fable. Of the Sampo. Does anyone know this? Sampo, S-A-M-P-O. Okay, good, this is great. So there's an old Finnish fable about something called the Sampo. And it's kind of a magical mill, or device, that's made by a magical sort of blacksmith type person. And it gives the person who owns it to power to produce anything they want. So, you know, there's various versions of all the fables. And, you know. The idea is that you kind of crank it and you tell it what it wants, what you want, and out of the mill comes, you know, food.

[1:34] Tablecloths was one of the things, people like tablecloths, you know. Cutlery, steel to make gears and things like that, you know, other things. And of course, so the people who ended up with this thing, they realized how powerful this was. They're untold riches, because this thing would create something out of nothing, this Sampo.

[1:52] And, um. And so, of course, what's going to happen when you have something powerful that only one person owns, right? There's going to be a war over it, right? And there's various, like I said, there's various versions of this. But at one point, the Sampo was making salt, which was really valuable. Of course, it's hard to get salt, you know. So the Sampo was making an unlimited supply of salt. When the war for the Sampo started, and there was a battle, and the Sampo was on a ship. And then in the war, the Sampo fought. And the Sampo fell to the bottom of the ocean. And there it is. It's continuing to produce salt at the bottom of the ocean. And that's why the ocean is salty. And so it's a dumb fable, because really it answers the question, why is sea water salty? You know, because they didn't understand why it was so salty. And so, because the Sampo's down there just milling away, you know, making salt. But the other side of the fable is, of course, you have this beautiful thing of abundance that people can't share. And human violence and greed is always going to assert itself. And that thing gets ruined. And it itself ruins something else. Like you could imagine that the ocean was full of fresh water.

[2:57] How cool would that be? And it got ruined. Now it's all salty. It tastes terrible to go swimming in the ocean. So, but that makes me think of this, when I see this miracle where Jesus feeds the 5,000, right? He has just, you know, five loaves of bread and two fish. And out of that, he produces enough food to feed 5,000 people. I think of the Sampo, like, but of course, this is Jesus. This isn't a miracle. It's not a finished fable.

[3:23] It's an idea that something comes almost from nothing. So we'll look at that. Now, I have to say, and this is just by word of introduction, that I want you to read all of John chapter 6. It's 71 verses. It's one of the longest chapters in the whole Bible. So we don't have time to read all of John chapter 6 this morning because, well, this is because it's so long. But it's a masterpiece. John chapter 6 is a masterpiece. It kind of all folds together in these really intricate ways. And, and this is the thing. This miracle, which is at the beginning of John chapter 6, sort of sets the tone for it. Now, we'll go into why John chapter 6 is so great.

[4:02] So we want, we want you to read all of John chapter 6 when we're at home. Now, we want to also start off with, since this is the first Sunday, talking about miracles, right? Miracles are, they're tough. They're tough for us in sort of a post-industrial, or not even a post-industrial, industrial age. We trust science. We're a little bit suspicious of miraculous things. We're like, how could this happen? Sometimes we're looking for explanations for them, how they could have happened naturally, you know. And, but one of the questions I want us to be asking all this month is, do you believe in miracles? Do you believe that these miracles, these miracles happened? Do you believe that miracles still happen? Or were miracles just for then? And now there's just. Just coincidence and good luck and chance, you know. Or do, or does God still perform miracles for us in our midst? Miraculous healings, miraculous exorcisms, miraculous all sorts of things, right? And that's a question I'm not going to answer it for you. And everybody has their own answer. But I'm hoping as we go through this month that we see God's hand in the miraculous and that we start to really embrace that the miraculous can and does still exist.

[5:19] But that's, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself. So now the other thing I want to say, just introduction, is that John's gospel deals with miracles in a slightly different way than the other gospels do. He uses a different word for them. The Greek word is semion. It means a sign or, and there's, there's other words for miracles in other gospels. And for John, there's always sort of a parenthetical or a narrative like comment after, not always, but almost always after a miracle happens. And it. The sort of the narrator saying, this is what happened when this miracle took place. And almost always it says that people, this was done so that people would have faith that Jesus is the Messiah. So there's this sense that, that John is always saying miracles are so that faith will be created in the people who witnessed the miracles. There are signs that point to the divinity of Jesus and that people should have faith in him as the Messiah. And that happens a lot in John. So. And, and in other places, miracles are sometimes because Jesus is compassionate. He sees somebody suffering. He wants to heal them. He's just moved by it. Right. There's others because he's asserting power, his own power over the demonic.

[6:36] And because he can't be sort of in the same place as the demonic and he has to, he kind of has to move it away. But, but in John, it's often that this was done in order that people would believe. Okay. So I want, I want, um, um, let's see here. Well, that's enough for the introduction. I kind of got ahead of myself here. That's it for the introduction. Let's go to our reading now. John chapter six, one through 15. It begins like this. After this, Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is also called the Sea of Tiberias.

[7:08] A large crowd kept following him because they saw the signs he was doing for the sick. So there's that word. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover. The festival of the Jews was near when he looked up and saw a large crowd coming toward him. Jesus said to Philip, where are we to buy bread for these people to eat? He said this to test them for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him. Six months wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little. 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.

[7:52] Oh, what are they among so many people? Jesus said, make the people sit down. Now there was a great deal of grass in the place. So they sat down about 5000 in all. Then Jesus took the loaves and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, gather up the fragments left over so that nothing is left. Nothing may be lost. So they gathered them up and from the fragments of the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten, they filled 12 baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, this is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world. When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force and make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. . Let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for your word.

[8:56] And we ask that you add your blessing to it in Jesus name. Amen. So I'm going to go back to this idea that we need to look at the larger context of John chapter six. And again, I'm going to say, read it at home if you get a chance. It starts with this miracle, but don't forget there's a similar miracle that happens in John chapter two. And this we preached on about a month ago. That was the turning of the water into wine. And so we have. . . So we have two miracles that have to do with food and drink. In short order. And there are other miracles over the natural world. I mean I consider that one the wedding at Cana. That miracle is a miracle of power over the natural world. A transformation of one substance into another. That's pretty good. In the feeding of the 5000. It's sort of a. . . It's a multiplication of one substance into a larger amount of the same substance. Evidently. Right. They're different. So. . . In chapter 6, also in chapter 6, Jesus walks on water. It's a neat trick. How does he do it? Well, we're going to find out that you can't press miracles too hard. You can't try to understand them. But that's definitely power over the natural world. And also at the Sea of Galilee, not in John chapter 6, but in other parts of the Gospels, Jesus calms the storm. So control of the

[10:12] weather, which would be very nice to have, is also kind of, if you imagine Jesus has a little deck of cards here, and he's like, control the weather. No, let's see, feed people. He pulls one out, and he puts it down. He's got a lot of cards in his deck when it comes to controlling the natural world. But there's one other, and it's a negative miracle. During Holy Week, Jesus, and this is the only miracle he does during Holy Week. People were expecting a lot of miracles during Holy Week, and he, intentionally didn't give them any miracles because he wanted them, he didn't want them to go and make him king. He wanted them to come to him in faith and understand the real miracles that he was offering. But during Holy Week, the only miracle he does is he curses a fig tree, and it dies. You know, so it's like a zap. And I actually have that power. So I'm, you know, this is the only way I'm like Jesus. I can look at a plant, and it will die. Because I have not the, I have the opposite of a green thumb. I have like a yellow thumb, or whatever it's called. I can kill any plant. Just give it, if you want a plant dead, if you have weeds in your yard, I'll just come look at them, and they will somehow die. So,

[11:31] so that's, that I almost, I almost am reluctant to include that one, because it's kind of a sad miracle. Like, he just kills a plant, you know. But he does it to make a point about faithfulness. Like, this tree, this tree, it didn't produce any fruit. He found a fig tree that had no fruit on it, and he, he cursed it, and it died. And that's also, like, right there is a tiny, like a very tiny parable. That's frightening, right? Could be frightening. But let's go to chapter, again, let's go to chapter six in a nutshell. I just want to give you a quick overview of the rest of chapter six. Remember in chapter two, he gives people something miraculous to drink. Here he gives them something miraculous to eat, right? He multiplies this food. And then he sells them after our sacrifice. And then he gives them something miraculous to eat. And then he gives them something miraculous to eat. And then he gives them something miraculous to eat. And then he tells them that even though they like this food, he has food and drink for them of a spiritual nature. He's like, yes, this was physical food, but that's just a foretaste. I have spiritual food. I have spiritual bread to give you. And their response then to this offer of spiritual bread

[12:37] is kind of the key to the whole chapter. They say this in verse 31. We're not going to show it on the screen, but verse 31, the people say to him, our ancestors ate the manna, in the wilderness, as it is written, he gave them bread from heaven to eat. And so they are this miracle of feeding them miraculously. And they're all aware of it. They're like, wow, where did all this food come from? It reminded them of the exodus of God's people. They left Egypt. They're out in the wilderness. They said, we don't have any food. And God provided food. This manna came down from heaven. They were able to gather it up and they were able to eat it. And now the word for heaven and sky are the same word in that language. And so we hear it differently. So they thought the manna came from the sky. So they're like, oh God, our father gave us that kind of bread from the sky. And he's saying, well, this is different. This is bread from heaven. Maybe he had to kind of spell it out for them, right? So why is that the key? Because they're setting this in the context of exodus. And Jesus is too. The exodus from Egypt, they prepare the meal. They run out of the land. They go out into the wilderness. God feeds them and he gives them water miraculously. Moses is

[14:00] able to miraculously give them something to drink out in the wilderness. So they're connecting this offer of free food with the exodus story. But then in verse 32, Jesus says to them, very truly, I tell you, it was not Moses who gave you, the bread from heaven, but it is my father who gives you the true bread from heaven. Jesus is starting to teach and he's starting to even reinterpret the exodus story. But he's also saying there's a new exodus happening now and is taking place in me. And I want you to notice a shift from the past tense to the present tense. He says, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but it is my father who gives you, which is present tense, gives you now the true bread from heaven. And this is something that happens often with Jesus, where he's saying somebody greater than Moses is here. Somebody greater than John the Baptist is here. They were both great people here, but now there's someone right in front of you who's greater than both of those. So the quality of the food is of a whole different level and it satisfies for eternity. I gave you some multiplied bread. It filled your stomach up for just a day, but I'm actually offering you the true bread from heaven. It's very reminiscent of the story of the exodus story. And I want you to

[15:17] read the story in John chapter four of the woman at the well. And he says, I want to give you the water of life that you'll never be thirsty if you drink it. And she's like, which well can I get that one from? And he's like, no, no, it's a different kind of water, right? It's a different kind of bread. It's bread from heaven. So they say, okay, what actually is that bread? What is that bread? Tell us what this bread from heaven is. That sounds different than what you just gave us.

[15:44] And Jesus said, in verse 33, the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. And just like the woman at the well, they say, sir, they said to him, give us this bread always. We're in, we're in, we want this bread. Okay. We want this bread. Maybe in their minds, they think they'll never get hungry, but he's really talking about spiritual food. Again, there's always a bit of a disconnect between these things. And it's not until the resurrection that a lot of it gets cleared up in people's minds. So that's the bread of God. And he says, give us this bread always. And he's like, Jesus said to them, I, now get this part, verse 35, I am the bread of life. They're saying, give us this bread. And he said, okay, I will. And that bread is me. That's me. I am the bread of life that God wants to give you. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry. And whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. So you see here in chapter six, God is sort of, Jesus is sort of re-encapsulating the Exodus story. And the key is Moses. Jesus is sort of retelling it all. Is he the new Moses? You know, sort of. He's leading his people. Yes, but not quite. He's actually the Passover lamb. This is Jesus is the Passover lamb, right? He gives his blood to save the people from the angel

[17:05] of death. He gives his body to nourish the people on the way. And what is the bread? It's the, it's the true bread of heaven. It's himself. It's his own body. It's his own body. It's his own body. It's his own self. And if you go on in chapter six, it gets very specific. Jesus says, my body is true food. You know, it's, and it's hard. And even some people didn't like what he said. They, they, some of them left him on account of that difficult teaching. So when you hear that phrase, because we hear a lot of the, I am statements of Jesus, I'm the gate, you know, I'm the way, the truth, and the life. But here he says, I am the bread of life. It's, it's beautiful. And it's mysterious. And he is the bread that gives life, but also the bread that saves life and the bread that is life. And the bread is himself that he gives as a sacrifice.

[18:00] So this miracle, which is actually a miracle over the physical world, while he's able to duplicate or multiply bread, it's really a preamble to a much larger teaching in John chapter six, where he's telling them, I'm the new Passover lamb. I'm the new Passover lamb. I'm the new Passover lamb. And this bread, that bread was good bread, but this other bread, this heavenly true bread from heaven, that's me. I'm giving myself for you. And when you take it into yourselves, you're participating with me and what the father's doing in the world. So there's a lot more. But I'm hoping that we can sort of read chapter six at home with this set of glasses on it. This is a sort of a retelling of the Exodus story. Really exciting. It puts this one particular miracle into context. And I'm hoping that we can sort of read chapter six at home with this set of glasses on it. This is a sort of a retelling of the Exodus story. Really exciting. It puts this one particular And now I just want to say, we want to talk, I do want to talk about this one particular miracle, because it's a miracle over the physical world. You know, why does he do miracles? He does it to test his disciples. He's probably compassionate on people because they're hungry. Another,

[19:05] one of the other gospels that talks about this miracle says that Jesus had compassion on the crowd because he sensed that they were hungry. And so he also did it for that reason. But this is a miracle in the context of the physical world. And so he does it to test his disciples. And so he does it to test his disciples. And so he does it to test his disciples. And so he does it to test his is always in service of faith. So people believe, people follow. I asked you to put up the last slide there, Caleb. And you see in verse 15, they do have a response. It says right there, when Jesus realized they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he's like, I'm not ready for this. So there was a faith response, but it was kind of faith in physical power, not spiritual power. So he wasn't ready, right? Later, now the reason why there's this conversation with the man of God, he's like, I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready for this. I'm not ready. And so the man of God, he's like, I'm not ready. And so he does it to test his disciples. later they find him again. And they don't want to make him king anymore. But they want to take him by force and make him king, which doesn't sound fun for him. So he withdrew again to the

[19:56] mountain by himself. Now we can make that go away. They don't quite understand. So the miracle is in service of teaching about himself, about the incarnation, about the cross that's to come, about the new Moses, about the new lamb, about the new bread, the new cup, and the new life. So this is a really important miracle because it sets the stage for all. Jesus is teaching. And I just want to, you know, some of you are scientists. The men's Bible study actually read, but just by accident, we read this on Friday and we were talking about how do you do this? You know, how do you make something come from nothing? How do you make a Sampo? You know, you can't really do it. How do you make something large out of something small? How do you take five loaves of bread and turn it into enough to feed all these people and have something left over? So a physicist, all right, so there's a few physicists. I know Stan's a physicist. There might be a few other maybe amateur physicists out there. They would say the laws of the universe don't allow for the creation of matter out of nothing. Okay. You can't do it. I'm going to ask Craig though, what ingredient do you need if you want to create matter? Yes. I'm glad I asked Craig.

[21:10] Who else would have said energy, by the way? A few. Caleb. Wow. Caleb and Eric and Jared. Who else would have said? I mean, don't be shy. Come on, smart. Yeah, David. Come on, smart people. Okay. Money. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So it turns out that energy is mass times velocity squared. Is that Newton's second law or whatever? I don't know. It's anyways, well, the laws of second law of thermodynamics, perhaps. Stan, put a note in the, Stan, put, Stan, put something in here. So. Okay. So Albert Einstein. Got to love him. He. He realized that this is true. Energy equals mass times velocity, which is speed squared. And so he postulated that energy of the energy that's bound up in any matter itself is the value. The size of that mass Measured in grams or kilograms. Times the speed of light. Squared. And the speed of light. Square. light is very fast 186,000 miles per second or 3 times 10 to the 8th meters per second. Thank you. It's going to get a little heady in here. I'm not saying I'm smart. I just remember this from college. And so E equals mc squared. You know this, right? So if I had, okay I'll take this thing here. I don't know what it weighs. It weighs maybe 5 ounces, 4 ounces, something like that. If I were to convert this matter into energy, the energy

[22:49] would be the mass of this, which is small but still a lot, times the speed of light squared. If you square the speed of light, you're talking about a really big number, right? Okay? So this little thing would, if we converted it to energy right now, it would level this, well, probably 5 blocks. I don't know how, I don't know what it would do. It would destroy the church and a pretty big radius all around us, okay? Okay. And so then if you have a core of uranium inside a bomb and you convert all that to energy, all of a sudden then you have a very destructive weapon, of course. So E equals mc squared. Now how do you get mass out of energy, right? Well if you do a little bit of, it's just changing around the fraction. If E equals mc squared, you take the c squared from that side of the equation and you put it under the other side. So now mass equals energy divided by, the speed of light squared. Did I get that right? Yeah. So E equals, m equals E divided by c squared. C is the, did I tell you c is the speed of light? That's the nomenclature for the speed of light. It's not sl or anything. So, so that, but if you, that means that the energy needed, since it's being divided by the speed of light squared, the energy amount

[24:10] needs to be massive if you're going to create, you know, energy. So you can't just keep matter out of energy. So I'll give you an example. If you fiddle around with it, and I'm going to put it in terms that I think we'll kind of get a better understanding of it, and I'm going to keep explosive weapons out of it because that's not fun. Although I will say that matter is converted into energy in two places, nuclear fission like in a nuclear power plant, or nuclear fusion, which is in the core of a sun or a star, and that's how we get so much heat. Okay. So when you fiddle around with it and you say, how much energy would it take to make 100 grams of food or any matter? It doesn't matter. Matter is matter. It weighs that certain amount, right? So that's a hundred grams of food. It's like a couple of mouthfuls, not much, you know, would not satisfy you, but it's just like a mouthful of food. Okay. And we're going to use the metric system. You guys like the metric system? No, we're not actually going to have to use half the metric system because how much to make a hundred grams of food, but then I'm going to convert it to the English section.

[25:11] It would take all the fuel that would fit in 117,000, 117,747 jumbo jets. All if you filled all their tanks up with gas and you took all that gas, which is each one holds 51,000 gallons of gas or something like that. That would take all that gas to make this tiny little mouthful of food. Do you get what I'm saying? So where is this? Where are we going with this miracle here? Right. To make just a little mouthful of food, it would take all that gas in all those 747s. So multiply that by thousands of people that day. And then remember that they were satisfied after their meal. And then remember that there was a lot of food leftover and I'm not going to do any more math because I don't want you to throw me out of here, you know, but you're talking about a lot of energy. What, where is Jesus getting this energy? How is he producing all this extra matter? Now I'm going to stop you right there by saying that. I mean, I'm going to stop myself. Because this is the problem with miracles. You try to pick them apart and understand them, then you kind of lose some of their essence. The same thing is true with parables, right? If you try too hard to pull them apart, they start to lose some of their meaning.

[26:23] They have to exist on their own. They have to have some mystery about them. God is at work in all these things. And you know, all I would say is if God has the power to call the universe into existence with his voice, this is a small miracle. You know, this is much smaller. It's much bigger than creating the entire cosmos by saying, let there be light. Okay? And yet this is so much more than we could do. So even Jesus' this miracle is very small miracle to him, but to us, it's truly astounding. Okay. We're going to stop now. Just a few more thoughts. What about us? Okay. So this is dramatic. It's the creation of matter and mass from seemingly nothing, right? But it's a miracle in the service of a proclamation that Jesus is the true bread of life. He's the one who gives of himself for sinners like me and you. And then I want to ask that question again and ask it. We'll be asking it week after week. Do we believe in these miracles, right? Do they drive us to deeper faith? And do we see miracles as being uniquely for us as a sign of God's unconditional love and care for us? I want us to get to those places. So we're starting that conversation now and we're going to keep coming back to it. So let's pray. Heavenly Father, thank you for this. Thank you for the grace of the Holy

[27:41] Spirit. Thank you for this miracle, this amazing thing that we can't understand and we probably shouldn't try, but we know that you are the author of the miraculous and that you do this to teach us and that you do this so that Jesus can reveal himself as the son of God, the lamb of God come into the world to save us. And so we thank you for that finally. And Lord open our hearts to whatever miracles that you may show us in this next week. Amen.