Tanilba Bay Baptist Church
Worship

      • John 6:1–13NIV2011

  • A problem too big

    We’ve been saying it for years now, but there is a cost of living crisis in Australia, and while opposition parties in parliament always think they have the solution the problem seems very persistent.
    As a result, their our countless people throughout our community who are doing it tough. We also have a housing crisis meaning there are many people living in sub-par houses, or more and more frequently, no house at all.
    As a church, we want to help. At Christmas time we had the opportunity to donate into the Christmas hampers. As they were handed out, they were really well received.
    Now it’s not my intention to diminish this effort at all, but while it was a lovely gesture, when you think about it, it doesn’t really change the situation. You see, they enjoy a few nice things they didn’t have to pay for for a while, but that runs out, and they’re back to where they were.
    Are we really making a difference?
    It’s often the case when we help people out. It’s appreciated in the moment, but not much real change.
    Now we could rationalise it by assuming if enough people help, then a real difference could be made. But will enough people actually help?
    Or we could hope that maybe the help we provide will just be the leg up that they need to get them out of the hole they’ve found themselves in - but is that hope realistic?
    Well, I’m going to suggest that the meagre amount we can offer is worth it… not because of the reasons I just mentioned (even if there might be some truth to them), but because we have a God who can turn our little into something significant.
    You might not be able to make a significant difference in the world around us - but guess what? We know someone who can.

    The gathering crowd

    Well, today we venture back into John’s gospel which is actually where we started this series, having first looked at Jesus turning water into wine in John 2.
    Now here in chapter 6, the setting is the Sea of Galilee. Well, as I mentioned last week, Jesus has stationed himself in the town of Capernaum which is on the Northern side of the lake. We’re told at the start of chapter 6 that Jesus crosses over to the far shore, but by this point in his ministry, people are constantly trying to seek him out.
    Verse 2 tells us that they followed him, so maybe some went via boat, and some went around on dry land.
    Well, when Jesus arrived at the other side, he wanted to take the opportunity to talk with his disciples, so he goes up a mountain side (or possibly more accurately, a hillside), and he sits down to teach them.
    But then verse 5 tells us he looks up, and there is a huge crowd coming toward him.
    Now, when it says “massive crowd” it’s not exaggerating. We’re told later in verse 10 that there were about five thousand men, and as Matthew’s gospel makes clear, this is the number besides women and children, so the number would have been even bigger.
    To put that in perspective, the population here on the Tilligerry Peninsula is a little under seven thousand people.
    So imagine we all decide to go for a walk down to (say) Salt Ash but then the entire Tilligerry Peninsula say, I wonder what they’re doing, let’s go walk down after them and find out, and all seven thousand of them start walking down.
    Now imagine, we’re sitting in our little group having a lovely conversation and we look up and just see the most massive group walking down the line.
    But then imagine, someone in our group pipes up and says: ‘you know what would be nice? Given these people have walked so far, I reckon we should give them each some lunch’.
    I think we all turn to the person who made the comment, and I suspect we just laugh at them.
    I know some people are very good at producing food on short notice when someone turns up at their house, but when you’re far from home, and we’re talking thousands and thousands of people… it’s a completely different league. It can’t be done it’s impossible.

    A testing question

    Well, this is exactly what happens as Jesus sits on a hilltop with his disciples - only it’s Jesus who says to his disciples - let’s give them lunch!
    Well, actually, they weren’t his exact words.
    Rather it’s initially a question directed at Philip, and it’s almost as if he’s testing his skills in logistics.
    The question he asks is this: “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?”
    Now, I reckon you would have been able to see the cogs turn in Philip’s head. He’s looking up and starting to do some mental arithemtic.
    People are just streaming to the location and he’s trying his hardest to make an estimate of the number of people. I’m thinking in the end he just thinks - this question is ridiculous. Even if a shop magically appeared in front of them and somehow had enough bread, there’s not a chance inn the world that they would have anywhere near enough money. I suspect his just randomly throwing a number out there when he says it would take more than half a year’s wages just so everyone could have a bite. But perhaps his not too far off the mark.

    Loaves and fishes

    Another of the disciples, Andrew, joins the conversaiton. Now, have you ever been in one of those brain storming sessions, where you run out of sensible ideas pretty quick, and so you just throw out some pretty wild ideas that you know have not a chance of solving the problem. Well, I think Andrew’s up to throwing out the wild ideas.
    You see, he’s spotted a boy who’s carried with himself five small barkley loaves and two small fish. Now these barley loaves are about as basic as things get. And the fish would have likely been some sort of pickled fish (I’m think something like a sardine), that you would be able to add to the bread to give it a little flavour.
    So, yes, Andrew brings this very meagre amount of food to the attention of Jesus, but he knows how ridiculous it sounds. Everyone would only get the smallest grain of bread.
    But Jesus is like: is that your offering… okay, I can work with that.

    The miracle

    As the crowd arrive, he has them sitting down. With such a large crowd, I’m guessing the probably took longer than you might think. But we’re told they’ve got plenty of grass for them to sit on, so soon, he’s in front of this crowd, and he has the five small barley loaves and two small fish.
    He has the loaves in his hands, and he gives thanks. The text just says he then distributes the bread.
    Now it doesn’t tell us what this would have looked like for the crowd watching Jesus thanking the bread. I mean, does the bread kind of pop out like popcorn? Or maybe there’s like a basket that’s a bit like Mary Poppin’s bag - you know, the one where she keeps pulling stuff out of the bottom of it. Maybe every time they take a loaf out of the basket, another just appears. Or maybe a whole bunch of baskets full of bread just appear.
    The reality is, it doesn’t really matter the specifics of how it happened. We just know that it did. About 5000 people had enough bread so that they had enough to eat.
    And of course, the same thing happens with the fish. Jesus gives thanks for it, and everyone gets some.
    There is so much in fact, that there were even left overs. And they didn’t wwant it to go to waste, so they had some baskets and went around to collect the left overs. They end up with 12 baskets full of pieces of barley loaves.

    The reaction

    Well, as you might imagine, the crowds were suitably impressed. People in the crowd start saying “surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world”.
    Now, just to be clear, they’re starting to get to the idea of Jesus as Messiah. Perhaps not quite there, but it’s not much of a leap from the great prophet that was identified in Deuteronomy 18, and the Messianic prophecies from the later propets.
    Jesus must be the one. And they want him for king.
    Now, this is where it gets interesting. You see, Jesus is rightfully king, but he’s not the type of king they want him to be. The kingdom that Jesus reigns over is quite different.
    And so, Jesus had to withdraw from that place.

    Lessons from the miracle

    Well, as we look at this miracle, there are quite a number of different things that we can learn from it.
    We can see in this miracle a very clear precursor to the Last Supper where Jesus breaks bread as a sign of the broken body. In fact, if we were to follow the chapter through, when we get to verse 35 we’ll see the clear declaration “I am the bread of life”
    So in this passage we get a lesson about who Jesus is and what he has come to do.
    There’s also a lesson in this miracle about how we can face impossible situations. Particularly when we read it with the very next miracle recorded where the disciples are in the boat at night when the waters start getting rough. But Jesus walks on water and comforts them in the midst of a very difficult scenario.
    Impossible situations become possible with Jesus.

    A meagre offering

    It would be worth our time exploring these lessons, but the main message I want to draw out is how Jesus turns our very meagre offerings into something incredible.
    For all intents and purposes, the small amount of bread and small fish were insignificant. Think of putting a bush fire out if all you have is one single bucket of water.
    If you give $50 to a homeless person, you’re hardly going to make a difference in that one single homeless person, let alone the countless homeless people throughout the country.
    We look around ourselves at the world with all of the societal problems, and we think, what can I do? I’ve got very little to offer… including both in resources like cash or other items, or in skills.
    Or we could say the same thing when we think about ourselves as a church.
    Yes, I know we can be proud of ourselves for putting on a lunch every Thursday for 50-odd members of the community - but how much difference are we making?
    But here’s the thing… Jesus doesn’t want us to solve all the world’s problems. He does want us to care about them, but he knows we are only finite people with limited resources.
    What he wants, is for us to offer what little we do have. He will do the rest.
    You know, I just mentioned the Community Meals 4U program that we run.
    Now, here’s an interesting thing about the kitchen that you may not know. When I first arrived at the church almost exactly 13 years ago, that kitchen had just started to be built. The previous kitchen was in the little room that we now call the cry room, which if you look in their it’s pretty tiny. But when they started building, the church didn’t quite have enough money. For a while, the project stalled due to lack of funds. But then something happened. God blessed the little we could offer. Extra money came in. We managed to get some things cheaper than we expected. We only had a little money, but God blessed the little we had, and now that kitchen is a blessing to many.
    Or I think back to the days we were running a rather large youth group here. We didn’t have a lot to offer. We could hardly scrape together enough leaders to make it work. And while I recognise there were problems that we encountered, there are countless stories from those days where God turned up and lives were changed.
    It was about a year or so ago I got a message from one of the previous youth, who thanked me for those days. He told me how after moving town, he came to know Jesus as his Lord and Saviour.
    We had quite a number of other youth making decisions for Christ. We didn’t have much to offer, but it wasn’t about what we could do, it was about what Christ was doing with our little offering.
    You see, here’s the thing… when we see someone in need and we give them a hand, from a practical perspective, we’re rarely gonig to be changing their life in some profound way -yet… God can multiply what we offer.
    We might not offer much, but if they open up to Jesus, their lives will become transformed. The blessings start to multiply.

    What do you offer?

    So what is it that you can offer to the world around us that is so lacking in hope?
    Maybe it’s hospitality, where you can open your house up to have someone over for a meal.
    Maybe it’s financial, where you can give to someone or some group that is in need.
    Maybe it’s your time. Your time could be used for practical purposes like building things or cleaning. Or maybe it’s time to be with someone who just needs a friend.
    Maybe it’s an expertise in a certain area like admin, or computer skills or accounting.
    You know we can think about all the ways we can help, and often we can think - but what good is it. Am I really going to be making a difference?
    Or possibly, your life might be so full that you feel what you have left to give is almost nothing.
    And if you want to think purely in the likely practical outcomes of your little offering, you’d probably conclude that it is going to be insignificant. But what I want to tell you this morning, is: don’t forget that Jesus is in the business of turning your little insignificant offering, into something that is significant.
    How’s he going to do that? Well, most of the time, that’s going to be a mystery to us. Sometimes we won’t always see what Jesus is doing, but that doesn’t necessarily mean nothing happned.
    Our job is just to offer what little we have, and let Jesus do the rest. It’s up to him what the final outcome will be.

    Conclusion

    My hope is that you find this message an encouragement. It’s very easy to become discouraged when we think that what we do doesn’t amount to much.
    But when we realise that it’s not just about what we offer. It’s about what Jesus does through our offering. This takes pressure off ourselves, but at the same time, shows that what we do will matter.
    Do what is it that you can offer at a time like this.
    Let me pray...
Tanilba Bay Baptist Church
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http://www.tanilbabaybaptistchurch.com
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