The Gospel of Luke 9:12-17 Feeding 5000 men
Luke 9:12-17 · Vern Peterman · Jul 5, 2015
Gospel of Luke, No. 34
Holly Hills Bible Church
https://www.hollyhillsbiblechurch.org/teaching/messages/49265941641

Transcribed from the recording by SermonAudio, so expect the occasional misheard word.

Good morning. We're looking at Luke 9, 12 through 22 here in our continuing investigation of Jesus. And this particular passage that Courtney read for us here has two sharply contrasting events. And the first of those is the feeding of 5,000 men. Sometimes it's called the feeding of 5,000. In truth, however, this is feeding of 5,000 men plus women and children.

Somewhere around the Sea of Galilee, we'll talk about where I think that is. Jesus asked his disciples in the second part, who people say that he is, and then who the disciples say that he is, ending with telling them that he must be rejected, killed, and rise again. We'll see why he includes those things after the question. So, the first part of the account is the feeding of these 5,000 men, plus women and children who are with them.

And this is the only miracle recorded in the Gospels that's recorded in all four of the Gospels. So this must have significantly impressed the Apostles. It was an event that they just had riveted in their minds and stood out. This is something that must be told to everyone. The Gospels differ slightly in some of the details, not in a conflicting kind of way, but in a compatible way, each of them offering some different details about this one very significant event. And you have there, kind of at the top of the slide, the different references if you wanted to do some comparison studies between them.

Though the location of the feeding of the 5000 is debated, in looking this thing over, and I've looked over a bunch of the different considerations here, it's most likely a place just north of the Sea of Galilee. Some of the other options, by the way, are places that Nancy and Courtney and Ingrid and I went to as well. but you have it here on page one. This is an area that is just north of the upper end of the Sea of Galilee. It's away from the shore and kind of up on a side of a hill there.

It is a grassy area and by the way the time of year, regardless of any pictures you might see, the time of year is a time of year when things are actually quite green. So if you see in the background, things are not, that's because they took the picture at the wrong time of year. But at any rate, so that's the area. And it also happens to be a place that we saw when we were visiting from Bethesda, excuse me, Bethsaida.

And I believe Courtney got this shot. And it's right up here. is where that would be. So they would be there up on this grassy hillside, up high enough that they were away from the shore, and far enough away that there were some towns and villages and cities nearby, but nothing immediately adjacent to where they were meeting. So this would be the most likely location where the feeding of the 5,000 took place.

So here's Luke 9.12, and it says, Now the day was ending, and the twelve came and said to him, Send the crowd away, that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside, and find lodging, and get something to eat.

For here we are in a desolate place. And right here, and as you see in the picture, there's nothing really right around it. You have to travel some distance to get to some nearby city or village or whatnot. So here's what the disciples said, and if you think about it, just looking at it, it's pretty reasonable. It's getting late in the day, people are running out of food and water, they need to get somewhere, get something to eat, find some place to stay.

It's actually a fairly reasonable thing for them to offer. If the crowd had gathered that had gathered were sent into the cities and villages nearby, they could find food and lodging. There's definitely places that would be glad to sell them bread and fish and give them a place to stay. It was Jewish custom to be very hospitable to fellow Jews. And so that would fit.

But for Jesus to get away from the crowds was not always simple. That's part one. But more, more than that, Jesus had in mind to teach his disciples some specific lessons. And obviously, because this is reported in all four Gospels, they got the importance of this particular pivotal event. They would never forget these.

So here's Luke 9.13, but he said to them, you give them something to eat. And they said, we have no more than five loaves and two fish, unless perhaps we go and buy food for all these people.

Now, it's interesting. There's a place where others argue that this event took place in a place called Tabgah, closer to where we saw what's called the Jesus boat. And in that place there, they actually, several centuries after this, built a church and they made a mosaic. And lo and behold, they put in four loaves instead of five in the mosaic. And the two fish were the wrong kind of fish.

So I'm not sure what they were thinking. But at any rate, now. So here's the disciples, you know, you've got to give them something to eat. You know, Jesus comes around and says, you give them something to eat. Wow. And they said, we have no more than five loaves and two fish. That's it. Okay. Unless perhaps we go buy food for all these people. And we can talk about that in a minute. So here's this boy, he comes up with, you know, five loaves and two fish. And lo and behold, they go and take a picture. Does it look like five loaves in there? These people can't count or something, I don't know.

Now, Jesus didn't ask, could you give them something to eat? He didn't ask a question. Or how about if you give them something to eat? He could have asked that, but he didn't. He commanded them. He used the imperative, commanded them to give the people food. You give them something to eat, right?

So the disciples having already assessed their resources, they come back, got five barley loaves, that's a detail out of another one of the Gospels, and two fishes, more than likely tilapia, otherwise known in Galilee as St. Peter's fish. John 6-9 tells us that a boy was offering these loaves and fishes, so we have that detail from the Gospel of John.

So the disciples were working through the logistics. You can imagine, and they're putting their heads together. Jesus says, you know, you give them the food. And they're working through all the logistics in order to come up with a plan here. If you give all these people food, they would have to go out and buy food for them and then bring it back. So the disciples would go out into the surrounding towns and villages, buy the food, and then bring it back. Okay, if he says we've got to do that, then that's what we're going to do next here.

Five loaves and two fishes was just not enough to spread around for everybody to have even a little crumb. Here's your crumb. A little fish crumb and a little bread crumb. That's it. Hope you liked it. So not enough for even that really. The group is very large.

Now, we get the information from Mark 6.37, the disciples figured they would need to spend 200 denarii. Now, denarius was one average day's wage for a laborer or the lowest level Roman soldier was paid about a denarius a day. And so this would be 200 days wages. to buy food for all these people. So here's the disciples figuring they have to go into the disciples' kitty, so to speak, their treasury, and split it out and they all run out to the villages and cities and go and get some food and bring it back.

So, we think, what were they thinking? You have to admit the disciples were actually thinking reasonable thoughts. This is not, you know, crazy. It's like, okay, Jesus has beat them. I guess that's what we got to do. It just wouldn't make sense that that's what you would conclude.

We might have been inclined to think along the same lines if we were there. But Jesus was going to reveal his power and deity to these disciples, along with teaching them some other principles. Key point. So he had asked this question not because he wanted them to go out into the surrounding towns and villages and buy food, but he asked them, you feed them, he told them, you feed them, and he brought this point home to them so that they might come to a realization.

We do not have what it takes here. And here's an interesting account. This is out of 2 Kings 4, 42-44. You have it on page 2 of your handout, I believe. And this is an account which is very similar out of the Old Testament with Elisha. Now a man came from Baal, Shalisha, and brought the man of God, Elisha, bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley, and fresh years of grain in a sack. And he, Elisha, said, Give them to the people that they may eat. So here's something similar to what Jesus said.

And his attendants said, What? Will I set this before a hundred men? If you've got twenty loaves here, you can give a little bit to each one. That's it. But he said, Give them to the people that they may eat. For thus says the Lord, They shall eat and have some left over. So he said it before them and they ate and had some left over according to the word of the Lord So a similar event had happened during the days of Elisha Compared to what it was about to happen here. So Luke 9 14 and 15 reads like this For there were about 5,000 men and it says in some of the other Gospels plus women and children and he said to his disciples have them sit down and eating groups of about 50 each and And they did so and had them all sit down. So you can imagine the disciples, they're thinking, okay, we've got to go out now, I mean right now, and go into the towns and villages and get some food. And Jesus says, nope, we're not doing that. We're going to have everybody sit down. We're going to eat right now. Okay.

You wonder kind of what some of the disciples were thinking. So Jesus didn't have the disciples instruct the crowd to sit down, excuse me, didn't just have the disciples sit down in these groups of about 50 for something to do. It wasn't just an exercise to take up time. Jesus explicitly told the disciples to have them sit down in these groups of about 50 people in order for them, and he says, to eat. In order for them to eat. We could have a great time wondering about what the disciples were thinking at this point in time.

Jesus has lost it. You must be kidding. They're going to be sitting down for a long time. Right? No. Jesus has something else in mind. They did, however, they did, however, learn, so far, Jesus was not your usual kind of rabbi. So maybe Jesus is going to do something different here. And that may have been going through some of their minds. Nonetheless, they followed through with what Jesus instructed.

So there were 5,000 men plus women and children. If the 5,000 men were gathered there plus women and children, there could easily have been 10,000 people present and possibly even more. So that's a lot of people to be fed all at once in groups of 50 and be up in this location up in the upper right here of this grassy hill. So 10,000 people would mean about 200 groups of 50 people each. So that'd be the grouping. Each disciple would have to serve more than 800 people, would be the way that would work out, assuming the number 10,000. And it could have been higher. But that's not too unreasonable an assumption, about 800 people served by each disciple.

We're not told that Jesus conveyed to the disciples how he was going to feed this huge crowd of people. Jesus didn't say, look, don't worry about it, just do this, I'm going to take care of it, I'm going to reproduce this stuff, you know. And so he didn't explain anything, as far as we know.

So here's Luke 9, 16. Then he took the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he blessed them and broke them and kept giving them to the disciples to set before the people. Now, notice the words here. He kept giving it to them. So it wasn't, you know, here's yours and here's yours and here's yours. But he continued to give it to the disciples. As they were feeding, they would run out, they come back and he's got some more.

So I say don't do this at home. I put a smiley in there because in fact, you know, it might be something you do at home. It's a good idea to pray before meals and at home and elsewhere. And the disciples had heard Jesus bless and give thanks for the meal many times before and nothing extraordinary happened at those events. He just blessed and gave thanks for the meal. That was it. But Jesus was doing something different at this meal. that we shouldn't necessarily expect for God to do for us all the time. But look at what happened afterwards. We'll take a look at that in a minute. Meanwhile, I want to tell you a little story.

This is my great uncle, Brayden Finney, that's the best picture I have of him. Great uncle Brayden Finney, he was a pastor in Corvallis, Oregon. And at one point in time, This was after World War II. He passed along a commentary on Romans to my grandfather. So that's the, and it's Newell's commentary on Romans. So he passed it along to him. It's that guy.

But one time prior to this, the family was in a tough way. Some years during the Depression, for example, it was pretty rough on families, especially pastors, where everybody else is strapped. And so they, however, had one bag, it was a small bag, of flour. And so Braden prayed before they opened the bag.

And he said, Lord, we don't have money for the next food. We, in fact, don't have any more food than just what's right here. This is it. This is all we've got. And we just look to you to provide. They opened up the bag, and there was a $20 gold piece inside. The Lord answered their prayer. The Lord's answer was already there. Isn't that something? The Lord knew ahead of time.

Now, in In the New Testament times, fish was served in three different ways. And sometimes it was cooked, you know, fresh fish. So that would be one way, typically grilled over a fire. And another thing that they had, some would find it disgusting, is fermented fish paste. It's still, by the way, popular over in Thailand. But nonetheless, fermented fish paste was actually a staple of the Roman army. They had different grades of fermented fish paste.

But this particular one that fits with this account was dried fish, and sometimes they would salt it as well. And that you could break up, and that's the reason for thinking that's the particular form that this boy came with. He came up with two fish, probably dried, possibly salted, and they had been, you know, prepared probably some days previous, and the boy had offered those two there. Most likely tilapia, which has one fin, the mosaic there in Tabga has two fins, one dorsal fin. So it's this last form that is most likely what was used there, and you could break it up in pieces.

So, he kept giving them to the disciples. So the reproduction of the food, the fish and the loaves, was happening in Jesus' hands. Because if he was the one that was continually giving, he was the one that was continually supplying, right? All twelve of the disciples were coming back to Jesus and receiving more bread and fish. He kept giving more and more and more. He kept giving it to them. It wasn't reproducing in the baskets that they had, but they kept coming back to him. And five loaves of barley bread and two dried fish, like the tilapia, were made into enough food for thousands of people, for everyone to be fed, as the disciples went back and forth bringing more and more food.

So in Luke 9.17 it says, And they all ate and were satisfied, and the broken pieces which they had left over were picked up, twelve baskets full. Now, they had thousands of satisfied customers, don't you think? After the thousands of people had eaten all they wanted, there was still more left over. As a matter of fact, there were still 12 baskets left over, one for each of the disciples. So they all came back with these baskets filled with the leftovers. So this event must have really stayed in the disciples' minds for all four of the Gospels to record this one miracle. This really got their attention.

We have it from John 6.15, and John is exclusive in this. It says, So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take him by force to make him king, withdrew again to the mountain by himself alone.

Now imagine, Galilee was actually a place of repeated revolts and often tax revolts. More so than Jerusalem and the area to the south. So among the Jews, the tax revolts almost always started in Galilee. And one of the reasons why is because the Roman tax presence was so intense and so heavy. And the Romans would come in and take and take and take from these people.

Imagine having a king that instead of taking from you, gives to you for free. That would be such a phenomenal relief and actually have a Jewish Jewish king that would come and give you a whole bunch of free food and not take from you. That would be astounding. That would be wonderful. And so you can imagine the kind of the emotional momentum that began to start there at this feeding of the 5,000 men plus women and children.

So Jesus wanted the Jews to accept him as the Messiah, but God would make Jesus the King of Israel, and not people. It wouldn't happen because of deposing Herod Antipas as a king by force, and putting Jesus there in his place. Not going to happen. That's not what God intended, and it's not what Jesus would allow.

Now, the disciples thought that the real issue here was food and how to get the people to the food at first, and then after Jesus says, you feed them, then how to get the food to the people. But is that the real issue here? No, it is not. The real issue was not food. The lesson was centered around food. But the real issue was not food.

The real issue was always to draw our focus upon Christ and who He is. And I think that's one reason why in here the disciples kept coming back to Jesus for more. It put their focus on Him as the source instead of looking at how are we going to do this by ourselves. I think that's a key thing. The Lord does not delegate anything to us. Our place is to believe He doesn't send us off with some task, and we go off and do it, and then come back and report on how we did. He says, no, that's not how I want to do things.

You've been crucified with Christ, right? It's no longer I who do the living, but Christ does the living in me. When we put our focus on Him, all the other issues are settled and secondary. The other lesson I think comes out of this is our insufficiency is God's opportunity. Jesus told them, because they were thinking, well just send the people out and then it's not a responsibility of our own. Jesus turned around and said, nope, you feed them. And why did he do that? Because they realized their insufficiency. Hey, five loaves and two fishes, that's not going to cut it. That's not going to cut it. We have nowhere near enough.

Our insufficiency is God's opportunity. We ask the question, what would have happened if the disciples had all the food that was needed to feed all those people or could get all the food that was needed easily on their own? Would they recognize their insufficiency? No. In here, our insufficiency and our recognition of it is God's opportunity. It was only the realization that the food resources were totally inadequate that opened the door to God's opportunity through Christ that day. Our insufficiency is God's opportunity. Do you realize you're insufficient? Yes. Good. Stay there, right? Stay there. That's God's opportunity. He says, trust in me, I'll take it from there. Trust in me. I'll take it from there. Now here we turn a corner.

This is Luke 9.18 after the feeding of the 5,000. So really the focus of the lesson here for the feeding of the 5,000, the focus of the lesson is actually for the sake of the disciples. That's the big takeaway. It's for the disciples, not the 5,000 and the women and children with them. They're going to be Jesus and the disciples alone, but the focus again is on the disciples' understanding. They're the ones that need to learn the lessons.

So here's Luke 9.18. It happened that while he was praying alone, the disciples were with him, and he questioned them, saying, Who do the people say that I am?

Now here's the location where they had fed the 5,000. Probably up in here, based on the accounts in parallel, that more than one of the Gospels says they were up around the villages of Caesarea Philippi, which is north of there. The farthest north we went on our travels was Hazor, so this would have been a little farther to the north and slightly to the east. And so that's likely the location where they're at. So who do people say that I am? The feeding of the 5,000 was motivated by Christ's compassion for the people. That's part one.

But the spiritual lessons were all directed to the disciples. Now Jesus is alone with the disciples, and it's really focused on them again, even though no one else is around in this instance. His spiritual lessons are all for the disciples. We'll soon see that learning them will take a long time. There's some things they understand and they already get and there's some other things that they haven't got a clue about yet. But that doesn't mean he's not going to tell them. He is going to tell them anyway. They'll just take a while to catch up with it.

Now another thing to point out is the people in the Old Testament on into the New Testament means the Israelites. We might be inclined to think just the people as sort of a general term, but specifically the Jews in the Old Testament and the New Testament use the people and the nation, singular, as that's the Jews, and the peoples and the nations for the Gentiles. So this is actually a specific term pointing who, not what do the Gentiles think, but who do the Jews say that I am.

It will be instructive to know here what the people are getting from all the ministry time that Jesus and his disciples have been pouring into them, mostly around the Sea of Galilee. Probably about 80% of Jesus' ministry time was spent around the Sea of Galilee. He stayed away from Tiberias from any record that we have, because that was the Roman capital of Galilee.

It will be insightful here to gain the disciples' impressions of what the people are saying about Jesus and see how that differs from the disciples' current understanding. So he's going to ask them, one, a question, what do the people say? And then he's next going to ask them, what do you say? Who do you say that I am?

So Luke 9.19, they answered in response to his question, who do people say that I am?

Some would say John the Baptist, resurrected. Others would say Elijah, and others that one of the prophets of old has risen again. So different ones probably chimed in different answers. So John the Baptist and others say Elijah, but others that one of the prophets of old. So another one. So these words are similar to what we saw last week from Herod Antipas, what he was hearing and thinking about.

But wait a minute, I beheaded John. Is this John resurrected? Or is this Elijah? Or is this another one of the prophets? While the people saw Jesus as someone spiritually significant, and this is not disrespectful, there was a move to make him king by force, and that was not good.

That was not good. Man, we really like the free food. That's a great deal. That's a great deal. If we make him king, he'll give us food instead of taking our food. Doesn't get any better than that. Now, Herod Antipas, I should tell you, is descended from Esau. So he's not a Jew, but rather related. Descended from Esau.

Here's Luke 9.20, And he said to them, But who do you say that I am?

And Peter answered and said, The Christ of God. The Christ of God. So it was Peter who responded with, you are the Christ of God. And so Christ means anointed one, just as does the Messiah from the Hebrew. Actually, technically, Hamashiach, and the Greek is Christos, and both of those have been anglicized to Christ and Messiah.

This was very critical that the disciples got this right. So Jesus was asking them for a particular reason. There's something you got to get right. At least at this point, Peter got it right. On that particular point, he got that right. Jesus was the long-promised Messiah, the Anointed One.

And as the days went by, they were further and further convinced of that, including the feeding of the 5,000 that they had just participated in. Let's ask this question. Could Jesus have fed the five thousand and not involve the disciples. Certainly could have. He had all those people out there with some empty basket and all of a sudden food shows up.

So he could have done it without involving the disciples and yet what he did was begin asking them about it and then telling them what to do. You feed them and then turn that around into involving them in the process so that they really got the lesson and that really sunk in. So here's Peter, no hesitation, You are the Christ of God. You are the long-promised Messiah sent from God. So here's Luke 9, 21 and 22.

But he warned them, instructed them not to tell this to anyone, saying, The Son of Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and be raised up on the third day. Hmm. Which gospel is this? This is a gospel of substitution, right? Christ died for our sins, was buried and rose again. So add this, he's telling them, to who I am. Add this to who I am.

Jesus is indeed the Messiah, the Anointed One, and Peter did get that part right, and that's part of the gospel of the kingdom, right? But the disciples also need to come to know that Jesus was their Savior too, that he loved them and would give his life for them.

Voluntarily he was not a victim It would mean that they would eventually come to understand that Jesus would be rejected by the Jewish leadership and he Jesus spelled out here are the Jewish leaders the elders and scribes and and all and Be killed and dying for all sins, but would rise again the gospel of substitution they needed to understand that and add that to who he was and Now, before we came to faith in Christ, the most important question was, who do you say that Christ is? It's a question that a person must have the right answer to. Eternity turns on that one question. Who do you say that Christ is? So that's true before we come to faith in Christ. The person who realizes who Christ is, yes, he is Christ, the Son of God, who died for my sins and was buried and rose again. And if I recognize that and believe it, I'm saved. God does the rest.

But alternate answers don't get you to the same place. Does it work to make a commitment to Christ? Does that work? Does it work to join Jesus' team? No. It's believing that Christ died for your sins and was buried and rose again. That's the content of the gospel that matters. People have to have the right answer to the question, who do you say that Christ is? Even after we believe, however, and are saved from one moment to the next, the most important issue in our lives is our answer to the question by Christ, who do you say that I am? That question still matters. Still matters.

There are some people who think, you know, I pray when I get in trouble and otherwise I don't pray at all, right? God's sort of the emergency room for troubled things going on in my life. And that's when I call upon God, just when I'm in deep hot water. So he's somewhere between the ambulance driver and the ER doctor, right? And that's what we do. Occasionally as a pastor, I'll have somebody come to me and they're essentially asking, would you help me get the rock out of my road? I don't mind at all helping people get the rock out of their road unless God put it there, right? Unless God put it there. And a lot of times things happen in our lives because we have a need of them and a need to make a realization.

As we go along as Christians, after we're saved, understanding who He is and answering the question by Christ, who do you say that I am, still matters until we go face to face with Him. And it will be very clear who He is and we will be like Him. Let's pray. Lord, we do thank you for what you've revealed in this very public event, the feeding of the 5,000. And we thank you for what you revealed also in this very private event with Jesus and his disciples. And Lord, just like the question Peter asked, it's a relevant question for us. Who do we say that you are? And Lord, we just ask you to bring these truths and these teachings home to our hearts. We pray in Jesus' name. Amen.