Who cares enough to lead the lost home?

“That Nothing May be Lost”

(John 6:1-15, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, April 5, 2009)

John 6:1-15 After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. ² And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick. ³ Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. ⁴ Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. ⁵ Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?" ⁶ He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. ⁷ Philip answered him, "Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." ⁸ One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, ⁹ "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?" ¹⁰ Jesus said, "Have the people sit down." Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number. ¹¹ Jesus then 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. ¹² And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, "Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost." ¹³ So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten. ¹⁴ When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, "This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!" ¹⁵ Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

A large crowd followed Him (1-4)

It is no mystery why thousands of people were following Jesus Christ wherever he went. He was working miracles in fulfillment of the prophetic writings. Death and misery came into this world through sin, and anyone who can perform so many miracles, sin-defying miracles, will attract a great crowd of needy people. We are desperate for the overturning of the fall. We are desperate for the healing that can only come from God.

In Isaiah 35, we read of the signs of Messiah. Interspersed in verses that speak of a world that seems to be beyond pain and sadness, a world full of the sensible glory and presence of God, there are prophesies of the blind seeing, the deaf hearing, the lame walking, and the mute singing for joy. These were the kinds of things that Jesus did in His earthly ministry, but He did not bring the entire new world to us immediately that Isaiah spoke of, that heavenly world somehow here right before our eyes. Yet these other miracles, where the misery of the miserable was overturned with a simple word or a touch, these things were being done in great numbers.

As great as these individual healings were, the greatest life-giving work of Jesus would not be any one act of compassion for some needy person. Our greatest healing would come in the fulfillment of the Passover. As Jesus became for us the Passover Lamb, the largest crowd of desperate people would have their needs bountifully addressed. It would be through the cross that the foundation would be laid for the entire new resurrection world that Isaiah spoke of. The many miracles that Jesus performed which caused so many people to follow Him were signs of that coming place and time. Of all those miracles Jesus performed, John chose seven to speak about in his gospel. One of these seven was the sign of feeding thousands of people with bread that seemed to come from heaven.

He knew what He would do (5-6)

Jesus knew what He would do as He saw such a large crowd coming toward him. Jesus always knew what He would do. He knew the passages that He was fulfilling from the Old Testament, not just the obvious ones, like Isaiah 35 that speaks so clearly of a new life that is coming. Even whole sections of the history of Israel would find their fulfillment in this one Man, Jesus Christ, like the period of the Lord’s provision for His people in the wilderness recorded in the book of Numbers. The Lord had heard the cries of His people in Egypt, and had given them the Passover and the Exodus, yet they were not yet in the Promised Land. Over 600,000 fighting men together with their families were travelling in a desolate place, and they all needed to eat. God fed them from heaven miraculously. He gave them some kind of heavenly bread. We know that man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord (Deuteronomy 8:3). Jesus is the Word of the Lord. Jesus is the Bread from heaven. He is the One you need today, and He showed this in this amazing sign, a fulfillment of something that God only hinted about for so many years. He did this by providing food from heaven for His people.

Jesus knew what He would do. Yet He asked a question of His disciples that made it sound like He did not know. “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” He was engaging His disciples in the solution to the need before them. We are told that He asked this question to test them. What kind of answer or behavior would have been consistent with passing the test?

Five barley loaves and two fish (7-10)

First the disciples had to see the need for what it was, and recognize their natural inability to solve the problem. Back to Numbers for one moment, if God did not bring bread from heaven for the Israelites in the wilderness for forty years, then the people would have died of hunger. One of the lessons that the cross teaches us is that we cannot solve our deepest problems in our own power. To be prepared to receive that lesson, the Lord brings us many experiences throughout our lives that force us to admit that there are things that we cannot fix. When my father was suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease, and my mother was undergoing cancer surgery in a hospital in Philadelphia, he and I were sharing a waiting room talking about things that we could not fix. My father had forgotten many things by that point in his life, including forgetting moment by moment why he was there in that waiting room, and then feeling guilty and crying when he remembered that it was because his wife was having cancer surgery. There was one thing that he did not forget. He remembered that he had learned that he was not in charge of everything. He learned that 35 years earlier when Mom and Dad lost their four year old daughter to drowning. Dad knew then that God was in charge of things, things that Dad could not fix, and he remembered that.

We learn this same lesson in our lives, not only through experience, but through the Bible. The disciples had a lesson to learn. They had a sign to witness. Part of the lesson of that sign from heaven would be that God would have to feed the people if thousands were to be fed. Five barley loaves and two fish would be inadequate. The companion lesson to our inability, and the big point of the sign that day would be the ability of God the Son, Jesus Christ, working through His disciples. Jesus did not panic. Can you hear His voice? “Have the people sit down.” First lesson: We are not able. The second lesson is like it: God is able, and Jesus is God.

As much as they wanted (11)

Jesus took the loves. He gave thanks to His Father in heaven. Then working through the seed of the church in the disciples and those seated who would simply pass the bread and the fish from one hand to the next, starting with an obviously inadequate supply, people were fed, lots of people. In fact they all ate as much as they wanted. Only God could do it, but He decided that He would do it through people just passing along good food to the next person, food they had received from someone else. Starting with His hands, the blessing went forward through their hands, and into their mouths, and it was a good meal. It was a meal from heaven.

It was also a sign of heaven, because in heaven, people don’t go hungry. In heaven, God cares for us, and He even uses us in the process, because that’s what He likes to do. In heaven, we have good meals. In heaven, we have the fullest appreciation that all the praise and glory for every good meal belongs to God, and that everything good started in the nail-pierced hands of Jesus. In heaven, we are finally satisfied with abundance that God has for us.

Jesus and people – differing expectations and intentions (12-15)

What happened next is unexpected, and even though all the gospels tell this story of the feeding of the 5000, this next detail only appears here in John. It is something that Jesus said. “Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost.” Why did Jesus say this? It was not a concern for cleanliness or order. The birds would have surely been happy to do their part. But that’s not what Jesus wanted. Part of the reason must have been the substantiation of the miracle; that they started out with five loaves and two fish, and ended up with twelve big baskets after everything else had been eaten. But this can’t be the whole store, or even the main story, since Jesus gave a reason for His instruction to gather up the pieces. He said, “that nothing may be lost.” This is a very strange way to speak about bread. We do not think about leftovers being “lost.” By the way, the Greek word can also mean perish or die as in John 3:16, and the words translated here “nothing” can also be translated “no one.”

God has this thing about lost stuff. The concept of being lost has to do with things that were once part of something, but then they seem to be gone. God hates that. You can look in the law. He has provisions about finding lost things and lost animals, and bringing them back where they ought to be. In Luke 15 Jesus tells three stories about a lost sheep, a lost coin, and a lost son, and He says that people in heaven are passionate about lost people, people who wandered, that they ought to come home. But it is the use of this word in John’s gospel that tells us that Jesus is teaching us something here about His love for the lost. This word used here and in John 3, is also used in the remaining part of John 6 that we have not read today. In John 6:27 Jesus talks about food “that endures to eternal life,” and He contrasts that with lost food. He uses this same curious word (lost) that He spoke of when He told the disciples to gather the fragments. In John 6:39 He says, “And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day.”

Jesus is the Son of God. He gives Himself away, like a lost thing, so that no one that the Father gave to the Son will be lost forever. This is His resolve. This is why He came to us. This is why He dies. They think that He is the best prophet ever because He gives the best bread. They want to make Him king right away. He has another plan, God’s plan, a plan that is the fulfillment of everything that a prophet could be, everything that a king could be, everything that a priest or a Passover lamb could be. He is the Lord. He feeds us from heaven. He gathers the lost.

Questions for meditation and discussion:

1. What might some of the reasons be that Jesus is attracting such large crowds?

2. Why does He perform this miracle, and why does John choose it as one of His seven signs?

3. Consider the following passages that speak of the lost: Psalm 119:176, Jeremiah 50:6, and Ezekiel 34:10-16.

4. What is the intention of Jesus in His saving work? What is the power of Jesus in His saving work?