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September 24, 2006
Bread, the Staff of Life
Deuteronomy 8: 1-10
John 6: 35-40
September 24th, 2006
This morning I invite you to look carefully with me at a great and mysterious truth that God unfolds for us gradually in the Gospel of John. Jesus said, in the verses we have just read, "I am the bread of life." In the section before this He hinted at this, but did not say this directly. Instead he calls to mind for fellow Jews who knew their Bible well those shaping moments in their history when their forebears were in the wilderness. Forty years they wandered in the desert depending on God for literally everything.
God fed them. God gave them water to drink. God guided them with a pillar of cloud by day and fire by night. God protected them.
The bread that God gave them to eat was particularly in Jesus mind as He launched the great teaching about how all of human life is sustained. John does not quote the passage from Deuteronomy that Deb read for us moments ago. But the other Gospel writers tell us that Jesus quoted an important word from that section at the beginning of His ministry. Jesus was weakened by hunger in the desert from a forty-day fast. The devil tempted him to turn some bread-shaped stones into bread. Jesus quoted from Deuteronomy 6 in response: "Do not put the Lord your God to the test," or as we are more used to hearing these words, "Do not tempt the Lord your God."
When the devil persisted, urging Him to try out God's care of Him by jumping from a pinnacle of the Temple Jesus replied, "One does not live by bread alone but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God." It would seem Jesus was still thinking about the bread temptation when He said this. Actually the Hebrew of this verse does not say "every word," but "all" or everything that proceeds from the mouth of the Lord" (kol motsa' pi adonai).
Moses said these things looking back as the end of his life drew near. He reminded his people of the mysterious bread with which God fed them in the wilderness. They called this bread "manna," which sounds like a name of some specialty bread. But when the Israelites first dubbed this bread with this name they were actually asking a question, "What is this?" The name stuck. Ever after this "what is this" was in their minds as a sign of God's provision of the staff of life in a day when there were no fields growing grain in their precincts.
This bread was mysterious in that it didn't really look like bread. The Hebrew word for bread may also be translated "food." This strange food looked flaky like frost, or perhaps like philo-dough; it was white like coriander seed; and it tasted like wafers made with honey. But this was not the whole of its mystery. The Israelites could not plan for tomorrow by gathering up more than enough for day. When Jesus taught us to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread," He had in mind the bread that they could only gather enough for one day. Because if left over night the manna was worm infested and spoiled. The psalmist called it "cereal (dagan) from heaven, the bread of powerful ones (lechem abirim)," It came from above as an abundant though mysterious supply from God and gave the strength needed to live.
But Moses also looked forward to the way God would continue to care for them. The way God would care for them didn't have the same kind of mystery to it, but if they stopped to think they would realize how life would simply open up for them.
They would go into a land "flowing with milk and honey." It would be a land with cities ready-made to move into, cities they did not build. They would live in houses they did not construct, filled with things they did not make. They would drink water from wells they did not dig, and eat vegetables from gardens they did not plant. They would drink wine made from grapes that came from vines they did not cultivate. And he had to warn them that as they enjoyed all these benefits that they would not forget the Lord who brought them out of Egypt.
In fact as we look back at God's care of ancient Israel we don't read that He expected them to "believe" in God the way we talk of believing in God. Instead they were not to forget Him. They were to thank Him. They were to fear and obey. And I wonder if these acts of mind and heart that God expected of ancient Israel were the school in which they would learn about belief—which Jesus said was needful to have one's thirst quenched.
I spoke to the children this morning about thanking their parents for the good things they provide—good food, nice looking clothes, toys and so much more. I suggested that in our families when we thank our parents they feel good to be thanked. When this takes place over the years children become the friends of their parents. And so it was for Israel that when they responded to the psalmists' words, "O give thanks to the Lord for He is good; His steadfast love endures for ever," they could remember the story of their past which told of God's care. They would remember and thank Him. They would remember the remarkable manner of God's care and it led them to feel awe before Him. They hopefully remembered to obey Him as they felt awe and gratitude, and thus they were led on to that deeper attitude of heart that the New Testament calls belief.
Belief by nature is exercised toward things unseen. As Hebrews 11: 6 puts it, "Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen." In Old Testament times God's people trusted because they could see God's supply. There were more than visual symbols; there was the actual cloud by day and the actual fire by night to guide them. There was the sudden flow of water when they were thirsty, the morning by morning descent of manna for their food. They got used to things, but there it all was, the daily visual reminder of God's care.
But not so when Jesus came, having emptied Himself of all those visual signs of deity. Now it would take faith that He was who He said He was, who He seemed to be in doing His various signs.
Jesus, on the cusp of revealing the great truths by which all people ever after could find life, looked back to the manna God gave Israel. He taught that that bread, sustaining of life and mysterious in its origin though it was, was not the bread most needed. Israel looked back nostalgically on that bread though at the time it became monotonous so that they complained about it. They complained because it did not fully satisfy. Indeed, it was the most temporary of breads. It was infested with worms and grew stale overnight if they tried to save enough for tomorrow.
There was other bread that really came from above that, if eaten, strengthened the eater with eternal life. "For the bread of God is that which comes down from heaven and gives life to the world," Jesus said, further tweaking their curiosity. So they asked Him, "Sir, give us this bread all the time." But they little expected the answer that would come.
"I am the bread of life." Yet there was more mystery to come. Jesus did not yet speak of eating this bread, simply of coming to Him as a means of staving off the deep hunger, and believing in Him as a means of quenching the deep thirst.
We often talk of coming to Jesus, and of believing in Him. And we do well because Jesus said to come to Him, particularly if we are weak and heavy laden. He told us that believing in Him was needful to inherit eternal life. But there is something unquantifiable about coming to Him and believing in Him. In a way we don't know when we've really come to Him and not merely to some threshold where Jesus is the subject beyond. We can't see Jesus, after all. Belief is a kind of knowledge, but when it is in someone we cannot see, it is a helpless kind of knowledge. Edith Hamilton referred to this as trust, a word that has less of a knowledge aspect than the word belief.
When Jesus taught of coming to Him and believing in Him it was like two stages along the way to the kind of relationship to Him that He would finally say with all its starkness. Of that I will speak next Lord's Day. Few of us are prepared for this next stage as few were prepared for it in Jesus' day.
How do we come to Jesus and believe in Him so as to receive this life He promised? Why did He call Himself bread?
Because bread is the most basic necessity we have. The word itself in the Old Testament is sometimes used as a synonym for food. Why? Because bread is the most basic of foods. It is made of grain crushed so as to make it digestible and then lumped together and baked. At the Communion service we remember words from a second-century Christian worship order in which we pray, "As the grain was ground . . . let our lives be spent in your service." The bread God gave Israel was not grain-bread but somehow made of coriander seed that was like honey wafers. What a curious description of bread, we think. It was in its curiosity that it suggested the far more marvelous Bread that was born in the House of Bread, which is what Bethlehem means, many years later.
It would have been most appropriate for John to tell us in our passage that Jesus said that as basic as bread is, bread is not the most basic need we have. Indeed, when Jesus wanted to find a suitable metaphor for His life-giving role with us, though He spoke of bread, it was bread unlike any bread anyone has ever eaten.
No wonder there is a reserve in John's Gospel as Jesus taught of the relationship we are to have with Him. Come to Him and have no hunger—but since when does just drawing near to bread satisfy hunger? Believe in Him and you will not thirst, but since when does believing that water is water take away thirst?
And thus we find ourselves in much the same boat as ancient Israel. It struck me how very near Israel's situation we are as it thought of entering the Promised Land. We live in cities we did not personally build, in houses we did not put up. We eat food we did not grow—that is stacked in splendid variety in the grocery stores. We drink wine made from grapes grown in Spain, France, Australia and other far flung places. And all this we are able to buy even with money we do not yet have. How like ancient Israel we are.
And so we must follow the tutorial of faith God gave to Israel. Thank God for everything. Fear Him. Obey His commands. And realizing that this does not draw us as near to Jesus as we need, let us still follow the tutorial of this means of drawing near to God. And in due time Jesus will give us this gift of faith.
Even here there is mystery to God's work with us. Because Jesus said that only those whom the Father draws to the Son will come. Yet, when we think of the story with which all this begins in John 5, where Jesus feeds 5,000 men plus women and children—who came randomly we might say from the surrounding villages and country-side, we realize that Jesus was illustrating how broad is the sweep of God's call. Indeed, how do we know the limits of God's drawing people to His Son? They come hungry and He gives them bread and fish. No, more than that, He gives Himself. Jesus is the Bread of Life. No other bread can be called that because the effects of all other bread are momentary.
I must wait till next Sunday to give the final stage in Jesus' teaching about how we engage Him by faith. But suffice it to say this morning that if we begin with gratitude, awe, and obedience as Israel did, we will surely be led into the stage of belief, by which we apprehend Jesus and find life in Him. These are deeds we must do and not just speak of them.
To speak of gratitude without expressing it is empty. To speak of reverence for God without letting our awe characterize our lives with respect to Him is pointless. To ignore God's command while speaking reverently about them is hypocrisy. The "stuff" that prepares us for faith, a gift of God, is ours to do. It is the means by which we ready ourselves for what God can give. To try to describe this work of God feels strange as I say it. But I perceive this is what happened as God, to use the term of the Apostle Paul, gave the law to be a schoolmaster to bring us to Christ. It is for us to accept this tutelage, trusting that it is good, and thus be drawn into that soul-satisfying, life-giving relationship to God that comes only by faith in Jesus.
Let us pray: O Lord, to speak of such hallowed things is beyond us. But grant that so much as we understand of your ways and your expectations of us we may do, so that we may believe in Jesus and thus enter into eternal life. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM
September 17, 2006
Perils of the Deep
Jonah 1: 1-6
John 6: 16-21
September 17th, 2006
There is a passage in Shakespeare’s “Julius Caesar” where Brutus offers haunting wisdom to Cassius: “There is a tide in the affairs of men, which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune, omitted, all the voyage of their life is bound in shallows and in miseries. On such a full sea are we now afloat, and we must take the current when it serves, or lose our ventures.”
Does it not sometimes seem to you that your life is lived on the surface of a great deep? We are like little boats headed for some port that we think we know. There are depths to life that every now and then we realize are there; moments we are aware are full of significance.
There come those tides in our lives that carry us along, winds that catch our sails and push us at a pace and in a direction we could not have imagined when we were young. It is important that we set our sails at times when the winds are favorable and set our rudder with the good tide. And sometimes we must fight against the winds and set the tiller at an angle to the tide or life will go ill.
And sometimes there come frightening storms that threaten to drown us. The storms are sometimes due to our mistakes or sins. We made some very bad choices and the consequences blow hard. At other times the storms come completely without our deserving. These storms seem all the more ruthless.
When we face such storms what should we do? The two stories from Jonah and John’s Gospel that we read this morning have to do with these two kinds of storms that come to us. If we will notice there is wisdom for us in both stories.
The two points I would make this morning are these:
First, when our storms are due to our offences or sins in word or deed, we must acknowledge them rather than ignore them, and repent of them before God and before the ones we offended. To repent is to turn away from the wrong that we have done. We must not try to ignore our offenses or blame them on others when they turn out badly. Unrepented of, our sins will certainly become storms or even like hurricanes.
Second, when we have suffered sorrow we are not responsible for, we should take to heart the promise we quote some times on the Lord’s Day from the Heidelberg Catechism. “Whatever evil God sends my way in this troubled life He will turn to my good, for He is able to do it, being Almighty God, and determined to do it, being a faithful Father.” The great promise of this Almighty God-Father is that he will be with us, and that is all we need.
Maybe you wonder why is it that one offense or an accident may cause a tsunami while we have to keep on making good decisions for them to have good effects; and we must have continuous good fortune for good effects to continue? I ponder this too.
Let me begin first with the event described in John’s Gospel. The disciples were crossing the Sea of Galilee at night. Jesus left them alone after the previous day’s feeding the five thousand with five loaves and two fish. That gracious deed drained Him. He needed to be refreshed. He withdrew to a mountain by Himself. We can imagine that Jesus needed to be alone to pray, to speak with His heavenly Father, to gather strength for the tests to come.
Perhaps He had told the disciples to meet Him on the other side. So they set the sail of their little craft toward Capernaum. But as often happens when the winds blow across the Sea of Galilee from the surrounding hills, a storm of frightening proportions threatened to capsize them. Then, to make matters scarier still they saw this apparition walking on the water. Was it a ghost? If the water didn’t drown them they’d die of fright. But Jesus spoke, “It is I, don’t be afraid.” And they were glad to take Jesus into the boat with them and thus they reached the shore safely. We’re not told that the storm subsided, but that Jesus got into the boat with them. They were glad to have Jesus with them.
I began this morning’s worship by reminding us all of the promise in the Prophet Isaiah: “Fear not for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are mine. When you walk through the water I will be with you, and the rivers shall not overwhelm you.” “I will be with you,” the Lord promises us. How often in distress have the word of Psalm 23 surged to mind, “Yea though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for Thou art with me.” That is enough. I am not alone in this. You are not alone. Claim this promise.
The disciples were not responsible for the storm at sea. They did not do wrong to set out when there might be a storm. Presumably Jesus had agreed to meet them on the other side. Yet the storm came and they were at risk.
Perhaps terrible accidents or illnesses have come to you or to loved ones. No one was responsible for the dreadful brain cancer that recently took a young mother in our community of whom I was told this week. The tragic death of three children in the Hockerman family as they returned from holidays last year, hit by a drunk driver comes to mind. They were not responsible for this.
Then I think of the distress that comes with being misunderstood. For example, the speech Pope Benedict gave at the University of Regensburg this past Tuesday, taken so wrong. He spoke to colleagues in a place where he once taught of the importance of the use of reason that we learned from the Greeks. But the illustration he used toward the beginning cited a conversation between a Byzantine emperor and a Muslim academic that focused on the idea of jihad and the will of God. The pope was not impugning Islam. This was not his intent. It is inconceivable that in this highly charged environment he would choose to incite Muslims! He surely had no idea the consequences that would follow his illustration. A frightful flame has been fanned in the Muslim world that results in this peaceful, loving pope being compared to Hitler.
You can think of moments in your life in which you were taken wrong, perhaps falsely accused. A friendship broke over your friend’s taking you entirely differently than you meant. Maybe your reputation took an unearned flogging. It cast a long shadow over your life. Such are the causes of life’s sorrows that make us want to say, “In times like these we need a Savior!”
When events like this happen we look to God. We pray as Jesus prayed, “If it be possible remove this cup from me.” But the answer that comes most often is, “Fear not for I will be with you.” The disciples were glad when Jesus got into the boat with them. Great peace uncannily comes to us when we have cried out to God and recognize that though we’re still in the storm Jesus is there with us in the boat.
But sometimes we earn the storms that come.
Jonah was disobedient to God who told him to go East to Nineveh, but he went west toward Spain. He was told to go tell Nineveh to repent of its sin or suffer dire consequences. He wanted Nineveh to suffer for its cruelty. Assyria was notorious for barbarity towards its enemies. He wanted Nineveh’s doom more than he wanted to obey God, even though his calling was to tell what God told him to say.
We don’t know all that contributed to Jonah’s thinking. Maybe when he mentioned to friends what God told him to do they said, “That’s ridiculous!” Maybe there was a protest from devout Israelites in his village. They thought the way the prophet Habakkuk thought. Why should God favor wicked nations over good nations—that is Assyria over Israel. Only bad should come to Israel’s wicked enemies. It was only reasonable. So Jonah faced peer pressure as well as his own native bias against Nineveh.
But God told Jonah, “Go to Nineveh and tell that wicked city to repent.” But he flat refused. Not only that. He did not stay at home in his refusal; he went the other way. He disobeyed as deliberately as possible. He went down to Joppa and bought a ticket in a boat going the opposite direction, to Tarshish in Spain.
There was an idea the Israelites picked up from peoples who lived around them that the gods were all local deities. Every Baal had its territory. So the Israelites sometimes thought that “the God of Israel” was just the local deity, rather than the Creator of heaven and earth. So Jonah could escape the annoying deity who told him to go to Nineveh by getting out of his territory. It didn’t quite work.
But we know how it came out. The God who spoke to him, the Creator of heaven and earth was every bit as much with him in that boat going to Tarshish as He had been with him in Israel. God goaded him to repent in the most forceful way. A great storm at sea threatened to wreck the ship that took him east. The pagan sailors prayed to their gods as Jonah slept in the hold of the ship. He was momentarily at peace; he had escaped his god’s influence; he was getting away with flaunting God’s will. Just go east, young man, and you can avoid God’s command.
But his peace didn’t last. God taught him a very forceful lesson about repenting of his omnipresence and of his sin of disobedience. The only reasonable thing for the sailors to do with Jonah—he told them—was to toss him overboard because he was the cause of the storm. And so they did.
Jonah found himself in the reeking stomach of a large fish. It stank like crazy. Imagine the company he had in the belly of that leviathan! Everything it had had for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that day was being digested around him! Somehow, like Pinocchio in the whale, he was able to breathe still for three days and three nights before the fish couldn’t stand his company any more. Do you see humor in the story? Not only the sailors but also that great fish could not stand his company! “You make me sick,” it thought. It vomited him up. He found himself on dry land.
Jonah got the point. He reluctantly turned back and went to Nineveh. To his chagrin Nineveh responded to his call for repentance—that came from a prophet who in coming to them was repenting of his own disobedience. The rest of the story you probably know well.
There is a great lesson here. The way back from ours sins against God and against one another is to repent. That is, to admit the wrong we have done and turn from it. We are a proud people, much more apt to stonewall after we know we have offended than to confess our sin and turn from it. We plow on straight ahead. Acknowledging we have done wrong is a sign of weakness—we show that we believe this. Thus we reject the peace of God for ourselves and bring grief to others. Jonah needed to be tossed into the sea and get swallowed by a great fish to get the point. Maybe we need this kind of reminder too.
The truth has surged in my heart in recent years that Christianity seems so much more a matter of believing right than of doing right. It really didn’t matter what Jonah’s theology was if he was disobeying God. It doesn’t matter very much if we have good ideas about the Holy Trinity, about Jesus the Son of God, about the Holy Spirit, about sexual ethics, etc., if we are living in disobedience to God. Bonhoeffer reminded us recently, “To believe is to obey; to obey is to believe.” But we separate obedience from faith because we are getting away with it in our prosperous times.
I think of the line we sing vigorously in Fosdick’s great hymn, “God of grace and God of glory.” “Rich in things and poor in soul.” Thus we may sing cheerfully of ourselves little realizing that the hymn is an appeal to our consciences from God.
When you come down to the bottom line the voyage of life for us all will come to an end. And in the end we look back and see that our storms have a beginning and an ending. It is how we respond to them that matters. Perhaps your storm will end if you confess the wrong, the sin you have done, and turn from it. If you sincerely repent your storm will taper down to a breath of wind. Afterward you will realize that it was a kindness of God that you suffered this consequence of your sin. Your suffering turned you around. Or perhaps you are living in on-going tension inside, in hostility against those who were once your friends because you have not repented of your sin against them. You have not turned around, and you realize you must. Don’t ignore such tuggings of conscience.
Perhaps your storm has come to you unearned. Take comfort in God’s promise that He is with you when you go through the deep water. You are not alone.
God is with us in life’s storms. His kindness is exposed in the storms we have caused, urging us to turn around, to repent and be reconciled. His kindness is exposed in the peace He gives us in the storms that have come “undeserved.” Of course, most of the tragic things that happen cannot be thought of in terms of deserving or not deserving. It is a troubled world we live in. But God presides over this world for good. It belongs to Him.
O Lord God, grant us in the storms of life to see more clearly that You are always near us, and then so to live, responding to your voice, taking comfort in your presence. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM
September 10, 2006
Jesus’ Idea of Enough
I Kings 17: 8-16
John 6: 1-15
September 10th, 2006
This account of Jesus’ feeding the five thousand is one of the most thought-provoking stories in the Gospels. All four Gospels tell it. But only John’s Gospel points out the details that make the human element in the story really vivid. And John points us toward the great truth that Jesus is the bread of life who really satisfies our hungry souls if we will feast on Him.
What grabs our attention in the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand with a shepherd boy’s lunch may be the miracle, the outward sign of Jesus power. Or perhaps we notice the shepherd boy himself, offering his little lunch that is more than enough in Jesus’ hands to do all He needs to do. I want to focus on this second obvious lesson of this story.
But first we need to see that this feeding story is just an introduction to a greater truth. The most important point of the story is that Jesus Himself is the bread of life. Jesus fed the five thousand around the time of Passover when bread is an important part of the meal. But now there was no bread in this wilderness place where they all were when they should have been getting ready for Passover. Jesus reminded them afterwards that God provided manna when their ancestors were in the wilderness. This manna had to serve them as the Passover bread because there was no other kind of bread available in the wilderness.
Passover and God’s feeding Israel with manna in the wilderness were only illustrations--just like His feeding the five thousand—of a greater truth—that Jesus is the one who satisfies the hungry heart.
After this Passover there would be other Passovers. After God fed the Israelites manna in the wilderness they were hungry for a greater variety of food, and after they entered Canaan, the manna ceased. After Jesus fed the five thousand with the little boy’s lunch, they were hungry by the end of the day. They needed something more—the Bread of Life Himself—Jesus. This is the great point of this story.
This section of John’s Gospel ends by letting us know we need to feed on Jesus. Then as now there were those who thought it scandalous that all they really needed was to feed on Jesus. Religion demands of us much more than this. How many matters we crowd into our idea of what we need to do to be truly Christian. “Come to me all who are weak and heavy laden,” Jesus says. We need to be weak, tired, hungry, and heavy laden to want to come to Jesus. Perhaps it is hard to eat of Jesus if we are not weak, tired, hungry and heavy laden. Some of His followers left Jesus when they heard they had to eat of Him. We too are easily distracted from feeding on Jesus. Maybe we’re not tired enough, not heavy laden enough to need Him this way.
Let’s get back to the story. It is good to remember to begin again where Jesus began with a little boy and with His disciples and with many others among the five thousand who quietly watched Him that day. Because in this beginning Jesus guides us in how we are to think of ourselves as well as of Him.
This story is dear to me because it reminds me of a poignant moment in my early ministry. Not long after I began my first Presbyterian pastorate in Brookston, the children’s choir director position was open and there was no one to fill it. So I offered to give it a try. Years before I had started a little band when I taught at an orphanage in North Carolina. Now I would try my hand as children’s choir director. I had around fifty kids
I was fortunate to have an excellent accompanist in the mother of one of the little girls in the choir. We decided to do a musical as our big project. We found a musical based on this story called “The Boy Who Had a Fish.” The musical needed a few soloists and a good chorus, so my first task was to pick out the soloists. Since I was new to the church I was given advice by those who knew the kids well. I was told that there would be a very eager little boy who would want to sing, but he shouldn’t bowl me over with his eagerness because he couldn’t carry a tune.
Well, I discovered who this little boy was soon enough. True enough, the little fellow wandered all over Robin Hood’s forest when he sang. What a joyful noise he made unto the Lord! On pursuing this a bit farther I discovered it was because nobody had wanted to squelch his cheerful little personality by making him stick to the notes. But his loud wandering voice was a hazard in the chorus; he distracted others from the tune. So I sat down with the little guy and said he had to stick to the tune. He looked at me with bewilderment. The tune? What’s that? So we helped him know what the tune was. Lo and behold, it soon became evident that this little fellow was the obvious male lead.
So the little boy with apparently small musical gifts but a willing heart became the star of the show in a musical about a boy who brought his small lunch to Jesus to feed five thousand people.
The little that we have if we offer it for Jesus to use is plenty. It is more than enough in God’s hands.
We wish we knew a lot more about this unnamed little boy. How did he happen to have a lunch while nobody else did? Was he inadvertently in that place as he tended his sheep? Or was he in the crowd, the only one who brought a lunch? Did he become a follower of Jesus after this? Was he important in the early days of Christianity?
We can hardy imagine Jesus’ disciples compelling him to give up his lunch. We imagine him giving it willingly. We wish we knew his name.
The only two names we learn are the two disciples who doubt that his little lunch was enough to do any good. He had only five barley pita-type breads and two small fish. Barley was poor people’s grain. Philip told Jesus helpfully, “Two hundred days wages worth of bread would not be enough to give everyone a little bit to eat. So what is this among so many?” It’s good to have practical questions asked when we make our plans, isn’t it? A good dampening bit of common sense wisdom is so valuable is it not when we attempt great things?!
Then Andrew chimes in that he’d found this lad with the little lunch, “But what are these among so many?” And this is the last Andrew and Philip are quoted in the Gospels. I think you and I might like to have remembered that what we said last was a bit more profound than what Philip and Andrew said at this pivot moment in Jesus’ ministry. It wasn’t that they didn’t have faith in Jesus. After all, they left all to follow Him. But in this moment that squeezed their credibility they thought the obvious thoughts.
We must have lots of food to feed lots of people. Didn’t Jesus once teach that we should count the cost before setting out to build a building? Before setting out to feed five thousand people make sure you have enough food!
But in matters of faith what is obvious is not always right. “God works in mysterious ways His wonders to perform,” William Cowper taught us to sing. “Deep in unfathomable mines of never ending skill, He treasures up His bright designs and works His sovereign will.” It’s a lesson Jesus wanted His disciples to learn as they watched Him face this impossible situation—thousands to feed and only a little lunch to do it with. And we have something to learn of this too. Expect the unexpected from Jesus.
He looked up as though it were an ordinary table meal with an ordinary family gathered round. He gave thanks, “Blessed are You, O Lord, King of the universe, who brings forth food from the earth.” And then He broke first the bread, and then the fish. And He kept on breaking it and it kept on multiplying. On and on He broke the bread and fish until His disciples fed perhaps as many as twelve thousand hungry people. There were five thousand men plus women and children.
I think it is simply disingenuous to think that Jesus did not actually do as the Gospels tell us. The “miracle” was not that everyone shared what they had, or some such evasion of this Divine deed of multiplication. There was no sign if there was not a “miracle.” But the point of the sign was not that Jesus could miraculously feed great numbers of people with physical bread and fish. Jesus was the point of the sign, for which the miracle was what people could see.
What did the sign point toward? It is possible to see it pointing in various ways. First, it was a sign that Jesus could do an act of God because He was God. Second, the bread was a sign of satisfying life’s most basic need. This need is not the bread itself that sustains physical life. The need is for Him who is the Bread of eternal life, of that life that enshrouds all life, that gives it the meaning which all of us need. Third, here was a sign that Jesus will take the little we have and multiply its usefulness.
What does Jesus expect of us? I wonder if Jesus would point us back to this story at the start of His ministry—about a boy with his noon meal that He gave for Jesus to use.
As He neared the end of His ministry he told a story about three servants to whom the master gave a “little,” though the little seems like an awful lot to us. It was “little” because by comparison with God’s wealth it was as insignificant as the little boy’s lunch in the face of the hunger of a vast throng. But to us the sums Jesus mentioned seem a ot of money. Perhaps a lot of money in human terms is mentioned because it takes a lot of money to catch our attention. Jesus expected these three servants to put to good use the “little” they had when he was away.
To one servant He gave five talents—which is roughly a lifetime’s worth of earned income. To the second he gave two talents—about what he would earn by age forty-five. And to the third he gave one talent---about ten-year’s income. Each of them had a lot more responsibility than the little boy did with his lunch.
The master returned to see how his servants had done. The first servant had doubled the sum equal to a lifetime of his work. “Well done, good and faithful servant,” the master said. “You have been faithful with a little; I will give you much responsibility. Enter into the joy of your master.” How interesting that the master should consider a lifetime of work just a little. A lifetime of faithfulness is still just a little in the big picture.
The second servant he found had taken his income earned till age forty-five and increased the value to ninety year’s worth of income. Again the master said, “You have been faithful with a little. I will give you much responsibility.” And the master welcomed into his inner circle of joy with the other servant.
The third servant who had been given the equivalent of ten year’s worth of income to use perhaps thought that his amount of money wasn’t very much by comparison with the other two servant’s responsibility. Being very conservative, he hid the money so he could give it back and not lose any of it. With confident look he approached the master with the full sum intact, unused. He heard a very different word from his master. “You wicked and slothful servant. You know I reap where I have not sowed and gather where I have not winnowed grain; why didn’t you at least invest it and get a bit of interest?” And the master condemned that fearful, lazy servant. “Cast him out into the outer darkness where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth.”
Why the weeping and gnashing of teeth? Because in the outer darkness the question will be asked with great sorrow, “Why didn’t I use what I was given? Why did I hoard it, stashing it away so that it was useless? If only I had!!!”
The little boy with his lunch used not for his own benefit ended up with twelve baskets full of bread and fish to take home to mom and dad. Maybe you and I think what God has given us is more like the little boy’s lunch than like even the ten year’s worth of money invested in the faithless servant. I think there are many Christians who feel insignificant with their gifts, and so they think more in terms of survival in life than in terms of usefulness.
Then we hear about some people like the tiny Albanian nun we know as Mother Theresa used her frail body, her poverty, and immense heart to bring hope and healing to thousands of the most wretched people in Calcutta, India. And her gift of herself was multiplied as thousands of young women joined her Sisters of Mercy, bringing hope and the Gospel to thousands of other wretched people in other parts of the world.
Millard Fillmore, now known worldwide as the founder of Habitat for Humanity, came from humble beginnings in Alabama. Full of ambition he became a millionaire by age twenty-nine. But as his business prospered, his health, integrity and marriage failed.
He gave his life to the Lord, reconciling with his wife. He sold all they had and poured the money into caring for the poor. He went to Koinonia Farm a Christian community near Americus, Georgia, where he learned from Clarence Jordan how to apply Jesus’ teaching to life. In 1974 he moved to Zaire to test his idea of building affordable housing for the poor. And thus began what we know as Habitat for Humanity that now provides housing for thousands of people who would not otherwise have a home—in Jesus’ name.
What comparable stories in miniature abound where people come to Jesus, feed on Him, and then use their little lunches or what seem to us their great resources in Jesus’ name. I wonder what awaits the world through the ministry of this congregation when we have felt weary enough, hungry and needy enough to come to feed deeply on Jesus to find rest—to take on us His light yoke—and thus find the peace our hearts long for. Taking on Jesus’ light yoke is something to carry. The “something” is what we have been given for a high purpose.
I began today reminding our children how God used some children in Bible times—Samuel, the only child of a childless old lady, and David, the shepherd boy, and then the unnamed boy who brought his five loaves and two small fish to Jesus. What has God placed in our hands to use that will not only do much good in a hurting world, but also bring Jesus to others who are starving for Him?
Let us pray: O Lord, thank you for what we have to use. Grant us to use what we have to bring people to Jesus and thus to bring healing to our troubled world. In Jesus’ name. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM
September 03, 2006
The Evidence for Trust in Jesus
Deuteronomy 18: 15-22/John 5: 30-47
September 3rd, 2006
This morning we have listened to two very striking passages from the Bible, first from Deuteronomy where Moses promises that God will provide another prophet like him. And the question that looms over the years since Moses lived is, “Who was that prophet? Or maybe, “Has that prophet come yet?” We Christians believe Jesus was that one who was actually far more than a prophet. Indeed we take pride in this and ask why everyone doesn’t.
The second passage from the Gospel of John shows us Jesus involved in discussion with fellow Jews about His credibility. What is the evidence that He was legitimate—that is, that in healing on the Sabbath He did the work of God? Was He the one about whom Moses and many other prophets spoke?
Whose testimony should they believe? They looked to current opinion. Jesus pointed out to them that they accept the authority of those who speak on their own authority. Teacher such and such said this so we accept what he says. Nicodemus probed beneath the opinion of the teachers of his day and so he came to Jesus by night to see Jesus for himself. He knew his Bible. He came to see that there was more to Jesus than met the eye of his contemporaries.
John the Baptist believed Jesus was the Lamb of God who came to take away the sins of the world. Should they believe John the Baptist who spoke so glowingly of Him? They didn’t, though all admired John.
Jesus said there were three “evidences” they should believe. First, his works, second, God the Father, and third, the Scriptures. Let us consider these three evidences shortly.
These two passages—from Deuteronomy and the Gospel of John--that point us to Jesus prodded me to ask the question, “What is the evidence for trust in Jesus?”
We can take that question in two ways. First, we might take it as Josh McDowell intended in his well-known book, Evidence that Demands a Verdict. That is, what is the historical and biblical evidence pointing to Him that should compel us to trust in Him?
Second, we might take it from the other angle, “What is the evidence that I trust in Jesus?”
In large measure I think the second question is the most important. Because Jesus is not on trial before us. We have come to treat matters of faith as a great trial with the world as the jury. Christianity is the defendant along with Islam, Hinduism, Judaism, and all the other religions that compete for followers. Which one is right? In a way we seem to think that the one that gets the most votes wins. We are big into statistics, you know—democracy however, doesn’t work in matters of faith.
How many members in a religion marks its “success” after all. We’re big into numbers. So we’re worried that Islam is gaining so fast, and Mormonism, and as Presbyterians we worry at the loss of members that many of us think is indicative of something grim. Thus we see external evidence as a clue to what’s going on.
But over and over again the Bible makes plain that it is what’s going on in the human heart that matters. The prophet Isaiah grabs me: “This is the one to whom I will look, the one that is humble and contrite in spirit, and trembles at my word.” This puts the focus squarely on the individual. God looks through the institutions we establish in our structuring of what is right, often informed by what we are accustomed to. He probes past all of this to the heart of the one who will find Him only if this one seeks Him with all her heart.
Belief, obedience to God’s ways, faithfulness in following Jesus happens one person at a time. And this is the evidence that is either there or not there that we have trusted in Him.
Although I believe it is certainly important that we speak what is true about Jesus so that people may know rightly of him, it is far more needful that we live what is true. And this is what I hope you may consider deeply in your heart. Not just how I or anyone argues persuasively that Jesus fulfills prophecy, or that He was the Son of God—an idea we do not, indeed CANNOT understand. But what you and I can understand if we evidently trust Jesus because we take His word to heart, and try earnestly to live what He teaches us.
We have erred in the terms we use. A teaching we may learn and then recite. So we refer to Jesus’ teachings as lessons learned in school, from a book. But if Jesus’ teachings are not just information but commands that must be obeyed from the heart they take on a different cast. We are compelled to obey commands from our legal system that seem to have immediate consequences if we disobey, but what about commands that don’t have immediate consequences? Jesus’ commands don’t have immediate punishment if we disobey them.
If each time we did not perform according to the golden rule, doing unto others as we would have them do to us, there was an immediate punishment—say a severe headache, or an immense pang of guilt, we might get the idea that this is a command. And we would start to take note of how we are treating others, lest we get a horrid headache or a severe dose of guilt. If each time we did not feed the hungry that we are able to feed, or clothe an insufficiently clothed person in the dead of winter that we could clothe, or deliberately go to the prisons to care for the Jesuses that are incarcerated, or care for the lonely sick in hospital—we received a severe headache or a horrendous pang of guilt, then we might realize that the commands of Jesus were indeed COMMANDS.
But this does not happen. We become accustomed to disobedience in the particulars of Jesus commands. We disobey without remorse because we do not receive immediate punishment. Jesus will not force us to obey Him. The church doesn’t dare. We’ve tried to follow Scripture in this. What happens is that folk simply go elsewhere.
Obedience must come from the heart, out of love for Him. And we know that we love Jesus if His commands are so important to us that we obey them. And if we do obey from the heart there is a luminous quality to our lives that starts to glow.
Indeed, it is more than a clever statement to say that the only book about Jesus that people can understand is the book of your life and mine. How many have been turned off by Jesus Christ by the Bible? A lot of folk talk about the Bible who have never read it. But they have read your life and mine. And their opinions of the Bible are often based on what they have read in your life and mine.
So the great question is, “What is the evidence that you and I trust in Jesus?”
The objective of faith is to bring the human heart into the ways of God. And by heart we mean the whole life. You can tell what a person really believes by what he does, much more than by what he says.
But it is our duty to try to understand what Jesus said about why we should trust in Him—as the beginning point of showing we trust in Him.
In John’s Gospel we read this morning that there were these three evidences: first, His works, second,
God the Father’s witness, and third, the Scriptures.
There were those in Jesus day who were struck by His works.
Thus word of Jesus got to Josephus, the first century Jewish historian who was born shortly after Jesus was crucified said of Jesus something like this:
At that time there arose Jesus, a wise man, if one should call him a man. For he was a performer of marvelous works, a teacher of those who receive the truth with pleasure. And he won over many Jews and many of the Greeks. It was said of him, ‘This was the Christ.’ When Pilate, upon hearing him accused by the foremost men among us, condemned him to the cross, those who first loved him did not cease. For he appeared to them again alive on the third day, the prophets having foretold these things and many other marvels about him. And even now the tribe of Christians, so called after him, has not disappeared.
Wow! Josephus seemed to know all that was most important about Jesus. He even knew that the Hebrew Bible foretold Jesus’ coming.
Indeed many people were amazed at His works, who never got beyond wanting Him to do more and more of them. After all, when He fed them they didn’t have to work hard for their food. And if He healed them, they felt much better. But they never saw past the signs that He did to believe in Him.
Then there was the testimony of God the Father. How were they to pick up on this if they could not hear God the Father’s voice? Jesus noted, “His voice you have never heard, his form you have never seen.” But the one witness of the Father they did have they neglected. “You do not have his word abiding in you.” What was this word? I think this word must refer to the witness of history, the witness that came through daily life of the insufficiency of sacrifices they offered to do what they longed to do when they offered them faithfully. Each time a father brought the family to the Temple to sacrifice a lamb there must have been the feeling, “There has to be more to loving God than this.” There must have been the sense that God wanted more than to see a lamb die. They offered sacrifices out of duty, while their hearts longed for God. And their need could only be satisfied if the object of their desire was a person rather than a strange, mysterious, illusive, hidden God. Their very sense of lack testified to the One who would satisfy them when they saw Him.
But when this One came, they didn’t realize He was the One. There is an inertia in the human heart. We are trapped in custom. Even we who claim to have seen Jesus are trapped in our customs so that we know the word, know the story of Him, but He may not have penetrated into our hearts.
The third witness was the Hebrew Bible. How so? Subtly, mysteriously the witness of the Father comes through as we read even the Hebrew Bible. We examine all its parts and can see it points to a final blessing to the world. Not just monotheism, but a person—one like Moses, no—better than Moses. Because their ancestors hardly received Moses with respect. His reputation far exceeded how Moses was received in His own day. He was rejected, often treated with contempt. God had to protect Moses from his own people’s rebellion.
There is not time to suggest how all the Old Testament pointed to Jesus. Nor is this needful because what is important is not encyclopedic knowledge of the fact of Jesus, but submission to the will of Jesus.
As Jesus said that His judgment was just because it was not His will but the will of the One who sent Him, so you and I can expect that we have to get beyond our own will to do His will. We have tried to blend our strong wills with impressions of what it is to be a Christian, and it doesn’t work. Only if in your day to day life, and in my day to day life we deliberately ask, “Lord, what is your will?” will we ever know His will. Asking God’s will is 99% of the battle of life.
How the Church is hurt by our strong wills, what we want very much, not having asked with all our hearts, “Lord, what is your will?” of everything we say and act upon. A proof that the Church is of Divine institution perhaps, is that it has survived despite the chaos of strong wills by which we are torn.
This is why it is evident that the key evidence that will be persuasive to the world that Jesus is worthy of trust is that we have trusted His will for us—that we seek His will as the guiding principle of our lives. This is so uncommon, and its results are so full of grace, that the truth will come through—the great truth by which we show we have been saved. Saved from what? Saved from ourselves. Saved from our fighting conflict of wills by which the harmony in the Church is evident.
As we take the Lord’s Table this morning, as you hold that bread and cup in your hand will you, in your heart say with honesty, “Lord, let your will be my will.” If you and I do this often enough we start to believe and seek what we pray for. The world waits for us who say we trust in Jesus to show evidence that we actually do.
Let this begin this morning. Let this begin again tomorrow morning. Let this begin across the body that gathers here today. And I wonder what will be the effect as others see the evidence that we trust in Jesus.
Let us pray. O Lord, grant to us to trust in Jesus in whom we say we trust. Amen.
Pastor Stuart D. Robertson
Faith Presbyterian Church
West Lafayette, IN 47906
Posted by faithpres at 09:30 AM