Bible Text: John 6:1-15 | Preacher: Pastor Christian Preus
Twelve baskets of fragments are left over from five loaves and two fish. Obviously this highlights the miracle, you end up with more at the end than you started with in the beginning. But that’s not the point. The point is that what Jesus gives remains. It endures. It never perishes. That’s the word Jesus uses, “Gather the leftover fragments so that nothing perishes.” You know that word, the same word Jesus uses shortly before when talking about you, “God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life.” What Jesus gives doesn’t perish. That’s the point. It remains forever. That’s why He’s so insistent that his disciples pick up the bread, so that nothing perishes.
And this is in contrast to Moses and the manna in the wilderness. Very obviously. What happened when the Israelites kept the manna overnight? It perished. It rotted, decayed. But what Jesus gives doesn’t perish. He doesn’t let it. The only day the manna could be kept overnight, the only time it wouldn’t perish, is when they kept it for the seventh day, for the Sabbath, because that is the Day of Rest, and Jesus was their Rest and there is no perishing with Him.
The entire feeding of the five thousand looks back to Moses and the giving of manna from heaven. The Passover was near when Jesus fed the five thousand. Why does our Gospel say that? Because Moses had celebrated the first Passover right before manna fell from heaven. Moses passed over the Red Sea. Jesus crosses over the Sea of Galilee. Moses led the people into the wilderness. Jesus leads the people into a deserted place. Moses went up on Mount Sinai. Jesus goes up on a mountain. Moses gave bread from heaven. Jesus gives bread from Himself, the One who came down from heaven.
But the differences are more important than the similarities. And Jesus makes this clear the next day. “Your fathers,” he says to the crowd, “ate manna in the wilderness and they died.” I am the bread of life that comes down from heaven, and whoever eats of Me will never die.
The manna perished, Jesus’ bread didn’t perish. The people of Israel perished in the wilderness. Jesus’ people will never perish.
And it’s because they have a different food and that food is Jesus Himself. That is the message Jesus is giving, it’s why He fed the five thousand. What Jesus gives doesn’t perish. So He’s not going to give them manna. You eat manna and you die. He’s going to give them life. And He is life. In Him we live and move and have our being. So He calls Himself the Bread of Life, the living Bread; He says, “Whoever eats of this bread will live forever and the bread which I will give is my flesh, for the life of the world.” There is life, when our God becomes our Brother and gives His life for ours, there is life, when Life meets death and death takes Him and Life rises again the third day.
This is what Jesus does. He feeds us with bread so that He can feed us with Himself. He gladly feeds us with bread, gladly takes care of all that we need to live in this life. You see Him do it here so naturally with the five thousand because it’s what He’s always done. “The eyes of all look to you, O Lord, and you give them their food at the proper time.” This is why we pray our “Come Lord Jesus” before eating, because the food we eat comes from Him. Again and again in the Bible, God will close up heaven to make His people realize that it all depends on Him. He tells the Israelites that He will make the sky like iron and the earth like bronze, so it yields nothing, until they learn again that it’s God who gives them their food. You can have a thousand grocery stores, a million farmers and ranchers, with all the hard work and sweat and industry of the workers, and no food, without God opening His hand and giving us rain and making chemistry work. Whether the globe is warming, whether that is a bad thing or a good thing, one thing is for sure, it is a God thing. Jesus sat on that mountain and distributed food to the thousands through his disciples, and He now sits on the mountain of His almighty power at His Father’s right hand, and gives us everything that we need.
If He takes it away, if you are feeling a lack of money, of health, of good things, of food, it is only so that He can test you as He tested Philip that day. “From where will we buy bread so that all these may eat?” Jesus asks that to test him. Philip doesn’t know. It would cost 200 denarii, that’s $10,000 dollars, probably more now with inflation, to feed this crowd. That’s a math answer. That’s a worldly answer. Jesus’ question was “From where” and the answer is “From Jesus.”
Jesus is the Savior of the body as much as the soul. And the beauty of it, and only Christians understand this (and sometimes we don’t understand it, because our flesh gets the better of us and we act like slaves to our body instead of children of freedom who have been freed by our God to expect beautiful and wonderful things from Him now and always), but the beauty is that when we realize that our Lord, our Jesus, gives us everything we need, there is no worry about the stuff of this world. Sinister forces are not in charge. Jesus is. If the government crashes together with the stock market, Jesus decided that and He fed five thousand in the wilderness and His Father, our Father, rained bread down from heaven. He will provide. He led them into a desert to show them that even when it looks to our human reason like we won’t have enough, like we can’t make it, He will come through. The widow of Zarephath always had enough flour and oil, it never ran out, because Elijah was with her, and we have a greater than Elijah with us, we have our dear Lord Jesus Christ who tells us, “I will never leave you or forsake you,” “I am with always even to the end of the age.”
And He feeds us so that we will never perish. I’m not talking about magical powers in Christians’ food stores. I’m talking about the divine power of Jesus. He doesn’t feed you with food so that you can live 60 or 70 or 80 or 90 years on this fallen planet and then die and that’s it. He feeds you, and it is He who feeds you, so that you can live forever. Every piece of bread and meat you put in your mouth, He gives you so that you may not perish. Because His feeding you with food and taking care of your body is so that you will come to Him and be fed in body and soul with the living Bread from heaven. There is no separation, no partition, of these things with Him. He is the Savior of the body as much as the soul. He is the giver of the food of earth and the food of heaven.
If we want the things of the body, we had better strive after Jesus. He gives you what your body needs. But this is the thing, that if you care only about your body, you’ll care nothing for Jesus. This is the greatest irony. What does Jesus give? Three times after He gives them bread, feeds five thousand men, He says, He who believes in Me will have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. Over and over again, He says it. And if we would only believe it and look forward to it and know this Jesus who loves us so dearly, we would never worry about the things of the body, or at least our worries would be met time and time again with the answer of our Lord Jesus that our cares are His and that He’ll take care of our body not only in this life, but He will raise it up on the last day and take care of our body forever.
But the unbelief of our flesh says, I need to work, I need to miss church, I need to NOT eat the bread of life because I need the bread that perishes. And we will actually make the excuse, I don’t have time to read the Bible, to pray, no time for Jesus. I have to work. I have to do this or that. It makes no sense. It is theologically ridiculous. I want more stuff, I want happiness, I want good times, and Jesus stands in the way! No, the opposite! Jesus will never feed your desire to sin. Never. But He will feed you with everything else, because everything else besides sin is His creation, is His gift, is His giving to You. It makes no sense to want stuff and therefore abandon the Creator of stuff, the Provider of every good thing.
Jesus knows what you need more than you do. It’s that simple. And He says seek first the Kingdom. He says labor not for food that perishes but for food that lasts to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you. I know a woman who, with her body failing, with all the best doctors doing their best for her, could do nothing better than eat the body and drink the blood of her Lord. And she did. And knowing that Jesus loved her, died for her, gave His flesh and blood for her on the cross, for her life, that no matter what happened, she had life eternal and her sins were forgiven and He would raise her up on the last day, that gave her peace, gave her rest, which is exactly what her body needed and she recovered. But you only know this, you only find this peace and this power of the Gospel even to benefit the body, when you seek first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, when you desire more to be rid of sin, desire more to be reconciled to your God, desire more to know that Jesus has given His flesh and blood into death for you, desire more to be awakened in His likeness and live with Him forever. Because then you see how happily He blesses you with all these other things. Then all worry passes away, because Jesus your Savior is in charge of your life here, now, and forever.
Every earthly lack is because of sin. Every pain you have, every lack, because of sin, whether your sin or Adam’s or someone else’s, this is what corrupts this world. And Jesus is the Bread of Life because He bears that sin. And His blood is drink indeed because it washes that sin away. The Feast of the Passover was near when He fed those five thousand. The feast where the lamb was slain so that death would pass over the bloodied doors. And here is the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. Here is the true Passover lamb, who answers all sin and death forever, by bearing it Himself and conquering for us.
And what does He say to you, after taking care of your every bodily need? He says, I will give you more. What He gives remains, it endures. Take eat. Take drink. You are worried about many things, but one thing is needful. Here is the living bread that comes from heaven. The God who became your Brother to redeem you and give you life forever. The food He gives never perishes. Because He gives Himself, gives His body on the cross, sheds His blood to wash away all your sin, so that you who believe in Him will never perish but have everlasting life. Amen.