Bible Text: St Matthew St Mark 8:1–9 | Preacher: Rev. Andrew Richard
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
The feeding of the four thousand took place in the wilderness, and the first thing we have to square with is the fact that there was never supposed to be a wilderness. God didn’t create the earth to have barren places, but to be exceedingly fruitful. God didn’t create man to be hungry and faint on the way, but to stretch out his hand and find food everywhere in nature. If any land is a waste, if there’s a lack of food and water and men must wonder how they’re going to survive, such a place was never meant to be, but is a result of sin, as the Lord declared after man’s first sin, “Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you” (Gen. 3:17-18).
Every year around this time in Wyoming the creation preaches us a fine sermon on the nature of sin. The sun beats down and scorches the earth. What once grew and thrived has the green burned out of it and stands dead in the earth until the wind blasts it and blows it away, or until wildfire consumes it, or until the snow buries its corpse. That’s the result of our sin, for, “The wages of sin is death” (Rom. 6:23). Listen to the ugly weeds scream at you from the sidewalk cracks, “Sinner!” Listen to the hills cry out and groan in the throes of death, “You have offended against your God!” Listen to the dying grass say, “You shall become like me. ‘As for man, his days are like grass; as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it, and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more’ (Ps. 103:15-16).” And this isn’t some sort of environmentalist twaddle. You’re not going to fix this by reducing your carbon footprint. The whole point is that you’re going to become a carbon footprint, “for dust you are, and to dust you shall return.” There’s barren desert on this earth because of sin, and you’re a sinner.
Thanks be to God for the recent rains. We have not deserved them in the least, but our merciful Father in heaven “sends rain on the just and on the unjust” (Mt. 5:45). And we have cause for thanksgiving in today’s reading as well, for we hear that Christ did not abandon us in the wasteland we’d made for ourselves, but came to us. Indeed, as men were dwelling in those parts of the earth that still support life, Jesus is the one who went out into the wilderness. After He was baptized He went out into the wilderness and overcame the temptations of Satan. “He Himself often withdrew into the wilderness and prayed” (Lk. 5:16). As Jesus exposes Himself to the consequences of our sin, He shows that He came to bear our sin. As Jesus leaves us standing on the fruitful banks of the Jordan and departs into the dead wilds for forty days and forty nights, He shows that He came to make an exchange with us: His life for our death, His paradise for our wasteland, His righteousness for our sin.
In today’s reading, Jesus is the one who went out into the wilderness. The crowds followed Him there, because they understood that the life-giving nature of Jesus is stronger than our wilderness of death, and even though the land might offer nothing, Jesus can still give everything. To them, it was worth having Jesus and lacking all else than to have all else but lack Jesus. The account of the feeding of the four thousand picks up on day three of their stay with Jesus in the wilderness, but think about the decisions they made to get to that point. On day one maybe they all had food with them. It was easy enough to stay with Jesus on day one. On day two it became obvious that supplies were running low, but they decided to stay anyway. It wasn’t as easy to stay with Jesus on day two. On day three they were left with seven loaves of bread and a few small fish. They all knew how far it was to home. They all knew how hungry they were getting. But they were hearing the Gospel! It was delightful! The words coming out of Jesus’ mouth were more life-giving than food. Esau traded his birthright for a bowl of stew, but these people traded entire meals for more of Jesus’ teaching. If it were just the twelve apostles who stayed, that would be one thing (Jn. 6:67-69). But no, not only twelve people valued Jesus’ preaching more than their daily bread, not only 20, or 50, or 100, or 1,000, but 4,000 people preferred to be hungry in the wilderness with Jesus than to leave Jesus and seek for food. And in the miracle that follows we see illustrated the truth that Jesus preached in the Sermon on the Mount: “But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Mt. 6:33). God grant us such faith as they had, and to rank the Word of Jesus above all things as they did. Jesus taught them to pray, “Give us this day our daily bread,” and they trusted that He would take care of them. Such is faith, that it reclines in the wilderness at Jesus’ feet and rests content.
That’s their attitude toward Jesus, because they know His attitude toward them. The Son of God came into the wilderness to seek and to save the lost. The people knew their Lord to be merciful and caring. And listen to how caring Jesus is. He’s concerned for the people before they’re concerned for themselves. He says, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat” (Mk. 8:2). “I have compassion,” Jesus says. Could He not rather say, “You sinners are getting what you deserve. You brought this on yourselves. I gave you paradise and you chose this barren wasteland of sin”? He could say that, and be perfectly justified in doing so. But He doesn’t say that, and has no desire to say that. “I have compassion,” He says, and that means two things. First, it means that Jesus felt what they felt. That’s what compassion does: it suffers with another. When He says, “I have compassion,” that’s the Son of God declaring that He has so taken on our human nature that He has felt the need for food, even though as God he has need of nothing. It cheers our hearts to know that we have no unsympathetic or foreign God, but one who has identified Himself with our sufferings. Jesus felt what we’ve felt. Second, when He says, “I have compassion,” it means that He is going to make their problem His problem. That’s what it always means when Jesus feels compassion: He’s going to do something about it. Therefore He fed four thousand men with seven loaves of bread and a few small fish. By His preaching He showed that He cares for our eternal life, and by His miracle He showed that He cares for our earthly life. It’s as if Jesus says in today’s reading, “I care for you entirely, body and soul. You have nothing to worry about.”
And then we worry anyway! The same twelve apostles who witnessed the feeding of the 5,000 now worry all over again before the feeding of the 4,000. So also we who can testify to the Lord’s provision for us worry as if that provision is suddenly going to come to a halt. We are stubborn as donkeys and dense as lead, and it is a miracle that anything of Jesus’ Word has made it through our clogged ears and into our stupid heads. Jesus lightly scolds us when He says, “Which of you by being anxious can add a single hour to his span of life?” (Mt. 6:27). We know it’s dumb of us to worry, and we know all too well that worry brings with it its own punishment. But we shouldn’t take worry lightly, or think that the stress of worry is the only punishment that worry deserves. Worry is a close relative of unbelief and blasphemy. Worry finds fault with God, mistakes His nature entirely, blames Him as if He has harmed us, while being blind to all His benefits. Worry is no light matter, but is a grave sin. When the people of Israel were in the wilderness and worried about food, they spoke against Moses and Aaron, saying, “You have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger” (Ex. 16:3). Instead of glorifying the Lord for bringing them out of the land of Egypt, they blame it all on men and ignore God’s care completely. Rather than seeing the new life that the Lord has granted them, they see only death, and even though the Lord provided for them in the wilderness, often their worry aroused His anger, and not a few of them died.
So we need to fortify our hearts against worry, lest we sin grievously against God and incur His wrath. But thanks be to God, He has given us many and powerful proofs against worry. First, Jesus shows very strongly in today’s reading that we have no need to worry because He worries for us. Listen to what He says: “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away” (Mk. 8:2-3). Hear how He casts His mind into the future and runs through the various factors and what-ifs. It’s just like what we do when we worry, except that Jesus isn’t sinning when He worries for you, because when He ponders the future He actually knows it and isn’t just speculating. And when He foresees a problem He doesn’t have to guess at half-solutions or throw up His hands in despair, but He knows exactly the right thing to do. Today’s reading shows that Jesus worries for you, and He worries rightly. So what do you need to worry for, especially since you know how easy it is to worry wrongly. Leave the worrying to Jesus, like the 4,000 did, and rest assured that He will take care of you.
Now sometimes Jesus will lead you into the wilderness, that is, He will bring you to a place in life where everything appears dead and hopeless. These are the times when Jesus teaches us to take up our cross and follow Him. But see the outcome in today’s reading. Even though Jesus led the crowds into what appeared to be the least fruitful place on earth, He then brought forth more abundance than the earth could offer anywhere else. And Jesus does the same for you, bringing nourishment out of affliction. You know this, as it says in Psalm 107, “He turns a wilderness into pools of water, and dry land into watersprings. There He makes the hungry dwell… Whoever is wise will observe these things, and they will understand the lovingkindness of the LORD” (Ps. 107:35-36, 43). Jesus uses some strange things for the good of His people: a wilderness for our supper, a tribulation for our blessing, His own cross for our salvation. There’s no need to worry when things look grim. Things looked grim on Good Friday, and we call it good for good reason.
Second, besides today’s account, the Lord has acted at other times to prove that He will always take care of His own. He gave the Israelites manna from heaven in the wilderness and water from the rock, and He brought quail for them to eat. He appointed ravens to bring bread and meat to Elijah. He made the little jar of flour and jug of oil replenish itself for the widow of Zarephath. He gave the miraculous catch of fish to the disciples not once, but twice. Besides the regular miracle of this cursed ground continuing to produce what is necessary to life at God’s command, God also shows that He’s willing to go beyond ordinary means if necessary, because, as Jesus says of earthly food and clothing, “Your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things” (Mt. 6:32). He will provide them.
Now we can point to a handful of daily bread miracles in Scripture, but much more frequently, both in the Bible and still today, the Lord provides for us in our need through each other. When David was fleeing from Saul, Abigail brought provisions to him and his troops. When David was fleeing from his son Absalom, three men “brought beds and basins, earthen vessels and wheat, barley and flour, parched grain and beans, lentils and parched seeds, honey and curds, sheep and cheese of the herd, for David and the people who were with him to eat. For they said, ‘The people are hungry and weary and thirsty in the wilderness’” (2 Sam. 17:28-29). Likewise today, Christians notice the needs of fellow Christians, and voice their needs to fellow Christians, and are never lacking for what they need, “because the love of God has been poured into our hearts by the Holy Spirit who was given to us” (Rom. 5:5).
We could go on for some time reflecting on all the reasons why we don’t have to worry. Would Jesus have taught us the Fourth Petition, “Give us this day our daily bread,” if our Father in heaven weren’t going to grant it? And would Jesus have placed it fourth if it were really the most important thing in life? The very order of the petitions of the Lord’s Prayer teaches us to “seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you” (Mt. 6:33). Or again, if the Son of God has become a man in order to grant us eternal life, will He not care for this little blink of an earthly life? Again, if Jesus gives us His very body to eat and blood to drink, will He not grant us the less costly food of our daily bread? The proofs against worry go on and on, and they all show that in the wilderness of this world you aren’t left to yourself, but you have a God who has joined you in the wilderness and provides for all your needs of body and soul. As Jesus did for the 4,000, nourishing them both with His Word and with daily bread, so Jesus shall always do for you, to Him be glory forever and ever. Amen.