Series: John
John 6
David Stockton - August 9, 2020

(Starting at 4:38)

We’re going to go to John chapter 6 and I want to read it to us, get in our minds, and then we’re actually going to read another passage that tells the same story. John 6, we’re going to start in verse 1:

Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias), and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. The Jewish Passover Festival was near.
When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.
Philip answered him, “It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”
Another of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up, “Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”

You’ve got the personalities coming out. Philip was more of the business mind, where he’s like, “We can’t do this. What are you talking about?” He’s planning all the logistics, figuring out, “This does not compute.”

Then you’ve got Andrew who’s just kind of going, “Well, we’ve got this, we’ve got this, but I don’t know, you know.”

I like the personalities you get in the Bible.

Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down (about five thousand men were there).

Now, whether it was just men or if it was families, its kind of hard to know. But here John is making note that there were five thousand men there. And we’re going to come back to that.

Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks, and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish.
When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples, “Gather the pieces that are left over. Let nothing be wasted.” So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.
After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, “Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.

So this is John’s account of this story, which is in all four gospel accounts, Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. This is one of the only things that is in all four of those accounts, because it’s so fascinating, so powerful, so amazing, that Jesus revealed the supernatural, intervening power of God in this moment by supplying food for all of these people from such a small source. How it went about, what took place, what it looked like when all of a sudden the basket just kept getting filled, I have no idea how it all went down. But it must have been so wonderful, so amazing. And all these people, just the physical hunger was met in this moment.

I want to go back to Matthew chapter 14 if you’ll turn there. We’ll get a little bit of detail that John doesn’t give us about what brought about this moment. John just basically says, “And then after this…” and then he goes into the story.

In Matthew 14, let’s get a little background on what was taking place in Israel, in Jesus’ life right before this moment. It says:

At that time Herod the tetrarch heard the reports about Jesus, and he said to his attendants, “This is John the Baptist; he has risen from the dead! That is why miraculous powers are at work in him.”
Now Herod had arrested John and bound him and put him in prison because of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, for John had been saying to him: “It is not lawful for you to have her.” Herod wanted to kill John, but he was afraid of the people, because they considered John a prophet.

So John was a righteous man. This is John the Baptist. This is Jesus’ cousin. He was doing great things for the people of God. He was calling them out of their wickedness, calling them out of their selfishness, out of their pride. And calling them to repent and get right with God. One of the things he did was he was speaking out against Herod and his family, the leaders of that day, the kind of Jewish aristocracy that were put in power by Rome.

Rome was dominating the whole world, but they would put local leaders in charge. So Herod was kind of a sell-out, what the Jews thought. He was kind of in bed with Rome and with the Jews and it was not a good situation. He was not loved by the people.

So John the Baptist saw some of the things that they were doing and he was saying, “It’s not right for you to be taking other people’s wives. It’s not right to be taking extra wives. This is not right. This is not Jewish. This is not Judaism. This is not of God.”

He was speaking out against those leaders and it ended up getting him arrested and put in prison. And there he was in prison. Then it says in verse 6:

On Herod’s birthday the daughter of Herodias danced for the guests and pleased Herod so much that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she asked. Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me here on a platter the head of John the Baptist.” The king was distressed, but because of his oaths and his dinner guests, he ordered that her request be granted and had John beheaded in the prison. His head was brought in on a platter and given to the girl, who carried it to her mother. John’s disciples came and took his body and buried it. Then they went and told Jesus.

So the grief of this moment, the outrage, the horror, the injustice. It must have just been absolutely brutal when this took place for the people of Israel. They’re oppressed, they’re struggling, they’re poor. The Roman domination has completely broken their backs. Now here, their ruler, Herod, does this completely disgusting act for a completely disgusting reason. And they’re left with this feeling.

And it says John’s disciples, the ones that were hanging out with John and helping with John’s ministry, they went and got his body and they buried him and they went and told Jesus. Now again, Jesus is not just someone who was a fan of John the Baptist. Jesus was John the Baptist’s cousin. Jesus was baptized by John the Baptist to fulfill all righteousness. John the Baptist had already been proclaiming that Jesus was the Messiah, he was the Lamb of God that was going to take away the sin of the whole world. And yet, now in this moment, John’s disciples come and tell Jesus the news of what took place.

I titled this message “The Social Justice of the Social Jesus.” In our day today there is a lot of zeal. There’s a lot of unrest. There’s a lot of outrage about a number of things. I don’t think it’s too wrong or too challenging to call this Jesus’ George Floyd moment. I mean, obviously the comparisons break down in a number of ways. But this really was an intense political, intense societal moment that was taking place in Jesus’ life.

I think it’s very important for us to look at what Jesus does. Because we’re all right now kind of stirred up. We’ve got the election challenges. Conservative, liberal, Democrat, Republican. We’ve got the racial unrest, black, white, privilege, no privilege, systemic—we’ve got all these words that are kind of firing us all up. And there’s anger and guilt swirling around. And then we also have this COVID thing, which has a lot of confusion. Sometimes they say this, sometimes they say this. Sometimes you think this, sometimes you think that, about how to walk forward. What’s the best practices to do.

Our nation is so pitted against each other. And what I’m seeing is that it’s starting to seep into the church a little bit, too, where it just has no place. We’re called to be one. We’re one body. We have one head and that’s Jesus Christ. So we need to figure out how to be unified above all of our secondary ideas, our nonessential concepts. So it’s good for us to look at Jesus and what he did in his moment of real political unrest and turmoil.

So that’s what we have. This setup for this story of feeding the five thousand. Let’s continue in Matthew in verse 13, in these couple of verses before we go on.

When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place.

That was Jesus’ initial response.

Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.

And Matthew goes on to talk about what we’ve got in John. How Jesus separated them all into groups, had his disciples get them all sat down and then he goes and feeds the five thousand.

There are a couple of things I want us to notice here. When we put these two stories together, what we really have is an extremely outrageous, horrific political event or something that happened in society, an injustice, that causes this crowd to go and find Jesus. Now Jesus, when he heard it, he withdrew so the crowds came to find him.

The reason there were five thousand men, the reason there was this large crowd was not just because they were wanting to hang out with Jesus. It was a combo. They had seen the power of God revealed through Jesus. They had heard the teachings of Christ that seemed to cut through all the confusion that was going on in that day. And so, in this moment when they wanted to look to someone to lead, when they wanted to bring about some sort of social change, when they wanted to overthrow Herod, when they wanted to do something because they were so angry, they came the Jesus, which is a great thing to do.

But what they found, I think, surprised them. Because they came to Jesus to really say, “All right, Jesus, lead the movement. Lead the march. Let’s go tear this place down. Let’s go to the palace and let’s get rid of Herod. Let’s do all these things.”

But instead, Jesus withdrew to a quiet place. Jesus sat everyone down. Jesus healed the sick among them. Jesus fed them, meeting a practical need. And then, as we go back to the book of John chapter 6, it says, then after this—they were so blown away—Jesus was able to feed all of them. They’re going, “This really is the guy! This is it! Let’s do this thing.”

It says that Jesus, knowing they were going to try to make him king, he again withdrew to a quiet place. And then the very next story we have, he’s there in a quiet place praying because his heart is broken because his cousin was beheaded. His heart is broken because of the oppression and the injustice. But he goes to prayer. He withdraws to a quiet place and prays.

And then that night, he sends the disciples out and he keeps praying, but then he walks to them on water—which is an awesome story—walks to them on water, reassuring them that he is in control over all of this stuff. And then he departs to another quiet place with his disciples

I just think this is interesting because, you know, right now, what I’ve felt when I heard about George Floyd and some of the other cases, and I’ve heard the cry of the black community as they are just so frustrated about a lot of their situation and all of that. I immediately was like, “Okay, I want to hear.” I’ve told you guys a little bit of the story. Fifteen of us white pastors met with fifteen African American pastors. We just went to try and start the conversation, “Hey, tell us what’s going on. Tell us where we’re at. Tell us what we can do.”

It didn’t go very well. There was a lot of distance between us when we got there. And when we left there was still a lot of distance. It kind of broke my heart. I was like, “Okay, Lord, what do I do?”

So I’ve been diving in to try to learn. To research I’ve been reaching out to African American pastors or Christians that I can just say, “Hey, can I just have more one on one conversation to see if that helps.” I’ve been getting to know a lot of people. It’s been really neat and really fascinating. I’ve learned so much and been so encouraged by some of these men that are really trying to sort out what to do and really trying to do the Jesus way as they go through.

Then there was another meeting of those same pastors down at the capital where there was going to be a lot of confessions and a lot of commitment going forward. I watched it on Facebook and was like, “Yeah. These words are good. This is heading in the right direction.”

Then we actually flew in a guy from St. Louis who was a professor but right now he’s teaching math at a school right next to Ferguson. He was there all that time and he has a very researched mind and a lot of papers he wrote about that time and what should be done and what shouldn’t be done. He came out and shared with our staff. I got to be with him and really just discover a lot of different things that I didn’t know.

So I’ve just been trying to dive into this thing. Really, what I feel like God has told me is, a lot of times we’re supposed to practice what we preach. But I felt that what the Lord was telling me is that we need to practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice, practice…before we preach. What I’ve seen a lot of Christians do is, they’re preaching without really digging in and trying to catch God’s heart.

And that’s the first thing we see Jesus do. Immediately when this happened, and he was Jesus, he knew what to do. But still, he withdrew to a quiet place to pray. And I just think, for Christians, we’ve got to be there. That’s our call right now. We’ve got to seek God’s heart. We’ve got to seek his presence. We’ve got to seek his power. Because without his power, all we’ve got is just more humanistic, secular ideas and strength. It’s not going to do anything at all for anyone.

There’s a story in the Old Testament that I’ve been chewing ever since all of this took place. It’s a really fun story. It’s about Joshua and the children of Israel, where they’re going to be heading into the Promised Land and they’re going to be having some battles between the Israelites and the Canaanites. One of the first places they went to was Jericho with those mighty walls. You’ve probably heard the story about the walls of Jericho.

The night before they were going into battle, Joshua, who was probably overwhelmed because of the intensity of the moment. They’re about to go into battle and he’s just a brand new leader. The Israelites are not warriors by any chance. Moses is gone now. He’s just kind of overwhelmed. So it says he went away to be by himself, away from the camp. And while he was there, I imagine he was praying, but all of a sudden it says that he saw a warrior standing next to him with his sword drawn. Joshua was startled. The question that he asked in Joshua chapter 4 is, “Are you for us or are you for our enemies?”

Then it says that the warrior answered, “Neither. But I’m the commander of the army of the Lord. And the place that you’re standing is holy. You need to take your shoes off.”

So Joshua takes his shoes off and has this little moment where he’s talking to the angel of God’s armies. A lot of people think this is a Christophany—an appearance of Christ in the Old Testament.

When I think about this story, it’s like the third option. “Are you for us or are you for our enemies?” And I can just hear people saying, “Are you for the blacks or are you for the whites?” “Are you for the Republicans or are you for the Democrats?” “Are you for my worldview, or my philosophy, or are you for the opposing world view philosophy?”

We’re pitting ourselves against each other. And we’re coming to the Lord, saying, “Are you for us or are you for our enemies?”

And God’s like, “No, man. No.”

First of all, God is for everyone. God so loved the world that he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him…whoever believes in him. Whatever their background is. Whatever their philosophy is. If they put their faith in Christ, if they give their life to Christ, they get eternal life. Whether they get everything right in this life or not, that is the trump card. Sorry I said trump there. I know you’re not supposed to say it. That overcomes anything we’ve ever done. The life and blood of Jesus overcomes anything that we could ever do wrong.

That’s the grace. That’s the beauty of it all, that somehow all of us, no matter how hard we try, no matter how hard we fight, no matter how zealous we are, no matter how right we think we are, we are still on the wrong side. Humanity will always be on the wrong side whenever we’re doing humanistic ideas. We’re all just trying to build a new tower of Babel. All these things, capitalism, socialism, communism, whatever it might be. Some might be better for some. Some might be better for others. Some might be better sometimes. Some might be better others. I don’t know. All of them are human philosophies that are going to leave us all empty and short of the glory of God. So we shouldn’t be fighting for them. We shouldn’t be making that be all we’re about.

We want to get on God’s side. And God’s side is found in the scriptures. God’s side is found in a relationship with him. God’s side is what’s going to get us from this life to fullness of life. We’ve got to find a way to get off of our side to God’s side. We know that Jesus Christ was the answer. God sent his son into the world to teach us what his side is all about, and to lay down his life to provide a bridge for us to get from our side to his side.

That’s why John, when he starts his book, he says, “In the beginning was the Word.” And he uses the word Word to describe Jesus. And the word Word in the Greek, and we’ve talked about this, is logos. And it’s basically God’s universal principle that rules the cosmos. It’s what makes life exist and happen. It’s God’s philosophy. It’s God’s politic.

So if we really want to get from our side to God’s side, we’ve got to go through Jesus. We’ve got to learn his teaching. We’ve got to learn his way. We’ve got to apply his blood to our life, We’ve got to invite him into our life. And for some of you, you might have spent your whole life looking for the next philosophy, or the next idea that might make you feel alive or whole. It’s never going to happen. There’s only one way to enlightenment and truth. There’s only one way to heaven in truth. There’s only one way to truth and that is Jesus Christ. He is the way. He is the truth. He is the life. And here’s the most amazing thing in the world. He loves you and he wants you to be on his side, be in his family. He wants to come and do life with you. That’s what the Bible teaches over and over again. And that’s what we see in the life of Jesus.

That’s the reality, We’re trying to figure out how to get from our side to God’s side. Sure enough, in Joshua’s day, God said, ‘Well this is how you do it. This is what you do to get on my side. I want you to walk around the walls of Jericho. I just want you to keep walking consistently day after day, day after day, in silence, keep walking and on the final day, I want you to shout.”

And we know the story. Those walls came down and God’s will and God’s purposes were brought out. And so for our day and age, when we see all these dividing walls, when we see all this division, I really feel like God has spoken clearly to us how we’re supposed to walk in his way, be on his side right now. It’s to consistently, day after day, whether COVID is here or COVID goes, whether the political party we want or don’t want wins, whether we’re black or white or brown or whatever, this is how we get the walls to come down in our society. We continue to walk with humility and we continue to walk with generosity. Those are the two things that are going to make the biggest difference in this time.

Jesus said, “If you want to come and follow me, come learn of me. Take my yoke upon you. Learn of me for I am meek and lowly and humble in heart.” That is the way of Jesus. That is the social Jesus. Humility and generosity. He withdrew to a quiet place. He drew everybody in. And he met their needs and served them by feeding the five thousand, by healing the sick, by teaching them his ways. And that’s what we get in John chapter six.

I want to talk a little bit about the power of God, as far as this miracle. Because this is a fascinating miracle. There are a number of miracles in the book of John, trying to teach us about God. And I’m going to tell us here in just a second one of the things that I think Jesus did that we can mirror as we go through this. One of them is the revealing of God’s supernatural intervening power. There are different people who have experienced that. There are people who haven’t experienced that. For me, I have seen God do miracles, signs and wonders. Oftentimes it’s not when I really thought he would. And it’s definitely not been every time.

There was a time where I was living in a village in Belize and I got to see the scriptures about casting out demons come to pass as I worked with a young man and prayed over him and he did experience two demons actually leave him. And he saw a man in white talking to him. It was fascinating and it was something that I hope I don’t ever have to be a part of again. But it was really cool to see the power of God in that supernatural intervening power show up for this young man,

I’ve also been here in the church, many times we’ve prayed for people. Sometimes we’ve believed that they’ll be healed and sometimes we don’t. And sometimes we get it wrong. Sometimes we didn’t think they’d be healed and then they got healed. Sometimes we thought they’d be healed and then they didn’t. But we’ve seen some actual, bona fide miracles. We’ve checked with people weeks afterward and months afterward and it’s still been true.

On the spectrum though, I just need us to understand. There’s this idea of Deism. Deism is the fact that God created the world, but then he doesn’t intervene. He just kind of wound up the clock and he’s letting it go. Deism is not a biblical idea. It’s not within orthodoxy. I don’t believe it’s true at all. But I can get why people would go there.

Most of the founding fathers of America actually were deistic. Thomas Jefferson created a bible and he took out all the miraculous signs and said, “Now this is the Bible that I believe in.”

The one problem with that is, if you take out the miracles, you take out the resurrection of Christ. You take out the resurrection of Christ, we are of men most miserable. We have nothing to hope for. Because if Jesus wasn’t a sacrifice that was able to rise from the dead, that means his sacrifice for us was not sufficient. So that’s why it just can’t be true.

But on the other side of Deism, you have this Pentecostalism, where it’s like God’s going to do everything you ever wanted him to do, and if he doesn’t, you’re doing it wrong. And that’s not a true at all either. That gets way outside the biblical concept.

There’s one other word I want you to know. It’s Cessationism. Cessationism is this idea that God stopped intervening supernaturally with miracles and all of that after the acts of the apostles. After Peter, James and John passed away. That it was a time that God was doing that and God is doing that no more. I can get why they would say that scripturally. But also, at the same time, I’ve just not found that to be true in my life. And I don’t think that makes sense of the God that we serve either. He’s the same yesterday, today and forever.

So somewhere in this camp between this Cessationism and this extreme Pentecostalism is where I think I’m trying to find my way, and where I think Living Streams is trying to find our way, where we do hope that God will supernaturally intervene, that he’ll give us grace in that way. But we also put our hope in God and we say, “If he doesn’t, then he’ll give us the grace to endure well.”

Like Paul said, “If he doesn’t give it to us then we can know that in our weakness his strength will be made perfect.”

I know some of you are both. Some of you have experienced those miracles and you’re rejoicing but then in other areas you haven’t. And some you have not experienced those miracles. It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re doing anything wrong. But if God says no to the miracles, then that means he’s saying yes to the grace you need to endure. And though it might be hard, you can endure.

So that’s a little bit about the power of God, the miracles of God. I want to mention that because I want to list what I do see in the life of Jesus, what his version of social justice looks like.

First of all, withdrawing from the crowd. I think withdrawing from the crowd is something we all need to understand. There’s a lot of populism. There are a lot of people building their lives on rhetoric right now. We need to make sure to withdraw from the crowd to hear the voice of our God as he guides us through this challenging time.

Secondly, we need to serve practical needs The fatherless, the widow, the orphans—these are the people that God’s heart is really paying attention to. We should be doing that as well.

Revealing God’s supernatural intervening power. We just spoke about that.

Speaking about the kingdom of God. I think it’s important for us not to be spreading other news. Right now, if you’re just talking about conspiracy theories or you’re just talking about Republican agenda or Democrat agenda, if that’s what you’re posting and talking about the most, I think you just need to take a moment and check yourself. Make sure that you’re talking about the good news of Jesus. Because that’s the message we’re supposed to be speaking about above everything else.

It doesn’t mean you can’t have fun and talk about these things and see where we land in these things. But if the political stuff becomes more than the gospel, we’ve got something wrong. Jesus testified to the truth. As Christians, we need to really be careful to find out what is true and make sure and help other pope find out what is true. Not just what is rhetoric.

Ultimately the best thing we can do is sacrificial love. Give ourselves to others for their benefit.

I want to close with this story of a guy named Daryl Davis. He’s a musician. He’s an African American. In 1987 he was playing at this club and a white guy came up to him and they kind of had a drink together. He was just saying, “Man, you play that piano so well.” They had a conversation and he ended up finding out that this white man was a member of the KKK. Daryl Davis was kind of shocked and a little unsure of what to do. But they talked a little bit more.

And for whatever reason, Daryl Davis felt like this was something that he needed to do. He needed to meet these people. And basically, the premise is, “How can you hate me if you don’t know me?”

Over time, up to this point, Daryl Davis has been able to get to know two hundred different KKK members and actually see them get out of the KKK. He has a closet full of all their cloaks. As they get out of there, as they get to know him, they actually end up handing their cloak to him. I think it’s just a beautiful story of engaging into this world that we’re nervous about.

Jesus, that’s exactly what he did for us. He who knew no sin became sin for us. He came into our world. He felt our need. He felt our pain and all of that. And he gave himself completely, sacrificially to us. He entered into our world so that he could show us how to get out. And if you can get to know Jesus, if you can get in relationship with Jesus, you will begin to experience his wisdom, his power. And you’ll realize it is not of human origin. And it actually can help build the world and build your life and bring you to peace.

That’s our message today. We’re going to have a little response slide—some things you can pray through, as we end this message. If you don’t know Jesus, if you haven’t invited him to be the Lord of your life, then this prayer is a really great thing. If you pray this for the first time, we’d love to know about it. Please comment below. Let us know that you gave your life to Jesus and you’re ready to go that way. We’ll get you baptized, or whatever comes next. But for the rest of you who know Jesus, this is still a good thing to pray, just kind of realigning our hearts with him. God bless you and we’ll see you soon,

First, say Father in heaven I understand that I have done wrong. Please forgive me,
Next, say Father in heaven I understand that You want me on Your side and made. Way for me by the death and resurrection of Jesus. Please put Your Spirit in me to teach and guide and comfort me.
Next, say Father in heaven I understand that You want my life to be a blessing to others. Please help me to remember that and give me opportunities for that.
Finally, say Father in heaven I understand that one day You will send Jesus again and He will restore everything. Please help me to have hope and peace as I look forward to that day.

Unless otherwise noted, Scripture is taken from the HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION®. NIV®. Copyright © 1973, 1978, 1984 by International Bible Society. Used by permission of Zondervan. All rights reserved worldwide.

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