Luke 9:10-17

Transcript

00:00:00:45 – 00:00:34:10
Clint Loveall
Hey, friends, thanks for closing out the week with us. Welcome back. If you’re joining us again today. We thank you for being patient with us Yesterday, a prerecorded session. I was out of town for part of the day. Just a a thanks to you all for tuning back in as we continue through Luke today, we’re in the ninth chapter of a very familiar story, one of the few stories that is accounted for in all of the gospels and one that I think is, again, it’s beloved, it’s well known, it’s kind of visual.

00:00:34:15 – 00:00:54:56
Clint Loveall
I think probably anybody who’s done a little bit of Sunday school or church is going to be familiar with this story from Jesus life. But I’ll read it for you then we’ll talk about it on The Return. The Apostles told Jesus all they had done. He took them with him and reduced Reed withdrew privately to a city called Beth Cedar.

00:00:55:01 – 00:01:17:06
Clint Loveall
When the crowds found out, they followed him and he welcomed them and spoke to them about the Kingdom of God and he healed those who needed to be cured. The day was drawing to a close and the 12 came to him and said, Send the crowd away so that they might go to the surrounding villages and countrysides to lodge and get provisions for We’re here in a deserted place.

00:01:17:11 – 00:01:38:57
Clint Loveall
And he said to them, You give them something to eat. They said, We have no more than five loaves and two fish unless we go and buy food for all these people. For there were about 5000 men. And he said to his disciples, Make them sit down in groups of about 50. They did so and had them all sit down and taking five loaves and the two fish.

00:01:39:01 – 00:02:23:15
Clint Loveall
He looked up to heaven and blessed and broke them and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd and all a and were filled. What was left over was gathered up 12 baskets of broken pieces. So this is a miracle of abundance. It’s a miracle of multiplication. It’s so many wonderful themes in this story. Michael, The idea of of enough, the idea of scarcity versus abundance, the sort of preview of he took bread and blessed it and broke it and take it and gave it to them.

00:02:23:20 – 00:02:50:35
Clint Loveall
You know, that’s almost taken for Batum later on in the Gospel. When we get to the Last Supper, we get a restatement of that that it’s almost the liturgical. How closely Luke sticks to that, that idea and to that phrase, the idea of some doubt, the idea of the return, the idea of trying to get away. But the crowd following you and Jesus still welcomes them.

00:02:50:40 – 00:03:20:35
Clint Loveall
This, you know, we, I feel like we say this often about Luke. This is a deep well, there’s so many so many great themes in this story, so many places to go, so many things to see. Luke has done a really nice job bringing these together. But ultimately, and I suppose this makes sense, the idea that this is one of the most well-known miracles would be that would be reasonable given that it involves the most number of people.

00:03:20:40 – 00:03:45:56
Clint Loveall
So the scale of this miracle is certainly surprising, especially when you consider five loaves and two fish versus thousands of people. But again, Luke has shown us this before and we continued unpacking in various ways with Jesus. Even what seems to be a little ends up being more than enough. And and Luke continues to spell that out for us.

00:03:46:01 – 00:04:24:31
Michael Gewecke
I think that when reading the Gospels, it is easy to get lost in some of the stories that are familiar and it’s easy to miss in those stories, the new lessons and teaching that is happening. We’ve seen Jesus already do some miraculous things. He’s certainly healed the sick. He’s passed it out. Demons. He’s called the storm here. As Jesus feeds the crowd, he continuing to do the thing he’s been doing all along, and that is to reveal who he is and what kind of kingdom he’s bringing to bear.

00:04:24:36 – 00:04:56:20
Michael Gewecke
But what he’s revealing in this miracle is that this kingdom is a radically different place than what we expected. It’s not just bodies mended, nature stilled and controlled, but it is bodies fed that people are miraculously provided for that mass itself. The idea that we only have this much but it could be enough for everyone is itself a reversal of the entire laws of the universe that we no and accept and hear.

00:04:56:20 – 00:05:31:48
Michael Gewecke
Jesus is revealing a ability to to be God. That is really remarkable what we might miss because of our familiarity with the story, the life rupturing kind of power that Jesus is displaying in a story like this. And when we see this story unfolding, we see that the disciples, they get it. It’s their voice that I think helps us see it, because they make the point, unless we’re going to go buy food for this entire crowd, they’re not going to eat.

00:05:32:00 – 00:06:01:32
Michael Gewecke
That’s a sensible adult kind of response to Jesus. But Jesus isn’t coming into this conversation with a sensible dollars and cents type blessing. He’s here to reveal that if you are about to trust in him, then all will eat and not just eat. There will be more than enough. The number 12, of course, being a significant number in the history of Israel, the number of disciples, the tribes of Israel, all these kinds of things.

00:06:01:37 – 00:06:26:40
Michael Gewecke
Jesus is very clearly in Luke’s telling, not just doing a miraculous thing, but he’s revealing something much deeper about who he is and about God’s plan for the world, about this kingdom that Israel’s been expecting. But now this very kingdom who Jesus is bringing to bear in a surprising way. And this is all happening in the midst of a story which on its surface just seems like, well, lots of people eight and that’s convenient.

00:06:26:51 – 00:06:39:42
Michael Gewecke
But really this is a story about how this kingdom that Jesus is bringing and initiating and portraying is going to change everything. And no one anticipated.

00:06:39:46 – 00:07:10:36
Clint Loveall
This is true. I don’t want to oversell this idea, Michael, because I do think all of the gospels are thoughtful and all of the gospel writers put significant intention into their their work. But in Luke, words matter and order matters. Luke is perhaps the most thoughtful. And so I think you also have to be open to the idea that Luke is the most subtle.

00:07:10:40 – 00:07:39:11
Clint Loveall
So what is the story that precedes this and that Luke connects it to the Apostles returned. Well, where have they been? Jesus had sent them out. And what did Jesus tell them? Don’t take anything. You don’t need anything. Your faith will be enough. People will respond. There will be hospitality in. In other words, Jesus told them explicitly to go out into the world in simplicity and faith, and they would be fine.

00:07:39:16 – 00:08:07:19
Clint Loveall
And now what happens? The people come to Jesus and the disciples say, We don’t have enough. They haven’t quite learned their lesson. And Luke gives us a fascinating way to get there. Notice that in verse ten, he says, On their return, the Apostles told Jesus. But then in verse 12, we say, As the day was drawing to a close, the one who came to him and said, And Jesus says, Feed them.

00:08:07:24 – 00:08:39:02
Clint Loveall
And they say, We can’t. And then, as you pointed out, Michael 12 is a significant number in the Scripture, but it’s also a significant number in this passage. They they pick up 12 baskets of leftovers and when you connect the 12 disciples who deal with the 12 baskets left over, the clear implication is there is a basket of bread and fish for every disciple who didn’t understand what Jesus was saying and told him, we don’t have enough.

00:08:39:07 – 00:09:06:22
Clint Loveall
Each one of those men gets a visible physical reminder that there’s more than enough in the economy of faith. If you take the world’s economy, there’s scarcity. But in in the kingdom there is enough. With Jesus, there is enough. And 12 matters here, because I think it’s a very specific and very intentional message that Luke leaves us with.

00:09:06:27 – 00:09:35:37
Michael Gewecke
You know, there’s an interesting little nugget here, too, that I think we might miss if we don’t just pointed out, and that is that in some ways we miss the really reversals happening in a book like Luke. If we don’t understand a little bit of the geography and I’m going to keep this really, really short, but if you’re an Israelite, your life revolves around this city, Jerusalem, which you’ve heard that before in your experience in the church.

00:09:35:42 – 00:09:53:04
Michael Gewecke
But to make it to where we are today, you have to start there in Jerusalem, which is in the middle of this little red orange section here. And we go all the way up to the Sea of Galilee here to the city of Beth Cedar. And just look here, I’m going to scroll out here. So hopefully you can see this like look at the distance between these places.

00:09:53:04 – 00:10:13:51
Michael Gewecke
You’ve got Jerusalem at the bottom of the screen there. And let’s say the top right side of the Sea of Galilee there. Click that. This is in the middle of nowhere when Jesus is doing these ministries, He’s not doing it at the center of the populous. He’s not doing it at the center of the intelligentsia. He’s not near the temple.

00:10:13:51 – 00:10:40:12
Michael Gewecke
He’s not near the teachers of the law. He’s not near the people who are the cosmopolitan city people. Jesus is doing this work in a remote region. He’s feeding crowds, as the text said in Luke, Jesus goes to this place. It’s a small place to be there privately. When Jesus goes, He’s drawing large crowds from the countryside and he is doing these miracles with these folks.

00:10:40:12 – 00:11:01:26
Michael Gewecke
That is not accidental. It’s part of Luke’s theme. It’s part of the idea that Jesus didn’t come to just be locking horns with the Titans in Jerusalem. Jesus came to bring good news to the people in the middle of nowhere. Jesus came to bring food for people who would have to travel to go buy it and hopefully get it.

00:11:01:28 – 00:11:25:23
Michael Gewecke
That all of this is playing into Luke’s general message, which is that Jesus is good news for the lost for the least, for the outcasts, for the people on the fringes. So the story itself, its setting is in some ways teaching this the lesson that Luke has been portraying all along. And if we don’t just pause to mention it, we might pass by to not see it happening.

00:11:25:28 – 00:12:04:45
Clint Loveall
Yeah, I think this is a a lot of levels. This is just one of those texts that is really there’s a lot of depth here. You know, this is a fascinating text to preach, to study. I think from a devotional aspect, the idea of offering Jesus a little and asking him to make it enough to transform the idea of service that the disciples come back and Jesus essentially makes them waiters, that they, as they continue to learn what it means to work in the kingdom and to follow Jesus.

00:12:04:49 – 00:12:32:42
Clint Loveall
They serve the crowd. They steward the crowd. You have them sit down and fifties and they then take the leftovers, which again, as I mentioned, are in and of themselves a message to those very men. And so just just a wonderful text. I think you know, they’re it’s not a coincidence. I think that this is one of the few gospel miracles that is accounted for in each of the four gospels.

00:12:32:47 – 00:12:52:36
Clint Loveall
It was well known. It was a story that was told. It was it’s it’s very telling. It’s it’s very indicative of who Jesus is and what it means to follow him. And so I think, you know, there’s just there’s just a lot here for us. And I hope that there’s something in it that might speak to you guys today.

00:12:52:40 – 00:13:19:40
Michael Gewecke
It is important to recognize that the church has always found meaningful this idea of the the loaves and the fish. And there’s lots of commentators who spend lots of time thinking some reasons why that might be the case. And certainly the idea that these were things that would have been available and food that might have been accessible, of course, but it’s easy to pass by.

00:13:19:40 – 00:13:46:57
Michael Gewecke
That is just a point in the story and not think about the additional symbolism that those things would have. The idea that Jesus is later going to take bread and break it and say, This is my body. And this would become part an integral part actually, of Christian worship. One of the things, by the way, that we might take for granted, but in the ancient world was one of the most frequent charges leveled against Christians, was that they believed in essentially eating Jesus.

00:13:46:57 – 00:14:16:37
Michael Gewecke
So the idea that they were going to be people participating in this inhuman kind of act. So the idea that bread appears here has an interesting connection with communion, this idea that Jesus is revealing something through bread even before the Last Supper, and then, you know, you might know that fish has become a substantial symbol of the Christian faith from the very earliest days as well, that there’s the disciples who are chosen, who are fishermen, who become fishers of men.

00:14:16:42 – 00:14:40:44
Michael Gewecke
The idea that Jesus tells some stories that involve fish, that here now fish becomes another important image in Jesus multiplying what didn’t seem to be enough for everyone. So I just think Luke does this thing that we sometimes miss in our modern Bible study. He tells us a study. Well, we get fixated in our modern context, ask, Well, did that really happen or not?

00:14:40:55 – 00:15:03:32
Michael Gewecke
Well, that’s an interesting question. Maybe, but if that’s what you get fixated on and you never move deeper into the story, you realize that there’s layer upon layer upon layer this story. There’s Jesus feeding people miraculously that might offend the modern sensibility. But then you move deeper and you see there’s theological significance. Why bread? Why fish? Then you move deeper and that you see, well, where is it and what significance does that have?

00:15:03:32 – 00:15:18:21
Michael Gewecke
If if you’re willing to dig deeper into a text and to live in it a little bit, you’re going to discover that all of these layers are built on top of each other. They all serve a purpose. They’re all intended. And there’s something that we can learn and be inspired by in the midst of it.

00:15:18:36 – 00:15:46:17
Clint Loveall
One of the ways I think we do that, Michael, is sometimes if we read a story, particularly parables, but even these miracle stories and ask Who do I relate to in the story? And here I think your choices are Am I a person who’s hungry and hoping to be fed? Am I a person who’s dealing with scarcity either mentally or physically, emotionally, or maybe monetarily?

00:15:46:17 – 00:16:15:57
Clint Loveall
Is it am I worried about a lack in my life and how do I look to Jesus to receive from him instead? Abundance? How? How do I offer him the places where I lack and allow him to fill me and to give me enough or more than enough? Or perhaps am I a disciple? Am I a person who is somewhat close to Jesus and beginning to understand in who he is?

00:16:16:06 – 00:16:45:33
Clint Loveall
And am? I called to serve him? I called to look at the hungry and hear Jesus’s words. You go feed them. Am I called to do something? Am I called to be the bearer of the the bread, the fish, the body, the truth, the help, whatever that looks like. Who am I in the story? And and if we can identify that, I think it maybe helps the story ring true for our own context in a way that is helpful.

00:16:45:37 – 00:17:03:57
Michael Gewecke
We certainly hope that that is the case for you all. We’re glad that you would spend your time with us and hope that this study has been interesting for you. Maybe inspired you to look even deeper in this story. We look forward to continuing on with an important declaration that will come early next week as we continue our study on Monday.

00:17:04:02 – 00:17:08:03
Michael Gewecke
Until then, be blessed. Certainly subscribe like and we will see you next week.

00:17:08:04 – 00:17:08:50
Clint Loveall
Thanks, everybody.