The Fourth and Fifth Signs

Good morning, everyone. I greet you in Jesus' name. I invite you to turn in your Bibles to the Gospel of John, chapter 6. I'm going to read the first 21 verses, and these verses are about the fourth and the fifth sign that Jesus performed.

If you remember from the beginning of the study here in John, John tells us at the end of his Gospel that he wrote these things, that he could have written many other things. There were many other signs that Jesus did, but that he gave us the ones he did so that we might believe, and in believing in Christ we might have eternal life. And so these two signs have that purpose in it. Now, one of the things that's really interesting is the Apostle Paul says in Corinthians that signs are for unbelievers, not for believers.

Okay? A sign is given for unbelievers, not believers. And I think that what Paul is saying there is that for those who believe already, they do not need a sign. At the end of the Gospel, when Thomas is saying of course, he wasn't there when Jesus appeared, and he said, "Unless I touch the nail prints in his palm and I see the wound in his side, I see him alive, I'm not going to believe he rose from the dead." Now, we call Thomas Doubting Thomas, but all the other apostles saw Jesus.

They saw him, and so they believed when they saw him. But Jesus told Thomas, "Here I am. Touch. See. I'm alive. Blessed are those who have not seen and yet believe." And I think that ties in this morning with our discussion from 1 John there, where he says, "How can you love God? How can you love God whom you have not seen and not love the brother who you have seen?"

Okay? And God is invisible to our physical eye. He does not make himself often known that way. Though we do know that Jesus himself was God incarnate, and we'll touch on that a little bit here in this passage because there is a reference to that at the end of the passage here.

Well, with those preliminary thoughts, let's read the passage. "After these things, Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. Then a great multitude followed him because they saw his signs, which he performed on those who were diseased. And Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat with his disciples. Now, the Passover, a feast of the Jews, was near. Then Jesus lifted up his eyes, and seeing the great multitude coming toward him, he said to Philip, 'Where shall we buy bread that these may eat?' But this he said to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, 'Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them that every one of them may have a little.'

One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, 'There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two small fish. But what are they among so many?' Then Jesus said, 'Make the people sit down.' There was much grass in that place, so the men sat down in number about five thousand. And Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to the disciples, and the disciples to those sitting down, and likewise of the fish as much as they wanted. So when they were filled, he said to his disciples, 'Gather up the fragments that remain so that nothing is lost.' Therefore, they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with the fragments of the five barley loaves which were left over by those who had eaten.

Then those men, when they had seen the signs that Jesus did, said, 'This is truly the prophet who is to come into the world.' Therefore, when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he departed again to the mountain by himself alone. Now, when evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum, and it was already dark, and Jesus had not come to them. Then the sea arose because a great wind was blowing. So when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea, drawing near the boat, and they were afraid.

But he said to them, 'It is I. Do not be afraid.' Then they willingly received him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land where they were going."

Okay, the two signs, the two miracles that Jesus performed here, of course, is breaking the bread, multiplying the loaves, and the fishes. That's the first one. Going from five barley loaves and two fishes to enough to feed five thousand men.

That's quite an accomplishment, all right? I've always wondered about how the logistics of that worked itself out, and I'm not going to speculate on that, all right? But the other one, of course, was his walking on water. Now, a number of years ago, when I was a teenager, I read a novel by Thomas Koesting called The Silver Chalice.

And the whole novel revolved around the cup that Jesus was supposed to have used at the Last Supper, and this was after Jesus's death and resurrection and so on, and so it's a story about the early Christians. It's rather a well-written story.

But one of the things that was really interesting to me and Luke is kind of the narrator of this story that Koesting wrote. But one of the things that's really interesting is this account of the feeding of the five thousands, which is the only account that is in all four Gospels. It's in Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. It's in Matthew 14, Mark 6, and Luke 9 as well. And each account has some different details and so on, but it's all the same account. But one of the things that Thomas Koesting said, he had Luke say this, which was a really curious sort of thing. He had Luke say this because Luke tells this story himself in his Gospels.

But he has Luke say to the young silver craftsman who is going to make this holder for the chalice or the cup that Jesus was said to use at the Last Supper, was that what happened there in the feeding of the five thousand is that Jesus opened these people's hearts up. And so some of them had food, and some of them did not, and they all sat down, and they were so struck by what Jesus said that they reached into their bags and they shared their food. And so the miracle that happened there was the change of heart and generosity that people felt.

You like that one? Okay. Now, the other thing with this story here about him walking on the water, you'll read some people who will say, "Well, see, actually there in the Sea of Galilee, there are these shallow parts and so on. There are stones that stick out of the thing or right below the surface." And so Jesus will be finding these stones, and he's walking out on the water.

We may laugh at that. We may reject those explanations and so on. But I would like to suggest to us that, of course, what is happening there is people are trying to give a natural explanation for something that God did, his intervention, doing something really unusual, really extraordinary, and I think maybe what we would say is a miracle.

Okay? All right. Something that's done through the power of God. Okay? But one of the things that I have noticed that even among professing Christians who might, yes, indeed acknowledge the truthfulness and the validity and veracity of the miracles and signs that are done in the New Testament is that they're really charry. They're really reluctant to consider or to think that God today can perform miracles. Have you met people like that? Some folks, particularly of a fundamentalist bent, have this idea that miracles were for that day and not for today.

Okay? Now, I think that one has to be cautious about this because people do, how shall we say, maybe say there are miracles happening when there are not. Okay? And that makes the rest of us rather charry of claims to the miraculous and so on.

But nonetheless, we should believe that God can do something extraordinary out of line with what naturally happens. Okay? We should be open to that possibility. Okay? And of course, what we have seen before here is Jesus turning water into wine.

Okay? Healing the nobleman's son, helping the lame man to walk, and so on. We're going to see the sixth miracle, which is later on his restoring sight to a blind man born blind since birth. And then you know what the last miracle is. There are seven miracles. There are seven signs in John's Gospel.

The last sign, the last miracle, is the resurrection, Christ's resurrection. Okay? And we have to if God could raise Jesus from the dead.

Okay?

Multiplying loaves and fishes as small potatoes. All right? It's small potatoes. But let's look at this passage here. All right? Now, this is happening up in Galilee. The previous set of events happened down in Jerusalem. All right? And Jesus leaves Jerusalem, and he heads up to Galilee.

And if you remember, there in Jerusalem, he came in conflict or he was questioned. He was confronted by some of the things that he was saying, and they were actually responding to a miracle he'd done on the Sabbath, and some of them were upset about that and so on. So he leaves there, and now he's up in Galilee. And you'll notice here it says the Passover was near. Now, this is the second Passover that is referred to in John's Gospel. And that's one of the reasons when you look in John's Gospel, there are actually three Passovers. That's where we get the understanding that Jesus's ministry lasted for three years. If we just had Matthew, Mark, and Luke's Gospel, we would know that because it's not marked in such a way.

But here we have in John's Gospel three Passovers. So this is the second Passover that's being referred to. All right? And he's up there in Galilee, and of course, he's from Galilee, and it refers to the Sea of Galilee, which was also known by the Romans as the Sea of Tiberias. Tiberias was an emperor. He was a Roman emperor, and the Romans actually built a city on the Sea of Galilee that they called Tiberias after the emperor. Okay? And he was performing signs. He saw his signs which were performed on those who were diseased. He was healing people, bringing recovery of sight, healing them of all their diseases.

And he had quite a following here. Okay? Luke said it's interesting that Luke's Gospel says in this account that he spoke to them about the kingdom of God and healed those who had need of healing. Now, John does not use the language kingdom of God.

All right? Or kingdom of heaven. He doesn't use that language. Okay?

And I think that tells us I mean, Luke's right. He was preaching about the kingdom of God. Jesus's language here in Luke is calling people to believe in him, to put their trust in him, to understand that he is the means to eternal life. He is, as we'll see later on in John, he is the way, the truth, and life. He's also going to talk about that here later on in chapter six, and we're not going to get to that. So the point I want to make there is that the kingdom of heaven, the kingdom of God, is all wrapped up in our response to Jesus, the message that he brings, our response to him, and that becoming part of this kingdom has to do with how we respond to Jesus.

Jesus lifted up his eyes. He saw this great multitude that were following him, and they were following him because of the signs. Okay? They were following because of the signs. I can imagine that. You think about that. We have some things here right now. If you heard about a person who could heal a disease that you had, a life-threatening disease, in fact, you saw him do that. Wouldn't you tell your friends and so on, "Hey, this guy can take care of your problem. He can heal your disease"? Wouldn't you pack up your bags and go following after him? Wouldn't you take whoever perhaps you had a friend, a relative who was ill, had a disease, you'd take them to him for Jesus to heal, wouldn't you?

Okay? So there's a lot of people following him here in Galilee. And he went to it says in one of the other Gospels, he went up onto a mountain, and there he sat, and his disciples came to him. And Jesus saw this whole multitude spread out there before him. And he says, and they don't have any food. He says to Philip, "Where shall we buy bread that these may eat?" Now, they were right. Luke's Gospel tells us that this happened right near the town of Bethsaida, which is where Philip was actually from. And so maybe he was Philip would say, "Well, Philip, do you know where to buy food here in this town?"

Okay? And Philip said, "Well, the resource" I think what Philip was saying is that the resources of Bethsaida would not meet the demand. And furthermore, Jesus, we don't have enough money to buy food for this people. Okay? 200 denarii. And denarii was a day's wages. So you think about here, that's more than a half a year's wages.

Think about that. What is your yearly how much money do you make every year? Can you imagine having to spend half of that to feed this crowd? Okay? That's how much it would take. And he said it wouldn't hardly give them a bite. It'd just give them a little bit of something.

And then Andrew comes along and says, "Well, there's this boy here, this lad." Recently, when I was over in Ireland, all the Irish, you know what they call a boy? A lad. They call him a lad. In fact, I've been amused to hear Craig talk recently. He talks about the lads, and I thought, "You've been acclimated a little bit over there in Ireland, which is great."

But this little guy, I think about somebody like Monty. Okay? Adrian has these five barley loaves and these two fishes. Okay? He has them. I guess his mother had enough sense to send him a lunch along. Now, barley loaf in this period of time was wheat was the preferred grain.

It made a better bread. It wasn't as coarse. Barley, if you ground it up and you made it into a bread, it was kind of coarse, crumbly sort of thing. This is probably a bun of some sort. And he had two fishes. Now, I don't think they were sardines, but I think maybe they were sardine-like.

Okay? These five small buns and these two sardines, that's what this boy had. All right?

And Jesus told him, "Tell the people to sit down." All right? And so Jesus took these five small loaves and these two little fishes, and he gave thanks. He gave thanks.

Some people refer to the Lord's Supper as the Eucharist. Have you ever heard that term? It's a term that comes from the Greek, which means thanks or giving thanks. And so in the sense that the communions are giving thanks to Christ for what he's done for us.

But the term here that's used here in John's Gospel is very similar to that. It just simply means thanks. All right? So he gave thanks. I'm reminded, okay, I'm reminded of the accounts in the Gospels where Jesus is sitting at the Last Supper with his disciples, and he takes the loaf, and he breaks it, and he gives thanks.

All right? He gives thanks.

Now, I'm not saying that anything sacramentally was happening here. And so I think Jesus was simply feeding them. I think he was simply meeting their physical needs. Just as when he healed people, he was meeting their physical needs. And Jesus tells us in the prayer that he taught his disciples that one of the things we're to ask for is what? Our daily bread.

God does care for our physical needs. Okay? He does not like to see anybody hungry. He does not like to see anybody destitute, not to be clothed, not to have a place to live. He does care about our physical needs.

And it's one of the things that we notice in the beginning of the early church when the Gospel was preached and people responded to it, what was their how did that flesh itself out with each other? Well, those who had more than what they needed sold their lands, their property, and so on, sold their extra lands and property and so on, and gave it so it would supply the physical needs of the church. In that particular case, they did maybe do what Coastine said.

All right? Where people were struck by the fact that the Gospel created within them a new love, a new heart, a spirit of generosity, particularly to one's fellow brothers and sisters, and that if you saw somebody who didn't have, you took from what you had and shared it with them. And I think that's still true.

Okay? I think that's still true. And I'm not going to deny that there is something miraculous in the sense of something spiritually powerful that happens when people's selfishness is dealt a deaf blow, and they become generous with the things they have. That is somewhat miraculous.

Okay?

Just as we talk about the new birth being a miracle thing. It is something supernatural here.

So he breaks it. It multiplies. He feeds the people. And then he says, "Gather up the fragments," and so on, "so that nothing is lost." And the disciples went and they gathered up the fragments, and there were 12 baskets full. Now, one commentator I read said that the Greek word here, basket, is actually a little basket that somebody a little wicker basket-like thing that somebody would kind of carry around as sort of a lunch pail.

And they how shall we say? Speculated. I think that's the only thing you could say. It was a speculation. Commentators do a lot of speculation. All right? But I thought this one was kind of worth it. Maybe it was a little interesting, in which he suggested that the disciples gathered up these 12 baskets. There were 12 disciples. And so Jesus not only provided for these 5,000 men who were sitting there, but he also provided some food for his disciples for the next day or so.

That may be so. Maybe not. But I want you to notice here, what is the response of the people who were fed? What is the response of the people who were fed? Who did they say, Jesus? What conclusion did they come to? Well, they came to the conclusion that this was the prophet who's to come into the world. Who are they talking about? I think I've referred to this before. But you remember in Deuteronomy 18 that Moses tells the children of Israel that there is going to come a prophet like unto me. Okay?

And if you remember, Moses was one of the persons in the Old Testament who combined in his person all three offices. He was a ruler. He was a priest. And he was a prophet. Okay? Normally, in the Old Testament, you will see these various offices divided. You will have prophets. You will have kings. You will have priests. Okay? Occasionally, somebody like Samuel will combine them all in one person, but very rarely. Okay? And so Moses is saying, "You're going to see God is going to raise up a prophet like unto me, a person like unto me who's going to be your ruler. He's going to be your priest, your intercessor. He's going to speak to you the word of God.

And when he comes, you're to listen to him and do everything you say." And so the children of Israel, the Jews, were looking for this prophet. They were also looking for the Messiah, and they had different opinions about whether the one was the same or not. But here, they decided, "Well, this must be the prophet that Moses is talking about." All right?

And what did they want to do as a consequence? Jesus understood, and this is one of the things that therefore, when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he departed again to the mountain by himself alone.

Okay? So they said, "This guy's the prophet. He must be maybe they think he's also the Messiah's to come. They want to make him king, put him in Jerusalem, kick the Romans out, and have the glorious millennium come."

Okay? Well, the glorious millennium was coming, just not in the way that they thought it was going to.

Jesus refused to allow that to happen. He refused to allow it to happen because, yes, he indeed came as a king, and he was the prophet that was foretold. But he's not a prophet like they expect him to be, nor is he a king like they expected him to be. And so he avoids this. He slips away, all right, and goes up to the mountain by himself alone. And then his disciples get in a boat, and they begin to row across the Sea of Galilee, the Sea of Tiberias.

And as often happens there, there's these squalls that come up that, from what I understand, are rather temperamental body of water. And the water is rough. The seas are rough and so on. And they are rowing hard. Now, some of these men are fishermen. They've probably been out there before. Okay? They've been out there before in rough waters in the Sea of Galilee and so on. But they're going toward Capernaum to the other side. It's dark. Jesus was still up in the mountain and so on.

And the sea rose because a great wind was blowing. And they had rowed about three or four miles, which is they're pretty well into the middle of the thing.

And Jesus comes walking on the water, not tiptoeing across the stones, but walking on the water. All right? This is the fifth sign. All right? Now, Matthew and Mark also give an account of this. And there's some more details there, and I'm not going to really go into them this morning.

In Matthew's Gospel, it talks about Peter when he sees Jesus. He says, "Could I come out?" And so he goes out. And you remember the story where he gets out there, and he says, "What am I doing?" And he begins to sink. And Jesus grabs hold of him and lifts him up. Okay?

But I want you to notice here what they saw Jesus draw more, and they were afraid. You think you would be scared if you saw somebody walking on the water? In the other Gospels, it does say that they thought maybe he was a ghost.

Now, that's a really interesting thing. I'm working on a message about heaven. I was maybe thinking I'd get it done today, but I still am working on it. And I'm really interested in all these various places where here it talks about they thought he was a ghost.

It talks about later on at the resurrection where the spirits came out of the tombs, I mean, at the crucifixion. I wonder what's that about. I have to do a lot more thinking and so on about all that stuff. But I just want to observe, they thought he was a ghost.

All right? And they apparently were scared. They were afraid. Didn't know what to make of it. And he says, "It is I. Do not be afraid."

Now, further down, if you look in verse 35, Jesus says to them, "I am the bread of life." I am the bread of life. From what I understand, where it's rendered in verse 20, "It is I," and where it says, "I am" in verse 35 is the exact same phrase.

One place it's rendered, "It is I," and the other one is rendered, "I am." And if Jesus says, "Okay, let's just, for the sake of substitution here, say," instead of saying, "It is I," he says, "I am." What's that sound like?

What's that sound like?

Okay? Huh? None other. I am. Who in the Old Testament tells Moses, "I am"? God. He tells Moses, "I am." When Moses asks, "Who are you?" God tells him, "I am. I am who I am." In fact, the proper name that God used to refer to himself, Yahweh, means that. I am who I am.

Okay? Jesus says at one particular time, "Before Abraham was, I am." All right? And this points us to the fact that the person walking on the water is no ordinary man, but he's the man who can say, "I am." None of us can say that.

Okay? None of us can say that because we are not we are becoming. We are becoming. We were somebody yesterday. We are somebody now. And we are somebody tomorrow. And that is a moving target. Okay? There was a day when I had hair on the top of my head, just to use a physical illustration.

Okay? Because there is growth. There's sometimes declension. There's change. All of us go through that in the course of our life. We change. God is the only one who can say, "I am who I am." He does not change.

He's the same yesterday, today, and tomorrow. And I think I'd like to hold out to you that when Jesus says here, "I am," that that is the claim that he is making. I am the same yesterday, today, and I will be the same tomorrow.

Okay? They are in presence of the great I am, as the hymn says. Don't be afraid, which is a really interesting thing to say to somebody because mostly when people encounter the I am, when Isaiah encountered Yahweh, what was his response? He was afraid.

He was afraid. But Jesus says here, "Don't be afraid." And I think what he's telling him is, "Don't be afraid of me." If their fear, as in the other Gospels indicate, they thought maybe it was a ghost or some other scary kind of thing, don't be afraid.

Okay?

We talked this morning about fear and about that perfect love that casts out fear. And there's two kinds of things that when we talk about fear, and sometimes people want to sort of go one way or the other with it. The fact of the matter is that we are to fear God.

We are to fear God. Okay? But the other reality is that we are in the presence of a God who loves us, and we're in the presence of a Savior who has given his life for us. And he can say, "Fear not, little flock, for it is pleased the Father to give you his kingdom."

Okay? And as I said earlier, Polycarp said at his execution, "I have served him many years, I think 80-some years, and he has done me no harm." We do not have to fear that God will do us harm.

We do not have to fear that Jesus will do us harm. He's actually come to do us good, to provide a way of salvation, a way of deliverance, a way of rescue. And that's what he's doing here with these disciples.

Okay? The great I am has come. Don't be afraid.

So.