So we're about halfway through our study of the major miracles of Jesus in the book of John.
And so here in chapter 6, Jesus crosses the Sea of Galilee.
Here's a picture of the Sea of Galilee.
It's like a big lake.
It's basically a beautiful lake, hills all around, there's towns all around.
People have been seeing Jesus' miracles.
Jesus is doing these miracles to validate himself, also to create wonder about himself.
And so Jesus crosses this sea, and a crowd gathers on the other side because they've all been hearing and seeing these miracles.
Thousands and thousands of people gather, 5,000 people, maybe maybe more.
But there's a problem.
The problem that Jesus sees is that there's nothing for these people to eat.
So let's read through the story.
We'll break it down, see what God might have for us.
Let's pray real quick.
God, as we come before your scripture, may this story have something for our hearts, because you are so good.
In Jesus' name we pray.
Amen.
So John 6, 5 through 7, when Jesus looked up, he saw a great crowd coming toward him.
He said to Philip, Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?
He asked us only to test him, for we already had in mind what he's 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.
Point number one is this we have needs beyond what our own resources can provide.
We have needs beyond what our own resources can provide.
Andrew finds a boy, has this pathetic little lunch, it's really pathetic lunch, five barley loaves, two fish.
This is what they have for 5,000 people.
These are the resources we have for our overwhelming issues.
Now I still have flashbacks of growing up hearing preachers hammer away at me that I need to lift up my five loaves to God.
And maybe that's a lesson here, but it's certainly not the focus of the story.
That lesson actually keeps the focus on me or you, if I did that to you.
And the focus of the story is not on the boy.
We don't even know the name of the boy.
The boy was actually found.
And there's no great faith implemented here.
The story is about Jesus' heart and power to come into our helpless state, which is amazing news.
If you have ever felt worn out or worn down or messy or exhausted, if you slept 10 hours and you still wake up and you wonder why I am still exhausted, I slept 10 hours.
Can I handle this?
Will I make it through?
Story goes on, John 6, verse 11.
Jesus then took the loaves, he gave thanks, he distributed it 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 the 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.
So all this is telling us this, point number two.
Through Christ we have resources beyond ourselves, which is good news because we don't have enough resources for our issues.
The past few weeks I've been re-watching The Crown on Netflix.
When Queen Elizabeth passed, I think half the world just watched The Crown.
And so I went back to watching The Crown.
Christy likes to sleep to it while I watch it.
That's our pattern in the evening.
So there's this fictional scene, and it is a fictional scene.
Prince Philip did go to Gordonston in Scotland, but the scene itself is fictional, but it's still quite a lesson for us.
His family, as a little boy, his family's been killed in a horrible plane accident.
He returns from that funeral and all that grieving, all that sadness.
He gets back to school and he sets into the project that he had been assigned with another boy to rebuild this gate, to build this front gate.
And it is horrible Scotland weather.
It is winter, it is cold, it is rainy, and he sets out to finish this gate by himself.
He's going to isolate himself.
He's going to refuse to talk to anybody, certainly not going to ask for help.
He's going to fume in his anger.
Really, he's just sad, needing help.
And he's just punishing himself for days in the rain, in the mud, and the cold, building block by block.
He's barely able to lift these blocks up.
It's kind of painful to watch.
Finally, he finishes the columns.
He gets the columns done.
But he has to lift these huge iron gates up on the hinges, which he can't do.
No matter how hard he tries, he can't get the gates up on the columns.
At one point, one of the boys says, Hey, let's go help.
And the headmaster says, Not yet.
Not yet.
Finally, Philip stumbles into the dining hall.
Bloody, muddy.
Everyone grows quiet.
It's been days.
And he mumbles, I need help.
And the headmaster replies, speak up.
See, the movement from just church attendee to lavishly loved, free, and becoming free, beloved Christian.
It's not one of being good enough.
It's not one of being strong enough.
It's seeing that you don't and you can't keep it all together.
Finally, the boy lets out, I need help.
And all the boys get up and they walk out to that front columns and they lift up the gates and they put them on the hinges and they all walk back in.
Now we would love to have the strength of the collective, wouldn't we?
We try to, but we're actually just the boy.
We can make it so far, but we can't get it all together.
I learned this week that John, this book of John, the author, John, mentions an event happening at Passover three different times in his book.
Remember, Passover is that feast the Jews would celebrate.
They were celebrating when God, Old Testament, but God liberated the people of Israel out of Egypt.
It was a liberation from slavery.
And there in that rescue, God frees them and then he provides for them in the wilderness with manna, bread from heaven.
And so they'd come together and celebrate this.
At Passover.
The first time John mentions an event happening at Passover is in chapter 2 when Jesus gets fired up and clears the temple.
Because people are trying to sell forgiveness.
They've turned forgiveness into a marketplace.
That's the first time.
The second time that John mentions Passover is here in John chapter 6, where the chapter begins with the feeding people bread.
The chapter continues, verse 14, and the people saw the sign Jesus performed.
They began to say, Surely this is the prophet who has 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 the context here was these people were horribly oppressed by Rome.
Here's their answer.
Make Jesus king.
This is the relief they wanted.
They wanted relief from Rome.
Jesus picks up on this and he wants to bring them a liberation and a freedom much deeper than that.
To our frustration, right?
To our frustration, God works like this, that he doesn't just fix our situations.
But he is with us.
He's with you and he's for you.
And his heart is to heal your heart and to make your heart whole.
Verse 32, Jesus then said to them, Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.
They said to him, Sir, give us this bread always.
Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life.
Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.
Now the third time John connects an event at Passover is in some final chapters there in chapter 11, 12, and 13.
So at the feast, the Passover, celebrating the liberation from slavery, this divine provision, we have Jesus walking into Jerusalem and moving to the cross.
Our sin put upon him who knew no sin, that we might become the righteousness of God.
Liberation from slavery.
Passover.
It's a Passover of sin, guilt, shame, self-righteousness, self-justification.
And see, John wants us to connect, chapter 2, forgiveness is free.
To chapter 6, Jesus is our bread of life.
And to the later chapters, the glory of the cross.
Point number three.
There are resources beyond ourselves, yet we enjoy them in our weakness.
Maybe you're like me and have what feels like an impossibility inside of you.
Or in your life.
It's the one issue that keeps nagging you.
It doesn't go away.
At worst, it enslaves you.
It's the one struggle, it's the one kid, it's the one parent.
It's the one relationship.
It's the tense part of your heart that you wake up to.
And it has us wondering: can I handle this?
Will I make it through?
And what it feels like is it feels like landing on the other side of the sea and seeing 5,000 people and then thinking you're gonna feed these people.
That's what it feels like.
The story teaches us that Christ is actually endeared to us in our weakness.
The greatest transformation many of us will ever have is to transform from I got this to I need help.
Right after Paul pleaded for an impossibility from him, this is the guy who wrote a lot of the New Testament.
He has this impossibility in his life and inside of him.
We don't know, he called it a thorn in his flesh, we don't know what it was.
Something, something horrible, something anguishing, something that wouldn't go away.
In 2 Corinthians 12, 9 and 10, this is what he hears back from God.
My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.
So Paul says, Therefore I will boast all the more gladly in my weaknesses, so that the power of Christ may rest upon me.
For the sake of Christ, then I am content with weaknesses, insults, hardships, persecutions, and calamities.
For when I am weak, then I am strong.
Philip and Andrew have nothing.
The one thing they bring is the only thing they have, which is their nothingness.
It's their need, it's their helpless state.
Which is something that we all have and we can bring.
We own our weakness because that is actually the place of the sweetness of grace.
The first question that we should be waking up to every day is not, God, what do you need me to do today?
Or God, what do you want me to do today?
Or God, what can I do for you today?
That's not the first question.
The first question is, how might I rest deeper in your lavish love for me?
That's the first question.
Then we are now empowered to ask the second question.
And the second question is, how might I love my neighbor?
But we have to ask the first one first and the second one second.
Okay, you have been incredibly patient because I know you want to hear more about bears.
Last week we celebrated Fat Bear Week.
Today, I'm sure you have heard of Bear 399, the most famous bear in the world.
And so some of you do know Bear 399.
First, I have two bear jokes.
Thought we'd start off right.
Bear with me here.
Uh first.
That was extra.
That was free.
What is a bear's favorite dessert?
Blueberry pie.
It gets worse.
Purposefully worse.
What is a bear's favorite pair of shoes?
None.
Bare feet.
Very good.
Thank you.
Thanks, done for today.
Uh, so bad.
It's good.
Okay, so back to Bear 399.
Here she is.
This is Bear 39.
That's her with her cubs.
She's 26 years old.
In bear years, she's a granny.
And this granny's popular.
She has devoted followers all over the world.
She has 29,000 followers on Instagram, so she has like a marketing department, apparently.
She often moves out of Yellowstone in the North Tetons, and she stays kind of public.
She keeps letting herself be seen and photographed.
She stays pretty calm around people, which is rare, and so she's become very popular and well known.
She sort of roams around.
She wants people to see her.
She's willing to deal with it.
She stays pretty public unless she wants a little romance with Bruno.
This is Bruno.
It's her boyfriend.
That's Bruno.
Stud that he is.
We can pretend they're married if it makes us more comfortable as Christian people.
They do tend to run off for private time.
I first learned of Bear Street 9 two years ago when I was in the Tetons, and her and her cubs had actually come down out of Yellowstone through North Tetons, and they were down in the kind of neighborhood, the area that I was staying in.
So everybody's talking about there she is with her four cubs.
Actually, that's her fourth set of cubs that she has reproduced.
So she is a mother and grandmother of 24 bears.
It's a lot of bears, it's a lot of Bruno time, a lot of Bruno time going on.
Now, when she came down into town, because I know you're so interested with all this, when she came down into town, everyone's talking about it because she's actually in a dangerous position.
She's in public, she's around people, she's in a neighborhood.
She's in the wrong place.
And she's in more danger than she realizes.
The entire town is aware of it.
It's on the news, it's on the radio, there's signs up, it drives slow.
Be noisy.
The goal is that all this noise and awareness would push her back into the mountains where she is safe.
She needs to get back in the mountains and she needs to move north.
The only reason she's alive is because the game warden is allowing her to be alive.
Her being protected from dangers coming from sources all around her, and she's not even aware of it.
And this is my point with Bears 399.
I get to tell a few bad jokes, and I get to make a point.
It works out.
She has more need than she realizes.
And she needs help from the outside.
And it's the same with the hungry crowd, and it's the same with Prince Philip, and it's the same with me.
And it is the same with you.
We can get along okay for a while.
And we dress up pretty good.
We can hold it together for a while, but eventually we realize that we do, in fact, need outside help.
And the good news is that despite our weakness, God is endeared to our weakness.
And he lavishes us with provision in Christ.
Here's the feast of provision we have in Christ.
We looked at this a couple months ago.
I'm going to reread the list that we reviewed two months ago.
This is the feast of our provision.
In Christ, we are always forgiven and always righteous.
Jesus is your righteousness.
In Christ, we have secure, forever acceptance and peace with God.
Jesus is your peace.
In Christ, we are never alone and have endless companionship.
Jesus is your friend.
In Christ, we are liberated from performancism to live by the Spirit and freedom and love.
Jesus is your freedom.
In Christ, we are relieved of judgmentalism and empowered to live with love toward others.
Jesus is your source of love.
In Christ, we are both deemed godly and becoming godly.
Jesus is your empowerment toward holiness.
And lastly, in Christ, we have a heavenly home prepared for us when our days on earth are over.
Jesus is our home.
Let's pray together.
God, thank you for your grace and mercy.
That though we have great needs, some of us in guilt, some of us in shame, some of us hurting, some of us lonely, some of us anxious, some of us disappointed, some of us just aware that we're just a little bit messier than we wanted to be.
Thank you that you are endeared to our weakness, that your grace is enough for our shortcomings, that you have fulfilled the law, you are calling us to yourself that the forgiveness is free, the bread of heaven, fulfillment of our souls is you and you alone, and we know it all through the cross.
Help us to move and transform from I got this to I need help.
And may we live in a trust that brings great joy to our hearts, a freedom and a peace that can only be known by having a secure identity in you, resting in you and growing in you.
Thank you that you are enough.
In Jesus' name I pray.
Amen.