Sermon Tone Analysis

Every follower of Jesus took advantage of the Lord, and the Lord is pleased we did.

Paul said again in Philippians 2:8, /"And being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself and became obedient to the point of death, even the death of the Cross."/

Jesus chose service.

He chose to be a bond slave.

He chose it to the point of death to our advantage.

So...this week, you serve instead of love.

And if somebody takes advantage of your serve, then great.

Because now you understand what it means to take up the cross and follow Jesus daily, to follow Him to Golgotha if necessary, to serve.

Until you can do that, my friends, you're not a complete follower of Jesus.

Until you can say, "I serve my children.

I serve my parents.

I serve my enemies.

I serve those that I am supposed to love, but I'm going to exchange the word love with serve.

I'm going to serve my neighbor.

I'm going to serve that stranger.

I'm going to become one who bears his cross and follows Christ.

That is going to show me what being a follower of Jesus is really all about."

Jesus said in Luke 9:23, "If anyone desires to come after Me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow Me." Now, some people take the last half of that.

We want to take up the cross.

That is our burden.

That is our misfortune in life.

But we leave off the first part where we deny ourselves.

A servant denies himself by definition.

Otherwise, he is an employee.

We are not called to be employees; we are called to be servants.

That means we deny ourselves.

When you learn to embrace serving, to have an outward-focused life in a serve-me world, when you learn to embrace serving, to show love by serving...you're on the road, my friends, to true greatness.

Jesus said in Matthew 23:11, /"He who is greatest among you shall be your servant."/

The greatest thing a Christian can do, the greatest level of Christian can attain, is to lower themselves to be a servant...to be a servant.

To show your parents you love them...serve them this week.

Without fanfare, but with love...serve them.

Serve your best friend, whom you love, this week.

Not for pay back later, but with love.

Determine to serve your husband or to serve your wife.

Instead of saying the word /love/ this week, not because of guilt...well, /maybe/ because of guilt, but with love.

Choose to serve this week.

I remind you...this can only happen joyfully if you have learned the freedom of who you are.

I said to you earlier...until you gain the freedom that you have of knowing where you came from and where you're going and why you're here then service is going to be something that at some point you're going to have to grit your teeth, but when you discover the freedom of who you are, you can take the lowliest job, and it won't matter to you.

That is why Paul tells us to have an outward-focused worldview in Galatians 5:13.

He said, /"For you, brethren, have been called to liberty/ [to freedom] /only do not use liberty as/ [an opportunity for a serve-me world] /an opportunity for the flesh but/ [look...use your freedom this way...] /through love, serve one another."/

That is how we express God's purpose for us.

Now with that in mind, and in just a few short minutes, I'm going to take you through our text today.

I spent this time because I wanted more than anything to shift your focus, to see this familiar story with a fresh set of eyes.

Turn with me to John, chapter 6, and the feeding of the 5,000, and to see it through the perspective of service.

Jesus has crossed in the boat with the disciples.

This one encounter, by the way, is recorded in all four Gospels.

We are able to fill in the picture by looking at all the encounters.

They leave the western shore of the Sea of Galilee where the settlement of Tiberius is located, and thus the Sea of Galilee is also called the Sea of Tiberius.

They travel over to the mountainous side, to the eastern side, to the area we call today the Golan Heights.

There, they disembark the boat in the northeastern corner of that huge lake and go up into the mountainside.

But the crowd that had been on the western side came across.

They crossed over...left Tiberius and crossed over past Capernaum, and then they come back around the other side of this lake and Jesus sees them coming.

When He sees them coming, He had been teaching His disciples.

The Bible tells us that He saw them as sheep without a shepherd, and He sat down and taught them.

Though they had gone away for a retreat, because of His compassion...and listen, when you are servant, there is no vacation...and though He had gone to rest, there was somebody to serve, so He chose to serve them.

It was not a small group.

There were 5,000 men, commentators tell us, with the women and children, there were well over 10,000 people had come there.

They come to Jesus, and He begins to teach them there on the hillside.

Then, darkness starts to approach, and it becomes obvious after a while that if they don't hurry up and go, they're going to be caught out there in the Golan Heights without light, and certainly, without food.

So there is a need for them to go, and the disciples are suggesting to Jesus, "We need to shoo these people away."

We come to our text in chapter 6.

It begins by saying, /"After these things, Jesus went over the Sea of Galilee which is the Sea of Tiberius."/

Now, "after these things" is probably some six months since our text we looked at yesterday.

/"Then a great multitude followed Him because they saw His signs which He performed and 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."/

This, by the way, is the third Passover.

This event here sort of inaugurates the last year of Jesus' ministry.

Verse 5, /"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."/

He turns to Philip.

Why?

Because Philip is from the nearest village in the northeast corner of the Sea of Galilee, the area known as Bethsaida, a small village at this time...maybe 50 people.

Now, here are 10,000 people on the hillside, and Jesus turns to Philip because Philip knows all the good restaurants, all the good grocery stores back in Bethsaida and says, "Where will we go to get enough bread to feed these people?"

Now He knew there was no place to go.

It was late in the day.

What bread had been made had been bought or had been secured.

Nobody is baking more bread, and there isn't enough to feed all these people.

Notice in verse 7, Philip answered Him, /"Two hundred denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may have a little."/

Now, that is eight months' wages for someone.

He says, "With eight months' wages, we couldn't buy enough bread."

And by this time, two years into the ministry of Christ, the disciples (the Bible tells us) are living off the support of the people who are believing in Jesus.

They are not wealthy men.

They are not still in their fishing business.

All of that has been abandoned.

They just have whatever pocket change they have.

Do remember when Jesus sent them out two by two, He says, "Don't take a lot of money.

Just depend on the support of the people," and that is how they have been living.

So they don't have eight months' wages between them.

Even if they did, he said that would only get a morsel for everybody.

But remember...Jesus knew what He was going to do.

He was just testing him to see if he was willing to serve.

My friends, He tests us today.

He challenges us not with sin but with challenges.

He wants to see if we will view what is in front of us with an outward-focused life.

If we will see the challenges in our community, the need to serve, those who are around us, and whether or not we will obey Christ and take up that cross or whether we will be pragmatic and say, "This is beyond my ability."

Sometimes, when we are met with great challenges, we just say, "Ooh, this is just too much for us.

We're not that big.

We're not that capable.

I'm not nearly that wealthy.

I couldn't possibly do all this."