God Provides

Sometimes, especially with some of the more popular Bible stories, there is a temptation to allegorize the story. Let me demonstrate what I mean by that:

When Jesus calms the storm it becomes about how Jesus calms the storms in your life.

When Jesus enables the disciples to catch more fish than their boats can carry it becomes about how Jesus will abundantly bless you.

When Jesus feeds five thousand people it becomes about how Jesus will take care of your bodily needs.

There are two problems with this approach. The first is that THESE ARE NOT ALLEGORIES! These are not just made up stories to teach some moral lesson, these are historical events. The second is that it makes the Bible all about us. Saying that Jesus calming the storm is about how He calms the storms in your life is like saying that the fall of the Roman Empire is about how important humility is. Is it a lesson that we can learn? Sure. Was that what the historical event was all about? No.

So what I would like to do today is take you through four steps that can help us to understand and interpret passages like these so that we can recognize them for the historical events they are and learn what we can from them.

What The Event Says About God’s Character

So, just to recap, a few thousand years ago Jesus led His disciples to a place by the Sea of Galilee. He was a popular figure because of the healings and miracles He had been doing, so people followed Him. I want you to picture that scene for a second, Jesus sitting on the ground in front of thousands of people. After a conversation with His disciples, He takes some bread and fish from a boy in the crowd, prays over them, and starts passing food out. But the food just keeps coming, until everyone in the crowd had enough to eat and there were a bunch of leftovers.

Now for the first step in this process, we’re going to think about what the event says about God’s character. We’re going to think about who God is. One of the best ways to get to know someone and to understand their character is to look at what they say and do. So let’s think about what Jesus says and does here. Well, He speaks to Philip in order to test him - so we know can see that Jesus has the attitude of a teacher or mentor. He wants the people to sit down and He’s willing to meet with them out in the world - so we can pick up that Jesus isn’t really picky about who learns from him or how they choose to do it. And then He feeds all of the people - so we can learn that Jesus understands the needs of people and that He has the compassion to provide for them and that He doesn’t want this opportunity to teach to be interrupted by everyone leaving for food. Oh yeah, and He does it with five loaves of bread and two fish - so we learn that Jesus can do impossible things.

So based on what Jesus says and does at the feeding of the five thousand, we can learn that Jesus has the attitude of a teacher, that He’s relaxed about how people approach Him, that He’s empathetic, compassionate, patient, and that He can do impossible things.

What The Event Says About God’s People

The next step in this process is to look at the other people involved, we’re going to think about what the event says about God’s people. So we look at the other people involved and Philip responds to Jesus question about feeding the people by pointing out how unrealistic buying dinner for all of them would be. So we learn that Philip is pragmatic and is concerned with how they’re going to make ends meet. Then we look at the crowds, they are following Jesus because He has already done miracles and healed sick people - so we learn that they’re following Jesus in hopes that He will fill some specific need for them, they’re following Jesus in hopes that He’ll do something for them. And they didn’t bring their own food - so we learn that they’re a little unprepared. Reading into their actions a little more, it looks like they are coming to Jesus for what they think they need instead of coming to Him for what they need most.

It reminds me of something called Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs which arranges human needs in order of importance. On the bottom is physiological needs, then safety and security, then love and belonging, then self-esteem, and ultimately self-actualization. It seems like the people around Jesus are concerned with the things at the bottom, they want their physiological needs met. But this hierarchy is flawed, and so was their approach, because even more fundamentally than our physiological needs is humanity’s need to be right with God - to put it bluntly, food and water and shelter can keep you alive for a few decades, reconciliation with God can keep you alive forever.

So based on what happens at the feeding of the five thousand, we can learn that people tend to pursue Jesus for what they think they need, missing the bigger gift of eternal life that He promises to those who follow them. And maybe, thinking about that combined with the lessons from the first step, we can see that maybe Jesus is using their perceived needs to bring them into contact with His fulfilment of their most foundational need.

How God’s Character Is Revealed Today

The next step in this process is to look at God’s character that the passage revealed to us and think about how we see that today. So in the feeding of the five thousand we saw that Jesus has the attitude of a teacher, that He’s relaxed about how people approach Him, that He’s empathetic, compassionate, patient, and that He can do impossible things.

And all of those things are still true as He provides for His people today. I knew a seminarian, that’s a student at the Seminary who is training to become a pastor, who went on vicarage, which is a year long pastor internship in the third year of Seminary, with a pretty sizable chunk of medical debt stacked up on a credit card. Now the credit card company, like most of them do, had a program where the payments and interest on the card could be frozen for a period of time for medical expenses. But, during the seminarian’s vicarage year that period of time was coming to an end and he and his wife were not in a position where they were going to be able to pay off the debt. Then, out of the blue, a random church sent that seminarian a check for enough money to pay off the medical debt in full without knowing that they needed the relief. God provided. His compassion and empathy and patience and ability to do impossible things still applies today - even when He works through other people.

How These Lessons Impact Us Today

Which brings me to our fourth step in this process, how do the lessons we’ve learned impact us today? Now there is a temptation when we hear stories like that, when we hear that God provides for His people, to take an attitude of “well than why do I have to go to work or pay my bills or put in the effort for anything?” Which brings me to a request I have of you all this morning - I would like to invite you to shift your perspective in two ways.

The first perspective shift is in direct response to that question. You don’t get to say “God provides” and then ignore everything else He says! Because so often we think about things in life as things we have to do to survive or to avoid some bad consequence or to get something we need. We have to go to work so that we can pay the bills, we have to eat so we don’t wither away, we have to pay our bills so that we don’t end up in trouble. Instead, I’d like you to think I go to work because God has called me into this vocation and I want to serve Him there, I eat because God has given me the gift of food and He has called me to take care of this body, I pay my bills because God has called me to be faithful in dealing with my neighbors. We trust that God will provide and we take the rest of what He tells us seriously. It’s a shift in perspective from “I do these things to provide for myself” to “I do these things because God says they are good to do.”

The second perspective shift is more simple, it is simply to see God at work instead of only the people and things that He uses. Instead of looking at a paycheck and thinking “my employer is paying me” we think “God has provided for my needs of money.” Instead of looking at a cart full of groceries and thinking “the store has what I need” we think “God has provided for my need of food.” When we start to look at the things around us and actively think about how God is providing for our needs, it strengthens our trust in Him and inspires gratitude for everything He does for us.

And my challenge for you this morning is this, pick one thing in your life and make an intentional effort to make these perspective shifts about it. Maybe it’s viewing work as a vocation, maybe it’s viewing bills as a chance to be faithful to your neighbor, maybe it’s seeing groceries and paychecks as God’s provision. Whatever that one thing is, make the shift and let that shift remind you of God’s greatest provision for you - the work of His Son Jesus. It’s in His Name, Amen.