John 6:1-15 - Do You Love Him, Or His Gifts?

Main Idea: Love the Savior, the Source of all good things, and not the things He provides.

• Don’t simply love the gifts that Jesus provides.

  • He sometimes provides miracles in unique moments.

  • He sometimes provides physically in unanticipated ways.

  • He sometimes provides earthly freedom for His followers.

• Love Jesus and His character that He provides to you.

  • He always provides you with His love to give to others.

  • He always provides you with faith to believe in His working.

  • He always provides you with gratitude for what He’s doing.

  • He always provides you with the self-control to wisely steward what He’s given you.

  • He always provides you with the opportunity to follow Him for the right motives.

Sermon Transcript (Auto-Transcribed by Apple Podcasts)

We are picking up in our study in John 5 through 10. So if you would turn your Bibles today to John 6, John 6 and verses 1 through 15. Been in a series called Pick A Side.

And in John 5 through 10, you have Jesus talking to the religious leaders of the time, as well as to the people of Israel.

And he makes it really clear, this is who I am, this is what I came to do, and this is what God is calling for you personally to do as a result of what God is telling you. And all throughout these chapters, you're going to see some people love it.

They're on board the Jesus train. Other people learn very quickly that though they enjoyed some things about Jesus, they were not on board for what he was doing. And the same call is given out to you and I today.

Are you going to allow Jesus to be your Lord and your Savior, the one who calls the shots in your life? Or are you going to go your own way? And so that's what we're going to be discovering today.

Today's message is entitled, Do you love him or his gifts? Do you love him or his gifts? There are probably a couple of different people in here today.

How many of you would say, you know, I kind of grew up, maybe not with the silver spoon in my mouth, but you know, we had some things that like my friends didn't have. Are you one of those people? Just raise your hand and put your hand back down.

OK, a couple of you. Some of you guys are nervous. You're like, listen, if they know that I've got the stuff, they're going to come for my stuff.

It's kind of the point. For many of us, it was we had friends or we had family members that maybe they were the ones that were a little better off. And so I think back to my childhood and my cousin Austin, he had the coolest games.

He had the newest gaming systems. And so whenever I got to have a sleepover at Austin's house, it was amazing because I got to have so much fun. His mom didn't really have like a bedtime for him.

And so as opposed to my mom, you know, brutally making me go to bed at 9 or 10 or whatever, I could just stay up all night and play these amazing games that they didn't have at my house.

Certainly the fear with a lot of people, it's less of a concern with family, but with friends, you would wonder, okay, well, does he actually like me? Does he want to hang out with me? Or does he just want to play with my stuff?

And in today's passage, Jesus does a very well-known miracle. But the response to it, especially as we look over the next about three or four weeks, the response from the people was that they loved what Jesus gave them, but they did not love Jesus.

And for you and I today, the question is going to be, do you love the Savior, the source of all good things, or do you just love the things themselves? We're going to be in John 6 today.

I want to, before we begin reading, looking through the passage and seeing the couple of practical things for us today, I want us to pray and ask the Lord to speak to our hearts.

Lord, whatever you have for us today, we ask that we would have ears to hear. Lord, you are the one that is sovereign, you are in control, and we are not. And Lord, we don't love that.

We want to be in control, we want a predictable future, we want a predictable now. But Lord, that's not what you've given us. But you have given us your word that you will always be with us.

Lord, we ask today that we would see that that is enough, that your presence, that your salvation is what we need. We don't just need more stuff from you.

Lord, I ask that if there's someone here today, and they have never become a Christian, they have never called on you as their Lord and their Savior, they've never been born again.

God, I pray that today as they, if you will see, Jesus kind of lay the gauntlet down on who he is, the Savior and the God that we ought to worship. God, I ask that they would choose to follow him as a result of that.

We love you, Lord, and we pray all of this in the name of Jesus. Amen. We'll begin reading in verses 1 through 15 today.

So catching up from the last two weeks, Jesus goes into the temple through the northern gate that enters into the temple in Jerusalem, called the Sheep Gate. He heals a man that was lame, that could not walk.

He was lame for 37 years, if I remember correctly. Then he tells him to pick up his bed that he was laying on and walk. It angered the religious leaders of the time who said, oh no, you can't carry your stuff on the Sabbath day.

That's working. And so you're violating the law. So Jesus owns, I did this, I healed the man, I told him to walk and the religious leaders became irate with him.

Scripture actually tells us they started looking for how they could kill Jesus. So what ultimately ended up in his crucifixion began in John 5, that he didn't play by people's religious rules.

And instead, he followed the heart of God, which was for restoration and for love and for the healing and the wholeness of people. And Jesus declared to them exactly who he was. He was God the son.

They were also angry about that because he said that he was God's son, making himself equal with God. And as a result, they wanted to kill him.

And he told them, in essence, God is the source of life and God is the judge, as I am God the son, I also have the right and the ability to give life and I am the righteous judge. And in fact, God has commissioned all judgment to me.

So that's where we were last week. Now we find Jesus here in John 6. One after this, Jesus crossed the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Sea of Tiberius.

That would be its Roman name. Verse number two, a huge crowd was following him because they saw the signs that he was performing by healing the sick.

Here, as with many times in Jesus' ministry, you don't have a huge crowd following him because of the doctrine that he had or the teachings that he was giving or the fact that he declared himself to be the son of man from Daniel 7 or God the Son.

They saw that he could do miracles. And so they were following around the miracle worker. Verse number 3, Jesus went up a mountain and sat down there with his disciples.

Now the Passover, a Jewish festival, was near. So this would be either two or three years before the Passover feast that Jesus would do the last supper with the disciples, and then he himself would die as that perfect Passover lamb on our behalf.

So this would be about two or three years before that Passover. And John writes this portion right here for one very important purpose.

So you would borrow the stuff that you know about Moses and the children of Israel, and that you'd bring it to this passage.

So if you guys know the story of Egypt, of Moses, of the Exodus, some of you, you've seen DreamWorks prints of Egypt, and you've got like the fun songs or whatever going in your head right now.

That's okay, actually, for this instance, because you need to know some of that. You need to think about God's provision for a people that could not save themselves.

And through following exactly what God had outlined, the children of Israel found salvation.

They were passed over when the death angel came through all of Egypt, and those that had trusted in the Lord and had followed him, they experienced salvation in it. You should be thinking about all those same things as you're coming right here.

Verse number five, so when Jesus looked up and noticed a huge crowd coming toward him, he asked Philip, this was one of his apostles, one of the disciples, where will we buy bread so that these people can eat?

And then John butts in, just in case you're wondering like, ooh, Jesus didn't plan ahead. He asked this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Whenever God asks questions in scripture, it's for examination, not for information.

God asks questions for examination, not for information. This is when I know that my daughter took a toy from her brother and I ask her, hey, did you take that from Bubba? And she goes, no, I wasn't asking because I didn't know.

I was asking to examine so that she would recognize that what she had done was wrong. Here, Jesus wants Philip to have some faith and to have some belief, but he wants to figure out where does Philip think that the food is going to come from.

Philip answered him in verse 7, 200 denarii worth of bread wouldn't be enough for each of them to have a little. A denarii would be about a day's wage.

And so he says, we could work for 200 days straight and we would still not even have enough money to buy a little bit of bread for all of these people.

Verse number 8, one of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him, there's a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they among so many? Andrew is a really unique figure within the Gospels.

He's almost always bringing someone to Jesus that either like didn't know him or that needed to see Jesus. And just as a very quick aside, I want to be that kind of believer.

I want to be the person that is constantly bringing someone that I've met, that I've interacted with, that I have a relationship. I want to bring people to Jesus. And can I tell you, that's God's goal for your life too.

We are called to be those that are disciples of Christ, and we make disciples of other people. You don't have to give anyone an associate's degree in ministry in order to make them a disciple. You just bring them along in your faith walk.

That the things that you know, you share. The things that you don't know, but you know someone else knows, you pair them up with those people too. And together, we help people to be able to see and to know Jesus.

Here, there is a human inability to be able to meet the need. As we'll read further on, there's about 4,000 or 5,000 people that are there that are listening to Jesus. And they've got five barley loaves and two fish.

I don't know about you guys. I'm not that great at math, but 4,000 or 5,000 divided by seven is not going to be a great meal.

And here, Jesus' care for them wasn't just that they, you know, we can have an elective meal, even as we'd read through some of the other gospels, people journeyed for a couple of days to be able to hear this wonder worker, this miracle worker.

And so they were far away from home. It wasn't just, okay, I can take, you know, two hours, pop back home, grab some food and come on back. It was people that were very far away from any food source.

And so here, Jesus cares for an immediate, urgent need that is here for these individuals, something humanly impossible, but with God, nothing is impossible. In verse 10, Jesus said, have the people sit down.

There was plenty of grass in that place, so they sat down. The men numbered about 5,000. Now this could be kind of a generic, like the humans that were there, this could specifically just be the males that were 5,000.

And so then you would have an untold number more of women and children that were there. It's not specified in the text how many, but here at least 5,000 people.

Verse number 11, then Jesus took the loaves, and after giving thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated, so also with the fish, as much as they wanted. One of those two things here.

Number one, Jesus took the loaves, and after giving thanks, what he was given was inadequate for the need, but he thanked God for it. For you and I today, when it doesn't look like we've got enough in the bank, do we thank God for what we have?

When our relationship with our spouse or with our kids or with our friend isn't going so well, are we thankful to God that we still have any sort of relationship with them, that they're still around?

Are you thankful for even the miniscule and small things in your life? But then I love this, that he distributed to everyone that was there, both with the bread and with the fish, as much as they wanted.

That in our God, we find not just everything we need and not all the time, this wasn't an everyday occurrence in Jesus' ministry, but we can often find that God gives us what we want.

I think about my own relationship with Samantha and with my kids, and I'm thankful that God didn't just give me like a spouse or family that I needed, He gave me the family that I wanted.

I think about our church, that God could have been like, hey, Bryon, I want you to go to like, you know, middle of Nebraska, to a place with like 20 people, and God could have done that, like, he's the one in charge.

But he gave me y'all, and he gave me our area, and a place where I'm able to be near some of my family members, and that I can visit them.

God is immensely good to us, and so often when we are in dire need, and when we're hurting inside, we forget all the good things that God has done for us. Can I encourage you? Let's give thanks for what God has given us.

Now, he's not always gonna give you everything that you want. You know, I'm rather partial to, I don't know, honestly, a minivan would be kind of cool.

I don't need it, but, you know, there's been times that I'm, huh, it could be fun to have a minivan. We had one friend in Washington state that they had a really nice minivan. And I was like, ooh, I could get used to this.

But God doesn't always give you everything that you want, and that's okay, because we don't have God's heart. And so we don't always want the things that are best for us. But sometimes, as much as we want, God does give to us.

So let's be thankful for that. Verse number 12, when they were full, He told His disciples, collect the leftovers so that nothing is wasted. When I read through this verse, it just shocked me.

I went, Jesus cared about like the unlimited, you know, it's all of garden breadsticks that He's handing out to people, and He cared about the waste.

And then I remembered like the verse in Proverbs that tells us a brother that is lazy is one that is just like one who wastes or destroys his stuff.

That it is a lack of care for what God has provided when we don't take good care of the stuff that God has given us.

And here Jesus, even though He made the unlimited bread and fish that He handed out, He actually cared about making sure that everything that God had given was used for the purpose.

That it wasn't just a gigantic, you know, landfill worth of food just strewn all over the place. And He instructs the disciples to pick it up.

Verse 13, So they collected them and filled 12 baskets with the pieces from the five barley loaves that were left over by those who had eaten. Here are many people through the years have noticed. Okay, 12 baskets.

There's 12 disciples. So maybe, you know, each basket or each disciple gets a giant basket of food when they go through.

Maybe it's, you know, the 12 tribes of Israel and just as Moses with the Passover meal and then with the manna that came down from heaven that we'll read about in two weeks, that actually three weeks that Jesus ties directly to this miracle.

It could be that it's a picture of Jesus is the new and better Moses, that Jesus himself brings out this bread and fish, that Moses just prayed to the Lord and the Lord had the manna appear.

But Jesus himself does something new and better and provides for God's people in miraculous ways. All of that is somewhat speculative as we look at the passage. None of it's explicitly told to us.

But there's 12 baskets with the pieces from the bread that were left over by those who were eating. What's the response of the people to this? Well, we'll see another response in a couple of weeks.

But they say this in verse 14, when the people saw the sign he had done, they said, this truly is the prophet who is to come into the world.

This is referencing back to Moses during the time of Israel's wandering in the wilderness, where he said, there is going to come a prophet like me, and everyone, all of the people will have to listen to him, or God will cut them off from the people.

So here, they're kind of getting what Jesus is laying down a little bit. I also, especially because I know what the end of chapter 6 has for us, they don't say that he's the prophet, the message giver from God, when they hear what he's teaching.

They say he's the prophet when they see the sign that he does. Now you might go, okay, well, you know, what does it matter? As long as they say that he's the prophet.

I promise you, we will see in the upcoming weeks that it really does matter the motives that we come after God with, which then we can see in our last verse for today, verse 15.

Therefore, when Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself. Jesus' goal was not just to become the king. It wasn't just to rule on David's throne.

Here, these people were going to do it. You know, if you guys were like, okay, let's make Jesus king, you know, we'll make him a write-in on 2028's presidential ticket, and we'll make Jesus the king, the president of America.

Here, these individuals, they wanted to make Jesus king. And when Jesus knew it, he got out of there. He was not going to become the king, not that way, not by force, and not the way that they wanted him to.

They had an expectation, this king, he's going to overthrow Rome, as we'll see in upcoming weeks. They're like, listen, you can make unlimited food. None of us will ever starve.

None of us will ever have any worries about where our next meal is coming from, because you can accomplish all of this. And Jesus says, that's not the reason I came. Question for us today, do you love him or his gifts?

We've got a choice to love the Savior, the source of all good things, and not just the things that he provides. It's just two things that I want us to look at today.

First, from the side of the people and how they loved what Jesus gave, but didn't love Jesus himself. They wanted him to do stuff, but they didn't want him. And again, if you're like, I don't know about all that, pastor.

I promise you, wait two weeks, and then you will be like, oh, okay, yes, I see where the Bible explicitly tells us that.

Trust me for now, or just read ahead, even as I'm going through these, you can read ahead, and you can see Jesus say these same things. First today, don't simply love the gifts that Jesus provides. Don't simply love the gifts that Jesus provides.

Jesus sometimes provides miracles in unique moments. He does here with the bread and fish, just unabashedly, unashamedly, He does something that no one else thought was possible. It was not going to happen unless Jesus himself did it.

And we do serve the miracle working, the wonder working God. If you've seen that in your life, can you say amen? Jesus is the wonder working God, and He works miracles.

But part of the thing of it being a miracle is that it's not every day. It's not commonplace. If we could have it on demand, it wouldn't be a miracle.

And the truth is this, God often, most often, works through the regular means of you and I.

We want him to randomly, you know, we win the lottery and we've got two bajillion dollars and we're able to give, you know, 300,000 to the Annie Armstrong Offering. We're like, yeah, great. Awesome.

We want that kind of miracle. We want a miraculous change in our relationships that without us having to do like any of the inner work of, okay, maybe I'm a jerk, maybe I talk too much, maybe I this or that.

I got to start, you know, shape and change in who I am in line with the word of God so that I am not, I'm not annoying to people, that I am not a stumbling block in my relationship with others.

Instead of doing that, we just want God to like make a miracle that everyone automatically finds all of our quirks and all of our faults as endearing. That's not how he works.

And the problem is so often, we want miracles from God and we want them on our timetable, and he has not promised them to us. And the question is, when you then come face to face with a lack of a miracle, are you still going to love the Lord?

Will you love God in the mundane, in the simple, in the unexpected, and in the heartbreak? Secondly, Jesus sometimes provides physically in unanticipated ways.

Frankly, I've come before you guys sometimes and been like, hey, I had like this extra cost thing that I went, oh no, what's going to happen? And then God was like, hey, here's this opportunity that you can pay that off right away.

And I'm like, okay, thank you, Lord, that's so great. But I should also not take that as a license to just go, okay, I can do whatever I want to do and God will cover for me.

I'll waste all of my money and I just know that God's going to take care of my needs. It's not how it works. God sometimes does provide physically in unanticipated ways.

And we can rejoice with the promise of Philippians 4 19 that my God will supply all of your need according to his riches and glory by Christ Jesus. And we can be thankful for that promise.

While also recognizing God doesn't say you are forever going to have a four bed, five bath house with two acres on it. Like that's just your lot in life or you're always going to have a minivan or whatever.

God might give you some things and he might take some things. Are you going to choose to love him regardless of what you have or what you don't have in your life?

Will you love God if your loved one passes from the sickness that you're praying for a miracle for? Will you love God if you never fully recover from your sickness? Will you love God if your marriage still falls apart?

Will you love God even if you lose your home? It's when it gets down to those moments of severity that we have to do the hard work to go, do I love a God that gives me stuff or do I love my God? That's not, it's easy to say that.

That is a hard existence to live.

For every one of us that have prayed for a loved one, for me, my grandma and my grandpa that I love dearly, that both passed and I haven't gotten to see them, talk with them, be on the phone with them for 10 years or longer now.

When I've had family members that I've been praying would come to know the Lord and they just haven't wanted any sort of relationship and I haven't heard from them in a while. In those moments, I've got to choose, do I love Jesus or do I love stuff?

Do I want a genie in a bottle or do I want the God expressed to me in scripture? And lastly, for not simply loving the gifts that Jesus provides as reflected in the children of Israel, is they're like, hey, we're going to make them king by force.

Jesus sometimes provides earthly freedom for his followers. Here the Israelite people, they were under Roman oppression. Rome was not known for their like just and equitable tax laws.

But even worse than that, this is why the tax collectors were so hated in scripture. It was more than just whatever bitterness you have towards the IRS personally.

It was actually the tax collectors were Jewish people, Israelite people that had turned their back on their nation.

And they collected Rome's taxes from the Jewish people and whatever they wanted to add on to Rome's tax, they could and you couldn't do anything about it.

You couldn't then go to like a Roman magistrate and be like, hey, they're charging, you know, an extra 75% tax. They'd just be like, well, tough.

And during that time period, it was brutal for the people all across the Roman Empire, but especially there in Judea and in Galilee and Samaria.

And it was these people, these people under the thumb of an oppressive foreign government that they said, we want to make this Jesus king. But Jesus didn't come to just give you a political kingdom.

Like he told Pilate, my kingdom is not from this world. Otherwise, I would tell my disciples to fight. For you and I, do we follow Jesus because it's semi-popular or acceptable in America, or because Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life?

If it became illegal tomorrow to do Christian things, like sharing your faith, giving to the church, reading your Bible, would you have anything to worry about?

Will you choose this week to act like a Christian in the free society that God has given you? Share an invite with someone else. Read the Bible with your spouse, or with your kids, or read a debt your lunch break at work.

You can serve in the church this weekend. We've got some opportunities for people to make food and to provide for others. Through praying for someone else and taking a moment with them to pray for them.

Jesus, up to this point in American history, He has given us incredibly earthly freedom here in our nation. We don't have to worry about some of the things that fellow believers in China or in Russia have to deal with.

But are we making any use of it? Don't simply love the gifts that Jesus provides. Today, love Jesus and His character that He provides to you.

Instead of being the people that see the abundance of bread and want to make Jesus king, let's be those that hear who Jesus is, the Son of God, the Savior of the world, the one who died in our place, taking our punishment on himself, the one who rose

again. Let's love him, not simply the good things that he can provide for us. I see from the passage Jesus' love. And for you and I today, he always provides you with his love to give to others.

Jesus saw these people, the 5,000 plus, and he cared about them enough to want to give them a meal. Jesus might not call you to feed 5,000 people, though I think some of you might take that as a personal challenge and you might attempt to do it.

But you only get five bread, five loaves of bread and two fish to do it with. That's all you get. But Jesus had a love for these people and he cared for them.

Can I ask you this? Do you love your area of service in your church, in your family, or your volunteering? Or do you love Jesus and people?

If you lost your hands and couldn't cook, if you lost your voice and couldn't sing, if, I'll give a throwback to Jimmy, if you lost your eyesight and couldn't switch slides, would people in your life still feel loved by you?

If the area was gone, would they still experience your love for them? Are you loving people with a tool that God has given, or do you simply love the tool itself?

As a pastor, I'll tell you guys, one of the things that God consistently has to remind me of is, okay, do you love like being a pastor? Do you love preaching or do you love people?

And for me, I constantly have to go, okay, I have to voluntarily choose to love the people of God, because our hearts are constantly prone to loving stuff, to loving status, and that's not what God calls us to love.

He calls us to lay down our lives in service and love and care for one another. So let's pursue that as the people of God. So God provides us with his love to give to others.

Secondly, God always provides you with faith to believe in his working. Here as he asks Philip, hey, what are we gonna do to feed these people? And Philip goes, listen, we work for 200 days and we don't got enough to feed him a mouthful.

Jesus is offering an opportunity for him to have faith in the working of God. Do you love the idea of God's working miracles or do you love Jesus and want to follow him in faith?

We can love the idea of Jesus working miracles, but do we love the idea of Jesus helping us to be a part of a miracle in someone else's life?

That through the words that we say to someone, someone that is discouraged and depressed or anxious or on the verge of suicide, that God can use your kind words towards another person to be a miracle in their life.

For some people that the world encourages all of their choices, despite how detrimental it might be to their soul or to their body, will you be the one that is part of a miracle in helping someone else?

Frankly, I think of the Annie Offering that we are able to be a part of little miracles happening all across North America in people being able to know Jesus, as we saw a washing laundromat in Flint, Michigan, that we're able to be a part of helping

out a local congregation and how they're outreaching their community through what we're doing. Are you following in faith to be a part of the miracle that God wants to work? Next, Jesus always provides you with gratitude for what he's doing.

He gives thanks for the bread and gives it out to people. First, Thessalonians 5 would tell us rejoice always, pray constantly, give thanks in everything, for this is God's will for you in Christ Jesus.

When was the last time you thanked God for your job, for your kids, for your health insurance, for the opportunity to be able to get away for a weekend? When was the last time that you thanked a loved one for being a part of your life?

When was the last time that you thanked your spouse for their love? When was the last time that you thanked someone that served you at Church Potluck for some of our parents? When was the last time that we thanked some of our nursery workers?

God is always working and we ought to have gratitude, even as Jesus himself did while he was on this earth. Next, Jesus always provides you with the self-control to wisely steward what he's given you.

That was the gathering up of the baskets, not wasting any of it. Are you taking care of your health, pacing yourself in tandem with the life stage that God has given you?

Or are you still working like you're in your 20s, when some of you are maybe no longer in your 20s?

Conversely, those of us in our 20s and 30s, are we sitting back and wasting the most productive years of our lives, spending half our free time on movies and social media?

Whatever God has given you, whatever strength he's given you, whatever relationships he's given you, he wants you to use those for him. And then lastly today, Jesus always provides you with the opportunity to follow him for the right motives.

We're gonna see up coming through the end of chapter six, the people wanted Jesus to just keep giving them unlimited food. They did not want him as their Lord and their Savior.

And when the choice came between, okay, I'm not gonna give you food, I'm not gonna give you more endless food, but I am offering you salvation and eternal life.

They walked away because they were interested, not in Jesus, but in the stuff that Jesus gave. And Jesus knew this. The Apostle Paul would tell us in 2 Corinthians 5, the love of Christ compels us.

Since we have reached this conclusion, if one died for all, then all died, and he died for all so that those who live should no longer live for themselves, but for the one who died for them and rose again. Today, it's a tough message.

It's one that goes to our heart, because we enjoy and we are glad for it, and we are thankful for what God has given us.

As I look across the room today, I don't think any of you are like, oh, I just hate the clothes that I'm wearing right now so much, and I hate the car that I drove in, and I hate the air-conditioned building, and I hate the sunshine outside.

No, we're thankful for all of these things, but all the stuff isn't Jesus. And God's not saying, like, get rid of all the stuff.

But as we hold with an open hand what the Lord has given us, may we also recognize and adore the hands that gave them to us. Today, do you love him or do you love his gifts?