King of Abundance
Notes
Transcript
Warren Brosi
March 10, 2024
Dominant Thought: The Giver not the gifts satisfies our deepest needs.
Objectives:
I want my listeners to learn the three kinds of longings: crucial, critical, and casual.
I want my listeners to experience trust in Jesus to satisfy our crucial longings.
I want my listeners to prioritize our critical longing for Jesus.
Dr. Larry Crabb identifies three kinds of longings humans have in his book, Inside Out—Real Change is Possible If your’re willing to start from the Inside Out. Those three longings he calls, “crucial, critical, and casual.” He describes crucial longings as:
We were designed to live in relationship with Someone unfailingly strong and lovingly involved who enables us to fulfill the important jobs He assigns. Without relationship or impact, life is profoundly empty. Nothing can fill that hollow core except what we were built to experience. Not imperfect friends, not impressive work, not excitement, not pleasure. Nothing can satisfy our crucial longings except the kind of relationship that God offers (1988: 81).
He goes on to say that if there are crucial longings, then there are non-crucial longings, too. He divides the non-crucial longings into two categories: critical and casual.
Critical longings are the relationship longings. People need to be loved and respected by family and friends. People need others in their lives who love them and know they will be there when they need them. Quality relationships add enjoyment to life.
“A third category, casual longings, includes every other desire we experience, ranging from trivial (“I hope this restaurant has my favorite salad dressing”) to significant (“I want to hear a good report from my doctor”) (Inside Out, p. 81).
As we think about these three longings, I want to lay them over our text for today of John 6. As we move through this story of Jesus feeding the multitude and teaching them, we’ll see how people respond to these three longings. For now, let’s remember the crucial, critical, and casual longings.
Read John 6.1-15.
John narrates the next part of the Jesus story with, “Some time after this” (John 6.1). Sometime after the Sabbath controversy in Jerusalem when Jesus healed the lame man at the pool of Bethesda. Jesus is now near the Sea of Galilee and a “great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs He had performed by healing the sick.” The people have some deep longings. The same longings we have today. They start following after Jesus.
Jesus goes up on a mountainside and sat down. Similar to Matthew 5 when Jesus sat down on a mountainside to teach the disciples. Jesus is taking the position of a teacher or Rabbi. John may want us to picture Jesus as Moses who also went up on the mountain. It’s the Jewish Passover, another Moses connection. The Passover was mentioned in John 2.13, as well. The Passover celebrated how God delivered the people from Egyptian slavery and Moses was their leader.
When Jesus saw the great crowd coming toward him, he tests Philip, on the the twelve disciples with a question. He asks, “Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?” (John 6.5). Philip does some quick math and says, “It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!” (John 6.7).
Jesus already knew what He planned to do. Yet Jesus was testing Philip to grow Philip’s faith. J.K. Jones shared with our class on preaching the Psalms the difference between temptations, trials, and tests. He shared:
Temptations are the result of a world ruled by the devil (Ephesians 6.12). Trials are the results of a world wrecked by sin (Romans 8.28). We live in a world of cancers, divorce, job loss, and shattered dreams. Tests are the results of a God who loves you so much, He sees it as the only way to mature you.
Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up and said, “Here’s a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will these go among so many?” (John 6.9). Andrew is always bringing people to Jesus in the gospel of John. He brought his brother, Simon Peter, to Jesus in John 1.41, “The first thing Andrew did was to find his brother Simon and tell him, ‘We have found the Messiah…And he brought him to Jesus” (John 1.41-42). Later in John 12, some Greeks are going to come to Philip with a request, “Sir, we would like to see Jesus” (John 12.21). Philip sent to tell Andrew and they both go tell Jesus (John 12.22).
So even at the outset, we have some longings identified. A great crowd of people. They are getting hungry. Andrew realizes the best way to meet these longings is to go find Jesus. Andrew takes the boy and his little loaves of bread and his little fish to the Lord Jesus.
Jesus instructs the disciples to have the people sit down. John mentions, “There was plenty of grass in that place” (John 6.10). Could John be painting Jesus as that good shepherd? “He make me lie down in green pastures…He prepares a table” (Psalm 23).
John gives us the headcount of 5,000 men, not including women and children. It could be a crowd of 15,000 people. That’s well over ten times the population of New Berlin.
Jesus took the loaves and gave thanks and distributed to those who were seated…as much as they wanted. He did the same wit the fish.
When they had their fill, or had enough to eat, Jesus instructs the disciples to pick up the leftovers. “Let nothing be wasted” (John 6.12). The gathered 12 baskets with pieces of the barley loaves.
After the people saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say, “Surely this is a Prophet, who is to come into the world” (John 6.14). There’s a prophecy in Deuteronomy 18.18, where the Lord declares to Moses, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their fellow Israelites, and I will put my words in his mouth. He will tell them everything I command him.”
Moses was the prophet of God who led God’s people through the wilderness. It was during the days of Moses that God said, “I will rain down bread from heaven for you. The people are to go out each day and gather enough for that day. In this way I will test them and see if they follow my instructions” (Exodus 16.4).
With this miraculous meal Jesus provided for the crowds, they may have remembered how God provided for their ancestors in the wilderness. They liked what they saw and tasted. This man is a prophet from God and looks like He’ll make a great king to throw off these Romans much like Moses led their ancestor away from Egyptian slavery. So, the the people intended to make Jesus king by force, but Jesus withdrew again to a mountain by himself.
So, in looking at this story, we begin to see the 3 types of longings people have. Casual longings—we need some food for today. Critical longings—let’s make Jesus king by force. Crucial longings—I better take this boy and His lunch to Jesus. He’ll know what to do.
Jesus spends some time along on the mountain. The disciples get into a boat and cross the Sea of Galilee. Jesus takes an early morning stroll on the water. Then, the people eventually find Jesus on the other side of the lake around Capernaum. When they find Jesus and realize He didn’t take a boat, they ask him, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” (John 6.25).
In John 6.26 and following, Jesus teases out these key longings even more clearly. Jesus says, “Very truly I tell you, you are looking for me, not because you saw the signs I performed but because you at the loaves and had your fill” (John 6.26). In other words, he says, “Your looking for me not because you want me, but because you have a full belly.” Then he challenges them, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life...” (John 6.27). He’s telling them, you’re pursuing casual longings and think they will ultimate fulfill you, but it will spoil. However, there is a food that will endure to eternal life.
Larry Crabb again in his book, Inside Out, share that many people look at these three longings and pursue them in the wrong order. They feel that if their casual longings/desires are met, then they’ll have healthy relationships with people, and then they’ll find Jesus to meet their deepest needs. Crabb states it this way,
There seem to be two broad ideas about the path to joy. One holds that God fills the circles of desire from the outside in. First He makes us comfortable. We trust Him for health and wealth. Then, as that develops, our relationships improve…Then together, as a community of fulfilled and happy people, we praise God for His goodness. His blessings lead us more fully into His presence. This is a popular view, but one that, as I understand Scripture, reliably leads people away from maturity. (p. 85).
When people start chasing the signs instead of the Savior, then they move away from maturity and away from a healthy relationship with Jesus.
Crabb states, “The second idea presents the process quite differently, contending that the deepest fullness comes during difficult times of difficult struggles with denied comfort ans strained relationships. Knowledge of God develops form the inside out” (p. 85). One needs only to look the life of Job and realize our relationship with God is not dependent on our circumstances—the casual and critical longings. In other words, The Giver not the gifts satisfies our deepest needs.
Listen to how the Giver, Jesus Christ, confronts the crowds misaligned priorities.
Read John 6.28-40. Jesus states clearly that He’s the one who can meet their crucial longings when He says, “I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty” (John 6.35). He’s the one to meet our deepest needs for all eternity.
Still, there were disagreements among the people. In John 6.41, “The Jews began to grumble about Him [Jesus].” In John 6.43, Jesus says, “Stop grumbling among yourselves.” Jesus tells them again that He’s the living bread that comes down from heaven..Whoever eats this bread will live forever” (John 6.51). When Jesus said these words, “the Jews began to argue sharply among themselves” (John 6.52). The people are divided among their response to Jesus. The critical needs of healthy relationships are falling apart because they cannot acknowledge the truth of Jesus’ words.
Throughout the wilderness wanderings, the children of God were prone to grumbling and complaining. One commentary notes, “It is recorded that they grumbled about the water they had to drink (Exodus 15.24), at their lack of bread (Exodus 16.2) and water (Exodus 17.3), at their hardships in the desert (Numbers 11.1), at the difficulties occupying the promised land (Numbers 14.1-3), and even against the manna (Numbers 11.4-6) (George R. Beasley-Murray, John, p. 93).
As we look back over the story thus far, Jesus has fed thousands with a little boy’s lunch of little loaves and little fish. He’s walked on water. He’s invited them to enjoy the living bread from heaven that He offers to the world. He’s preach a powerful sermon in the synagogue in Capernaum, His hometown base of ministry. Listen to how the people respond. In John 6.60, many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching. Who can accept it?” They disciples begin grumbling. Then, we come to one of the saddest verses of the Bible, John 6.66, “From this time many of His disciples turned back and no longer followed Him.”
Instead of pursuing Jesus as the one who can meet their most crucial longings in life, they choose to run after the casual things of this world that will not endure. It was simply too difficult of a path for them.
Then, Jesus turns to the Twelve and asks, “You don’t want to leave, too, do you?” (John 6.67). My friends, how those Twelve respond to that question that day in Capernaum in the first century has cascading effect to this day. Simon Peter, the spokesman for the group, “Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life. We have come to believe and to know that you are the Holy One of God” (John 6.68-69). Simon answers for the Twelve, Jesus you are the one who will meet our needs. You are the one you will lead us to eternal life. While Simon spoke for the group that day, each one of them would have to make their chose for Jesus individually. John foreshadows one of them who would not choose well. John concludes this scene with the words of Jesus, “Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!” (John 6.70). Then John comments, “He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray him” (John 6.71).