Soul Provider

Sermon Transcript

We are in the Gospel according to Luke today, but I wonder if you know the story of the second book of the Bible, the book called Exodus. Exodus begins with an Egyptian Pharaoh ruling over God’s people in the land of Egypt, and he enslaved them. The job he forced them to do was to make bricks for his buildings. One day when he got mad, though, he told them he wanted them to increase their production of bricks, but to do so without straw, which was an essential element of brick-making at the time. Pharaoh was a harsh master. I wonder if you’ve ever worked for a harsh master. Maybe your parents expected you to read their mind, and got mad at you when you didn’t. Maybe you’ve worked for companies that gave you work to do but wouldn’t spend the money to get you the supplies you needed to do the job, or give you the training necessary for you to know how to do the job.

 

Well as I said, we’re in Luke today, and in Luke we’re getting to know a different master from Pharaoh: Jesus. The Bible calls his subjects disciples, and twelve of those disciples he set apart as apostles, who feature prominently in the passage on which we are focusing today. So what kind of master is Jesus? What kind of Lord is he? Many of you here today are disciples of Jesus; how do you relate to him? Some of you here today are not; what kind of master do you imagine him being? Is he a harsh master? In this text today, we’re going to see that the answer to that question is no. Rather, Jesus is a generous master, who richly provides for his people. Jesus richly provides for people through his people. He’s provided for the gospel to get to us, and he provides above and beyond our deepest needs.

 

He’s provided for the gospel to get to us

 

Our passage today begins with Jesus calling the twelve together. We read of these twelve being set apart in chapter 6, but it’s not until here in chapter 9 that Jesus sends them out. So we read in verse 1 that Jesus gave them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, and he sent them out to proclaim the kingdom of God and to heal. Throughout Luke so far, we’ve seen Jesus casting out demons, we’ve seen Jesus curing diseases, and we’ve seen Jesus proclaiming the kingdom of God. We’ve seen him go from village to village, and from city to city, to proclaim the gospel. But how would the gospel get to all the towns and cities of Israel? How would it get beyond Israel to places like Europe, Africa, and the rest of Asia? How would it get to us, especially given that Jesus knew God’s plan for him was not to live forever on earth and personally go to every town in Israel or every nation on the earth? God’s plan for him was that he suffer, die, rise again, and enter his glory. 

 

Well, Jesus still could have personally spoken from heaven to proclaim the gospel to every nation of the earth, but what this text is showing us is that he’s chosen instead to spread the gospel to more people through his people, and especially at the beginning here, through his apostles. Ephesians 2:20 tells us that the church is built on the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Christ Jesus himself being the cornerstone. So Jesus endowed them with a unique power and authority to cast out demons and cure diseases. Just as Jesus performed miracles that revealed what the kingdom he was proclaiming was like, so he knows that in sending out these apostles, he is not sending out celebrities who already have credibility with those to whom they will be proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and therefore he also gives them the power and authority to cast out demons and heal diseases. He provided for them what they needed to accomplish the mission on which he was sending them: He told them what kingdom to proclaim, and he gave them the power and authority to perform signs that displayed that kingdom.

 

He also sent them out in such a way that they would remain dependent on his provision. He tells them to take nothing for their journey–no staff, no bag, no bread, no money, and no second tunic. They could take the clothes on their back, and that’s it. Nor was Jesus going to feed them with bread from heaven; instead, someone was going to have to welcome them into their home. In other words, someone was going to have to embrace their message if even their basic needs were going to be met. And it wasn’t their job to figure out how to market the message well to ensure that happened; Jesus sent them out to proclaim a particular message, the same message he’d proclaimed. But Jesus says that message will have its intended effect; there will be houses for them to enter, because some will believe the gospel they proclaim. And if in any town none receive you, Jesus says in verse 5 that when you leave that town you should shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them. Shaking the dust off the feet was a way of saying, “If there’s not a single house in this town that will accept the gospel of the kingdom, then even the dust here is destined to perish.”

 

Now it’s important to realize that we are not apostles today. Apostles were a foundational office for the church, not an ongoing office in it. Apostles were eyewitnesses of the resurrection of Christ and appointed personally by Christ. No one today meets those qualifications. So if someone claims to be an apostle today, it’s an almost certain indicator that the person is a false teacher and you should stop listening to them. And because we are not apostles today, Jesus has not given us power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, nor has he forbidden us from packing a second shirt or carrying cash when we travel.

 

We are not apostles, but we are part of Jesus’ church to which he gave the commission to proclaim this same gospel, a gospel that has gotten to us because Jesus provided these apostles with the power and authority to cast out demons and heal disease, he sent them out to proclaim the gospel and heal, and they did just that. Can you even begin to fathom how many ideas have been developed and promoted over the past 2000 years on earth since the time of Christ? 99% of them we don’t even know about, because they never spread. They’re lost to history. But here we are today, 2000 years after Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth, and on the other side of the globe, we are gathered to proclaim this same message, because Jesus did provide his apostles, and when they went out, they did heal disease and cast out demons, and when they went into towns, the word of Christ was powerful to lead some to faith, who welcomed them into their homes. Eventually those apostles took the things they learned and entrusted them to faithful men, who they then sent out to teach others as well (2 Tim 2:2). They also committed the message to writing in our Bibles, so that we could have certainty that the message we’re proclaiming and believing is the message Jesus gave his apostles to proclaim. Recall that Luke even told us at the beginning of this book that that’s why he was writing it: That we might have certainty about Jesus (Luke 1:1-4).

 

A few principles we can take from this then as members of Jesus’ church: First, notice the symbiotic relationship between the proclamation of the gospel and good works. No we don’t have the power to miraculously cure disease at will, but we do have the Spirit of Jesus in us empowering us to love diseased people, and it is still the case today that one of the main ways we display what the kingdom of God is like is by how we treat the sick, the poor, the hurting, the weak. The gospel is good news for such people, the kingdom of God belongs to such people, because the gospel teaches us that in reality before God, we all are such people! Before God in reality we are infected with the disease of sin, suffering under its tyranny, and were destined to perish under God’s wrath, but God has given us his Son, Jesus Christ, to bear our griefs and carry our sorrows, to be pierced for our iniquities, so that we could be forgiven, healed, and made citizens of his kingdom. What a contradiction it would be, then, if Jesus’ people kept their distance from the physically sick, poor, hurting, and weak. Let us adorn the gospel by drawing near to such people. A pastor friend of mine became a Christian in part because he went on a church’s men’s retreat before he was a believer, and saw the way the men of that church loved a man who most in the world would consider hard to love. Their love for that man displayed what the kingdom they proclaimed in the gospel was like.

 

And let us proclaim that gospel. See that summary in verse 6 tells us that Jesus’ apostles did in fact depart and go through all the villages, preaching the gospel and healing everywhere. Everybody likes the healers; what house would have rejected them if all they’d have done was come to town healing peoples’ diseases? Just as it’s dangerous to preach the gospel apart from good works, so it is dangerous to do the good works for which we know the world will applaud us while hiding the gospel for which we know the world might reject us. But Jesus tells us here not to be afraid of that; he says if they don’t receive you, just shake the dust off your feet, and move on to the next town. You know part of the reason we sometimes struggle to see fruit in evangelism is that we just do so little of it. We were talking about this in my Citygroup recently: If you share the gospel with one person every couple years, and that one person doesn’t come to faith, then don’t act like the word of Christ is failing. You should still love such a person, but you don’t need to make it your mission to keep beating the gospel into that one particular person’s head. Move on to someone else, and trust that over time, as we work together with our brothers and sisters in this church, and with our brothers and sisters in the other churches in the city, some will believe. As the founder of Cru, Bill Bright, has put it, “The goal of evangelism is to share the gospel in the power of the Spirit, and to leave the results to God.”

 

Another aspect of that we see here is the willingness we ought to have to part with lesser goods for the greater good of Jesus’ mission. Though Jesus hasn’t given us exactly the same command to go out with no staff, bag, bread, or money, Jesus calls every one of his disciples to the same willing spirit in whatever his mission does require of us. In Luke 14 he tells us that anyone who does not renounce all that he has cannot be his disciple (Luke 14:33). In Luke 18 he speaks of those who have left house or wife or brothers or parents or children for the sake of the kingdom of God (Luke 18:29). Some of you I know are living in smaller houses in neighborhoods the world deems less desirable, living farther from family, keeping less money, spending less money, and even making less money than you could elsewhere because you want to see the proclamation of the gospel spread further in the city of Philadelphia. How might you give up some of your money, comfort, or time for the advance of the gospel this week? That’s a question worth discussing over lunch.

 

I think of our brother Harshit Singh, who could easily get a calling as a pastor in numerous places throughout the world that are much easier contexts with much less opposition and more comfortable living conditions than where he lives, but he chooses to stay where he is in South Asia for the sake of the proclamation of the gospel advancing in a region with less access to it. Perhaps the Lord would call some of you in this room today to leave Philadelphia to go to a part of the world in which it’s harder to live, so that you might proclaim the gospel to people who have never heard it. We’d be eager to send you if so; we’ve even set aside money to do that. That’s another principle we see in this passage in those who welcomed the apostles into their homes: Those who believe the gospel support those who go out to proclaim that gospel. That’s why we give so much of our budget to missions, and why we want to join the Association of Churches for Missions and Evangelism (ACME)–so we can funnel more of our resources toward gospel proclamation.

 

And finally, though I’ve already alluded to this some, we see here that the mission Jesus has sent us on is intentionally set up in such a way that if he doesn’t provide, it isn’t going to work. If he hadn’t given them power and authority over all demons and to cure diseases, they wouldn’t have had it. If his word wasn’t mighty to save some, no one would have welcomed them into their homes. It wasn’t their job to make it all work. So we want to do ministry as a church in such a way that if Jesus doesn’t actually work through his word in peoples’ lives, the church won’t survive. Over the past few decades an idea has crept into the mind of many Christians in America that we should develop growth systems in churches that ensure its growth, whether God is actually the one growing it or not. It operates on the laws of human psychology, the same laws that a business uses to grow itself: Market research, product design, marketing, and so forth. That’s a fine way to run a business, you can run a business like that to the glory of God, but do you see here that’s not how Jesus intends to run his church? He didn’t send the apostles out to do market research. He sent them out to proclaim the gospel and to heal, with all the pressure being put on Jesus to come through for them if it was going to work. Let’s adopt that posture in our ministry: We do what Jesus tells us to do, and leave it to him to provide. We proclaim the gospel, we do good works, we pray, and Jesus does the growing at the time, place, and rate he chooses.

 

For 2000 years now, Jesus has done that. Over those 2000 years particular churches have come and gone, but the gates of hell have not prevailed against Jesus’ church. His mission will succeed, and we see in verse 7 that already word of him was spreading to the highest levels of society. Herod the Tetrarch was the ruler of the territory of Israel by appointment of the Roman Empire, and we read here that even he was beginning to hear of these things, but he was perplexed about Jesus. Verse 9 tells us he then sought to see Jesus, but think about how much more richly Jesus has provided for us. We can not only hear rumblings about Jesus like Herod did; we can read the proclamation of his apostles, explaining very clearly to us who Jesus is, in the Bible! We can read the next story after this, which we’ll discuss in just a moment, in which 5000 people in a desolate place do see Jesus and he reveals something of who he is to them. We can read the next story after that, in which Peter confesses Jesus to be the Christ, and Jesus affirms his response. We can read a bit after that the voice from heaven saying, “This is my Son, my chosen one; listen to him!” And not only has Jesus provided us with the rich revelation of himself in his word, but he’s sent his Holy Spirit, to open our minds to understand who the scriptures reveal him to be. When Herod finally did see Jesus, it was at the end of Jesus’ life, when he was on trial to be crucified. At that time Herod wanted to see some sign from him, but Jesus gave him none. Herod asked Jesus a series of questions, but Jesus didn’t answer them. Herod died still perplexed about Jesus, but Jesus has richly provided us with the revelation of who he really is!

 

If you are here today and you still find yourself perplexed about Jesus, the Bible is the book you need to read. It’s where Jesus’ apostles wrote down the proclamation Jesus gave them, and it is here to reveal to us who Jesus is. Read the Gospel of Luke in particular, join us as we preach through it, and ask God to send his Holy Spirit upon you, to open your mind to understand it. Through the apostles, Jesus has richly provided for the gospel to get to us, that we might have certainty concerning Jesus. And next we’ll see that he provides above and beyond our deepest needs.

 

He provides above and beyond our deepest needs

 

So after the apostles get back verse 10 tells us that Jesus took them and withdrew apart to a town called Bethsaida, which is more remote, but still near the sea of Galilee where Jesus had been doing most of his ministry. His apostles had been working hard, and so he wanted to get away with them for some rest. But when the crowds found out, verse 11 tells us they followed him. They weren’t letting him retreat, and amazingly, Jesus welcomed them and spoke to them about the kingdom of God and cured those who had need of healing. Jesus was not a workaholic; he knew when it was time to get away and rest. But Jesus also wasn’t a restaholic; he was willing to be interrupted, and was ready on all occasions to be instrumental for the good of others, whether by preaching or by good works. This is one way the Lord reveals the thoughts and intentions of our hearts: How do we respond when interrupted? I’ve noticed I can say I’m busy doing good works the Lord wants me to do, but when it turns out the Lord had different good works prepared for me that day than the ones I’d chosen, my resistance shows I was more so working for myself than for him. 

 

Well Jesus shows us that it was his heart’s desire to do his Father’s will, and he sensed that when the crowd followed him, his Father wanted him to postpone the retreat for ministry in word and deed. So he did, but we read in verse 12 that the day began to wear away. Try to feel the vibe Luke’s giving us here: He didn’t just tell us the time. He said the day began to wear away. They were supposed to be going on a retreat, they got interrupted, and now Jesus is preaching and healing for so long that the day itself is beginning to wear away. The vibe is one of fatigue. So what do the twelve do? The twelve come and basically say, “Hey can we be done?” “Send the crowd away to go into the surrounding villages and countryside to find lodging and get provisions, for we are here in a desolate place.” That seems reasonable enough, and isn’t it often how we feel? Lord, I want this person to be helped, but can you use someone besides me to help them? Jesus replies: “You give them something to eat.” 

 

But the twelve have another understandable objection: They only have five loaves and two fish, and Luke tells us there were 5000 men gathered there, which means there may have been even more women and children as well. In response, Jesus doesn’t explain how he’s God so he’s able to multiply those five loaves and two fish. He simply gives them a command: Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each, and we read that the disciples did so. Notice again the relationship between Jesus and his disciples. The disciples don’t figure out how to get 5000 men fed with five loaves and two fish. The disciples just do what they’re told. Get them in groups of 50 Jesus says, the disciples have no idea how that’s going to help anything, but the disciples do it. This is our role in Jesus’ mission, brothers and sisters: We do what Jesus tells us. Sometimes that feels constraining to people; where’s the creativity in that, after all? But it’s actually freeing to admit there are things we simply cannot do, but Jesus can. That’s what frees us to simply do what he tells us to do.

 

Verse 15 tells us that Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish, looked up to heaven, and said a blessing over them. This blessing would be like a prayer of thanksgiving to God. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the crowd. And they all ate and were satisfied, so much so that there were twelve baskets of broken pieces left over. The text doesn’t narrate for us how this happened; the impression is that as the disciples came to get bread from Jesus to give to the crowds, there was always more of it. There is a story somewhat similar to this in 2 Kings 4:42-44, in which the prophet Elisha fed a group of 100 men using only twenty loaves of bread. He did so because the Lord revealed to him that they would eat, and have some left over. But Jesus is greater than Elijah, not only because he fed more men with less bread, but because he didn’t have to wait for a word from the Lord promising that the people would eat and have some left over. He is the Lord, and so he makes it happen himself. Jesus richly provided for this crowd of people through his people, his apostles, who distributed the bread he provided to them.

 

And this wasn’t the last time he would do so. There are two other places in Luke’s Gospel where we read that Jesus took bread, blessed it, broke it, and gave it to his disciples. One is at the last supper, when Jesus took the bread and said, “This is my body, which is given for you. Do this in remembrance of me” (Luke 22:19). And the next is after he rose from the dead and ate with his disciples (Luke 22:30). So how does Jesus ultimately provide above and beyond our deepest needs? He provided for this crowd’s, and for our deepest needs, not by giving us bread, but by giving his body for us on the cross. The crowd that ate this bread would be hungry again, and without food, they would die, because we all are in bodies that are now under the curse of death. That’s the bigger need that Jesus came to address. Because of our sin, we were under the sentence of God’s judgment, but when Jesus gave himself for us on the cross as the perfect, unblemished sacrifice in our place, he satisfied the demand of God’s justice against our sin. And then he rose from the dead, to eternal life, in a new body that could never die again. If you repent and receive him, he meets all your deepest needs. In him your sins are forgiven, you are reconciled to God, and you are promised eternal life. 

 

Did you catch in verse 17 how they all ate and were satisfied? That’s pointing us to the satisfaction that can only be found in Christ. What else can truly satisfy you? The next hobby, the next relationship, the next vacation? It always has to be the next one, because the last one didn’t satisfy! It can’t. As the ancient theologian Augustine said, God has made us for himself, and our hearts are restless until they rest in him. There is real satisfaction in him, and yet even our full satisfaction will not come until we too eat with the resurrected Christ in his eternal kingdom. Though now we walk by faith, then we will walk by sight. Though now our love is divided between Jesus and various things in this world, then our love will be purified, and channeled entirely to the only one who can truly satisfy. He doesn’t just give us the forgiveness we need; he gives us himself, the one in whose presence there is fullness of joy, and at whose right hand are pleasures forevermore (Psalm 16:11).

 

We’ll never exhaust the depths of his glory, saints. Scripture speaks of the unsearchable riches of Christ (Eph 3:8). That means you can’t ever search enough as to have found all the riches of Christ. We’ll spend eternity seeing and savoring more of these riches. Scripture even tells us that the reason God saved us was “so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus” (Eph 2:7). God’s plan for the coming ages is to keep feeding us, to keep satisfying us, to keep showing us the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. It’s an eternal feast we’re looking forward to, and the main course is immeasurable. There will always be more left. It’s the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. 

 

I wonder, is this what you feast on now? How ready are your tastebuds for the eternal feast of heaven? Are you acquiring a taste for it, or are you still filling up on the cares, riches, and pleasures of life, as Jesus called them in chapter 8? As Jesus said earlier in Luke, “Blessed are you who are hungry now, for you shall be satisfied” (Luke 6:21). Herod wasn’t hungry; Herod was chillin in the palace. But Herod missed Jesus. “Woe to you who are full now, for you shall be hungry” (Luke 6:25). Don’t fill yourself with junk now. Feast on Christ by faith now, and you’ll feast with him in glory.

 

Serve him now, and he will richly provide for you. Sometimes we limit our service of Christ because we fear that we’re going to burn ourselves out, and while the Bible doesn’t use the phrase “burn out,” it does warn us of a similar phenomenon. Psalm 127:1 says, “It is in vain that you rise up early and go late to rest, eating the bread of anxious toil; for he gives to his beloved sleep.” If the apostles had taken it upon themselves to feed the 5000 in order to impress Jesus with all the good they did, they would have burned out. They’d have been running around trying to scrounge up bread, find whatever wheat they could, harvest it themselves, thresh it themselves, bake it themselves. They’d have been rising up early and going late to rest, and it is possible for believers in Christ to fall into that. We can get more concerned about being able to look at ourselves in the mirror and convince ourselves that we’re doing a lot for Jesus than we are to actually do the good works God has prepared in advance for us to do (Eph 2:10). You can’t do everything; you are not the Christ. As Pastor Zach Eswine has said, you don’t have to repent for failing to be omnipotent; you have to repent for trying to be.

 

So what’s the alternative? The alternative is not laziness, or what the Bible calls idleness. While we’re talking about eating, 2 Thessalonians 3:10 says, “If anyone is not willing to work, let him not eat.” The alternative to the anxious striving of the flesh is not idleness. The alternative to the anxious striving of the flesh is the joyful striving of the Spirit. The twelve apostles went out at the beginning of the chapter with no staff, no bag, no bread, and no money. The disciples were hoping to retreat, the day began to wear away, and yet, when Jesus tells them to have the crowds sit down in groups of 50 and serve them food, they do it. They then spent the rest of the time feeding everyone else; we never read of them eating. But then in verse 17 when our story ends, how many baskets of broken pieces were left? 12. Twelve baskets of bread left; exactly the number of the apostles. If you are working hard for Jesus by faith in his finished work for you, you don’t have to worry about him failing to provide for you.

 

Jesus richly provides for people through his people. He has richly provided himself as a sacrifice for us on the cross. He has richly provided eternal life through his resurrection from the dead. He has richly provided for the proclamation of this message to make it to us today through his apostles, through the scriptures they wrote, and through the countless believers in Christ who have come since them, taken what they’ve heard, and entrusted it to faithful men who could teach others also. And he will richly provide for us in the coming ages as he shows us more and more of his unsearchable riches. So feast on him by faith, seek first the advance of his gospel, and trust him to richly provide for you, and through you.