Why Your Limitations Are Actually a Good Thing

Introduction

Welcome. It’s great to have you all here. Welcome, especially to the kids in church this morning. We have some activity stuff for the kids and sheets for the youth. As I set up here, I’m not doing anything with this, just to keep you wondering, in case I’m thirsty. It’s a strange time of year. I was struggling to keep track of the days, and I had to prepare to be here. Keeping track of that, it was just a matter of don’t stop. As long as I keep moving, I’ll get to Sunday. We look into this coming year, and it feels like as soon as Christmas is over, we’ve hit the end of the year. We’re so close to the end, and then we have this random Sunday between Christmas and New Year’s. We’re trying to figure all that out. We want to jump straight into thinking about community together as a church. Our series with Meals with Jesus is unpacking that. Last year, we focused on stories in the Gospel of Luke, with Jesus having meals at different people’s places. We’re going to focus on John’s writings this year, the Gospel of John, and then we’ll jump to Revelation at the end, thinking about different kinds of meals. We get this one in John chapter 6, the feeding of the 5,000. It’s a very unusual meal. I want to think about that and what we think about as we look forward from that. This is a time of year when people do a lot of looking back and looking forward. It’s New Year’s resolutions time. I heard a saying years ago, “May our problems last as long as our New Year’s resolutions.” There’s a skepticism in me that says, “Don’t bother.” But there’s another part that says, “You might as well take the opportunity.” There’s something good about that. As we head into the new year, I want us to think about where we’re looking. This morning’s sermon will focus entirely on that, on where we’re looking as we unpack John chapter 6.

Looking Back To Steady Our Stance

Looking Back at God’s Faithfulness

One of the things we do that’s healthy as Christians is we look backwards. We look backwards to steady our stance in Jesus. Relay races are an example of a situation where you are not supposed to look backwards. Looking backwards does the opposite; it makes you unstable. In the 2016 relay race, the United States team was clipped by Brazil. The baton flew in the air, and their race was over. They were given a second chance, but they had to run by themselves. The tension of knowing what you do here in those exchanges will be in the history books for what they did the first time. They successfully not just won, not just qualified, they went on to win the gold. You recognize that what’s happening in that moment is as much as they’re tempted to look backwards, especially after a drop, tempted to look backwards to get a gauge of what’s going on, they know they cannot risk the interruption to their footing or their pace. The opposite is true for Christianity. We cannot afford not to look backwards because so much of what God has done in the past is what steadies our footing for the future. We get this little comment in John chapter 6 as people are gathering. We’re told it was verse four. It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover celebration. It has been consistent for God’s people that God constantly calls his people to look back at the past. In particular, what he wants them to look back at is his faithfulness in the past because it’s looking back at God’s faithfulness in the past that helps steady our footing for the future. We want to do this constantly and think about gratitude. I don’t know what the year has looked like for you. Many of you know that it’s been a fairly tough end to the year for my family. There’s many ways we would like to say happy to see the end of 2025 and looking forward to a new year. And yet we would say that it is healthy for us to look back on the things that we can have gratitude for even amidst great difficulty because what the reality of what we find in life is that God is always faithful. And often it’s when we look back that we will see the faithfulness that was happening in the dark times. The light that was there even though we could only see darkness at the time. God calls his people to look back. In many ways, Passover for the Jewish people is as close to a new year as there comes. They are told to look back, but they’re also told to reset and look forward. God calls them to look at his faithfulness and remember his faithfulness. Remembering God’s past faithfulness anchors us for the future. So we look back to steady our stance.

The Feeding of the 5,000

This whole story in John 6 is the first sign in John. Jesus has done a few different healings, but this is called the first sign in John’s writing that distinguishes a statement about who Jesus is. This feeding the 5,000 is a particular miracle that comes with particular teaching about who Jesus is. There’s a strange interaction with the other disciples as Jesus is revealing who he is. We’re told there are 5,000 men, and that’s just the men. There are at least 5,000 men; we don’t know how many women or children are traveling. It’s the time of the Passover. There’s a good chance that around that area in Galilee, people would gather together. People would gather together to travel to Jerusalem in groups because it was safer to travel in groups. There’s a good chance that the group coming to see Jesus has been traveling together. If that’s true, we would assume that all their children are spending time with them, as well as the family, the wives, the relatives, everyone’s there. If there are 5,000 men, there has to be a lot more overall. It’s hard to depict what that number would look like. You imagine, I think that pretty much the whole suburb of Riverston is coming over the hill to meet Jesus. They’ve heard the legend of what he’s doing. And they’re coming over the hill. Jesus looks at Philip and says, “Where can we buy bread to feed all these people?” What a funny joke. Philip is totally taken back by it. What is Jesus doing? We’re told that he’s testing Philip. Is it can he find bread? Was he organized and planning for this? Would he know who Jesus is and what he’s going to do? Jesus hasn’t done a miraculous feed before. It seems like the first thing Jesus is testing is whether his disciples are understanding the right question. The question Jesus asks is where are we going to get the bread? But the real answer he is searching for, Philip goes for how are we going to get the bread? But the real question Jesus is digging for is who? Who is going to provide for the people? Who is going to provide for the people when no one else has the means to? The first question in the test is the question of the right person. The second one is a test of the right comparison. A lot of scholars point to the fact that through this whole story of bread. Jesus is pointing back to God’s people exodus out of Egypt, but also their time in the desert where God provided mana for his people to eat, a kind of sweet that described like a breadlike substance. And so in the history of God’s people, Moses stands as this great leader, a start to their nation, Israel, as they came out of Egypt. He was the leader then. And in Deuteronomy, we’re told there’s going to be another one like Moses that’s going to come. And Jesus is starting to seed that question of who. Not just who’s going to provide when no one else can, but who is he? It’s the right comparison to who has come in the past, Moses. And here we see Jesus as one who is even greater than Moses who has come. And so it’s a comparison between Jesus and Moses, but it’s also a comparison between Jesus and disciples, isn’t it? Because his disciples don’t have the ability to solve this issue. And yet compared to Jesus, he is the one. And so we’re encouraged in this story to look inwards and acknowledge our own limitations. That’s what the question really leads Philip to. The question reads leads Philip to know he doesn’t have the ability to solve this issue. He is limited. And there’s a reminder for us that it’s helpful for us to remember our limitations, not to squash ourselves down and undermine any confidence we might ever have, but to put us in the right place before God.

Looking Inward To Acknowledge Our Limitations

Coming to God Empty

The great church leader and teacher Augustine uses the idea of recognizing our emptiness and actually emptying ourselves of the things that might be pushing God out, the selfish things in us. He says, “Jesus cannot fill us unless we come to him empty.” That is, if we are coming to God saying, “Look at me, use me, I’ve got all the things I can do on my own, it’s nice to have God on the side,” we miss the point that we must come to him empty. Augustine pushes the analogy further to say, “If God wants to fill us with honey, how can he do that if we are already full with vinegar?” We need to come to him empty. We look inward. We look backward to steady our stance. We look inward to acknowledge our limitations. But we also look outward. We look outward to surrender the small gifts that we do have to offer. It’s the way God has created us, our own giftedness, isn’t to be parked and forgotten about, but to be used by God.

Surrendering Our Small Gifts

The crazy thing that happens next in the story, Philip says, “It’s impossible. We’re never going to get enough food.” Andrew’s response is ludicrous. What does Andrew do? He comes forward and he says, “Hey, there’s a boy. We’re stealing his lunch. Poor kid. He’s the only one here with some food. 5,000 people coming or more coming over the hill. This poor kid’s the only one who actually has something to eat. And they say, ‘Let’s take that from him. Let’s take this poor kid’s five loaves and two fish and give that to Jesus.’” Maybe Andrew is thinking of the water into wine and that Jesus asked them to do something and they brought water and he contributed wine. We’re not told that’s what’s going on. It just seems like he’s just gone, “I don’t know what else to do.” It is clear consistently in Jesus’ ministry that he chooses to use his people in their faithfulness. He doesn’t just make the bread come out of nowhere, but he actually uses the small gift that is offered. So while we might look inwardly and recognize our inability, we also look outwardly as we think about what we have to offer and serve God with. We come empty of ourselves because we are giving of ourselves. I love the illustration of the value of a pencil in that picture because a pencil, it’s a pretty cheap item by itself, and by itself, it’s actually completely useless in the hands of an infant. It can be a scribble on the wall or on the floor or hopefully on a piece of paper. In the hands of a master artist, that pencil gains immense worth, doesn’t it? The same thing’s true as we think about our own small contribution that God has gifted us all uniquely in different ways, and in his hands, our small contribution, no matter how small, can be used for masterful artwork. That’s what happens with this small five loaves and two small fish from this boy. It goes into the hands of the artist, the hands of the creator, and it becomes something amazing. That’s true as we think about all the things that we have in our life, both good and bad, and how they shape us to be who we are and how they might be used in small ways for God’s great glory. I think even things like the traumas we face, the difficulties of our past, if we only hold them to ourselves, then they are not used for God. But there are times when even our traumas can be shared with others. Even our difficulty and hurt can be shared with others in a way that might help them, encourage them. The small moments we might have over a cup of coffee with someone. The small financial opportunities we might have to give to ministry. The small amounts of time we spend in prayer. It can often feel like we don’t have a huge amount to offer God. He is the creator of all, after all. And yet he does amazing things with small gifts. We look inward and recognize our inability. We come to him empty because we look outward and give him the small that we have.

Looking Upward To Treasure The Treasure

Treasuring Jesus Above All

We look upward to treasure the treasure. This miracle that happens, God turns this small amount of food into a huge amount of food. There’s more left over than they started with. It’s an incredible outcome of this miracle. But the real challenge of this story becomes how the people respond and what they desire to treasure. It’s a strange verse, isn’t it? Verse 14 says, “When the people saw him do this miraculous sign, they exclaimed, ‘Surely he is the prophet we have been expecting.’” You think, “Yes, they’re getting it. He’s the one greater than Moses. Surely he’s the prophet we’ve been expecting.” Then it says, “When Jesus saw that they were ready to force him to be their king, he slipped away into the hills by himself.” We talk a lot in Christian ministry about making Jesus king of your life. Here they are. They want to force him to be king. What a strange idea. Jesus slips away. The challenge here is what they’re truly treasuring. What they’re truly treasuring is not the one who has done the miracle. What they’re truly treasuring here is what they have been fed. It’s their own stomachs that they’re truly treasuring here. The danger is they’re going to force Jesus to be king so that he will feed them again. So that he will continue to fill their stomachs. Jesus is saying they’re not treasuring the right treasure. That he is the right treasure, and we need to treasure him. The abundance of Jesus’ ministry in this story is evidence of his identity as the one he says he is, who has come from God and who is God. It’s also evidence of his power to save. He is the one in our inability. He is the one who has the ability. He is sufficient to save. One of the meals that we’re going to look at towards the end of this series is in Revelation. Jesus says, “Look, I stand at the door and knock. If you hear my voice and open the door, I will come in and we will share a meal together as friends.” This is a promise we have from Jesus that he says he will always answer. If you open the door, he will always answer. He is always going to answer that prayer. The power of abundance we see in this story shows us he has the power to be the one to answer that prayer. The same thing is true of his abundance in spiritual blessings. We’re told in Luke that Jesus is talking about prayer, and he’s talking about, even though you’re sinful, you know how to give good gifts to your children. He says, “How much more will your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to those who ask him?” Once again, he’s saying, “This is the prayer that will always be answered.” Those that ask for the Holy Spirit will always receive the Holy Spirit. His abundance in this story shows us that he is the one that has the ability to answer these prayers. We’re called to treasure him above all. We look upwards to treasure the treasure. As Jesus feeds their stomachs, we’re reminded that Jesus didn’t come to satisfy our desires. He desires that we’re satisfied in him. He wants us to treasure him as the treasure. As I round up and think about the different ways we look as we look into a new year, we always should be looking back at what God has done. All the things God has done in the past shows us his goodness. We can always look back to the fullness of God and see what it is he has done. We look inwards at ourselves and recognize our own inability. We acknowledge our inability and say we come to God empty knowing that we need him, and there’s nothing we can do that will make us right with him. We look back to steady our stance. We look inward to acknowledge our inability. We look outward to offer our small gifts. We ask Jesus to fill us.