Tabor Baptist Church

Introduction

• Concentrating on v14-21
• Calvin's Institutes:
1. A knowledge of God
2. A knowledge of ourselves
• The Scriptures are about Christ/God - this is our first priority
• Then incidentally about ourselves
• The context: the Pharisees seeking a sign
• Jesus rebuts them
• They were unwilling to accept the work and ministry of the Saviour
• Is there a danger of us wanting God to speak to us in a special way?
• Overview:
• Christ's care and tenderness for His own
• Christ's total sufficiency
• Two fundamental lessons centered around a loaf of bread
• Jesus' teaching blossoms from it
• Only humans can understand spiritual and eternal things

Christ's care and tenderness for His own

• The disciples had forgotten to take food
• Jesus' says "take heed"
• Jesus recognises their lack of understanding
• This situation is perhaps 18-24 months into Christ's ministry
• Yet they failed to understand basic truths about Christ
• Christ's strong language: take heed, beware
• Leaven/yeast: invisible, very powerful, augmented
• Leaven of the Pharisees, Herod and also the Sadducees (Matt 16:5-12)
• These dangers are with us today
• Pharisees: traditionalists
• Herodians: secularism or worldliness
• Sadducees: skeptics
• What does Jesus do about this?
• Look how caring He is for His own - "beware"
• A beautiful, constant and ongoing care
• Beware of the yeast in the Church and our own souls
• The disciples should have known better
• The parable of the leaven
• After the feeding of the 4000 the disciples hearts were hardened
• (Speaking of Christians)
• Maybe a better translation - their hearts were sluggish
• We have a wonderful Saviour - do you see that?
• We need His own care and chastisement
• We still have hard hearts
• We need to constantly submit ourselves to the word of God

Christ's total sufficiency

• We have an sufficient Saviour but the disciples lack a sufficient faith
• 'Is Christ displeased because we didn't bring bread?'
• There was an air/spirit of pessimism in the hearts (and maybe unbelief)
• The example of Christ's miracles
• They only had one loaf between 13!
• Christ could have fed more than 5000
• There were many full baskets (12 and 7) with fragments that were left over
• Christ's sufficiency is overflowing
• The Apostle Paul's teachings
• We don't actually know how Jesus fed the disciples
• Perhaps they were too embarrassed to record this event
• Perhaps their understanding was improved by the Passover thereafter
• John 6

Closing Remarks