In Peter Allison's sermon titled 'Supper at Jesus' Place', he discusses the miracle of feeding the 5,000, emphasizing its uniqueness as a creative miracle recorded in all four Gospels. The sermon highlights the importance of rest, as Jesus and his disciples sought solitude after their ministry work. Despite this, Jesus welcomed the crowds, demonstrating hospitality by teaching and healing them. Allison points out the significance of Jesus blessing the food, underlining gratitude and acknowledging God's provision. By feeding thousands with minimal resources, Jesus affirms his identity as the Creator, capable of providing abundantly in any circumstance. The sermon concludes with a reminder of God's ability to provide for those who seek His kingdom, encouraging believers to trust in His provision and avoid anxiety.

Luke chapter 9. I'd like to read beginning in verse 10. And the apostles, when they had returned, told him all that they had done. Then he took them and went aside privately into a deserted place belonging to the city called Bethsaida. But when the multitudes knew it, they followed him.

And he received them, and spoke to them about the kingdom of God, and healed those who had need of healing. And when the day began to wear away, the twelve came and said to him, Send the multitude away, that they may go into the surrounding towns and country and lodge and get provisions, for we are in a deserted place here. But he said to them, You give them something to eat. And they said, We have no more than five loaves and two fish, unless we go and buy food for all these people, for they were about five thousand men. Then he said to his disciples, Make them sit down in groups of fifty, and they did so, and made them all sit down.

Then he took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he blessed and broke them, and gave them to the disciples to set before the multitude. So they all ate and were filled, and twelve baskets of the leftover fragments were taken up by them." How sweet are Christ's words to our taste, sweeter than honey to our mouths. Heavenly Father, your word is truth, it is pure, refined seven times as silver. And we ask that as we hear it, you may teach us that it might be mixed with faith and that you would strengthen us to do as we have heard. Please sanctify this vessel of clay and purify my sinful lips that they might proclaim the riches of your glory through Jesus Christ.

Amen. This is one of the more well-known and common miracles that Jesus has done. It's unique for a number of reasons. It's one of the only miracles, other than the miracle of the resurrection that is recorded in all four of the Gospels. It is the creative miracle.

When Jesus turned the water into wine, there was buckets of water and then it became buckets, barrels of wine. But in this case, there was no food. It wasn't like he turned stones into bread. There was nothing here. He created.

And he created on a very large scale enough food to feed thousands of people. It says there were 5, 000 men. Other texts of the scripture, that other gospel accounts point out this besides the women and the children, 5, 000 men. Adding in the families, if there is an average of three a family, that's 15, 000 people here. If there's four average in a family, that's 20, 000 people.

So it's very likely that Jesus is feeding 15, 000 or more people. That's a lot of people to feed. And there's a number of witnesses to this. There are a number of participants in this. There are 15, 000 or 20, 000 people who are all experiencing this miracle.

They are eating the food that didn't exist moments before Jesus created it. Moments before Jesus created it. So it's a very significant miracle. And it happened after the apostles came back from their ministry trip. Don't know how long they were gone, but they came back and they are telling him everything that they have done.

And That word to tell is a word that means to relate fully, to recount a story. The apostles were excited about what they had done, what they had seen. They had healed people, they had seen demons cast out. And they wanted to tell Jesus all about it. This is the word that the writer of Hebrews uses when he says, time would fail to tell you about Gideon and Barak and so on.

Time would fail to give you the full account of all of these stories. So I can only mention them. So what's saying here is these disciples in their zeal and in their enthusiasm, they were recounting to Jesus all the things that had happened. And Jesus takes them apart to a deserted place. Mark tells us why, a little more detail.

Mark tells us that they were so busy with these crowds that were following Jesus in this period of His Galilean ministry before they have rejected Him. Mark says that they don't have time to eat. They scarcely have time to eat. And so Jesus takes them, he says, to come aside to a private place, a deserted place. And so in this meal, which I've called eating at Jesus' place, The first thing that we see is that rest is important.

Bodily rest is important. There were many coming and going and they didn't even have time to eat. Jesus has come aside to a deserted place. There may be seasons of long hours, hard work, that's good, many times it's necessary, but rest also is vital and good. And it's not being lazy to rest when the body is weary.

It's not being lazy to have set times of rest. The Lord has given us one day in seven so that we can rest in that day. Night work is stressful on the body. Research has shown that productivity on plants that have three shifts, continuous shifts, productivity is a lot lower in the night. And a number of the very headline, big headline accidents all happen on the night shifts.

Bhopal, Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, Daxon Valdez, those are all big catastrophes all happened at night. And So the stresses and burdens of our calling are not an excuse to ignore rest, even Kingdom work, such as the Apostles we're engaging in. Now, culturally, we don't tend to have that problem today. We tend to have the opposite problem, but it can be a problem. It can be, in fact, in some segments of corporate America, I would say it is a problem.

That there is work without rest, continual work without rest. Rest, bodily rest, the first thing Jesus teaches his disciples, bodily rest is important. And the needs of ministry, even healing the sick and preaching the kingdom, need to be paused or can't take away the need for rest. So laziness is a sin. But Jesus is not calling His disciples to a sin here.

He's calling them to rest. And rest can take different forms for different people. Those working in public, like the apostles were doing, rest might be being in private, being in a deserted place, being away from crowds. For those that maybe work alone in deserted places, rest might be being around with other people. The second thing we see then is that Jesus graciously receives the crowd.

So they've gone away. Jesus has gone away to a deserted place. And the multitudes, when they see Jesus leaving, they follow. They follow Jesus. But Jesus doesn't say, breathe out that exasperated sigh and say, what are they doing over here now?

Or anything like that. Rather, He says that He received them. That word for receive means to welcome somebody into your home, to extend hospitality, to open your heart to them. He accepted them. He received them.

Even though they are disturbing his rest, he received them. They had the zeal to follow him into a deserted place because they wanted to be healed. They wanted to hear Him. And so He spoke to them about the gospel of the kingdom and healed those who had need of healing. In other words, he continued to minister to them, to do the same things that he was doing in the previous place, where the crowds got too heavy.

He showed them hospitality even when it wasn't convenient. Peter reminds us in his first epistle, 4-9, be hospitable to one another without grumbling. Be hospitable to one another without grumbling. If the disciples and Jesus had an occasion to justly refuse hospitality, this would have been it. But they don't.

This is what Jesus wants us to do as well. It's what he calls us to do, to be hospitable to one another without grumbling. We might show hospitality in a grudging way. Jesus is calling us to receive, receive people, to show hospitality, to minister without complaint. And that means even if we're tired, even if it's inconvenient, Jesus desires us to minister like He did without complaint.

So they're out there ministering, and it starts to get dark. The day is gone, and the disciples think, well now would be a good time to send the people away. We don't know whether their concern was the people and them genuinely needing something to eat, or whether their concern was more their own convenience and they were getting tired and they thought that would be a way to get a break themselves. It doesn't really say. We don't know.

It could have been an honest concern for the people. It could have been a little of both. And so they want Jesus to send them away. They want Him to dismiss this crowd. Now, it's a strong word.

It really stands in contrast to the word that Jesus received them. To send away means, in this case, to dismiss an assembly. But it's the same word that's used even of a divorce, to separate, to divide. So the disciples come to Jesus saying, send the multitude away so that they can go into the towns and get lodging and get provisions, because we're in a deserted place out here and there's no place to get food. And so Jesus comes back with, well, you get them something to eat.

You get them something to eat. This was a test. Jesus was testing His disciples. In John, it says that Jesus asked Philip to get them something to eat. He said to Philip, where should we buy bread that these could eat?

And Bajan tells us that Jesus asked this question to test him, because Jesus already knew what he was going to do at this point. And Philip said, 200 denarii worth of Bread isn't sufficient for them. 200 days wages is not enough to buy food for this many people. A year's wages isn't enough to buy food for this many people. A year's wages is what?

$50, 000? $100, 000? Is not enough to buy food for this many people. Christ is testing them. Christ had given to them His authority and His power.

Remember that? We looked at that last week. He had given to them his authority and his power. Remember that? We looked at that last week.

He'd given to them his authority and his power so that they had the power and authority to go out and cast out demons and heal the sick and preach the gospel of the kingdom. But they forgot that. They forgot that. Andrew knows about a little boy or a boy that has five loaves and two fish. Five what we might call crackers or five slices, pieces of bread.

Little barley loaves they're called. And two fish, five loaves and two fish. And so he tells Jesus about this. This is interesting, I think, that Andrew knew about this lad's lunch in such a large crowd. Andrew must have been talking to the lad, taking an interest in him.

Andrew, you remember, is the one who brought his brother Peter to Christ and Philip is the other disciple who brought another disciple to Christ. He brought Nathaniel. So here you have the two people, two disciples, that would seem to be those who are most people oriented. You had James and John, remember, were asking for power in Jesus kingdom, But Philip and Andrew are two people who are concerned about other people. These are the two disciples that have brought other disciples to Jesus.

And these are the two disciples that we find interacting with Jesus, specifically mentioned in this example. So I think we might presume that Andrew may have been talking with this lad, took an interest in him, and so he knew about his lunch. And so he tells Jesus, In the John account, he tells Jesus that, well, we just have five loaves and two fish. But what is that among so many? What good is that?

Hardly worth mentioning. And so Jesus presses on. He simply says to His disciples, Make them sit down in groups of fifty. And then he took those five loaves and two fish. And so the third lesson we see here is he blessed the food before he served it.

We see Jesus doing this frequently when he is eating, especially in public. He did it before the Lord's, at the Lord's Supper. He took the bread and broke it, and when he had blessed it and given thanks, he gave it. We see Paul doing this when he was on the ship and they had been shipwrecked and driven by a storm for many days. And then the first time he ate, he publicly took, in presence of them all, he took the bread and gave thanks publicly to God.

The Scriptures teach us to give thanks for God's good gifts. Paul told Timothy, for every creature of God is good, and nothing is to be refused if it is received with thanksgiving. For it is sanctified by the word of God in prayer. It is set apart. It is holy by the word of God and prayer.

Romans 14, he who eats, eats to the Lord, for he gives God thanks. It's the expectation of giving God thanks when we eat, because we're recognizing that God has given us everything that we have. Everything that we have comes from God. And it's proper to acknowledge that, to recognize that it's God that provides us food. Ephesians 5 speaks of giving thanks always for all things to God the Father in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ giving thanks to God always And so Jesus gives thanks he gives to us this example It also recognizes that that without God's blessing of our eating, the food won't do us any good.

Without God's blessing on the food, it doesn't do us any good. And so to eat then without giving thanks is to presume on the Lord's goodness. And it's to take it for granted. It's to make light of God's provision. And so it's customary, has been customary among Christians to give thanks for their food before they eat.

It's a sign of a Christian. How many times have you been in a restaurant and you see a table over there giving thanks for their food before they eat, and you say, well, that must be a Christian group of people. It's a sign. It's a significant sign about who is Christ. When we acknowledge before we eat that this food that we have is from God.

He's given it to us and we're thankful for it. We're not taking it for granted. We're not presuming upon His provision. We're not thinking that, well, we did our part in getting it. The power to get wealth, the power to get our food is from God.

The next thing we see about Jesus eating at Jesus' place here is that Jesus follows an orderly process. He has them all sit down in groups of 50. That's family style as opposed to everyone getting their own food. And It's a very fast way to serve food, the way Jesus arranged it, because it's a parallel operation. The dining hall I ate in college sat 5, 000 people in tables of 12.

So there was a number of tables. There was a big room. But everybody could get their food within three minutes of the ending of the prayer of thanks for that meal. Within a few minutes, everybody had their food. Because there's a parallel operation, the mess cooks could come out and they would give each table their supply of food in on a tray, all the bowls of food for that meal.

And all they had to do is give it to one person at the table and so they could serve many tables. One person could serve a number of tables within three minutes very easily. And then each table could then pass the food around. And so within three minutes, 5, 000 people had their food. I saw it happen every day in college.

It's a very efficient way and it's a very orderly way. Jesus follows an orderly process in serving this food. We're instructed to let all things, to do all things decently and in order. Paul's instruction into the church is that all things should be done decently and in order. So this is an orderly and a decent way for the disciples to distribute food to 5, 000 men or probably 15 or 20, 000 people.

Each disciple, if there's 12 disciples and they're in groups of 50, there would be 100 groups. So each disciple has to provide the food to 8 or 9 groups of people. That's easily doable. Now it doesn't say exactly how this miracle took place, but we have a very strong hint in the tense of the verb gave he gave to the disciples says he blessed and broke they took the five loaves and two fish and looking up to heaven he blessed and broke them and gave them to the disciples to set before the multitude." Gave them to the disciples. The tense of that verb in the Greek is imperfect.

It means that it is ongoing. It's not complete. It's an action that was ongoing. Literally, it has been translated, He blessed them and break and was giving to the disciples. Was giving to the disciples to set before the multitude.

This leads me, I think, to conclude that this miracle was probably done in a very similar fashion to how other miracles Involving the creation of food were done the widow at Zarephath whose flour and oil did not run out or the prophet's widow who was able to pour enough oil from one jar to be able to sell into other jars, into many many other jars, and she kept pouring and pouring and pouring and as long as there was another jar to pour into, the jar she was pouring from never ran out until she was able to sell, have enough oil to sell it and pay all her debts and enough left over to live on. So this was a miracle where in the case of the widow at Zarephath, every time she went, Every day when she went to pour out a little flour and oil to make that day's bread, there was always more oil in that jar and it never ran out. And I think this is, I think this may have been how this miracle was done. Jesus took those loaves, he blessed, looked to heaven, he broke them, blessed them, then he gave it, he said he was giving them to the disciples to give to the crowd.

So he's giving each of the 12 disciples a handful of loaves and fish that they would take and deliver to a group of 50 and they could come back and get another handful to take to another group so they would have had to go to eight or nine groups or maybe they could take enough maybe they took Jesus gave to them and so Jesus gave around to the twelve apostles and And every and his hand the food in his hands didn't run out Then the Apostles disciples would have taken that food and gone to the first group Giving it to the person there and then gone to the next group and given it again. And so every group they had to go to, there was more loaves and fish in their hands to give. And the people then would have passed that around in the groups of 50, and they would have passed it in the same way the widow poured out her jar. I think that may have been how it's done. We don't know for sure.

But it certainly would have been an efficient way, and it's the way the two other miracles of creation of food were done as well. But This was on a massive scale. They carried this food, these five loaves and two fish, to a hundred groups of fifty people each group passed out that food and When they were done There was more left over than when they started You notice Jesus is careful not to waste any food. This is another lesson we can learn here, eating at Jesus' place. After they were done, they didn't just leave the fragments for the birds.

They gathered them up in baskets, and they had twelve baskets left over. There was a care here not to waste food, even when there was plenty of it, even when it was free. We tend to think when something is free and there is lots more where we got what we have. We have a tendency, don't we, to minimize economy, to minimize frugality, to just say, well, there's plenty more where I got this. I don't need to be too careful with this.

Or if I waste a few of these, it's not a problem. There's a sense in which there may be wisdom in that, but Jesus is careful here not to waste any food. They picked up the fragments that were left and didn't just throw them out. You might say, well, we've just fed 20, 000 people, what's a few baskets? A few baskets of fragments.

Just forget about them. But no, Jesus collected them. He had the disciples pick up all the fragments so nothing was left, so no mess was left. But more importantly, so that food wasn't wasted. Now Jesus had just created all this food.

He could have easily created more. It's not a matter of scarcity, it's a matter of proper stewardship. Proverbs 12.27 says a lazy man does not roast what he took in hunting, but the substance of a diligent man is precious. And that's the sense here. This substance, even though it was freely available, even though Jesus could have easily created more, it was valuable.

And they took care not to waste it. The substance of a diligent man is precious, it's valuable. Whereas a lazy man shoots something and doesn't bother to roast it because he's too lazy to do the work. Jesus didn't take that approach. He saved the food.

He found another use for it. The disciples had many people they ministered to and many uses for for that food. Jesus shows here that. He provides. Even in a desolate place, Food is one of the most basic needs of our life.

And Jesus shows here that He provides for those who seek first His Kingdom. Seek first My Kingdom, He says, and its righteousness and all these things will be added to you. These people followed Jesus into a desolate place because they wanted to be healed. They wanted to hear more about this gospel of the kingdom. And in that sense, regardless of what their other motives might be, they did seek first His kingdom.

And so Jesus provides for them. And He provides abundantly. There's no rationing here. There's no cutting up the loaves and the little pieces so everybody gets a bite. Jesus provided abundantly.

They ate and were filled. This wasn't a little snack to tie them over, this wasn't something to wet their appetite, this was enough for them to eat and be filled. So much so they couldn't eat it all and there were twelve baskets of leftovers. God provides for those who seek His kingdom. He provides abundantly.

He provides in any circumstance. Jesus fed 600, 000 men in the wilderness for 400 years, plus their families, without the Israelites ever planting one crop of wheat. He brought water from a rock in a wilderness, in a dry and barren land. Brothers and sisters, there is no circumstance. There is no circumstance in which you will ever find yourself that the Lord cannot provide your food or anything else that you need.

There is no circumstance, there is no place you will ever find yourself, there is no situation There is no situation in which you will ever be that Jesus cannot provide food and provide it abundantly. Jesus also showed himself to be the creator. Jesus is God. And in doing this miracle, He is asserting that He is the creator God. That he brought food into existence out of nothing.

Out of nothing. For by him all things were created that are in heaven and that are on earth visible and invisible whether thrones or dominions or principalities or powers all things were created through him and for him. John says all things were made through him and without him nothing was made that was made. And that's after he's telling us that Jesus is God. Only God can create out of nothing.

Only God can speak and bring forth what didn't exist before. So in doing this miracle, Jesus is proclaiming to everyone who was there, to everyone who heard about this, because this would have gone everywhere. In fact, after it, the people wanted to come by force and make him king, John tells us. After all, here's somebody who could just create food for them out of nothing. What army?

One of the major problems of any general in trying to fight a war of aggression is to feed his army. Where are you going to get food for 500, 000 soldiers? That's a real significant issue. You have to have a supply chain in place. But here's Jesus, he could just make the food without any effort at all.

So they wanted to make him king. Of course, Jesus' time wasn't ready, and that wasn't what His purpose in coming to earth was, it wasn't his mission. And so he didn't allow them to do that. He departed from there. But in doing this, Jesus did declare that He was God.

He was fully God. He was the Messiah promised in the Old Testament and he is our he is still our provider He can he still Is our great high priest our great our prophet and our king And he is still able to provide for us in whatever circumstance we find ourselves. There is no economic crisis. There is no national disaster. There is no circumstance that we ever would find ourselves, no matter where we go on this earth, no matter how remote we go in bringing the gospel of the kingdom.

There is no place that we can go that Christ cannot provide for us. Almighty Father in heaven, we ask that you would comfort us, that you would assure our hearts this morning, for we are so prone to anxiety and prone to worry about where our needs will come from but Lord you are the you are the great provider You own all things in the earth and you are sovereign over them and you give to those whom you will and you take from those whom you will. So we pray that we might learn from this lesson and from all of the accounts that are recorded in your Word of your provision in each and every circumstance for all of our needs, for all the needs of your people, for all the needs of those who are taking up their cross and following you. So Lord, we confess our sins of anxiety, of fear, and we commit to trusting in you.