Two Fish for the Saviour
OT Lesson: Genesis 22:1-18 (NLT)
Some time later, God tested Abraham’s faith. “Abraham!” God called.
“Yes,” he replied. “Here I am.”
“Take your son, your only son—yes, Isaac, whom you love so much—and go to the land of Moriah. Go and sacrifice him as a burnt offering on one of the mountains, which I will show you.”
The next morning Abraham got up early. He saddled his donkey and took two of his servants with him, along with his son, Isaac. Then he chopped wood for a fire for a burnt offering and set out for the place God had told him about. On the third day of their journey, Abraham looked up and saw the place in the distance. “Stay here with the donkey,” Abraham told the servants. “The boy and I will travel a little farther. We will worship there, and then we will come right back.”
So Abraham placed the wood for the burnt offering on Isaac’s shoulders, while he himself carried the fire and the knife. As the two of them walked on together, Isaac turned to Abraham and said, “Father?”
“Yes, my son?” Abraham replied.
“We have the fire and the wood,” the boy said, “but where is the sheep for the burnt offering?”
“God will provide a sheep for the burnt offering, my son,” Abraham answered. And they both walked on together.
When they arrived at the place where God had told him to go, Abraham built an altar and arranged the wood on it. Then he tied his son, Isaac, and laid him on the altar on top of the wood. And Abraham picked up the knife to kill his son as a sacrifice. At that moment the angel of the Lord called to him from heaven, “Abraham! Abraham!”
“Yes,” Abraham replied. “Here I am!”
“Don’t lay a hand on the boy!” the angel said. “Do not hurt him in any way, for now I know that you truly fear God. You have not withheld from me even your son, your only son.”
Then Abraham looked up and saw a ram caught by its horns in a thicket. So he took the ram and sacrificed it as a burnt offering in place of his son. Abraham named the place Yahweh-Yireh (which means “the Lord will provide”). To this day, people still use that name as a proverb: “On the mountain of the Lord it will be provided.”
Then the angel of the Lord called again to Abraham from heaven. “This is what the Lord says: Because you have obeyed me and have not withheld even your son, your only son, I swear by my own name that I will certainly bless you. I will multiply your descendants beyond number, like the stars in the sky and the sand on the seashore. Your descendants will conquer the cities of their enemies. And through your descendants all the nations of the earth will be blessed—all because you have obeyed me.”
NT Lesson: John 6:1-15 (NRSV)
After this Jesus went to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, also called the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd kept following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing for the sick. Jesus went up the mountain and sat down there with his disciples. Now the Passover, the festival of the Jews, was near. When he looked up and saw a large crowd coming towards him, Jesus said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread for these people to eat?’ He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he was going to do. Philip answered him, ‘Six months’ wages would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little.’ One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, ‘There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they among so many people?’ Jesus said, ‘Make the people sit down.’ Now there was a great deal of grass in the place; so they sat down, about five thousand in all. Then Jesus took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated; so also the fish, as much as they wanted. When they were satisfied, he told his disciples, ‘Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost.’ So they gathered them up, and from the fragments of the five barley loaves, left by those who had eaten, they filled twelve baskets. When the people saw the sign that he had done, they began to say, ‘This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.’
When Jesus realized that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, he withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
Sermon
Introduction
Good morning. How did you enjoy the confusing weather last week? One day it was a spring day and the next winter day with snowfall. I hope those days are over. Anyway, I hope you had a good Valentine’s Day last Tuesday. And today, we will have a party after the worship service, which may possibly be the last chance to party before the Ash Wednesday. We celebrate the Valentine’s Day today and the theme is Mardi Gras. We have lovely decorations and music for dance. And without beer and wine, it is not a party. But at the same time, I think we’d better not drink beer and wine at church especially on Sundays. So I compromised. Instead of wine, we have Welches sparkling grape juice. Instead of beer, we have root beers from Wisconsin made with Wisconsin honey. I’ve tasted many different kinds of root beers, but this one is my all time favourite. And mathematically, root beer in a square box is just beer. So maybe you can try it today if it works. It should. Mathematics doesn’t lie.
Feeding Miracles
We have two Scriptures today as usual. I tried hard to fit both Scriptures into the sermon in the limited time frame just in vain because I cannot preach for forty or more minutes. It is not that I am incapable of, but if I do, you will feel like being held as hostages. So I decided to preach the OT lesson next Sunday, and today, I will focus only on the NT lesson. So it is the miracle of Jesus feeding five thousand men beside women and children. This is one of the best known miracles of Jesus. By the fact that there were five thousand men, we can safely say that there were equal number of women. But in reality, there have been always more women than men at church or at any religion. There are more male religious leaders but always way more women believers. The gospels also mention group of ladies followed Jesus all the way from Galilee to Jerusalem, serving the Saviour. I think there must have been seven or eight thousand women but I will just count five thousand women to be safe. Now we need to count children. These days most people have one or two children. But it was not so back in the old days. Even my parents have six children including myself. So the rule of thumb back in the old days was to have as many children as possible because the children were the most valuable property. I’d like to say that three or four children for each woman but again just to be safe, let me count two each, which makes it ten thousand children. Then the simple calculation is this: five thousand men plus five thousand women plus ten thousand children, that is twenty thousand people. So we can safely say that Jesus fed twenty thousand people. This calculation is just for the informational purpose. Let us just follow the tradition in the naming and call it the miracle of feeding five thousand.
Jesus Had Compassion
So now we know that Jesus fed thousands of people, not just once but at least twice, possibly more. Gospel of John ends by saying that “There are so many other things that Jesus did; if every one of them were written down, I suppose that the world itself could not contain the books that would be written.”3 Thus even though the gospels mention only two times when Jesus fed thousands of people, it could actually be many times. But the question is why. Why did Jesus do this when he was not required of feeding people for free? In Matthew 15, Jesus says before feeding four thousand, “I have compassion for the crowd.”4 The gospels shows us that many times Jesus was filled with compassion for people. This is why I said last Sunday that Jesus may have sent one of His disciples to help the poor widow who had no money to feed herself. Jesus has compassion for us all the time.
Nature of Miracle
There have been many attempts to explain this miracle of feeding thousands of people by multiplying the small amount of food. The main question was how it was possible. Most of them denounced this miracle because it cannot be explained scientifically. Even some theologians said that actually everybody was hiding their sacked lunch, and seeing a little boy donating his lunch, they were moved and everybody took out their lunch. They tried to explain this miracle in many different ways simply because this miracle is not explainable using their scientific knowledge. I think that is kind of funny because a miracle is, by definition, something happened which cannot be explained scientifically. They cannot explain a miracle, and that is the very definition of miracle. So I am not going to explain how Jesus fed thousands of people with a very small amount of food. I just say, ‘Believe in miracle, muggles.’ Jesus is the Creator God. If He was able to create the entire universe out of nothing, simple multiplication of some food is a piece of cake, not that Jesus fed them cakes.
What Fish?
So we don’t know how but we do know what Jesus fed them—five loaves and two fish for the five thousand, and seven loaves with a few fish for the four thousand. I was not interested in what kind of bread Jesus fed them because back then there were only two kinds—leavened and unleavened, that is baked with yeast or without. It was before the Passover, so it must have been regular leavened bread. But fish, I was quite curious because the gospels do not specify which fish and yet there were several different kinds of fish in the sea of Galilee. So I did some research and here it is.
First, there were catfish. But I had to exclude the catfish. Personally I like fried catfish, but it is forbidden in the OT. God commanded in Leviticus 11, “Of all the creatures living in the water of the seas and the streams you may eat any that have fins and scales. But all creatures in the seas or streams that do not have fins and scales… you are to regard as unclean… you must not eat their meat…”5 And catfish, as you know, have no scales on them. So no catfish.
The next is called Biny and it is huge. The size of regular fully grown biny is about adult man’s arm. And I highly doubt that a boy was ever able to carry two of them in his lunch box. So I am going to pass it.
The following is called Musht which is in the tilapia family. Its nickname is St. Peter’s fish. Almost every restaurant around the lake of Galilee serve ‘St. Peter’s fish’ with French fries. But there were no French fries back in the Jesus’ days. How sad. Luke 5 shows us a moment when Peter caught nothing overnight, and Jesus made him catch so many fish which almost sank two boats. And musht is believed to be the fish that Peter caught with his nets, and it is where its nickname came from. Even though it is not as huge as Biny, it is still big enough for a single fish to be a full meal.
The last candidate is Kinneret sardine. As its name indicates, it is in the sardine family. You all know the size of sardines. They kind of fit in the sardine tin which we can buy at Kroger. They are little bigger than your middle finger. At the miracle of feeding four thousand, the gospels say they had a few small fish,6 and this Kinneret sardine is the smallest fish in the sea of Galilee, small enough that a boy can carry two of them in his lunch box. And this small fish used to be pickled. So now we know what kind of fish Jesus was feeding tens of thousands of people—sardine. And sardine is one of my favourite fish.
Offering as Seed of Ministry
No matter what Jesus fed the people, feeding itself is one of the great and very important ministries of Jesus and of ours, the followers of Jesus. Feeding thousands of hungry people is truly an important and valuable ministry. I’d like to talk about how this valuable and crucial ministry of Jesus was possible beside the miraculous power of divine Christ. There was a boy. We don’t know his name. Actually we don’t know anything about this human being except his gender and age group, a male under twelve, in other word, a boy. That’s it. That is all what we know about him. He could be in a poor family, or possibly in a middle class family. Definitely he was not super rich like Bill Gates. By the way, one day a few years ago, I used Bill Gates as an example of super rich and I was told that I am an old generation. Obviously these days the younger generations say Elon Musk or Jeff Bezos as examples of super rich. But I am going to stick to Bill Gates because I am an old generation. Anyway, that boy happened to sack his lunch with five loaves of bread and two small fish, probably pickled sardine. That day, everybody was hungry. Jesus was hungry. The disciples were hungry. Tens of thousands of people were all hungry. And this boy was hungry as well. But at the request of Jesus, this boy willingly gave away his lunch box. What the boy offered was honestly not a lot. Actually it was kids menu size, not enough for even one grown man. But this small amount became the seed of Jesus’ ministry. The boy had no idea how and what would happen. The boy simply offered small amount, which was definitely not enough at all for the ministry of Jesus.
Conclusion
Jesus did the ministry of feeding the hungry and helping the poor. Because we are the followers of Jesus, we want to do the same. To do that, we are partnering with the Caring Centre in town. The Souper Bowl offerings which we collected last Sunday was $314. And as far as I know, it was sent to the Caring Centre. Maybe we can designate the last Sunday of the month as Caring Sunday when we bring non-perishable food items or monetary donations for the Caring Centre. As I repeatedly emphasise, Jesus does not care about the amount. Whatever amount you bring will be the seed of the ministry in this church. Through the ministry of this church, with our small offerings, we can affect and help our neighbours far and near whom Jesus have compassion for, and whom are precious in Jesus’ eyes. And through that, we can let God’s kingdom come on earth and on this town. Amen.
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