Skip to content

Tag: food

Jesus Feeds 5000

The Bible records that Jesus did nearly 40 different miracles during his time on earth – but of those 40 different miracles, (with the exception of his resurrection) there is only one miracle that is recorded in each of the four Gospels. 

Now I found that to be pretty surprising! Of all those miracles that Jesus did – only one was so important and so significant that each of the Gospel writers – Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John – all decided that they need to include it in their Gospel.

And so, as we journey through the life and ministry of Jesus in our current message series, it seems only fitting to include this miracle as one of the milestones that we’ll stop and take a look at along the way.

Now before we get to today’s passage – I do want to point out roughly where we are on the timeline. Last week we saw that Jesus just starting out his public ministry – calling his disciples to follow him. Specifically we looked at how he called Peter and Levi, but by the time of today’s story, Jesus had called all 12 of his disciples and had commissioned them as his apostles. Over the next little while as they followed Jesus, Jesus began to teach them and to prepare them for ministry. This meant watching and listening to Jesus as he taught the crowds, cast out demons, and did miracles such as healing the sick and even raising the dead.  

Then after that initial period of learning from Jesus – Jesus sent them out on what we might consider a short-term mission trip. It seems that Jesus would agree with the old 4H moto – “Learn to do by doing!” And so the disciples were sent out two-by-by into the surrounding towns and villages to preach the Word of God – calling people to repent of their sins and turn to God. And as they preached, Jesus also gave them the authority to cast out demons and heal the sick as he had been doing.

And so, as we begin our passage today, we’re going to see that the disciples had just returned from their missionary tour and were ready to debrief with Jesus regarding everything they had just experienced.

Of course, while they had been gone, Jesus had continued his ministry of preaching and teaching, performing miracles and casting out demons – and so by now, Jesus could hardly go anywhere without huge crowds of people following him. And that’s about where our story today begins.

As I mentioned earlier, this story is recorded in all four Gospels, and I may jump back and forth a little bit to see some of the unique details in each Gospels, but I’ve chosen Mark’s Gospel as our main text today. So if you want to follow along, you can turn to Mark chapter 6 and we’re going to start at verse 30.

Leave a Comment

Eating to be a Blessing

Listen to this Sermon!Well, I have been very excited for this Sunday. Not because of the SuperBowl later this afternoon – although I am looking forward to that – but because we’re tackling a subject that’s very dear to me. That subject is eating!

We’ve been going through our B.L.E.S.S. acronym over these past few weeks. And in case you’ve missed a week or two, let me give you a quick recap.

We began by talking about how greatly God has blessed us. Everyone of us are truly some of the most blessed people in the world. But God hasn’t just blessed us so that our lives can be comfortable and easy. Rather, God has blessed us, so that we can be a blessing to the people around us. And we do that all to the glory of God.

So using this B.L.E.S.S. acronym, we’ve been learning how we can be a blessing to the people around us.

The B stands for …. Begin with Prayer. It’s the kinda prayer that goes like this: “Here I am. Send me. Please God, give me a divine appointment for me where my blessings can meet someone else’s need.”

And I trust that as you’ve been praying that prayer, God’s been answering it. I hope by now you’ve all had the awesome experience of being God’s delivery person – delivering God’s blessings to the people around you.

The L stands for Listen. And there were a couple of lessons on listening. The first was to listen to the Holy Spirit. We talked a bit about listening to the nudges of the Holy Spirit as He guides us along on our blessing delivery route. The other lesson was to actually listen to people. Don’t just wait your turn to talk – actually listen to people. Hear what they’re really saying. Ask the right questions to find out what their real needs are.

And now today, we get to talk about the E in bless. And the E stands for Eat! And hopefully by now I’ve stirred up your curiosity. What on earth does eating have to do with being a blessing to the people around us?

Leave a Comment

Eatin’ That “Christian Food”

This devotional is a rehash of an earlier post, Livin’ on Strained Carrots. That devotional was written for grades 7 thru 12 and this is a re-write for grades 1 thru 6.

Today I want to teach you guys something very important. The thing I want to teach you is pretty easy to do, but there are lots of grown-ups that still don’t know how to do it. In fact, the thing that I’m going to teach you is so important, that if you learn how to do it today, and you start doing it – you will never be the same! Do you want to know what I’m going to teach you? I’m going to teach you how to feed yourself.
Before you tell me that you already know how, I want to play a little game.

Game:

Three contestants blindfolded, guess what object they hold. If they are right, they win the object.(Pop, Smarties, and baby food)

Imagine that it’s Christmas time. Christmas day, actually. All of your relatives have arrived and it’s time for the feast. There’s a big turkey (or ham or whatever your family usually eats complete with all the trimmings. Name a few of the things you would have at your Christmas meal…
So there’s all this food just waiting to be eaten, someone asks the blessing on the food and everyone digs in – except you. For you, your mom or your dad opens a jar of baby food and starts feeding you that stuff.
How would you like that? No way! That would be gross. And besides, you’re not a baby anymore! You don’t need your parents to feed you – you can feed yourself!
But you know… you couldn’t always feed yourself, could you? When you were a baby, you had to be fed by your parents. You had no teeth and all you could eat was baby food. But aren’t you glad you grew up and learned how to eat regular food all by yourself?
Today, I want to show you how you can grow up as a Christian and feed yourself spiritually. If you don’t know what that means, that basically means that I want to show you how to be really good friends with God.

1 Comment

Living on Strained Carrots

A jar of baby foodRecently I spoke at the chapel time for a Christian High School. It’s a little long for a devotional, but it can easily be chewed down to size. So without further ado, here is “Living on Strained Carrots”.

Game: Double or Nothing

Three contestants are blindfolded, and they try to guess what object they hold. If they are right, they win the object. Then if they correctly answer the bonus question about that object, they will double their prize. (Pop, Doritos, and a jar of baby food – for the bonus: What flavor?)

Imagine that it’s Christmas time. Christmas day, actually. All of your relatives have arrived and it’s time for the feast. There’s a big turkey (or ham or whatever your family usually eats complete with all the trimmings. There’s all this food just waiting to be consumed, some one asks the blessing on the food and everyone digs in – except you. For you, your mom or your dad cracks open a jar of Gerber’s “Broccoli, Potato, and Cheese Casserole” and start shoveling it in.

1 Comment