A THANKSGIVING THOUGHT ABOUT FOOD AND LEFTOVERS

Food - great food, favorite food, traditional food, and enough food, even too much food, and leftovers symbolize Thanksgiving Day in most of America.  Therefore, it seems appropriate to share a brief thought on the subject of food and leftovers.

John 6:1-13 records the biggest meal ever served by Jesus during His earthly ministry (and with the most leftovers).  It is of course,  the Feeding of the Five-thousand.  Not only was it the largest meal served by Jesus, He served it picnic style. This was the first Christian dinner-on-the-grounds!

While there are many wonderful lessons throughout John’s recording of this event, we will consider a few of those tucked into the first seven verses:

1 “Some time after this, Jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee (that is, the Sea of Tiberias).”  When Jesus crossed over to the opposite shore of Lake Galilee, He was fully aware that a great crowd of needy people would be following Him.  He also knew that unless He changed to a more favorable location, the people would go hungry.  He knew all of this before His disciples were aware of what He was doing, and before the people in that great crowd had any idea that He was making provision for them.  That crossing was a divinely calculated event.  Jesus always knows our real need before we do, and has a plan by which to care for us.

2 “and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the miraculous signs he had performed on the sick.”  Our needs, once we become aware of them, always seem bigger to us than they do to God.  The great crowd of people who followed Jesus had their own individual needs.  They saw that Jesus had met the needs of others, and then began to consider their own situation.  The miracles that Jesus performed on behalf of the sick were no small thing to those whom He healed, but to Jesus, the miracles in no way depleted His limitless stores of grace.

3 “Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples.”   Jesus did not immediately set to healing or feeding.  God does not always meet our needs exactly as we might wish or expect.  There are times when in order to meet our greater needs He must prepare us.  There are times when He will only sit down with us.  However, we may be sure that His very presence is always His promise of provision.

4 ”The Jewish Passover Feast was near.”  The Jews were preparing a great feast to honor the past deeds of Israel’s God, and to express their longing for His promised coming.  As they did, their God was preparing a feast of another kind.  Most of the Jewish leaders would miss this feast, but the humble in heart, the broken in spirit, the outcasts, the needy, the lame, the forsaken, and the forgotten were about to be fed by Israel’s Messiah.  Let us beware lest, as did most of the Jewish leaders of that day, we eat at the wrong table.

5-7 “When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him, he said to Philip, 'Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?'  He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do. Philip answered him, 'Eight months' wages would not buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!”  Jesus knew exactly what Philip was thinking.  We are too often like Philip.  Once we become aware of how great is the need of the moment, we cry out as if God himself were only then becoming aware of the situation.

Jesus knew that Philip could think only of an earthly way to meet the need.  Philip thought he needed money and the work of those who made their living baking bread.  However, Jesus would feed the people needing neither money nor the services of the baker.  Yes, it often pleases God to supply our needs in such a manner as Philip imagined, but He is not bound by such means.  God can supply all our needs according to His riches in Glory!

Do your needs look too great?  Do they seem reconcilable only though money and bread?  He will not permit us to suffer beyond what we are able to bear.  He may supply our needs though the small lunch of a child, out of His great treasure, or through some unexpected gift of a friend, but remember this; the need is even now being met though it may not at this moment be in sight.

Charles G. Finney, one of America’s greatest Christian leaders.  He was the human instrument behind what is known as “The Second Great Awakening.” Finney recorded in his memoirs that after preaching to hundreds of thousands, he found himself, only a few years prior to the Civil War, at Oberlin College located in Ohio, where he was to teach, but at a time when there was no money to pay the salaries of the faculty.  It was Thanksgiving Day, and His financial situation was desperate.  He wrote the following account.

“At one time, I saw no means of providing for my family through the winter. Thanksgiving Day came, and found us so poor that I had been obliged to sell my traveling trunk, which I had used in my evangelistic labors, to supply the place of a cow which I had lost. I rose on the morning of Thanksgiving, and spread our necessities before the Lord. I finally concluded by saying that, if help did not come, I should assume that it was best that it should not; and would be entirely satisfied with any course that the Lord would see it wise to take. I went and preached, and enjoyed my own preaching as well, I think, as I ever did. I had a blessed day to my own soul; and I could see that the people enjoyed it exceedingly.

After the meeting, I was detained a little while in conversation with some brethren, and my wife returned home. When I reached the gate, she was standing in the open door, with a letter in her hand. As I approached she smilingly said, ‘The answer has come, my dear;’ and handed me the letter containing a check from Mr. Josiah Chapin of Providence, for two hundred dollars.

He had been here the previous summer, with his wife. I had said nothing about my wants at all, as I never was in the habit of mentioning them to anybody. But, in the letter containing the check, he said he had learned that the endowment fund had failed, and that I was in want of help. He intimated that I might expect more, from time to time. He continued to send me six hundred dollars a year, for several years; and on this I managed to live.”

God knows your needs as well, and it is His will to meet them in the manner that will best bring you to greater faith and maturity.  He has lessons yet to teach you.

How often have we looked back on some seemingly impossible situation and realized that not only had God met our need, He had actually provided more than we really needed or deserved.  The leftovers from the Feeding of the Five-thousand serve as a powerful object lesson of the ease with which the Lord is able to care for us.

The leftovers also teach us that God is not in the business of wastefulness.  The leftover pieces were clean, nutritious, and valuable.  He had them placed in baskets so that they would not be further broken or spoiled.  Our Lord is the Master of conservation and good stewardship.  He would have us be as well.

Finally, the leftovers teach us that God knows not only of our present, but also of our future needs.  His provision for today is not the last.  Jesus knew that some would be hungry again before they had an opportunity to get back home.  He never sends us on our way without providing for the journey.

In light of such encouraging thoughts, there is every reason to “Let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body; and be thankful” (Colossians 3:15).

HAPPY THANKSGIVING, AND DO NOT FORGET TO SHARE THE LEFTOVERS!