FIRST WORDS
To My Friends, Colleagues, Church Fellowship, Curious People everywhere and especially my Grandchildren,
Always know that you are fully loved by God and you are loved by me. I pray that you remember our purpose is to reflect the entire Glory of God.
CHRIST AND THE FEEDING OF THE 600,000
We, who are modern Christians, have been taught from the earliest days of Sunday School and inspired by the numerous Pastoral messages concerning the New Testament miracles where Jesus Christ feeds the 5,000 or the 3,000. But, have we made the connection between the more modern occasion of this miracle (about 30 A.D.) with the first miracle of its kind that was performed by Christ at least 1,300 years before the birth of Jesus Christ as God incarnate (God in human form).
This is not an event where Jesus Christ in a New Testament Israel is reenacting a miracle that was performed by His Father in the Old Testament before God the Father retired and left the family business to His Son. (I certainly hope you get the light hearted humor I am trying to introduce into this. I am not trying to be sacrilegious, and please forgive me if that is the way it comes across. I am trying to point out that many modern Christians take just this point of view when they think about the relationship of Jesus Christ to the Father.) This Old Testament miracle recorded in Numbers 11 is foundational, in that Christ as He leads His people in the wilderness will act consistently in both this situation and in those that are to come when He walks this world in human flesh. With that in mind I call our attention to the details of both events.
During the wilderness years about 1,300 B.C. the people of God are grumbling and rebelling because of a lack of meat in their diet. They are hungry for meat in a diet that consists of manna. Christ speaks with Moses and instructs him that he is to tell the people to consecrate themselves, for tomorrow they will have meat to eat. Not just enough meat for tomorrow but enough meat to eat for the entire month. Numbers 11:18,19 Moses understandably responds to Christ with these words, see if they sound familiar. "I am among six hundred thousand men on foot, and you say, "I will give them meat to eat for a whole month!" Would they have enough if the flocks and herds were slaughtered for them? Would they have enough if all the fish in the sea were caught for them?" I'll ask again, does this sound familiar. Let me take you to a response by God's servants that might be more familiar. In about 30 A.D. Christ has been teaching for the day and everyone is hungry. The disciples ask for Christ to send everyone home and Christ tells them feed the people. Mark 6:30 "This is a remote place, they said, and it's already very late. Send the people away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat." But Christ answered, "You give them something to eat." They said to him, "That would take more than half a year's wages! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?" In 30 A.D. Jesus Christ is going to take two fish and five loaves of bread and feed 5,000 people. We look upon this with awe and wonder at the power of God in the Jesus Christ, and yet 1,300 years before this Christ is going to cause a wind to blow from the sea and provide quail that will fall 3 feet deep outside the camp of Israel. The people of Israel could walk the entire day away from their camp and the quail were still piled up 3 feet deep. Three million people ate quail for the next month until they were sick of meat.
This, along with the mana from heaven, is the original miracle of the feeding of God's people.
There are many differences between these two miracles and yet the common theme is the incredible nature of the miracle that leaves we as God's children speechless as God asks, "Is the Lord's arm to short?" Num. 11:23.
When we doubt the power of Christ to speak into our lives in ways that bring forth miraculous results, we answer God's question with a tepid shrug of our shoulders.
We would do better to share with each other the bold faith of Paul when he tells Timothy, "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep what I have committed to Him until that day." 2 Timothy 1:12
"Is anything to hard for God?" Genesis 8 and Jeremiah 32
I was blessed this week when I read this encounter and immediately heard it's echoes in the centuries to come as God comes into the world to save us. I continue to be amazed at the reality of God that is the same in Christ yesterday, today and tomorrow.
Yol bolsum,
Pastor Tim
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