Are Gimmick Wrong?

Jn 6:1-14

The next meal that I want to talk about this week is the feeding of the 5000. It’s an interesting story from a couple of points. It has a message about evangelism and it deals with faith of the believers.

I love the imagery of this story. Imagine being one of the disciples and you are planning on some quiet down time with Jesus. You get in the boat and are going to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, but the crowd keeps following you. Jesus gets out, and, being who he is, has compassion on them and begins to heal the sick. Yet, Jesus, being who he is, takes advantage of the opportunity presented to him to preach the gospel.

Now you have to remember, these people can’t get in their cars and drive to a restaurant to get something to eat after the lessons like we can. They have a long walk back to their homes. They followed Jesus hoping to see more miracles and didn’t plan to be there all day, so they didn’t bring food with them.

Jesus tells the disciples to feed the multitude of people there. You can almost see the look of exasperation on their faces as Philip answers for all of them. Are you crazy? Do you know how much that’s going to cost, Jesus?

Maybe there is enough food among the group to at least give everyone something small to nibble on. They are in luck. One young boy brought his sack lunch. Andrew brings it to the other apostles. Let’s see, 5 loaves of bread. That’s one small loaf per 1000, and two small fish. Hmm, One per 2500. Yeah that should work!

Jesus then blows them away and says, “good, start handing it out.” We know the miracle that followed.

What can we learn from this meal? Other than being a good story, is there anything we can apply to our lives today? Let’s find out.

PRAYER

I. A Lesson of Faith

A. Where shall we buy bread?

1. When you read this story in John, it brings up a point that the other gospel don’t.

2. Jesus asked Philip the question to see where his faith was because he already knew what he was going to do.

3. He wanted to Philip to see who he really was.

4. When you first read this, you don’t blame Philip for not getting it. We would have thought about only the physical possibility as well.

5. But think about what has just happened even recently.

a) Jesus had just healed many sick people with a touch or a word.

b) He had just healed the paralyzed man at the pool of Bethesda.

c) He had turned water into wine at a wedding.

d) He had cast out demons

e) He had raised a young girl from the dead.

f) You really think he couldn’t make lunch for everyone?

6. Somehow, even with all this, Philip still couldn’t see God working beyond human capabilities.

7. His faith was sadly lacking in Jesus’ ability to do the incredible.

8. Andrew wasn’t a whole lot better. He found a young boy who had a sack lunch and brought that to Jesus.

9. Okay, now were talking. He was thinking Jesus could do something great with this small meal!

10. Well, it was almost faith in Jesus. Look at his words in verse 9. READ

11. Do you know who appears to have the strongest faith of anyone? The young boy.

a) He gave his meal to Jesus.

b) He seems to believe that his small meal could be useful to the savior.

c) It wasn’t much, but he gave it to Jesus

B. Are we so different?

1. I wonder if God does the same thing to us today.

2. Have you thought he might be saying to us, “get the message to the people.” And we respond, “but God, how are we going to pay for that?”

3. Or maybe we are like Andrew and say, we’ll we have these resources and might as well use them, but they aren’t really enough to do anything special for the kingdom.

a) How many times have we almost been at the point of something incredible, but didn’t have the faith that we could do it with what we have.

b) Maybe, we are more like Andrew than anyone else.

c) We know we have some abilities and we’re willing to give them to God to use, but we don’t really see how he could do much with them.

d) If left to our faith, we would do something small and feel that well, we did what we could with what we had available to us.

e) We’d pat ourselves on the back and think we did something and never realize the great miracle we just passed up because our faith wasn’t strong enough to believe God could do great things with what we have.

4. Let’s have the faith of the small boy

a) We might not have a whole lot, but when given to God to do the incredible, the incredible happens.

b) OUR resource may seem like nothing, but HIS resources are unfathomable.

c) Let’s give what we have to God.

d) It might be money, time, our skills, or simply our willingness.

e) If we do our part in giving what we have, God will do his part in doing something great with it.

5. If God says feed my sheep, he’ll provide the food just like he did with these people.

6. Faith isn’t blind stupidity, but a complete trust that God will make sure that if we are doing his will, he’ll provide what is needed to make it happen.

7. Do you have the faith to take him at his word?

II. The Gimmick Meal

A. Jesus used gimmicks

1. You may not like to hear it, but Jesus used gimmicks to get the people to listen to his message.

2. The crowds followed him to this mountain because they saw the miracles he was performing.

3. If you read on in chapter 6 they continued to follow him hoping for another free meal.

4. READ 6:30

5. At that point, he began preaching some very hard things for the Jews to accept.

6. When they heard the teaching vs 66 says many of them turned away and no longer followed him.

7. His gimmicks paid off though. Some heard the truth after the gimmicks and followed him because they were convinced he was the savior.

8. What started with a search for a free meal, ended with a search for the savior.

B. Modern church and gimmicks

1. I often hear about people getting upset because a church uses a gimmick to connect with the world around them.

2. I remember people telling me that power point shouldn’t be a part of our worship because it’s just a gimmick.

3. We struggle with the fact that people won’t just come to hear Christ preached, that if we have to resort to gimmicks, it’s not really the gospel they are responding to.

4. I freely admit to them that they are right. People rarely initially come to Christ out of pure gospel motives.

a) They come because of a class

b) They come because of a boyfriend or girlfriend.

c) They come because of the way the service is done.

d) They come because someone offered them some type of gimmick to see God.

5. Which is worse, doing something a little unorthodox that brings people in to hearing the gospel and changing their lives, or doing church just like we did in the good ole days and everyone stays on the outside of our doors?

6. After the gimmick puts them in contact with the gospel, the gospel begins to work on their hearts.

7. We shouldn’t be just about gimmicks,

8. We shouldn’t water down the truth just to get more people into the doors.

9. That’s not what it’s about.

10. Gimmicks, innovations, or whatever you want to call them need to lead people to hear the truth.

11. Some will be open to the truth and want to know more and some will hear more than they can accept and turn away.

12. The truth of this passage is that Jesus used a gimmick to open the way to telling them what they needed to hear.

13. If Jesus used them, why would it be wrong for us to use them as well?

C. The greatest gimmick

1. A church recently packed the house when they gave keys away to anyone who came to church that day. At the end of the service, people lined up with their keys to see if it opened the door to a car.

2. Jesus was the greatest gimmick ever used to bring people to God.

3. If you come, I am the key that opens the door of salvation.

4. At the church only one key opened the door to the car. With God everyone who comes to him gets a key that opens the door to salvation.

5. Are you ready to receive your key to salvation?