Presented to The Church in the Village at Shepherd Village
To view a 2019 version presented to Grace Point Ministries, click here: https://sheepspeaks.blogspot.com/2019/04/luke-9-and-miracle-of-salvation.html
Hello,
I am Captain Michael Ramsay. My wife and I have 3 daughters: two are in high
school and one is in kindergarten. We are blessed to be Salvation Army Officers
- I am from Victoria originally and we have
served in BC, Saskatchewan , Manitoba
and we are currently serving in Regent
Park
There
was a fellow who decided to go parachuting with his friend. As neither of them
had ever been parachuting before they needed to be trained. They spent the day
at the airport studying wind trajectories, physics, the speed of acceleration
of a free falling object, as well as what to do if your parachute fails to
open. The one friend did not understand it at all and even when they practiced
with a mock parachute, he didn’t get it. He couldn’t even get the mock
parachute to work. He didn’t get it.
Then
they went to the plane. Flipping a coin to see who would go first, the friend
lost and was supposed to jump first. Discovering, however, at about 850 ft in
the air that he was afraid of heights, he convinced his companion to jump
first.
They
were jumping from 3000 ft. As this was their first jump, cords were tied to
their parachutes so that they would open automatically upon exiting the plane
because you never know if someone new will be able to pull the cord to release
the parachute or not. The companion climbed out on the wing (as he was supposed
to) jumped, counted to five (as they practiced), looked up saw that the parachute
had opened beautifully and enjoyed one of the most peaceful experiences of his
life noticing the miracles of God’s creation while drifting to the ground on
this perfectly windless day.
The
friend, emboldened, does the same: climbs onto the wing, jumps, counts and
looks to see the parachute; he reaches to grab the steering toggles on his
parachute…they aren’t there. His parachute isn’t there (most of it anyway). It
isn’t working. He has to take it off his back and pull the emergency chute all
the while following faster and faster towards the ground. As he pulls the cord,
he prays: “Lord, please save me.” He pulls the cord, looks, and the emergency
chute didn’t open properly either. It isn’t catching any wind. It isn’t slowing
him down. He falls beneath the trees towards the power lines and highway below.
It is
at this time that the Lord’s hand reaches out and actually lifts the
parachutist up in the air, opens his parachute and gently sets him on the
ground without a scratch. This is a true story; I am that parachutist. Miracles
do happen.
Today
we are going to read about the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 as recorded
in Luke 9:10-20 (NIV):
10 When the apostles returned,
they reported to Jesus what they had done. Then he took them with him and they withdrew
by themselves to a town called Bethsaida kingdom
of God
12 Late in the
afternoon the Twelve came to him and said, “Send the crowd away so they can go
to the surrounding villages and countryside and find food and lodging, because
we are in a remote place here.”
13 He replied, “You
give them something to eat.”
They answered, “We
have only five loaves of bread and two fish—unless we go and buy food for all
this crowd.” 14 (About five thousand men were there.)
But he said to his
disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” 15 The disciples
did so, and everyone sat down. 16 Taking the five loaves and the two fish and
looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the
disciples to distribute to the people. 17 They all ate and were satisfied, and
the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.
18 Once when Jesus
was praying in private and his disciples were with him, he asked them, “Who do
the crowds say I am?”
19 They replied,
“Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, that one of
the prophets of long ago has come back to life.”
20 “But what about
you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”
Peter answered,
“God’s Messiah.”
In our
Scripture today, I don’t think it is an accident that God and Luke put the
story of Peter’s confession of faith directly after the miraculous feeding of the
5000. Luke leaves us to draw the natural conclusion from this miracle that
indeed Jesus is the Christ and that God is a God of miracles.
Last
week I returned from Ottawa Ottawa
Today,
I want to share a story from another deployment: the 2008 hurricane relief
effort in Texas
I
heard more than one account of a contemporary miracle paralleling that of the
fish and the loaves. Our canteens (food trucks) were instructed to make sure
that they gave away all of their food before they came in for the night. One
canteen had some food left. It was getting late so they were seeking someone to
give their last Cambro (container) of food to. They prayed. One person then saw
a line of about 12-18 tired and hungry looking construction workers so they
headed over to offer them their food. They were really appreciative.
As
they were feeding these men, a number of school buses filled with people
pulled up. It is my understanding that they served over 800 meals at that
location – no one went away hungry. Feeling blessed by what the Lord had done,
they started to clean up. (Now there was a non-believer, a Red Cross worker on
their canteen with them today). Someone picked up the container from which they
fed the 800 meals and read from the side of it, ‘serves 90 meals’. The Lord fed
more than eight times that number and no one went hungry. Providentially, there
was a Red Cross worker who was helping them on the truck that day. He began to
cry. He said that he had never believed in God – until now.
In our
Scripture today, I don’t think it is an accident that God and Luke put the
story of Peter’s confession of faith directly after the feeding of the 5000.
Luke leaves us to draw the natural conclusion that God is a God of miracles and
Jesus is the Christ. He performed the miracle of the feeding of the 5000 two
thousand years ago and he performed the miracle of the feeding of the 800 nine
years ago. He is still performing miracles today and in doing so, He is
providing us opportunities to know and to help others know Jesus as Christ just
like Peter, and just like the Red Cross worker.
In the
Salvation Army we often serve God through feeding people in need; our challenge
when doing this is to keep our eyes open to the miracles of God and to be
willing to help others come to know Jesus’ love through them.
This
week my mind has been flooded with memories of the emergency disaster work with which I have
been involved. One of the first was a fire in northern Saskatchewan
We were blessed to be able to shelter and
feed displaced people; feed emergency responders, and provide emotional and
spiritual care. However, lives were lost and there were injuries, lost
businesses, and a lost home. Animals, our pets are often a source of comfort in
difficult times. There was a couple whose home was lost; they were able to
escape but their home, their belongings and their dog was not. The building
came crashing down on their dog and the fires raged for as long as they did
over the site. That night, in his distress, the pet owner missed the comfort of
his dog and he prayed, “God, please let me see my dog one last time – if only
just in Heaven.”
The next morning at just before 7AM when I
was delivering coffee to the people on site, I heard it: barking. The
SaskEnergy employees had heard it first. They told the firefighters. The
firefighters rescued him; he was pretty much unscathed. He was saved. The dog
was saved! Praise the Lord it was a miracle; it really was! God is a god of
miracles. God answered prayer and provided salvation that day.
I have been meditating a lot on Luke
9:10-20 these past couple of weeks in the context of The Salvation Army and the
Lord’s ministry through us of feeding and helping people in their time of need
and how these real miracles providing real assistance often really lead to
eternal life. There are those however – not as many - who when these things
happen, question why God allows tragedy and some even take that further to ask
why, if God is a loving God He sends people to hell?
The answer to the question why does Jesus
condemn people to hell is that He doesn’t. Listen carefully to what I am saying
here… Jesus doesn’t condemn people to hell. hell is real but Jesus
does not send people there. Those who are going there make that decision all on
their own. Those who stand condemned, condemn themselves by denying what is
plainly obvious to everyone (Ro 1&2). I truly believe that God gives us all
we need to know in this life from our experiences and even creation itself (cf.
Ro 1:18-24) and indeed there will still be a time when every knee will bow and
tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Ro 14:11, Philip 2:10) and then some,
some who believe in the Lord and obey His commandments will go off to spend
eternity with Him and some, some who deny Christ (Matthew 10:33) and do not
obey His commandments (John14:15), some who simply refuse His love will go off
to the hear the weeping and gnashing of teeth (Mathew 25:31ff). This is sad.
This is particularly sad because we know
that God loves us. John 3:16 says that He loves the entire world. He loves us
so much that He laid down His life for us (John 15). God loves us so much that
He sent His only begotten, his only natural, his only sired Son to die so that
we may live.
I can’t imagine how much this must hurt God
that some of us do actually perish. I am a parent. Many of us are parents and
grandparents here. Think about this scenario for a moment. The house across the
street is on fire; there are children asleep in that house. Your child is able
to save them. Your son or daughter – your ONLY son or daughter can reach them
so you encourage her “…Go, go, go! Save those people.”
Your daughter goes. She goes. She suffers
every peril in that burning house that everyone else in there is suffering (cf.
1 Cor 10:14; Lk 4). There is the smoke – the deadly smoke, there is the fire,
and there are the falling beams. She is successful. She gets to where the children
are. She can see them. She is able to make an opening in the wall. She points
them to the way out. She yells for them to walk through the opening in the
wall. She has made a clear path so that all of the kids can be saved - and then
she dies. Your daughter dies so that all these kids can be saved. Your child
dies so that none of these kids need to die but – here’s the
kicker: the children did not want to be saved. They die. She died so that they
could be saved but – on purpose – they died. They did not need to die but they
chose not to walk through the opening. They chose to die. Your daughter dies
for them and they all die anyway; they refuse to be saved.
This is what it is like for God when our
loved one’s reject Him. He sent His son to this earth that is perishing. He
sent His Son to this house that is on fire – and His Son died so that we may
live but yet some still refuse His love for us and some still reject His
Salvation. He sent Jesus not to condemn us to burn in the eternal house fire
but to save us but some of us refuse to walk to safety. Some of us simply
refuse to walk through that opening that Jesus died to make. John 3:18: “Those
who believe in Him are not condemned; but those who do not believe are
condemned already…” of their own accord because, 3:19, “people loved darkness
rather than light.”
It was the same with our huricane relief
work on Galveston
Island Island . Some,
however, rejected their salvation.
There is a story of one 19 or 20 year-old
who stood on the waterfront, intentionally defying the storm. He was swept away
to his death. I met a man who lost his home and his business and praised the
Lord for his insurance but he wondered why his brother chose to stay behind and
die. How does he deal with the fact that his brother rejected salvation?
This is the same for us today. We praise God
that the early warning for the end of times was sounded 2 millennia ago with
the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ. We praise the Lord, that he gave
his life so that everyone can be saved -
but the sad thing is that some will reject this salvation. Some ignore the
early warning system. Some defy God. Some refuse to be saved. But there is the
good news. Many will be saved; as we share the Gospel of salvation, many will
be saved.
Jesus died and rose again, and we, as long
as we are still breathing have the opportunity to be saved from the
eschataolgical hurricane and the eternal house fire. As long as we are alive we
can still walk to safety through the path Jesus made through His death and
resurrection. We can walk from certain death to certain life. All we need to do
is believe, obey, and walk through that wall to eternal life because “Indeed,
God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that
the world might be saved through Him” (John 3:17). “For God so loved the world
that He gave His only [begotten] Son, so that everyone who believe in Him may
not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Salvation comes from Christ alone and we
who know that have a responsibility to share that news. Just like Christ
provided the food and asked the disciples to distribute it and Peter then confessed
Jesus as Lord; so we are asked to point people to that salvation the Jesus
provided for the whole world. And we are invited to share in that salvation.
Can you imagine if Jesus made the bread for all the people and the disciples
never handed it out?
Romans 1:16-17 states that I am not ashamed of the Gospel for it is
the power of Salvation for all. Thinking to my work with natural disasters; can
you imagine if the news announcers were so ashamed of the fact the hurricane
was coming that they didn’t share information? Can you imagine if the
meteorologists were so ashamed of the fact that they did not know the exact
time and hour the hurricane was going to strike that they didn’t tell anybody?
Can you imagine if your neighbour knew that the hurricane was coming and she
evacuated but she never told you because she was ashamed because she couldn’t
explain exactly what, why, where, how, and when the hurricane was coming? Can
you imagine the horror as you look up to see your life being swept away – and
no one ever told you how to be saved?
Well, an eschatological hurricane is coming and it is a lot more
dangerous than Hurricane Ike. There are people in this city here today who are
sleeping in their beds or watching their TVs right now who have no idea that the
end is coming. There are people out there who are lost and just waiting for us
to point them to salvation.
So today, let us do that. Today let us point people to safety. None
of us know when our lives are going to end. We may be taken tomorrow. None of us
know when the Lord is returning and bringing with him the end to our world.
But, like the weatherman watching the storm, we do know that the things of this
earth are going to pass away (Mt 24:35, Mk 13:31, Lk 21:33, Rev 21:1) and it is
our job to share with everyone we meet the good news of the way to salvation so
that they do not need to perish.
It is our responsibility to share the Gospel for, indeed, the Gospel
is the power of God for all to be saved both now and forever. To this end then,
I encourage us all to look for opportunities to share the good news of
salvation in the upcoming weeks here so that we may all turn to God and
experience the full power of His Salvation.
I have one more story for us from my time
in Texas Texas who had accepted the
Lord not too long before coming to Galveston
Scott was working on of one of our
canteens. Paul lives in an apartment with 10 other people and is familiar
with the neighbourhood activities of gangs and drugs. This boy saw our
canteen near his home and wanted to help. He approached Scott and
volunteered to help. Scott welcomed him with open arms and very quickly
made an impression on Paul - he kept coming back. Scott even gave him T-shirt
and hat. The look on Paul’s face was worth a million dollars or more.
The evening before Scott was to return home
from his deployment, I had the opportunity to give him his exit interview.
During this interview we began speaking about Paul. Scott told me that he had
prayed with Paul on a number of occasions and that Paul was asking about Jesus.
I asked if Paul had asked the Lord into his heart. Scott said ‘not yet’ and
asked me to help him do that.
The next day, Sunday; Scott, Paul, and a
number of other volunteers working on the canteen eagerly awaited our arrival –
Paul was ready to ask the Lord into his heart. We arrived and I
encouraged Scott to lead Paul in the ‘sinners’ prayer’. After a simple
confession of sin and profession of faith, Paul was welcomed into the family of
God. We then sang a verse of Amazing Grace and Scott presented Paul with
a Bible.
While we were celebrating Paul’s
proclamation of salvation, two apparent ‘good-ole boys’ rolled up in a pick-up
truck with their radio blaring Hank William’s “I Saw the Light.” They
were angels. They were messengers of God who had come to celebrate with us,
then they were gone.
In the midst of all the turmoil and all the
suffering God was there. In the midst of all our troubles and all our
sufferings today, God is here. nine years ago in Texas
Today we all here have a choice or two to make. For those of us who
are presently experiencing eternal salvation we have the same choice as the
disciples of our text, we need to choose whether to share the bread of eternal
salvation with all those gathered around us.
And for those of us who have not yet taken advantage of that
salvation Jesus has already provided for us, we have the same choice that faced
the people of Galveston
Island
It is my hope today that all of us will
choose salvation.
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