Many years ago when Rudyard Kipling was a popular writer it was reported that he was getting 10
shillings for every word he wrote. Some students at Oxford University, who were not impressed
with Kipling, sent him 10 shillings with a request that he send them one of his very best words. He
cabled back one word-thanks!
This is certainly one of the very best words in any persons vocabulary. I became curious about
what use Jesus made of this word thanks, and to my surprise I discovered that Jesus used the word
more often for food than all other uses put together. He is not revealed as thanking God for nature,
for people, or for the temple in which to worship, but over and over again Jesus is portrayed as
giving thanks for ordinary, everyday, commonplace food. The main New Testament word for
thanks is eucharisteo. Out of the 9 times it is on the lips of Jesus 8 of them are in reference to food.
Now, lest you think this is a Greek word somehow related to food, let me assure you this is not the
case. The primary use of this word in the New Testament is from the pen of Paul, and he hardly
ever used it for food. In all of the letters of Paul he is always giving thanks for people.
The evidence overwhelmed me because Jesus is the only person in the Bible who is so thankful
for food that it becomes a prominent part of His life's story. Here in the record of His feeding of the
4000 Jesus is recorded as giving thanks 2 times in two verses. First He thanks God for the 7 loaves
in verse 6, and then He takes the few small fish in verse 7 and gives thanks again. The second time
He uses a synonym that can also mean praise. He thanked God for the bread and praised God for
the fish. This is the only miracles Jesus performed where He expresses His thanks twice for the
same meal.
In the feeding of the 5000 He only gave thanks once. The only other place we see this double
thanksgiving is also connected with food, but it is not a miracle meal. It was the Last Supper, and
Jesus in Luke 22 first took the cup and gave thanks, and then He took the bread and gave thanks.
Jesus was a thankful person, and even though in His deity He was the creator of all food, in His
humanity He was thankful for food. The dinner table is a frequent piece of furniture in the life of
our Lord. A focus on the role of food in His life will magnify the reality of His humanity.
Mark's Gospel is a food-filled Gospel. The only miracles that all four of the Gospels record is the
miracle of feeding the 5000. Mark goes beyond the others and records the feeding of the 4000
which Luke and John do not record. He tells of the eating and drinking and feasting and banquets of
Jesus. Jesus ate with just about everybody. There was the tax collectors, the sinners, and even the
Pharisees. Meals were such a major matter that the disciples of Jesus were suspected of not being as
spiritual as John's disciples and Pharisees, for they fasted, but the disciples of Jesus did not. In Mark
2:19 Jesus defends their non-stop feasting by pointing out that you do not fast at a wedding, and that
was the atmosphere of His ministry. He was the bridegroom, and the they were the guests, and so
feasting was always in order.
The Pharisees did not like the crowd that He ate with, nor the frequency of His eating. It just did
not seem very spiritual to them, but to Jesus it was very spiritual, and it was that for which He had
so much gratitude. We know the Pharisees made a big issue about Jesus healing on the Sabbath,
but they also made a big issue about His Sabbath eating habits. His disciples would pick off some
grain as they walked through the grain field on the Sabbath. The Pharisees charged them with
breaking the law. Jesus defended them and said in Mark 2:25-26, "Have you never read what
David did when he and his companions were hungry and in need? In the days of Abiathar the high
priest, he entered the house of God and ate the consecrated bread, which is lawful only for priests to
eat, and he also gave some to his companions."
Jesus plays the role of the lawyer, and in defending his disciples he appeals to precedent as any
good lawyer would. Meeting the need of hunger is so basic that it has priority over legalistic and
ceremonial laws, and He sums up His argument in verses 27 and 28: "The Sabbath was made for
man not man for the Sabbath. So the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath." When it came to
eating on the Sabbath Jesus is 100% in favor of it, and in Mark 1 He even healed Peter's
mother-in-law on the Sabbath, and she got out of bed and made them a Sabbath meal.
Eating was not only a basic part of the social life of Jesus and His disciples, it was a part of His
healing ministry. When He raised the little 12 year old girl from the dead, the first thing He said in
Mark 5:43 was, "Give her something to eat." Today you are given an IV with nourishment going
into your body because they know this is important in the prevention of shock. It is vital part of the
healing process, and Jesus knew this long before science did.
We could go on through many references showing how food played a major role in the ministry
of Jesus, but we want to just look at the conclusion of His ministry at the Last Supper. A large
portion of the Gospels revolve around this last meal. The Gospel is perpetuated through this meal,
for Jesus left us with the command to remember Him by eating bread and drinking a cup. Meal
symbolism is the means by which the Master makes His atoning death a perpetual part of our
memory. All of this introduction is a foundation for the point I am making which is-
THANKSGIVING FOR FOOD IS A CHRISTLIKE FOCUS.
The reason I think this is an important issue is that Christians often feel more like the Pharisees
then the Lord. We feel like too much focus on the body and its pleasure in eating is not spiritual. At
Thanksgiving we often feel like gluttonous pagans when we spend so much time planning, buying,
preparing, and then devouring food. It all seems so secular and unspiritual that if someone told us
they only had a hamburger and fries at Thanksgiving we would tend to feel they should be
nominated for sainthood. We have an uneasy feeling about our love for food. To add to the mixed
feelings we know that much food is a major cause of health problems. So as American Christians
we are caught in some ambiguous feelings about the spirituality of our Thanksgiving celebration.
Eating disorders are a problem, and on the other hand millions are starving, so the more we think
about food the more mixed our feelings get.
To take food, and plenty of it, away from Thanksgiving is like taking gifts away from Christmas,
eggs away from Easter, and fireworks away from the 4th of July. Food is the very essence of
Thanksgiving. My point is, we do not need to feel that this is some sort of compromise with our
culture, for the spirit of Thanksgiving for good and abundant food goes way back before our culture
even existed, and is the foundation for why it is a part of our culture.
The American spirit came from the Christian spirit, and not the other way around. The people
who gave us Thanksgiving were Christian people. The background for the first Thanksgiving in
America is quite similar to the feeding of the 4000 in our text. The people had been following Jesus
for 3 days, and whatever provisions they had were now depleted. Jesus knew if He dismissed them
to go home some of them would faint for lack of food. Jesus had compassion on these hungry
people, and that was the motivation for this massive meal by miracle. His own disciples only had 7
loaves and a few small fish. This was scarcely enough food for them to have a meal, but Jesus
multiplied it to feed the multitude.
The first Thanksgiving in America had this same desperate setting. The Pilgrims in 1623 found
themselves facing a crisis. A great drought had left them with no rain on their crops from May to the
middle of July. The people down South in Virginia wondered why the Pilgrims did not just give up
and come down to God's country where food was abundant. I am sure there were people who
thought the 4000 following Jesus were fools to be off in the barren desert listening to Him when they
could be on the coast catching an abundance of fish. The Pilgrims trusted God to deliver them, and
so they set aside a day of fervent prayer. Governor William Bradford kept a journal of these trying
times, and so we have an eye witness account of the events that lead to Thanksgiving.
Bradford describes the day of prayer, and I will break into his account and share a portion: "...for
all the morning and greatest part of the day, it was clear weather and very hot, and not a cloud or
any sign of rain to be seen; yet toward evening it began to overcast and shortly after to rain with
such sweet and gentle showers as gave them cause of rejoicing and blessing God....It came without
either wind or thunder or any violence, and by degrees in that abundance as that the earth was
thoroughly soaked therewith. Which did so apparently revive and quicken the decayed corn and
other fruits, as was wonderful to see, and made the Indians astonished to behold. And afterwards the
Lord sent them such seasonable showers, with interchange of fair warm weather and through His
blessing caused a fruitful and liberal harvest...for which mercy, in time convenient, they also set
apart a day of Thanksgiving."
Jesus fed the 4000 by miraculous provision of food. He fed the Pilgrims by a natural provision
of food, but the end result was the same: people filled with gratitude for food. The focus on food
was the very heart of the American Thanksgiving because God's people were grateful for His
provisions. Feasting with lots of food is symbolic of God's blessing. Famine and lack of food is
symbolic of God's judgment, and being in a state which is out of His will. Jesus had His longest
encounter with Satan when He had gone without food for 40 days. Lack of food and spiritual
warfare were linked just as abundance of food and thanksgiving to God are linked.
When Jesus endured His greatest darkness on the cross, and felt forsaken by God, He was a very
hungry man. He had last eaten on Thursday evening. He had since been through the energy
consuming struggle in the garden of Gethsemane, and the all night illegal trial. He was hurried to
the cross without breakfast and hung there through the lunch hour, and at mid-afternoon in His state
of horrible hunger He felt God forsaken. He died a hungry man, but when He rose from the dead He
ate with His disciples again, and promised He would eat with them forever. Lack of food and lack
of God's presence go hand in hand. The most cursed times in the history of Israel were times of
terrible famine. In famine they were God forsaken. They suffered horrible starvation under God's
judgment, but when they lived in obedience they feasted on great abundance.
Food was always a focus of thanksgiving. In the great 23rd Psalm the very essence of being led
by the Good Shepherd is abundance of food. "You prepare a table before me in the presence of my
enemies." The lying down in green pastures and being lead beside still waters is enjoying abundance
of eating and drinking. How revealing is the picture of the Good Shepherd in Rev. 7 where He leads
His people who have been through great tribulation to springs of living water, and verse 16 says,
"Never again will they hunger; never again will they thirst." The very essence of heaven is food and
drink in abundance with hunger and thirst banished along with all other evils.
No wonder Jesus taught us to pray, "Give us this day our daily bread." Every meal we enjoy is a
little taste of heaven. It is a reminder that God is good, and that we have a basis for perpetual
thanksgiving. Not only is it not unspiritual to focus on food for Thanksgiving, it is the very essence
of spirituality to be thankful for food. Where do we begin our training of our children to be thankful
to God? We begin at the table with such prayers as, "God is great, God is good, and we thank Him
for our food." Or, "Come Lord Jesus be our guest, let this daily food be blest."
Why do we begin with food? Because food is the primary symbol of God's goodness. If you are
not thankful for food, you are not a thankful person. If you do not have food, nothing else matters.
It is a level where the smallest child can begin to grasp gratitude, and it rises to the level of the most
profound theology where Jesus says in John 6:51, "I am the living bread that came down from
heaven. If a man eats of this bread, he will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give for
the life of the world." How is a man saved? It is by what he eats. You are what you eat, and Jesus
says you can only have eternal life if you eat right. Here is food exalted to the level of the key to
eternity. Jesus goes on in John 6:53-56, and stresses over and over that the key to eternal life is in
eating the proper diet. Your diet determines your destiny. Jesus says,
"I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh
of the Son of Man and drink His blood, you
have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh
and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I
will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh
is real food and my blood is real drink. Whoever
eats my flesh and drinks my blood remains in me
and I in him."
If you have been thinking that all this focus on food is much ado about nothing, and trifling with
trivialities, now you will have to change your mind, for Jesus has lifted this subject to the highest
conceivable level of theology. This subject is to vast to cover in one message. It takes us through the
whole Old Testament sacrificial system where after the sacrifice was offered to God the priests and
the people ate the sacrifice in a feast of thanksgiving. Jesus was our sacrifice. He was the Lamb of
God that takes away the sin of the world. He was the best sacrificial Lamb ever offered to God. All
the other lambs were eaten and enjoyed with thanksgiving. What is to be done with the best offering
ever? Jesus says that He too is to be food for a feast of thanksgiving. He is our manna from heaven.
He is our sacrificial meat which we are to enjoy perpetually as we thank God for this provision that
guarantees we will never hunger again. In Christ we consume that food and drink that feeds the
eternal nature and gives it life abundant.
Taking Christ into your life is taking nourishment that feeds the soul. The Christian life from
salvation to eternity has a food focus. Jesus said to the church, "Behold I stand at the door and
knock, if any man hears my voice and opens the door I will come in and eat with him and he with
me." Eating together with Christ is where the Christian life begins. The new birth is a birthday
party. It is a feast for the soul, and the final result of this meal with the Master will be the marriage
supper of the Lamb that begins eternity. That first feast with Jesus leads to feasting with Him
forever. The Christian life is to be a feast oriented life of enjoying food on all levels. There is food
for the body, for the mind, and for the soul.
To try and get away from the focus on food for thanksgiving is to quench the Spirit. You have to
cut out a vast chunk of the Bible if you are going to judge a food focus to be secular and unspiritual.
You have to reject the symbolism of Christ and a large portion of Scripture. Focusing on food does
not make you spiritual, for everybody does that. The most depraved and ungodly will feast on
thanksgiving. They will stuff themselves with no thought of God. The response to this thoughtless
and thankless feasting, however, is not fasting, nor guilt, for our feasting. We are to feast with a
thankful heart for the goodness of God that allows us to enjoy the abundance and pleasure of food.
Jesus loved to feed people, and He died that we might have access again to the tree of life for all
eternity, and be able to eat forever the wonderful fruits of God's creation.
In a sense, we are saved to eat. That is a slogan I have never seen in print, but the facts of the
Bible support it as a legitimate Christian slogan. We are not born to lose, we are born to eat. We
are born to enjoy what God has made to give life on every level, for body, mind, and soul. Jesus is
the total caterer, for He provides food for the total man. To eat on the highest level is to feed on the
Word. We are to taste and see that the Lord is good. The Christian is to enjoy
feasting for the total man. Christians are not to be gluttons, but they are to be people who enjoy
physical food as well as the mental and spiritual.
When we don't feel good we do not enjoy food. This is not a good state to be in, but one which is
negative, and one which does not produce the fruit of the Spirit. We are most loving, joyful,
peaceful, and in harmony with God and man when we are cable of enjoying a good meal. The
physical and the spiritual are linked. All that hinders the enjoyment of food is of the kingdom of
evil. Sickness, depression, grief: you can put together a whole list of things that make us not enjoy
eating, and they are all negative, and things that the devil uses to rob us of abundant life. In
contrast, all that leads to feasting and enjoyment of food are things like health, joy, love, friendship,
and victory over the forces of evil.
There is no escaping the facts, the focus on food is inescapable for the thoughtful person.
Everything that God gives is food for the body, mind, or spirit. He feeds the total man, and the more
we recognize this, the more we will see all of life as a feast of one sort or another, for which to be
thankful. God is the great Provider. He provides the manna for His people in every wilderness. In
the feeding of the 4000 Christ is the Cosmic Caterer doing in a more visible way what He has
always done and will always do, feed His sheep. Israel in the wilderness came to see God as their
daily host. The manna fell in abundance, but they could not use doggie bags. They could only take
enough for the day. They had to depend on God everyday and not save up so they could forget Him
for a day or so. It is dangerous to be independent of God, for we too easily slip into thinking we can
provide for ourselves, for we are not charity cases.
That is our great sin as Americans. We are so affluent that we forget our dependence on God.
Give us this day our daily bread is not relevant to us. We buy groceries for a week or two, and we
know we are always set for better than a day. We lose this sense of dependence on God, and thus,
we lose a sense of gratitude for daily provision. We do not see God as our daily deliverer supplying
our need for food. Our problem is not that we are too focused on food, but that we are not focused
enough on thankfulness for our food. We try to minimize food, and in so doing we eliminate a basic
element for the building up of a spirit of gratitude.
Meals just do not last. Even this miraculous meal did not last long. By the time these 4000 men
got home they were, no doubt, extremely hungry again. This miracle was no cure-all for hunger. It
was just a stop gap measure to help these people get back to their normal world where they provided
for their own daily needs. So this miracle lunch was old news by supper time. Miracles do not last,
and to depend on miracles is to make a major mistake. If you are only thankful for miracles, you
are not a very thankful person. We need to see that God's primary way of meeting our needs is
through natural means, and this is to be the basis for most of our thanksgiving.
There is no hint that these people gathered in the wilderness each year to celebrate this great
event of mass feeding. It was done and gone, and life went on. They had to go fishing for fish, and
they had to farm for bread the rest of their lives in order to eat. Jesus did not tell them to forsake
their farms and boats and follow Him, and He would feed them by miracles. He sent them back
home to labor for their meals. The miracles solved no problem, but only met the need for this one
meal. If you have never been fed by a miracle, do not feel bad. Just be thankful you have the
natural means by which to meet your need for food. Your gratitude can never depend on miracles.
This is true in the spiritual realm as well. We need to be thankful for the commonplace everyday
provisions of food for the total man.
We become victims of our culture when we cannot be thankful on this level, but demand more
and more things in order to feel gratitude. This has always been a danger for Christians, and Paul
warned about it in his day. He wrote in I Tim. 6:6-9, "But godliness with contentment is great gain.
For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. But if we have food and
clothing, we will be content with that. People who want to get rich fall into temptation and a trap
and into many foolish and harmful desires that plunge men into ruin and destruction."
Lloyd Ogilvie says that many Christians are never satisfied. They have everything yet they are
driven by ambition and lust for more. They want power and control, and are ever in the quest for the
kingdom of thingdom. There are Christian people of fame and fortune, but are they super spiritual?
Not at all. They have forgotten to be thankful for the simple and basic values of life. But we also
need to recognize that it is not more spiritual to give up the good things of life that God has made it
possible for us to enjoy. We need to learn to enjoy whatever God provides with a spirit of
thankfulness. Paul wrote in Col. 2:16, "Therefore do not let anyone judge you by what you eat or
drink..." He called them worldly rules that we are to reject by those who would treat the body
harshly and say, as he does in verse 21, "Do not handle, do not taste, do not touch."
Paul called them hypocritical liars who order people to obtain from certain foods which God
created to be received with thanksgiving. In I Tim. 4:4 he writes, "Everything God created is good,
and nothing is to be rejected if it is received with thanksgiving." All through history there has been a
tendency to think fasting is more spiritual than feasting, and that to indulge in banquets where food
is the focus is to be less spiritual. This is a rejection of the life of our Lord who was no ascetic, but a
lover of good food, and all the fun that it provides for fellowship with family and friends.
John Calvin, whom we may think of as a stern theologian, saw the folly of asceticism, and he
wrote, "If anyone raises the objection that a frugal use of food and drink is sufficient for the
nourishment of the body, I answer, although food is a proper provision of our bodily need, yet the
legitimate use of it goes beyond mere sustenance. For good flavors were not added to food without a
purpose, but because our Heavenly Father wishes to give us pleasure with the delicacies He
provides." Wise Christians will learn to enjoy the good food God has given. We are not to become
indulgent pleasure loving fanatics, and forget moderation, but simply to enjoy the pleasure of what
God has provided through food. God wants you to enjoy and be thankful for all He has provided.
Don't take it for granted, take it with gratitude.
History is filled with true stories of how men lost at sea will catch a seagull and devour it with
more gratitude than many have with prime rib before them. We have such an account in Acts 27
where Paul and other prisoners are being carried by a vicious storm. Paul urges them all to eat. He
says in Acts 27:33, "For the last 14 days you have been in constant suspense and have gone without
food-you haven't eaten anything. Now I urge you to take some food. You need it to survive. Not
one of you will lose a single hair from his head. After he said this, he took some bread and gave
thanks to God in front of them all. Then he broke it and began to eat. They were all encouraged
and ate some food themselves."
All 276 men were saved. Paul implied they would not have survived without the food to give
them strength for their swim to safety when the ship broke up. Food was a key factor in this story of
physical salvation. Paul was thankful for food that made their salvation possible, for if you don't
save people bodies, you can never save their souls. Who knows how many of these 276 men will be
in heaven because they were eager to hear of Christ the Heavenly Bread after being saved by means
of His servant Paul, and through earthly bread? Salvation, sanctification, and many other aspects of
the Christian life often revolve around a focus on food.
