Going to the desert place to meet with Jesus

Matthew 14:13-21

Twice we are told that this is a deserted place.

Jesus has gone by boat to a ‘deserted place’, a place where there were few people, out of the way, where everything else could be left behind, in order to get away and grieve. He has just heard that his cousin John the Baptist has been beheaded, and he knew that what had happened to John would happen to him. And Jesus longed for time to be on his own with his heavenly Father. 

But the crowds follow him on land and they get to the place ahead of him. The only time Jesus was going to have on his own was his time in the boat. And Jesus, when he saw the crowd, ‘had compassion for them’.   

This can feel like a deserted place, especially in November or February. 

And this is a place where people come to get away from normal life, for holiday. In the past, it was the holy days that were the holidays – the days to get away from it all, to step out of our everyday story: of work and routine, need and sickness, in order to step into the God story: of the death and resurrection of Jesus, and of how we can share in that story, become part of that story and know his love and provision and his hope.  

There is something very powerful when we go to the desert places to meet with Jesus – whether that is a literal desert, or our own room when, in the words of Matthew, ‘we shut the door and pray to our Father in secret’

Christ’s miracles on the Sea of Galilee, the Feeding of the Five Thousand and of the paralysed man, illuminated manuscript, France, c. 1200. National Library of the Netherlands, The Hague. 

1. We can meet with the healing of Jesus 

‘When Jesus went ashore, he saw a great crowd; and he had compassion for them and cured their sick’ 

There is a lot in the early chapters of Matthew about Jesus’ healing work. 

We are talking about Jesus, the King of the Kingdom of God, who has come to bring in God’s reign. In the words of Matthew 8, he took onto himself ‘all our infirmities and bore our diseases’. And when the Kingdom of God comes in its fullness there will be no sickness and no death. 

And we can bring to him those who are sick and ask for healing. And sometimes we see wonderful healings – glimpses of that future kingdom. 

But I note that even those who rejoiced when they saw their loved ones healed, would one day still weep as they laid them in a grave. This side of heaven, even the most remarkable of healings are only temporary. But they are a sign of the coming reality. 

2. There is something very powerful about going out into the desert place in order to meet with Jesus, because we can meet with the provision of God

Jesus provides a meal for the crowd. Not just a snack, but bread and fish – with enough left over to fill 12 baskets. Those 12 baskets are significant but I am not going to deal with that today. 

There are echoes here of the Old Testament, of how God provided food, bread, for the people in the wilderness, in the desert place. And God revealed himself to his people with a new name, Jehovah Jireh, the God who provides

And only a few days earlier, Jesus had been teaching his disciples that if they seek the Kingdom of God first, if they put God first in their lives, then God would provide for them. 

And in the same sermon, Jesus had taught them to pray, ‘Give us today our daily bread’.

God provides for his people. 

There is a slight tension here because Jesus also seems to imply, particularly in Matthew 25, that those who follow him will experience times of thirst and hunger. They will be naked and strangers. They will be sick and put in prison. 

Last week we heard from a man, who now heads up the Delhi Bible college, that when at the age of 24 he was preaching to a small group of people, he was attacked by a group of young men and kicked senseless. That, he says, is still the experience of Christians in many parts of the world. 

And yet Jesus says, God will provide. And he will provide often when we go out into the desert places. 

The very very few times that I have felt called to step out and give all, God has provided for us. To be honest I can only think of one occasion when I didn’t bottle it. No two. At my wedding, when I said to Alison, ‘All that I have I give to you!’

3. When we go to the desert place to meet Jesus, we will learn of the wonderful grace of God. 

The disciples learn. 

It is the disciples who urge Jesus to send the crowd away so that they can find village stores and buy themselves bread. It is a very good instinct. Let them take responsibility for themselves. 
But Jesus tells them, ‘you give them something to eat’.

There were 12 of them. How could they find enough food to feed 5000 plus people. They only had 5 loaves and 2 fish between them. 

But they learn that Jesus can take the tiniest sacrifice, if fully surrendered to him – if we give, pray, go, speak, forgive - and transform it into something quite remarkable. 

They surrender their meal, and Jesus feeds 5000 with 12 baskets left over. 

If we surrender anything to him, he will do wonderful things with it. 

4. If we come to Jesus  in the deserted place, we will meet one who is full of compassion. 

Jesus was grieving, but he saw the crowds and had compassion on them. 

And when Jesus takes the bread, blesses God for it, breaks the loaf and shares it, he knows what he is doing. 

In a moment we are going to do the same.

Then Jesus was foretelling an event. Today we remember that event. 

Because he is the bread. And in his wonderful compassion for us, in our brokenness, sickness and sin, he came and offered himself to God for us. His sacrifice for us makes our sacrifices look so small. And God blesses him. He receives the offering that Jesus is making. At both the baptism of Jesus, when he humbled himself and went down into the water, and at the transfiguration when God glorified him on the mountain, we hear the same voice, ‘This is my Son, my beloved, with whom I am so pleased’. 

And then he was broken – like the bread - quite literally on the cross. His arms were wrenched from their sockets every time he tried to breathe. Every bone in his body would have been put out of joint as he hung there. We think of the nails in his ankles and in his hands. And even when he was dead a spear was thrust into his side, and blood and water flowed out. 

And because he gave himself to God for us, he was shared. We can have life. The life of Jesus can come into us, just as in a few moments the bread will come into us, and we can live. Not in the old way, the way of self-justification, of living for self – but in a new way: a way of obedience, of holiness, of dependence on him, on reliance on his word and his promises. And this is the life that truly satisfies, and that even physical death cannot destroy. 

Could I urge you to go to the deserted place to meet with Jesus. 

It is the place where we may find physical healing, but we will certainly meet with his compassion and find healing for our soul.

We hand over to him the things we’ve been trying to do in our own strength. 

We hand over to him our attempts to make things work by being positive – positive thinking. We think if we pray hard enough, wish hard enough, work hard enough, want hard enough then the universe will be good to us. We will get the job, the career, the stuff, the girl or boy, the recognition – because we will have deserved it. And we will then know that we matter, that we are someone. 

But it doesn’t work like that. Or if it does, it might in a little way, but it will not take away the deep fear, the exhaustion and it will not satisfy your soul, your deepest longing. 

That satisfaction comes when we go to the deserted place to meet with Jesus.

We leave behind the things on which we rely, and we surrender to him. 

And we will meet one who is able to turn 5 loaves into food for 5000. We will meet one who is so powerful and who is so compassionate.

And he will give peace to our souls and he will satisfy us.