But He Knew What He Would Do

Summary

Summary prepared by Acts 2:38 Life from the sermon's captions — published in summary form; watch the full sermon at the source.

Williams asks the most familiar miracle in the Gospels to be read backwards. The text is John 6:1-6: a great multitude follows Jesus over the Sea of Galilee because of the miracles they saw on the diseased; he goes up into a mountain with his disciples, lifts up his eyes, sees the company coming, and turns to Philip with an impossible question — "Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?" But the question was never a problem to be solved: "he said this to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do." Nothing will ever catch God by surprise. It is okay if you don't know how it ends; all that matters is that you know the One who already knows what he is going to do.

That knowing runs through the whole canon of the sermon. God told Jeremiah, "Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee" (Jeremiah 1:5), and twenty-eight chapters later, "I know the thoughts that I think toward you" (Jeremiah 29:11) — he cares about your family, your children, your house, your finances more than you think he does. The psalmist felt it personally: "thou hast searched me, and known me... thou art acquainted with all my ways" (Psalm 139:1-3). God is not following a trail of clues to get involved in your life; he works from the end back toward the beginning, with the end in mind.

So the circumstances themselves must be re-read. There are no markets on the mountain — Jesus deliberately led the multitude to a place of hunger and desperation where multiplication was the only answer, just as he had once sent the disciples into the city to buy bread so he could be alone with the woman at the well (John 4). Don't curse your circumstance; it may be a setup for a miracle. The "bad theology" that reads every sickness as God's displeasure collapses against the faithful in the lions' den, Joseph in the pit and prison, and the man born blind — blind, Jesus said, not for sin but "that the works of God should be made manifest in him" (John 9:1-3). Even the delay at Bethany is the same doctrine: "I am glad for your sakes that I was not there" (John 11:15) — late for Lazarus is right on time for God, because he already knew what he would do.

At the altar the doctrine becomes a distribution: five thousand fed and more going around, enough for the mezzanine and the back door. If you're still down at the bottom of the mountain hoping the bread doesn't run out before it gets to you — there's more where it came from.