Storms & Stomach Pangs

Mark 6:30-56

Transcript

 The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught.
And he said to them, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest
awhile. For many were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat. And
they went in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. Now many saw them going
and recognized them and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there
ahead of them. When they went ashore, he saw a great crowd and he had compassion
on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach
them many things. And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said,
this is a desolate place and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the
surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat. But he
answered them, you give them something to eat. And they said to him, shall we go
and buy 200 denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat? And he said to
them, how many loaves do you have? Go and see. And when they had found out, they
said, five and two fish. And then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on
the green grass. So they sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties and
taking five loaves and the two fish. He looked up to heaven and said a blessing
and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people.
And he divided the two fish among them all and they all ate and were satisfied.
And they took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. And those who
ate the loaves were 5,000 men. Immediately he made his disciples get into the
boat and go before him on the other side to Bethesda while he dismissed the
crowd. And after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray.
And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea and he was alone on the land.
And he said that they might were making headway painfully for the wind was again
against them. And about the fourth watch of the night, he came to them walking
on the sea. He meant to pass them, but when they saw him walking on the sea,
they thought it was a ghost and cried out. For they all saw him and were
terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, take heart, it is I. Do
not be afraid. And he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased. And they
were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their
hearts were hardened. When they had crossed over, they came to the land at
Genesoret and moored onto the shore. And when the people got out of the boat,
the people immediately recognized him and ran about the whole region and began
to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was. And
wherever he came, in villages, cities or countryside, they laid the sick in the
marketplaces and implored them that they might touch even the fringe of his
garment. And as many as touched it were made well. These are the words of our
God. Let's pray. Lord God, we are thankful and grateful to come together in
worship in this way and to gather under your word. Lord, we pray that you would
bring encouragement and challenge and comfort and conviction as each one of us
need that. That you'd minister to us by your Holy Spirit and illuminate our
hearts and minds. We pray for that in Jesus' name. So there are two major events
going on in the passage that John just read. First there is this feeding of the
5,000 where Jesus miraculously multiplies food and then secondly we see Jesus
walking out on the water to meet his disciples as they struggle against the wind
in the boat. And the two events happen back to back. It's in a 24 hour period.
The title of this sermon is storms and stomach pains. And these are two very
well known accounts in the life of Jesus. But I want us to see how Mark very
intentionally positions them together. And I want us to see a truth that the
disciples started to learn but that applies to us today through these two
events. And it's just this. Jesus is able to meet you in your insufficiency.
Jesus is able to meet you in your insufficiency. So I want us to explore that
idea and the passage begins in verse 30 where Jesus and his disciples plan to
get some rest but those plans are ruined. Look at Mark 6 verse 30. The apostles
returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And he said to
them, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while. For many
were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in
a boat to a desolate place by themselves. And many saw them going and recognized
them. And they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them.
And when he went ashore he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them
because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many
things. The disciples are returning to Jesus and giving him a report of all that
they had seen, all that they had done. Back in Mark 6, 7 through 13 he had sent
them out two by two. And now they are coming back returning to Jesus to tell him
about how their ministry has gone. They are giving a report of everything that
has been done and everything that has been accomplished. And Jesus says, come
away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while. Both Jesus and the
disciples have been very busy. They can't even really escape the crowds. Some
crowds are growing through the Gospel of Mark. So they are looking for some
peace and quiet. They get in a boat and go out to the wilderness to a desolate
place. So normally this would be obviously not very densely populated. But think
about the crowd and to get a sense of the mood of the crowd think about the
story that we just explored last week with Herod and John the Baptist. This holy
man and preacher of repentance who just had his head cut off. That type of
injustice describes the political climate that the people of Israel are living
in. And of course they are longing for a better leader, a different leader, a
Jewish leader and they are desiring a righteous ruler. So Jesus and his
disciples come out to the desolate place looking for rest and when they come to
the desolate place everyone has already beaten them there. There is already this
huge crowd. Some of these people would have been political rebels who are
looking for a military messiah. Other people they are likely looking for more
signs and miracles. They are enamoured by Jesus and his teaching. So although
they are trying to get away to withdraw, they can't. They can't get away from
the expectations of the people. It is probably not really very hard for us to
imagine this type of scenario because you know how you look forward to rest and
relaxation? And that could be vacation, that could just be something that you
are planning to do at the end of the day. But you can imagine how easily, how
frustrating this would be. Planning and anticipating some rest and relaxation.
Getting your hopes up for that time. You come up to the quote unquote quiet
place. It's crawling with people. So Jesus' response is not exasperation as ours
likely would be. It's compassion. And he engages with the people. It says when
he went ashore he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them. Because they
were like sheep without a shepherd. He began to teach them many things. His
response and that reference to sheep without a shepherd comes from a prayer of
Moses actually. Near the end of his life. So Moses says as he realizes his
earthly life is winding down. He says in Numbers 27 16 to 17. He prays let the
Lord the God of the spirits of all flesh appoint a man over the congregation who
shall go out before them and come in before them who shall lead them and bring
them in that the congregation of the Lord may not be a sheep that have no
shepherd. Moses knows how much he struggled to shepherd the people of God
through the wilderness. And the short term answer to his prayer was his
successor Joshua. But the ultimate answer here is Jesus. The good shepherd. And
it's important because God used Moses and Joshua to shepherd and feed his people
in the wilderness. It's in the wilderness, in the desolate place that God fed
the Israelites with manna, with bread from heaven. It was Joshua who took the
wilderness generation out into the promised land, to the land flowing with milk
and honey. So when we come to the feeding of the 5,000 now, where Jesus provides
bread in the wilderness to the people of God, it's being very intentionally set
in the framework of Moses' prayer. Jesus is the fulfillment of that. So although
he must be exhausted and although he must need rest, Jesus teaches the people.
He gives them his words. He treats them with compassion. He teaches them. But as
the day goes on and on, and the disciples approach Jesus with what seems to them
to be a real problem, let's read if you look in chapter 6, verse 35. When it
grew late, his disciples came to him and said, this is a desolate place. And the
hour is now late. So the disciples don't have the level of compassion that Jesus
has for the people. But they do have just perfectly legitimate practical
concerns. There are thousands of people out here. We're in the middle of
nowhere. They're going to need something to eat. Everyone had been, had kind of
charged after Jesus when they saw the boat go across the water. Nobody packed
any food. So they come to Jesus and bring him these concerns. It's getting late.
We're in the middle of nowhere. We need to send these people away. They're not
being harsh. They're just being realistic. And Jesus says to them, you give them
something to eat. What a strange thing to say. Like you really can't be serious.
Maybe this has happened to you before. Every once in a while I'll go through the
drive through of Tim Hortons and find out that the car in front of me has paid
for my coffee. And you think for about a second, oh, cool. And then you realize
you're supposed to do that for the person behind you. But what if then you
realize, or what if someone then suggests to you, why don't you foot the bill
for the next 5,000 cars? Just leave your card. Just foot the bill for the next
5,000 cars. That's kind of how the disciples would respond. Kind of
sarcastically. That would have been 200 days labor for ordinary laborers like
them. That's how much this would have cost to feed these people. But Jesus
doesn't really, they respond to him kind of sarcastically. And he doesn't
respond to their sarcasm. He responds to them literally. He says, how many
loaves do you have? Go and see. So Jesus tells them to take inventory of what
they do have. And when they come back, they report that they have five loaves
and two fish. It's a ridiculously small amount of food. There's 5,000 men and
five loaves. So each thousand people can have a loaf. It seems like a very
pointless exercise. They already knew they had a problem. They already knew
these people didn't have food. That's why they came to Jesus in the first place.
Then they take the time to confirm the problem, and there's probably even less
food than they were originally thinking. If you realized, if you're home one day
and your refrigerator just completely stops working, and you realize you've got
food rotting in there, and you go online to Lowe's or Home Depot and you
realize, oh, this is going to cost me like $1,500. And you're thinking, I don't
have any money. And then someone suggests to you, why don't you look in the
couch cushions? Well, that's just annoying. You just come back and you're like,
I have 82 cents. It's just annoying. You already know there's not enough. So
going through the process of proving to yourself that there's not enough is
simply frustrating. It's just making you realize this situation is impossible.
They're completely unable to feed 5,000 people. They're totally inadequate. They
have nowhere near the resources. And what's interesting is based on the
miraculous power that Jesus has already demonstrated in the Gospel of Mark, it's
not like he needed their help or needed to put it's not like Jesus needed to put
the disciples through this exercise. Think about this, in Mark's Gospel we have
already seen Jesus heal people with a touch, calm storms, cast out demons. He
did not need the disciples to play a role in what was about to happen. And he
did not need for them to go collect these five loaves and two fish. But instead
he tells them, you feed them. They have to actually see the impossibility of the
task. And they have to recognize their inadequacy. God spoke the world into
existence by the word of his power. He doesn't need us to do anything. He can do
whatever he wants with or without us. But he chooses to work through weak people
and inadequate people. And these people become vessels of his power. In John's
parallel account of the passage, he provides a little bit more color about what
happened when Jesus' disciples went out to see who had any food. John 6, 8-9
says, one of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother said to him, there's a
boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. But what are they for so many?
So that's all they had. There's just this one kid whose mom probably packed him
a lunch. And the point is, we have to recognize our own insufficiencies. We have
to be brought to that place. I think most of us would like a day or a week or
probably really like a lifestyle where we wake up every day with confidence and
with full assurance that we have all the resources that we need spiritually,
emotionally, physically, financially for everything that the day might present
us. We'd love to wake up and just be like, I got it. It's under control. We're
like that as individuals. The same would apply to churches. As a church, it
would be great to sit back and think, what are we going to do with all this
money? Or think, what are we going to do with all these extra volunteers? So
many people, so many people want to serve in the nursery, but I have to tell
them, you can only do it every six months. Most of us instead, though, we live
with this ongoing sense of inadequacy, of not having enough or being enough. But
think about Jesus here, bringing his disciples to that place of recognition. We
have to recognize that before we're really able to do anything for God. When we
do, then we have to, then we recognize that the credit for anything that gets
accomplished has to go to God. When the apostle Paul talked about gospel
ministry, he said that God chooses to work through human weakness. And he said
in 2 Corinthians, we have this ministry in jars of clay, which would have been a
common ancient image for brokenness. To show that the surpassing power belongs
to God and not to us. So Jesus is not deterred by the disciples' lack of
resources. He collects the small offering of food. Verse 39, then he commanded
them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups by
hundreds and by fifties. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked
up to heaven and set a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the
disciples to set before the people. So he tells everyone to sit down and we have
this visual of people kind of dotting the hillside and the green grass, sitting
in orderly groups. Jesus has already fed his people with his word. And today,
it's funny because today we kind of think about bread as like this danger food.
But these were not people who had ever heard of the Atkins diet. Bread is a
symbol of life in the first century. Jesus refers to himself as the bread of
life. He says I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger and
whoever believes in me shall never thirst. These people had, obviously, they had
physical needs that day. But Jesus is also pointing toward their greater
spiritual needs. And their minimal resources are not a problem for Jesus. We see
a miracle of multiplication despite their lack of resources. And when we think
about miracles, I'm not going to try and explain to you how this happened. It's
a miracle. It's a multiplication of food. And when we think about miracles, we
usually think about something that happens like in reversal of the natural
order. We'll use the phrase like defying gravity or something like that. But the
miracles were not simply demonstrations of power. They point forward to Jesus'
real redemptive purpose. Because someday we will be eating bread, feasting in
the new heavens and the new earth. This is not an amazing deed simply so that
people will be impressed. The text tells us that Jesus, he broke the bread, he
looked up to heaven and said a blessing. And he broke the loaves and gave them
to the disciples to set before the people. When he took the bread, he prayed in
dependence on his father, he blessed the food and he broke it. And he was
providing for their physical needs. He had provided for their spiritual needs.
And what he was doing was pointing forward to a greater reality. Because near
the end of the Gospel of Mark, Jesus again takes bread in the institution of the
Lord's Supper. And when Mark describes that he says he took bread and after
blessing it, he broke it. And he gave it to them and said take, this is my body.
He was pointing forward to the provision of his life on the cross where his body
would be broken for sinners. Well in this case they all ate and were satisfied
and they took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces of the fish and those who ate
the loaves were 5,000 men. His body was broken so that one day we could feast
with him in the new heavens and the new earth. The miracle is a picture not of
like a reversal of physics or something like or a simple demonstration of
amazing accomplishments. It's pointing forward to what's to come. It's a picture
of restoration. Now the Gospel of John offers a parallel account of the feeding
of the 5,000. When the people saw the sign they said this is indeed the prophet
who has come into the world. So in John 6.15 says that Jesus perceiving that
they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew
to the mountain by himself. So the people are seeing the amazing power and they
want to capitalise on this moment and make him king. It would appear to be a
golden opportunity both for Jesus and the disciples to press their advantage.
The people are excited, they've seen something amazing, there's thousands of
them, it's time to keep everyone together, it's time to rally against the forces
of injustice. But once again we see in Mark that Jesus has no interest in
becoming a popular hero. He gets out of there and sends his disciples back
exactly where they came. So we're going to look at the connection of these two
passages just briefly. But Mark 6.45 says this. Immediately he made his
disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side to Bethsaida
while he dismissed the crowd. And after he had taken leave of them he went up on
the mountain to pray. And when evening came the boat was out on the sea and he
was alone on the land and he saw that they were making headway painfully for the
wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them
walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them. But when they saw him walking on
the sea they thought it was a ghost and cried out. For they all saw him and were
terrified but immediately he spoke to them and said, Take heart, it is I, do not
be afraid. And he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased and they were
utterly astounded for they did not understand about the loaves but their hearts
were hardened. So right after the feeding of the 5,000 Jesus sends the disciples
back to Bethsaida. The text says he made the disciples get into the boat. They
were probably like, We just got here. Why do we have to go back already? He
dismisses the crowds and goes up on the mountain to pray alone. So finally
alone. Think about Jesus in prayer up on the mountain praying for himself
knowing what awaited him in the days to come. Praying for his disciples who are
still hard hearted and lacking faith. And night falls and Jesus is alone on the
mountain while his disciples are in the boat out at sea. So he is significantly
elevated above them in the sea of Galilee is down below which is why they have
this wild weather. And crazy wind patterns. And we already know, we read about
the storm that the disciples encountered in chapter 4. This one does not
necessarily seem life threatening but it says they were making headway very
painfully straight into the wind. They're not necessarily in danger of dying.
They're just rowing in the middle of the night on a desolate sea struggling
while Jesus prays for them and it went on most of the night. And they were
struggling while they were being obedient. They were going and doing, they were
going in the direction that Jesus told them to do, doing what he told them to
do. Getting on the boat even though I'm sure they would have preferred to stay.
And maybe their attitudes aren't perfect but they're essentially doing what
Jesus asked them to do. Here they are rowing into a head wind. That's what they
get for their obedience. Isn't that interesting? Don't we think that if we do
the right thing, if we essentially do what God's word tells us to do, we're
going to be blessed. We're going to experience some sort of success. We're not
supposed to find ourselves struggling thrashing around in the dark in the middle
of the night. About the fourth night, fourth watch of the night, which is
between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. So it's dark. Jesus comes out. Isn't that amazing? He
prayed for them and he let them struggle. He knew how long. That's just not even
going to try to make an application. It's just fascinating. The text says he
meant to pass them by. That phrase itself, that pass them by, it's a statement
of Jesus' divinity. It's the same exact language in Exodus 33 and 34 when Moses
asks for a glimpse of God's glory. Moses didn't get a full look at God's glory,
but we're told that the Lord passed by him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord, a
God merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and
faithfulness. He meant to pass them by. The disciples thought they saw a ghost.
They thought it was some sort of apparition. They're terrified. They're already
terrified because they're rowing in the middle of the night. Think about this
imagery of the storm and the doubts that the disciples must have had as they
struggled that night. Here we are trying to do the right thing, exhausted,
struggling away, rowing, going nowhere, restraining, it's dark, we're not even
sure we're going in the right direction. What is even the point? And aren't
those really the storms of life that we all face and the doubts that we face
that we are struggling and sometimes wonder? What if this is all just pointless?
In the first story, the disciples have to face their lack of resources. In the
second story, they have to face their lack of strength. But both times, they
have to come face to face with their insufficiency. In fact, the text tells us
that the experience of the loaves, seeing them multiplied had not actually
served to strengthen the disciples' faith. One would think that seeing the
disciples, one would think that the disciples seeing Jesus provide for them only
hours earlier might provide some sort of strength or encouragement or faith in
their hour of trial. Fifty-two says they didn't understand about the loaves.
Their hearts were hardened. And yet even in their weakness, even in their lack
of faith, Jesus comes to them and says, take heart, it is I, do not be afraid.
He gets into the boat with them and the wind ceases. And what holds the two
stories together is Jesus' disciples inadequacy and Jesus' absolute sufficiency.
We're the ones without resources, strength, without faith. That's us. Jesus is
the one who meets us there. And he gives us his presence. And he gives us his
power. And he gives us his very life. Jesus is able to meet you and I in our
insufficiency. Let's pray.