Guard Your Heart (Mark 8:1–21)

CPT: Jesus performs another miracle of miraculous feeding. The Pharisees refuse to believe the signs, asking for more. The disciples struggle to understand Jesus’s signs and teaching. They were slow to see and hear.

Purpose: Fathers Day…

CPS: Guard your heart against corrupting influences and remember what God has done.

Guard your heart against corrupting influences.

Guard your heart by remembering what God has done.

Introduction

Attention

Happy Fathers day to all of our dads. A godly father is a blessing. Our culture needs more godly men who are willing to step up and be godly husbands and fathers in their household. We need more men who are willing to be a godly influence in a child’s life. So if that’s you this morning, thank you. Thank you for seeking God out in your life, for your marriage, and for your children and grandchildren.

The influence of a person can have a tremendous effect. A person’s influence can shape our thoughts, the way we see the world. Unfortunately, a lot of times those influences are not always the best. A negative influence can rub off on you. If you hang around a negative influence long enough, it starts to shape the way you see things.

We need to be careful with the influences, as much as its up to us, the influences that we have around us. Inevitably, there is going to be that person that you sit next to in your workplace or in your school, that person who swears they are just being realistic, but somehow in every situation they predict there will be doom and gloom. Everything is going to be terrible and there is nothing anyone can do about it. They believe that, and they want you to believe that as well.

Or there is going to be that person in our world that, you know that you go to church, and you leave encouraged and strengthened, ready to follow the Lord. But you then get around your friend on Monday, and they want to drag you right back into a lifestyle that you’re trying to avoid.

How do we guard our hearts against corrupting influences?

There can be influences that are good, but they throw in one little seed in there that can throw you off. I was blessed to have a wonderful father. My father is a godly man and a tremendous influence in my life. I know my father watches our live stream sometimes, and as I thanked our fathers earlier, I want to say, thank you, Dad.

My father is naturally funny. They often talk about Dad jokes, and my Dad knows how to joke around. Sometimes, your kids take those Dad jokes seriously. My mom cut up a watermelon one day, and I was eating the watermelon. Watermelons had these black seeds. Well, I was being careful not to swallow the seeds, but I did end up swallowing a few.

So I went to my Dad and said, “Dad, what happens when you swallow a watermelon seed?” My dad said, “Well, a watermelon tree starts to grow in your stomach, of course.” I walked away and was a little frantic. I started to imagine this tree growing inside my stomach and eventually growing out of my mouth. I hoped that the seed didn’t grow.

The next day I woke up, and there was no tree growing out of my stomach, so I said, “Phew! I dodged that one.” And ever since then I was careful not to eat any seeds from a watermelon, an orange, or anything else, because I didn’t want a fruit tree growing in my stomach.

Even when we don’t mean to be an influence in a person’s life, we are. Now my Dad has been a tremendous, godly influence in my life. But even a small thing from an influence can seep into our brain, into our thinking, and be a corrupting influence.

How do we guard our hearts from corrupting influences? We are going to take a look at guarding our hearts from Mark 8:1-21.

At the end of chapter 7, Jesus has gone to an area called the Decapolis. This was an area east of the Sea of Galilee, which consisted of ten Greek-speaking cities. It was an area that had the influence of Gentile culture.

In this area, he heals a man who was deaf and had difficulty speaking. As has been the case in his ministry, we get to chapter 8 and there is another crowd that is gathering around Jesus, certainly people seeking their own healing, and listening to him teach. When we get to chapter 8, this crowd has been with him for three days. In Mark 8:1-21:

Scripture Reading

Mark 8:1–21 CSB

1 In those days there was again a large crowd, and they had nothing to eat. He called the disciples and said to them, 2 “I have compassion on the crowd, because they’ve already stayed with me three days and have nothing to eat. 3 If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way, and some of them have come a long distance.” 4 His disciples answered him, “Where can anyone get enough bread here in this desolate place to feed these people?” 5 “How many loaves do you have?” he asked them. “Seven,” they said. 6 He commanded the crowd to sit down on the ground. Taking the seven loaves, he gave thanks, broke them, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. So they served them to the crowd. 7 They also had a few small fish, and after he had blessed them, he said these were to be served as well. 8 They ate and were satisfied. Then they collected seven large baskets of leftover pieces. 9 About four thousand were there. He dismissed them. 10 And he immediately got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha. 11 The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, demanding of him a sign from heaven to test him. 12 Sighing deeply in his spirit, he said, “Why does this generation demand a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation.” 13 Then he left them, got back into the boat, and went to the other side. 14 The disciples had forgotten to take bread and had only one loaf with them in the boat. 15 Then he gave them strict orders: “Watch out! Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.” 16 They were discussing among themselves that they did not have any bread. 17 Aware of this, he said to them, “Why are you discussing the fact you have no bread? Don’t you understand or comprehend? Do you have hardened hearts? 18 Do you have eyes and not see; do you have ears and not hear? And do you not remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of leftovers did you collect?” “Twelve,” they told him. 20 “When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many baskets full of pieces did you collect?” “Seven,” they said. 21 And he said to them, “Don’t you understand yet?”

Pray

As we look at this text, this feeding sounds familiar. We preached about the feeding of the 5,000 a few weeks ago. I preached a sermon titled “Bring Jesus What You Have.” You can go back and listen to it in the podcast. We started our sermon podcast less than a year ago. We recently published our 50th sermon to the podcast, and our sermon podcast has been downloaded over 550 times. When I publish this sermon to our blog this week, I will also provide a link to that previous sermon on the feeding of the 5,000.

Many people are aware of the feeding of the 5,000, but many do not know that Jesus does this miracle at least two times in two separate miraculous feedings. There is the feeding of the 5,000, and then there is the feeding of the 4,000, which we see here.

Both of them have a lot of similarities. When you read this, you might think that the author is repeating himself. Both of these feedings involve a large crowd of thousands of people. Both are in a desolate or remote place. In both cases, Jesus is described as having compassion on the crowd. Both of them involve bread and fish. In both, Jesus commands the crowd to sit. Jesus breaks the bread in both, and distributes the bread to his disciples, who give out the food to the crowd. In both, the disciples collect basket fulls of leftovers, and in both, Jesus and his disciples get into a boat.

You say, Jason, it sounds like the same story. Yes, there are similarities, but there are also differences. In the first feeding, they are there one day, but in the feeding of the 4,000, it has been three days. The amount of food is different. In the feeding of the 5,000, there is five loaves of bread, and two fish. In the feeding of the 4,000, there are seven loaves of bread, and a few fish. The word for fish is different. In Mark 6, Mark uses the general word for fish, but in Mark 8, he uses a different word that describes little fish. RC Sproul describes these fish as being like sardines. There are a different amount of basket fulls left over. In the 5,000, there were 12 baskets, and in the 4,000, there are 7 baskets. The word used for baskets in these two are different as well. One commentator said that the 7 baskets may have been larger than the 12 baskets.

If there was still any confusion on whether these are the same or are different, the Lord describes them as two different events. We look at the end of our text today, and Jesus points out to his disciples these two different feeding events. Remember the 5,000? Remember the 4,000? So Mark tells us, who by the way when you are reading the Gospel of Mark, the early Christian witnesses say that Mark’s Gospel is how he heard the works of Jesus from Peter, so Mark is telling us that there were at least two different feeding miracles from Jesus.

So the crowd is with Jesus, and he wants to feed them. The disciples question Jesus, and what I love about them is that they are slow to learn. That makes me feel normal. We can be like that, can’t we? We are people in process, and so were the disciples. But Jesus does this miraculous sign, and the people leave fed and satisfied.

But what I want us to see here is this tremendous contrast. The Gospel writer is putting these accounts together, and you can’t get away from the contrast that you see here. On one end, there is this tremendous, miraculous sign of the feeding of the 4,000. The Lord has been doing miracles all over the place, casting demons out of people, making the deaf to hear, and creating food to feed people. All of these miracles are signs pointing to Jesus as the Messiah, the Son of God.

But then we get this incredible contrast between the miracles of Jesus and the Pharisees demanding a sign. Here come the Pharisees. We’ve had some interesting interactions with them so far.

It says they began to argue with him, trying to test him. It says in Mark 8:11-13,

Mark 8:11–13 CSB

11 The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, demanding of him a sign from heaven to test him. 12 Sighing deeply in his spirit, he said, “Why does this generation demand a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to this generation.” 13 Then he left them, got back into the boat, and went to the other side.

The words for argue and demand are strong words. The Pharisees are inserting their power and authority to try and force Jesus to do something. You wonder what’s going on here? Jesus has been doing incredible miracles all over the place. How much more do they want?

There is an interesting thing to note here. It’s common for people to say, “God, show me a sign.” But sometimes, we don’t ask for a sign because we want to believe. The Pharisees here don’t have a genuine willingness to believe. Rather, they are creating a barrier as an excuse for unbelief.

We can do the same thing. We may have seen God come through in our life over and over again. There have been tremendous blessings in our life. We prayed before, and God moved in our life and in our family. But we get to a place where God challenges us to faith. And we don’t want to believe, so we create a barrier. We say, “God, this is a big thing. Show me a sign.” We say this when really, God has been showing up in our life over and over for a long time. We ask for a sign not because we want to believe, but because we don’t want to take that step of faith. We don’t want to believe, so we put up a barrier as an excuse for unbelief.

Mark describes Jesus as sighing deeply in his Spirit. This is an interesting word, and its only used here. It means to groan. It’s this exasperation from Jesus. The Lord is patient, but his patience is not to be abused.

The Lord is described as slow to anger. In Psalm 103:8:

Psalm 103:8 CSB

8 The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in faithful love.

Also in 2 Peter 3:9,

2 Peter 3:9 CSB

9 The Lord does not delay his promise, as some understand delay, but is patient with you, not wanting any to perish but all to come to repentance.

The Lord is slow to anger and patient, but his patience is not infinity. The Lord was patient with the world until the time came for Noah to build a boat, and then judgment came to the world in the flood. We are living in a time of the Lord’s patience, but it is a patience that will one day come to an end when the Lord returns, bringing judgment to the world.

We see with the Lord in Mark 8 a Lord who is slow to anger, but a patience that is nearing its end. He says, “Why does this generation keep demanding a sign? It won’t receive a sign,” and we know from this same story in Matt. 12:39 where he says, “except for the sign of Jonah,” referring to his death and resurrection.

There are so many signs of God in our life that we just take for granted. In case you haven’t noticed, we exist. We live in a tremendous miracle every single day, a miracle that demands an answer. We have bodies that are perfectly designed for us to function. We have hearts that beat all of the time without us being aware. It is pumping blood throughout our perfectly designed bodies. Our muscles are connected in such a clearly designed way for us to move around. We have brains that are able to process and think through all of this complex information.

We are in this reality, and we didn’t ask to be here, but here we are. The signs of the Creator are all around us. Life is an incredible miracle every day, but we just sort of say, “Well, it’s just another ordinary day.” After a while, we lose the wonder of it all.

Sometimes, when we see the work of God over and over, we might start to lose the wonder of it all. We start to take for granted what God is doing right in front of us.

When we start to lose the wonder of what God is doing in our life, there are influences around us that are ready to take advantage of that. That’s when we need to guard our hearts.

That brings us to our first point,

Guard your heart against corrupting influences.

When the Pharisees are disputing and arguing against Jesus, the disciples can’t be too far. They must’ve been within earshot of what the Pharisees were saying. And don’t think that the influence of the Pharisees didn’t have an effect on the disciples.

Before Jesus, they had every reason to at least have some respect for these religious leaders. After all, the Pharisees were the men who carefully followed the Law. They knew the Law of Moses. They knew the Scriptures. They followed the teaching of the elders. These were respectable religious men in Jewish society. If someone were going to try and be a religious Jewish man in the first century, they would likely try to learn from the Pharisees.

You can imagine the disciples trying to process the conflict that they found themselves in. On one hand, here were these religious men who, as they grew up, learned about them as good, religious Jews. On the other hand, there is their rabbi Jesus, who the Pharisees are now against. But Jesus has the words of life, and their in the middle of this conflict. We know that they Pharisees had an influence on at least one disciple in Judas, and likely they others, there is a small part of them that is wondering about what the Pharisees are saying.

The Lord sense the conflict within them as he gives them this warning in Mark 8:15:

Mark 8:15 CSB

15 Then he gave them strict orders: “Watch out! Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”

He warns his disciples to watch out for the influence, for the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. Both the Pharisees and Herod had influence among the Jewish people. Both were Jews. The Pharisees spread their false teaching and hatred against Jesus, while Herod spread his influence of worldliness amongst the Jews. Jesus warns against both of their influence.

You only need a small amount of influence to create a big different. He describes this as leaven, which is something used in cooking to cause dough to rise.

When you are cooking bread using dough, if you do not add any sort of ingredient to make it rise, the bread will be flat, and not have the airy type of texture that you like in bread. So, when you are cooking bread, you add something called yeast.

Yeast are actually these small, microscopic single-celled living organisms that enter into the dough. What it does it that it starts entering the dough and eating up sugars inside the dough. As it eats the sugar, it releases a waste of carbon dioxide within the dough, causing these air pockets in the bread, and making the bread rise. The dough rises and doubles in size. The high baking heat kills off the living yeast organisms, resulting in the soft, chewy bread that we like to eat.

The Lord uses this picture of leaven in bread to describe the little influences that can seep into our own mind and soul. All it takes is a little thing. All it takes is a little gossip, a little bit of information to start to change the way we think about a person. All it takes is a little doubt sown into us about all of the things we need to do today that sows a seed of doubt in our ability to connect with the Lord that day. All it takes is a little influence about the way we think of church - “You don’t need to go to church today, take a Sunday off.” Little influences can have a big difference.

We need to guard our hearts against corrupting influences, against the little organisms of influence that want to creep into our soul and damage what we know about Christ.

They say today the real skill is knowing how to handle information. There used to be a time that if you wanted information, you had to get up and go somewhere to find it. We used to have these places called libraries. Do you know what those are? I believe they’re still around. But if you wanted information about say, Native Americans, or the Civil War, or whatever you wanted to research, you had to go to a library, find a book, check the book out, and then try to remember to bring it back.

If you were fancy, maybe you had one of these encyclopedias in your house. They would go around and see these encyclopedias you could have in your home. So if you wanted to learn about Einstein, you could go to the letter E in your encyclopedia, look up Albert Einstein, and get a bit of information about him.

Now, information is just flowing everywhere. You carry around with you a library, encyclopedia, map, and everything else in your pocket! You have an entire world of information in your phone. But with all of the information, all of the noise being thrown at us, the real skill today is knowing what voice you are going to listen to.

There are a lot of voices being thrown at you, but many of them, probably most of them, want to drag you down with them on the road to destruction. All of the information in the world points us to the reality of what Jesus said in Matt. 7:13-14,

Matthew 7:13–14 CSB

13 “Enter through the narrow gate. For the gate is wide and the road broad that leads to destruction, and there are many who go through it. 14 How narrow is the gate and difficult the road that leads to life, and few find it.

Many people are going down a path to destruction, and their influence wants to try and drag along with them and their thinking. There are influences in the world that are destructive because they come from souls heading towards destruction.

If there is any voice that I want to hear, I want to hear the voice of the Lord leading me through the narrow gate. I want influences in my life that lead towards the path to life.

There is a verse that I’ve repeated to my children many times, because I know the power of influences in a life. Its in Prov. 13:20:

Proverbs 13:20 CSB

20 The one who walks with the wise will become wise, but a companion of fools will suffer harm.

This is a verse that I’ve repeated to many people and to my children. We need to guard our hearts against corrupting influences. If you spend time around people with wisdom, that will rub off on you, but if you spend time as a companion of fools, that will cause you harm.

Eventually, you are going to be in a situation where there are corrupting influences around you. We can’t separate ourselves from the world, we live in it. So what do we do? How can we guard our hearts? The Lord gives us instruction on how to guard our hearts. That is our last point.

That is our last point,

Guard your heart by remembering what God has done.

The Lord gives us some guidelines in Mark 8 to teach us on how to guard our heart. He does this through a series of questions that he asks the disciples. The Lord described leaven, and they thought he was talking about bread. So he corrects their thoughts through a number of questions in Mark 8:17-21:

Mark 8:17–21 CSB

17 Aware of this, he said to them, “Why are you discussing the fact you have no bread? Don’t you understand or comprehend? Do you have hardened hearts? 18 Do you have eyes and not see; do you have ears and not hear? And do you not remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of leftovers did you collect?” “Twelve,” they told him. 20 “When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many baskets full of pieces did you collect?” “Seven,” they said. 21 And he said to them, “Don’t you understand yet?”

First, He asks them in verse 17, “Do you have hardened hearts?” The first thing he asks us to do is to take a heart inventory. As you see influences start to creep into your life, where is your heart with the Lord? What are those influences doing to your heart? Are you willing to listen to the voice of the Lord, or is your heart creating a barrier to listen to God? Do you have a hardened heart. Guard your heart by taking a heart inventory.

Second, he asks them in verse 18, “Do you have eyes and not see; do you have ears and not hear?” Are you willing to see what God is doing in your life? Are you able to be sensitive to what God is doing? There are things that God is doing in your life right now. I don’t believe it is an accident that you are here on a Sunday morning. What is God doing in your life? In your family’s life? Are you able to see and hear what God is doing? Guard your heart by being sensitive to see and hear the work of God in your life.

Third, he tells them to remember what God has done. “When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of leftovers did you collect?” “Twelve.” “When I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many baskets full?” “Seven.” If you want to guard your heart against corrupting influences, remember what God has done.

You can look at this in your own life. “When you were running around with the wrong crowd, walking around in the world, when you were angry at people and depressed, who was there to pick you up?” “Jesus.” “When everything seemed hopeless, when you thought there was never going to be anything better for you, when you were angry at your parents, when you thought life was ruined for you, who brought you out of that?” “Jesus.” Guard your heart by remembering what God has done.

Some of us didn’t grow up with fathers, and Fathers Day is a painful reminder of that. I’ve heard some guys tell me that they were worried because they didn’t have a Dad growing up, or their Dad made bad decisions. They were worried that they would be able to be a Dad because they never learned how.

Listen, you may not have had a Dad growing up, and none of us had a perfect Dad. But men, we all have a heavenly Father who is there to teach you how to be a loving father. He teaches you how to be a husband when he says in Eph. 5:25, “Husbands, love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself for her.” He teaches you how to be a father when he says in Eph. 6:4, “Fathers, don’t stir up anger in your children, but bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord.”

As I prepared this sermon, I was remembering the influence of godly men in my life, who also served as a godly father figure. I learned from my pastor in New York, from watching his humility and his patience with me as I asked him tons of challenging Bible questions in his office. I learned from my Bible teacher at the New York School of the Bible, who taught me in apologetics and brought me with him to the park. What he would do there is set up a booth with a sign that read, “Ask me about the meaning of life.” Eventually, someone would bite and walk up. They would say, “Okay, I’ll bite. What’s the meaning of life?” My Bible teacher would then begin to tell them about what Jesus had done in his life. Eventually, someone came up and asked me about the meaning of life. I learned from my Bible teacher, and shared with the young man about what Jesus had done in my life, how he had died for my sins, and I was a new person in him.

You can guard your heart against corrupting influences by remembering what God has done for you, and by sharing that with others. Guard your heart by taking a heart inventory, by being sensitive to see and hear God’s work in your life, and by remembering what God has done.

Conclusion

Guard your heart against corrupting influences.

Guard your heart by remembering what God has done.

Guard your heart against corrupting influences and remember what God has done.

Conclude

Prayer

Last Song

Doxology

Numbers 6:24–26 CSB

24 “May the Lord bless you and protect you; 25 may the Lord make his face shine on you and be gracious to you; 26 may the Lord look with favor on you and give you peace.” ’

Jude 24–25 CSB

24 Now to him who is able to protect you from stumbling and to make you stand in the presence of his glory, without blemish and with great joy, 25 to the only God our Savior, through Jesus Christ our Lord, be glory, majesty, power, and authority before all time, now and forever. Amen.

You are dismissed. Have a great week in the Lord!