Problems are Opportunities to Glorify God
Notes
Transcript
Good Morning Liberty
Good Morning Liberty
I have been thinking and I need to take up a hobby. So I am going to start collecting coins. I think the change will do me good!
This month is the Edna McMillan offering. This offering goes to the state missions. Through our state convention, we can be part of a larger impact on our state. Our money is combined with all the other churches in the state and through that we as a smaller church can do great things in our great state. We have a goal of 1.2 million as a state. That is a large number that we could never reach on our own. Just like we are going to see in our scripture today, nothing is too big for our God. Problems are just opportunities to have faith in our God and to glorify Him. There are so many people in Oklahoma that are in need and have not hear the Gospel. Through this we can be apart of reaching them and helping them.
Today we are going to be in Mark 6:30-44. This is one of the most famous stories in the Bible. It is a very popular VBS story. Hopefully we will see some new nuggets of truth today as we look at this passage. Last time we met, we looked at the death of John the Baptist. How standing up for the truth and calling out leaders sins, cost John his life. The truth is the Bible is worth standing up for, no matter the cost. It is the truth that changes life. It is the truth that gives life. We must stand up for it. Before that we say Jesus send out His disciples 2 by 2. He gave them power to heal and cast out demons. This was the first time that the disciples would do miracles. Up to this point they had just watched Jesus do the miracles and listen to His teaching. Now they were given the opportunity to go and do. Today we pick up when the disciples come back to Jesus to report what had happened.
This story is found in all 4 gospels. Besides the resurrection, it is the only one that is in all 4. This must be an important story full of important lessons for us. Let’s get into it.
Lets pray
30 The apostles gathered together with Jesus; and they reported to Him all that they had done and taught. 31 And He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a little while.” (For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.)32 And they went away in the boat to a secluded place by themselves.
33 The people saw them going, and many recognized them and ran there together on foot from all the cities, and got there ahead of them. 34 When Jesus went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and He felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things. 35 And when it was already late, His disciples came up to Him and said, “This place is secluded and it is already late; 36 send them away so that they may go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” 37 But He answered them, “You give them something to eat!” And they said to Him, “Shall we go and spend two hundred denarii on bread, and give it to them to eat?” 38 But He said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go look!” And when they found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” 39 And He ordered them all to recline by groups on the green grass. 40 They reclined in groups of hundreds and fifties. 41 And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward heaven, He blessed the food and broke the loaves and He gave them to the disciples again and again to set before them; and He divided the two fish among them all. 42 And they all ate and were satisfied; 43 and they picked up twelve full baskets of the broken pieces of bread, and of the fish. 44 There were five thousand men who ate the loaves.
We see that the disciples are returning from their trips and where telling Jesus all about what had been done. I image that the disciples were on high that no drugs could even come close to achieving. They had healed people, and cast out demons. They were excited beyond words. They had done things that they had only seen Jesus do. I can imagine the first time they healed someone or the first time that they cast out a demon, they were probably extremely nervous. I would be!! But when the person was healed or the demon left, that nervousness turned to excitement. The more that they healed and cast out demons, the more confident they became. They were telling Jesus all about it and notice what Jesus said, come, lets go rest. Jesus saw the tiredness in them. Doing ministry work is hard and it will make you tired. But it is so worth it. The joy that you get from helping someone, or telling them about Jesus, far out ways any tiredness that comes with it. It is like the Bible says, the harvest is plentiful but the workers are few. If we are doing the work of Christ, we will be tired. But He will sustain us. He is our provision. This is what Philippians 4:13 is talking about.
13 I can do all things through Him who strengthens me.
No matter how tired we are, no matter how big the work is, Jesus will provide the strength to get it done. We just have to be willing and obedient. We go and He equips and provides what we need.
Jesus tells them to come and go with Him to a secluded place to rest. They did not even have time to eat. They definitely were not Baptists! We always have time to eat! So they get in their boat, just Jesus and the 12 and they go along the shore to rest. The people see them and recognize them. They begin to run ahead and they actually beat them to the spot. They are there waiting on them. The disciples are probably not happy about this! They were tired to begin with and then they had to row to this spot and now there are a bunch of people there!
Jesus gets out of the boat and sees the crowd and felt compassion for them. The disciples were like, we have seen that look before. Time to go to work! Jesus is a compassionate King. He cares for the people. Jesus saw the people and their needs and it moved Him. He was moved to compassion. That compassion moved Him to teach them many things. The compassion came from that fact that He saw them as sheep without a Sheppard! Do you know what happens to sheep who don’t have a Sheppard? They die. Sheep are dumb animals. I have a short clip that demonstrates this fact. Now if that is not humanity in a nutshell, I don’t know what is. We get ourselves into a bad spot, God rescues us and we go right back to the exact same spot. We don’t even look for different trouble! We go back to the same trouble as before. We are sheep! That is the reason the Bible calls us sheep. Without our Sheppard, Jesus, we will die. He leads us and keeps us on the narrow path.
Jesus had been teaching for a long time and the disciples came up to Him and when it was late and said send them away so that they can get some food. Jesus probably taught right through lunch and it is now close to dinner. It was getting late. I love Jesus’ response to them. You feed them! Jesus is testing them, they had just preformed many miracles and cast out many demons and they still did know! They are sheep!! Jesus is probably shaking His head. They gave Him a sarcastic response, are we to take a years wages and feed them! That would not have been enough to feed the crowd. They could only see the problem even though the solution was standing right in front of them talking to them. All that they had seen Jesus do, and they still don’t think of Him as the solution to any problem. We are a lot like them. We tend to use prayer as a last resort. We often try to solve our problems ourselves before we give them to Him.
Jesus asks them how much food do you have? In Johns account we see that a kid had 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. These were not loaves of bread like we have today. They would have been similar to pita bread. He had 5 pieces like pita bread and then the fish would have been little fish that were pickled to keep them from going bad. So not much food. Not even enough for just the disciples to eat. This was a small lunch for a little child, not food for a crowd.
They tell Jesus what they have and He tells them to sit in groups of 50’s and 100’s. This was so that it would be easier to distribute the food. He told them to sit on the green grass. There is another time that green grass is mentioned in the Bible. Psalms 23:1-2
1 The Lord is my shepherd,
I will not be in need.
2 He lets me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
2 He lets me lie down in green pastures;
He leads me beside quiet waters.
Sheep need green pastures to feed on and to rest in. He knows what we need.
Then He takes the food and looks to His father and blesses it. This was a common practice for the Jews. They would have prayed before meals. Jesus blesses it and then broke it and handed it to them to hand out to the crowd. It says He kept giving it to them to pass out. They all ate and were satisfied. The Greek word use for satisfied is where we get our word Glutton. They were stuffed. They were hungry and they ate until they couldn’t eat any more. They were not just full, they were stuffed. If that wasn’t enough of a miracle, Jesus gave them leftovers! They had 12 baskets full of bread and fish!! 1 basket for each disciple to stare at and think about what happened.
Finally we see that there were 5,000 men. In Matthews account it says that there were 5,000 men beside the women and children. There were somewhere between 15,000 and 25,000 people that were stuffed with bread and fish that meal. This is the largest miracle that Jesus performed during His ministry. I can’t even imagine how that happened. I would have loved to see the look on everyone’s face. Every time the disciples came back with an empty basket, Jesus filled it. All things are possible in Christ!
A couple of things that I want to focus on in this story.
Doing ministry work is hard and tiring. Being a christian means we are called to do! We are called to go and make disciples. We are called to go and meet the needs of people. We are to have compassion just like Jesus did. Jesus had compassion for the spiritual and physical needs of the people, so should we. Jesus looked at the situation, not as a problem, but as an opportunity to trust the Father and glorify His name! We will face problems that are beyond our physical needs. That is when we are to turn to Jesus and let Him glorify Himself through us.
2. We need a Sheppard. We are human sheep. There are questions but no answers, distress but no relief, anguish of conscience but no deliverance, tears but no consolation, sin but no forgiveness. We desperately need a shepherd, One who is compassionate and able to provide for us and protect us. We need a Shepherd Savior. We don’t have to look very hard to see what happens when we don’t have a shepherd. Our world is a mess. The darkness is blinding. It seems hopeless, but again nothing is to big for our King. Through our weakness, He is made strong. The more daunting the task in front of us, the more glory He gets. Don’t look at the situation as a problem, see it as an opportunity! An opportunity to glorify our King, to strengthen our faith. It isn’t easy, but it is worth it. The first step is not to measure our resources, but to determine God’s will and trust Him to meet the need!
Liberty, I know some of you are tired from working to keep this church going. Just know that Jesus sees your tiredness. He knows what you have done and what you are doing. Keep doing what you are doing. Your work is not going unnoticed. We appreciate you and what you do. We love you and thank you for your labor. Rest is coming.
We are going to get tired church. We are going to have days when we don’t think we can keep going. That is when we lean on our King. He will provide for us. He will keep us going. We must have compassion for others and look to meet their needs, just like Christ did. We may be tired, but we will be tired together. We will lift each other up, we will step in when others can’t. We will glorify our King. It will be hard. But together and with Jesus, we will persevere.
I have been in contact with the Evangelism and Apologetics leader at the Baptist Convention. We are going to have him here to preach to us about evangelism and then after lunch he will do some training and then we will go to some of the parks and put to use what he teaches us. I am so excited to learn this and go and put it to use side by side with you. I love you guys and I am so excited about what God has in store for us.
Lets pray
