Untitled Sermon (54)

God will never give you more than you can handle. I have heard this saying many times, and it is something famous people teach, like Joel Osteen, who posted this back in 2014. This is a misquote of 1 Corinthians 10:13, “13 No temptation has overtaken you that is not common to man. God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond your ability, but with the temptation he will also provide the way of escape, that you may be able to endure it.” Joel gets a few things wrong with this post. First, 1 Corinthians 10:13 is about temptation specifically, not life in general. Second, that suffering always leads to a big destiny, which also is not promised in Scripture and is easy to find times when people suffered greatly and then simply passed in relative anonymity. Third, it is about you and your strength. But here is the Truth of the matter. God often allows us, and even pushes us, to see our limits, experiencing more than we can handle. Why? Because once we get to the end of ourselves and see our limits, we will learn to lean on Him, molding us into who He has created us to be as we walk according to the Spirit. This morning we are continuing our series… and we arrive at a passage that has 3 seemingly disconnected stories. Yet there is a through line, that our human limitations reveal our great need. But, to quote Charles Spurgeon, “I have a great need for Christ; I have a great Christ for my need.” As we go to Him in our limits, we will see that His compassion and abundance are more than enough for us. Let’s pray. 

So as we go through this passage we will come to three times where we see a distinct limit, what each of those limits needs, and how Jesus Himself is more than enough to fulfill that limit. The first limit we see and what that limit needs is that limited energy needs divine rest. Look with me at verses 30-32… we talked about this the last two weeks but as a reminder, this is a continuation, the end of the narrative we began two weeks ago. In the beginning of this narrative what we see is that the 12 disciples were sent out on mission, to take the good news of the Kingdom to others and to proclaim the message of repentance for sin. They have done just that and they have seen and been a part of some incredible things. And they return to Jesus and they start to tell Him everything that had happened. 

One of the things I think we as Christians can do better is celebrate the wins. Do we ever stop and talk about what the Lord has done through us? This is why we try during our annual meeting to discuss the “wins” from various ministries. It is good to celebrate what the Lord has done through us. But to do this we also need to stop at some point, rest, and reflect. The disciples went out on mission and worked hard, which is a great thing. We should work hard, we should serve hard, we should put in Gospel work and sacrifice for the good of the Kingdom and others. But we should not do that 24/7/365. Jesus tells His disciples that they need to rest. I love how verse 31 puts it. They had no leisure even to eat. 

Jesus does not say they were in sin for being so focused, but He does tell them that they need a break. This has been something that has been created into our very DNA. We are made in the image of God, and we see from the beginning of creation, the Lord rested on the 7th day. And then that pattern is used in the command of the Sabbath. Now we are not going to do a deep dive into a theology of the Sabbath and how our ultimate rest is found in Jesus, but rest is something we need. The disciples needed it. We need it. So are you finding time to rest? Are you finding time to slow down, eat a good meal, have a conversation, spend time in Scripture, and prayer? 

How can we rest better? This may sound like opposite thoughts but hang in there with me: more people need to serve. You may know the saying, many hands make light work? There are people who find it difficult to rest because they feel that everything falls on them. In order for the people of this church to better be able to rest, then the work of ministry needs to not fall on a select few. And when we are sharing the load, then we will protect each other from burn out because each person will be able to appropriately and adequately rest. 

But also, for those who are people pleasers, those who struggle to say no, here is your permission, you know your bandwidth, if you are doing too much then please feel the freedom to say no. We do not want people burning out here. We want the church and her people to last a long time. Now, this should not give any of us permission to be lazy, or to not stretch ourselves. But I hope and pray each of us knows and realizes our limits, realizes that we need the divine rest that Jesus created us to need. When we ignore that, it actually hurts. It hurts ourselves, because we can burn out, we can reinforce the belief that whatever it is relies on me, and we can ignore that very real need we have for Jesus. It hurts our families, because sometimes over serving and not resting leads to us not being as present for our families, it makes us less gracious, and it does not set our families up to flourish. It hurts our church, because when 20% of the people do 80% of the work, we end up missing out on the gifts and ideas other people could bring. Maybe someone is more gifted than you at something, chances are that is true, I do not believe anybody here is the best in the world at something, but the church functions at its best when every member of the body is functioning. 

And when we share the burden, when we realize we cannot do everything, we can trust the Lord in our rest. When we rest, we are actually acknowledging that they are creatures, we can take breaks because our God does not take a break. So rest. Trust that the Lord is working even if you yourself are not doing everything little thing. That Jesus will work in us and through us, using our efforts, but ultimately that the results are not up to us, so resting is a way of saying we trust in His work and not ultimately in our own. 

But our limits are not simply seen in the fact that we need rest, we also see that limited leadership needs divine compassion. Look with me at verses 33-34… unfortunately the rest that they needed did not quite happen because a bunch of people saw Jesus and the disciples and recognized them. They are missing something that they have never been able to find and there is something about Jesus that makes them keep going to Him. These people have leaders, they have priests, they have teachers, yet they are missing something.

I want to look at a passage from the Old Testament. The passage is when God is revealing that Joshua will be taking over for Moses. Here is what Moses says to the Lord, Numbers 27:17, “17 who shall go out before them and come in before them, who shall lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the LORD may not be as sheep that have no shepherd.”” Having good leadership is something we all need, it is a deeply human need. We may live in a cultural moment where our culture subscribes to individualism, that we are our own captain of our own soul, that we do not need anybody or anything else, we are in charge of us, but the Truth is we need, and even desire in our core, good leadership. Good leadership ultimately needs to be submitted to Christ, to the Gospel, to the Kingdom. 

This is why we take church leadership seriously as a church, this is why we take the role of elder extremely seriously. (Talk about nominating process, and limits). But the truth is, even the best elders are still human. We each have limits. Which is why, when we get there, the need for food was not their greatest need, their greatest and deepest need was something else.

Because when it comes to our passage, we see something that is true across the board, the best human leadership is still human, and Jesus sees their deep need. What is their need? That they are like sheep without a shepherd. When thinking about that picture, what is a shepherd? A shepherd is someone who guides, protects, and cares for the sheep. Sheep need that. People need that. But here is a problem, too many people are looking to people to fulfill what only Jesus can do. I want to look at another Old Testament passage, Ezekiel 34:23-24 “23 And I will set up over them one shepherd, my servant David, and he shall feed them: he shall feed them and be their shepherd. 24 And I, the LORD, will be their God, and my servant David shall be prince among them. I am the LORD; I have spoken.”

The elders here do their best to be Christ centered, shepherding this church towards Christ. But no matter how hard we try, human leadership is still very human. But in the Ezekiel passage we just read, we see that we have a shepherd who is above any human shepherd, a shepherd who will care for God’s people perfectly. And when that shepherd shows up, how does He look at His people in their limit? In their need? With compassion. 

Now we need to talk about this word. The word refers to a feeling deep within the gut, because where we think of the heart as the center of emotion in the biblical world they thought of the stomach as the center of emotion. Jesus had this intense, gut-punch compassion for the people He was looking at. He is not only having empathy or sympathy, feeling or acknowledging their feelings, He had His own feeling of compassion, moving Him towards them, which led Him to step in and do what only He could do, so Jesus, in His compassion, acted. And His compassion is not driven because they had some physical need, but rather because they lacked true guidance, they lacked a true shepherd, they were spiritually open and vulnerable. So Jesus steps closer to them, and then begins to feed them in the way they ultimately needed, by feeding their soul. 

His compassion did not immediately lead Him to giving them what they might have thought they wanted but rather what they truly needed. Think about earlier in Mark, the healing of the paralytic. His, and His friends’, immediate want was to walk again. Jesus’ in His compassion gave Him what He truly needed. Think about the Gospel. We have a lot of wants in our life. But Jesus comes and gives us first and foremost what we truly need, grace and forgiveness. We all need a true shepherd. No matter how good of elders we have at any church, we need the true shepherd to give us divine compassion. We can, and should emulate that compassion for each other and for those who do not believe, but ultimately the one who can have true compassion and give us what we need is the only One who can give us what we truly need, Jesus Christ. 

But Jesus does not simply care about our spiritual, He cares about our needs and we get to participate, even when it looks like we cannot do it completely on our own, because we cannot, because limited resources need divine abundance. Let’s read the rest of our passage starting in verse 35… this is a really famous miracle in the life of Jesus. This whole section is titled in most of our Bibles as “Jesus feed the five thousand.” While other things happen, this is the big ticket item, so to speak. The disciples come up to Jesus and they recognize the physical need these people have. They are hungry, there is no food here, we need to let them go and get something to eat. Jesus responds simply: you feed them. 

Ok Jesus, you just made, quite literally, an impossible request. It would take 8 months wages, or as our passages says, 200 denarii. They looked around and see the, as the end of our passage tells us, 5000 men. If you are newer to Scripture this is actually not an accurate number. In those days when taking count of a crowd you counted adult men. So if you add women and children there is a good chance it was more like 15000-20000 people. So for Jesus to be like, alright you feed them, seems rather ridiculous. It makes me think of video games where you collect all these weapons and materials and then you look and your character is just dressed like this. Like does Jesus think they are Mary Poppins and have pockets that are infinitely deep? How are we supposed to feed them?

But notice the phrasing Jesus uses. He says, “you give them something to eat.” Not, you provide for every need they might have until they are full. Cook a feast. No, you give them something to eat. Jesus follows that up with a question, how many loaves of bread do you have. They come back with the answer, we have 5 loaves of bread and 2 fish. Jesus, we cannot feed all of these people with a lunch this small. This is enough for a couple people, maybe. But Jesus does not ask them to provide more than they have, He asks them to bring what they have. In order for everybody to be taken care of, Jesus was going to have to do what only Jesus can do. 

How many of us have an instinct to wait until we think we are ready? Instead of helping and doing what we can? As you may know, I have quite a passion for the pro-life cause. I hear about the abortion numbers and the things that are going on and they are staggering. If I looked at Jesus and said, well I cannot stop abortions from happening, and until I have the influence to change laws and make a “real difference” then I will not move, that would be me being disobedient. So my/our loaves as a church is supporting and serving with the local pregnancy center as they serve one woman at a time saving babies lives one at a time. What will the Lord do with that? I do not know. 

Where, whether at this church or outside these walls, do you have a few loaves and fishes you can bring? We do not have to have the abundant power of Christ ability to change the world. We have to realize we have limits, but in our limits we must trust Christ with our limits. All I have to offer is this, Lord. I do not know what you will do with this, but here is what I can bring. When we hold things back because we do not feel like we have enough we are actually showing a lack of faith in Christ and too much faith in ourselves. We are actually saying that we believe we should be able to do more and will wait until we can do more. But we may never be able to do more. All we can do is give the loaves and fishes that have been provided to us. 

Are we holding something back from God because we do not feel like it is enough for God to use? Because God can use whatever we bring to do whatever He wills. Which leads us to what happens next in the miracle, Jesus does what only Jesus can do. Jesus tells everybody to sit in groups on the grass, and He blesses the food and begins to distribute the food. And you may know the story, the people ate until they were full and then they ended up with 12 baskets full of leftovers. Back to the introduction, feeding these thousands and thousands of people, that was way more than the disciples could handle. In no world could they feed each of them, and if there was a restaurant nearby they could not even pay for them to eat. They were helpless. But Jesus could take what they gave and do what they never could. The miracle was never in the five loaves and two fish. The miracle was in Christ. He took their insufficiency and turned it into abundance.

Our God is a God of abundance. Jesus says that He came to give us life, but not just life, life abundant. Hebrews tells us that Jesus says to the uttermost. In the garden Adam and Eve could eat from any tree of the garden. In Jesus’ first miracle He lavishes a wedding with the best wine. Paul says that God can do more than we could ever ask or imagine. In the Jesus storybook Bible, Sally-Lloyd Jones writes this (read page 17). Now the lavishing does not always look like physical blessing, but Jesus lavishes His grace upon us, and this is most clearly seen at the cross, where He lavished His blood, and in the resurrection, where He lavished His victory, and His ascension, where He lavishes His hope and peace. 

The disciples started this process knowing they had hardly anything to offer. Hardly any food or money, no solution to speak of. Yet the end that time each with a basket full of food. The lesson in this is not that Jesus made them sufficient, but that ultimately Jesus is the One who is sufficient, He always has been, and He always will be. Let’s pray.