THE JESUS REVOLUTION

What is the point of this passage?

REVOLUTION

The textual and historical context tells us this is about revolution. When Jesus Christ left the villages and towns of Galilee to go across the lake in order to find peace and quiet, he was going to the remote part. He was going to the rural part, the hill district.

This area was ground zero of revolutionary resistance to the Roman imperial rule. This is Jedha City in Rogue One or Boston, MA in 1775.

It was in this remote and rural region that all the freedom fighters were hiding out. This is the place where everyone was sympathetic to the zealots. This was the center of the zealot movement, and the zealots stood for the violent overthrow of Roman rule.

When they arrive an enormous crowd comes out in the middle of nowhere. This was an unpopulated region. When it says 5,000 men, it probably means heads of families, so there were actually 15,000 to 20,000 people there.

John, in his gospel account of this incident, in

John 6:15 ESV

Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.

, comes right out and says what Mark hints at here. That is, they came to make him king by force. This is the place where everyone wanted a revolutionary leader. Jesus shows up. They come out. Why? They want a revolution! I mean, don’t forget. If you’ve been with us through this walk through the book of Mark, just immediately before this is the story of Herod and the murder of John the Baptist.

tells us why they have come. They have come to make him king. This is the place where everyone wanted a revolutionary leader. They want a revolution!

Do you remember what Kyle taught us in last week’s sermon? These people lived under the rule of Herod. Herod was one of the depressive and exploitative rulers of Rome. His reign of terror made their yearning for a king even greater.

What a vivid depiction of the most depressive, exploitative, kind of imperial rule. No wonder they yearned for a king! Jesus goes to the part of the country that’s the center of all the revolutionary fervor in that whole region of the world. They wanted him to be a revolutionary leader. They wanted him to be a king. They wanted a revolution. That’s what they were after!

Jesus goes to the center of revolutionary fervor to unveil His revolutionary plan.

JESUS BRINGS AN UNEXPECTED REVOLUTION.

Mark 6:34 ESV

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.

When Jesus looks at them in verse 34 and sees them as sheep without a shepherd, that is a very significant phrase. Jesus is not looking at them through pastoral but political eyes. This is not the shepherd of but the political shepherd of

Numbers 27:17 ESV

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.”

So . “The Lord is my shepherd.” The shepherd loves his sheep and nurtures and cares for the sheep. Yes, yes, yes. However, Jesus is actually quoting here Moses’ prayer to God at the end of his life () where Moses says, “After me, you must give the children of Israel a political and military leader.” So Jesus is actually quoting . It goes like this. This is Moses praying to God and saying, “May the Lord … appoint a man over this community to go out and … lead them … so the Lord’s people will not be like sheep without a shepherd.”

This is Moses praying to God and saying, “May the Lord … appoint a man over this community to go out and … lead them … so the Lord’s people will not be like sheep without a shepherd.”

Almost every place in the Old Testament that talks about sheep without a shepherd is talking about the need for a political military leader. When Jesus looks out and sees them coming and says, “They’re like sheep without a shepherd,” he knows what they’re after. They want him to be their revolutionary leader who liberates them from oppression. They want him to be another Moses, another Joshua.

Notice Jesus response to their desire. They came for liberation and Jesus begins to lecture. They came ready to overthrow the government and Jesus begins to teach the Gospel message.

This is not the normal revolutionary response. Most leaders at this point are distributing weapons not words.

Jesus response to their desire is a radical repudiation of the liberation models of the day. Jesus will not march to the populist and militarist drumbeat. He disavows the zealot model of liberation, but he doesn’t disavow a model liberation.

When he gives the Word and he gives bread, what is he saying? Bread in our culture means carbohydrates but in this culture it meant life.

Jesus is saying, “I’m a revolutionary leader, but other revolutionary leaders came dealing out death. I come dealing life.” When he starts giving out his Word and bread, he is actually saying, “I’m bringing you life in two ways: life through doctrine, and life through deed.” How so?

He gives life through His doctrine. Jesus talks about his Word and the gospel as bread. In God’s Doctrine is bread.

Matthew 4:4 ESV

But he answered, “It is written, “ ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.’ ”

, he says to the Devil, “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God.” See? God’s Word is bread.

Then in

John 6:27 ESV

Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.”

John 6:32–33 ESV

Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

, Jesus says, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give you. […] It is not Moses who has given you the bread from heaven [when he fed you with manna in the wilderness], but it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven. […] Your forefathers ate the manna in the desert, yet they died. But here is the bread that … a man may eat and not die.”

John 6:32 ESV

Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.

Jesus is saying; “You have a hunger in you deeper than the physical hunger. You have a hunger that bread can’t fill. If you don’t get that emptiness filled by me you’re going to starve forever.

Jesus is saying; “You need a gospel revolution before you need a government revolution.” A government take over by those who are still empty will only lead to more emptiness. A true revolution begins internally not externally.

Jesus is saying. He is saying, “You have a hunger in you deeper than the physical hunger. You have a hunger that bread itself … literal bread … can’t fill. If you don’t get that emptiness filled by me, if that hunger isn’t addressed by me, you’re going to starve forever. All your revolutions are going to go awry unless you deal with this hunger. All your revolutions trying to get more of that kind of bread will go awry unless you first have this kind of bread and you deal with the emptiness and the fears and the problems inside, in your soul, in your spirit.”

Jean-Paul Sartre, an atheist philosopher, once said; “That God does not exist, I cannot deny that my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget.”

He says, “I don’t believe in God, but I’m hungry for God. I’m hungry for what only God can give.” Jesus says, “The hunger that Sartre says has no cure, I have the cure for. Jesus is saying that once he satisfies your real spiritual emptiness, then you’re empowered.”

Jesus not only liberates us through His doctrine but his deeds. He gives them more than bread. He gives miraculous bread.

Let’s talk for a minute now about the miracles for a second. It’s very important. Why does Jesus do miracles? What do the miracles mean in general?

Is Jesus trying to get people to say, “Wow! Look at your power and greatness.” No.

The point of Jesus miracles are not intended to validate His raw power but the redemptive purpose of His power.

We modern people think of miracles mainly as spectacles. Suspensions of the natural order but that was not their purpose.

Jurgen Moltmann, the German philosopher, puts it like this.

“Jesus’ healings are … the only truly ‘natural’ things in a world that is unnatural, demonized, and wounded.”

Do you hear what he is saying? God didn’t make the world the way it is today. When God created the world, there was no hunger and starvation. There was no blindness and leprosy. There was no poverty and disease and death. Those things are unnatural! God didn’t make the world like this. That means miracles of Jesus show that Jesus is no happier with this world as it is now than we are.

God didn’t make the world the way it is today. When God created the world, there was no hunger and starvation. There was no blindness and leprosy. There was no poverty and disease and death. Those things are unnatural! God didn’t make the world like this. That means miracles of Jesus show that Jesus is no happier with this world as it is now than we are. The miracles of Jesus are not primarily suspensions of the natural order; they are restorations of the natural order.

The miracles of Jesus are not primarily suspensions of the natural order; they are restorations of the natural order.

They are pointing back to the world the way it was. More than that, they’re pointing forward to the new heavens and new earth that Jesus Christ is going to bring about at infinite cost to himself.

Someday we’re all going to be eating bread in the new heavens and new earth, and we will die not. We will perish not. We will be perfect. This knowledge of the future. This future guarantee is bread now for your soul. It’s hope. It’s strength. It gives you everything you need to face the world.

Sartre denied God’s existence but could not escape his hunger for God. Why? His atheism said we’re here by accident, just explosions and lava and amino acids. We’re here through a process of evolution, which is the strong eating the weak.

As he looked at a world full of disease, hunger, injustice, and death he realized that his doctrine prevented him from good deeds. His doctrine told him that this was the natural course of life.

Natural selection. Survival of the fittest. Nature is red in tooth and claw. Any attempts to undo the natural course of life would be the highest hypocrisy. Atheism provides no power for the revolution our hearts desire. Only Christianity provides us with hope and strength of revolution.

The gospel says these things are not natural, and these things are not inevitable. When you embrace the doctrine of Jesus that’s bread now. It helps you face everything. It helps you keep going. It helps you get up and do it again.

Jesus says, “If you experience through the doctrine that inner liberation and if you’re empowered through this doctrine of hope to deed, to healing people spiritually, socially, emotionally, psychologically, and physically, you’re part of my revolution.”

JESUS USES UNQUALIFIED REVOLUTIONARIES.

Here is this bunch of people. They’re out in the middle of nowhere. The disciples make a perfectly reasonable suggestion. They say, “Okay, Lord. Lunch on their own. Send them out. Let them go to the towns.”

They make a perfectly reasonable suggestion, and Jesus deliberately makes an absolutely irrational suggestion. He says, “You feed them.” In Greek, the emphasis is on you. “You feed them.” Of course, they get their backs up. I think Matthew, Luke, and John kind of tone down a little bit what they say. Mark is a little more honest about the sarcasm.

They say, “You’re asking us to do the impossible!” And this is the Jesus’ whole point. Jesus Christ says, “Until you see what I’m calling you to do is impossible, you are absolutely unqualified to do it.” Look at how Jesus even does this miracle.

That’s not what he does. First of all, he works with the food they have. He doesn’t do this food out of … He uses the food they have, which is inadequate. He uses their food, but it’s inadequate for the job. Then only as the disciples go out with this inadequate food is it multiplied. Only as they go out does Jesus actually meet the needs. His power only happens through the disciples. What is Jesus saying?

First of all, he works with the food they have.

He uses the food they have, which is inadequate. Then only as the disciples go out with this inadequate food is it multiplied. Only as they go out does Jesus actually meet the needs. His power only happens through the disciples. What is Jesus saying?

Jesus says, “What I’m calling you to do, my work in the world is impossible. It will take a miracle.”

If you go out knowing it’s impossible, knowing you’re unqualified, knowing it will take a miracle and you go out to do it anyway, then and only then will Jesus do his restoration work through you. There’s this great quote by a commentator on 2 Corinthians that puts it perfectly like this. Listen carefully.

“It is not God’s intention that we should be in ourselves adequate to our tasks. Rather, he wants that we should be inadequate. If we only accept the tasks which we think are adapted to our powers, we are not responding to the call of God. The church is always in a crisis and always will be. There will be difficulties, limitations, insoluble problems, lack of people and money, a menacing outlook, endless misunderstandings and misrepresentations. We are not only to do our work despite these things; they are precisely the conditions requisite for the doing of it.”

All the problems, all the difficulties, all the limitations, all the impossibilities … we not only are supposed to do our work that Jesus gives us in spite of those things; they are the requisites for it. Only the inadequate are adequate. Only when you know you’re inadequate and you go do it anyway, only when you know it’s going to take a miracle for the things that you’re being called to do by Jesus to happen and you go do it anyway will he begin to work through you.

JESUS COMMITS A UNIQUE REVOLUTIONARY ACT.

All revolutions start with a shot, with some revolutionary act. You invade the city or you storm the fortress. You do something. Therefore, revolutions start with acts of violence. The revolution that Jesus is about to begin will be no different. I thought you said Jesus is a revolutionary leader who brings life not death.” He does for us but not for himself.

What is the revolutionary act on which this whole thing is based?

Mark 6:41 ESV

And taking the 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.

Two verbs. He blessed and broke.

Just a little later in the Mark, Jesus is serving the Lord’s Supper the night before he is about to die, it says,

Mark 14:22 ESV

And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.”

, just a little later in the book, when Jesus is at the Lord’s Supper the night before he is about to die, it says, “Take it; this is my body.” Same two verbs. He blessed and broke. This is pointing to that.

Same two verbs. He blessed and broke. is pointing to .

Jesus is saying to everybody who is coming after him, trying to make him king, “You want a new Moses. You want a Moses who will feed you with bread in the wilderness. You want a Moses who will liberate you from oppression. You want a new Moses. Well, I am not just a new Moses. I’m the ultimate Moses. I have come to do the ultimate exodus, not to liberate you just for a while from political oppression but from sin and death itself. Here’s how I’m going to do it.”

Jesus, on the cross, looking at the people killing him (his enemies), the people rejecting him, says, “Father, forgive them,” then he died. In other words, he blessed the people who were killing him and broke. He broke! If you see him blessing and breaking on the cross, first as your substitute and second as your example, that will make you a revolutionary.

First, as your substitute. If you see him blessing and breaking on the cross for you as your substitute, that’s going to make you a revolutionary. How? If you see a loaf of bread, if it stays whole, I can’t eat it, right? So I starve. I die. I decay. I literally go to pieces. If the bread stays whole, I go to pieces. If I am to be whole and eat the bread, it has to be broken into pieces. It’s me or the bread. Either you’re pieces, or I’m pieces.

Jesus Christ said, “I am the bread.” What he meant by that is, “I was torn to pieces so you could be whole. I went to the cross, and I took the penalty the human race deserved for all you’ve done. I absorbed sin. I absorbed the punishment. I absorbed judgment. If I had stayed whole, you would have been broken to pieces. But I was broken to pieces so you would be whole.”

When you see that you’re saved not by what you do but by what Christ has done and, therefore, you can be adopted by grace and you can say, “Father, accept me because of what Jesus has done” and know he loves you absolutely, totally, unconditionally, forever, that is what fills the inside emptiness. That will liberate you internally, when you see him doing it as your substitute.

Then secondly, if you see him doing this as your example (he blessed his enemies, and he broke)that is revolutionary! Do you know why?

Okay, do you know what you see out there? You see “me first” power. The world is built on “me first” power. My life is to be whole. You are broken for me. Your life broken for me. Your life poured out for me. That’s how we do it in the world. That’s how we get up the ladder. We exploit. We elbow people out. See? Your life broken for me. Jesus Christ says, “I’m the Son of God. I come from ultimate reality, and here’s how I live my life: my life broken for you.”

The world is built on “me first” power. My life is to be whole. You are broken for me. Your life broken for me. Your life poured out for me. That’s how we do it in the world. That’s how we get up the ladder. We exploit. We elbow people out. Your life broken for me. Jesus Christ says, “I’m the Son of God. I come from ultimate reality, and here’s how I live my life: my life broken for you.”

If you take that dynamic into the center of your life, a man dying for his enemies, that will turn you into someone who subverts the culture, who lives in a complete opposite way from the culture. When you move out into this society, not living for yourself but pouring yourself out, not only in service for our own type but for people like Jesus did who are very different, who don’t believe what we do at all, that will subvert the culture. That will do it!

Secularism makes people selfish, individualistic. Religion makes people self-righteous and tribal, but the gospel transforms you on the inside, then turns you out to live a life of service for all the people around you, including the people who don’t believe like you do, because that’s how Jesus saved you. That’s what he did. We become a counterculture. We’re different than they are. We want to subvert the way the dominant culture works.

Look. Secularism makes people selfish, individualistic. Why not? Who is to say what’s right and wrong? Religion makes people self-righteous and tribal, but the gospel transforms you on the inside, then turns you out to live a life of service for all the people around you, including the people who don’t believe like you do, because that’s how Jesus saved you. That’s what he did. We become a counterculture. We’re different than they are. We’re very different. We want to subvert the way the dominant culture works.

We accomplish this through sacrificial, loving service to the people around us. If you want to become a revolutionary, you have to do it the way Jesus did. You have to lose power, not take power, in his name. You say, “What do you mean by that?” You have to become vulnerable. “What do you mean by that?” Let me give you three examples to close.

Giving. If you give minimum 10 percent of your income away to charity, to the poor, to the community, to the church. Your giving brings liberation. It helps to change the community and make it better. However, it makes you vulnerable. You don’t have it all socked away.

We live in a economically unstable world, don’t we now? If you give the way Jesus calls you to give you become vulnerable. You’re losing power for the sake of other people. But if you don’t do it, you’re no revolutionary. You’re part of the problem. You’re part of the culture out there we’re trying to subvert.

If you hold onto your money instead of giving it away you’re no revolutionary of Jesus’. You probably haven’t actually had the internal (seeing him do it as your substitute) transformation or you’d be able to do the external (seeing him do this as an example).

Here another example: relationships. Jesus says we have to forgive everybody who wrongs us. We have to work like crazy to keep our relationships right.

If you see somebody over there who has something against you, or if you have something against them, you have to go to them again and again and again and say, “I don’t think we got it right yet. We have to get this thing straight.” You have to forgive. You have to reconcile. You can never give up. You can never just stew. You can just never let a root of bitterness grow.

This is hard work! It makes you vulnerable, emotionally vulnerable. “I don’t want to go and talk to people about my feelings. I don’t want to go and let people know I’m having struggles with them.” It makes you vulnerable. It’s a loss of power. It’s often a loss of face.

If you don’t do it, you’re no revolutionary. You’re part of the problem. You’re part of that culture we’re trying to subvert.

If there’s anybody here who says, “I don’t think I’ve ever really embraced Jesus like you’re talking about.” Just remember what he said. “I am the bread.” He doesn’t say, “I am the teacher who will show you how to save yourself.”

He says, “I save you. I lived the life you should have lived, died the death you should have died. I was broken for you.” To really embrace him is not just to try to be like him. It’s to see what he has done for you and ask God, “Please accept me because of what he has done.” That will change you. If there’s anybody here who says, “Well, I’ve embraced Jesus. I’m trying to do his work, but oh, my goodness. It’s hard.” Remember only the inadequate are adequate. Let’s pray.