Sermon Tone Analysis
Overall tone of the sermon
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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
, 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.
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
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.
, 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
, 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.”
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.
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