Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand

It’s been a while since we have gotten to meet together for a regular night of youth. It’s been about three weeks since we have gotten to be in the book of Mark.

In the last few lessons that we left off with, we saw how Jesus sent out the Apostles to go perform ministry on His behalf, and then because of this… King Herod hears of this ministry being done and thought it might be John the Baptist who had been raised.

Who of-course from your lesson with Angela, you know that He was beheaded for standing up to truth. Telling Herod, it is not lawful for him to have his brothers wife.

We then come to the feeding of the five thousand which happens to be the only miracle that is recorded by all four gospels.

All of this is happening and then we run into this story. You can only imagine the emotional and physical tole that the apostles have been through up to this point.

Mark 6:30–44 ESV

30 The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. 31 And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32 And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. 33 Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. 34 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. 35 And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. 36 Send them away to 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 buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?” 38 And he said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” 39 Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. 40 So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. 41 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. 42 And they all ate and were satisfied. 43 And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. 44 And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men.

Jesus looked out for the wellbeing of the disciples.

The disciples see the crowd as a difficult situation. Jesus sees the crowd not as a problem, but as an opportunity.

We can see here in this passage where even after doing the work, being the hand and feet of their eventual Savior, that they still were not looking through the eyes of their Master.

To them, the crowds were a problem, perhaps even a nuisance, but to Jesus, they were sheep without a shepherd.

For those of who you don’t know, this is a huge statement be Mark. Sheep without a shepherd is extremely dangerous in an open field environment.

Sheep cannot live without a shepherd. They are entirely dependent on a shepherd for everything. They require constant care and watching over.

Without a shepherd, sheep can wander from the flock, can even find their way wandering off of a cliff because of the way they see and move.

The sheep also may not be able to find water. They need the Shepherd for this.

They may be attacked by predators. They must be protected.

Also, their wool will overgrow. It will become matted, heavy, dirty and infected with parasites. Their hooves also need to be cared for or else they won’t be able to walk correctly.

Mark says that JESUS HAD COMPASSION ON THEM BECAUSE THEY WERE LIKE SHEEP WITHOUT A SHEPHERD.

Now this is where you can tell that Mark doesn’t really care about your feelings here. All he’s interested in is the truth. Because Jesus just called you and I DUMB, unable to do hardly anything for ourselves SHEEP!

But Mark tells us that Jesus has compassion on them. And the amazing thing we can also get form this is that he also has compassion on us.

The first step is not to measure our resources, but to determine God’s will & trust Him to meet the need.