verses 30 through 44. I'm going to read verses 30 through 34 to start us. If you don't have a Bible, you can find the text also in your order of worship. So I say to you, you hear the word of God. The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all they had done and taught. And he said to them, come away by yourself to a desolate place and rest awhile. For many were coming and going. And they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in a boat to a desolate place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them. And they ran their own foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. 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. Let us pray.
While they are praying that as we consider your word this morning that you would come and open the eyes of the blind and the ears of the death that you would wake us up where we are sleepy. I pray that you be in my head and in my thinking and my heart and in my understanding and in my mouth and in my speaking. In Christ's name, we pray these things. Amen. And amen. Well, if you've been here for the past few months, I've been looking at the Gospel of Mark today is the last sermon. I'll do in this series until next year. Next year we'll pick up sometime in the winter right where we left off. And so after Easter, of course next week I'll preach on some Easter text. And then after Easter we're going to start looking at the book of Galatians. And then we're going to take a break to do a look at stewardship. And then I'll finish off Galatians during the summer. So up to this point, however, we've been doing the book of Mark. And if you remember so far in the book of Mark, the first six chapters, Jesus wins some and he loses some. He loses some in that many people reject him. We saw the religious leaders reject him. We saw his own family, think he was crazy. We saw the Gentiles reject him in the region of the Gero scenes on one hand. On the other hand, we saw Jesus win a lot. We saw him exercise his authority over lots of things. He exercises his authority over nature when he calmed the storm. He exercises authority over the demonic world when he cast 2,000 demons out of the man who I called Legion. We saw him, I also heal a woman who've been sick for 12 years and we saw him raise a little girl from the dead. And today as we look at this last passage, it's also a big deal. It's a battle. It's sort of a smackdown because Jesus showed his authority over all those things. The big question is whether he can win in a contest of man versus food. Those of you who laugh know what I'm talking about, don't you? One of the benefits of my insomnia is I get to watch cool shows like man versus food at 2 in the morning. Have you seen man versus food? I don't know what channel it's on the history channel or discovery channel, something like that. Basically it's his guy named Adam Richmond who goes from place to place around the country and he takes on all these eating challenges. So one place might have a 5 pound hamburger that if you can eat it, you get your picture put on the wall. One place might have the world's hottest chicken wings and if you can eat just six of these things, you get your picture on the wall. A couple of weeks ago, he ate 180 oysters in one sitting and one that really got my attention was he went to Beth's cafe here in Seattle and they have a challenge to 12 egg omelet filled with chili and cheese on top of the bed of hash browns with a loaf of toast on the side. And the whole question is whether he can eat all these challenges that these restaurants offer. And every time he'll do the, you know, it's about a half hour show and at the end of the show, it'll you know, chink up on the screen who the victor was. Man or food. You want to know how he did with the, the 12 egg omelet? I'll tell you at the end. Think about this though. Jesus, the day it's man versus food when we look at the text, except it's a complete opposite. You know, you can train yourself to eat, you know, 50 hot dogs or something like that I guess. It's one thing for one man to eat enough food for 5,000 people. It's another thing for one man to produce enough food for 5,000 people. In other words, it's another thing to basically perform a miracle. This is one of the most common texts in the whole Bible and yet it's one of the most familiar. And yet we tend to overlook how big it really is. At some point, Jesus was praying and things just started to multiply. It's big. Speaking of food, by the way. This text that we're going to look at this morning is part of a sandwich. If you've been here, you remember I told you that Mark likes to write in what I call sandwiches. In other words, he takes two stories and he tells, he, by telling the two stories, he takes one of the stories and he'll sandwich it in the beginning and the end of another story. So when Jesus was battling the religious leaders chapter 4 that was sandwiched in between his parents and his mother and brothers calling him crazy. Last few weeks ago, we looked at the woman who was sick for 12 years. Well, she was sandwiched in between the healing of gyrosist daughter. And this passage right here is really the bottom piece of bread, I guess, or the top piece of bread. It's part of the sandwich sandwiched in between the story of Jesus sending his disciples out to preach the gospel and then coming back and ending up in this scene where they feed 5,000 is sandwiched, this great banquet that Herod gives and the death of John the Baptist. And I think that's on purpose. Mark usually makes a sandwich in order to either draw a contrast between two things or to compare two things. And when you look at the Herod's banquet and then you look at Jesus's banquet because the feeding of the 5,000, the language that is used there is the same language as that of a banquet of a party. And Herod has a party in Jesus has a party. Herod's party is sort of presumptuous and self-serving and Jesus's party is other serving. Herod's party ultimately ends up deadly. Jesus's party ends up being satisfying. Which party would you rather go to? Today we're going to look basically. You see Herod's party at the end of the day, Herod was presumptuous and had a palace and he had money and had all the girls and had all the power. It seemed and yet at the end of the day still Israel was like sheep without a shepherd. They were still leaderless. So the question is who can lead them or who do they need to lead them and that leads us to to our text today. Basically we're going to look at three things this morning. We're going to look at first as our need of a shepherd. The second thing we're looking at is our need of a meal. And the last thing we're going to look at is the feast of Jesus. Hey, let's look at finally at the first our need of a shepherd in verses 30 through 34. The apostles returned and Jesus said to them, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while for there are many coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat. He first of all, part of the context here, especially if you look at this account and the other gospels, especially John, the area where they were in Galilee was an area that was known to harbor the zealots. Remember the zealots were those who wanted to rebel against Rome. It started in about you know six AD and they were constantly plotting to take to rebel against Rome where they did rebel against Rome. And it was a place that was constantly alive with sort of messianic fervor. They were looking for someone to come who would lead them against the Romans. John chapter six, we know that they thought Jesus was this person because it says they sought to take him and carry him away and make him that person. They want to make him their king because they were looking for someone who would lead them. One of the metaphors in the Old Testament for sheep without a shepherd, one of the things that points to is the need of a military leader like Joshua. In other words, the army is like a sheep without a shepherd and what they need is just a shepherd to come and rally their forces to come and help them take over the Roman Empire or take over those who would oppress them. And Jesus, the disciples have gone out. You know, I always put myself in these texts and I was reading this. You know, I'm thinking, okay, the disciples have gone out. They've been obedient to Jesus. They've preached and they've healed and they've cast out demons. They come back. Jesus sees them and he says, well, you boys need some rest. And they probably felt tired and thought that was great. I was hoping he would say that. So Jesus has, let's come away to a desert place. Let's go to the wilderness, if you will, to rest and they get in a boat and they begin to probably go up the shoreline. And as they're going up the shore, people anticipate where they're going to be, the crowds do and they run ahead of them and they're waiting. And I just think if I was sitting on that boat and being one of the disciples and God to the, expecting to put my feet up and you know, watch some TV for a while or something and I got to the shore and saw this crowd there, I would have just rolled my eyes probably inside. I looked over at Peter. Nothing's easy to do. Nothing. Can't rest, can't do anything. Get in the boat. All we had to do was go to point eight point B. We'd rest but no, no, no, no, no, no, we go. And as soon as we get there, the people are already waiting and clamoring for us. I assume that's what the disciples thought. On the other hand, what's interesting is to see what Jesus thought because Jesus was just as tired as they were. He was just as hungry as they were. He had to be. And yet, what does Jesus think and say when he sees them? In the verse 34, it says when he, that's Jesus, 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. So what leads Jesus to have compassion on the crowds is justice is that they are like sheep without a shepherd. And the question is what kind of shepherd do they need? The answer is really, they need three kinds of shepherds. Everyone does. First, they need a priestly shepherd. This whole text we're going to see looks backwards. It looks backwards and sort of recalls the Exodus and Israel and the wilderness and the Exodus and God providing food for them. So they need a priestly shepherd like Moses, someone who can represent them before God. They need compassion. Jesus has compassion because at this point, they don't have someone who can represent them before God. But they also need a prophetic shepherd. They need a shepherd like Ezekiel who could teach them, who can tell them the word of God and who can tell them where this salvation is to be found. Finally, they need a kingly shepherd. They need a shepherd like David. That's what the book of Ezekiel says. He says, one day I'll send my shepherd David to shepherd them. Israel. So they need a priestly shepherd, a prophetic shepherd and a kingly shepherd. And Jesus has compassion on them. And it's a good thing that Jesus had compassion on them because guess what? Jesus is the priestly shepherd, the prophetic shepherd and the kingly shepherd. Jesus is the priestly shepherd because Jesus is the one who will represent them before God. He'll represent them before God primarily by dying for their sins. I mean, we're heading this week into holy week and as we head into holy week, what we're doing is we're celebrating on one hand that Jesus is our king on the other hand, we celebrate the fact that he died for our sins, that he took them away and when he rose from the dead, he now represents us before God. He is a priestly shepherd. You want to shepherd who can represent you before God. But also, he's a prophetic shepherd. He teaches them. It says he sat there and he taught them many things. Finally, Jesus is also the kingly shepherd. That's what we celebrate today. He rode through Jerusalem on a donkey. You know the beautiful thing about Palm Sunday. We talked about this in staff meeting. You know, you would only ride through some place like that on a donkey. If you were king, if you were totally in charge. In other words, if you'd like to look at the book of first kings, when David's about to die and they're not sure who's going to be the king, there's some political jockeying. And David says, here's what you want you to do. I want you to go get my donkey, not my war stallion, but my donkey put Solomon on it and walk him through the town. What does that mean? You see, when you go through the town on a stallion, it means that you might not be all the way in charge. You might need to put down an uprising. When you go through on a donkey, that means you have nothing to worry about, that you're completely in charge. And Jesus, even though he goes into holy week toward the cross, he is completely and utterly in charge. That's the kind of king and that's the kind of shepherd that you and I need. That's what kind of shepherd the crowd needed. And the question is, do you have that kind of shepherd? Do you know that Jesus represents you before God? Do you know that he teaches you? Do you know that he is the one who will govern you? You know, I prayed this morning, I was reading a book when I was in Ethiopia by Richard Loveless. He said, the longing of every human heart is a righteous government. I never thought of that before, but as soon as he, I read it, I've made all the sense in the world. That's why people on the left are arguing for one thing and people on the right are arguing for another thing, but there's only one place to find righteous government. And that is where you have a righteous governor, nor in Jesus' utterly and completely righteous as your king and your shepherd. And the question is, will you bow to him? Will you shout Hosanna to him? You see, you need a shepherd, but you also need a feast. That's where Jesus goes with this next. Look at verse 35. It says when it grew late, the disciples came to him and said, this is a desolate place. And now the hour is now late, send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and build just to buy themselves something to eat. But he answered them, you give them something to eat. And they said to him, huh? That's not what it says. They said to him, shall we go on by two hundred denariah worth of bread and give it to them to eat? And he said, how many lows do you have? Go and see. And when they found out, they said five and two fish. It's interesting, the relationship that Jesus has with his disciples. In some ways, it reminded me of a boss and an assistant or secretary, a good assistant and a good assistant will come to the boss and say, boss, it's time to shut down. It's time to go home. It's time to do this. And the disciples come and they say, you know, hey, getting a little late, there's nothing to eat here. You ought to send these people home into their villages so they can buy themselves something to eat. It's a good assistant will say that to you. On the other hand, every now and then, the boss has to say, we're not going to do that. We're going to do something else. And what Jesus tells them to do had to be shocking to them. They come and they say, you know, people don't have any food. You need to send them out. The disciples think they're being compassionate. I imagine. And Jesus says to them, you give them something to eat. What are we supposed to give them? And they say, what are we supposed to spend, it would cost two hundred dinari to feed these people? Two hundred dinari was a year's wages back then. And you can almost imagine them being sort of cynical or say, okay, you expect to spend a year's wages on these people and just give them that year's wages for one meal and then they go, Jesus says, you give them something to eat. You know, the incredulity of the disciples reminded me of Moses. Remember, this is like the Exodus, the what's happening here. And Jesus is sort of pulling together this new Israel and remember what happened with Moses when the people needed food. This is one of my favorite passages just because it always makes me laugh. Not the complaining part. Remember, Israel was in Egypt and they they've been walking in the desert for not very long and God provided mana for them. And after while they got tired of the mana and so they said it Moses, oh, that we had meat, we remember the fish we ate in Egypt. They cost nothing. The cucumbers, the melons, the leeks and onions. But now our strength is right up and there's nothing at all but this mana to look at. And then Moses a little later on says, Moses said to the Lord, why have you dealt ill with your servant? And why have I not found favor in your sight that you lay the burden of all this people on me? He says, where am I to get meat to give this people? For they wheat before me and say, give us meat that we may eat. I'm not able to carry all this people alone. The burden is too heavy for me. He says, this is my favorite line. He says, if you would treat me like this, kill me at once if I find favor in your sight that I may not see my wretchedness. In other words, the people are complaining so much. Moses says, God, if you love me, please smite me. Do me a favor and just get rid of me because it's undoable. There's no way to do this. Now what's interesting here is Moses lack of faith because it's much like the disciples lack of faith. God had brought them out of Egypt, thought had provided mana. Was it any big thing for God to also provide them meat? And yet Moses is sort of woe is me. How am I supposed to do this? And what Moses forgot, because God answers him as he says, the Lord's arm too short. The disciples have been with Jesus all this time and still they're asking these questions. Now we would seem odd to me to us if we didn't do the same thing. It's amazing to me how much people in church worry. I'll be honest with you, one of the most miserable times I've ever had in my life was the year 2009 between the months of say October and December. You think why that might be so miserable? Because everyone is worried about the budget and worried if God is going to provide and worry. He's done it every year for the past 125 years, but next year's the year he's not going to do it. Lord, how can we do it? And we need to be wise and all of that kind of thing. But there comes a point where you have to trust that Jesus is going to provide for you. And the question is your knee jerk reaction. Jesus will take care of us. Now let's figure out what the wise thing to do is, or is it what's the wise thing to do? We'll think about Jesus taking care of us later. The disciples are still knee jerk. We can't do it in and of ourselves. You notice what Jesus focuses on? He doesn't focus on what the disciples focus on what they don't have. Jesus focuses on what they do. He says, what are you at? Five loves, two fishes. Go get them. That's it. That's it. Because people got to eat. People need a meal and the question is who's going to provide it for them? If you look to the disciples to provide it for you, you got nothing. You look to Jesus. You got everything. You see in the Old Testament, one of the themes that comes up over and over again is God providing for his people, not in the midst of opulence, but in the midst of the wilderness. In fact, it almost seems like Jesus creates the crisis here. Almost like Jesus keeps teaching, keeps teaching, keeps teaching, because he knows this is going to happen. It's sort of like God taking Israel out into the wilderness, don't you think? We tend to look at our lives and think that man, man, the middle of this just mess. God, why would you just get me out of it? When in fact, God probably put you in the middle of that mess so you would look to him and say, God, will you provide for me? I'm in the wilderness. Will you provide for me? I'm in the wilderness. Will you give me rest? I'm in the wilderness. Will you give me food? And Jesus' answer always is yes. No one who calls on Jesus, will he not hear? No one who asks for forgiveness of sins will he not forgive? No one who looks to him for provision will not receive it. At least the provision that he sees fit to give. So what's the feast of Jesus? What has he given them? Let's look at this last few verses, finally. Verse 39, then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass so they sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties and taking the five loaves and 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. And they all ate more satisfied and they took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces of the fish and those who ate at the loaves were 5,000 men. It's another illusion, by the way, it starts with looking back at Moses and the Exodus because remember what Moses and the Moses did shortly after the text that read you in numbers, God says, break the people down. He says thousands, hundreds, fifties, tens to break them down into these groups. That's probably how they could count them. People say how they know there are 5,000 people there. Well, if they're broken down in the groups of fifties, you could look out and see. So he says, break them down. And then Jesus does something interesting. He takes bread and he breaks it. He gives thanks and he distributes it through the disciples to the crown. Now by doing that, by being the one who breaks the bread, by being the one who prays, Jesus himself is the host of the table. Jesus is the one who's throwing this party. But does that language sound familiar to you? Let me read it to you again. Verse 41, it says, in taking the five lows in the two fish, he looked up the heaven and said a blessing and broke the lows and gave them to the disciples. It's the same language that you hear at the last supper. It's the same language you hear at the last supper. He takes bread and he breaks it and he gives it to the disciples. You see that what's happening here in the speeding of the 5,000 is it's a miracle for sure. But there's something bigger than that. It's a miracle that Jesus produced this stuff. The bigger miracle is coming. You see what it does on one hand is it looks back to when God provided for Israel in the desert, when God provided food for them in the wilderness. But it also looks all the way forward to the very end of time when Jesus will have this great wedding feast. In Revelation 19, if you want to look it up, that at the end of time, Jesus will provide this feast where he will break bread and he will break it with all those that are called his beloved to his bride. But in the more immediate future it points to something else. You see right now he's feeding the crowd with real bread that he has taken and he's broken and he's given. And if you remember John's account of this event, the feeding of the 5,000, the next day the people come and they say, give us some more of that bread. Remember what Jesus says to them? I am the bread. That's crazy talk. So I tell you the truth unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood you cannot see the kingdom of God. You see the feast of Jesus isn't just bread that he gives you to sustain you with. The feast of Jesus is himself. It's his very self that you and I need Jesus for a very survival. If you're not a Christian you need to trust him to forgive your sins. If you are a Christian you need to trust him to get you through to the very end. Do you? Do you? Or is other things sort of crowding him out? I love the end of this word says in verse 42 it says, and they all ate and were satisfied. You know what's interesting when you watch man versus food? He's never satisfied. And I mean that's there's, you know he went to Beth's cafe and he gets to the 12 egg omelette filled with chili and cheese and peppers on a bed of hash browns, loaf of toast and he ate the whole thing except one bite. He got to the end of that whole thing and there was one bite on the plate and people were cheering, eat it, eat it, eat it and he got up and walked around and he sat down and he looked at that one bite and he just said, I can't. You can't eat it. Even I was talking to the TV, I'm like, dude it's one bite. Putting your mouth and chewing it, he throw up after the show but do it right now. Just looking at that bite made him sick. In every show at the end of the end of one of these massive meals, five pound hamburgers, 64-ounce steaks, he's not satisfied. In fact at the end of these shows, he's sickened by them. I never want to see oysters again. I never want to see jalapeno peppers again. I never want to see ground beef again. You see just by filling yourself up, doesn't necessarily mean you're going to be satisfied. And even if the act feels good, the end product doesn't necessarily follow. When Jesus feeds the crowd, all eat and are satisfied. When you feast upon Jesus, you're satisfied. You know what's so beautiful about satisfaction? Is it doesn't necessarily mean you're full? You ever think about that? I mean when you're satisfied with something, that means I could eat a little bit more of that. I like it so much or I can't wait until the next time. The crowd ate and they were satisfied. They didn't have want for anything else. The question is where are you with that? Are you content? Are you satisfied? Is Jesus what you need is the all you need. When you feast upon Jesus, do you say, man, that's good. Or do you look around and you say, man, I wish I had more money, I wish I had more stuff, I wish I had a better this, I wish I had a better that. What Jesus is pointing to is the one thing that can satisfy us and that is himself. That's it. Most of us, you know, we run around with sort of like scrap. You ever seen ice age? Or the way I say, if you haven't seen it, you need to get it and watch it. If for nothing else, to watch the things in front with scrap because remember scrap is basically this near, Neanderthal kind of squirrel with huge fangs and his whole life revolves around catching this one nut. Nothing else matters and he's never satisfied. Now the beauty of the gospel is just this is that Jesus is the one who catches the nuts. Guess who they are? That's you and me when Jesus grasps you and he catches you, he never lets go. You should take comfort in that. Think about that. Let's pray. Father, I pray that is we considered Jesus this week during Holy Week that we wouldn't just go through the motions, that we wouldn't just think, oh, it's Palm Sunday, oh, it's Monday, Thursday. But in fact, we would we would relive these moments with you when you said that if the people don't cry out, the stones will cry out. And when you said, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? I pray that we that we would enter into those things and understand them better. Pray these things in Christ's name, amen, amen.