Scriptures are going to read from a Gospel this morning, Mark chapter 6. Probably, no, Charlie is not here. I suppose a word of explanation in order to keep other explanations that sometimes seem to make so much sense. Charlie is blessed now with having a wonderful opportunity to work and occasionally that will call him away on Sunday. We are trying to work to remedy your having to see me stand here and try to do what I did this morning to make that flow a little more smoothly. But as we work through these things together, I think that we've learned to work together well enough to where it will not really impact our worship in any significant way. We'll just be all the more blessed when Charlie is able to be here and not be working on while we are worshiping. So do pray to that in that we'll have a good substitute pitch hitter on those days when Charlie is not able to be with us. We do appreciate him when he's here though. Mark chapter 6. I'm going to begin in chapter 6 at verse 30 and read through 56. It's a very familiar account to us. Let's look together at God's word reading from the inspired word of God. Listen for it is God who speaks to us. The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught and he said to them, come away by yourselves 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 at a boat and the 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 a shory 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. And when it grew late his disciples came to him and said, this is a desolate place and the hour is now late. Send them away. Go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy them something to eat. But he answered them, you give them something to eat. And he said to them, shall we go and buy 200 to now I worth of bread and give it to them to eat. And he said to them, how many loaves do you have? Go and see. And when they found out they said five and two fish. Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups by hundreds and by 50s 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. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces of the fish. Those who ate the loaves were 5,000 men. And the Lord bless the reading of his word and the hearing of his people to grass withers and the flowerfades. The word of God remains forever. Well, as we have been working through Mark's narrative, we've come across passages that are very familiar to us, stories that we have heard since our youth. And we've also seen in the midst of that some that perhaps weren't so frequently studied or frequently discussed. And the one characteristic of Mark's gospel that we have noted together is that it is a rapid fire succession of events. There's not a lot of daylight between the different events that Mark is giving us. It seems to be not a reader's digest version, but certainly one where there is no empty space between the events. We don't get a lot of as he was walking here or oh, by the way, this happened. It's really one right after another, a catalog of the ministry of Jesus very quick, using the word immediately over and over and over again. And so what we can do is we can line these up and get a very clear picture of what Mark is trying to communicate. And it's a communication of contrast and concepts. He introduces to us the concept of Jesus' mastery over nature and the soul and sickness and the grave. And then he brought to us this idea that the disciples went out and they were doing ministry and they were taking his teaching and even conducting some performing some of the miracle work and went out and spread the work of Jesus and spread the word of his ministry. And then right in the midst of that, there was a reflection upon the death of John the Baptist. And we pondered over Mark's purpose when he seems to be in such a hurry to get this information out to us and takes in time to tell us something about John the Baptist which happened in the past. Really, we left John the Baptist at the river and then we learned that he was killed. And so in this gospel narrative, we have John the Baptist killed at a feast held by Herod and it comes right before Jesus serves 5,000 people from the loaves and fishes. Well, let's look at these two feasts and this is only, I put this only on one line, so it doesn't take very long to mark these contrasts. There were two feasts that Mark was showing. A feast that is sponsored by Herod and then a feast that is given by Jesus. One had nobles and the elite that were invited to at a rather exclusive group, and we could say when it comes to the feast that Jesus provided, it was basically all the rest. Everyone else could have come. Not that the nobles and the elite wouldn't have been allowed to come, but the invitation was to all who would come. And one, we saw the very best men can provide. We saw the best in entertainment, we saw the best in food, we saw the best in hospitality and in architectural and aesthetic pleasures. And the other one, we saw the ministry and the best that Jesus can provide. At one, we saw exotic dancing and the second one, we see truth telling. And in the first feast at the end, we saw the death of man as John the Baptist hid his sever and served up on silver platter. And in the second feast we see the host's compassion for the sheep. So you see the contrast in these two feasts, one by a man and the other by the Lord. And then we move to the narrative itself, which is also interesting, beyond simply the miracle of multiplying the loaves and the fishes. There's a whole lot of information besides Jesus feeding the masses here. It seems to be the climax of the story, but there's so much more that is going on at the very beginning. We're told that the apostles ever turned to Jesus and they told them, told them of everything that they had been doing and everything that they had been teaching. And you get the energy that is in this verse as they have come to Jesus and they're excited to report to him the good reception that they've received, the good work that was done. And you can also get the sense because they are famished and they are tired and they haven't even stopped to rest that they were moving and moving and working and working and working. And now they've come back in and they've got their after-action report. And as they're giving this report, Jesus then looks to them and says, come away by yourselves because there have been masses pressing in upon Jesus and His ministry team. And they had never been left alone. These masses kept following them and moving on them. It's kind of like in the summertime if you're drinking a coke and all of a sudden or a Pepsi and all of a sudden you have a bee that finds out what's going on and no matter where you go, they follow you around. It's sort of like that or if you're camping and there's not. I hate to use insects but they just always are all over you when you go outside. You can't get away from them. And so we get the idea of these masses always clinging to this ministry team that Jesus has assembled and there's no relief. Jesus recognizes that and His response is, you come away by yourselves. Let's go to a desolate place. What's a desolate place? It's a place where the people aren't. A place where they won't naturally go to because there's not a food supply or a water supply or there's not a population center. It's a wilderness maybe. Maybe it's rough terrain. It's a place that you don't go. We go to the wilderness to get away even today. And so Jesus is encouraging them to come on and go to a desolate place. It's time to rest. It's time to rest and to gather yourselves again. You're exhausted. You've been going and you've been ministering. You've been teaching and you've been doing and I can see that you're drained. It's time to go away to a desolate place. This is our Lord saying that. He didn't tell them to just pull themselves up by their bootstraps. We're just getting started. He said let's move away together. Let's go to a desolate place and let's rest a while. Did he say let's go off and let's do some additional study so that you can take it to the next level? He said let's go and let's rest. Let's rest a while. So while they were coming and the people that says we're coming and going said they didn't have leisure to eat so they're famished. Jesus is ministering to the disciples. He saw their need for rest. It was a very real need. I drew my first application from this. We live a very fast-paced life. All of us. I don't care right now what your vocation is or your lifestyle is. If you're living and you're breathing you have as Steve said earlier. You've got a heartbeat. Then you're living a fast-paced life. We have our email. We have our microwave ovens. We have our cell phones and our cars. All of these make for quick living. I think we've surrendered the gift of time. Time, you know, is a gift. And we forfeited the gift of time. We don't even consider it. We do try to master time. But the way we try to master it is we try to load up our time like we're loading up a pack mule with more things. Because we think if we can get more packed in the time, we are the masters of our time. Really, we're just forfeiting our time. We forget that wisdom. True wisdom requires quiet reflection on what we have learned, a life itself, and on the experiences that we have. We don't take time for that quiet reflection. My sense is that after this tremendous ministry work that these disciples had done, it's time to go and arrest and to reflect and to be recovered as it were by Jesus. When God speaks or reacts, we ought to stop and we ought to reflect, letting it settle into our spirits to have its effect. To reflect upon it, we are not wise as God. It takes us a minute. And so when God moves or we see his hand at work, we ought not to immediately move to the next thing we should stop. And we should reflect upon what has God done so that we might grow wise and our walk with the Lord. You know that feeling of a full day, maybe you've even been traveling, a business trip, maybe. You thought you might rest on the airplane. Why don't we even think that anymore? You sit down and the person next to you is either all in a world to themselves noisy or you've become their new best friend and they want to talk. There's no rest, there's no reading on airplanes. And so after this long trip or whether it's even on the road, you get home, it's late, two hours later if you thought you would get home and you're so glad to see the door of the house, you want to go in and you want to hear nothing but the ring of silence. And you walk in the door and the ring that you hear is the phone because they've been trying to reach you for three hours. And there's messages already waiting for you. And if you carry a phone, you pull it out and realize you haven't felt it vibrate. You have 23 emails and people thought that you should have responded hours ago to those messages. That's the kind of life that we live, isn't it? And then by the time you finish putting out all the fires, it's all you can do to get the sleep before it starts again. That's the kind of life that we are living. When do we reflect? When do we learn? When do we grow? When do we mature? When do we let God's work sink in to our lives? But as the disciples began to respond and as they gathered there with Jesus and they heard His plans, they began to sit off in the boat and those that were crowded around them, saw where they were going, guessed the destination and practically beat them there. And so as they make their way down through the water, they can probably see the folks running on the shore and are trying their best to ignore what's going on, but you can't. And so they get there and the boat pulls up and it stops and makes this landing. And when he sees that is the Lord sees that the plans that He had for the disciples weren't going to work out, Jesus responded. His plans that He had for the disciples, He wanted this for them. He had purpose in this for them and now it was thwarted and His response, not frustration, but compassion. He wasn't annoyed by those people that won't leave them alone. He wasn't angry that He can't even go off into the wilderness without still getting a good cell phone signal. He was compassionate. He showed His love and He showed His care. The disciples would learn that you can't just lament the condition of the people. You can't just look out there and say, you know we're laboring and we're ministering hard as we can, but look at those folks, they're just struggling and they just don't get it. You can't just lament the condition of the people. You have to sacrificially address it. You can't just observe it. You must look at it. Chapter 2 says the same thing in verses 15 and 16. If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, and one of you says to them, go in peace, be worn, filled, without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? So also faith, faith with that works is dead. We have a lot of Christian cliches, don't we? We see someone whose life is a mess and we'll go, you know, if they would just get right here, all the answers are right here. That's a true statement, isn't it? That doesn't dismiss us from the work, however. This has always been here. It was here before they had their problems, us simply lifting it up and saying, I've got my copy. Do you have yours? Doesn't fix anything in their lives. It doesn't help them understand the contents of this at all. Sometimes we'll say, I'll make that a prayer request and we do trust God with all things, but does that also dismiss us from the work of a disciple? Jesus didn't say, look at the folks, they're all going to our desolate place. Peter, will you push us out a little bit further into the water and we'll just pray for those people? He prayed for them and he got out of the boat and he touched them as well. Ministry from a distance has never really been effective. Ministry in close proximity is where relations are made and lives have changed. Jesus looked at the people that were gathering there on the shore. He saw people that had no shepherd. They wandered around on the shore and they must have looked to him like sheep just scattering around without anyone to lead them. Their physical hunger was only mirrored by their spiritual hunger. They were looking for him. They were searching for him. They wanted to be near him. The compassion that Jesus felt was one of sorrow than neglect that these sheep had suffered. Sorrow. These sheep didn't lack for clergy. In fact, there were so many priests and scribes that they had to be organized by platoons. They were marching around all over the place. There was plenty of people to perform religious duties. But the people themselves lacked such spiritual maturity. I don't even know that we could call them spiritual babes. But even as Jesus was teaching, they were amazed at the teaching that they couldn't even grasp it. He was trying to explain by story and by action in his miracles and by his physical presence speaking to them and teaching and sending the disciples out. And yet they lacked a biblical framework enough to be able to understand that God himself was with them. And he had compassion upon them. In his book, The Calls of Discipleship, a Dietrich von Hopper, he describes the plight of those who are without a shepherd. He says, there were questions, but no answers. There is distress, but there is no relief. There is anguish of conscience. But there is no deliverance. There are tears, but there is no consolation and there is sin. But no forgiveness. Dietrich von Hopper is describing a generation that is growing up in our shadow. He's describing the generation that is now in their 20s and younger. They have questions. They have no answers. They give them a copy of the Bible. They have questions. But they have no answers. They have distress taking their lives and unprecedented numbers. They have distress. They have no relief. They have anguish of conscience. They have no deliverance from that anguish. Is the Christian message now gone? Has it failed? Is it no longer valid for remedying the human condition? Is it no longer valid as being the word of salvation to people? Or have God's people stopped understanding it to the point that we're able to communicate in a way that actually does bring God's remedy to these circumstances and situations. See, the people on the shore needed good news. All they got was good advice. Plenty of good advice. What's the use of religion? There's really no shepherds for the flock. Zechariah 11, God condemned Israel's shepherds by saying their own shepherds have no pity on them. Oh, they had shepherds. But they had no pity on the people's lack of discernment and understanding. And then in Zechariah 11, 15 for 17 we read, take once more the equipment of a foolish shepherd. For behold, I'm raising up in the land a shepherd who does not care for those who are being destroyed or seek the young or heal the maimed or nourish the healthy, but devours the flesh of the fat ones even their hooves, woe to my worthless shepherds who desert the flock. Now, why read that he's raising up a bad shepherd? Because we could take from that by turning it on its head the qualities of a fine shepherd, one who cares for the ones who are being destroyed and what destroys them, the pagan belief that destroys the proper view of God, proper understanding of the Christian gospel, one who does not seek after the young, to care for them and the covenantal relation of the covenant family, and one that does not use the flock for their own gain, for their own agenda, for their own pleasure, for their own seeking. In Ezekiel 34, God promises, I will rescue my flock, and they will no longer be a prey, a flock that is a prey. The portrait of the Lord is presented to us all through the Old Testament as one that is a shepherd, far different from the scathing indictment we just read. Psalm 23, Psalm 78, Isaiah 40, Ezekiel 34, all of these give us a picture of a loving shepherd, one that is tending to the flock, the good shepherd, Jesus is the good shepherd, the shepherd that will lay down his life with the sheep. Jesus is that shepherd, and he meets the needs of the sheep. And as Jesus looked at them and he stepped from the boat, he knows what they need the most. They need bread. That's what they need the most. What kind of bread? The kind of bread that he brought when he taught them. That's what he brought first. He brought them the good news of salvation, which is the bread of life. The pastor of any church of Jesus Christ is but an underchepper of Jesus Christ. The pastor isn't supposed to do anything other than what the shepherd himself would do for his sheep. We live in a day of churches that are populated, but terribly, terribly weak, and able to fall prey because the people themselves are without a true shepherd. A time when the social morals of a generation without boundaries is also a time when people have little use for teaching of God's worth. The congregation belongs not to a local body or even a local session. They also are undercheppers, belongs to the chief shepherd. The people of a congregation are his sheep, and he's given them pastors and elders to teach them and to keep them fed to nurture them from the word. When Jesus stepped from the boat, he began to feed the sheep by teaching them. No matter what you do, though, logistics always becomes a factor, doesn't it? Supply always becomes a mitigating circumstance. So either Jesus was starting late in the day, or he taught for a very long time, as it was the second. The disciples became concerned about keeping the people there, but there was really no provision for food. Obviously, the first Christians were Presbyterians, because after a good sermon, the first thing we think about is lunch. And so they were worried about the fellowship meal. That's all we do. We preach and we eat. And so these were thinking along the same lines. Jesus was preaching a very long sermon. That's how we also know that they were good Presbyterians. And then right after that, it was time for the fellowship meal, and there was no food there. So clearly the priority is, we're going to have to break camp, we're going to have to sing the benediction because it's time to go and get some food. Jesus didn't wave his hand at that time to somehow keep the people from being hungry. He didn't stop the sun and the sky to say, we'll just end time right now because I'm not finished teaching. He didn't do any of those miracles. He did something very practical. When people came with a good idea, he looked at him and he said, okay, we'll then feed them. That's a word I've always heard. When somebody has a good idea, they're probably the best person to carry out that idea. The disciple said, the people needed to be fed. So Jesus said, okay. Then you feed them. You give them some food. You're the disciples. I'm the teacher. Feed the people. Well, they were absolutely shocked and amazed because while Jesus had been serving the spiritual food, the disciples had nothing on their own persons to give them. They were shocked beyond words, really. Well, how are we supposed to do that? We don't have the money. There's no time to travel to the next town. We don't even have a way to bring back that much food. Nobody here has a truck. How are we going to bring all that food back for these people? Meager really doesn't describe their resources. Does it? We talk about meager resources in all of the ministries that we have. And that's what every church does. It always wants to do more than there's resources to do. So resources are always meager. No, theirs was impossible. And no resources. He said, you feed them. And they pull out their pockets. And they go like this and say, we don't even have any money. Much less a bookstatch of food. They even share with the person next to me. We have nothing. Nothing at all. So Jesus tells them to go out and see what the crowd might have. They bring the report to Jesus after careful analysis. After bringing in a team, no doubt a committee to measure the resources and to present a great Excel sheet that the fellowship dinner just can't be pulled off. It's just not done to happen. Sorry to disappoint Jesus, but there will be no fellowship dinner because there's no food here. Lots of fellowship, but no dinner. This isn't far off from the experience of the Hebrews and the wilderness. In Numbers chapter 11, the people there began to complain. They wanted to go back to Egypt because they were just simply tired of eating nothing but mana. They forgot what slavery was like. They forgot that they were willing to trade and forfeit their citizenship in the kingdom for leaks and for onions and for garlic. Imagine that. They were willing to trade the kingdom for leaks and onions and garlic. So Moses asked the Lord for some help and God promised that he would give them meat for a month. In fact, he said, I'll give them so much that it will be coming out of their nose. They're going to hate it. They're going to detest it. I'm going to give them so much. So in the desert, massive flocks of quail arrive every day as a miracle from God. So for this, feeding 5,000 heads of household and their families is a small thing in comparison. Like Moses before him, Jesus prays to God for provision and then he breaks the bread. Feeding 5,000 men were told, meaning it was probably up to 15 to 20,000 people. When it says 5,000 men, that's a head of household way of phrasing things. So at least one more for most of them and probably with children. 15 to 20,000 people we would estimate. When we celebrate the Lord's supper together here, right in front of where I'm standing. We remember a Passover meal. A meal when Jesus broke bread saying, this is my body. We hear the words of the Lord and through his underchefers, inviting and feeding his people to come by faith to be nourished by the shepherd. In verse 42 we read the results of this. They ate and were filled. The disciples looking only at a world's provision. Looking only at what man can do, which essentially extended just as far as their hands could go into their pockets and satchels, would have simply sent the people away. And that would have been the end of the day for them. None of the rest would have happened. They would have sent the people away. We've got no food. Sorry, it was a great idea. Just not the season and would have sent them away. But in the hands of Jesus. In the hands of Jesus as they sought to obey as he directed, they were used to feed the masses, the bread that the Lord himself had blessed. The disciples, they were tired, yes. And they needed a well-deserved break. They needed to rest. Jesus himself said so. But Jesus calls them to take action. Do you know why? He noted they needed to rest. And then he called them back to work. Do you know why? Because his sheep take no holidays. And those who pursue his sheep do not need rest. Do you know what it means for us today? It means the work of the elders is to break the bread of God's word as the very means of grace and feed you that which the Lord has supplied. It means that if you are wandering and you are hungry and you are without a shepherd, and when I say hungry it means that you sense the spiritual void in your life. There's an unsettledness, there's an unhappiness, there's an unrest, then you are hungry still. And Jesus will feed you. If you have questions with no answers, then Jesus can feed you. If you will just eat what the Lord has supplied and you ask yourself, well, what is he supplied? As he supplied you with a church, he supplied you with a word, the word. The people in the desolate place were supplied with the word. And they ate and they were filled both physically and spiritually. If you will eat what the Lord has supplied, your joy will be made complete, as the Scripture says, and you will be filled. What a promise that is made to us that we will be filled, satisfied. So different from the life we live today, the life of this satisfaction, we will be filled. It's prayed to God that we see his hands break the word, after blessing, feed his people. Our Heavenly Father, gracious and good, we thank you. We thank you, Father, for your faithfulness to us, for your love to us, for your ministry to us, for your calling to us, and we ask your Lord that as we move from our seats, that we wouldn't simply move to go and eat, that we wouldn't leave this and go to a desolate place to eat, the Father we would rise to serve. And though we could use a break, there are sheep wandering, who are lost and hurt, who have questions and no answers, who have hearts that have yet to taste the joy of Christ, his peace. So you call us back to work. So we pray, Father, that you might bless us, your people. We labor according to your word and to your ends in Jesus' name. Words to our closing hymn are, in your bulletin, let's stand together and sing.