Sermon Tone Analysis

Intro

This morning we are returning to the Crown & Cross series from the Gospel of Mark.

And we will pick up in Mark chapter 6 where we left off just before Thanksgiving.

Wow! Has it been that long?

Have you ever had people drop in unexpectedly, maybe uninvited, and they stay long enough that you feel the need to feed them?

If you have kids or teenagers at home, you are probably used to these happy, but unplanned meals.

You check the leftovers, the cupboards, the freezer, and you make do with what you have.

I don’t totally remember this from my childhood, but my mom told me about the time my uncle and his family rang our doorbell at 308 North Fullerton Ave in Montclair NJ.

They were not expected.

And there were seven of them.

Uncle Mario, Aunt Lee, and their five kids - Patty, John, Leilani, Mario Jr., and Melissa who is my age.

They were of course welcome and they filled the house with along our own family of six.

Apparently Uncle Mario had sent my father a letter saying they would like to come visit from Florid and stay with us.

But my father never got the letter.

Long distance phone calls were expensive so Mario never bothered to call and confirm - even with no reply from my Pop.

So not only was my mom scrambling to make up beds for everyone, she had to feed 13 people with no warning.

But that what you do for family.

But what about strangers?

What about over 5,000 of them?

Jesus provided compassionate care for the huge crowd that spent the day listening to his teaching.

Series

Mark’s Gospel shows Jesus as a man of decisive action with a clear message and mission, and the reader is called to actively response to the message.

Mark divides Jesus’ life into two parts: his identity as Messiah and King over all things in chapters 1-8a (the crown) and then we see His purpose in suffering and dying on the cross in chapters 8b-16.

In the last message we learned more about the death of John the Baptist, the proclaimer of Jesus as Messiah and Son of God.

Today, we will see how Jesus went into action and cared for strangers when he saw their needs.

They had no shepherd to look after them.

And his first response was to care for their souls by teaching them.

We will see four aspects of Jesus’s care in this passage: compassionate care, omnipotent care, cooperative care, and complete care.

PRAY

READ Mark 6:30-44

As Mark continues to present Jesus as the Messiah worthy of the crown, in this passage we see Jesus’ compassion for the lost, the disciples seeing a problem but unable to solve it, Jesus blessing what was available and feeding and satisfying the people’s needs.

Just as the crowd two thousand years ago in Israel needed a shepherd to save and care for them, today we still need a shepherd to save us and satisfy our greatest needs.

Jesus is that Good Shepherd.

Here’s my outline for the passage:

Christ's compassion for the lost

Disciples can’t fix a problem

Jesus blessed what was available

Jesus feeds and satisfies

Christ's compassion for the lost

Capernaum to Bethsaida

This miracle is the only one recorded in all four Gospels.

Each writer includes some different details and a unique perspective.

To set the stage, earlier in this chapter we saw Jesus sending out the twelve disciples in pairs to start ministry on their own.

They preached the Gospel of God’s kingdom - calling people to repent of their sins, they cast out demons, and they healed the sick.

In verse 30, we see them return to Jesus and excitedly telling him about everything that happened.

This is the joy we experience when our missionaries come home to tell us about their ministries, or when we get a video like the one from Michael Davis in Scotland today.

We see Christ’s compassionate care.

Jesus cared about his disciples and said, go get some rest in a quiet place - because they were surrounded with people again and didn’t even have time to stop and eat.

The busyness of their location leads us to believe they were in Capernaum the main city of the area.

Luke 9 tells us that Jesus took them to a town called Bethsaida.

You can see that on the map.

The passage tells us that the people saw Jesus and disciples leaving in the boat and they followed by land with more adding to the crowd until there was a great crowd who met the boat as they came ashore.

It would be about 4-5 miles on foot.

Imagine the disciples’ reaction thinking they were getting away from people for a much needed break.

Disciples tired and probably annoyed.

They hadn’t yet learned to look at life through the eyes of their Master.

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

Jesus looked at the very same situation, not as a problem, but as an opportunity to trust the Father and glorify His name.

An effective spiritual leader is someone who sees the potential in problems and is willing to act by faith.

We learn to say Yes more, with God’s blessing instead of No.

There are some very clear connections to the Old Testament that help the Jews of that day and us today to see Jesus as the Messiah and fulfillment of these prophecies.

The first is when God called Joshua to lead Israel after Moses died.

Don’t forget Jesus name in Hebrew was Yeshua or Joshua which means “to save or deliver.”

Numbers 27:17 “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.””

The other passage is in Ezekiel 34.

We read part of this earlier with Jake.

Ezekiel prophesied against the shepherds or priest of Israel who cared for themselves but did not feed or care for the people.

"My sheep were scattered; they wandered over all the mountains every high hill.

They had none to search or seek for them."

These were the spiritual leaders Jesus found when He came to earth.

Pharisees and Scribes who cared little for the people, but were proud of their self-righteousness and their positions in the community.

God said "I will rescue my sheep from their mouths."

Jesus made it clear that He was the Good Shepherd and the religious leaders were the not.

Jesus saw the people and in His great love and compassion for them, v. 34 says he began to teach them many things.

Most of all they needed spiritual truth.

They needed the hear the Gospel of repentance to be saved.

They needed to know about God’s Kingdom which is greater than any earthly kingdom.

In our Rediscover Church series, we saw that the best way we can love our community is to share the Gospel with them.

Their spiritual needs by far outweigh any physical needs.

READ Hebrews 4:14-16

We can come to Jesus with any burden, any temptation, any struggle and we will receive mercy and grace from our compassionate Savior.

Disciples can’t fix a problem

Next his disciples identified a problem and came to Jesus with a solution.

It’s getting late, we are in a desolate place - send the people away so they can buy something to eat.

Maybe they were still hungry themselves!

We never heard where they had a chance to eat.

Maybe on the boat ride over.

But their solution was send the people away.

Jesus responds saying what they did not want to hear.

“You give them something to eat.”

They had just returned from ministry on their own so Jesus tests their ability to work themselves again.

Their response shows their frustration.

V. 37, not even 200 denarii of bread would be enough.

One denarius was the equivalent of one days wage.

So we are talking about almost a year’s income.

That’s a lot of money and it could buy a lot of bread, but it still couldn’t feed such a huge crowd.

There were no restaurants or door dash to call.

Let alone a local bakery with bread for 5,000 people.

That was just impossible.

The disciples were probably thinking how could Jesus tell us to feed them?