Bibles, if you will, and open them to the book of Mark.
As we continue our study of the book of Mark, we are in chapter 6.
And we got down to ah around verse 45 as we concluded our study a couple of weeks ago, the last time we were here in the Book of Mark on Wednesday night.
So we'll be picking up in Mark chapter six, verse 45, after a word of prayer.
But let's bow our head.
Our gracious Lord, Father, giver of all good and perfect gifts.
We're grateful for your blessings, for your love and your kindness, for the sunshine that you provide, the rain that nourishes the ground, for the patterns and the cycles in this
planet that give life to all who are in it and are upheld by the word of your power.
Lord, we pray that you will be with nations and leaders throughout those nations.
We pray for those who lead cities and counties and states.
pray that they will make choices that do not hold back the furtherance and the spread of the gospel, but rather will make decisions that provide doors of opportunity.
We pray for boldness in the body of Christ that we might be bold to step up and to use those open doors of opportunity to preach the gospel, to reach the lost with the truth.
They might know both who you are and what you have done to provide salvation on this earth.
and provide a home and an eternity in heaven.
Lord, we are grateful above all your other gifts for your Son who came and died on the cross for our sins that we might have the hope of eternal life.
And we pray that we might diligently seek Him, that we might be bold to stand before your throne to seek grace and help in time of need.
And Lord, we pray that we might all be an encouragement and a
a comfort to those who struggle on a daily basis.
All this we pray and ask in Jesus' name, amen.
In Mark chapter 6, after Jesus feeds the 5,000 men who are present on that occasion, Jesus will cross the Sea of Galilee, and you have the events recorded.
And one of the things, you know, we started this study in Mark quite some time ago, and it was on Sunday nights, and we've picked it up uh here in this Wednesday night class.
One of the characteristics you see of Mark is his emphasis on what Jesus did and how he did it in terms of the rapidness in which he accomplished the work that he did.
He emphasizes that with the term immediately.
uh All throughout the book of Mark you see immediately, immediately, immediately.
Mark emphasizes that Jesus did the work that He accomplished in a very short span of time.
He did it in three and a half years.
If you think about, uh just by way of comparison, uh Eddie and I have now been here, and we're in our eighth year.
Jesus' entire ministry was in three and a half years.
And Mark is emphasizing that Jesus didn't waste any time.
Jesus didn't delay anything that He did.
He was focused on a very specific goal, and He pushed towards that goal on a continual basis.
But it also meant that Jesus quickly would go from one place
to another place.
Jesus didn't spend three and a half years in one city.
Jesus would go and, as we noticed in the earlier text, earlier on in chapter 6, that Jesus would send His disciples ahead of Him.
He didn't want to start from zero when He arrived in a village or in a town in Judea or in Galilee.
He wanted His disciples to have already been there, to have already started the ministry, to have already started the evangelism, and when
he arrived, there was already a nucleus of people waiting to hear him.
And so he used not only his efforts, but the efforts of others to accelerate the work that he did.
But we notice this text in verse 45, immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida.
Jesus says,
to the disciples, you get in the ship and you go across.
Now that would have left Jesus with who?
The crowd, the multitudes.
They would have been present, they were there, they had eaten from this food, and as the crowd was known to do, they would just stay wherever Jesus was.
Quite often at night, what would they bring to Jesus, or who would they bring to Jesus?
the sick, those who are lame, those who were ah in need of healing, they would bring those individuals to Jesus at nighttime.
uh Quite often, think about it reasonably, these people would, some of whom would have had jobs, would have had occupations, and so there would almost likely have been a new group
of people arriving come nighttime.
So Jesus is going to send his disciples across the Sea of Galilee to Bethsaida.
And while he sent the multitude away, he went uh and, sorry, and, I'm gonna get my words out in just a moment here.
All right, so he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he sent the multitude away.
And when he had sent them away, he departed to the mountain to pray.
Jesus sought time away from people
to pray.
We see this occur numerous times in the record of Jesus' life, where Jesus will get up early before its daybreak and leave his disciples and leave the others to go find a place
apart from others to pray.
Why would Jesus do that?
I'm not asking for necessarily a biblical text, I'm asking for your thoughts on why Jesus would do that.
All right?
Interruptions.
Ask any mother how easy it is to get anything done if you're constantly being interrupted.
There's one over here who's getting very acquainted with that.
You don't get much of anything accomplished if you're constantly being interrupted.
Ask any boss who's got enough employees under them what it's like to try and get anything accomplished.
Every single time you sit down to do something, somebody walks in and says, hey, I need help with X.
Jesus had that times infinity because he had people who were clamoring to come to him to be healed, be taught, to be fed, all of these things going on and every city he went to,
what was waiting for him?
multitudes of people.
So Jesus sends the disciples away, Jesus sends the multitudes away, Jesus goes into the mountain to pray.
Why send the disciples away?
Okay?
Partly, you've got, they're going to cross by boat, okay?
Likely, this was a boat that belonged to one of the disciples, or may have been one of the fishing boats that belonged to uh James and John's.
uh
parents uh or to Simon and Andrew.
So this may have been part of their possession, therefore they needed to make sure it got to the next place.
This is their mode of transportation.
So the boat needed to go.
But is it also the case that sometimes even those who are closest to you, those who are learning from you, those who are your direct students, you need a separation from them to
pray?
to have time to focus on what you need to do.
It's not just the multitudes that Jesus separates himself from.
He also separates himself from the disciples.
One of the things that you realize, there was a lectureship at Memphis, oh I don't know what year it was, probably 2009 or 10.
Whatever year they had the theme, what is man?
And uh in that particular lectureship, Brother Keith Mosier did a night lesson, I think it was an afternoon lesson, on the faith stages of man.
And that lesson is always stuck with me.
And it emphasizes the fact that as we...
understand how we understand things, as we understand how we believe things, that there are different stages that people are at in belief, and they tend to go through those
cycles or through those stages of belief in a rather normal set of processes.
They develop from one stage to another stage, not in the strength of their belief, but in how they understand and actuate their belief into their lives.
And there's different stages people are at, and quite often, people get stuck at a stage.
They get stuck at a stage they never really quite get past.
In a lot of cultures, in a lot of places, in a lot of congregations.
A lot of people are stuck in the same stage of belief that they were in as teenagers.
If you ever see a congregation where people tend to just go with a crowd, whatever's popular among the congregation, that's just what they go with.
They're at a stage in their belief where they can't stand on their own.
They can't actually determine what is right and wrong and do what
is right no matter what anyone else does.
They're looking to those around them to determine what is right so they can go with that.
Which is how whole congregations go off into apostasy, is they're not building their faith on what they know to be true and what the scripture says, they're building their faith on
what the group is doing.
It's why cliques exist in high school.
and continue to exist in work and continue to exist throughout most people's adult lives.
Interestingly, the psychology and the background study that has studied this emphasizes that most people never move out of that until they go through a crisis.
It is a crisis in life that moves them out of
be allowing themselves to be driven by whatever everyone else does.
And then there are a few people who they proceed through that actually quite quickly because of their characteristics, because of their personalities.
And then there's some people who just, never leave that stage.
That's where they are their entire life.
But as you consider that, the difficulty is when someone who's teaching
is at a higher stage of belief.
They understand and actuate on their belief at a much different level than the people who are constantly surrounding them.
And it's a burden not only to deal with what they know needs to happen, but with the failure of these people to move beyond the stage they're at.
When you notice the transition, because by the way, it's very obvious in Scripture when the disciples transitioned,
from the stage of belief where they did everything that everyone else was doing and when they moved beyond that.
Can anybody identify what event occurred, what crisis occurred that moved them out of that stage and into the next stage?
the crucifixion and the resurrection.
Look at the disciples before that.
Just days before, they're sitting in the upper room arguing about who will be the greatest in the kingdom of heaven.
Just days after, actually before I moved to the just days after, just days before.
They're leaving and departing when Jesus is arrested.
There's only one of the disciples that stays with Jesus through the entirety of that period of time where he is on trial.
Who is it?
it's not Peter, it's John.
Peter stays with Jesus until he is at the chief priests abode, but then Peter denies him and Peter leaves and grieves, and yet John, you see in the text, if you pay attention,
John is not only present throughout, John is standing at the foot of the cross with Mary.
John noticeably is described as the disciple whom Jesus loved, and it doesn't seem to be that he was that because Jesus just kind of liked his personality better.
John was at a different level than the other disciples were.
John had conversations with Jesus that the other disciples did not.
Peter was the leader in that he was the one to take action first, but John was at a position above, not in authority, but in how he understood what was going on and the
strength of his faith.
was different than all the other disciples.
And you see that in the text if you pay attention to those glimpses of statements about what John is doing versus what others are doing.
And he's also, by the way, the disciple who writes a record of Jesus' life and won't even mention his own name.
So, all of that to point out, Jesus not only separates Himself from the crowd, He separates Himself from the disciples to pray.
Because there's times when leaders, when elders, when ministers, when those who are trying to guide mission works need to get away from even their helpers.
to spend time focusing on their faith, their life, their spirituality, and their mission.
So Jesus goes into the mountain to pray.
Now when evening came, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and he was alone on the land.
Then he saw them straining at rowing, for the wind was against them.
One of the things that's characteristic of the Sea of Galilee is it's not very big, but storms, because of the nature of the topography around it, it's kind of in a well.
There's mountains around it, and the wind will come in off the Mediterranean Sea, and it will spin up a storm in the Sea of Galilee very quickly.
So they have gotten...
into the midst of the sea, going across the sea, and now they're stuck because they're trying to get to the other side, but they're rowing and they're rowing and they're making
no progress because the winds are blowing against them now that they're in the midst of the sea.
And so Jesus observes this and we read, about the fourth watch of the night, he came to them walking on the sea and would have passed by them.
That's a statement that maybe we don't often stop and consider.
Here they are in a boat.
12 men rowing.
And there's Jesus by himself.
Are they making any progress?
Is he?
Take a moment and consider why is that?
Just start with the physics of it.
Why is he making progress and they're not?
He's walking on the water.
Aren't they floating on the water?
Okay, he's in charge of the- I'll grant you that one.
All right.
Are they trying to move just themselves?
or are they trying to move a boat too?
They're trying to move a boat.
It's not their own bodies that are keeping them from making progress.
It is the weight and it is the uh impact of the wind on the boat.
know, sometimes we take some, yeah, go ahead.
hit it from the same which is on the north east corner and that would mean that the winds are coming from the northeast which is very unusual in that part of the world correct
everything typically just like here most of their storms over on the Mediterranean came over the mountain range and up don't see a gap correct
So yes, this would be very uncommon for the wind to be blowing the other direction.
just straight across, I understand the geography of it, well south of the.
They got tired of rowing and went straight to shore.
So they're headed the direction, they're making no progress, Jesus begins at shore facing the same wind, and he's passing them, and would have passed by them entirely.
Jesus is moving Himself.
They are trying to move the boat.
They're failing, he's succeeding.
Now, would they have failed entirely without the boat they were in?
If they were in the middle of the sea, on their own power alone, would they have failed entirely without the boat?
Yes.
But what was keeping them from making any progress?
The boat.
Well, take this just a moment and get a metaphor out of it.
Sometimes the thing that holds back an evangelistic work is the weight of a congregation.
Sometimes the fact that you need everybody to work is the thing that keeps any progress from going because of the weight of the entire body needing to work together.
Why is it that Paul emphasizes so often in his writings that the body is supposed to work as a unit?
that everybody can't be the mouth, everybody can't be the eyes, everybody can't be the ears because we all have a part to play if the body's going to function properly.
But what happens if the eyes aren't working?
You're have some problems.
What happens if the hearing's not working?
Going to have some problems.
What happens if there is no mouth?
Going have some problems.
What happens if there are no feet?
No hands.
Okay, if you lose the integral parts of the body, you will not make progress.
God did not give us a plan whereby a single person came onto the planet and converted everyone.
Or that the church continues to exist by the force of personality of one Christian.
God didn't give us a plan whereby we could go it alone.
there are going to be times in your Christian life, and maybe have been already, where you're like, you know what, if it weren't for the congregation, Christianity would be
great!
I know that's been true about every job I've ever been in.
We said when I was 18 years old working in grocery store, somebody would say, hey, how's the grocery business?
If it weren't for the customers, it'd be great.
Talk to some bankers.
They said, yeah, we've concluded that if it weren't for the clientele, we'd really enjoy banking.
You want to talk to some people who really appreciate that, go to IT support.
If it weren't for the users.
We love this job.
Except none of it would work if you didn't have it.
You wouldn't have a job.
Now when it comes to Christianity, if someone says, you know what, I don't need the church, I'm just going to go it alone.
you're going to because you are now not following God's plan.
And you know, the only thing harder than making the boat go across the ocean or across the Sea of Galilee would have been for them to go against God's instructions.
What if Jesus had told them to go to Bethsaida?
And they said, you know what?
Kind of just prefer the other direction, because that's where the wind's blowing.
just assume go where the wind's blowing and go with the flow, then do what Jesus said.
So here we find another lesson.
You know, Paul in Ephesians 4 will tell those Christians that the
revelation and the work of the elders, teachers, preachers, apostles, and prophets was so that the Christians wouldn't be tossed to and fro by every wind of doctrine.
Guess what?
It's really easy to put up the sail and go wherever the wind's going.
It's a whole lot harder when you've been given instructions to go the other direction.
And so here they are.
They're working, working, working, striving to fulfill the command.
final lesson from this.
They're striving to fulfill the command on whose own power.
their own.
They're striving to do what Jesus told them to do with their own abilities.
Are they succeeding?
No.
They're out in the middle.
Absolutely.
They were doing what they were told to do, commendable, but they were trying to do it themselves.
Now, this is a practical, physical example.
Yes, of course they were trying to do it themselves.
That's the way they always did it.
They got in the boat, they went into the ocean or went into the sea, they crossed to the other side, and if they needed to row, they rowed.
But on this occasion, the way they'd always done it wasn't working.
They were making no progress.
You ever see a congregation make no progress doing what they've always done?
And they're wondering, why can't we make any progress?
Maybe the question is, why are we doing it the way we've always done it?
If it's not broke, don't fix it, but if you're not making any progress, maybe it is broke.
And maybe we haven't admitted it.
Now, Jesus saw them as he was walking on the sea, or saw them as he would go, and he would have passed by them.
Verse 49, and when they saw him walking on the sea, they supposed it was a ghost and cried out, for they all saw him and were troubled.
But immediately he talked with them and said to them, be of good cheer, it is I, do not be afraid." One of the things that you see in the change between the way the apostles acted
before the resurrection and the way they acted after
is emphasized over and over and over by Jesus during His time on the earth where He kept telling them, do not be afraid.
or O ye of little faith.
The last time Jesus criticizes them for their lack of faith is immediately after the resurrection.
and something changes.
oh
they begin to grow as they've never grown before.
because they stop trying to do it their way.
The last question that is asked of Jesus...
after he has been resurrected and before the Holy Spirit comes upon them.
The last question asked, will you now restore the kingdom to Israel?
It's the last glimpse of the old apostles where they're still trying to do it the way they thought it was always going to happen.
And what does Jesus reply there in Acts chapter 1?
when they say, will you now restore the kingdom to Israel?
It is not for you to know the times or the seasons.
And he's emphasizing God's in control.
You do your job.
as Jesus approaches them, as they observe Him going by, as they're afraid because they're seeing someone walking on the sea.
He says, of good cheer.
It is I.
Do not be afraid.
Then He went up into the boat to them, and the wind ceased.
And they were gently or greatly amazed in themselves beyond measure and marveled, for they had not," notice what Mark tells us, "'for they had not understood about the loaves.'"
because their heart was heartened.
They're being taught a lesson.
Were they amazed when Jesus fed 5,000 people with seven loaves and two fish?
If they were amazed, why does the text tell us that their heart was hardened?
Okay?
Didn't have the faith.
uh Is it possible for someone to be amazed having observed something and not apply it?
Not learn anything from it?
yeah, the entire nation of the Jews.
What do they keep asking for?
One more sign please.
Just one more sign, show us one more sign.
Jesus said, with the signs.
You've seen them.
I'll give you one more.
It's the sign of Jonah.
Three days and three nights and then I'll be resurrected.
There's your final sign.
That's your last chance.
But the point is they were observing these things and they had allowed them to become commonplace in their understanding so that they were no longer applying the lessons from
the signs.
They were no longer taking to heart the message of the miracles.
So if this text is about the disciples learning the lesson from the last text, because that's what Mark tells us it is, then what was the lesson they failed to learn in the
feeding of the 5,000?
Okay, God provides.
In contrast to what?
All right, do you remember the discussion when Jesus tells the disciples to feed the people?
Go back in Mark chapter 6.
Verse 36, the disciples say to Jesus, send them away that they may go into the surrounding country and villages and buy themselves bread for they have nothing to eat.
But He answered and said to them, you give them something to eat.
And they said to Him, shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread and give them something to eat?
The lesson for the people was different than the lesson for the disciples.
What was the lesson for the people?
What should they have taken away from the fact that here is this man who's been teaching them that has now taken seven loaves and two fish and fed 5,000 plus people?
What was the lesson?
If they're faithful, God will provide, but more importantly, who is Jesus?
That Christ is the Son of God.
That He is who He has claimed to be.
Right?
But that wasn't the lesson for the disciples.
The lesson for the disciples came in Jesus telling them to feed the people.
and them saying, looking at our own resources, we can't do it.
When Jesus told them to feed the people, we discussed this when we were back in this text, did Jesus tell them, the people on your own?
Correct.
Jesus didn't tell them how to do it.
Jesus didn't tell them with what resources to do it.
Jesus didn't tell them to do it by themselves.
He told them to do it.
Did Jesus tell them to cross the Sea of Galilee and go to Bethsaida?
Yes.
Did they immediately start out and do what they thought they could do?
In the feeding of the people, they immediately said, we can't do it.
In the crossing of the Sea of Galilee, they immediately assumed they could do it.
One occasion they saw the task and they said, that's insurmountable.
We can never achieve that.
We don't have the resources.
The next task, they assumed they could do it because they'd always done it.
On which occasion were they wrong?
Both!
oh
because they aren't yet learning the lesson.
Without God, they can't feed 5,000.
But without God, they can't even cross the Sea of Galilee.
we often imagine that because we have done something in the past with God's allowance, uh
that it is under our power to do it.
m
Did you have something to eat yesterday?
Do you have food in the pantry the day before?
Do you have food in the house last month?
Are you under the impression that that's because you caused it or God allowed it?
When the rain comes, when the crops grow, when the earth continues spinning, are you under the impression that you caused it or God allowed it?
Because the moment he doesn't allow it, you don't do it.
You don't have it.
And the disciples found out that what some of them, a third of them, had spent their entire career doing crossing the Sea of Galilee, they couldn't do unless God allowed it.
But the moment they did it with God, when did the wind cease?
when God got in the boat.
the moment they were not trying to do it alone.
They weren't trying to do it their way.
They weren't assuming they had the ability.
The moment that was true, they finally started making progress.
So.
The lesson of the lows.
oh
is the disciples could have fed the 5,000 by themselves.
if they had had the same faith Moses had in the wilderness.
Remember, this entire section began, chapter 6, with Jesus sending out the disciples and them casting out demons, healing people, having all of these great victories of faith as
they go out into the area and they come back and they're just thrilled.
with what they have been able to do.
And now here we are, and Jesus is trying to teach them the lesson of Moses.
You see, the feeding of the 5,000 is a type of Moses.
It's a representation of what Moses did for Israel in the wilderness.
But when Moses had no food for the people, did Moses say, I don't have enough money to go to Egypt to buy food?
Is that what he did?
What did do?
He went to God.
When the people were saying we're gonna die of thirst here in the wilderness, did Moses say...
Got no water for ya.
No, he went to God.
The lesson that is in the text.
for the disciples.
is you will never succeed leading God's people by yourself.
You can't do it.
You'll only succeed if you lead them God's direction with God's instruction, with God's resources, with God's help.
Otherwise, you'll fail.
Okay?
Thank you for your time.