The Compassion of Word & Deed (Mark 6:30-44)

I wonder how many of you have seen the cinematic masterpiece, What About Bob?

A 1991 movie with Bill Murray.

It's not exactly high art, but it is it's a good time.

And if you haven't seen it, uh Bill Murray humorously portrays a man named Bob.

Bob Wiley, who is mentally unstable to say the least.

He's obsessed with getting help from his psychiatrist.

In fact, he's so persistent and so obsessive and breaks every sort of normal boundary between a client and a doctor that his doctor actually quits his practice and moves and won't tell Bob where he is moved to.

Subsequently, Bob gets a new therapist played by Richard Dreyfus.

And they meet.

Richard Dreyfus's character gives him a few sort of tips.

He says, I'm going on vacation, but when I come back, we will resume our therapy, only to find that Bob almost beats him to his vacation.

That he shows up at his house, that he obsessively and hilariously and relentlessly tries to spend time not only with his doctor but with his family, even ends up spending the night with them.

What about Bob shows us a little bit about what it feels like, doesn't it?

When you just want a break.

When you're at the end of your bandwidth, you're running off the edges of your bandwidth.

Like Bilbo Baggins once said, when you feel like you are too little butter spread across too much toast.

Have you ever felt that way?

Like too little butter spread across too much toast.

Ironically, it's in the seasons of life when we feel like we can't meet the needs of others that we are shown just how needy we are instead.

And here's a question.

How do you feel like God sees you when you are at your neediest?

How do you feel like God sees you when you feel like you're at your weakest?

When you're at the end of your rope?

When you've fallen into the same sin yet again?

When maybe you feel directionless, like you have no shepherd, like when you feel like you wake up and you are as hard-hearted as ever.

When you come before God in confession, have you ever prayed like this?

God, it's me again, wrestling with the same sin that I can't seem to shake.

And I hate myself for it.

Do you ever feel like God is as frustrated with you as you get with yourself?

Our passage this morning shows us exactly how God responds because Jesus shows us the character of God.

And that character, his compassion, is not one of frustration and eye rolling, and I'm embarrassed for you.

You think you're embarrassed, I'm embarrassed for you.

God is not like that at all because Christ shows us in this passage exactly how God responds.

And what we're about to read is one of the most famous passages in Scripture, Jesus miraculously feeding 5,000.

And one of the reasons it's so famous is because it's the only miracle recorded for us in all four Gospels.

And I think it's safe to say, if it's the only miracle recorded in all four gospels, then it's important.

That it shows us something not only about ourselves, it shows us something about Jesus as well.

So let's read this passage and ask God for help from Mark chapter six, verses thirty through forty-four.

The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all 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 in the boat to a desolate place by themselves.

Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them.

And 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, 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 to go into the surrounding countryside and villages, and buy themselves something to eat.

But Jesus answered them, You give them something to eat.

And they said to him, Shall we go and buy two hundred neri 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 had 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 fifties, 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 twelve baskets full of broken pieces of the fish, and those who ate the of the loaves were five thousand men.

The word of the Lord.

Almighty God, we are thankful for your word, and we're thankful for the character and the compassion that we see in Jesus.

We know that he reveals you faithfully to us.

And what we ask is that you would dig out for us ears to hear, and that you would give us eyes to see him, the risen one, the merciful and gracious one.

And that by your grace and by your Holy Spirit, you might in turn make us compassionate and merciful and gracious.

We pray these things in Christ's name.

Amen.

So this morning I want to look at this passage under three headings, and I want us to look at the persistence of the crowds, and then I want us to see the persistence of Jesus, and then I want us to see the persistence of the food.

So the persistence of the crowds, of Jesus, and of the food.

And we just read in verse 30 the apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught.

Now, where have they been?

We talked about this a little bit last week.

If you remember last week we saw King Herod and his banquet, which looms large in juxtaposition to this banquet that we're about to see.

That Herod started thinking about John the Baptist because the apostles had been sent out by Jesus to proclaim repentance and to heal.

And so Herod hears of what they're doing, and he says, ah, John the Baptist is back.

And so they've gone to preach repentance and to heal.

And they're back.

So they've been traveling, but it's been a work trip, right?

They've been engaged in spiritual battle, they have preached, and clearly they are tired.

And Jesus 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 in the boat to a desolate place by themselves.

Jesus sees their need for rest.

He says, Let's take a break, let's get away.

Because even though they're back, we just read in passing, people are still chasing them down.

They're coming and going.

As soon as somebody leaves, somebody else walks in through the front door, and this line never seems to stop.

And Jesus says, I notice that.

And we're going to go away so that you can rest because you don't even have time to eat.

You don't even have time to eat.

It's good to rest.

It's good to get away.

I had the privilege this week of visiting a cohort in Memphis, and we we just prayed together, and we had some seminars, and we slept in, and we ran whenever we wanted to.

And it's good to get away and to take a break.

And that's what Jesus says.

Let's go somewhere.

It's important to know that Jesus cares about his disciples' rest.

That he doesn't just sort of just keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, though he's also sensitive to the needs that are coming their way.

But we shouldn't miss this impulse that Jesus shows to show compassion on the weary, even if he's going to say, okay, guys, there's a little bit more for you to do in a moment.

It shouldn't be surprising to us that the one who says, Come to me, all who are weary, and I will give you rest, it shouldn't surprise us that he cares about rest.

No one can go all the time.

No one can continue running on adrenaline nonstop.

When one application of this is, like we saw in the prayers of the people, to hear Jesus' kind and gracious word to us in the fourth commandment that on Sundays, when it's possible, we should lay down the work of our hands.

That we set aside our work week.

And it's not always perfectly easy to do this.

I mean, that's like I tell my children, you're going to have to do homework on some Sundays, that's fine.

But plan to rest, take your rest seriously, so that when you go to worship and you take a little time off, it doesn't feel like a burden to you.

Yes, we're made to work, we're made to produce, we're also made to rest.

Though on this day, the persistence of the crowds makes this rest look a little bit different than maybe the disciples thought it was going to look like when they were on that boat going to the other side.

Maybe what they thought wasn't in the cards.

And this is a reminder, too, that the rest of the Bible doesn't always look like sitting on the couch with a bag of Doritos.

It's kind of my, you know, that's not always what rest looks like.

In verse 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.

I mean, this is a bunch of what about Bobs chasing down the disciples and going there.

We saw that you were going away, did you?

You saw that we were leaving and you got here before us.

That's amazing.

That's amazing.

They're chased down like the paparazzi chases down the rich and the famous.

They've chased them down.

They're following them relentlessly.

And this is a theme in Mark that has been developing ever since chapter one.

I don't know if you remember.

In chapter one, Jesus heals a leper and he says, Hey, by the way, don't tell anybody.

And this healed leper tells everyone.

And so we read that Jesus, he couldn't even do anything by himself because word had gotten out.

That then in chapter two, that famous story where Jesus is teaching in someone's house, and these friends take their paralytic friend to Jesus, but they can't even get in.

The only way to get him to Jesus is to climb on the roof and lower him down.

They can't get away, he can't do anything.

The crowds are chasing him, and they have been chasing him.

They just don't stop, and Jesus seems to never turn them away.

That's the thing about Jesus that really is pretty different from us.

He just they just keep coming and he keeps saying, I will meet you.

I love you.

It's like Mark is urging us to see vividly what Jesus tells us elsewhere.

Ask, seek, knock.

That these crowds is maybe they don't respect boundaries and maybe they don't stop, but what they do see is that in Jesus they want to do whatever it takes to get to him and to be with him.

And Jesus never says, Stop, you don't get it.

You don't get it.

Clearly it was exhausting.

The crowds were so persistent, but this leads to my second point.

So is Jesus.

So persistent.

When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and we read, he had compassion on them.

Why did he have compassion on them?

He had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

They were like sheep without a shepherd.

I want you to try to imagine how you would feel.

You finish, you know, a couple work projects, you finally get a night out with friends, and you go and you sit down, and who should be sitting at the table next to you, but your most socially awkward co-worker.

Hey, you're here too?

Yeah, I'm here too.

Can I pull up a chair?

Go ahead.

You finally go on a date with your spouse, and the babysitter calls before you get to the restaurant and says your child is throwing up.

Be right there.

You're excited about a quiet evening at home, and you get a text that starts with, Hey, I hate to bother you so late, but yeah, okay.

And the passage doesn't say, but when they're approaching the shore, did Peter sort of elbow Andrew and say, You gotta be kidding me, right?

We're not told what the disciples respond, what they think.

I know what I might think.

Whatever the disciples thought, we know that Jesus had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

And this is an indictment.

We just saw in the Jeremiah passage, woe to bad shepherds, and Jesus has been pointing out in this gospel, there are bad shepherds.

There's Herod, who's a king, a ruler, and he's supposed to govern and to pursue justice, and he's supposed to think about those under his rule, but he only thinks for himself.

He only thinks about his own appetite and his own ego, and he uses the rule of law at his own disposal, right?

He'll cut off heads if he wants to.

The Pharisees, too, he says, you tie up burdens that are too heavy for anyone, and you don't lift them yourselves.

They look like sheep without a shepherd because the shepherds are, they're all morally bankrupt in his day.

And we're supposed to think of Herod's feast, like I said, Herod, who indulged himself in a feast last week, and Jesus who will not indulge himself but serve others.

You know, we finished Jonah a few weeks ago, and Jonah's big problem is he's a prophet who's been sent to a nation that he doesn't like.

They're his own nation's enemies.

I don't want grace and mercy for them.

I want to keep them outside, and I want them to get the justice they deserve.

And God says, You don't pity them?

Shouldn't I pity them?

They don't know their right hand from their left hand, Jonah.

They need a shepherd, Jonah.

And here Jesus shows us the divine impulse to those who act as though they don't have a shepherd, and it is one of compassion.

He doesn't roll his eyes in exasperation.

He has compassion for them precisely because they look like sheep without a shepherd, which means he has compassion for them precisely where they're the most chaotic and wicked and scattered.

His heart moves towards them where they are broken and weak.

His love for his people is inexhaustible.

And this is not just true for others.

Do you know it's also true for you?

And we we know Jesus loves sinners, for God so loved the world.

We know that.

And yet, how often do we cower in shame before we pray before God?

Or we say, I can't pray to God right now.

Not after what I did last night, not after what I said to that person.

Where do you need a shepherd?

Where do you not know your right hand from your left at times?

Do you know that Jesus is not angry with you?

Like, you know, when you bark at your children and your shoulders sort of drop in shame, like, why did I do that?

Do you know that Jesus has no intention of barking at you?

And that when you when you talk about somebody behind their back, do you know that Jesus has no intention of turning his back on you?

That Jesus is not like us, and that is what's so wonderful about the gospel.

His grace and his mercy is so persistent, it can only be described as infinite for people like us who receive it, who cry out for mercy and entrust ourselves to this Jesus who receive it by faith.

Where are you neediest?

Where is your sin ugliest?

That's where you need compassion from Jesus, and you need to know that He desires to give it to you.

This miracle is looming in our passage.

He's about to feed 5,000 people, but don't miss his initial show of compassion.

We read, and he began to teach them many things.

He began to teach them.

He shows compassion to these people by corralling these sheep, as it were, by his word.

One of the ways that he shows compassion on these people who look as though they have no shepherd is he teaches them.

And it doesn't tell us what he teaches here.

But in Mark so far, we know that Jesus has taught, repent and believe.

We've heard him teach that he can forgive sins.

That as a physician he came to call the sick and not the righteous.

In the parable of the sower, he tells us how important this word is.

That when this word is heard and accepted, it has the power to produce all sorts of fruit in our lives.

And so if you ever feel like you frustrate your Lord, if he rolls his eyes at you, that he gets as annoyed with you as you get annoyed with others, we need to hear his compassionate word.

He has compassion on them and he teaches.

And what that means is that when he teaches us, we ought to hear it in a tone of compassion.

When I was in second grade, I was a very submissive second grader, very obedient.

And I remember sitting in my class, you can't go to the bathroom unless your teacher calls on you and I raised my hand, and our class was in a U, and she had her back to me for a while and didn't make a peep.

Just this quiet, submissive boy.

She never turned around, and I just went all over the place.

And it was awful, shameful.

I mean, just water scushing.

And I was humiliated and shamed.

And I had to go to the office, not because I was in trouble, but to call my mom.

And I remember when I was getting carried, my mom carried me to the car, and I remember saying, I am disgusting.

Like this is gonna get all over you.

And I remember her saying, That's okay.

That's okay.

In that moment, there was not an ounce of frustration, an ounce of expectation, just you are dirty and filthy, and I'm here for you.

It was compassionate, it was kind, it was gracious, and you and I need to know that that is how Jesus is with us.

He is compassionate and he is kind and he's willing to get dirty with our filth as he carries us.

He's compassionate on those who need a shepherd.

In John 10, Jesus says out loud, I'm the good shepherd.

The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep, and he goes on to say, My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me, and I give them eternal life, and they will never perish.

And no No one will snatch them out of my hands.

Your shepherd's posture is one of compassion and grace and mercy.

And when he teaches, that is what he is extending.

And that is what, when we entrust ourselves to him, we receive.

That what we need is the compassion of Jesus, but we must receive it.

We must believe him when he tells us, This is what I offer.

We must exert our moral will and say, I will move in that direction.

I will put in my hands what you are holding out.

His posture is one of compassion.

The question for us is, have we received that yet?

He's still extending, even now.

Of course, Jesus doesn't just feel compassion for the sheep, and he doesn't just teach them in a compassionate way.

He demonstrates his compassion, doesn't he?

That's the persistence of the food, which is my way of just saying food for days.

It's a miracle.

It persists.

Apparently, Jesus' compassionate words go on for a little while.

And the disciples come to him and they say, Hey Jesus, do you mind to stop if you'll stop talking a little bit?

It's getting late and there's no food here, and people need to go and eat.

And Jesus says, You feed them.

And they say, You know good and well, we don't have the money or the resources to feed all of these people.

And he says, Well, let's see how much food we have.

Go and find out.

You know the story.

Five loaves, two fish.

And then he calls out to the crowds, hey guys, we're going to feed you.

Sit down in groups of 50 or 100, and we're going to carry food to you.

And Mark tells us that he has them sit down on the green grass.

He's shepherding them.

We're supposed to think of Psalm 23 here.

Now, before we get to the miracle, it's important to note that in this passage we see in Jesus, like we see in so many others, that his ministry is a ministry of word and deed.

That when you think about what ministry for Jesus, what it looks like, it has content, he teaches them.

He also demonstrates that in compassionate deeds.

And so it is that those who follow him, churches that bear his name, have a ministry of word and deed.

You know, his disciples say, they're hungry.

Let them go and eat.

Notice Jesus doesn't say, but I just fed them spiritually.

He doesn't say that.

He doesn't say there's something more important than a grumbling belly.

He doesn't say that.

I think it is pretty clear in the Gospels that the ministry of the word is primary.

It comes first, but it's never chosen over against service deeds.

It is primary, but it never pushes aside deed ministry.

And Jesus shows us over and over again he cares for the spiritual and the physical needs of his people because we are whole people, body and soul.

And he says, I've come to love you, body and soul.

And my prayer for this church, as I'm sure so many of your prayers for this church, is that we too would be marked as a people who are rich in word indeed.

That we learn to care for the needs of each other, speaking words of truth and love, but also offering meals and hugs and kleenexes.

You get the idea.

That in our midst we want to see people coming to faith by the words of Jesus, but then seeing what do they need?

What do we need physically?

And so just to say out loud, even though our resources are limited, if you have physical needs, if there are times you're like, I cannot pay the grocery bill or the power bill, let me know.

We don't have unlimited resources, but we have some resources for moments of just acute need.

It can alleviate some of that.

Your physical needs matter just as much as your spiritual needs.

And that's true for our neighbors as well.

As we find our place in this neighborhood, we want to be known as a church, I hope.

Let's pray together that we would be known as a place that is rich in word.

Jesus sounds so gracious and merciful there, but he also sees our needs.

This is the way that Jesus intends for it to be.

Some of us might be more gifted at speaking a word of truth, and others might be more gifted at saying, Why don't you come over, you and your family, for dinner?

We need both.

Word and deed ministry reflects the compassion that Jesus demonstrates for us here.

And I don't know if you notice this.

He's so committed to it at this moment at meeting the needs of others.

He does it in such a non-flashy way.

The disciples know a miracle has taken place.

The text gives us no indication that the crowd see a miracle.

They just saw food.

Like, great, and they eat.

They have no idea where it comes from.

We simply read, 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, and set before the people.

He divided the two fish among them all, and they all ate and were satisfied.

And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces of the fish, and those who ate the loaves were around five thousand men.

Jesus could have rained bread down from heaven.

He had done that for the Old Testament Israelites every day.

He could have done that.

He could have said, Watch, my love for you is like this.

Whoosh.

He didn't do that.

He didn't say, Open your baskets.

A little surprise for you there.

You get a fish, and you get a fish, and you he doesn't do that.

It's so flashy, it's not flashy at all.

Second thing I want you to know is he uses the disciples to divvy this out.

Now, had he done this in an extraordinarily flashy way, had the crowds been wowed, the disciples would have felt pretty important in this moment, just by association.

See what he did.

We're with him.

We're with him.

This is what he, this is for you, this is for you like.

That sort of popularity by association, they could have felt really important.

And instead, they just got to look like waiters.

We're tired.

All right, go and feed them.

5,000 men.

That doesn't count the women and children.

Go and feed them.

Likewise, so often when we serve in Jesus' name, it might just look like we're waiting tables.

Or like we're a nursery worker.

Glamorous or not, being used by Jesus to serve others is also very often satisfying in its own way.

You know, this passage starts by noting the disciples didn't even have time to eat.

No time to eat.

And how does it end?

They took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish.

You know, first century Jews would have carried around a basket.

We've got records where Romans mocked them, the poor Jewish folks carrying their baskets.

So they would have had these baskets.

They would have, each apostle would have had a basket.

And we read that these apostles who have no time to eat are then recruited to serve, then go walk around, and each of them has a basket full of food.

Doesn't tell us, but I think the implication is, and now they got to eat.

A really good meal, just like everybody else.

That they were called to serve, but Jesus and choosing them to serve was also serving them and meeting their needs.

These disciples are already stretched thin.

And God has decided to show them that their depleted resources have no bearing on what God can do through them.

And I think so often you and I we think we've got to have all the resources in the world.

We see needs and we think we know what we need to meet those needs, when instead we just have to offer to Jesus what we have.

Do with these what you will.

And so often he surprises his disciples with how he uses his people with what they have.

So often people marvel at the grace of God precisely because they see grace.

How did this happen?

God was gracious to us.

But I also want to note you know, you can read this passage in a sort of triumphalistic way.

Like, God's gonna meet every need for everybody all the time.

Like, we still live in a fallen world.

And then there will still be people who don't have enough to eat.

And we're gonna see brokenness, and there's still a hard reality to life in a fallen world.

And Jesus Himself says the poor will always be with us.

But I think he's showing us something in this passage that gives us great hope.

When Jesus performs this miracle, I mean he uses very familiar language.

Did you notice it?

He takes the bread and he blesses it and he breaks it and he gives it to his disciples.

And Mark uses this exact same language in chapter 14 when he institutes the Lord's Supper.

And I think what Mark is showing us is that here Jesus is showing us what he died for.

What did he die for?

He died for our sins.

He died for those of us who were, we've lived like those who don't have a shepherd, and he meets that need, our spiritual need.

But he didn't just die for our sinful souls.

He did.

And we want to lift that message up a lot, but he died for our bodies too.

I mean, how is life after this life described?

It is a resurrected body in a physical place.

We don't ever become disembodied.

So even in the new heavens and the new earth, for the rest of eternity, we are going to have bodies that have no needs.

That are in, they have souls with no more needs, that every one of our needs, body and soul, has been met.

And every time we proclaim that at this table, what we see is a spiritual message in physical realities, pointing to a greater feast where we have every need met.

And as we do that, what we're doing is we're bearing witness to the day when Jesus is going to finish everything that he has started.

In this way, we share the gospel and we live it out in hope of a day that is coming.

Let's pray.

Father, we love you.

And we thank you for your mercy and your grace.

We thank you for your words and your deeds.

And we ask that you would meet us by your word and in deeds of compassion.

But we also ask that if you meet us, if you show us grace and mercy in this way, that we might be the kind of people that extend that to others as well.

We pray these things in Christ's name.

Amen.