Mark 6:30-44 (See also Matthew 14:13-21; Luke 9:10-17; John 6: 1-15)
“The Ministry of Jesus: From Jordan to Pentecost” Part 3
Bart W. Newton, Preaching Minister
To view a simple online worship service of “Word, Communion and Prayer,” and please click on the the following link: "Table Time: The Feeding of the Five Thousand"
(Unless otherwise noted, Scripture quotations taken from The Holy Bible: English Standard Version.)
Summary: In part 3 of the series "The Ministry of Jesus: From Jordan to Pentecost, through the miraculous feeding of the 5,000, we’ll see not only what Jesus can do, but who He is. And, from His examples discover ways to minister to those around us.
• In the first message of the series, we examined the baptism of Jesus and how closely, in many ways, our baptism as Christians relates to His.
• In the second message we saw how Jesus set aside His divine privileges, lived like a man, took the role of a suffering servant, and succeeded where Adam and Israel both failed. We also learned from Jesus how to successfully withstand Satan’s schemes and do what is right in God’s eyes.
• Today, in the miraculous feeding of the 5,000, we’ll see not only what Jesus can do, but who He is. And from His examples discover ways to minister to those around us.
• Did you know that this is the only miracle of Jesus included in all four Gospel Letters (Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John)? Each one includes a detail or two not included in the other three.
Mark 6:30-44:
30 The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. 31 And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.” For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. 32 And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. 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. 34 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. 35 And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. 36 Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” 37 But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?” 38 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.” 39 Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. 40 So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. 41 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. 42 And they all ate and were satisfied. 43 And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. 44 And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men.
• They were on the northwest side of the Sea of Galilee. Jesus had just found out that His cousin, John the Baptist, the prophet who was preparing the way for the Messiah and had baptized Jesus, had been beheaded by Herod.
• John’s death would have filled Judea and Galilee with mourning and wailing. Zealots who had looked with hope to Jesus to establish His kingdom and boot out the Roman occupiers would have wondered why hadn’t Jesus done something to save John.
• At the same time the apostles were returning from their commissioned tour of preaching, healing the sick and casting out demons (6:12-13). So, they debriefed with Jesus “all they had done and taught.”
• But the crowds had gathered and Jesus wanted some time alone with the apostles, Jesus tells them: “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.”
• Jesus and the apostles get in a boat in the Sea of Galilee and they start heading six miles across the lake. This gives Jesus and apostles time to commune and rest a bit apart from the crowds.
• But as they are crossing the northern part of the Sea of Galilee toward the eastern shore,
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.
• If Jesus had wanted to give the crowd the “the slip,” He would have headed the boat SE and they wouldn’t have been able to have followed them along the shore. Instead, they head straight across to the eastern side, a distance of six miles. Jesus knew this would give him and the disciples some quiet time together for fellowship, rest, debriefing, etc.
• At the same time the boat is floating across the lake, all along the NW, N, and NE shoreline, thousands of people making their way to where Jesus and company were headed.
• Now get this, to get from where Jesus had boarded ship and where He would land, the multitude had to walk 8-10 miles along the northern shoreline!
• Mark’s account says that the people got to the other side where Jesus came ashore before Jesus and the apostles did. The Gospel Letter of John tells us that when Jesus and His disciples reached the other side, He took them up on the mountain side and sat down with His apostles for a bit. And then, Jesus looks up and saw a large crowd heading towards Him. Is there a discrepancy between the two accounts? I don’t’ think so at all.
• When Jesus’s boat first arrived, there would have been some of the more youthful, fit and fast people already there. But behind them, thousands of slower folk, some older and infirmed, all along the coastline were making their way.
• So you see, Jesus had some time on the side of the big hill with His apostles before thousands had opportunity to assemble there.
• According to John’s account, as Jesus sees the crowd making its way there,
• John 6:5-6: Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?” 6 He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. 7 Philip answered him, “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.”
• Eight months wages wouldn’t be enough money to buy each person even a bite, much less feed them!
• It’s like Philip was saying to Jesus, “It’s not a matter of where we’ll buy them food, but how will we buy them food. We can’t do it!”
• The great crowd arrived and Jesus, who really would have liked to have rested and fellowshiped alone with His apostles, 34 … had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
• Jesus did not accept them begrudgingly: Luke 9:11… he welcomed them…
• “welcome” = “welcome to hospitality and home”
• Jesus, using the beauty of the mountain and the lakefront welcomed them onto His Father’s “front porch”! Jesus offered hospitality to the least, the lost, the last, and the lamenting.
…And he began to teach them many things.
• Luke 9:11 Jesus… spoke to them of the kingdom of God and cured those who had need of healing.
35 And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate [uninhabited] place, and the hour is now late. 36 Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” 37 But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?”
38 And he said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.”
• So off they went making their way through the thousands of people asking, “Got any food?” “Do you have anything to eat?”
And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.”
• According to Luke 9:13, that was all there was unless they went and bought some food.
• In fact, Peter’s brother, Andrew, says, in John 6:9: “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?”
• “How is this little bit going to help us?”
• Barley was less expensive than wheat, so the boy was quite possibly from a poor family. Loaves would have been more like our buns or rolls or large biscuits.
• I’m guessing all hungry eyes were on Jesus on the mountainside as they saw His apostles and the little boy with his lunch bucket of food.
• I can picture Jesus smiling at the excited boy, maybe rubbing the boy’s crop of head hair, looking at the food, rubbing His hands together and saying, “Good enough! Time to eat!”
39 Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. 40 So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties.
• Luke’s Gospel records that Jesus told His disciples to have the people sit down in groups of about 50 people. (9:14)
Jesus had healed many of them. He’d spent the day teaching about the kingdom of God. They were hungry. It was late in the day. The grass was plentiful and green. Why would they not sit down at His command?
41 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.
• Incidentally, if our Lord said a blessing and gave a prayer of thanksgiving before meals, isn’t that enough of an example and encouragement for us to do the same? Whether you are family of one or 15, remember to thank God for His provisions!
And he divided the two fish among them all. 42 And they all ate and were satisfied.
• John 6:11b: So also the fish, as much as they wanted.
43 And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish.
• Basket = was more like a large wallet or collapsible knapsack that was commonly used for carry one’s lunch and a few other traveling accessories.
44 And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men.
• Roughly the population within the city limits of Owensville, Ft. Branch, and Haubstadt combined!
• Matthew’s Gospel: And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. (Matthew 14:21)
• That would be like throwing in the population of Princeton!
Application:
• Jesus’ commands are always accompanied by sufficient resources and empowerment to accomplish the commands. (Larry Chouinard, p. 265)
• What did Jesus command the disciples? “You feed them.” When Jesus calls us for service, He will also equip us for the task.
• Disciples are called to minister to the flock by relying on divine resources to supply what is needed to feed the flock.
• Disciples of Christ are called to look at people with the hospitable and compassionate eyes of Jesus.
• How do you and I see the crowds and the individuals within the crowds?
• Have your views been changing on the blessing and necessity of practicing hospitality to others, not just here but in your homes?
• We mustn’t stop without considering…
John 6:14: When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!”
• Notice that instead of using the word “miracle,” John used the word “sign” for what Jesus did in this great feeding of thousands.
• The people did not say that Jesus was a prophet but “the Prophet,” the Prophet Israel had been waiting for since the days of Moses centuries before.
• Jesus was the Prophet of whom Moses spoke:
• Deuteronomy 18:15-18: 15 “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen— 16 just as you desired of the Lord your God at Horeb on the day of the assembly, when you said, ‘Let me not hear again the voice of the Lord my God or see this great fire any more, lest I die.’ 17 And the Lord said to me, ‘They are right in what they have spoken. 18 I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him.”
Jesus is the new, perfect Moses feeding Israel manna in the desert! (John 6:14)
• Why do you suppose the 5,000+ would have been that cooperative at sitting down in groups of 50?
• Yes, they were hungry. But they were also in a desolate place. The Jews expected that when the Messiah would come, He would give manna in the desolate place like Moses did in the wilderness with the Israelites all those centuries ago!
• Moses had fed the Israelites with manna from heaven in the wilderness (Exodus 16).
• Elijah had been nourished by the ravens in the desert (1 Kings 17:1-5).
• Elisha had fed a hundred men on twenty loaves with bread left over in the desert (2 Kings 4:42-44).
Jesus was making the claim that He indeed is the King for whom Israel (and the world) had been waiting.
• The willingness of some of those who sat in groups of 50 may have come from the idea that Jesus was dividing them into military ranks of 50.
• They might have thought that Jesus might be preparing to lead them to overpower the Roman government and set up His kingdom.
• John 14:15: Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.
• He would have nothing to do with such an earthly, worldly kingdom.
• “[Jesus] regarded the setting up of an earthly kingdom as a temptation of the devil (Luke 4:5-8) and he would have no part of it. He is king in the hearts of his followers, but that is a very different thing. The tragedy of these Galileans was that they tried to make Jesus into their kind of king. They did not get what they wanted and in the process they lost the kind of king Jesus really is. People still make that mistake. They insist that Jesus be the kind of king (or savior or whatever that they want). They try to force him into a mold of their own choosing. They can never succeed, but while they are trying they lose the wonderful gift that Jesus is offering. Let us learn to see him as he is and to submit to his kind of kingship.” –Leon Morris, Reflections on the Gospel of John, pp. 211-212
• Did you notice Mark 6:41a: 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.
• All four Gospels include Jesus taking the bread, saying a blessing or giving thanks, braking the bread, and giving them to the disciples.
• Does this remind you of anything? It does me. The weekly celebration and observance of the Lord’s Supper that we receive not just as individuals but as a community.
• “Several feedings of [impoverished] people are recorded in the Gospels….They all stem from and reflect the institution of the Lord’s Supper which looks both back to the Passover and to all the feedings of God’s people throughout history in the desert, and forward to the messianic banquet which it anticipates.” –Michael Green, The Message of Matthew, p. 167.
The Lord’s Supper
(Matthew 26:26-28; 1 Corinthians 11:26)
Now as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to the disciples, and said,
“Take, eat; this is my body.”
• The body of Christ given for us.
And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, saying,
“Drink of it, all of you, for this is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many for the forgiveness of sins.
• The blood of Christ poured out for us.
At this time of reflection and celebration, pray for yourself and your brothers and sisters in Christ to be faithful in keeping the New Covenant.
For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.
King Jesus has died. King Jesus has risen. And King Jesus will come again.