Mark chapter 6, as we continue on through the life of Jesus, through the lens of Mark's gospel.
Last week, we looked at the feeding of the 5,000.
And I want you, as we start here this morning, to imagine yourself in the place specifically of Peter.
They started off that day exhausted.
They had gone on this mission trip, as it were, into the cities and the villages around Galilee, proclaiming the gospel.
Jesus had sent them out two by two.
They were preaching and people were responding to the preaching.
They were given power to heal and to cast out demons.
And they come back and they're telling Jesus all about this.
They're excited.
All of the disciples are, and they are, Jesus can see, quite exhausted.
And so he says, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.
However, as they are going along in the boat, people see them and somehow know where they are going to.
And so when they come to shore in this deserted place, 5,000 men show up, plus who knows how many women and children, and a massive, massive crowd assembles.
And as the day goes on and Jesus sees this crowd there,
harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd, the text tells us.
And Jesus has compassion on them.
And so Jesus spends all day teaching them, ministering to them through the word.
And as the day grows late, the apostles, the disciples say, Jesus, you need to send these people away.
We don't have anything to feed them with.
You need to go get them out of here, get them into the villages, the cities, the countryside to go find food.
And the disciples,
are making a reasonable request here on a human level.
And Jesus says, how about you guys give them something to eat?
And they said, we don't have anything to give them to eat.
We don't have, I mean, two thirds of a year's wages wouldn't buy enough food for all these people.
And Jesus says, well, what do you have?
They come up with five loaves and two fish and Jesus
takes the five loaves and the two fish, and he feeds the multitude.
And so the disciples, and we're thinking here specifically of Peter, he's gone from exhaustion to frustration that, oh, this crowd showed up when we're supposed to be resting, to disbelief that Jesus would be able to handle the needs of this crowd to an amazement.
And now I'm going to read through verses 45 to 52, but I'm going to change the pronouns so that they are in the first person, as if this is Peter speaking.
Immediately he made us get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd.
And after he took his leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray.
And when evening came, our boat was out on the sea, and Jesus was alone on the land.
And he saw that we were making headway painfully, for the wind was against us.
And about the fourth watch of the night, between three and six in the morning,
He came to us walking on the sea and he meant to walk past us But when we saw him walking on the sea, we thought he was a ghost and so we cried out And we all saw him and were terrified But immediately he spoke to us and said take heart.
It is I Do not be afraid And he got into the boat with us and the wind ceased And we were utterly astounded For we did not understand about the loaves, but our hearts were hardened
A tradition tells us that Mark's gospel is largely taken from the eyewitness of Peter.
Mark is a close associate of Peter later in Peter's life, and he's probably writing down mostly Peter's memories.
He's probably doing some research on his own, especially when we get to summary statements of things that happened.
A paragraph like that, when you switch it into the first person, it just beats with that eyewitness feel.
Like, here's what it was like to be there in that boat.
I think what we're going to see in the text today is that Jesus provides, but he doesn't always provide in the way that we're waiting for him to.
The disciples were provided for by Jesus.
But they were not ready to receive the provision that he offered.
He gives, he provides, but he doesn't always provide what we want or the way we're looking for it.
Verses 45 to 46.
The first word we see there is the word immediately.
And I think it's fair to wonder, why was Jesus sending the disciples out immediately after he had committed, or committed, performed this miracle?
He's fed the 5,000 you would think maybe let's take some time to bask in the glory of this But if you read the same account in John's gospel This is one of the the few miracles that shows up in all four Gospels a lot of times you'll have something in and what are referred to as the synoptic Gospels Matthew Mark and Luke but John won't have the same story, but this one occurs in all four Gospels and in John's
telling of it.
He tells us in John chapter 6 verse 15 that after Jesus had fed the multitudes, there is like this upswell, this rising of desire to make him king.
They were going to try to take him by force and make him the king.
And Jesus apparently doesn't want the disciples in on this.
He doesn't want the disciples in on this scheme, this... And I
There would be a real danger of that.
We know at least one of the disciples, Simon the Zealot, he's called in chapter 3 verse, I think it's 19, chapter 3 verse 18.
We see Simon is someone who is already part of a movement to try to get rid of the Romans, to try to establish Jewish rule again in this region.
And it would seem like if Jesus is coming and he's making himself known as the king of the Jews, he's greater than Moses, he's greater than Joshua, he's greater than these Old Testament figures, and he's coming, he's the Messiah, shouldn't he want to be made king?
But Jesus doesn't want them to make him king in that way.
That's not what he had come to do.
He sends the crowds away.
He sends the disciples away, and then he sends the crowds away, and then he withdraws to pray.
And that's, we would think, oh, big deal, Jesus is going to pray.
Of course Jesus is going to pray.
But it's one of only three times in Mark's gospel that we are told Jesus withdrew to pray.
The first time is chapter 1 verse 35 after he's spent a whole Sabbath day teaching in the synagogue and then once sundown had come he's healing and performing miracles for people, casting out demons.
He's had this long day of ministry and the people are expecting him to keep doing it.
The crowds are pressing in at the door and he withdraws early that morning and disappears.
The crowds are then looking for him the next morning.
He disappears so that he can go pray and
in a sense like reorient himself, like what am I supposed to be doing?
What is the mission the Father has sent me on?
And he leaves the crowds that are waiting for him and goes into the nearby villages to preach the gospel.
He says, for that is why I have come out.
He came to this world, first of all, teaching about the kingdom.
But then the third time we see him praying in Mark's gospel is chapter 14.
verses 32 to 42 in the Garden of Gethsemane.
And there he's being tempted by, honestly, his knowledge of what is to come.
He's being tempted to walk away from the cross, right?
And he's having to pray, Father, if there's any way for this cup to pass from me, let it be
but not my will but yours be done.
He's having to pray that God would give him the strength to go through with why he had come to earth, going to the cross to bear the weight of our sin, my sin and your sin.
Each of these times Jesus is facing a pressure point in his ministry.
We see him withdraw to pray.
At first he's being tempted to just focus on the the miracle stuff and to to neglect the teaching which is why he had come to teach about the kingdom.
And then he at the end of his ministry is being tempted to not follow through with the securing entrance into the kingdom for for those who would trust in him.
And here in between
Jesus is praying again and it seems this is another one of those pressure points.
There's a temptation to just take where the crowds want to go.
And Jesus instead withdraws.
He sends the disciples away.
He doesn't want them influenced by that more than they already surely are.
And he draws away and prays and sends the crowds.
He disperses them away.
Jesus came, first of all, to free his people not from Roman oppression,
not from any other people oppressing them.
The oppression that Jesus came to free people from, Matthew 1.21 says, is the oppression of their own sins.
His name will be Jesus, for he will save his people, not from the Romans, but from their sins.
Do you see yourself as in need of this kind of provision?
We can very often look for Jesus and pray for him to save us from all kinds of outside circumstances.
Lord, would you fix this situation for me?
And it's not wrong to pray those things, right?
If you've got a tough situation, who else should you ask but Jesus to fix it for you?
But you've got a more fundamental need than that.
Because he could save you from all the outside circumstances, and if your sin is not dealt with, that's a really temporary solution.
Because if you gain the whole world, Jesus says, and forfeit your soul, you didn't actually gain anything.
Do you see yourself as in need of Jesus to save you from your sins?
Have you repented of your sins and trusted in his sufficient work on the cross to pay for you?
Second thing we see in this text is that Jesus does see your troubles.
Verses 47 and 48.
When evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land.
When he saw that they were making headway painfully,
for the wind was against them.
The disciples are sent out by Jesus while he goes up to pray.
And it says, verse 47, that evening had come and the boat was out on the sea.
Usually that word evening, the Greek word there means like right at the edge of dusk, but probably this is later than that because
before the miracle with the 5,000.
It's already late in the day.
So by the time that Jesus has, the disciples have passed out food for 5,000 people.
They've picked up all the leftovers.
He's dispersed the crowd.
We're probably after dark at this point by the time the boat even sets out.
And Jesus goes up on the mountain to pray.
And he can look down and the Sea of Galilee, Lake of Galilee, depending on which gospel you're reading, how they refer to it, it's a lake.
It's only four miles across.
So, and there's a little bit of question on the geography in this.
So most scholars think that this sermon was taking place on the kind of the Eastern part of the lake and Bethsaida is in the Northeast corner.
So it wouldn't actually be across the lake.
It would be up several miles.
So are they getting in the boat to go up or is there, there possibly was another Bethsaida on the other side of the lake that we don't have recorded.
Outside of scripture.
We don't know for sure the max distance that they're having to travel is four miles Okay, so it's it's not very far might even be less than that that they're trying to get and they are spending hours Rowing against the wind.
I mean this this has to be some kind of wind that they're not able to get across and The time of year that is is probably taking place close to Passover.
So the moon is full Jesus is able to look out on the lake and see that
They're struggling out there.
They're not making any progress.
After hours and hours and many of these men are skilled oarsmen.
They've lived on the water their whole lives.
They're professional fishermen and they are struggling.
That phrase, making headway painfully, could also be translated tortuously.
Like they are suffering as they try to row this boat to where Jesus has sent them to go.
Do you ever
You ever wonder, as you row against the wind, if Jesus actually sees the struggles that you're dealing with?
I often reflect on the Psalms.
Psalm 22, verses 1 and 2, David says, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
Psalm 13, verses
Verse 1 says, How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?
Will you ever hear my groaning?
Will you ever hear my crying out?
God.
Some people, when they hear those sorts of things, think, why?
You can't pray like that.
I don't know.
It's in the Bible.
Inspired by the Holy Spirit.
I think if you feel that way, that's exactly how you should pray.
You should go to God and say,
I feel forgotten and neglected by you.
Help me.
The key is to not let yourself wallow in that and stay there.
Those two Psalms, the first one I quoted there, Psalm 22, Jesus quotes from the cross, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
But Psalm 22, being in verse 29 says,
All the prosperous of the earth eat and worship, before him shall bow down all who go down to the dust, even the one who could not keep himself alive.
Posterity shall serve him, shall serve the Lord.
It shall be told of the Lord to the coming generation.
They shall come and proclaim his righteousness to a people yet unborn, that he has done it, that he has provided salvation for that one who is crying out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
While he's not utterly forsaken, God does come through for him.
God does provide for him.
Psalm 13, again, verse 1 had said, How long, O Lord, will you forget me forever?
How long will you hide your face from me?
Verses 5 and 6 say, But I've trusted in your steadfast love.
My heart shall rejoice in your salvation.
I will sing to the Lord.
because he has dealt bountifully with me.
Jesus sees them in their struggle and whatever you are struggling with he sees your struggle.
The disciples don't understand that yet.
They just see the wind and they see the waves and they are consumed by their circumstances to the point where Jesus comes walking across the water and they don't recognize him.
About the fourth watch, again, that's between three and six in the morning.
The fourth watch of the night, he came to them walking on the sea.
Walking on the sea.
And some people have tried to explain this away, like, oh, it must've been misty and he's just walking along the sea.
Or, you know, maybe there was this hidden reef or a sandbar under, just underneath the surface and he's walking on that.
Again,
Peter and John and Andrew and James, at least of the four, know this water like the back of their hand.
If they thought that's what he did, that's what they would have said.
He's walking on the water.
He's really walking on the water.
But they don't say, hey, it's Jesus.
They say, it's a ghost.
Oh, no, this night is bad enough.
And now there's a ghost.
Jewish tradition, Jewish superstition at that point said that those kind of horrible winds and waves were caused by demons.
The Greek word here is phantasma, like a phantom who stirred up the waters.
And that's what they think they see.
Those who live on the water are notoriously superstitious.
And apparently these guys aren't any different.
They think they are seeing a spirit.
Jesus is walking to them.
And it's an interesting phrase here at the end of verse 48.
It says, he meant to pass by them.
You might think that kind of adds insult to injury.
He sees them in all this pain and all this struggle and he says, I was going to walk by.
Hi guys.
And keep on walking.
There's a couple layers here.
The first is just probably just speaking from the perspective of the disciples as they're struggling with the wind and they see him walking and
They don't see him walking straight to them.
Maybe they think it, whoever that is, whatever that is, it's going past us.
So they're just giving you their perspective, regardless of what Jesus intention was.
But there's also a lot of biblical weight attached to that phrase pass by to pass by in Exodus chapter 33.
Story that I'm sure will be familiar to many of you.
This is after God had given Moses the Ten Commandments.
Then Moses comes down off the mountain, sees the golden calf that the people have made, smashes the commandments, heads back up on the mountain, and God says, hey, here's the deal, Moses.
I'm going to kill all these people in the desert and start over with you.
And Moses says, no, no, no, no, no, God, we don't want to do that.
What good would it do?
What glory would it bring to your name if you killed these people that you just brought out of Egypt?
And so Moses prays to God and intercedes for the people.
And we see this often in scripture, like the leader of the people standing in the gap for them, praying on their behalf.
We see this with Moses here.
We see it with Abraham earlier on praying for Lot and the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah.
We see it later on with Samuel praying for the nation.
We see it with Jesus, even from the cross, praying that the father would forgive those who were crucifying him.
Right?
It's one of the roles of a leader is to stand in the gap, to pray for the people, even when they are in sin.
And God has said, okay, I will, I'll be with you.
Verse 18 of chapter 33 in Exodus, Moses says,
Please show me your glory.
And God says to him, I will make all my goodness pass before you and will proclaim before you my name, the Lord.
And I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious.
And I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy.
But he said, you cannot see my face for man shall not see me and live.
And the Lord said, behold, there is a place by me where you shall stand on the rock.
And while my glory passes by, I will put you in the cleft of the rock, and I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by.
Then I will take away my hand, and you shall see my back, but my face shall not be seen.
So in some way God presents his glorious presence to Moses but doesn't actually let Moses see it as it goes by.
Moses can't look the goodness and the glory of God in the face or he would die.
God covers him up and he just gets to see the trailing parts of God's
goodness and glory and yet even that glimpse is such that at the end of chapter 34 Moses comes down off the mountain and the people make him cover his face with a veil because he's shining so much that they can't stand to look at him.
He sees the goodness and the glory of God and he is transformed by it.
Here in Mark's gospel the disciples have just
witnessed the goodness of God on display.
They've been seeing it the entire ministry of Jesus with the healings, with the exorcisms, Jesus freeing people from all sorts of problems, the raising of Jairus' daughter from the dead, and now they have seen, like Moses, providing manna in the wilderness for the people, right?
I mean, we know ultimately God did that, but the people saw it as Moses providing manna in the wilderness.
Now Jesus, in a desert place, has fed the multitudes
from nothing.
He's made bread for them.
They've seen the goodness of God on display.
They are now seeing him cross the sea on foot like in the Exodus.
The goodness of God, the power of God are on display in Jesus and yet they see him and they think, it's a ghost!
Job chapter 9
Job is speaking here when Job is still very much in his bitter phase.
He's speaking of God, he says, who alone stretched out the heavens, verse 8, and trampled the waves of the sea, who made the Bear and Orion and Pleiades and the Chambers of the South, who does
Great things beyond searching out, and marvelous things beyond number.
Behold, he passes by me, and I see him not.
He moves on, but I do not perceive him.
Job recognized God's power over nature, but he did not perceive his hand at work in his life in the hardships that came to him.
And the disciples, again, have just seen Jesus feed the multitudes, but their first supernatural thought
is not salvation because Jesus is here.
Their first supernatural thought is, oh no, a ghost.
And we know from Matthew 14 that when Jesus cries out to them, take heart, it is I, do not be afraid, Peter's response is, if it's actually you, Jesus, why don't you tell me to come out there?
And Jesus says, okay, come on.
And Peter gets out and Peter starts to walk across the water.
But I wonder if you remember,
how that went for Peter Jesus said come Matthew 14 verse 29 Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus when he saw the wind he was afraid and beginning to sink he cried out Lord save me what stopped Peter from making it to Jesus
He moved his eyes from Jesus to the wind.
His eyes were off of his Lord and onto his circumstances.
Are your eyes on the wind or are they on Jesus who is the Lord of the wind and the waves?
They've already seen Jesus calm a storm, right?
Chapter 4 verses 35 to 41.
Jesus was in the boat at that point with them and is asleep during the storm.
And they think, Jesus, don't you care that we're all going to die?
And they wake him up and he wakes up and he says, peace be still.
And the wind and the waves stop and his disciples don't rejoice.
They go, who is this?
Well, he's the Lord of nature.
The disciples, even once Jesus comes into the boat, do not understand
They don't understand what's going on.
Verse 50, they all saw him and were terrified, but immediately he spoke to them and said, take heart, his eye do not be afraid.
And he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased and they were utterly astounded for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.
It's interesting.
Why don't the disciples, why don't the disciples get it?
Number one, it says, they do not understand about the loaves.
They did not grasp that Jesus could provide for their every need in any circumstance.
They panicked about their circumstances rather than trusting in their sufficient Savior.
And the reason for this, it says, is because their hearts were hardened.
And this is an important thing for us to grasp.
Fundamentally, unbelief.
Unbelief for the disciples at this point is irrational.
They've seen Jesus' power.
There's no rational reason for them to say, He can't take care of the storm.
They've seen Him do it.
But unbelief is never, at root, an intellectual problem.
It is a matter of the heart.
Their hearts were hardened.
That's why they didn't understand.
Are you trying to cling
to something in your life, trying to cling to control of something in your life, and thus, like the disciples, losing your mind because you can't control your circumstances, can't control what's going on around you, can't stop the wind, can't save yourself.
If so, hear the words of Jesus.
Take heart.
It is I. Do not be afraid.
There is no circumstance in life where Jesus cannot or will not provide for those who trust in him.
Psalm 84 verses 10 through 12.
Some of my favorite verses in all the Bible.
Psalm 84 beginning in verse 10 says, For a day in your courts is better than a thousand elsewhere.
I would rather be a doorkeeper in the house of my God than dwell in the tents of wickedness.
For the Lord God is a sun and a shield.
The Lord bestows favor and honor.
No good thing does he withhold from those who walk uprightly.
O Lord of hosts, blessed is the one who trusts in you.
If you trust in the Lord and you need something, he will provide it.
Now that doesn't mean you will get everything you think you need.
The disciples thought they needed the wind to die down or to be able to row across a lot faster than it happened.
Their timing was not God's timing.
Their ways were not God's ways.
But His thoughts are higher than our thoughts.
His timing is better than our timing.
His provision is better than what we ask for.
The last few verses of this chapter in Mark chapter 6 are kind of a summary statement of Jesus' ministry that followed here for a while.
They do get across.
The boat makes it to the region of Gennasseret.
And it says they moored to the shore.
And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him and ran about the whole region and began to bring sick people on their beds wherever they heard he was.
And wherever he came, in villages, cities, or the countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment, and as many as touched it were made well.
There's two things I want to note really quickly.
This is, like I said, it was a summary statement.
Like chapter 1 verses 37 to 39 has a summary statement.
Chapter 3 verses 7 to 12 has a summary statement.
But unlike those two where it says he was teaching and casting out demons and healing, here it only talks about healing.
It doesn't talk about teaching or casting out demons.
Two things that are significant here.
Number one, the people are pursuing Jesus.
He doesn't go around to all the cities and villages once they get to Gennasaret.
The people just flood to him.
He's dealing with a too much popularity problem.
The second thing that we see though, and I think this is why it only mentions the healing here, not the teaching or the exorcisms, is that this is a stark contrast to Nazareth.
So Jesus had gone to his hometown at the beginning of chapter 6.
and could not work many miracles there because the people did not believe in him.
So there were a few healings that happened, but very few.
Not what Jesus was capable of, but the people didn't believe in him and so they weren't going to receive his healings.
Here, the region, many of the sick people in the region, perhaps most, come to Jesus and are healed.
Like the woman in chapter 5 who had the flow of blood and thought, if I could just squeak through the crowds and touch Jesus' robe, I will be made well.
It's the same way these people are thinking.
They think if I can just get to Jesus and touch him, he will heal me.
He has the power to do that.
And there was nothing magical about his garments that made it work.
It was the fact that they trusted in Jesus' power.
They trusted in Jesus' ability that
that He had the power to save them.
So the question that should leave us with is like, where are you this morning?
Are you paralyzed by fear, unbelief, the wind and the waves of your circumstances?
Or are you willing to humbly come to and cry out to Jesus, knowing that He can handle, that He can provide for your every need?
Would you pray with me?
Father God, we need your help.
We can't soften our own hearts.
We can't change ourselves, but you can.
Your Holy Spirit is absolutely capable of doing that.
And so, Lord, we pray that you would give us that which we need, which is soft hearts and a willingness to humble ourselves before you.
First Peter 5 tells us to humble ourselves underneath your mighty hand that in due time you might exalt us casting all our cares upon you because you care for us.
Help us to do that we pray in Jesus name.
