Mark chapter six and verse 30. And the apostles gathered themselves
together unto Jesus and told him all things, both what they
had done and what they had taught. And he said unto them, come ye
yourselves apart into a desert place and rest a while, for there
were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as
to eat. And they departed into a desert
place by ship privately. And the people saw them departing,
and many knew him, and ran afoot thither out of all cities, and
out went them, and came together unto him. And Jesus, when he
came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward
them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd. And he
began to teach them many things. And when the day was now far
spent, his disciples came unto him and said, This is a desert
place, and now the time is far past. Send them away, that they
may go into the country round about, and into the villages,
and buy themselves bread, for they have nothing to eat. He
answered and said unto them, Give ye them to eat. And they
say unto him, Shall we go and buy two hundred pennyworth of
bread and give them to eat? He saith unto them, How many
loaves have ye? Go and see. And when they knew,
they say, Five and two fishes. And he commanded them to make
all sit down by companies upon the green grass. And they sat
down in ranks by hundreds and by fifties. And when he had taken
the five loaves and the two fishies, he looked up to heaven and blessed
and break the loaves and gave them to his disciples to set
before them. And the two fishies divided he
among them all. And they did all eat and were
filled. And they took up twelve baskets
full of the fragments of the fishies. and they that did eat
of the loaves were about five thousand men. Amen. May the Lord bless to us this
reading from his word. The care with which the Lord
Jesus Christ nurtures his disciples, looks after them, tends for them,
cares for their needs, is a joy to behold. And here we see that
these men have returned from their ministry. We spoke a little
bit about John the Baptist last week, but prior to that you'll
remember the Lord had sent the disciples out in twos and he
had commissioned them to go out and preach. He had empowered
and commissioned them and here it is that they are returning
and we are given this account by Mark of the return of the
disciples and the Lord meets them. He calls them together,
gathers them together and they share their experiences and they
give an account of what they did and what they achieved by
way of healing and casting out demons, but especially they gave
an account of their teaching and doctrine, which is no less
than the preaching of the gospel, because that's what these disciples
were doing. They preached repentance, they
preached righteousness, and they preached faith in the Lord Jesus
Christ. They preached the kingdom of
God and they modelled their message upon what Christ had taught them
and the Lord Jesus Christ's own ministry. We know that because
the Lord was satisfied with the accounts that the disciples gave
and kindly and caringly he drew them aside for a period of rest
and a period of respite. That little verse alone, where
the Lord, as it were, gathers his disciples to him and they
give an account of what they had done, ought to challenge
every aspiring preacher and indeed every preacher to appreciate
the weight of responsibility that we carry in our ministry. Preachers are accountable to
the Lord, perhaps like no other. for what they do and what they
say. And I would like to suggest to
you that that is a fearsome responsibility. The writer to the Hebrews tells
us, for they watch for your souls as they that must give account. Preachers have to give an account
for the souls of those that they minister to. And I think there's
a paradox in here because, and I'm speaking personally as well
as what I gather from reading the histories and the biographies
of other preachers and perhaps faithful men in times gone by,
that often Ministers of the gospel care more for the souls of their
hearers than those individual hearers do for themselves. There is a burden which comes
with preaching the gospel to the souls of eternity bound men
and women. Here we discover that these disciples
are patterning themselves upon the Lord Jesus and his ministry. We're told of the Lord right
back in the early verses of Mark's gospel in chapter 1 verse 14
and 15. We're told that the Lord came
into Galilee, which is the place that they were in at the moment,
preaching the gospel of the kingdom of God and saying, the time is
fulfilled the kingdom of God is at hand, repent ye and believe
the gospel. So that was the ministry of the
Lord Jesus Christ. It was a ministry which said
the kingdom of God is at hand, repent ye and believe the gospel. So these two things, the kingdom
of God is at hand was the coming of the Lord Jesus Christ in itself.
And the message that he proclaimed was repent and believe the gospel,
repentance and faith. And these two characteristics
have perhaps become the touchstones of faithful gospel preaching,
repentance and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. The gospel that
the Lord Jesus Christ preached was a gospel of repentance and
faith. The gospel that John the Baptist
preached was a gospel of repentance and faith. John the Baptist preached
repentance. And therefore the gospel that
the disciples preached was equally a gospel of repentance and faith
as they had been taught. And the gospel that we preach
today, the gospel that we are called to preach, is the selfsame
gospel of repentance and faith. And it is the gospel which is
good news to sinners because it speaks and declares the good
news of God who delivers and justifies guilty sinners by grace. That is the content of the message
of the gospel. Grace given without or outwith
works. Grace without works. Or, let me put it this way, unconditional
grace. Grace that is not given based
on or contingent upon or dependent upon anything on the part of
the individual who receives it, but which flows wholly and exclusively
out of the goodness and the love and the mercy of God alone. Unconditional grace. Repentance
and faith, the content of this gospel message, is characteristic
of all true preaching. As the Lord preached, as John
the Baptist preached, as the disciples preached, as faithful
ministers throughout the history of the church have declared. And repentance, sometimes it's
called evangelical repentance, but it's not this legal obligation
to repent. It is a gospel confession. Let me see if I can unpack this
a little bit for you because I do believe that this is an
important distinction. This repentance of which the
Lord preaches and John the Baptist and the disciples, this repentance
of which we preach is nothing like Roman Catholic confession,
for example, or Even the way that some Protestants talk about
getting to the end of the day and spending a time of self-analysis
and self-examination so that we can repent of our sins that
we've committed and have a, as it were, a reset so that we start
the next day with a clean slate. That's not the repentance that
we're talking about here. Not a blow-by-blow confession
of the things that we have done wrong. But it's a realization,
it's a recognition and understanding that we have no righteousness
of our own except and until God gives us His righteousness, the
only righteousness that is acceptable righteousness. And that He gives it, our understanding,
that He gives it to us without regard to merit or any deserving
on our part. That's what we mean when we talk
about free grace. You'll hear me mentioning free
grace from time to time. That's what we mean, that God
graciously gives acceptable righteousness, righteousness that is acceptable
to Him freely, without recourse to the works of the recipient. It's a grace that flows unconditionally,
coming from God's unconditional love towards us, coming because
of his sovereign purpose to gather a people to himself. And that's
what's meant by this repentance. Again, not this blow-by-blow
confession for individual sins, but an awareness of a need for
an acceptable righteousness. And the other aspect of this
gospel that Christ and his disciples preached is faith, repentance
and faith. And again, that is not our work
in believing, but it is the Holy Spirit's divine enabling by which
the sinner comes to see and to understand and to believe that
Jesus Christ in his sacrifice and death is the way, is the
means by which God brings about our salvation and our righteousness
and our justification, which is the application of that acceptable
righteousness. It is the sinner, the individual,
seeing and believing how God justifies sinners and secures
that righteousness for us through his grace. So that gospel that
the disciples were here preaching is a gospel of repentance and
faith. And it's exactly how the Apostle
Paul describes to the Ephesian elders his own ministry, that
apostolic ministry of the Apostle. So you see the continuity here. It's the way that the Apostle
describes his own ministry when he says to the Ephesian elders
in Acts chapter 20 and verse 21, testifying both to the Jews
and to the Greeks, what? Repentance toward God and faith
toward our Lord Jesus Christ. Recognising I have no righteousness
of my own except God give it to me. Recognising I am guilty
by nature, I am guilty in thought, I am guilty in word, I am guilty
in deed. And if God saves me, it will
be his mercy through that substitutionary work of the Lord Jesus Christ,
by the death of Jesus Christ in my place. That's the Gospel, and there's
a blessed promise attached to it. All who come in repentance
and faith, all who come by this confession and believing, as
it is revealed in them by the Holy Spirit, have been saved,
are being saved, always shall be saved, even to eternity. Because the Apostle in Romans
chapter 10 in verse 9 says, If thou shalt confess with thy mouth
the Lord Jesus, and believe in thine heart that God hath raised
him from the dead, thou shalt be saved. Because that is the
essence, that gospel of repentance and faith, of confession and
trust that characterises those whom the Lord has been pleased
to draw to himself and make righteous in the Lord Jesus Christ. That
was the gospel that the disciples preached and that was the gospel
that the Lord Jesus Christ approved of. And it seems However, when
they came back to the Lord and gave this account of their activities,
that the time that the Lord had designated for rest and leisure
was rather short, it was curtailed. And verse 33, in our reading
tells us that many followed the Lord Jesus Christ as he got into
the boat and headed along the coast to that desert place where
this time with his disciples was envisioned, that the people
came out of the villages and the towns and the cities and
they ran and they outwent them. So much were they attracted to
the Lord Jesus Christ for his healing, for his help, for his
doctrine, that they outran the Lord Jesus in that little boat
as he travelled along the coast. Oh, that the Holy Spirit would
lay such a hunger for spiritual health and wellbeing, for spiritual
help, for gospel doctrine on the hearts of men and women today. It does in many ways seem a day
of small things, but let us have an enlarged view because I think
that that was the purpose of the Lord Jesus Christ in this
miracle that we are about to consider briefly. Let us have
an enlarged view that All is not yet come to its climax and
conclusion, that the Lord still has a people that he will gather.
And that is the reason why he is giving us this day, this day
of grace, this time, this opportunity to preach the gospel, even to
send it to the ends of the earth in a way that has never been
possible before. Oh, that men and women would
so run to hear Christ preached, to have such a spiritual appetite
for the gospel that it surpasses everything else, even stopping
to pick up food on their way out of the door. Anyone who tells
us that they can take or leave gospel preaching, that some days
they'll go out and hear it, other days they'll have other things
that are important, they're not too concerned if they miss it
occasionally. Anybody that can take or leave gospel preaching,
or anyone who can find something worthwhile in a wide range of
doctrinal traditions, or who fail to value the personal spiritual
engagement with the Lord that the gospel brings us to. Anyone
who goes to a church because they've got a great youth work,
or goes to a church because they've got a marvellous musical activity,
or for any other reason other than the centrality and the purity
of the gospel that is preached, have neither the passion nor
the felt need of those Galileans that chase the Lord Jesus Christ
along the coast. Do you see the picture that is
being set for us here? They ran along the beach. They ran along the shoreline
following Christ's ship, hoping that he'd be in it so that they
would be present wherever and whenever he docked the boat. Such was their enthusiasm to
be in the presence of the Lord Jesus Christ. Shame on us if we are not eager and expectant
to find Christ in the Gospel. And shame on me if I cannot set
Him before you in the Word. That's the burden of the preacher. That's the obligation and the
responsibility. That is the looking after the
souls of men and women. and boys and girls. That's the
burden for which a preacher of the gospel must give an account. And I want to remark also upon
the compassion of the Lord for these people, these seekers.
The Lord, we're told, came out of the ship and he saw these
people that had run along the coastline after him. And we are
told that he had compassion on them, because they were a sheep
not having a shepherd. And there was he, the good shepherd. He the good shepherd, they as
sheep without a shepherd. What a perfect fit the Lord Jesus
Christ is for the sheep without a shepherd. But I can improve
upon that a little bit, I think. Let me just pause with you a
moment and let us think about this compassion of the Lord Jesus
Christ that he had for these people. The Lord Jesus Christ
had compassion because he felt the needs these people had. He felt their need. And that is a wonderful strand
of the Lord Jesus Christ's humanity and union with us, his people. We, hear this, hear this, because
I think it'll do you good. We never experience hardships,
trials, and difficulties alone, never. The Lord is in them with
us. Now I know you're going to say,
you're going to say to me, look, we understand that. We understand
that the Lord is omnipresent. Right, right, he is. But that's not what I'm saying.
What I'm saying is deeper and more beautiful than that. I'm saying that the Lord feels
with us. endures with us, that the Lord
gets hit, that the Lord gets hurt, that the Lord gets knocked
down with us, that the Lord knows exactly what we're going through,
not because he's omniscient and knows everything in his Godhead. Sure he does, certainly he does,
we're not going to lose sight of that for a moment, but rather
because in his humanity he is tasting it with us. In his humanity he is touched
with the feeling of our infirmities. And that's a whole lot more precious
to those who are encountering trials and difficulties. I don't
know whether you've noticed, but there's a great proliferation,
great growth in help groups these days. There's a help group for
pretty much everything. And if you have got a problem
and you've got a difficulty, you've got a trial, then you're
encouraged to find a suitable help group. And the essence of
a help group is that it's people who are going through the same
experiences as you are. Now, I'm not detracting at all,
and I don't mean to suggest that I'm detracting from help groups
or the help and the comfort that such groups can provide. But I am saying that Christ was
there before that. Before that sense of engaging
with someone who feels the way we do, we look to Christ first. Because knowing that the Lord
Jesus Christ feels what we are feeling, is enduring what we
are enduring, and hurting as we hurt, does that not energise
our prayers? Does that not lighten our depressions? Does that not lift our spirits? If it doesn't, what will? You
think you're on your own in this matter, but you're not. You have
an understanding friend right there, right with you. at the heart of your trial, that
sticks closer than a brother, and closer than a husband, and
closer than a wife, and closer than a pastor, closer than a
help group, closer than a friend, because He's with us in the heart
and in the midst of it all. He understands, and therefore
we are encouraged to go to Him. And Christ's compassion also
is love in action. Look what he did when he saw
these people. He had compassion upon them, seeing their need,
feeling their need, knowing their need better than they knew themselves.
He at once began, what? To teach them many things. Many things. Suitable for the
many needs of many individuals. These words are not accidental.
The Holy Spirit has written this purposefully to teach us of the
dimensions of the love and compassion of the Lord Jesus Christ to us
in our needs. They were sick and he healed
them because that was their need. They were weary and he sat them
down because that's what they needed. They were hungry and
they fed him. And no matter what the need was. You may feel that your need is
the most exotic, the rarest, the most unusual trial ever known
to men and women in this world. But the Lord is in it with you. And he has the knowledge of the
many things that we need. He's got it measured. He's got
it weighed. He's got it named. He's got it
explained. And he says, I will not leave
you comfortless. I will come to you. We spoke a little bit about the
feeding, the miraculous feeding of this multitude in the little
introductory note that I sent out the other day. I make mention
of that Often, if you would like a copy of that sent to you, let
me have your email address and I'll get it off to you in anticipation. And I do that because I don't
want simply to be telling you the story of the verses as we
come to think about these things. We don't need to enlarge on the
narrative in that sense. But surely there are many lessons
in this feeding of the 5,000. And we've touched upon a few
of them. Things like the fact that the
Lord Jesus Christ takes ordinary things and produces extraordinary
things. That he teaches us where true
spiritual power is to be had, not within ourselves, but as
God's gift from heaven. that he blesses what honours
him to the souls of his people and that he breaks and he dispenses
according to our need in miraculous ways. This gospel that we preach
isn't an offer to come and get saved, it's so much more, it's
a fullness, it's a completeness, a comprehensiveness for the needs
of all his people. because it takes us to the very
feet of that one who has compassion upon us, and who knows us, and
who feels for us, and who feels with us in our troubles. I do want to make a couple of
little points here about this miracle, however, just before
we bring our thoughts to a conclusion. The first thing I want us to
realise is that it was designed like all of these parables, like
all of these miracles that the Lord Jesus Christ performed,
this was designed for his disciples and for his people, for his church.
It's not designed for the world to gloat upon or to critique
or to mock and laugh at. That somebody can feed five or
ten thousand people with five little barley loaves and two
fishies. How ludicrous is that? This isn't for the world. This
is for his church. This is for you and me. And it
was for his disciples' faith at that time. And I We're told
expressly that the Lord did this to test his disciples' faith. And I take that to mean that
it was purposed to deepen their faith and it was purposed to
deepen their knowledge of their own ministry and their own role. Feeding hungry tummies with bread
and fish was a picture of feeding hungry souls with the gospel. So when the Lord says to the
disciples, give ye them to eat, you feed them, you feed these
people. The disciples said, what? So
many, hundreds, thousands of people we have here before us
and we've got so little. We've got so little. The Lord
was training his apostles for service. He had to teach them
humility, but he also had to show them that the power that
was vested in them was central to this work of taking the gospel
to the ends of the earth. They had gone forth two by two,
and they had preached and they had cast out devils and they
had healed the sick and now they were coming for a period of rest.
But before that, the Lord said to them, listen, I want you to
have a broad view, a wide view of the nature of this work that
we are embarked upon. And you need to be humble in
it because it's not of you. but you're also going to be provided
with such powerful tools as will enable you to take this message
to the ends of the earth. The second point that the disciples
had to learn is this, that the Lord would provide for
them and all their needs. Having followed the instructions
of the Lord in this matter of the feeding of the 5,000, these
12 men collected what? 12 baskets of fragments that remained,
bread and fish that remained over. Now, it doesn't take a
mathematical genius to realise that each disciple had a full
basket for himself. The Lord didn't leave them hungry. This passage began with the disciples
not having leisure even to eat and it ends with the Lord giving
them a basket full of food. What's the lesson in that? That
the Lord knows and provides for the physical as well as the spiritual
needs of his people. Let me give you another example
of that. In the Old Testament, the priests that served at the
altar were fed by the gifts and the sacrifices that were brought
by the people of God and presented in their divine worship. And
in the New Testament, gospel preachers do the same. They are
to be provided for out of the gifts and sacrifices of the Lord's
people. There is a two-way symbiotic
relationship here between those who preach and those who are
preached to. And we read that in 1 Corinthians
9, verse 14. Even so, says Paul, hath the
Lord ordained that they which preach the gospel should live
of the gospel. So the Lord is teaching his disciples
these truths as well and that they will be provided for and
they will be cared for. He had called them from the fishing
of fish to be fishers of men. but yet he would provide for
all their needs. There's such richness in these
passages and these miracles that I fear we hardly begin to do
justice to them in speaking of them. And yet how blessed we
are to have had these things recorded for us to marvel at
and to wonder. We worry about so many things
we worry about so much, like these disciples. We find ourselves
running around telling the Lord that he ought to do this or he
ought to do that. The disciples said, Lord, don't
you know what time it is? The day is far spent. Lord, don't
you realise the seriousness of the situation? I wonder if you
ever hear yourself in, if you hear yourself echoed in the,
and the lack of belief and the lack of confidence that these
disciples had in the Lord's control of every situation. What does
the Lord say? The Lord says, sit down on the
grass and watch what I'm about to do. Do we doubt that the Lord will
provide for us? Paul reminds us. Romans 8, 32. He that spared not his own son,
but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also
freely give us all things? There's nothing that will be
withheld. The psalmist said, let the mercies
of the Lord come, even his salvation. This letting of the mercies of
the Lord is his delight. for his people and for their
needs. The Lord Jesus Christ laid down
his life to save our souls and to supply all our spiritual and
eternal needs. Everything needful has been supplied. And these are the big things
in life, right? These are things like righteousness
and justification and forgiveness and reconciliation with God. everlasting glory. The Lord Jesus
Christ has provided all these things. They're all done, all
sorted, all certain. And our Lord Jesus Christ has
also got the little things of life in hand. If we believe the
former, we ought to give him credit for the latter as well. And yet, if he deems it suitable,
and helpful and beneficial for our souls to test our faith in
these little things, these trials in time, ought we not to trust
Him for that too? Let us remember, He that spared
not His own Son but delivered Him up for us all, how shall
He not with Him also freely give us all things? Amen.