Turn in your Bibles to Mark chapter
8. I just might read these first 9
verses for us. Mark Chapter 8. In those days
when there was again a large crowd and they had nothing to
eat, Jesus called his disciples and said to them, I feel compassion
for the people because they have remained with me now three days
and have nothing to eat. If I send them away hungry to
their homes, they will faint on the way and some of them have
come from a great distance. And his disciples answered him,
where will anyone be able to find enough bread in this desolate
place to satisfy these people? And he was asking them, how many
loaves do you have? And they said, seven. And he
directed the people to sit down on the ground, and taking the
seven loaves, he gave thanks and broke them, and started giving
them to his disciples to serve to them. And they served them
to the people. They also had a few small fish,
and after he had blessed them, he ordered these to be served
as well. And they ate and were satisfied. And they picked up seven large
baskets full of what was left over of the broken pieces. About
4,000 were there and he sent them away. So this is the second of these
great public miracles of our Lord Jesus. They are testimony
to His deity. They are public miracles that
can't be refuted. In fact, when Nicodemus comes
to meet the Lord Jesus, comes out of the darkness, into the
light to meet the Lord Jesus, Nicodemus said, Rabbi, we know
that you are a teacher come from God, for no one can do these
signs that you do unless God is with him. And to Nicodemus'
friends and a multitude of others, when Peter gave that great sermon
on the day of Pentecost, Peter referred again to the miracles
of the Lord Jesus. They are public miracles. They are undisputed miracles.
And Peter, after reading from the prophet Joel, to explain
what was happening before them. He said to the people, men of
Israel, hear these words, Jesus of Nazareth, a man attested by
God to you, by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did through
him in your midst, as you yourselves also know. One thing we need
to bear in mind is that the activities of the Lord Jesus are public
activities. They are irrefutable activities. In a sense, God is saying, as
he does in 1 Corinthians 15, the witnesses are multitudes. These miracles, as we have said
so often, attest to several things. But two critical things they
attest to. They attest to the fact that
our Lord Jesus is God. Our Lord Jesus is God. He is God the Son. And His creative
miracles are meant to show us that He really is God. And the other thing that we've
said so often as we've gone through Mark's Gospel is that the miracles
are pictures of the way Jesus saves his people. And so we have
before us this great miracle, this public miracle, but there's
a meaning in it, a meaning that I'm praying the Lord, the Holy
Spirit will just burn into our hearts as we go through these
verses. And so the crowds, multitudes,
followed the Lord Jesus. And they followed him from great
distances. And the Lord Jesus, with this
crowd, purposefully leads them into a wilderness. And he leads
them into a wilderness for three long days. The multitude that followed the
Lord Jesus as we know in John chapter 6 were not all believers. People come and inquire and are
inquisitive and for a time followed the Lord Jesus for all sorts
of reasons. They might follow for historic
reasons. They might follow the Lord Jesus
for a while for family traditions. They might follow for carnal,
covetous reasons. They might come to Him in times
of emotional crisis. They might come to Him in times
of desperate need. But we do need to remember that
after three years of the Lord Jesus' public miracles and these
amazing witnesses and the amazing words that the miracles attest
to, is at the end of his ministry there were 120 in Jerusalem and
maybe 500 in Galilee. The majority of people that were
excited for a time about the Lord Jesus were never truly His
people. We need to keep bearing that
in mind. But the Lord Jesus leads these
people into a wilderness. It's a desolate place. And he
has a purpose. God has a purpose in everything
he does. He doesn't do things by accident. The wilderness that is this world
is a wilderness that's created by our sin. The world was good
when God made it. And he put Adam and Eve in a
garden that God himself declares to be very good in Genesis. It's a very good creation. And it's a creation which is
full of great bounty. But after the dreadful fall,
our fall, our fall with our father Adam, our fall in our father
Adam, our rebellion against God, where we said to God, I don't
want your provision, I will follow Satan's words and Satan's advice,
and I will take for myself the rewards that Satan offers. I
will doubt the word of God and have the word of my wisdom in
place of God's wisdom. I will challenge God's right
to be judge. I will believe what Satan says,
that I will not die. I can be God. I can be on the
throne of my own life. And God sent a curse on this
creation. and he condemned Adam and Eve.
Not only to live in a wilderness ground, in verse 17 of Genesis
3, cursed is the ground for your sake. In toil you shall eat of
it all the days of your life, both thorns and thistles it shall
bring forth for you, and you shall eat the herb of the field.
In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread, till you return
to the ground, for out of it you are taken. For dust you are,
and to dust you shall return." The wildernesses of this world
are wildernesses created by sin. But as we've seen in Mark's Gospel,
there's a wilderness which is a far, far more hostile wilderness. And if you turn back a page in
your Bibles to Mark chapter 7, there is a great, great wilderness,
which is the wilderness of the heart of man. Three times in
Matthew 7, in verse 15, he talks about the problem for mankind
living in this wilderness world, is that we think that things
outside defile us. But the things that defile a
man are the things which come out of him. Those are the things
that defile a man. Verse 20, what comes out of a
man, that defiles a man. And then in verse 21 we have
a list. For from within, out of the heart
of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders,
thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lewdness, an evil eye,
blasphemy, pride, foolishness. All these things, these evil
things, come from within and defile a man. That is the great problem. That
is the great saviour. The problem shows us how great
a saviour we need. All of mankind without a saviour
is a lost mankind. The news has been full of tragedy
again this week. The tragedy that's happening
in the Horn of Africa as we see children starving to death, we
see mothers There's one tragic mother who I've seen several
times on television. She's lost four children. Four of her babies
have died in her arms, starving to death. And of course in Norway
we have that terrible tragedy, that terrible evil of those people
being killed. And there you have this extraordinary
picture of this island which looks like such an idyllic island
and yet it's a place where someone's evil heart overflowed and 84
people died. This world is a wilderness. This
world is a wilderness because of what goes on in the hearts
of men. So the Lord Jesus brings this
crowd to himself. And then he leads this crowd. We must never forget that in
all of these situations the Lord Jesus reveals his deity. He's the one who leads. He's
the one who sovereignly takes these people into a wilderness. A wilderness where men are exposed in a way
that the comforts of this world and especially the comforts of
religion will never expose them. A wilderness where they are helpless. A wilderness where their good
deeds matter for absolutely nothing. A wilderness where they are seen
to be what they really are. does not live by bread alone. Man lives by the Word of God. Man lives because of God's provision,
not because of man's goodness and not because of man's activity. We've got to remember the Lord
Jesus went to a wilderness just like this wilderness and spent
40 days in this wilderness. He knows what hunger in a wilderness
is like. He knows what thirst in a wilderness
is like. and to compound his pain in the
wilderness, he had Satan come to tempt him. It's extraordinary
that one of the temptations of Satan is take these stones and
turn them into bread. The Lord Jesus goes back to such
a wilderness, this time having defeated Satan, taking his people
with him. And in Mark chapter 2, In 8 verse
2 of chapter 8 of Mark, the Lord Jesus looks upon this crowd as
he did the crowd in chapter 6. He looks upon them and he feels
compassion for the people. Religion, any religion, no matter
what its doctrine, If it's a religion that causes men to be hard of
heart toward other fallen sinners, it's a religion that's not of
our Lord Jesus. The Lord Jesus had compassion. He felt compassion for these
people. God's children, given God's heart,
feel compassion for the people around them. Some might challenge
us because we want to say, and I think so rightly so, that God's
love is an infinite love. God's love is a covenantal love. God's love is a love that is
cast upon specific people. He loved his people in eternity. He loved his people and it drove
him into this world. He loved his people. and earned for all of his people
a robe of perfect righteousness under the law. He loved his people
when he went to the cross. He loved his people when he went
to the tomb. And he loved his people when
he went to heaven. And he loves his people now.
The love of God cannot be distinguished from the other characteristics
of God. God is absolutely sovereign.
His love is a sovereign love. God is infinitely powerful. His love is an infinitely powerful
love. God is infinitely knowing and
His love is an infinitely knowing love. And so to say that God
loves everyone and the end result of that love for everyone is
that multitudes go to hell is not the love that God talks about
in the scriptures. It's an everlasting love. Read
Jeremiah 31. It's a love that began before
the foundation of the world. Read Ephesians 1.4. But that doesn't mean that our
God And our Lord in His humanity reflected the fullness of His
humanity. And in that humanity, He was
a God, He was a man, a real man, and He felt real human emotions. He was touched. with the feelings
of our infirmities and so his compassion is a real compassion
even though some of these people were not the objects of his infinite,
eternal, immutable love. Just read John Chapter 6 and
you'll see it clearly and John Chapter 10 as well. But these
people have remained and the Lord Jesus had taken them to
be with him for those three long days and they have nothing to
eat. He'd taken these people to a
place where there was nothing that they could do to sustain
their lives. His promise was, his statement
was, if he sends them away hungry in verse 3, they will faint on
the way. And some of them have come a
great distance. They have no food left. There
is nowhere else to turn. There is no hope anywhere. And it's often, almost always,
at the point of our desperation that we find that the Lord steps
in and intervenes miraculously. When we have nothing of ourselves
to bring to Him, is the time he so often shows the depth of
his provision and his care for his people. And the disciples in verse 4
ask a great question. How can anyone satisfy these
people with bread? Where will you find enough bread
in this desolate, in this wilderness place to satisfy these needy
souls? And so often, and so rightly,
we criticise the disciples' lack of faith. You keep saying, why
don't you see? It's there before you, why can't
you see? And then we do exactly the same
thing. How often have we seen God provide amazingly, amazingly,
wonderfully, miraculously, and then we're put in that same situation,
sometimes hours later, and immediately we turn to our own resources
and say, well I've got to try and figure this out somehow because
God can't do it. No wonder the man came to the
Lord Jesus, Lord I believe, Please help my unbelief. We are just
like the apostles. We see the wonders of God. We see the wonders of Him around
us. We see the wonders of His work in our church family and
then we despair and God comes along and reminds us amazingly
of how little and how weak and how pathetic our faith is, and
how much of what seems like faith is mixed with such shocking unbelief. A few weeks ago, before Clay
Curtis came, I was looking at my phone and wondering why I
had my numbers on all of these flyers and we put them out there
everywhere and I thought, dear oh dear, someone should ring
this phone. Why doesn't anyone ring this
phone? Anyway, almost before I'd finished my whinging to God,
Jamie rang and we ended up having an amazing time together in the
scriptures. And then soon as Jamie had left,
we get a phone call from a fellow down the coast called Peter and
he wants to come to our conference and they've been a great encouragement.
And then a few hours later we get a phone call from Isabel
in Canberra, and she's talking about coming and the Lord has
rebuked us again and again. You come here on a day like today
and you think, who's the Lord going to bring along? We're probably
just going to have this little tiny flock. Jenny's away, Lisa's away,
Alex's away, people have been sick, and all of a sudden the
Lord opens the doors and we have to find more chairs. So often
God needs to rebuke us, don't we? So our faith is pathetic. We have a great God. We have
a big God. He wants us to look over the
horizon of time in our lives and expect Him to do amazing
things. At least then we won't be embarrassed
like I am all the time. But sure enough, the next time
that things come along, I'll be like these apostles saying,
where on earth can you do this? fulfill this situation? How can
you satisfy? It's a good question, isn't it? And against the dark background
of our sin and our unbelief, the faithfulness of our God just
shines ever more brightly, always ever more brightly. And he asked them, How many loaves
do you have? And they said seven. Just as
he did in the previous miracle of feeding the 5,000. He wants
the apostles to bring what they have. And it might seem, as it did
in the previous miracle, such a tiny, tiny amount to lay before
such a big, big crowd. 4,000 people is a big crowd and
here you are with 7 small loaves. As I wrote in the notes there,
if the work we are doing is God's, It matters not whether we appear
to have much or little. It's all the same to Him. What we have is utterly insignificant. Our greatest assets and abilities
are just as insignificant in the work of God's Kingdom as
our greatest needs and abilities. So often we fail to live as Paul
was caused to. We live so often in the strength
of our flesh. But Paul, having seen amazing
things in 2 Corinthians chapter 12, he pleaded that the Lord would
take this thorn in the flesh away And the Lord replied wonderfully
in verse 9 of chapter 12 of 2nd Corinthians. He said to me, my
grace, my grace, not your work, my grace is sufficient for you,
for my strength. is made perfect in weakness. Therefore most gladly will I
rather boast in my infirmities that the power of Christ may
rest upon me." The question is not how much we have, but in
whose hands is it? Just a tiny amount or absolutely
nothing in the Lord's hands is sufficient. There was nothing
material in this world and he said let there be light. He spoke and creation came into
existence. What a little thing it is for
him who led his people through a wilderness for 40 years and
fed them for 40 years and caused water to come out of a rock to
feed just 4,000 people. in this wilderness and he's already
got bread to start with. And so he shows his sovereignty
of the situation in verse 6. He commands, he directed, he
commands the people to sit down on the ground Taking the seven
loaves, he gave thanks. He always wants to acknowledge
that these things come from his father and he's not independent
of his father. He gave thanks and broke them
and started giving to his disciples. Again as we saw in the earlier
miracle, the Lord is a Lord of order and not chaos. The Lord wants to honour the
place of the apostles. in his work. So he breaks and
he gives and then the apostles distribute. And they are the
ones who serve them to the people. The apostles were the ones who
served us with the words of God. If it wasn't for the apostles,
we wouldn't have this book. God wants to honour apostolic
ministry. He wants to honour the apostles'
witness to the Lord Jesus and their place in his kingdom. Faith that is not apostolic faith
is a faith that will take people to hell. We have this book and
these promises from God. We need to say what the apostles
said about the Lord Jesus. We need to say what the apostles
said about us. And so he had a few small fish
and after he had blessed them, he ordered these to be served
as well. Verse 8 is just beautiful, isn't
it? They ate and were satisfied. They ate and were satisfied. And not only was there satisfaction,
there was an abundance of satisfaction. They picked up seven large baskets
full of what was left over of the broken pieces. The grace
of our God is a super abundant grace. It flows and flows and
continues to flow. There is an abundance of mercy,
there's an abundance of compassion, there's an abundance of ability
in our God to meet our needs. He will supply, says Philippians,
all of your needs according to His riches in Christ Jesus. How rich is Christ Jesus? Is gold a problem for Christ
Jesus? Is bread a problem for Christ
Jesus? Is provision of things in this
world a problem? His riches are amazing riches. And about 4,000 were there and
he sent them away. So that's the story. A wonderful
story of our God taking people into a wilderness. A wonderful
story of our God miraculously providing. But there's one part
of this story that I pray the Lord the Holy Spirit will bring
to our remembrance. I talked about this wilderness
world that we live in. It's not a place of security. It's not a place that we can
call home. It provides no satisfaction. Go and find some millionaires
and ask them whether they're happy. I used to play golf with
a bunch of guys who were millionaires and travelled the world. And
the overwhelming thing that I remember about them is that they had all
that this world could offer. and offer it in a place of extraordinary
peace and freedom in Australia. We have a public wealth in this
land which other nations would be envious of. And they're unhappy. They are desperately unhappy.
They've collected all of these things and they've clung to them. And rather than being something
that caused them to have liberty, They were just a burden and they
were unhappy. And the problem that we have,
the problem that all of us have, is the wilderness of our own
hearts. The wilderness out there is meant
to remind us of the wilderness of who we are. who we really
are as people. And in Mark's Gospel, we need
to see, as we go through and see the miracles, that we are
the man with the withered arm in Chapter 2. We are men overcome
by Satan. We are the lepers. who call out,
unclean, unclean. We are the paralytic who has
no power and no ability to do anything to help himself. We
are the bleeding woman who for 14 years was desperate and sought
the physicians of no value and just got worse. We are before the law, unclean,
unclean. We are the desperate parents,
like Jairus and his wife. We are the dead girl. We are
the wild, unchainable, uncontrollable demoniac. We are these people, and it's
these people who have no resources in themselves, who've been taken
to see the wilderness of their own heart by God, as He brings
conviction of guilt with regards to sin. The sin that we are,
not just the sin that we do, but the sin that we are, the
defiled heart that we are. We are caused by God when he
exposes the wilderness of our hearts to see that we desperately
need a saviour. We need a saviour who is powerful. We need a saviour who is compassionate. We need a saviour who is sovereign
and can lead. And we need a saviour who provides
abundantly. and we need a saviour who satisfies. And only the Lord Jesus will
do those things. Man in his natural state thinks
that he has everything that he needs. Man in the religious world
can think like the Laodiceans who say, I am rich, I have become
wealthy, look at my religious attainments, look at my good
works and my good deeds, and have need of nothing. I've created
and stitched together a robe of my own righteousness. But
do not know, these are Christians that God's writing to, and do
not know that you are wretched, miserable, poor, blind and naked. I counsel you to buy from me
gold refined in the fire, that you may be rich, and white guns,
the robe of Christ's righteousness, that you may be clothed, that
the shame of your nakedness may not be revealed. and anoint your
eyes with eye salve, that we'll see who the Lord Jesus really
is and see who we are, that we may see. So often we fail to
see that we are the wilderness wanderers. As Galatians 6.3 says,
for if anyone thinks himself to be something when he is nothing,
he deceives himself. And so that's the challenge that
lies before us. As the Lord Jesus come and visited you afresh to
remind you that you are the wilderness wanderer. That this world offers
no hope. Your activities, your religious
activities offer no hope. That you must find satisfaction
in the Lord Jesus. No satisfaction in anything that's
of satisfaction apart from Him. No sense of dissatisfaction. If He is in it, then He's working
it for our good. And a conscious awareness of
His presence and His provision. He comes and speaks as He did
to Hosea. He said, I am going to allure
her, to lead her into the wilderness and speak tenderly to her. The sweetness of the Lord Jesus
in who He is, is precious to the souls of God's people in
the wilderness. May God be pleased to make Christ
the satisfaction of your heart Your heart and soul and mind
forever. Let us find satisfaction in nothing
but who He is in His person. Satisfaction in nothing but what
He's done for us on the cross. For His pardon. Satisfaction
in His providential care and control of all things. Satisfaction
in His provision. Satisfaction and rest in His
presence, and satisfaction and rest in His praise. Wearing His robe, a robe of righteousness
that covers the shame and provides streams in the wilderness, which
is who we are in our Adam nature. Let's pray.