Jesus Feeds The Five Thousand

You are listening to a message from Thrive Community Church, a church located in southwest Florida. For more info visit us at thrive-fl.org. We continue now with Simply Jesus from the Gospel of Mark chapter 6 in which we find probably one of the most famous miracles of all in the New Testament most people know Jesus fed the 5,000 with just five loaves and two fish and this miracle is recorded actually in all four of the Gospels one of the few that is. So we're so familiar with the basics of the story I think sometimes we miss the implications of it. The 5,000 men and the others who may have come out into the wilderness, what were they looking for? What were they looking for? Were they looking for simply Jesus and who he said he was or were they looking for someone else? Were there expectations? What actually happened in this miracle? We're going to read Mark chapter 6 and get into the idea of that the expectations that the people had were not fulfilled by Jesus. He does something even more revolutionary than what they were looking for. Let's read Mark 6 30 to 44. The Apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. He said to them, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest for a while. 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. When he went ashore he saw a great crowd and 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 he answered them, you give them something to eat. And they said to him, shall we go and buy 200 denarii 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 by 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 basketfuls of broken pieces and of the fish and those who ate the loaves were five thousand. When we read this text I think we cannot help thinking that Jesus was trying to get away into the wilderness to take a break, go camping with his friends and ends up having a big picnic, kind of a family reunion. Everybody just wanted to get back to nature and go out and hear a great teacher. But I think we don't understand the context of what's really going on in Israel at the time of Jesus if that's all we get out of it. We don't understand the expectations of Judaism, their hopes and their dreams. We realize there is much more going on in this text than simply the miracle of a mass feeding. We're going to break down the message as follows. The story is actually about a revolution. It's a revolution like no other. It's not what was expected and it's led by revolutionaries who are absolutely, absolutely unqualified for the job and it's initiated by a shocking revolutionary event. So first of all it's a revolution. And why do I say it's a revolution? Because we got to understand both geography and the cultural expectations of the first century. When Jesus left the villages of Galilee and was going out into the hill country, he was actually going into the hotbed of revolutionaries and freedom fighters. Though many people disagreed with what the zealots were trying to do, their violent insurrection against Rome, they sympathized with their cause. They wanted a revolution. They wanted Rome to be overthrown. They wanted it to be subverted. And Jesus looks at the crowd and this is the passage. He says, they looked out in Mark 6 34 and because they were like sheep without a shepherd. When we hear sheep and shepherd we think, oh quite quiet nice pastoral scene, but no. Actually the metaphor of sheep and shepherd from the Old Testament from passages like the Prophet Jeremiah chapter 23 and Ezekiel chapter 34, let alone Psalm 23, what we find out time and again that shepherd is a metaphor for the leader, both political or military leader of Israel. And in fact this passage that Mark has is a reflection of a passage by Moses from his book of Numbers when he was praying to God for someone to follow after him. He knew he was going to die soon and that the people would be without him as their leader. So who would be next? And Moses says in Numbers 27 15 to 17, Moses spoke to the Lord saying, let the Lord the God of the spirits of all flesh appoint a man o...