A Meal For Thousands

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. The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all they had done and taught. And 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 and 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. 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 say 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 looked up, and they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces, and of the fish. And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men. This is the word of God. Good morning. Thank you so much. That was from Mark chapter 6, verses 30 to 44. When you come to a miracle story like Mark 6 is, right? By the way, did you know that that story is the only miracle that's listed in all four gospels outside of the crucifixion and resurrection? But this is the only one that's listed in all four gospels. For some reason, this was extremely important to the early church and to the disciples. It's kind of like active learning, okay? That is the style of learning we're supposed to do as professors and instructors, and I'd say high school teachers, elementary teachers. Active learning is where you actually get involved in the learning that the, One who does learns. Have you ever heard that phrase? It's from John Dewey. He said, The one who does learns. So if the professor is the one who's doing it all, guess who's learning, okay? And you've been, and the problem with sermons like this, too, it's like, I'm doing all the work, and you're, not that it's work, but you're sitting there, it's kind of like, hmm, how can we make this an active learning scenario, huh? Well, Jesus tends to do that with his disciples. Notice he involves his disciples in the miracle. He doesn't leave them to the side and say, Watch this. You know? He gets them involved. And time and again, he does. He's going to get you involved in miracles. Okay? He gets you involved in working with other people. He's doing that here. So much is going on in this text. When I was studying it this last week or so, there are hyperlinks all over the place. What I mean by hyperlinks is that different phrases, different words are used in this text that also link to different stories and events, especially in the Old Testament. You might also wonder, it's like this morning we sang oceans, which is basically about walking on the water in the midst of chaos and turmoil, and you go like, well, wait a minute, our theme is wilderness, desert. Fascinating. Even the beginning of the Bible, Genesis 1, talks about water, and it's filled a watery world that God separates the chaotic waters at creation to be, calm them down and to dry land, all that stuff. Israel, throughout the Hebrew Bible, you will find them not as a seafaring group of people. They didn't have a lot of boats, except on the Sea of Galilee, which was a little dangerous when that happened because these storms could come up real quick. But they were not a seafaring people. They had other people do that, the Phoenicians and others around them, the Egyptians. The sea was a scary place. First of all, it was filled with creatures that you didn't know about, and it was dangerous. And in creation, it's a story. It shows you the chaos of just when the world gets chaotic. By the way, have you noticed when the world gets chaotic? Hmm, is it? That's when life is threatened. When all of a sudden everything seems to be up. The other extreme is chapter two starts in a desert. That creation story starts where there was no water and God creates a garden, an oasis in a wilderness in Genesis 2. So what's fascinating is throughout the Bible, there are these two themes that run throughout the Bible, the chaos and the threat of the sea, and the chaos or the lifelessness in a ...