FBCWest 656 | More at the End than the Beginning
Recorded On: 04/27/2025
Bulletin
Hymn # 33 “To God Be the Glory”
SCRIPTURE READING – 1 Chronicles 16:23 - 29
Giving of Selves and Our Offerings
OFFERTORY PRAYER
OFFERTORY MUSIC – Pru Hungate
Praise and Worship
“Battle Belongs”
“God so Loved”
“Endless Light”
Proclamation of the Word
Message by Pastor Joe
“More at the End than the Beginning”
Hymn # 316 “Do You Really Care?”
Sermon Notes
Mark 6:33 & 34 A large crowd comes to se Jesus, He feels compassion on them and teaches
Mark 6:35 & 36 The disciples want Him to send them away and provide for themselves
Mark 6:37 & 38 Jesus tells them for them to give them something to eat, but they say their resources are insufficient
Mark 6:39 & 40 Jesus tells the crowd to sit down by groups
Mark 6:41 & 42 Jesus blessed the bread and fish and everyone eats and is satisfied
Mark 6:43 & 44 There are more bread (12 baskets full) and fish than when they started, but 5,000 men were fed
Scritpures
Transcript of Service
Now, today's message, we see in the Gospels that there are only two miracles that Jesus performs that all four Gospels record.
One, obviously, is the resurrection.
Important to understand that. The other one that all four Gospels teach is the one that we're going to look at today, which means if all four gospel writers thought it was important for us to know it, then it must be important for us to know it. And then next time we'll see that, unfortunately, the disciples didn't seem to understand what happens.
So if you have your Bibles and you should turn to the Gospel of Mark, chapter 6, starting with verse 33.
Now, the context here is a little bit in the sense of Mark had kind of talked about Jesus' ministry and then kind of went and then changed the chronology of it and talked about what had happened to John the Baptist and his beheading and what had happened there. And so now it's kind of coming back. So the context is this, is that Jesus had sent out his disciples two by two to minister and they had done so and had come back and the disciples were sent to preach, to heal, and to cast out demons. So they were doing much of what Jesus' ministry was, but they were doing it on their own two by two. And so they've come back and after any type of ministry, sometimes it's good to have some relaxation and rest and that's what Jesus does. And then now we see where Jesus is now continuing to move on with the ministry. So it says in March 6, starting with verse 33, "The people saw them going and many recognized them and ran there together on before from all the cities and got there ahead of them." So I want you to notice they didn't just recognize Jesus.
They had recognized the disciples because the disciples had gone out ministering, preaching, healing, and casting out demons. And so all of a sudden the people are seeing the disciples and Jesus. And so they're running together and they're trying to go ahead of them so that they can be there before them.
And when Jesus went ashore, he saw a large crowd and felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. And so Jesus sees this multitude and we're going to see in a brief moment how large this multitude is.
But he sees them and he has compassion for them because he views them that they're like sheep without a shepherd. Now sheep, unfortunately, are fairly defenseless.
And so about the only real defensive mechanism the sheep has is its wool. The bigger it looks and in whatever the taster it may seem, but then it's harder to get you to sink your teeth into the wool. So that's pretty much it. They're defenseless.
And unfortunately, that's why Jesus kind of uses them as an example. They're not necessarily the brightest animals in the kingdom. So he sees them and he says they're like sheep because sheep like to follow.
If one sheep starts going in a direction, they all seem to just gravitate to it. They don't know where they're going, why they're going. It's just everybody else is going. And so that's kind of what they do. They're without a shepherd. They're without a leader. It's kind of like here. I remember my mom always saying like, well, if all your friends want to jump off a bridge, do you want to jump off too? You know, it's kind of, are you going to be a sheep or are you going to do other things? And we try to teach our kids not to be sheep, but unfortunately a lot of times. And so Jesus is this multitude of people and he's compassionate.
He's not judgmental in the sense of what a bunch of dumb sheep. It's he's compassionate for them because they don't have the leader that they, so what does he do? He teaches them many things so that they might learn, so that they might gain some wisdom so that they might understand. And so Jesus teaches them many things.
And when it was already quite late, his disciples came to him and said, this place is desolate and is already quite late. Send them away so that we, so that they may go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.
So the disciples are going, wait a minute, it's getting kind of late in the day.
People are probably hungry and this isn't, you know, there aren't any fast food restaurants around and so Jesus, you need to send them away so they can get something to eat.
Now it's interesting because Jesus had sent the disciples to these people
and the disciples are saying, okay, well, our ministry may have been successful, but we need to send them away rather than to deal with their needs.
And so based on whatever it appears that this is probably happening around the springtime, which means that the reason why we're going to see the number of men that we do in a few moments is because it's probably near the time of Passover when the men are traveling to Jerusalem to observe Passover because in at Passover, if you were a man, you were required to be in Jerusalem three times a year in Passover with one of them. And so the disciples just said, send them away so that they might deal with it.
But he, Jesus answered them, you give them something to eat.
He doesn't pass off the obligation to the crowd. He doesn't even say, I'll take the responsibility. He says, you disciples, you give them something to eat.
It places the responsibility for them on the disciples. Because after all, the disciples had been ministering, had been proclaiming the gospel, had been healing people and had been cashing out demons. So Jesus says, okay, you give them something to eat.
And they said to him, shall we go and spend 200 denarii for bread and give them something to eat?
Now, a denarii is basically a day's wages. So I'm going to put it into today's context. If you were to be employed by a number of fast food restaurants here in California, you would earn about $20 an hour. So an eight hour day, you would earn $160.
For 200 days, you would earn $32,000. So the disciples are saying,
to feed these people just some bread, it's going to cost us about $32,000. Now, they don't say they have it or don't have it. They just said, it's expensive.
And we're going to see if we just allocate just to the men, that's $6.40 a sandwich.
I don't think you could go to any fast food place and buy a $6.40 sandwich.
So the disciples are saying, this is an expensive proposition. They haven't made it clear whether they have the money or don't have the money, or if they have the money, they don't really want to spend it on these people. They should go deal with themselves. And he said to them, how many loaves do you have? So look, so Jesus still says, wait a minute, it's still your obligation to feed these people. So if you don't have the cash, what do you have? What are the resources that you have to fulfill this obligation that you give them something to eat? So he says, go look. And when they had found out, they said five loaves and two fishes. Now, the other gospels will tell us that this was a young boy who had the five loaves and two fishes. Now, we kind of tend to think in our thought that a loaf of bread is like a loaf of bread. This is probably not what we're talking about. It's barley bread and it's probably like pita bread. So for those of you who don't know what pita bread is, it's kind of like a tortilla, a flour tortilla with a pocket.
And again, we don't know why this young boy has these five loaves, these five pita breads and two fish. Other than I'm going to suspect that his mom said, you're not leaving the home without lunch and a little bit of whatever. I'm sure he didn't think ahead of time. It's his mom said, you know, you need to take a sack lunch with you because I don't know how long you're going to be gone. So he had these five loaves, which was probably like five pita bread things and two fish. So he's going to have a fish sandwich. So their resources are you go and spend over 200 days of wages, or we've got five loaves of barley bread and two fish. We don't have the resources. We don't have enough. Notice what Jesus does. And he commanded them. He didn't give a suggestion. He'd say, here's a good idea, guys. He goes, he commanded them all to sit down by groups on the green grass. So he he tells this crowd, you go sit down, you're going to sit down in a certain way. And they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties, which means it's going to be easy to count how many people were talking about, because if there are groups of hundreds or fifties, you go, that's a hundred, that's 200, that's three. And so you can count them all up. And so we have these people in group. Plus, it's in an essence, when you eat, what are we supposed to do along with eating? We're supposed to fellowship, supposed to speak to one another. And so Jesus is saying, I want you to sit together as groups so that you might communicate with one another, so that you might fellowship with one another. It's not just the point of eating and satisfying your hunger. It's a matter of fellowshiping together. So it has them sit in groups of hundreds and fifties. And if I were there, I'd probably sit by myself because that's who I am. But so again, he being Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish and look at looking up towards heaven. He blessed the food and broke the love and gave them to the disciples to set before them. And he divided up the two fish among them all. So we see Jesus blessing the meal and then giving it to the disciples to give to the people rather than Jesus giving it directly to the people. Because Jesus is trying to teach his disciples something because the disciples know that all they have are five loaves and two fish. I find it interesting, even though it's not sufficient and even though it's a situation where it's obvious it's not sufficient, the boy seemed to have offered it to the disciples to give to Jesus. It's not enough, but I will give what I have to you. It wasn't, well, wait a minute, let me at least hold on to one of the loaves and one of the fish so that I can eat. It's he gives what he has that is insufficient for the need. And even though it may cost him his meal, we don't know the name of this boy. There are a lot of great people of faith that we never know the name of.
So give things away because they see a need and they do it and offer it to Jesus.
And so they do this and Jesus does the prayer. He distributes it to the disciples who will well aware that they have five loaves and two fish. And they all ate and were satisfied. They were satiated. They had what they needed to be full. This is important. It wasn't, oh, let me have a bite here or a bite there. When Jesus does something, he does it completely. He doesn't give you a little bit to just mask your hunger. He's satisfied. And so having done this, they have eaten to their full. They are satiated. There's no longer need. Now, in a moment, we're going to see that the people who ate were at least were 5,000 men. We also know that there were others.
The reason why it's important that it says 5,000 men because men tend to eat more than other people.
Now, I have a growing grandson who probably eats more than a typical man, but he doesn't necessarily eat it all at one time. He eats it over the day. So I might be able to eat more than him in any one sitting. But when the day is done, he's eaten more because he's a growing boy and he's very active in whatever. Men, again, tend to eat more. If you've ever gone to a place to lose weight and you've gone with your spouse, and so I have. You ladies, I feel sorry for you. When it goes, you want to weigh X amount of pounds, they say, okay, you get to have eight calories per pound you want. Men who usually weigh more, we get to have 10 calories per pound we want. So we get to eat more
to lose weight. Again, men tend, and so making sure that we understand men who have men-sized hungers are satisfied. It's not dainty little children, it's men who are satisfied.
And they picked up 12 full baskets of broken pieces and also of the fish. They started with five loaves and two fish and end up with 12 broken pieces of bread and some fish. There is a basket for each of the disciples.
The disciples understood there were five loaves and two fish and now we each have at least one basket full of bread. They ended up with more than they started with.
So then it tells us there were 5,000 men who ate the loaves. Now, again, there were more. There were probably the wives and children and other people. So more than 5,000 were fed, but there were 5,000 men fed, satisfied. The whole crowd was, right? But they ended up with more than they started with. What the disciples needed to learn is this. It's what you and I need to learn.
It's not what you have. It's who you're with.
There are a lot of times people will say, "Well, I only have."
The little boy could have said, "Well, I only have five loaves and two fish."
But he was willing to give what he had,
even though it wasn't enough. But having given what he had, there was more at the end than at the beginning because they were with Jesus.
Jesus is the one who multiplied. Now, I think
what the disciples, if they were catching on, they should have said, "Well, Jesus, you want us to feed the 5,000.
You gave us authority to preach. You gave us authority to heal." Because let's face it, they don't have the ability to heal. It's because Jesus gave them that authority. And they didn't have the authority to cast out demons. It was Jesus who gave them the authority to do that. Then they should have said, "Well, Jesus, if you're asking us to do this, then you need to give us authority to do what is necessary to fulfill the task of caring for these people, the people that you've sent us out to minister to." When we're in ministry, we need to be less concerned about what we have
than who we're ministering for. Now, who are ministering to, who are ministering for? As those who are His disciples, we are to be His witnesses. We are to witness for Him, about Him, which means we probably don't have sufficient understanding of the Scriptures,
not like Jesus who taught with authority, but what we do have, we need to offer it up to Him. And that He will take what we have given and cause it to grow. Now, I can come up with the most creative and wise teachings on why you ought to accept Jesus as Lord, if you haven't. But that wise, creative teaching will not cause you to believe. It's His Spirit reaching out to those who don't believe to come to Him. You see, I don't have enough to cause the result. I don't have enough to satiate your Spirit, but He does. We simply need to say, "Lord, I understand I don't have sufficient assets to do what you've called me to do, but I'm not worried about the assets because I know who I'm with. And the one I am with is the Maker of the heaven and earth. He is the manna who's come from heaven. He is the one who supplies all of our needs. He is the water that's living water. He is the one who is the great I am. It is He that I minister for.
And while almost every single time we never have enough, not about doing enough, about knowing who it is we're ministering for.
Disciples, we're going to see next time. Don't get this lesson.
It's interesting. Jesus teaches a parable, parable of the solar.
And He says, "If you don't understand this parable, you'd have a great difficulty understanding the others." I think this miracle, we don't understand it. We have greater difficulty understanding the reason Jesus called us to minister.
We're going to see next time the disciples didn't catch it, which is why I think it's included in all four gospels, because this teaching through this miracle blew past them. We need to understand this miracle,
which is interesting because these disciples saw Him heal the sick, raise the dead, cast out demons,
cause people who were lame to walk again. They saw all of these various miracles.
And yet, frequently never understood. That's why it's very important for us to place our faith in Him, not what He did. Very, very rarely do we gain faith through miracles.
It helps support the faith. It may strengthen the faith, but if faith isn't there, miracles do nothing to add to our faith. We simply wait for the next miracle. But Jesus here in this miracle says, "What is it that you need that you don't think you can obtain? What is there in this life that doesn't seem to satisfy that He can and will?"
We in turn need to understand that in all of our efforts, I don't care how wonderful a pastor or Sunday school teacher or musician or whatever it is that is your part of ministry is, it is still insufficient for the task.
Two questions. You care enough to do it anyway,
and you know the one who will accomplish it.
As people will tell you, they don't care as much about how much you know. They want to know how much you care. That's one of the successes of ministry. In our ministry, it is not
how much we know, how full of the scriptures that I am is that I love you enough to share with you the gospel. Understanding that what I have and what you have isn't sufficient for the task,
our assets are insufficient, but we know who is totally sufficient, and we care enough to let Him minister. In all God's