Feeding the Faithful and the Faithless (Afternoon)
Download MP3Good evening, guys. Tonight we're gonna continue our series in Mark. So if you have your Bibles, go ahead and turn with me to Mark chapter 8. You'll find it also printed in your worship guide. We're going to be spending the majority of our time in Mark 8 verses 1 through 21.
Connor Coskery:We've taken a couple weeks off from Mark with Holy Week and Easter. So, to orient you back to where we've come from, a couple of weeks ago, Joel and Dwight, they introduced us to the Seraphenician woman. This was a woman who was a gentile, she was desperate, and she gave us a beautiful picture of gutsy faith, where coming before Jesus, she trusted that all of his his gifts out of his grace would spill over from his table. And tonight, we're going to be in Mark chapter 8, and we're going to see a lot of those same themes. As I was studying this passage, it made me think of white water rafting.
Connor Coskery:Each summer, we take a group of our students up to the Ocoee River and out right outside of Chattanooga and, raft the middle part of the river. And, if you've ever been rafting you know that there's a moment right before the shoot of a big rapid where the water begins to change. There's this, the water, enters kind of this v shape, and it starts to turn over. It starts to speed up. You feel the current drawing you into something significant.
Connor Coskery:It's your cue. Get ready. Something's about to happen. And Mark 8 is like the beginning of a big rapid. By the end of this chapter, we're not going to talk about this tonight, but by the end of this chapter, Peter, the disciple, is going to confess that Jesus is the Christ.
Connor Coskery:And it's going to launch the 2nd act of Mark, which is undeniably headed straight to the cross. But the passage we're looking at tonight is like that subtle yet significant current that's drawing us in. Something big is coming, and Jesus knows it, but his disciples aren't ready, and Jesus is concerned. So, if you would, read with me. We're gonna start in Mark chapter 8 verse 1.
Connor Coskery:And do listen carefully, for this is God's word. So Mark 8 verse 1. In those days when, again, a great crowd had gathered and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples to him and said to them, I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now 3 days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them from have come from far away.
Connor Coskery:And his disciples answered him, how can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place? And he asked them, how many loaves do you have? They said, 7. And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground, and he took the 7 loaves, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples and set before the people. And they set them before the crowd.
Connor Coskery:And they had a few small fish, and having blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them. And they ate and were satisfied. And they took up the broken pieces left over, 7 baskets full, and there were about 4,000 people, and he sent them away. And immediately, he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Damathua. The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him.
Connor Coskery:And he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, Why does this generation seek a sign? Truly I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation. And he left them, got into the boat again, and went to the other side. Now they had forgotten to bring bread, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. And he cautioned them saying, Watch out, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.
Connor Coskery:And they began discussing with one another the fact that they had no bread. And Jesus, aware of this, said to them, Why are you discussing the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Having eyes, do you not see?
Connor Coskery:Having ears, do you not hear? Do you not remember? When I broke the 5 loaves for the 5,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up? They said to him, 12. And the 7 for the 4,000, how many baskets full of broken pieces did you take up?
Connor Coskery:And they said to him, 7. And he said to them, do you not yet understand? This is the word of the Lord. Pray with me. Lord, we have gathered again this evening to pay attention.
Connor Coskery:Lord, there's a lot of other things we could be doing, but you have gathered this crowd in this place for your redemptive purposes, and I pray, in spirit, you would move. That you would convict our hearts, the ways that we we too do not yet understand. And, lord, would you comfort them with the promises that we have in Jesus. Lord, may the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart be pleasing in your sight for you, Lord, are our rock and our redeemer. We pray this in Jesus' name.
Connor Coskery:Amen. When I was younger, I was terrified of storms. Big storm phobia. And I was reminded of this, recently when we took, we took our 5 year old to Disney World for the first time. I had been to Disney World before 25 years ago, but I didn't remember anything.
Connor Coskery:And when I mentioned this to my mom, she reminded me that I didn't remember anything because when I went, I didn't actually do anything. I didn't I didn't enjoy any of the rides because I was terrified of going outside because of the dark clouds of Florida in the summer. This trip was a lot more fun, I can promise you that. Storms scared me. And so to comfort my fear, every time a storm would roll in, my dad would look at me and he would say, Connor, do I look scared?
Connor Coskery:And he would follow that up with, When I begin to panic, then you can panic. He wasn't being condescending, he wasn't putting my feelings down, instead, he was trying to direct my eyes away from the clouds and onto him. He was saying, I'm your dad, and I promise to keep you safe, no matter what. And most of the time it worked. I would I would look at him, I would trust those words, and I would calm down.
Connor Coskery:Identity impacts trust. Identity impacts trust. In that moment, I didn't trust my dad because I thought he had control over the storms. Not to mention there were a myriad of school counselors at my schools that weren't able to actually calm me down. I trusted my dad when he looked at me and he said that, because he was my dad and I knew that he would do whatever it took to keep me safe.
Connor Coskery:The primary question of Mark, that we've been considering throughout this series, is who is this Jesus? In our passage tonight, we see that the disciples, they're still unsure. They don't quite know, they don't understand Jesus's identity, and that impacts the way that they trust him. That's why we see them not trusting him. And Jesus knows that if they don't trust him, if they don't believe him, then as those storm clouds of the cross begin to billow in the distance that he sees, he knows that they're in trouble.
Connor Coskery:So here's how I want us to walk through the passage tonight. I want us to enter in and to experience what the disciples and what Jesus were going through in this moment, and I want us to to consider 3 things. 1st, we'll see that Jesus is gracious. It's just like his interaction with the Syrophoenician woman, that grace and compassion, abundance overflow out of who he is. And second, we'll see that hearts are hard.
Connor Coskery:That, despite yet another miracle, the disciples don't get it. And 3rd, I want to encourage you that Jesus, by his grace, he softens hard hearts. So Jesus is gracious, hearts are hard, and Jesus, by his grace, softens hard hearts. So look with me now at verse 1, and we're gonna first consider that Jesus is gracious. So let's begin with the feeding of the 4 1,000.
Connor Coskery:The passage begins in those days, and this phrase is meant to take us back to the end of chapter 7, which is printed in your worship guide. So if you want to take a look at that, we see that Jesus returned from the region of Tyre and went through Sidon to the Sea of Galilee in the region of the Decapolis. The Decapolis, which is translated 10 cities, it included this, this conglomeration of gentile settle settlements. And this is the place where earlier in Mark, if you remember, the first time we, we we entered the Decapolis is when Jesus sought after the man with a demon. And he went and healed this man.
Connor Coskery:And when he healed this man, this man went throughout the the Decapolis, throughout these cities spreading the name of Jesus. And at the end of chapter 7, Jesus did yet another miracle. He healed a deaf man and he gave him back the ability to speak. And we read that the the crowds that witness this, they're in awe. The region of the Decapolis, this is the setting where this, this great crowd, this 4,000 people have gathered.
Connor Coskery:This crowd's probably, primarily gentile, which is not Jewish. And, it's not wrong to think that many of these are probably gathered because they heard the testimony of the the man who had a demon that was healed, and now this deaf man who can now hear. It's a similar scene, as you read it, to when he fed the 5,000, except this scene, this situation, it seems more urgent. Mark tells us that they've been with Jesus for 3 days, much longer than the previous encounter, and that they're in a desolate place. There's no mention of towns nearby for them to go and even think about purchasing food.
Connor Coskery:But as we read it, the formula is the same. Jesus had compassion on the crowd, he asked his disciples for any available loaves and then any available fish. He gives thanks, he hands them to the disciples to then distribute to the crowd. And the people leave satisfied. The Greek there, it's better translated, they were filled.
Connor Coskery:Their bellies were full. Jesus again demonstrates his incredible grace. Notice that Jesus takes the initiative throughout this story. Jesus called his disciples. Jesus had compassion for the crowd.
Connor Coskery:Jesus directed the crowd to sit. Jesus took the bread, broke it, blessed it, and gave it to the disciples to give out. Jesus sees people in his need and he rushes towards them in compassion. This is fundamental to who he is and what he's demonstrating is this is the type of kingdom that he is ushering in. Think back to when you were in elementary school or middle school and, when a teacher would bring, bring something that you could, that you could you could touch and you could pass around to the class.
Connor Coskery:I always loved these things, very tactile learner here, but it was always helpful for me in taking an abstract concept and bringing it into reality. Right? This is called an object lesson. And Jesus's miracles are like object lessons. They bring something hard to grasp, that's really challenging for us to get, and they bring it into reality.
Connor Coskery:And in this case, Jesus demonstrates how his kingdom is a kingdom of grace by taking something small and multiplying it to feed many. And notice that Jesus didn't distribute the loaves. Mark tells us that Jesus gave the loaves to the disciples to set before the people. Jesus taught his disciples about his kingdom by inviting them to participate in his kingdom work. He taught them about the kingdom that he's bringing in by inviting them to then participate in the kind of work that this is.
Connor Coskery:Jesus wants his disciples to know and to believe that he is a very different king than the king they're expecting. When Jesus feeds this great crowd of Gentiles, he wants to demonstrate that his kingdom overflows with compassion, with love, with grace, with abundance. Where are you in this story? Do you resonate with the weary, the hungry crowd? If so, receive his grace now.
Connor Coskery:That God sees you, that he loves you, that he promises to be near even though he feels far right now, and that despite the weakness that you feel, he promises that his power is made perfect in your weakness. Receive his grace if you are tired and weary and hungry this evening. Perhaps you are in a season of plenty where you've experienced that multiplying work of Jesus. There's nothing to be ashamed about that. That's what we want.
Connor Coskery:And if that's you, how is God calling you to be an instrument of his grace to those around you? Whether you're in a season of plenty or want, our posture remains the same. Sri Lankan pastor D. T. Niles, he once said, quote, following Jesus is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread.
Connor Coskery:Following Jesus is just one beggar telling another beggar where to find bread. That's what we're called to do, friends. Your job is to offer Jesus what you have, even if it's just a meager offering, even if it's just a few fish, couple loaves, and you ask him to do whatever he wants with it. And then when he gives you gives it back to you, you go and take it to others. Sounds simple.
Connor Coskery:Right? It's easy. When I put myself in the shoes of the disciples, I feel like, if I were to witness Jesus taking taking the loaves, multiplying the loaves and fish, handing it out to this great crowd, I would have been on fire for Jesus, ready to go and usher his kingdom in with him. But we see that that's not the case. Jesus is gracious, but our hearts are hard.
Connor Coskery:So look with me at verse verses 11 through 21. So after feeding the crowd, Jesus and his disciples, they got into the boat, they went to Dalmatuah, another city located along the Sea of Galilee. It's the only time mentioned here we don't really know what's, why he's going to this particular city. But when he arrives, a group of Pharisees greet him and they begin to argue with him and ask him to perform a sign from heaven for them. The Pharisees, they were a group of religious leaders at this time, and they vehemently opposed Jesus.
Connor Coskery:They would often try and trick him and test him and try and catch him, messing up or messing up his words. In this instance, they want Jesus to prove himself. As I was reading this, I really had a hard time not laughing at them. They want him to prove himself. Surely, these Pharisees, very connected group of men, would have heard about all the miracles that he's done across Galilee.
Connor Coskery:Right? You know, when he cast out the unclean spirit, healed the paralyzed man, healed the man with a withered hand, calmed the storm, raised Jairus' daughter, healed the bleeding woman, fed the 5,000, walked on the sea, healed the deaf mute, and then just fed 4,000 people sitting on this this big hillside. Despite all the evidence, the Pharisees, they wanted their own sign from heaven. They wanted Jesus to perform. And understandably, Jesus is frustrated.
Connor Coskery:Mark writes that Jesus sighs deeply in his spirit. A sense here is impatience, distress. He's like, Why do you still not believe? So he refuses the Pharisee's request, he gets back in his boat, and he returns to the other side. Jesus isn't a magician.
Connor Coskery:You can't just hire him to perform for you. Mark doesn't tell us exactly why Jesus took this short journey, but we can what we can infer is that this sets up for what's what happens next. Verse 14 says, Now the disciples had forgotten to bring bread, and had and only had one loaf in the boat with them. The disciples forgot all of the leftover bread. It appears that they were arguing with each other about it.
Connor Coskery:Imagine the scene. You're in the boat. The disciples are arguing. They're shouting at each other. Who who forgot the bread?
Connor Coskery:How did you forget the bread? And Jesus is just sitting there. And he had to have been dumbfounded. Had they already forgotten? Why didn't they just ask me to take the one loaf and multiply it?
Connor Coskery:Something deeper is going on here, and Jesus knows it, so he seizes the opportunity and he warns them with this cryptic phrase, Watch out for the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. What's Jesus trying to say? Let me break it down. A leaven makes bread rise. You create a leaven by adding, adding dry flour to water and letting it sit on the counter and over the course of a few days nature it it infuses life with it, and that that dry lump actually begins to bubble.
Connor Coskery:It comes to life. And to make bread, you then add a small portion of that leaven into flour and water, add some salt, and wait, and you have bread. The concept of leaven would have been familiar for the disciples. Bread was a staple food with every meal. Leaven was prominent in in one of their most important meals, the Passover meal.
Connor Coskery:The Passover meal, it starts if you celebrated a Seder meal, then you probably did this, but it starts with, God commanding the Israelites to go and find the leaven and to remove it from their household. And they were to do that because leaven represented sin and distraction. And during the Passover meal, the Israelites needed to be ready. They needed to be ready to get up and to move when God called them. They need to get rid of the leaven.
Connor Coskery:Often in scripture, as the concept of leaven is used, it is, it's used in a negative sense. It's a metaphor for this subtle, pervasive power of sin. Leaven works slowly, beneath the surface. You might not know that anything's going on. Bread doesn't rise quickly, instead over hours.
Connor Coskery:Leaven does its work, and it takes something that looks like this and transforms it some into something entirely new. Apply this to sin, how powerfully destructive this could be. Jesus is concerned about this particular leaven of the Pharisees. He knows that it could be destructive. And I I believe that if we were to create, a leaven of the Pharisees, then it would be a little bit of unbelief, a little bit of sin, mixed together, stirred all together, and what that gives us is a hard heart.
Connor Coskery:Hours earlier, the disciples had participated in an amazing miracle. They watched Jesus feed thousands with 7 loaves and a few fish. And then based on their inconvenient circumstances, sitting right in front of them, they forgot. They forget. And Jesus notices that their hearts were being hard.
Connor Coskery:They weren't seeing, they weren't hearing, they were revealing that they don't really understand. Now before we're too hard on the disciples, have you ever forgotten god's promises? His promises of comfort, of presence, of provision? When what's going on right in front of you, when that isn't ideal, have you ever felt that moment where just all of God's promises just disappear? To ask it another way, what in your life, if it were to go away right now, would send you into a scramble?
Connor Coskery:Where does your heart go when that relationship suddenly ends, when you feel stuck in your job, when good desires unwanted diagnosis is delivered, where does your heart go? I wish, as a Reformed theologian who believes and preaches on the sovereignty of God, that I could say that in those moments, I am calm and content, but I, too, like the disciples, forget. More often than not, I am fixated by what's right in front of me, and I forget. We are prone to wander. Lord, I feel it.
Connor Coskery:Prone to forget. And this reveals that there is a deeper condition. There is something going on deep inside of us that we ourselves cannot resolve. If you are a follower of Jesus today, hear me that your greatest need is not to modify your behavior, though that might be necessary. Your greatest need isn't to work harder, and to reevaluate your life, and insert some more gospel centered habits.
Connor Coskery:That is a great idea. The greatest need that you have today if you are not a Christian is you need a new heart. This brings us to our last point. If our greatest need is a new heart, then thanks be to God that Jesus, out of the overflow of his grace, he softens hard hearts. Notice how Jesus responds to the disciples arguing.
Connor Coskery:He asks a series of questions, is your is your heart hard? Do you not see? Are you deaf? Do you not remember? Everything that I've done, do you still not get it?
Connor Coskery:He wants them to piece together how they've missed it, how they didn't understand the object lesson. But more importantly, Jesus wants them to recognize that they don't get him. We know the disciples stood in awe, they were astonished by what Jesus did, they they watched him heal, they watched him walk on water and feeding all of these people. But Jesus isn't after admiration, he wants more of them. He wants them to know him.
Connor Coskery:Italicized know him. To see, hear, and believe that he is the Christ, the promise keeping king sent from the father to come and rescue his people. As I study this passage, I I find so much in common with the disciples. Oh, how often I will go from standing in awe of what God has done to completely forgetting him when things don't go as I planned. And I'm sure that many of you in this room relate.
Connor Coskery:And when we look throughout the whole bible, we see that this is a theme. This has always been a struggle for God's people. I mean, the Israelites, they walked through the Red Sea, parted. God parted the Red Sea. They walked through, saved from pharaoh in Egypt.
Connor Coskery:And what did they do almost immediately? They they started crying out to God, hey hey, can we just go back to Egypt? There's bread there. Why aren't you feeding us? And then when he actually brought them into the promised land, what did they do?
Connor Coskery:They immediately forgot. And they started complaining again. Just this morning, me and a group of students were studying the book of Haggai. In Haggai, it talks about when God's people return from exile in Babylon. And it's been 20 years, they've returned from exile, and they still haven't built the temple back.
Connor Coskery:But they've spent a whole lot of time living in their paneled houses, building up their own houses. 20 years. And they haven't built the temple. They forgot. They were worried about what's right in front of them instead of building the very thing that God promises to to be his presence among his people.
Connor Coskery:This has been happening all throughout scripture. A problem has never been about God's ability or power. The problem is our hearts are infected with sin, and that makes them calcified, hardened to the things of God. We are naturally, in our sin, hardened to God, and there is no amount of effort. There's there's no nothing you can do to soften them.
Connor Coskery:They're solid stone, as the prophet Ezekiel would say. The only way a heart of stone can be replaced with a heart of flesh is by God's unimaginable transforming grace, taking it out of us and replacing it with a heart of flesh. The price of a new heart is the death of the son of God. The only way we can receive a new heart is through the saving work of Jesus who, for us, lives a life of complete obedience, dies our death on the cross, and then defeats sin and death by rising to new life. Jesus eradicates the pervasive, infectious power of sin.
Connor Coskery:And when we surrender to him, God the father actually does that open heart surgery. He takes our heart of stone out. He replaces it with a heart of flesh that longs for God, that believes in God, that sees, hears. The heart that forgets and runs away from God is replaced with a heart that runs to God. You know, if we take Jesus's questions to his disciples and we invert them, we see at least 2 ways that we should live with transformed hearts.
Connor Coskery:In those two ways, we remember and we trust. We remember and we trust. And at this point in Mark, we're left we're left in tension. There's there's there's not there's not a clean-cut resolution in this moment. The disciples didn't understand.
Connor Coskery:When Jesus made when Jesus asked that question, do you not understand? They would all have to look at him and be like, uh-uh. We don't understand. But soon they would. And they too would be transformed.
Connor Coskery:We see in the book of Acts, it shows us a totally different crew than the ragtag bunch who's arguing over bread. Right? The early church grew through a group of transformed men and women who remembered and trusted and shared the good news of Jesus with the world. The gospel promises that our hearts are made new. But still today, we wait for all things to be made right.
Connor Coskery:We still groan in unbelief at times, we still forget, we still don't get it. It's because we lived in we live in what's called the now, but not yet, where even as we place our faith and trust in Jesus, we are in Christ, all of his promises become ours, we still experience those lingering effects of the fall, where we forget, where we don't get it, where we still mess up. Hard hearts forget, but soft hearts remember. So if we're going to remember, one one important way that we remember is by immersing ourselves in the scripture and prayer. It's where we deliberately put ourselves in the way of God's promises, where he again and again shows himself faithful.
Connor Coskery:If we're going to remember God's promises, we have to first store God's promises in our hearts. Say that again. If we're if we are going to remember God's promises, we have to first store God's promises in our hearts. I like to think of the spiritual disciplines, you know, reading scripture or prayer, it's like a a rock underneath a waterfall, where that rock is positioned there and the water rolls over it. Over time, that rock is going to change.
Connor Coskery:You know, the 1st day, it might not feel like much, it might not, feel like anything's changing, but over time, as you look at that rock, it doesn't look the same. The water has transformed it. If we're going to remember, we have to immerse ourselves in the stories of God showing up for his people, rescuing his people time and time and time again. And if we're going to remember, we we will also need each other. The phrase one another is used a 100 times in the New Testament, because remembering is a communal endeavor.
Connor Coskery:I need you. Here at Redeemer, this is why we regularly share testimonies on Sunday. I need to hear your story. I need to hear it because it helps me remember and it strengthens my faith. It's why we gather in home groups every single week.
Connor Coskery:It's not because it's convenient, but it's because by Wednesday, or Thursday, or whenever your home group meets, it's by the time we get to that point, I've forgotten the promises of God, and I need my brothers and sisters to remind me. It's why we regularly take the Lord's Supper, because in the ordinary bread and wine, Jesus promises to meet us, to remind us of our salvation, and to nourish our faith. We remember, and as we remember, we trust. And trust looks like surrendering everything that we have to our faithful and gracious King Jesus. Even if it feels like a meager offering, even if it feels like, Jesus, this is this is a half a loaf.
Connor Coskery:I don't even have any fish. It means that whatever season we are currently in, we lay it before the feet of Jesus, and we trust him to make it a feast. And when he gives it that feast back to us, we then take it to others. The church is a community of sinners saved by grace, who gather together to remember and to trust what God has done in the past, what God is doing in the present, and what God is going to do in the future, that he is a God who takes one loaf and feeds a 1,000. Jesus is gracious.
Connor Coskery:Friends, our hearts are hard, but thanks be to God that he takes hard, dead, lifeless hearts and he makes them alive. Identity indeed impacts trust, and we can trust Jesus. He is our gracious King who keeps his promises. Leave here tonight. Remember him.
Connor Coskery:Help others remember him. Trust him. Lean on other people to help you trust him. Let's pray. Spirit, we need you.
Connor Coskery:Our hearts are hard. And I pray that you would soften them. Lord, I pray that we would see that whatever season you have called us into, that you promise to be with us, to never leave us, to never forget us. And, lord, whatever we have to offer you, lord, we trust that you take it And you you do, you you take what's little and you create an abundance. Help us, Lord.
Connor Coskery:Help us. Pray this in Jesus name. Amen.
