The Book of Mark
The Creator Provides, Pt. 2
Mark 6:30-44
Last week we started looking at the account of Jesus feeding the 5,000. It’s found in Mark 6:30-44. And just to take a different angle on the story, we’re looking at is as Jesus the Provider. He is the God who Provides, Jehovah-jireh. And as I told you last week, there are four things in this account He provided.
So far we’ve discovered he provides rest. That’s in verses 30-33. He provides Truth as we see in verse 34 and He provides healing. We don’t find that in Mark’s account, but Matthew heals us ne was healing their diseases.
All of that is kind of in the background. Tonight, as we come to verse 35, we get to the main story line and there we discover He provides
4. Food
verse 35
Sounds like they’ve been talking behind His back and looking the situation over and they decided it was getting late in the day and these people needed to eat. I would guess that conversation was sparked by their own hunger.
Remember, He had sent them out with nothing. He specifically said don’t take any bread. They were completely dependent upon the Lord to provided.
So very possibly, it has been weeks and maybe months since they’ve had a good old-fashioned home cooked meal. So I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a little bit of selfishness in their observation.
And food was a big issue in those days. There wasn’t any fast foods; meals had to be prepared; you had to find a place to prepare it and we’ve got a crowd of perhaps 25,000 people gathered up and they’re hungry.
So how is the Lord going to respond to this? Well because we are familiar with the story, we know what He does. He feeds them with a little boy’s lunch.
But let me just insert while passing by that this is very likely the most graphic testimony to common grace or general blessing in the gospel records. I’m talking about God just being kind to humanity in general. The Lord loves His enemies and He makes the sun to shine and the rain to fall on the just and the unjust.
In fact, even people who hate God, who reject God, who reject Christ, who curse Christ can and do fall in love, have the joy of family, enjoy a sunset, savor a good steak, take a vacation, wonder at the mountain and the rivers of this earth, enjoy the sweetness of life, the pleasures of life, all the things that God has built into life. All of that comes without discrimination by the grace of God. And most of humanity will enjoy all those things and never even say “thanks”.
God is a God of goodness and grace and compassion, and wants us to delight in His provisions.
So He didn’t ask for character references before people could eat. He didn’t evaluate their motives. He took the best and the worst of them and acted in pity on everybody. He healed everybody. He fed everybody.
In fact, when you think about it, God feeds everybody in the world every meal they ever eat because it all comes from His hand. Any healing that takes place is a gift of God without discrimination. He is a good and gracious and benevolent God !
Now I want to quickly add. General or common grace is good but it is inadequate for eternity. You may enjoy the physical food He provides, but You need the spiritual food He provides.
It’s nice to get away from everything and get some physical rest, but without the Spiritual rest He provides you will have no rest in eternity.
It’s wonderful to receive physical healing, but the real sickness of our soul is sin and only He can provide the wellness that we need. These are all symbols. He is, after all, the bread of life and if you eat of that bread, you will never hunger. He is the Rest of God. He is the Great Physician.
So, when it’s already quite late, His disciples come and said to Him, “It’s late and everybody’s hungry and we’re off in this desolate place and there’s no place to eat. And there is no to feed this huge crowd. And we’ve decided here’s what you should do.
Verse 36
His response is very surprising.
verse 37
That is not as outlandish as it first sounds. It sounds ridiculous to us because we think primarily in human terms. But what had they just returned from doing? They’ve been casing out demons and healing the sick and preaching the gospel. They’ve been seeing God provide everything they needed. They’ve been doing everything Jesus had been doing
But they didn’t make the transition from that to this. And I think it is because they had never seen Him do this. They’d seen Him raise the dead, but they’d never seen Him create something from nothing and do it on this scale.
Remember, this miracle is the only miracle outside of the resurrection found in all four gospels. This is a big miracle. And when He tells them to feed the crowd, they immediately begin to think like atheists. They take the power of God completely out of the picture.
So could they have actually fed the crowd? If He had delegated that power to them, then absolutely yes. But they aren’t there yet. So they’re now in a dilemma.
According to John 6, Philip gets involved in the dilemma and he comes up and says, “Well, we’ve got two hundred denarii,” that would be totally about eight month wages for one person which is a pretty good amount of money, but it isn’t enough to fix the problem.
Plus, where are you going to go to buy that amount of food and then prepare it? It’s an impossible situation.
And at the end of verse 37, they actually get a little sarcastic with the Lord.
Verse 37b
And you can just hear them going, “Hey, that’s funny!”
It’s interesting, isn’t it, that nobody seemed to think of 2 Kings 4 where the widow had the little cruse of oil and it just kept coming and coming and coming and coming and coming and coming. Instead, they’re sarcastic in their response.
And Jesus doesn’t even acknowledge their response. Instead He asks what is available.
Verse 38
We know from the other accounts that food was a little boy’s lunch, five little biscuits and a couple of sardines.
So Jesus tells them to make every one comfortable and get ready to eat. Can you imagine what the disciples are thinking about now? There’s fixing to be a riot! We’re going to set these people down and they’re going to expect to be fed and we can’t deliver and they are going to kill us!
This idea is just way too big for the disciples. We found one kid and took his lunch of five biscuits and two fish and Jesus thinks He’s going to feed this crowd!
But in obedience to Jesus they organized the crowd
verses 39-40
That must have been a spectacle by itself. How do you go about organizing this crowd and separate, sort out and get into groups of hundreds and fifties?
I don’t know but they did it and now this crowd is waiting to see what’s going to happen and it happens quickly.
verse 41
And just like that the problem is solved! They kept passing out bread and fish and it just kept coming. He kept handing fish and bread to the disciples and they kept waiting tables until everyone was full.
I don’t know how long that process took, but for whatever period of time it took, He just kept giving them food.
So was the food good? I’ll tell you what I think and I I think I’m right.
This is like eating in the Garden of Eden. These are uncursed crackers and uncursed fish. The crackers are made from grain that was never planted in a cursed soil. These fish never swam in cursed water. These are fresh, dead fish who never were alive. This is the only uncursed banquet that any of those people would have ever gone to.
This is just an incredible thing to think about. And there was nobody who said, “I’m sorry, I don’t eat fish.” Even if you don’t like fish, you’d like these fish! As far as I’m concerned, just plain, cursed fish is good. Can you imagine what uncursed fish would taste like?
So they all ate. Everybody ate and verse 42 tells us
“they all ate and were filled”
This is the best meal anybody ever had and they they gorged themselves on this simple meal of fish and bread.
Now I took the liberty of doing a little math just for fun. ANd it sounds like one of those story problems we used to get in math class.
If a boy eats five crackers and two fish and an adult eats ten crackers and four fish how much fish and bread did it take to fee a crowd of 10,000 adults and 15,000 kids?
That’s 175,000 biscuits and 70,000 fish! And all of it just keeps coming out of His hands, one after the other. He is the God Who provides!
And then a most interesting thing happens and we’re told about it in
Verse 43
Now Jesus did not have them pick this up because He was an anti-litter, pro-environmental clean-up advocate. He had them pick them up because when they picked it all up, it was twelve baskets full.
The precision of this thing just amazes me. After all this massive banquet is over, there is exactly twelve take-home meals left, one for each of the Apostles.
So how do you plan that? How do you create enough to feed the crowd so that everybody is gorged on the best fish and crackers they’ve ever had and then the leftovers are exactly what you wanted them to be?
The precision and complexity of that is simply a testimony to the power of God. This is the same Lord who built and organized and established the precision of the universe. And here He stands, in the flesh, the very Son of God, serving lunch to a crowd on the Judean hillside.
They were seeing divine power, creation power, divine compassion demonstrated in the physical world as a symbol of what He wanted to do in the spiritual world. They were seeing divine control, no waste, meeting every need.
So is that how they viewed it? Was it a real spiritual awakening? It’s hard to imagine that it wouldn’t have been.
After they had eaten, they all dispersed. Jesus and the disciples got back in their little boat and went across to Capernaum.
In the morning, guess what? John tells us the crowd was there again. What do they want? Breakfast, and the same fish and crackers will be just fine. Jesus said no. “You must eat and drink of Me. I am the bread of life.”
It’s time to get pass just fulfilling your physical needs and get to your spiritual dimension.
Jesus would not be the permanent source of free food, but He would be the permanent source of spiritual food. They weren’t interested in that. So the crowd began to dissipate. And even some of His own disciples, John 6:66 says, walked no more with Him. They left.
The display of deity was unmistakable. This is just creation by the Creator. The faith of His own was strengthened. I’m sure there were some folks who because of this came to believe in Him. But for most, they were the same kind of people who follow Jesus looking for only what He can give them in the here and now.
What a shame that they will take the good and miss the best.
Let’s pray.
