CHS Downtown sermon | +Quigg Lawrence

We're from Holy Spirit Roanoke, and we have a little downtown campus. We're gonna see what God does with this. I have some special guests I want to introduce. Brooks and Reba, come on up. Bring greetings. These guys win the award for coming the furthest distance to worship. Where they come from is pretty interesting, so I'm gonna let them tell you. In fact, I got a call from the place they're from today. So go ahead and tell them what you guys are doing because it's pretty cool and tell them where you're doing it.

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Hey, church. We are Brooks and Reba and Quinn and Marley, and baby John is at home with grandma. Her last name is Kane, and we are your missionaries to Japan. We just want to thank you guys so much for sending us to Japan and for praying for us and for supporting us.

One of the largest unreached people groups in the world—the second largest, actually. We're working with less than 1% of the population who even know who Jesus is. We have the opportunity to share the gospel with young people in Nagoya, and we just want to thank you so much for sending us to that. We're so excited.

I don't know if you guys know this, but 96% of the money from churches in America go to countries that are saturated with the gospel—countries that are poor and they have needs, but they already have the gospel. Yet what we find is the countries that don't have it—they're like 3% or 2% or less Christian, maybe even 1% biblical Christians—they have no gospel. They don't have Bibles. They don't have churches. As a church, that's where we're invested. We're so grateful you guys allow us to partner with you. We're sending couples to Cambodia. Will and Becky are going to Cambodia, which is gonna be really fun. We have a couple in Albania and so forth and so on.

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Father, thank you for Brooks, Reba, and the kids. Lord, thank you that they're willing to lay down their life to serve you. Father, we pray that you will bless the work of their hand. Bless the work of their hand. Father, I know they're tired. They just had a ridiculous flight. They came straight to a wedding. They just need this rest. We're not gonna squeeze them for anything. We just want them to relax and have fun. In Jesus' name, we pray. Amen.

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Steven Foster, you come on up here. I know I'm burning time, but Tim's not here yelling at me. So come on up. Don't tell him.

You guys may know, how many weeks was it you were here? A lot. Yeah. So a bunch of guys laid hands and prayed for Steven, and he had a little operation. You want to tell them about it?

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With no symptoms, but a family history of heart disease, they checked me out, and I had a 90% blockage going into the heart right here—left main. At 52 years old, I had open heart surgery. You guys prayed for me. A bunch of people were praying, and it could not have gone better. Even the nursing staff and the doctors were like, "This is a miracle how quickly you're up on your feet, you're recovering." Glory to God.

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Lord, we love Steven. We love his family. When he went in, we were all confident. We're like, "God, it's gonna be great." But honestly, Lord, there was a little bit of concern. There was a worry. Anytime somebody has their heart opened up and vessels ripped out, new vessels put in, it's a big deal. Lord, thank you for saving Steven's life. Thank you for helping his whole family through this. This is not easy. We give you praise, Lord. We thank you for the doctors, nurses, all the PAs, occupational therapists, whoever helped them. But God, you alone deserve the honor and the glory in Jesus' name. Amen.

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Mark 6: The Authority Given to the Apostles

We're gonna start. If you have a Bible or Bible app, go ahead and open up. We're in Mark chapter 6.

Here's the story. In Mark 6, Jesus says to the 12 apostles, "I'm gonna send you guys out two by two, and I'm gonna give you authority over every unclean spirit." We see the 12 apostles going out, and basically he says, let's see:

They went out and they proclaimed that people should repent. And they cast out many demons and anointed them with oil—the many who were sick—and healed them. — Mark 6:12

That was the call. Jesus gave them authority over every unclean spirit. They went out. They preached the gospel. They called people to repentance. And then they anointed people with oil and laid hands. Guess what? It worked. It worked.

And so when you turn the page, if you go down to Mark—I keep blaming small print. Maybe I'll get a hearing aid and new glasses at the same time. So it says in verse 30, the apostles who had just been sent out returned back to Jesus and they told him all they had done and taught.

You know, when I first read that, I thought, well, that's kind of arrogant. It's like, hey, look at us. Look what we did. But actually, no. I just think about a kid coming to his mom or his dad and they're so happy. They're so thrilled that the Lord himself worked through them. I mean, if God's ever used you in spite of your weakness or your cleverness or whatever, but ever used you to speak life to someone or you prayed. And maybe you weren't feeling anything, but you know what? God didn't worry about your feelings. And all of a sudden, the person was healed. We've seen that. Doesn't always happen, but we've seen it.

And so these guys come running back to Jesus like, Jesus, you're not gonna believe what happened. I wanna give you just a visual. If we have it on the overhead, I wanna give you just a sense of the joy they might have felt when they came back to Jesus. That's Mary Mack and she is my granddaughter and she's just cute as a button—that's not why I put it up there. Did you see her? She was slow learning to walk. You know, some kids are like seven months, eight months, they're just up and go. Other kids, you gotta kind of prod them to get them going. Mary Mack was just happy to scoot on her knees. I was worried because she's scooting on concrete. Her knees—I mean, goodness gracious, I hope skin replaces itself. But anyway, she got her first step. You could just tell she didn't quite know. It's like you're on a boat and she's trying to get her sea legs. But once she took the first step, she fell down. And she'd take a couple steps and she'd fall down. But eventually, after like three or four days, that was it. All of a sudden, she's walking, and she is so happy with herself. She is so excited that it's actually working.

And I think that joy that you saw in Mary Mack is kind of what the apostles were experiencing when God worked through them. That's the joy he invites us to in kingdom ministry.

The Rest Jesus Offers

So let's go to the feeding of the 5,000, and then we'll go to your questions. After they came back to Jesus, let's see what happened. We go to verse 31.

And Jesus said to the apostles that were returning back to him, telling him all about it, "I want you to come away by yourselves to a desolate place, and I want you to rest a while." — Mark 6:31

Basically, what Jesus is saying is like, time out. In the first service—I think maybe second service at church today—I said, it's kind of like a gerbil. You ever—I don't really like gerbils. They kind of give me the creeps. But I used to have a gerbil, and the thing would just run in this little cage thing all day long. It gets nowhere, but it would keep running. And so finally, I think the Lord's just saying, look, you guys have been ministering, and it's not just physically tired. It's also emotionally tired, and it's spiritually draining. So I need you guys to stop and rest. That's basically what Sabbath is. Cease laboring and refill.

My question is, do you do that? Do I do that? Or do we just kind of try to work, work, work, work, work, thinking we'll get more done? And if you take a rest, the question is, how do you rest? Do you rest in Christ or just go to a golf course hoping that somehow this magical refilling is gonna happen to you?

But they came back and Jesus says, I want you guys to rest because you've been pouring out. And it says, but 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.

So the fact that they're getting into a boat tells you that what? This isn't rocket science. Boats normally, unless you're in a boatyard, they get put into the water. Right. And the body of water they were on was the Sea of Galilee. Doesn't that sound so big? The Sea of Galilee. There's seas, there's lakes, and there's ponds. So let me give you an idea how small the Sea of Galilee is. It is 7% the size of Smith Mountain Lake. Basically, if you've ever been bass fishing or brim fishing, and you're in a little pond and you kind of see across it, right, it's not much bigger than that. That's where they were.

And so Jesus and the 12, they get in the boat, and they're just going to a desolate place across the water. And the people, they like being healed. They like all that Jesus was doing. They liked all the apostles were doing. And so they see them heading out, and they're like, well, we're just gonna put on our Nikes, and we're gonna run around and meet them. And so they ran ahead.

And as soon as Jesus and the 12 get there, the people they're trying to get away from so they can rest, they were there. And, of course, the apostles are like, really? Yo. We're on Sabbath. It's my day off. Okay? And they want to say, Jesus, just send them away. Send them away. Because you're the one who told us to go rest anyway.

So what does Jesus say? After the apostles say, "send them away to the surrounding countryside and villages to buy something to eat," Jesus answers. He says, "Well, actually, you guys give them something to eat."

Think about it. They're in a desolate place. There's no drive through. There's no Kroger's. There's no place to go get something to eat. And so in this desolate place, the apostles are like, "Well, we don't know what to do. We sure don't have food for them. Why don't they just go on their own and they can feed themselves?"

And Jesus says, stop. Stop. Stop. He goes, "What do you guys have?"

And they're like, "What are you talking about, Jesus?"

Jesus said, "Y'all give him something to eat."

And they were like, "Jesus, that would take two hundred days wages."

Now, let's do a little math here. Do you have a calculator? Okay. Good. You ready to go? Let's see who's quickest. Alright.

So the apostles said it would take 200 denarii to buy all the bread to feed all the people that were there. And if you're like me, that's like somebody saying 200,000 lira or ten year Rwandan francs. You're like, I don't know what that means. If you go to a foreign country, I just start shoving out money and hope it's right.

So basically, what does a laborer make? Like, if you work construction, how much would you make per hour? In the United States right now, it varies depending on the state. I looked at a chart, and it goes from about $8 up to about $18, depending on what state you're in. But Virginia was listed at $15.50.

Okay. So if you're a laborer, you make $15.50 an hour, you multiply by an eight hour workday, what does that come out to? $120 a day. Okay.

But remember, it wasn't one day's wage. It was two hundred days wages. That's like two thirds of a year. So 200 times $120, that comes out to $24,000.

So basically, what Jesus was asking them to do is produce food to give them something to eat, and they're saying, like, "Jesus, we can't do that. That'd be like trying to find $24,000 in our pocket. We don't have that." And what's more, even if it's not in the text, even if you had the money, where would they buy the food anyway?

But Jesus says, basically, "Hey, I want you guys to feed him." And he goes, "What do you have? Show me what you have."

And they dig around. I got some crackers, you know, nabs, whatever. No. What they found is one little boy had what? Five barley loaves and two fish.

When we think of loaves, we think of these lovely French loaves that Barb gets, or the big ones at Breadcraft. When you think of fish, you think of maybe a big fish you catch on a boat. Wrong. They said the little barley loaves, first of all, they're flat, and a small child could eat five, no problem. Basically, they're like overgrown crackers.

And the fish—I'm thinking they're about the size of two or three fingers. And so there's two little fish for 5,000 men, and we don't have any women and children.

So Jesus has basically said, "How much do you have?"

"We have five loaves, two fish."

And so, how would you divide those little fish up into 5,000 or 6,000 pieces? Do you know how small that would be?

Let me give you an illustration I don't think you'll forget. You ever dental floss? What's the point of dental flossing? To get it out of your teeth. Have you ever been flossing in front of a mirror and something comes flying out, some little piece? That's the goal. That little piece that comes out, that would be about double the size of what they would have gotten if they'd cut that fish up.

Do you see? It's humanly impossible. That's what the text is trying to tell us. It's humanly impossible, and yet Jesus said, "You guys give them something to eat."

The Gathering

So then in verse 39, he says, Jesus commanded everybody to sit down in groups on the green grass, and they sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties. Such strange verses. Why is he doing this?

Well, maybe Jesus knows that he's gonna do a miracle, and there's gonna be so much food, and they have to have an orderly way to feed people. And maybe, just maybe, they're whispering something to us about the character of God. God is a God of joy, he's a God of power, he's a God of passion, but he's also a God of order. Have you seen the creation? Have you ever looked through a microscope? Have you looked through a telescope? Have you been up on Bent Mountain getting away from the ambient light and looked in the sky? God is a God of order.

And so once he has them sit down in the green grass in these groups, it says he took the five loaves and the two fish. He looked up to heaven, and he said a blessing. Does that sound like anything you've ever heard of? Old Testament? Passover. How about when Jesus—let's read this again. It says he took the five loaves and two fish. He looked up to heaven. He said a blessing, and he broke the bread, and he gave it to the disciples. This is pointing to the bread of life himself, who would be broken for them.

He looked up to heaven and said, "Father, forgive them. They know not what they do. Into your hands, I commit my spirit." — Luke 23:34, 46

And so that's Eucharistic language. It's Eucharistic language. And actually, what we're gonna do in just a minute, which y'all are gonna do at your table, is the breaking of the bread. We give thanks. Eucharist. We give thanks.

And so the story ends up. It says after he blessed it, they gave it to the disciples. They set it before the people, and they divided the two fish. It's crazy. Still just two fish. He divided the two fish among all the people, and they all ate and were satisfied. You guys, that is a miracle. That's a miracle.

And those that ate the loaves were 5,000 men. — Mark 6:44

The point of this story is not how great the apostles were. God called them to join him in his ministry. He asked them to do something that was insane. I want you to take two little fish and a piece of bread and feed 5,000 people. That's crazy. But you know what? I think they look back to the time where they were sent out two by two, and they saw God work through them and do things they could not possibly do. And they just obeyed them, and they did it.