Enduring Hardship — Mark 6

0:00 Let's open with the word of prayer. Heavenly father, we come before you this morning. Once again, we're here to sit at your feet. We're here to learn. We are here to grow.

0:16 We are here to learn some of the things that you would have for us, the things that you have laid out in your word, the things that we are to live by. We ask that you speak to us this morning. We ask that you help us to open our hearts and rid us of the distractions and focus on on you. We ask you fill us with your spirit this morning that we would be receiving of your words. We ask for your blessing now in your son's precious name.

0:47 Amen. Amen. Have you ever had a time in your life when you went into panic mode? We all have but I think about the times when you were in panic mode and you were delivered from whatever it was you were panicking about. And I want you to think about how you felt in that moment when you were delivered.

1:30 We probably have a lot of these examples to pull from and the older we are the more examples we have. Growing up, I don't remember, I really don't recall mom and dad ever having a flat tire. I don't ever recall that. So the first time I had a flat tire was when I was 16. And I grew up working on cars with my dad, working on cars with my grandpa.

2:01 And I was 16 and on the 480 Bridge coming home, coming west on the 480 Bridge and had a flat tire. And I pulled over on the left shoulder because I was in the left hand lane so I pulled over to the left shoulder. And in that moment as a 16 year old who had just started driving, the panic I mean I was fine. I stopped the car and nothing happened. But I'm sitting there on the shoulder just aghast.

2:34 Like just and I'm sitting there and have I just had I'm blank. I'm totally blank. And I'm sitting here going, I didn't have cell phone. So I was 16 in 2002. So cell phones in 2002 were for the elite, if I still remember.

2:59 So I'm sitting there I'm going well shoot and I'm also in the left hand lane. So I'm like looking back behind me going watching all the cars. The exits on that side. So I need to cross four lanes of traffic on the highway. Like this is what's going through my mind.

3:16 And I'm like, I'm sitting here. Well, sitting here is going to do nothing. So I got out and started walking. I just... Nothing, no other better logic was in my head at the time.

3:28 Like this was, I had to do something so I just started walking. And I hadn't made it probably a 100 feet when an ODOT truck pulled up behind me. And this great big black guy gets out of this truck. And he and he yells at me, what's wrong? You got a flat tire?

3:55 And I said, yeah. And he goes, do you have a spare? And the you think to yourself, wow, what an idiot. I know how to change a tire. You know how many times I have taken the tire off of a car?

4:24 And in that moment when he pulled up, what are the odds that an ODOT truck of all people would come up behind you? And then not only is he there to help you, but then he points out this stupidly obvious thing. I remember how I felt then. I mean aside from feeling completely stupid, but the relief that I had in that moment, it wasn't even anyone I knew but that sort of that that deliverance I felt in that moment. I made it home just fine.

5:47 Mark chapter six and verse 45. And immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go ahead of him to the other side of Bethsaida. While he himself was sending the multitude away. And after bidding them farewell, he departed to the mountain to pray. And when it was evening, the boat was in the midst of the sea and he was alone on the land.

6:09 And seeing them straining at the oars for the wind was against them at about the fourth watch of the night, he came to them walking on the sea and he intended to pass by them. But when they saw him walking on the sea, they supposed that it was a ghost and cried out, for they all saw him and were frightened. But immediately he spoke with them and said to them, take courage, it is I, do not be afraid. And he got into the boat with them and the wind stopped, and they were greatly astonished, for they had not gained any insight from the incident of the loaves, but their heart was hardened. And when they had crossed over, they came to land at Genasaret and moored to the shore.

6:51 And when they had come out of the boat, immediately the people recognized him and ran about that whole country and began to carry about on their pallets those who were sick to the place they heard he was. And wherever he entered villages or cities or countryside, they were laying the sick in the marketplaces and then treating him that they might just touch the fringe of his cloak, and as many as touched it were being cured. And we'll we'll stop there. To bring you a little bit into to where we are. So Jesus just fed the 5,000, but I wanna rewind a little bit in chapter six.

7:38 As we as we look at these these first couple of verses in forty five and forty six, and as Jesus went to the mountain to pray. In chapter six, we read through verses seven and thirteen about the 12 being sent out on their evangelic mission. And then we have this section about the death of John the Baptist, okay. And in verse 30 of chapter six, And the apostles gathered together with Jesus and they reported to him all they had done and taught. So we skip this whole John the Baptist part and you get to verse 30 when the disciples came back and Jesus says to them in verse 31, Come away by yourselves to a lonely place and rest a while.

8:28 For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat, and they went away in the boat to a lonely place by themselves. Verse 33, And the people saw them going, and many recognized them, and they ran there together on foot from all the cities, and got there ahead of them. And then the rest of the 5,000. So they never got their rest is what I want to get to here. We're looking at forty five and forty six.

8:56 And Jesus is going to the mountain to pray and he just had this this long day of ministry feeding the 5,000. But before that is just when the the apostles had come back and he had wanted to go with them to a lonely place to have some time for themselves and to have some time to rest and recover and to pray. And he never got that chance. So, not only were they tired and needing this time to begin with, then they ended up having this whole long day in ministry. So now it's evening.

9:29 So, okay, we're gonna try again. He made his disciples get into the boat though and tells them to go across the lake. And he goes to the mountain to pray. All of this mental, physical, and and spiritual work drove Jesus to pray. That's what I want to get out of these first couple of verses.

10:04 It didn't drive him from prayer, but it drove him to prayer. And not just any prayer, it drove him to quiet time by himself with the Father. And part of what this is stressing to us, I think, is the incredible importance of our alone time with God. Not to diminish at all the corporate prayer that we share together and the importance of that. Doesn't diminish that at all.

10:40 But there's something very different about your personal alone time with God. And of course, your time with God, you couldn't be less alone. But the importance of going to the closet and shutting the door and those types of situations where that is really what you need. Jesus' life as we get through the book of Mark, we studied the book of John a while back. And as we look at Jesus' life, as we look at His example, every step of the way, everything He did was laid out for us.

11:23 So we had these examples. He was tired. He was 100% man, 100 God, but 100% man and was physically and emotionally and spiritually taxed after all of this. And it drove him to prayer. And he didn't let the disciples rest now.

11:47 He had just told them earlier in the day that we're gonna go spend some time by ourselves and and rest. He fed them. The disciples got fed, but then he says, get in the boat and it's evening and and go across the lake. Okay. That's a tall order.

12:06 We're already tired. At least we have some food in our stomachs, but we don't have a record here that they complained about it. Maybe they did. We don't we don't know. I'd like to think that they didn't give them some more credit.

12:50 Unknown to them, He could see them. Unknown to them, He could feel them. He knew what was going on with them physically. He knew what was going on in their heads as he gave them a nearly impossible thing to do. They had rode for much of the night and had barely gotten halfway across.

13:13 Now this story is recorded in Matthew and in John, so we have a few more details that Mark has left out, but there's a couple of other details we can pull into this. So they had gotten halfway across, which was maybe two or three miles in the fourth watch of the night, so 3AM ish. So they had spent maybe nine hours going less than three miles. So, let's do a little bit of math. That's a third of a mile per hour, right?

13:55 And a mile is seventeen sixty yards, and a third of that is, call it, five fifty yards ish in an hour. So you rode five football fields in an hour. Just trying to put in your head a little bit how painful this was. How painful this was. But they were were committed.

14:28 They did not turn around and come back. We give the disciples a hard time a lot. We do. We give the Israelites a hard time a lot. We give the Pharisees a hard time a lot.

14:39 But we gotta find these little places where we can give them a little bit of credit and stop criticizing them so much because we do a lot of the same things. They did not turn around and come back. The Lord gave them a job. He said to go across. And by golly, they were gonna do it.

14:58 This was this was rough. And it wasn't their fault that they had no... That their apparent lack of progress was not their fault. It was not their fault. Spurgeon said this, the apostolic crew rode and rode and rode, and it was no fault of theirs if they made no progress, for the wind was contrary unto them.

15:21 The Christian may make little or no headway, and yet it may be no fault of his, for the wind is contrary. Our good Lord will take the will for the deed and reckon our progress, not by our apparent advance, but by the hearty intent with which we tug at the oars. So their heart was in the right place here. They weren't making a whole lot of progress. How often do you feel like you're not making a whole lot of progress?

15:56 We go through our Christian lives trying to learn, trying to grow, trying to mature and no lack of no progress you just feel like there's no progress. Anybody else? But if your heart is in the right place, now, no growth could be your own fault. But if it's, there's times when it's not your fault. The Lord has given you an impossible job that you can accomplish with his help, but you have to do your part.

16:32 And if your heart is in the right place and your effort is in the right place and you're trying your hardest to do what it is he commanded, That's what he's going to look at. The Lord has eternity. So he doesn't need you to reach. He has all the time to wait. What we can look at here at this story and this situation that the Lord put the disciples in and we ask, why did he do it?

17:29 Do you think this was a little bit of a foreshadowing of what they were going to experience after he after he left? When he sent them out, the great commission, he sent them out to preach the gospel. Would it be like this? Probably. And look at ourselves today.

17:54 Is it like this? Yeah. It's it's a lot like this. Sending them out to sea with the wind in their teeth, pushing back at them the entire time. Expecting all of this labor in in rowing and striving against the wind, so strong of a current tossed by waves, would they be persecuted just like this?

18:24 You bet. Are we persecuted like this? Or not even necessarily persecuted, but the world's influence. Is it like this? It definitely is.

18:39 He's exposing them to this to train them up, to give them time to learn to endure hardness and hardship. This is a lesson for them and it's a lesson for us. We weren't there, but we're dealing with similar things now. Every one of us in this room is experiencing some kind of storm in their life. It may just be a little rain.

19:06 Maybe some of us are in the middle of a hurricane or a tornado. But all of us have something. And the church today is often a lot like this boat. It's a lot like this boat where we are going against the wind, against the current, But we have to it is our job. The Lord has given us a job to do.

19:34 He's given us a job. And as we strive at the oars, are we striving? Are we actually trying our hardest? Do we want to turn around? Because if the wind is blowing us this way and we don't want to go that way, I mean, do we go with it?

19:51 Do we go with it? Do we ever let up? We could turn around and let the wind and the current take us where it wants to, but he told us to go this way. It's comforting to know that we have the Holy Spirit interceding for us. So, we look at this and we know that Christ was on land praying probably for a lot of things.

20:23 Was He praying for the disciples? I would like to think so, among other things. But the Holy Spirit intercedes for us and we can know that, that He is on the heavenly mountain, praying for us, interceding for us in words and groanings that we cannot express. So as the Lord sees them straining, as he sees their commitment here, he could have checked the winds where he was. He could have sent an angel or two or a 100.

21:05 He could have done a lot of things to help them. But he chose the most personal way. He chose the most endearing way, and that was to go himself. He didn't go until the fourth watch of the night. Think about that one.

21:32 He waited until the fourth watch of the night. He gave them... He he he made them go through a lot, knowing the entire time what was going on, what was in their heads, and what they were dealing with, but he waited. When I had my flat tire, I waited less than five minutes. And, you know, going from this incredible panic to the incredible relief then, and that was only a few minutes, but this night.

22:13 He waited till the fourth watch of the night. Matthew Henry had this to say about it, If Christ's visits to his people be deferred long, yet at length he will come, and their extremity is his opportunity to appear for them so much the more seasonably. Though the salvation tarry, yet we must wait for it. At the end, it shall speak in the fourth watch of the night. It's a little bit of old English.

22:50 So, what he's saying is, the longer the lord makes us endure, the longer he makes us wait, how much more meaningful is it when he delivers you from it? You have so much more to gain. Yeah. It's terrible while you're dealing with it. It's all of this hard work, all of this effort, and you're getting nowhere.

23:21 Nowhere. But he gives you all of this time and he waits. He waits so that you can learn, so that we can learn. Not only from how terrible the situation is, but then also to experience his deliverance all the more greatly. But He doesn't deliver them.

24:21 So he catches up and he's walking by not even looking at them probably, it would seem. So, you're all in the boat and Jesus is just coming from behind, just straight on past you. And they see him, and they think he's a ghost. They recognize him, but they think he's a ghost. I mean, they're already stressed out and tired, and now they're scared because there's a ghost.

24:59 He makes them he makes them call. So you think about it today, you think about your life now. He doesn't come to you and grab your hand or pick you up. He needs you to grab his. He'll stand there.

25:27 He'll walk with you. But you have to do your part. He doesn't do everything for you. He can't do everything for you. What would be the point if he did everything for you?

25:40 He will do everything for you once you realize that you need him to do everything for you. But he needs you to grab his hand or jump on his back completely, but he needs you to do it. He's not gonna do it for you. You have to recognize your own fear, your own lack of strength, your own inability to accomplish anything, much less what he's specifically given you to do. He needs you at that place where you are at your lowest.

26:13 He rescued them. We we had a we had a storm on the sea earlier in Mark when he was asleep in the back of the boat. And in that case, he made them come to him and and explicitly ask for help. So they woke him up, right? And they they weren't really asking for help.

26:30 It was more like a, what's wrong with you sort of thing. So it was really kind of the wrong response. He doesn't make them explicitly ask for that kind of help but they're crying out in fear. He makes them make the first move. He just showed up.

26:50 And if they wanted to ignore him, they could have and he would have kept right on looking. Jesus is with us. The Lord is with us. The Holy Spirit is with us every step of every day. He's there for us.

27:08 But do we know that He's there? Do we see that He is there? And not only do we know that He's, you know, are we realizing that He's here? But then, are we asking for his help? Are we asking?

27:26 Now he knows that they're doing their part here. He gave him this job. They're trying their hardest. So he's giving them the credit for that. No, they're not making any progress at all, but he's giving them credit because they're doing what they're doing what he asked them to do.

28:29 It's possible. But this is the part where Peter gets out of the boat and sinks and the Lord picks him up. And then they get into the boat. And in John, John records that at this point, Jesus gets into the boat. They were at the other side.

28:54 They were halfway. It says that they were halfway and like being teleported they were immediately at the other side. That is what John records. And then it says in verse 50, 51, And they were greatly astonished for they had not gained any insight from the incident of the loaves, but their heart was hardened. Now is where we get to harp on them a little bit.

29:40 So it would seem that the idea here is that even after seeing the power of the Lord walking out to them, earlier that day He fed 15,000 people. Before that, we have one, two, three, four miracles. And after all of that, they're surprised. And it's not just a surprise like, oh, you caught me off guard sort of thing. They're completely and and utterly and dumbfounded.

30:23 Different translations get to this point differently, but it's it's really you have this sense that they just jaw dropping sort of response. Like, oh, yeah, I forgot you could do that. It wasn't that sort of response. It was a like they were seeing it for the first time. Him doing this wasn't any greater a miracle than anything else they had seen him do.

30:54 He was showing his power over the laws of nature. So when we look at this and we say, why? Why? How could you witness all of these things as one of the disciples leading up to this point and still be completely jaw dropping, surprisingly flabbergasted. And one of those things could be a lack of faith.

32:21 They weren't quite there in their relationship with Him, their understanding of him, and they hadn't quite put everything in him yet. And so he does this, and they're completely surprised. So think back to a time when the Lord performed a miracle for you, and the older we are, the more of these we have to pull back on. And as you went through some kind of horrible situation, whether it was... Whether it only lasted for five minutes or it could have been five years, I don't know.

33:03 But when... Think about something that that the Lord delivered you from. Do do we ever get surprised? Are we ever surprised by what he's able to accomplish through us? When he accomplishes the supernatural, when he accomplishes things through us that we cannot in human strength accomplish, Are we acting surprised?

33:31 Because we shouldn't. We should not be surprised. Augustine said this, he came walking on the waves, and so he puts all the swelling storms of life under his feet. Christians, why be afraid? It's so simple when you put it like that.

34:03 It's so simple when you put it like that. And I can stand up here and tell you this and make it sound easy or make it sound like I know how to do it. Jessica knows. But what I want you to think about, what we need to be thinking about in this is that we've probably heard this message many times in our life. This isn't the only situation in scripture that we're given of a trial.

34:48 We have repeated in scripture, and we've all heard a lot of messages about this topic. And what the Lord brought home to me this week as I prepared for this was that you keep hearing these things. You keep reading these things. You hear messages about these kinds of things because this is very real for us. The the the storms of life are so real and so personal and so close to home.

35:27 Just, it hits you so close to home. I mean, and even though I could have myriads of examples in my own personal life of deliverance, why do I sit here today in my current predicament and act like I haven't experienced all of those other things. So I can't help but feel like the Lord is driving at me this reminder because I keep forgetting. I keep putting it aside. I keep...

36:46 And maybe you've already jumped on the Lord's back. Maybe you've already gotten to that point, and he's bringing you through it. It's not over, but he's bringing you through it. But maybe you haven't gotten to that point yet. He's standing right next to you, but he won't do it for you unless you ask him to, unless you realize that you need him to.

37:15 Let's not forget. We need these reminders. We need these reminders. That's why it's given to us so many times, And that's why you're sitting here today listening to another message about the calming of the sea. But I know that I needed this this week.

37:42 And even if I was the only one who needed this this week, well, I thank him for it. But if one of you needed this this week, just one of you did, needed that reminder because you hadn't gotten to that point yet in what... Whatever it is you're dealing with. Let's close in prayer. Heavenly Father, we thank you once again for your word.

38:15 We thank you for the examples that we have. We thank you for all that you have given us to help us. You've given us a job to do. When you saved us and you indwelt us with your Holy Spirit, you gave us a job to do. We are to give you glory in our lives and we are to be transformed into the image of Christ.

38:45 And we recognize that that is impossible for us to do on our own. And as we go about every day trying to do that, are we trying to do that? Lord, we struggle with this. You've given us something very difficult to do, but you have given us all the tools that we need and you have promised. You have promised to be with us and to help us if we would but trust you.

39:42 And we ask that you would be with us and help us to open our eyes to just see you there and that we may know that all we have to do is give our situation to you and to call on you. We thank you for this time that we've had. We thank you for these reminders that we need so often because we forget. Help us to not forget the miracles that you have performed for us in our lives. Help us to not forget.

40:20 Help us to keep you at the forefront of all that we do, and that we can surrender our lives and surrender our circumstances to you and let you guide us through. We ask for your blessing as we go this afternoon and, as we return to our our work and our our daily lives this week. We ask for your blessing in your son's precious name. Amen.