Class Outline:

Tuesday August 30,2022

 

If you have the Son of God as your own, as stated by Paul so many times, you are “in Christ,” or “in Him,” then you have a treasure that is literally priceless and could only be described by someone who spent a lifetime trying to understand it from the Scriptures.

 

Though that boat is surrounded by hunger, sickness, and dangerous storms, we need not fear, but rejoice, for the Son of God is here with us.

 

Our ignorance of what it means to have Christ, He fixes by shepherding us.

 

In Joh 6, Jesus reveals to us that fulfillment in life is not physical. The multitude in this chapter can only imagine that the bread of life that is a gift from heaven is actual bread. It is an easy leap for them to equate it with the manna of the wilderness. It’s not bread that they need. They need a shepherd.

 

MAR 6:30-32

And the apostles gathered together with Jesus; and they reported to Him all that they had done and taught. 31 And He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a lonely place and rest a while.” (For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.) 32 And they went away in the boat to a lonely place by themselves.

 

We must not miss the psychological test that is about to hit the disciples. They are exhausted from serving the people and Jesus tells them that they are going to go to a private place and rest. The disciples, I’m sure, were overjoyed at the prospect of resting alone. And as so often happens to us when we’re about to do something we are anticipating with happiness (not sinful), we are interrupted by the needy.

 

MAR 6:33-36

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. 34 And when He went ashore, He saw a great multitude, and He felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things. 35 And when it was already quite late, His disciples came up to Him and began saying, “The place is desolate and it is already quite late; 36 send them away so that they may go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.”

 

In the fellowship of the Trinity is service and sacrifice.

 

Their solution to the unfortunate interruption is to send them away. Jesus’ solution is for the disciples to serve them.

 

MAR 6:37

But He answered and said to them, "You give them something to eat!"

 

It is a part of eternal life. We must not look at service and sacrifice as a necessary but unfortunate need. We must look at it as a good and positive aspect of eternal life.

 

Jesus tells them to feed the people, which is obviously impossible without His miraculous intervention. But they mustn’t do nothing. Sending the crowd away is doing nothing. Jesus is going to have them feed the whole crowd. They thought the time of rest was coming, but instead it was a time of great work. But their work can only commence after the Lord does His through the miracle. He quickly shows them that without Him they can do nothing.

 

JOH 15:5

“I am the vine, you are the branches; he who abides in Me, and I in him, he bears much fruit; for apart from Me you can do nothing.”

 

The disciples will feed the crowd and pick up the extra after the Lord performs the miracle that enables them. Through the vine flows all the nutrients and energy for the branches. If branches don’t have these they are only fit to be burned, which is Jesus’ way of stating our worth apart from Him. And the branches produce the fruit. The disciples, and ourselves, are not to do nothing, but work and serve knowing that the supply of energy and things will come from the one who can do miracles.

 

They will remember this day when just days after the church begins at Pentecost, they will be severely persecuted and still have to serve all others, even their enemies. They would probably wish they were back in the boat when they experienced the persecution of the early church.

 

The Great Shepherd teaches us courage by showing us that we can rely on His ability to do what we cannot.

 

What we can do is trust. And if we can trust, we can love, serve, forgive, give, not judge, be kind, gentle, and good. If our minds are twisted up with fear then we cannot. Fear is the flesh telling us that this course is no good. Jesus won’t calm the storm or feed us or heal our sinful selves. However, it is the flesh that is so deadly afraid of the life of the Trinity, for that life means the end of the flesh, as one writer put it, your troublesome inmate.