The Amazing Christ

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If you have your Bibles, I invite you to turn to Mark chapter 6 and find your place at verse 30.
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Mark chapter 6, beginning at verse 30.
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We're actually going to read to the end of the chapter because I have the outlandish idea that I'm going to get through all of this tonight.
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And I hear the laughter.
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What's funny is because we're on our third week, I am doing Colossians 3.16 again Sunday.
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I have more to say and I just thought about it, had a few people say, we want to hear what you have to say, so I'm doing it again.
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I just sit down, I start writing, I start studying, and it's like so much comes out.
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But there's a reason for my at least wanting to read this tonight, even if we don't make it through our exegesis of it all.
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I do want us to read because I think these two stories are connected in their purpose.
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Because what we've come to tonight is we've come to two of the most commonly remembered events in the life of Christ.
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Outside of the birth of Christ, which we celebrate at Christmas, and the death, burial, and resurrection which we celebrate at Easter, probably the two other most celebrated things that people remember about Jesus is that he fed the 5,000 and he walked on water.
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I mean, you think about even that phrase, walking on water, has become so tied to somebody doing something miraculous.
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The movie Tombstone comes to my mind after Wyatt Earp goes out and wins the gunfight and he's done this seeming miraculous thing.
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The person who's playing Doc Holliday says, well, where's Wyatt? And he says, he's over there walking on water.
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The idea was he had done something miraculous.
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And so walking on water and feeding the 5,000 are just two events that are so intimately tied to the miracle works of Christ.
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And so I want to show tonight what I think is the parallel and why these two are often so connected in our mind and why we see them connected in the Gospel of Mark.
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So we're going to read, again, picking up at verse 30, which is actually the apostles returning from their missionary journey.
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If you remember, they had been sent out on a missionary journey.
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There was the interlude narrative, which was the story of John the Baptist's death because of the situation with King Herod.
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We talked about that last time.
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And now we are at the apostles return, beginning at verse 30.
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So let's read.
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It says, the apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught.
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And he said to them, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.
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For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat.
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And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves.
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Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them.
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And when he went ashore, he saw a great crowd.
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He had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
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And he began to teach them many things.
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And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, this is a desolate place and the hour is now late.
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Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.
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But he answered them, you give them something to eat.
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And they said to him, shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat? And he said to them, how many loaves do you have? Go and see.
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And when they had found out, they said, five and two fish.
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Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass.
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So they sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties.
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And taking the five loaves and two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people.
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And he divided the two fish among them all, and they all ate and were satisfied.
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And they took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish.
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And those who ate the loaves were 5,000 men.
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Now, we move immediately to the next portion of verse 45 with Mark's favorite word, which is immediately.
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Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side to Bethsaida while he dismissed the crowd.
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And after he had taken leave of them, he went up the mountain to pray.
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And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea and he was alone on the land.
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And he saw that they were making headway painfully for the wind was against them.
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And about the fourth watch of the night, he came to them walking on the sea.
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He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out for they all saw him and were terrified.
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But immediately he spoke to them and said, Take heart, it is I do not be afraid.
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And he got into the boat with them and the wind ceased and they were utterly astounded for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were darkened.
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Notice there in verse 52 that it mentions again the feeding.
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This is why I think there's a connection here in verse 52.
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He mentions the loaves first fifty three when they had crossed over, they came to the land at Gennesaret and moored to the shore.
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And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was.
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And wherever he came in villages, cities or countrysides, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment.
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And as many as touched it were made well.
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May God add his blessing to the reading and to the hearing of his word.
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I've entitled tonight's lesson, The Amazing Christ, The Amazing Christ.
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And, we are here at the portion of Mark's gospel where we are confronted with two more miracles by Christ which are, for lack of any better term, two more amazing miracles.
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We have already seen Jesus do amazing things.
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We have seen Jesus calm the storm by merely speaking to it.
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And you'll remember how the disciples responded.
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They responded in fear because Jesus calmed the storm.
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We have seen Jesus, thank you brother, we have seen Jesus calm the storm.
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The people were afraid, the disciples were afraid.
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We've seen Jesus raise the dead with the daughter of Jairus.
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We've seen Jesus heal the woman without even speaking to her.
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She just touching the hem of his garment.
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We see a reference to that here as that was, she's not the only person that happened to.
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If you notice at the end of what we just read, it said that whoever touched the hem of his garment, that's what they wanted to do because power was going out from him.
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This miraculous, healing, amazing, miracle working power of our Lord Jesus Christ.
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And this is something that just, in my own mind and estimation, is something we have truly stepped away from in many areas in the modern church.
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And that is we've stepped away from our real confidence in the supernatural.
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Because we have become so, I wanna say fascinated, but that's not the right word.
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We've become so confident in our understanding of the natural.
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Right, if I said Moses parted the sea, people would have trouble with that.
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But if I said a meteor hit the sea and it parted the sea, okay, we know meteors do hit.
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We know meteors create tidal waves.
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We know that happens, therefore, not a big deal, right? And so you understand what I'm saying is we've become functional naturalists.
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When we call ourselves Christians, and Christianity is supposed to be supernaturalism.
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And not that we have to add an ism to everything we believe, but we are supernaturalists.
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We believe that there are things outside of the natural.
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And I wasn't gonna make this a big part of tonight's message, but I did do something on my podcast this week.
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I did a review of a movie that's about a demon possession.
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And the movie is really good.
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It's called Nefarious.
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It was made this year, put out by a Christian company, Soledad Gloria Pictures put it out.
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It's a little scary because it has to do with the demon possession.
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But the best part of the movie, spoiler alert, I'm gonna spoil one part of the movie.
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The best part of the movie, for me, was they brought in a priest to talk to this man who said he was demon possessed.
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And the priest came in, he had a rainbow colored stole.
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And I knew it, I called it as soon as I saw it.
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I said, that's not a real Christian guy.
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They're making the point that this is a guy because he came in with his rainbow stole.
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And he said, oh don't call me father, just call me Lou, right? He was so cool.
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Just call me Lou.
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And he walks up to the demon possessed man.
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And the demon possessed man is at first afraid of him.
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You know, thinking that he's real.
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And when the guy says, you're not demon possessed, that's not real.
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We don't believe that anymore.
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And the demon was like, we're friends.
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Like the demon became friends with the false teacher.
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Because he says, you're saying exactly what I want you to say.
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You've convinced the world we're not real.
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And what's the old saying? The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world he doesn't exist.
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Right? The greatest trick Satan pulls is convincing us that there is no such thing as the supernatural.
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That all we are is essentially just like the animals.
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All we are are soulless creatures who one day we're going to die and go back to the earth.
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And nothing's going to happen.
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There's no judgment, there's no heaven, there's no hell, there's no nothing.
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Right? And that's the idea that so many people live with this anti-supernatural Christianity.
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Where there are no things like angels and demons.
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There are no things like heaven and hell.
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There are no things like miracles.
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And beloved, I hate to say it, but so much of reformed theology promotes this idea of the high cerebralism.
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The idea that we can know so much.
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And when we know so much, we often begin to move away from the supernatural aspects.
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Nothing takes on a supernatural quality anymore.
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Because we've figured everything out.
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If you don't believe in the supernatural, then your view of Christ will be completely wrong.
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If you don't believe in miracles, your view of Christ will be completely wrong.
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Because Christ was a miracle working Savior.
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And I can't help but to tell you this story, this first story that we're going to study.
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I have in my mind a memory about this story.
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The story of the feeding of the 5,000.
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And I think I've told this before.
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If you've taken classes with the academy, I know I've told it in the academy before.
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But I remember listening to John Dominic Crossan.
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John Dominic Crossan is one of the teachers from the Jesus Seminar.
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And if you're not familiar with the Jesus Seminar, the Jesus Seminar was a group of people who were scholars.
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And they were legitimate scholars in the sense that they were studied men.
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But they were liberal theologians.
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And they had come to the conclusion that many of the things that the Bible says about Jesus did not actually happen.
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That the Bible embellishes these stories.
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They even had a meeting that they would have.
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This is what the Jesus Seminar was.
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Where they would meet together to discuss and debate which stories of the Bible were true.
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And which stories were embellished.
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And which stories were just plain made up.
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And they would have different colored stones that they would put out.
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That's how they voted.
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Like if it was a this color stone meant they believed the story was true.
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This color stone meant the story was possible.
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This color stone meant the story was not possible.
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And that's how they would vote.
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Very weird.
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Very cryptic.
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Very cult-like.
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But that's how they would do this voting.
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And they would come to the conclusion as to whether or not these stories were true.
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Anyway, John Dominic Crossan was teaching on the story of the feeding of the 5,000.
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And this is what he said.
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He said, it's a parable dummy.
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I remember those exact words because that's the words that he said.
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But he wasn't calling the audience a dummy.
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He was calling himself a dummy.
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He said, I think to myself when I read this, I say, don't you know that's a parable dummy? That's not a true story.
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It's a parable.
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Because what Jesus is actually doing is Jesus is not taking five loaves of fish or five loaves of bread and two fish.
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I've never seen a loaf of fish.
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But five loaves of bread and two fish.
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And turning them into more.
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What he's doing is he's taking the people who brought food and he's convincing them to share with the people who didn't bring food.
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And what we have is the miracle of ethical sharing.
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It's a wonderful socialist miracle.
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Where the haves shared with the have-nots.
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And therefore it becomes the miracle of ethics rather than the miracle of creation and multiplication by divine power.
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And you see how that would be appealing to the anti-supernaturalist.
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To the person who's looking for something to believe in but they don't want to believe in that which they can't wrap their minds around.
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The supernatural.
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Because I'm going to talk about it in a minute.
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I don't know how this looked.
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Like what was happening? Was Jesus picking up a loaf of bread? They'd take it from him and he'd look back and there's another one.
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They'd look back and there's another one.
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I mean I couldn't help but, I wouldn't look away.
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I'd want to know where the next one was coming from.
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I would have to know.
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One story, really terrible story, that grew up in the 1800s was that Jesus had filled a cave with bread and fish prior to this event because he knew what was going to happen.
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He had predicted, planned for this.
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And what he was doing was he was wearing a big flowing robe that had a train on it.
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And the men behind him would open the train and feed him fish and loaves and he would pass them out.
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And it was like David Copperfield feeds the 5,000.
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Now as a magician, or former magician, I didn't do that.
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Part of me is like, that's an interesting idea.
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But I know that's not what happened.
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And how blasphemy, how much blasphemy there is in thinking that's what happened.
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In thinking that Jesus lied.
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Because you know what? If it was an ethical miracle, like John Dominic Crossan said, that just means the text is wrong.
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But if Jesus has a robe where men are hidden under it, like you see when the kids want to get into the movie and they crawl and put two or three people on top and wear the trench coat and the glasses.
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I'm talking about the old picture of kids sneaking into the theater.
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If Jesus has got a robe with men behind him feeding him fish and loaves, that's not a miracle.
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That's a lie.
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And that's Jesus convincing a crowd of something that isn't true.
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And if that's what someone believes, they not only have a false Christ, they have a lying and blasphemous Christ.
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And what a terrible thing to consider.
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So I throw all that out to you simply to say this miracle has had so many strange interpretations.
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I just want us to take the text for what it says.
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And I want us to note one other thing before we go through it.
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This is the only miracle other than the resurrection that is in all four Gospels.
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There's no other miracle that Jesus did that is recorded, even the walking on water.
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Luke doesn't mention that.
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Why? I don't know.
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Like, I was like, when I got, when I was studying, and I was like, did Luke say that? And I went and looked.
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No, he didn't.
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I like even looked it up, like make sure I wasn't.
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Luke doesn't mention.
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Why? But Luke mentions a ton of other stuff.
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I mean, Luke, if it weren't for Luke, we wouldn't have many of the parables, the prodigal son, all that stuff that's only in Luke.
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Luke's got plenty.
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But it's amazing that there's only two miracles that make all four Gospels.
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It's the miracle of the resurrection, which obviously is in all four Gospels, and the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000.
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Which means, at least from the most basic sense, this story was so profound that every one of the Gospel writers felt the necessity to include it in his Gospel.
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There's something about this narrative that is important enough that all four of them would put it in their Gospel, and it'd be recorded four times.
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And the consistencies are awesome.
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Now, there are some things that are a little different.
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Like in John's story, it's actually a kid's lunch.
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Like the five loaves and two fish aren't even the disciples.
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It's like, here's this boy with five loaves and two fish, which I think is kind of weird.
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Like, Mom packed him a lunch, and we're gonna take his food.
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Okay, that's fine.
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And in Matthew's Gospel, he says it was just the men who were counted.
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So, like, if you go back in parallel, Mark mentions that it's 5,000 men, but in Matthew, it's like it's 5,000 men plus women and children.
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So, Jesus didn't feed 5,000.
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Jesus fed 5,000 men plus what we could only assume would have at least a one-woman-per-man situation Most likely, their wives were there.
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So, there's 10,000.
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And if each of them had a child, there's another 5,000 if each pair had a child.
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And my assumption is we're looking at at least 15,000 people that Jesus is feeding with five loaves and two fish.
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This is miraculous.
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I mean, it's miraculous to do what he did.
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It's even more miraculous when you begin to compound everything.
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Every gospel writer mentions it.
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Matthew mentions it's just men that's 5,000.
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There's 15,000 plus people here.
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This is a huge deal.
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So, let's go back up to verse 30 and just walk our way through the narrative.
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It says the apostles returned to Jesus.
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By the way, this is the first time in Mark they're called the apostles.
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The term apostolos is used earlier when they're sent out.
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That's what the word apostle means, to be sent.
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But they're not called apostles.
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It says he sent them out, apostolos.
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He did this in that sense, verbal.
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But here, this is a title.
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So, now they have gone out and they're back and Mark refers to them as the apostles.
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So, this is just a point to say this is the first time we see that in Mark's gospel.
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The apostles returned.
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They told him all that they had said and done or had done and taught.
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And he said to them, Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while, for many were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat.
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And they went away in a boat to a desolate place by themselves.
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Just right there before we get into the next part.
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This, as I've said over the last few weeks, this is the debrief.
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That's what I think is the best way to describe it.
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Those who have been in the military use that term after an event has happened.
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After you've been on a mission, you come back and you debrief.
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You talk about what happened.
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And it tells us that.
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It says they came back talking about what they had done, what they had taught.
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Jesus is talking to them.
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He's ministering to them.
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He's also giving them an opportunity for rest.
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And this is important because what we're going to see next is rest doesn't come.
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Because people won't let them rest.
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Rest is important.
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Not that this is the point of tonight's lesson but coming away from the rigors of life and especially ministry taking times of break is important.
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I am thankful that my fellow elders here and the church offers me time during the year.
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Next month I'm going to be away for a couple of weeks.
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By the way, Wednesday night, we will not be meeting on Wednesday nights in July.
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We're just not going to be meeting.
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Feel free to have people in your home.
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That's what we did last year and a few of you had people in your homes and we thought that was great.
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Andy is doing the bulletin now.
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If you want to have somebody in your home and you want to invite the church he can put it in the bulletin for you if you're interested in doing that.
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We're not going to have a regular Wednesday night.
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Breaks are good.
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It's good to have times to relax and rest.
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Jesus has that for his disciples.
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He takes them away to a place for rest.
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Verse 33 Now many saw them going and recognized them and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them.
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So the people are not wanting Jesus and his disciples to have a time of rest.
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They're wanting them to continue ministering.
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Why? Because they're doing miraculous things.
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Even the disciples now have been doing miraculous things.
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If you go back up in the passage it says Jesus gave them the power to heal.
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Jesus gave them the power to cast out demons.
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So now they're not only seeing Jesus do these things they're seeing the disciples do these things.
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And they don't want them to stop.
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Verse 34 When he went ashore he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them.
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Now just for a moment.
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Words are important and the word choices are important.
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I want to ask because I didn't check beforehand.
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Does the King James say compassion brother? It was moved with a compassion.
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That word we've seen it earlier in the Gospel of Mark the word is to have an emotional care.
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That's where the word splatna, we talked about that meaning the guts.
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This is the idea of being moved with compassion, being moved with care.
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Have you ever seen somebody that was just so desperate that your heart just goes out to them like you see them and you care for them? Right? Well this is Christ but Christ's care for them is so much more than we can comprehend.
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Like our little cares and concerns and our little bit of compassion is nothing compared to the compassion of our King.
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Because I can tell you what I think is happening.
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And again I'm exercising a little bit of sanctified imagination.
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But what I think is happening is I think the disciples are like they need to go.
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We are tired.
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And I base this upon what they say right after this.
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If you notice it says when he went ashore he saw them, had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
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And he began to teach them.
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And when it grew late his disciples said this is a desolate place, the hour is late, send them away.
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Right? Send them away.
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Jesus, we had a long ministry time.
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We're back now.
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We've gone off to our time to take a break.
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You were teaching us, talking to us.
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Here comes the crowd.
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You've preached all afternoon.
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It's getting dark.
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Send them away so that they can go get themselves something to eat.
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The shops are going to be closed soon.
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They're going to be closing the Crystal and the Taco Bell.
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You gotta get them out before the places close.
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And let us have some time to rest.
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Let us have some time to relax.
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It's been a long season of ministry.
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And that's not wrong.
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To be clear, it's not wrong to want rest.
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It's not wrong to need a time of respite for oneself.
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But Jesus chooses not to do that.
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Why? Because he cares for them.
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It says, going back to the passage, where it says he has compassion on them.
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And he has compassion because, the text tells us why.
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Because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
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Now here's the thing.
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They had plenty of shepherds.
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But their shepherds were not good shepherds.
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They had plenty of Pharisees who were willing to tell them all kinds of things that they should be doing.
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Binding up burdens and putting them on their shoulders that they were not willing to carry.
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We know there was no shortage of shepherds in Israel.
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But Jesus said they were blind guides.
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Jesus said they were wolves in sheep's clothing.
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And Jesus knew.
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I want you to think about this.
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When Jesus goes into Jerusalem, and I know this is way later in the text, but when Jesus goes into Jerusalem and he says O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who stoned the prophets, how often I would have gathered your children under my wings and yet you were unwilling.
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Who's he talking to? Because if you exegete that text, he says I would have gathered your children but you were unwilling.
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Is he talking to the city? I believe he's talking to the leaders.
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Because it's the leaders who had kept the people in darkness.
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It was the Pharisees who had kept the people in darkness.
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How often I would have gathered them but you were unwilling.
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You will cross sea and land to make one proselyte and all you do is make a man twice as much a son of hell as yourself.
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Didn't Jesus say that about the Pharisees? Their shepherds were bad shepherds and Jesus says I am the good shepherd.
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And so he's moved with compassion seeing these people.
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He's moved with compassion because they're sheep without a shepherd and they're coming to him.
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They're coming to him and so he does not send them away.
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Instead, he teaches them many things.
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He spends the afternoon teaching and then it gets dark or begins to get dark.
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And so his disciples came to him, verse 35 and said this is a desolate place and the hour is now late.
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Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.
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But, verse 37, Jesus answered them you give them something to eat.
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Now just for a moment, think about the implication of that because Jesus knows they don't have anything to give.
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Jesus knows what's in their knapsack if you will.
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Remember what he sent them away with? Nothing, right? He says when you go don't take money and don't take coins in your purse and don't take an extra jacket and don't take as the message of the Bible says, don't take your comb or your toothbrush.
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They don't have anything.
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And yet Jesus says you feed them.
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And their immediate response is the same naturalistic response we would have given.
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Remember I said naturalism is an issue for us.
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Well it was an issue for them because when Jesus said you feed them they weren't thinking miracle, they were thinking practical.
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They weren't thinking what God can do, they were thinking what they could do.
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They weren't thinking about the impossible that God makes possible, they were thinking about the impossible that's just impossible.
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Because look at what they say.
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They answered and said shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat? Now I'm assuming they didn't have 200 denarii.
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They may have, but that's a year's salary.
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That's approximately a year's salary.
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A denarii is a day's wage.
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So that's 200 days wage.
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You count the Sabbath that's almost a year.
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Maybe 8 months, 9 months, 10 months out of the year.
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This is a lot of money.
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Remember we said thousands of people, not just 5,000, probably 15 or more.
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They're saying even if we had a year's salary, Jesus, we can't feed these people.
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We can't do that.
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What are we supposed to do? He said how many loaves do you have? Go and see.
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When they found out, they said 5 and 2 fish.
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Now very quickly, I've shown you several times throughout this study of Mark, we would go to other passages and I would say there are times where there's inconsistencies and we have to harmonize.
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One great thing about this, I said it's in all four Gospels, and it's always 5 loaves and 2 fish.
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It's always that.
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That's cool.
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Not that I would expect any different, but some of this, it's always 5 loaves and 2 fish.
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There's a great consistency among the narrative here.
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Then Jesus or he, it just says personal pronoun he, then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass.
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They sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties.
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I think this is how they ended up knowing that it was 5,000, by the way.
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They actually put them in groups.
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Taking the 5 loaves and 2 fish and I'm just in my mind, I picture this and as I said, I just can't help but having this imagination.
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It's like my life, I love imagining things.
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They say you shouldn't try to imagine what Jesus looks like.
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You could end up getting into weird places, but I can just imagine Jesus in this moment because it says and taking up the 5 loaves and 2 fish, he looked up to heaven and there's a great comparison here to the Lord's Supper because in the Lord's Supper he blessed, he broke, he gave.
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We do that every Sunday.
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We bless, we break, we give.
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It says here having said a blessing he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people and he divided the 2 fish among them all and they all ate and were satisfied.
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We shouldn't get over that.
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We shouldn't look at that like, oh, it's mundane.
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We've heard the story before.
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It's not mundane.
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It's supernatural because somehow 5 loaves and MacArthur did this thing with this where he talked about it was actually 5 crackers and then it was like pickled fish and I don't know how he knows that but he described how the fish would have been prepared at the time and how it wouldn't have been much that it wasn't like 5 loaves.
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You think of like a loaf of bread, like I think of like wonder bread, like when Jennifer goes to the store she brings home a loaf of bread.