Christ’s Banquet for Believers

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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So we're moving on to something that's a lot more positive than last week's passage.

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If you were here last week, I know there were a few of you that weren't. We had a very difficult text, at least

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I had a very difficult text to preach. And the reason for that was it was just a dire passage of Scripture, probably one of the most troubling sections of narrative in the whole

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New Testament. We looked at the beheading of John the Baptist. And if you recall, if you were here last week, that last week's text was just filled to the very top with dysfunction.

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It was filled to the very top with immorality and perversion and murder, there we are, and darkness.

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And if you were to summarize all that we looked at last week in just a couple of quick sentences, I might rightly call it this,

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Herod's devilish banquet. That's what we looked at yesterday. Just the total sin, or the total depravity of sin.

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The very ends of human wickedness. And so as I came to our study today, our text for today, frankly, my soul was longing for something that would pick us up from last week.

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Something that would lift our spirits. Something that we could look at besides sin and death and dysfunction in the world.

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And I was so glad that God in his good providence has actually given us something that's almost the exact opposite of what we looked at last week.

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Last week he took us to the very bottom of the barrel. This week he takes us to the very heavenlies with God.

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Last week, God gave us man. He gave us the sinfulness of man. The wretchedness of man.

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And this week, God gives us the goodness of God. The sweetness of Christ. The very beauty and excellency of the

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Lord Jesus. And as we turn to our text today, what we're going to do is we're going to find the disciples.

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They're coming back from a mission. They had been sent out two by two, if you remember.

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They had performed miracles. They had cast out demons. They had preached a message of repentance.

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And they were coming back. And Christ is going to take them to a secluded place on the northern shore of the

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Sea of Galilee. And as we read our text, we're going to find, as we've heard already, that he was met with a large crowd.

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But he's going to have, rather than what Herod would do to the crowds or what Herod did to John the

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Baptist, he's going to have compassion on the crowds. He's going to teach them. He's going to feed them. And what we're going to see is this.

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It's something that's just refreshingly opposite from last week's passage. And this is the big idea of the text.

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In stark contrast to Herod's evil banquet, here we're going to see a righteous banquet hosted by Christ.

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And we're going to see that all of the blessings that Christ himself gives to those who come to his banquet.

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We're going to see Christ's goodwill as God and Savior. And that he seeks to give.

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It is his will to give every good and perfect thing to those who love him.

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To those whom he loves. Every good thing for life and godliness. So last week we got

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Herod's devilish banquet. This week we get Christ's perfect, good, righteous banquet.

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And I'm so excited to bring this text to you. I am just overjoyed that we get to look at something that is excellent and good.

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As compared to the difficulties of last week. And so we're going to begin. Come with me now.

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And begin at verse 30. Mark chapter 6 and verse 30. We read this.

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We're going to read the first three verses. 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.

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And rest, 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 the boat to a desolate place by themselves. So the disciples had just returned from this mission.

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Preaching two by two the message of repentance. Healing the sick. Performing miracles. We read about Christ's send off of these disciples in verses 7 through 13 of the same chapter.

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Mark chapter 6. And what we see is that the disciples were met with great success. After all, it was the news of this ministry that had made it back to John the

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Baptist. And what had pricked his conscience when it reminded him of John the Baptist. It was a tremendous success as far as ministry successes go.

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And in verse 30, when the disciples returned, they had much to tell Christ. As they rejoiced in all that they had accomplished.

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And we see something very similar to this in Luke chapter 10 and verse 17. A similar response that when

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Christ sent out the 72 disciples. Again, they came back.

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When they returned, they were filled with joy. They said, even the demons are subjected to us.

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And you'll remember that Christ said, don't rejoice that even the demons are subjected to you. Rejoice that your names are written in heaven.

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They were overcome. And isn't this often the case when we go out. We really, when we give all of ourselves to some service of the

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Lord. That's why I love hanging out with Steve when he comes back after camp. Because the joy is contagious.

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Or this year we have a sister and some brothers who have just come back rejoicing.

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The people that live with him would probably know best. Just the joy that comes with giving all of your heart in service to Christ.

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And that's exactly what these disciples do. They come back rejoicing. Their souls satisfied.

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And in verse 31, Christ recognizes something that perhaps the disciples did not recognize.

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They were not aware of. It's good to serve God wholeheartedly. And to rejoice in the fruits of the service.

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But it's also good and necessary, Christ shows us, to get away from the crowds.

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To go to a solitary place. To rest. To be alone with Christ. As one commentator puts it, the greater the demands, the greater the need to be alone with Jesus.

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To be accountable to him alone. The first prerequisite of being a disciple of Christ is being with Christ.

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Being with Jesus. So Christ insists on this. And the language that Mark uses, you know

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I love language. At the end of verse 31, implies that the disciples are to go, he says, to a desolate place.

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To an empty place. To an unpopulated place. Like the desert. Or the wilderness. Or if you live in Alberta, maybe to the mountains.

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It's to get away. Get away from the city. Get away from the crowds. And it's here that they're to settle down and take a breath.

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And again, Mark uses a word for rest that is just packed with meaning.

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It's to breathe. It's to be refreshed. It's to be reinvigorated.

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Paul uses that same Greek word for rest in Philemon verse 20. When he says to Philemon, he says,

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Yes, brother, I want some benefit from you in the Lord. Refresh my heart in Christ.

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That's the kind of rest that Christ wants to give his disciples. Refreshment in the heart.

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In Christ. And so as the people scurry about them. Coming and going. Making demands of Christ and his disciples.

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Jesus actually takes them away. That their hearts might be refreshed in him. And so they get in a boat.

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And we're not told where exactly they went. If we look in the Gospel of Luke chapter 9 and verse 10. We're told that they made their way to Bethsaida.

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It's a little fishing village that's located on the northern shore of the Sea of Galilee. If you're looking in the map in the back of your

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Bible. It's 10 kilometers east of Capernaum. Where Christ called his home base.

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And there they went to rest. To be alone with the Lord Jesus Christ.

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Now. What I intend to do is I'm going to take little bits and pieces from the text.

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We're going to expound it. And then I'm going to show you some realities. So I'm going to show you the first two realities that we see.

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Just from these first three verses. And as you'll see as we make our way through it.

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All of these truths are two dimensional. And what I mean by this is this. I have a six point sermon.

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I'm going to work very hard to be faithful and to honor your time. As my wife looks concerned in the back of the room.

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But what we're going to do is it's going to be two dimensional. There is an earthly dimension to what we see

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Christ doing here. And there's an eternal dimension to what Christ sees here. So I'm first going to point our attention at an earthly dimension.

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The first truth at the outset of this banquet that Christ is throwing is this.

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That Christ gives us earthly rest. Christ gives us earthly rest.

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From the very beginning of creation. God designed that his people would learn to rest.

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To be still. To know God. And to come to him alone. In Genesis 1 and 2.

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We read that God spent six days creating the world. Ex nihilo. What that means is everything out of absolutely nothing.

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And he did all of this by the word of his power. And then in chapter 2.

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After those six days were over. On the seventh day. God rested we're told from all of his works.

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He set aside the seventh day to be holy unto the Lord. Now if you've ever read that.

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It begs the question. Why did God rest? Did God need to rest?

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Did speaking suns and moons and planets and stars and oceans and animals.

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Bring God to the point of exhaustion that he had to rest? Or was he doing something else?

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As we continue to see revelation unfold. What we learn is that as God rested on the seventh day.

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That he made that day holy. He was creating a pattern. He was developing a pattern for his people.

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And it looks forward. We don't really find it until Moses. God's interaction with Moses and the nation of Israel.

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But what we find beginning in the book of Exodus. Is that this seventh day of rest was to pattern.

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To be a pattern for the nation of Israel. A pattern of rest and of worship.

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And some people today might say that the seventh day is a creation ordinance. That it applies for all time.

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That we are to honor the Sabbath day. Friday evening to Saturday evening. In obedience to the ten commandments.

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But what we see is that actually it was a pattern that God set forward. But it was not enacted in law truly until Exodus chapter 31.

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In verses 12 and 13. And if you know anything about signs. Daryl let me put you on the spot.

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When God flooded the whole world. And then after the flood water subsided. And Noah came out of the ark.

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God gave Noah something. As a promise that he would never ever flood the earth again.

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Do you know what it was? He gave him a rainbow. It was a sign of a covenant.

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It was the sign of the Noahic covenant. When God made a covenant with Abraham. He gave him a sign.

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Does anyone know what that sign was? It was the sign of circumcision.

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When God made a covenant with the nation of Israel. What was the sign? The sign was the Sabbath day.

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And so it was a specific sign to a specific people. Exodus 31 verses 12 and 13 says this.

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And the Lord said to Moses. You are to speak to the people of Israel and say. Above all you shall keep my

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Sabbaths. Why? For this is a sign between me and you. Throughout your generations.

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That you may know that I the Lord sanctify you. Now we can quickly get stuck in the weeds here.

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If we just talked about the Sabbath. What I'm trying to show you is this. That God has placed such emphasis on our need for rest.

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That he even made it one of the defining covenant features. Or signs between him and the nation of Israel.

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Now we're no longer under the Mosaic covenant. We're under the new covenant. As such we're not bound by strict adherence to the seventh day

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Sabbath law. Or any other old covenant laws. We read that in passages like Ephesians 2 and verse 15.

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Where it says that Christ has abolished the law of commandments expressed in ordinances. Hebrews tells us that the old covenant has been made obsolete.

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In Romans we read that we are no longer under law but under grace. But what we see is that God has always valued rest.

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And he values rest even now in the lives of his believers. We see that by what Christ is doing with his disciples in this passage.

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Christ is concerned. Still concerned. Sabbath or no Sabbath. That we not only serve him faithfully.

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But that we go to a quiet place and to be with him. Like the disciples we may not immediately recognize our own need.

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But it's there. And we need it more than we even realize. Especially in the busy world in which we live.

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We need to be brothers and sisters. We need to be a people who go alone to be with Christ.

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Period. To rest. To be still. To be away from our phones.

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To be away from our friends. To be away from the busyness of it all. To seek God's face.

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For hours. To be alone with God even for days. To be alone with our

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Bibles open in front of us. And to drink deeply from the unfathomable depths of God's word.

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To walk with God as we pour his word into our souls. And as we pour our souls out to him in prayer.

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But dear friends, we know what the problem is. Don't we? And that is this.

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That we often do not do this. That it does not describe our lives. That we would say, if we were to count, for instance, if I were to ask you.

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And I'm not going to ask you. But before God, if we were to count how many hours. Or how many minutes.

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Or how many seconds this week you were alone with Christ. Just you and him and his word.

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What would that look like? We don't have time. Or we don't make time to be alone with Christ.

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To be refreshed by him. And so what invariably happens is that we live compromised

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Christian lives. Our spirit is willing, but our flesh is weak. And it's made weaker still by our insistence on living long stretches.

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Without singularly devoting time to spend with the God of the universe.

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Our maker. Our creator. In whom we have bold and confident access through his son.

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I recently read a story about a man who sat under a pastor. And like we do during announcements.

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The pastor was describing the months of ministry that was to come. And he made this comment.

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He said, I'm not going to take any vacation this summer. Because the devil never does.

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And so neither would he. The devil doesn't take a break. I'm not going to take a break. But this man that listened.

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That was sitting under this preaching. That was sitting under this announcement. He was really interested by the statement.

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And so he went home. And he began to read his New Testament. And just to see what the

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Gospels have to say about this attitude towards rest. About Christ's attitude towards rest.

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And what he found is that in Christ's three years. Just three years of active ministry.

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There were mentioned ten distinct periods of rest and dedicated prayer.

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And we know that. If we were to go through the Gospels. To find all the times where Christ woke up early to be alone.

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When he woke up. When it was still dark. To be alone. When he went to the

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Garden of Gethsemane. As was his practice. To be alone with God. Ten distinct periods of rest and dedication and prayer.

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And this was in addition to Christ's nightly rest. And the Sabbath rest. But it's funny.

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We can look at stories like that. And be like, we would never be like that guy. Nor would we ever follow anything like that guy.

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But what we find is that this is also a trap that we can fall into. It's a trap that people that we admire have fallen into.

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People who have a deep grasp of the Gospel. People who should know better. You hear us often.

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We often quote about Charles Spurgeon. You know we love Charles Spurgeon. And Steve and I, when it's just him and I.

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We laugh hysterically at just the giftedness. And frankly the weirdness of Charles Spurgeon.

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And one of the things about the life of Charles Spurgeon was this. He was a man with a tremendous work ethic.

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If you want to think about this. For decades, he lived and ministered 18 hours a day.

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He left 8 hours a day for sleep and recreation. And so during those 18 hours of the day, he would preach multiple times per week.

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He ran an orphanage. He ran a pastor's college. He would read 6 books a week.

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He would take Sundays off so that he could preach a Sunday message. He would often not prepare his

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Sunday sermon until Sunday morning. And sometimes after spending the night asking his wife, what am

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I to do for tomorrow's sermon? It's funny, isn't it, Steve? And this was

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Charles Spurgeon reading these 6 books a week. And then on top of that, writing 40 books over the course of his lifetime.

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Well, it's not a surprise that he died very early. He died in his mid -50s. But one of the things that is almost as over top as his life is this.

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That on one evening, it was a Wednesday evening, he was speaking to a gathering of people in the

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Crystal Palace. This is without big TV screens, without any amplification.

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And after preaching to this 23 ,000 people, just with his own voice, he went home and he fell asleep.

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And one of his biographers writes this. He says, the exertion of preaching to such a huge audience must have been great.

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Although, C .H. Spurgeon tells us that he did not at the close feel conscious of any fatigue.

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But that Wednesday night, he went to bed and slept continuously until Friday morning.

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Some 36 hours. An experience he had at no other period in his life. All through Thursday, Mrs.

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Spurgeon went at intervals to look at her husband. But finding him sleeping peacefully, she wisely let him rest until nature should be satisfied.

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He slept for 36 hours straight because he had just been so hard on his body.

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Now, we laugh at this, but this is a dangerous trap that we often fall into ourselves.

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We run ourselves into the ground. But unlike Spurgeon, many of us are not spending several times studying our

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Bibles and seeking the Lord. But we spend those hours studying the world. And living amongst the people of the world.

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And focusing on the things of this world. But this text, brothers and sisters, is our call to return to resting in Christ.

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Like the disciples, do you go to be alone with Jesus? You must.

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You must. I think of a brother who had a wonderful strategy. A strategy that I would do well to model my life after.

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He said that he would take a chunk of time, maybe for you it's a Saturday morning, from 6 a .m.

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to noon. And he would say, that is my appointment time with Christ. It's going to go on my calendar.

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It's a recurring event. I'm going to do it every single week. And like I wouldn't cancel on heart surgery or an important visit with a specialist who's going to save my life.

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I'm not going to miss that time for the world. And he kept it. And he said that soon that became the most important time in his week.

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To the point that he became jealous to guard that time to be alone with Christ. Do you make time every day to be with Christ?

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Do you make time each week to just be alone and to commune with God? Jonathan Edwards.

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We often hear Jonathan Edwards spoken about. I think I spoke about him last week. But we don't often hear about his wife,

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Sarah Edwards. And he once said that the secret of his wife Sarah's godliness was the result of her resolve to get alone and spend time with Christ.

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He says this, he said, she hardly, this was her as a teenager. So young boys and girls, this could be you.

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She hardly cared for anything at those times except to meditate on him.

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She loved to be alone, walking in the fields, in the groves, and seems to have someone invisible always conversing with her.

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Dear ones, does this describe your life? If not, avail yourself of this blessing.

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So that's the earthly dimension. We're going to go now to the eternal dimension of this idea of rest.

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So not only does Christ give us earthly rest, but Christ gives us our eternal rest. We're going to move a little bit faster,

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I promise. In Matthew chapter 11 and verses 28 and 29, Christ calls each one of us, everyone.

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Everyone in this room, Christ calls to you. He says, come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you, what?

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And I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart, and you will find rest for your souls.

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What many modern Sabbatarians, those are people that celebrate the

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Sabbath religiously, do not realize is that Christ does not commend the

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Sabbath as a continuous law to observe, but he is the believer's ultimate Sabbath rest.

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Christ is the substance of the Sabbath. Paul relayed this to the

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Colossians, who were being confronted at that time by what we call the Colossian heresy. This idea that this pseudo -Jewish group was insisting on the strict observance of the

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Sabbath. And he said, therefore, let no one pass judgment on you in questions of food and drink or with regard to a festival or a new moon or a

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Sabbath. These are a shadow of the things to come, but the substance belongs to Christ.

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The Sabbath pointed to Christ. Christ is the substance of God's Sabbath rest.

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And so for everyone who comes to Christ by faith in him, he becomes our

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Sabbath rest. He becomes our Sabbath from striving for our own salvation. He becomes the end of our toiling to strive and to earn eternal life.

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Paul wrote to the Romans in speaking about the works -oriented Jews. Do you believe that you are still works -oriented?

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If you don't meditate on the gospel, if you don't regularly look to Christ, we all drift towards works.

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We all drift towards a performance -based righteousness. When we're doing well, we think that we're more saved.

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When we're not doing well, we think that we're less saved. But Paul says this to the Romans in Romans 10 in verse 3 and 4.

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He says, for being ignorant of the righteousness of God, the Jews, and seeking to establish their own, they did not submit to whose righteousness?

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To God's righteousness. For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to everyone who believes.

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And he says later in verse 9, if you confess with your mouth that Jesus Christ is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.

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It's reminiscent of Isaiah 30 in verse 15. Where he says, in returning and rest you shall be saved.

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But many are unwilling. It's possible that people in this room, some of you are unwilling to rest in Christ.

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You are unwilling to be right with him. You'd rather work, you'd rather strive, you'd rather toil, you'd rather do anything.

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But Christ calls you to find your rest in him. There was a man named

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William Grimshaw. And he was a pastor, a lost pastor.

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And I don't know what it is, but I just love reading stories about men that believe that they're called into ministry.

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That spend some time serving God as a minister, as an elder, as a pastor.

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And at some point discover that they are not saved. And such was the case with William Grimshaw.

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It was in 1731 that he entered the ministry. He lived in England. And because he felt that to be a clergyman would be a very respectful job, he entered into ministry service.

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And every Sunday, just faithfully, continuously, repetitively, religiously, he performed the duties with diligence.

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But he had no spiritual life or feeling whatsoever. He would read the prayers with seriousness.

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He would preach the sermons zealously, as zealously as he could.

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But he was not a believer. He thought he was a Christian, but he never knew the justifying power of Christ or the thrilling hope of eternal life that comes by saving faith in Christ.

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And so he labored. Picture this. A lost man behind the pulpit for 11 years, preaching and praying and reading and serving.

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If a man can be lost behind a pulpit for 11 years, how many people are lost in the pew for much longer than that?

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But he labored painstakingly as a blind man, leading some with vision and some who were blind.

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But after his death, he began to notice that all was not well with his soul.

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He realized that there was not true life in his being. And so he began to earnestly seek power over sin and to purify his heart.

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And he tried with some success to give up worldly pleasures and to avoid outward transgressions and sins.

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He fasted. He almost sounds like Martin Luther. He fasted. He kept a diary of his sins.

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He prayed prayers of vows and confessions. But the more that he tried to deal with the sin, the more he was confronted with the vileness of his own heart, the bitterness of sin, his utter inability to set himself right with God.

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He remained in this state, we're told, for years. Lost, wanting to be saved, striving to be saved, working and giving his best for years, but burdened with the guilt of his own sin, his own feelings of unworthiness.

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And then one day he went to a friend's house. And I can tell already that I like his friend, because his friend had a nice library, and in that library he had

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The Doctrine of Justification by John Owen and Precious Remedies Against Satan's Devices by Thomas Brooks.

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And as he leafed through these pages, his friends, I'm not sure if he let him read the whole book or if he just sat there by his bookshelf perusing, but he discovered the truths, the truth of Christ's substitutionary atonement.

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That Christ went to the cross, the righteous for the unrighteous, that he might bring us to God, that he went to the cross to be accursed on our behalf on that tree, that he might impute, oh, that glorious doctrine of double imputation, that he would impute his righteousness to us, and that our sin would be imputed to him.

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He would impute his perfect, God -pleasing, sin -erasing, heaven -admitting righteousness even to William Grimshaw.

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And as he discovered this for the first time, he discovered that it is by resting in Christ that one is saved.

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Yes, resting in Christ's active obedience, his perfect life, resting in his passive obedience on the cross.

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He learned the meaning of what I think is one of the sweetest English words in the whole English dictionary.

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Justification, standing before God, declared righteous, standing before God, and God does not have a frown on his face but a smile, perfect confidence, perfect peace, no judgment, no condemnation, standing before God, resting from all of your works by faith in Jesus Christ alone.

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So Grimshaw read these books, or looked into these books, and then he said this, he said, I was now more willing to renounce myself, every degree of fancied merit and ability, and to embrace

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Christ only, for my all in all. Oh, how many of you have embraced

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Christ as your all in all? You have given up striving, given up trying to earn merit before him, to establish your own righteousness, and you have just let go and fallen into the forgiving arms of Christ, the finished work of Christ, the person of Christ.

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It is not by toil, it's not by labor. I remember at one time having a conversation with my wife, and saying,

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I'm just trying to be a Christian. I think what I was trying to articulate is

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I just want to live a righteous life, but to be a Christian requires no trying.

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It requires resting in what Christ has done already for you. So we see resting.

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We'll look next at verse 33. Now many saw them going and recognized them all, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them.

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When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things.

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So just as Christ and his disciples are about to rest, it would seem that word had gotten out that they were going to Bethsaida.

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And so even before they could get to the place where they were going to be retreating, the crowds beat them, and they were awaiting them there.

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Now imagine for a moment that you are tired, or maybe even that you are with someone you know that they are tired, and you're just trying to bring them to Christ, just trying to bring them rest, and you see this crowd waiting for you.

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Now many of us would probably grow a little bit frustrated. If you think, you're messing with my plans.

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But what does Christ do? We're told that he responds with compassion. And this compassion that he responds to, it's a word that is only used of Christ's feeling towards someone.

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This compassion, it's a sense of empathy, of pity, of love, of concern.

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And why does he show them compassion? Why does he feel pity for these people? If we follow it down the line, he says this, he had compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

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Now, why would Christ use imagery like that? Sheep without a shepherd. For one, sheep were the most common livestock in Israel.

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And so maybe for us Alberta beef eaters, it would be like cows without a ranch.

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I'm not sure. I'm just winging it right now. But here you've got sheep without a shepherd.

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Certainly it's something they would have been familiar with, but there's more to it than that. If we study the lives of sheep, what we find is this, that sheep without a shepherd are often helpless.

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Sometimes I like the little rabbit trails that I go on as I study texts, and I try to study, can a sheep survive without a shepherd?

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Apparently it is possible in the perfect conditions. But outside of the perfect conditions, sheep are hapless.

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Sheep will be within a couple hundred meters of a flowing stream of water, and if they are not led to the water, they will die of thirst.

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Sheep need to be fed. Some sheep have fallen onto their backs and unable to get up or fallen on their backs in a mud puddle and have drowned in a shallow body of water like a deep mud puddle.

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Sheep need someone to come and to pick the bugs and the thistles out of their fur to keep them comfortable.

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If they are wounded, they need someone to bind their wounds. If they encounter a wolf or a bear or a lion, they're done unless there is a shepherd who is willing to lay down his life and protect the sheep.

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And so Christ looks with great affection on this crowd. They are people without a leader.

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They are people without a guide. They are helpless, lost, and confused.

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But this was contrary to God's plan from the beginning. Now I need to trim, and I'm going to trim a little bit out of here, but hopefully

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I make sense here still, that when Moses was about to die, as he led the people into the

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Promised Land or up to the Promised Land, he expressed concern at the nation of Israel's welfare.

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He says in Numbers 27, he says, Who shall go out before them and come in before them? Who shall lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the

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Lord may not be as a sheep that has no shepherd, or as sheep that have no shepherd?

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Now this was all according to God's foreordained plan to give the nation a new shepherd in the man

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Joshua. But what we find is that as a result of sin, the nation of Israel often was like this crowd, like a sheep without a shepherd.

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This idea of a sheep without a shepherd was spoken of when the wicked kings would bring their nation into foolish battles.

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We see that at one point in the Book of Chronicles, I think also in Kings. It's definitely used of the religious leaders who failed to care for God's flock, and perhaps one of the most famous ideas, and I know there's some of you in this room that aspire to the office of elder and shepherd and pastor, and might this never be so of us or of you, but in Ezekiel chapter 34 it says this,

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Son of man, verse 2, prophesy against the shepherds of Israel. Prophesy and say to them, even to the shepherds, thus says the

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Lord God, Ah, shepherds of Israel, who have been feeding yourselves, should not the shepherds feed the sheep?

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You eat the fat, you clothe yourselves with the wool, you slaughter the fat ones, but you do not feed the sheep.

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The weak you have not strengthened, the sick you have not healed, the injured you have not bound up, the strayed you have not brought back, the lost you have not sought, and with force and harshness you have ruled them.

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So they were scattered because there was no shepherd, and they became food for all the wild beasts.

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My sheep were scattered. They wandered over all the mountains, and on every high hill. My sheep were scattered over all the face of the earth with none to search or seek them.

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This is a condemnation. Now God is not talking about shepherds with literal sheep.

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He's talking about the leaders of the nation. They're fleecing the flock.

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They're ruling them harshly. They're not caring for their needs. But in the midst of all of this, a prophet,

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Jeremiah, in Jeremiah 3 .15. Again, if you aspire to this office, write this one down.

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It says, And I will give you shepherds after My own heart, who will feed you.

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Now feed you with what? Who will feed you with knowledge and understanding.

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There was a time when the nation was without shepherds, but Christ, or in this case,

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God, through Jeremiah, looked forward to a day when he would give not just one shepherd. We're going to hear about that in a minute, but shepherds after My own heart who would take the flock and feed them with knowledge and understanding.

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Now Christ's encounter with these crowds at Bethsaida anticipates the provision of shepherds for His people.

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And like the last example, there's two dimensions in the fulfillment of this. And so we'll look first at this.

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This is point number three, if you're following along in our heading. Christ gives us earthly shepherds.

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It was Christ's will from the beginning that when He would establish His church, when He said,

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I will build My church, that He was going to give that church shepherds after His own heart who would feed

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His flock with knowledge and understanding. In His goodness and in His kindness,

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God has given us, if we were to look in the New Testament, if you studied it all, this office of elder or of deacon,

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God has given us extensive instruction, not only on who should lead the church, but how they should lead the church and how they should not lead the church and how the church, the whole church, should deal with those who are poor or false shepherds.

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And we don't have time, for those of you who are in the Institute with me, you know that this is probably my wheelhouse.

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We don't have time to look at every passage. But for those of you who maybe weren't here at our last

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Statement of Faith class, we'll just summarize. Who is it that Christ has given to shepherd

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His church? The church, brothers and sisters, we read from Scripture, is to be led by a plurality of biblically qualified elders.

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That means multiple elders, not just one. It's not a one -man show. It's many men.

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And we're told about their qualifications. You want to know if you are under a good elder or a bad elder, a qualified elder or an unqualified or disqualified elder.

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1 Timothy 3 will tell you everything that you need to know. Follow that up by Titus 1 and 1

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Peter 5. And then contrary to the modern practice of appointing elders based on giftedness or charisma, what we find is that the character of the elders is king.

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It is primary. It is character, followed by the ability to teach. And the elders are to be helped by biblically qualified deacons.

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And the whole goal of the shepherd is just what we read in Jeremiah, to feed

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God's people with knowledge and understanding. They're to be devoted to the ministry of the word and prayer, of preaching and teaching the word and of praying for the flock.

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And they're not to be hirelings, but they're to give themselves fully.

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They're to lay down even their own lives for the sake of the flock. Now there are a number of allusions to this idea of shepherd and flock.

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I'm not going to go through all of them for the sake of time. I'll just read one in 1 Peter 5 and verse 1.

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So I exhort you elders, this is Peter writing to elders, as a fellow elder and as a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed, shepherd the flock of God that is among you.

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Shepherd, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly as God would have you, not for shameful gain, but eagerly, not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock.

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Now, what does a biblically faithful shepherd look like? We're going to see in a moment that the ultimate shepherd, the chief shepherd, the true shepherd, is the

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Lord Jesus Christ. But if you're looking for someone who is going to be a faithful shepherd, a standard that Steve and I must be held to, it is those standards set out in 1

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Timothy 3. It's those standards in Titus 1, in 1 Peter 5.

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And for those of you, I think about you brothers, a few of you here in this room that aspire to be elders.

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There is an example that I go back to over and over and over again in a

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Puritan pastor named Samuel Rutherford. He was not one of the greatest preachers in the world.

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Far from it. Nor did he pastor over a perfect church.

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It wasn't impressive in size. It didn't have great visible success. Even at one time, I don't know if it was to a letter or in his own journal, he said,

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I see exceedingly small fruit in my ministry. I would be glad for even one soul to be a crown of joy and rejoicing in the day of Christ.

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He often felt that his people were spiritually cold and unresponsive. And yet,

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I love what Andrew Bonar, his biographer, writes about this man. He didn't have a lot of outward things going for him to spur him on.

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But this is what's told of him. It says this, He has time to meet, to visit, for he rises at three in the morning.

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In that early hour, he meets his God in prayer and meditation. Space for study besides.

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He takes occasional days for catechizing. Kids, you know what that is now. He never fails to be found at the sickbeds of his people.

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Men said of him, he is always praying, always preaching, always visiting the sick, always catechizing, always writing and studying.

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One man said that he went out into the churches. He wanted to look for a new church. And amongst three churches, one pastor, he said, told him about the sinful heart of man.

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One pastor told him about the majesty of God. Both are important messages. But he said of Samuel Rutherford, he said,

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When I went to his church, he taught me the loveliness of Christ. And that is the chief job of the under -shepherd of Christ, is to show people the chief shepherd.

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Now in verse 34, Christ says this. We see, And Christ began to teach them.

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It says that when he saw that they were like sheep without a shepherd, he began to teach them.

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Now, why does Christ quickly step into this role? Why is it that Christ so naturally moves in when he sees that there is a people without a shepherd?

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And it's for this reason. It's to anticipate, this is number four, if you're following, Christ gives himself as our chief shepherd.

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Christ is our chief shepherd and he gives himself as our chief shepherd. The prophets prophesied about this.

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Come to me afterwards if you want to know where. 1 Peter, that passage that we just read,

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Peter holds him up in verse 4. He says, And when the chief shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

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We see Christ the shepherd in the Old Testament, Christ the shepherd in the New Testament, but perhaps no more important than Christ the shepherd in the

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Gospel of John. In chapter 10, in verse 11, there Christ says of himself, such beautiful words.

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He says, I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down his life for the sheep.

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That was Christ's job as the shepherd. He was not a hireling. He went to the cross to save you, dear brother and sister.

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He went to the cross for you, to bind your wounds, to bring you to himself.

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He leaves the 99 to go after the one. This is Christ, your chief shepherd, who died for you.

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I won't attribute this to you all. Attribute it to me. Dumb, rebellious, wicked, vile, drown -in -a -mud puddle kind of sinner.

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Christ died that he might possess us for himself, that he might show the measurable riches of his grace and kindness to us.

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So, he will give us shepherds. He will give himself as our shepherd. And then lastly, we read in verse 35,

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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 into the surrounding countryside and villages, that they may buy themselves something to eat.

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But he answered them, You give them something to eat. And they said to him, Shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread, 200 days' wages, a full year in a working man's life, and give it to them to eat?

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And he said, How many loaves do you have? And when they had found out, they said,

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Five loaves of bread and two fish. Then he commanded them all to sit in groups on the grass.

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They sat down in groups by hundreds and fifties. There's a reference back to the Old Testament, to Moses for that, when he was appointing judges.

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And taking the five loaves and the 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. And they took up the twelve baskets, full of broken pieces, the same number as the disciples, the same number as the twelve tribes of Israel.

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And he says that those who ate the loaves were 5 ,000 men. I've tried to unpack this on the fly, but 5 ,000 men.

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We're told in Matthew 14, verse 21, that was 5 ,000 men. It was

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Matt 14, 21. 5 ,000 men plus women and children. So about 8 ,000 people in all

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Christ feeds on this hillside. And what's really interesting is this.

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It says in verse 42 that they all ate and were satisfied. There was probably no practice in all of Scripture that was more regulated than the practice of eating.

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When we think about all of the laws that pertained to the diet of Israel, of who could eat, where, when, how, even what was to be eaten.

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And then all of the oral tradition on top of that. You could eat with this person and not with this person, in this kind of house, but not in this kind of house.

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You could have this person over for dinner, but not this person. And the whole goal was to keep that which was holy separated from that which was unclean.

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But here you have on this hillside, Christ feeds them all. Every single one of them.

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And we're told, and they were satisfied. I'm going to make these last two points very quick.

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So we see again two dimensions. Number five, the first dimension that we see here is that Christ gives us earthly food.

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I would be remiss if I didn't point this out, that Christ cares for our temporal needs. I love

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Psalm 147, verse 9. It says, God is always meeting the needs of his creation and of his people.

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But how often do we go about our days anxious and afraid?

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Where will we eat? Where will we sleep? What will we wear? Here we see that Christ is prepared to meet our needs.

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Now this is not a principle across the board. There have been Christians that have starved to death.

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There have been Christians that have died of exposure in the cold. But as a general principle or as a general rule, as a guide,

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Christ will care for you. Write this down if you're taking notes.

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Matthew 6, verses 25 to 33. Christ says, He doesn't add a single hour to his span of life.

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I'm going to fast forward to verse 33. He says this, Brothers and sisters, do you trust

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God that he will meet your needs? Or do you live with sinful anxiety that God does not care or that God will not care for you?

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He will provide. Seek first his kingdom and his righteousness. Give your cares to him and then live for him.

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And not only will he feed you earthly food, but he will feed you by his word.

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In 2 Peter 1, verse 3, it says, He'll give you everything that you need.

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He'll feed you with everything that you need so that you can live singularly for him. You hear me quote once in a while from H .A.

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Ironside. I have an excellent commentary on the Gospel of Mark from H .A. Ironside. So if you hear a lot of him, it's because I'm reading him.

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But he once went to a dying old man named Andrew Fraser.

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This is when H .A. Ironside was a young man. And he went to this man, and after a few words of introduction, this man,

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Andrew Fraser, said, Young man, you're trying to preach Christ, are you not? And Ironside replied,

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Yes, I am. Well then, well then, the saint whispered, sit down a little, and let us talk about the word of God.

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I think there are a lot of us in this room that would love to, we're praying for seniors, so God, send seniors, that we can have conversations like this.

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And this man, he opened his faded, his well -worn Bible, and with all the strength that he had, he opened it, and he turned, as he went with H .A.

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Ironside, from page to page to page, just working through the truths of Scripture.

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And Ironside said that he had never before entered into this kind of Bible study.

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He had never known a man who was so acquainted with the

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Scriptures that his spirit had never experienced something like this, to the point that as the man read the

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Bible and shared from it, Ironside had tears streaming down his face.

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And Ironside said, Where did you get these things? Can you tell me, did you find a book where you learned all of this from the

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Scriptures? What college or what seminary did you go to? And the man said, My dear young man,

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I learned these things on my knees on the mud floor of a little sod cottage in the north of Ireland.

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There with my open Bible before me, I used to kneel for hours at a time and ask the

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Spirit of God to reveal Christ to my soul and to open the Word to my heart.

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And He taught me more on my knees on that mud floor than I could have learned in all the seminaries or colleges in the world.

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God has given us this book to be our food. Man lives, or does not live, by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.

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And how many of us, just like we aren't spending enough alone time with Christ, are malnourished because we neglect the very food that God has given to feed our souls.

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Oh, that God would make us a church that just loves His Word, that knows it so that when you're old, you can sit next to the next

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H .A. Ironside and say, Brother, let us look at the words of Scripture.

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How many of us are preparing ourselves to be the next generation of godly man or woman?

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I think sometimes we lament that there seems to be a lack of godly men and women who will disciple us and who will muster us and will share wise things.

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Well, this is your opportunity to be that person to the next generation. But it doesn't start when you're 70.

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It starts now, walking with God in His Word. And then here we see that Christ, the last point, praise

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God, is Himself our eternal food. And that might sound strange, isn't it, that Christ is our eternal food?

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But thankfully, our brother read John 6 and he's given us the context. And so I'm only going to quote from one passage, maybe the golden passage there.

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In John 6, verse 35, Jesus said to them, I am the bread of life.

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Whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

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We see later that it is in reference to eternal life. And when

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Christ gives Himself as our eternal food, that Christ is the bread of life, not only is He concerned with bread today, with life today, with provision today, but life for eternity.

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This week, I've just been thinking about this. I came into this room buzzing at just the thought that how often we get hung up on the most trivial and, frankly, stupid things when we have an eternity with God to look forward to.

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That it only gets better, brother and sister. You can get the worst diagnosis tomorrow, but if you are in Christ, you have eternal life to look forward to.

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Oh, the bread of heaven, the bread of life, Jesus Christ.

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How He really did die for sins, and He really did conquer the grave, and He really did ascend to the right hand of the throne of God.

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And He is there, and He is preparing a place not for 144 ,000, not for the spiritual elite, but for every man and woman in this room who believes in Christ for you.

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He is there, He is getting it ready. A famous preacher,

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Charles Spurgeon, I'll name him, he told a story once of a little old woman who lived in a modest cottage in England, and on one occasion she had guests over, and she served a small meal.

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She labored in the kitchen, if you can picture this, right? The little old lady working hard to prepare a lavish feast for her guests.

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And as everyone gathered around at the table, she came and brought her tray, and the meal was this.

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It was a slice of bread and a cup of water. And as she served the meal, she bowed her head, and she gave thanks to God, and she said,

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What? What? All this, and Christ too?

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That you would give me what I need for today, but more than that, that you would give me your own son?

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That this bread was enough to sustain her for the day, and that Christ was enough to sustain her for all of eternity?

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That this woman deserved hell, but that God had given her everlasting life through the blood of his own dear son?

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And how often, dear saints, do we lose sight of that? That everything that we have is more than what we deserve, and everything that we need has been provided on the cross in Jesus Christ to be looked to even now in faith.

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So we saw Herod's banquet last week, death and murder and chaos.

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And now this week, we see Christ's banquet, the righteous

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Son of God, giving us everything, everything we need.

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Revelation 22, 17, we'll end with this. The spirit and the bride say, what?

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The spirit and the bride say, come. And let the one who hears say, come.

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And let the one who is thirsty, come. Let the one who desires take the water of life without price.

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Here you have Christ. He has set the table before you. And his spirit and his church and me now, come.

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Come to Christ. Come to this table. Come to him.