Repetition Is Not Enough

This is a a lengthy passage this morning that I'm gonna read. It is the majority of Mark chapter 8. In those days when there was again a large crowd and they had nothing to eat Jesus called his disciples and said to them I feel compassion for the crowd because they have remained with me now three days and have nothing to eat.

And if I send them away hungry to their homes They will faint on the way. And some of them have come from a great distance. And his disciples answered him Where will anyone be able to find enough bread here in this desolate place to satisfy these people.

And he was asking them? How many loaves do you have. And they said seven. And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground and taking the seven loaves. He gave thanks and broke them and he kept giving them to his disciples to serve to them.

And they served them to the crowd and they also had a few small fish and after he blessed them He ordered these to be served as well and they ate and were satisfied. And they picked up seven large baskets full of what was left over of the broken pieces.

Now about.

4 ,000 were there and he sent them away and immediately he entered the boat with his disciples and came to the district of Delmanuka and the Pharisees came out and began to argue with him seeking from him a sign from heaven testing him and Signed deeply in his spirit.

He said why does this generation seek a sign? Truly I say to you no sign will be given to this generation and leaving them He again embarked and went away to the other side. And they had forgotten to take bread and did not have more than one loaf in the boat with them.

And he was giving orders to them saying watch out Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod. And they began to discuss with one another the fact that they had No bread and Jesus aware of this said to them.

Why do you discuss the fact that you have no bread? Do you not yet perceive or understand? Do you have a hardened heart having eyes? Do you not see and having ears? Do you not hear and do you not remember?

When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand how many baskets full of broken pieces you picked up? They said to him twelve when I broke the seven for the four thousand. How many large baskets full of broken pieces?

Did you pick up and they said to him seven and he was saying to them? Do you not yet? Understand. And they came to Bethsaida and they brought a blind man to Jesus and pleaded with him to touch him and Taking the blind man by the hand He brought him out of the village and after spitting on his eyes and laying his hands on him He was asking him.

Do you see anything? And he looked up and was saying I see men for I see them like trees walking around.

Then again.

He laid his hands on his eyes and he looked intently and was restored and began to see everything clearly. And he sent him to his home saying do not even enter the village. And Jesus went out along with his disciples to the villages of Caesarea Philippi.

And on the way he was asking his disciples saying to them Who do people say that I am. And they told him saying John the Baptist. And others say Elijah. But others one of the prophets. And he continued questioning them But who did you say that I am?

Peter answered and said to him you are the Christ. And he warned him to tell no one about him. And he began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the scribes and be killed.

And after three days rise again. And He was stating the matter openly and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him. But turning around and seeing his disciples he rebuked Peter and said get behind me Satan.

For you are not setting your mind on God's interests, but man's.

The Prayer for Soft Hearts and Spiritual Sight

Let's pray.

Lord Jesus a lot of text a lot of repetition and it's easy for us to point our fingers At the disciples who are with you every day and ask the question. How can they not see and Yet Lord daily we don't see we are people who are fickle.

We are a people who Forget what you have taught us who forget How you have placed us and disciple us Lord. We even forget the very saving faith that you put into our hearts. And Lord we wander. Or this morning.

I pray that we would understand that that salvation and sanctification. They are not products of human will. But they are the gift of the Holy Spirit. So Lord help us to see this morning. That we should have a heart that is not hardened and Lord help us in this place to not be hardened.

But instead have soft hearts that are receptive to your word. Or that we would walk by faith and not by sight. Lord, I pray that you would give that to your people here. We ask it in your name. Amen. The title of the sermon today is repetition is not enough.

Repetition, Learning, and Why This Passage Matters

It's a play on one of my most quoted passages from a very wise man. My father who said over and over and over again repetition is the key to learning and that is true. And while my 20 years of teaching high school students have gone by I have learned it.

Repetition is often not enough because there has to be something else going on there. In fact, there was a conversation I had Friday this sermon was already written. So this is extra. There was a there was a conversation Friday and I said how many times am I gonna have to tell you this?

And the answer was how many times have you told me? I Thought you just told me now. I was like I told you 40 times. They didn't even hear they didn't know.

And so.

What it's easy for us to do is it's easier for us. First of all to jump into Mark and to grab this passage and to have a little bit of criticism and think oh. Well, this story is so similar to the one in Mark chapter 6 that it must be a mistake.

It must be a repetition. It must be the same story written again but that's a really foolish thing to think because when you look at the structure of Mark, there is a thing going where it's. Then repetition and this one is such repetition that we're really missing it.

You don't see the context. Here's the example. So in Mark 5 we have the demoniac and Decapolis if you remember him. He's going around in the desolate places cutting himself. Jesus cast the demons out legion that go into the pigs.

The demoniac goes back into Decapolis and he tells them what happened. He wants to follow Jesus, but Jesus sends him as an evangelist to the Gentiles then the next chapter. We have the feeding of the 5 ,000 and immediately after the feeding of the 5 ,000 Jesus goes out into the boat and he walks on the water and the disciples don't know what they're seeing.

They don't believe. They're hardened in their heart. And then last week we saw in Mark chapter 7. We saw the Pharisees come and argue and then we saw the the woman who asked for the healing of her daughter Entire and and then there is the man from Decapolis and so feeding of the 5 ,000.

Unbelief of the disciples then we have the Gentiles and then he goes back and he feeds the 4 ,000 and so what we should see here is there's a pattern emerging and the pattern is Jesus is giving signs over and over again and the kingdom is bursting out of it seems.

That the Jews thought that the kingdom was for the Jews only they were they were misunderstanding the application. They were misunderstanding the covenant that Jesus was bringing and so he is going to teach them and he is Signed much like I have many times.

You're just not getting it. Are you this is the deep side that you see in the middle of the chapter today? How do you not get this? How do you not believe when he says that there will be no sign? And so this this passage is so familiar that it often trips us up.

It gets confused with the feeding of the 5 ,000. But it has a different tenor to it. If you remember the feeding of the 5 ,000 was all about Jesus the shepherd. We had them sitting on the green grass in the middle of that passage.

We had Jesus calling himself. He was saying that they were like sheep that were scattered that they had no shepherd in this passage. We get a different tone and this passage is all about hardness of heart hardness of heart.

So the disciples have a hard heart. So let's look into it. Once again, there's this passage sets up. We see right off the bat in the first couple of verses that Jesus feels compassion for the people. This is the same word that means that he has a stirring or or attention in his guts in his bowels.

He has a deep compassion and sympathy for the people there this time. It's a little bit different though. It's much more about their physical needs this time. If you look in chapter 6 his compassion was for the state of the people that didn't have a shepherd.

They were scattered and they didn't know who to listen to because the teachers were bad. And the teeth as we see how bad the teachers are over and over again in Mark. But in this passage, it's really about their physical condition.

He has sympathy for them because they've been out for three days and there's nothing to eat. And so Jesus is going to provide for them but first there's going to be a lesson and it's a harsh lesson and it sets up to being maybe the harshest rebuke in the New Testament as we get to the end of our text today.

So the disciples look out at the multitude and Jesus says I have compassion. They haven't eaten for three days. They're gonna faint if we don't feed them and the disciples very stupidly.

Say.

What are we gonna do about it? There's no food here. How are we gonna feed these people? Are we gonna find enough bread here in this desolate place to satisfy these thousands? And so Jesus pops them on the head like the three stooges says no duh.

No, he doesn't do that. What he's going to do is he's going to take care of the people and he asked the disciples. He says what do you have and they have a few loaves and the loaves and the fish are different.

I believe it was five and two in the first feeding this time. It's seven and a unknown number. There's a few fish and there's seven loaves of flatbread. Naan, and they're going to give these out this time.

There are baskets left over. There are seven baskets and seven seems to be a theme this time around I don't know. It might be the completion of the multiplication miracle for the disciples. I don't want to go too far down that thread, but we get something interesting once again.

We've seen this a few times as we've gone through mark that Jesus takes the loaves and the fish and he blesses them and he breaks. Them don't miss the message there. True food comes from God true food comes from heaven and so that the position of these these multitudes is Completely in the hand and in the care of God the whole time and that's what the disciples don't see.

And so as you see as we go through this chapter something should have jumped out to you as I was reading that lengthy passage and what should have jumped out is there are signs and Then there's people asking for signs because they don't get the signs and that really teaches us the signs don't matter.

To unfaithful people the signs only increase the condemnation of people who are not there to see the signs. It should Recall the parable of Lazarus in hell and you know that the rich man who's looking up across the gap and she'll he says Would you send me?

Would you send them a sign send my friends a sign and Jesus says if they didn't believe Moses and the prophets. Then no signs going to work for them. And so it gets to the mysterious case of where does faith come from?

How are we even in the kingdom of God and how these disciples make it because they mess up. It occurred to me this week that in some sense the the Bible is so self-attesting as a holy book and I'll explain what I mean by that the the pillars of our faith.

The reason that we're here this morning Jude would tell us it's because of the testimony of the Apostles, right? The Apostles passed on the faith that they saw from Christ. He gave them the teachings and they passed it on and so we see here's the New Testament Church today.

Because of their witness and yet when we read what the disciples wrote, they were not very kind to themselves. They look like idiots. They really do over and over again. They're not superheroes of the faith.

There are people who constantly missed it who constantly didn't understand what Jesus was teaching at the time. But why we sit here as a faith and while we sit here as a church this morning, it's not because of those signs.

It's because of the resurrection and that's ultimately where faith is based. It's based on the fact that Jesus is God and that Jesus did raise again from the dead. And so we have a faith that is vibrant and active today.

So as we look what does that have to do with eating? Well, it has everything to do with you because this this feeding was indicative and emblematic of how Jesus was going to Feed the kingdom of God. He blesses God breaks the bread and then there is no limit to it.

I think I commented last time that Kelsey joke this morning. Could you just preach the same sermon as you did a few weeks ago? I'm like, I don't know maybe. Yeah, I'm having the deja vu thing. I will tell you this.

The kingdom of God is not bounded. Paul says that the gospel is unbound and the kingdom of God does not have diminishing returns.

Too often.

I think we believe that the kingdom of God is a competition for people to try to get our little section of it so that We can set up and be comfortable. We've seen in the in the big evangelical world this week another fall of a notable celebrity pastor Who basically went down the drain because he was ferociously guarding his camp.

By sending out barbs and slanders against his own friends. That's insane behavior but but it is behavior that looks at the kingdom of God as being a limited space with a Closed-end market so to speak where we need to get as much of that piece of pie as possible.

But Jesus doesn't work that way. Jesus comes in with authority and he feeds all of the multitudes and then there's so much left over. That they don't want to carry it around. How do they forget the bread?

They probably didn't want to carry the baskets, you know. Huge heavy baskets full of this food. That he says hey get on the boat immediately and they forget the bread and then they're very distressed, right?

We got no food and it's so crazy, right? Think of this. Thousands of people sitting here they've been listening to Jesus for days, right? They're hungry. They're looking bad. It's looking like they're starving dead.

Jesus feeds them. There's baskets left over and the disciples leave get on a boat and the disciples main concern. They're super worried about how there's no food on the boat. Do you get that? Like I laughed out loud when I read that this week.

The disciples are worried about the food even after Jesus has for the second time Fed thousands of people from essentially nothing from a guy's lunchbox. Okay, and the disciples are worried. What are we going to do?

Degrees of Hard-Heartedness

And I think that gets into the meat of the sermon today, which is where we're going to camp out. Which is degrees of hard-heartedness. And I think we see two degrees of hard-heartedness in this text and the first we're going to call the ultra hard-hearted.

These are people who hate God. These are people who have no care about the kingdom of God. These are people who want to go around the world. Proselytizing to make more and more people sons of hell just like they are the ultra hard-hearted.

See the ultra hard-hearted doesn't look like what you would think they look like though. Because the ultra hard-hearted scripturally always look like religious people. It always looks like people who cloak themselves in fake righteousness.

But know nothing of the grace of God and know nothing of the kingdom of God. Let me remind you so we look at verses 11 through 12 here. They are the Pharisees came out and began to argue with him. Seeking from him a sign from heaven testing him.

Signed deeply in his spirit. He said why does this generation seek a sign truly? I say to you no sign will be given to this generation. I hope that you catch that. That is that is a condemnation. Of the religious leaders when Jesus says that no sign will be given to them.

That means they're done.

They're done.

They have been weighed out and found wanting because what they've done is they have come out and Tested the Living God as the people were told not to do in the Old Testament. They were told do not put the Lord your God to the test.

And so the religious leaders of the day come out and they test the Son of Man and it's wicked. It's extremely wicked and their wicked desire for an attesting miracle shows their ultra hard heartedness.

Because they have heard the teaching they have heard one who teaches as with authority. They know that Jesus is not teaching like the Jews taught in that day. The Jews had dialogues with each other, you know.

When the Jews talk about teaching with authority what they would do is they would go in the synagogue and the rag Rabbis would argue with each other and they would write it all down. We've got here's this side.

Here's this side. I Don't know which camp you fall into and that's what's going on. There's two big camps During the time of Jesus where they're deciding which side of the rabbinical divide and fit on and Jesus comes in and he says what?

Scripture means.

He's not having a dialogue with someone else. He is teaching with authority and they have heard this and they don't like it. And the reason they don't like it is because they're hard-hearted. They know that he handles the scripture rightly and they hate it.

So it is today. So the wicked desire for a testing miracle gives them condemnation because salvation doesn't come from signs and wonders. If you just saw a sign from heaven, then you would be right. No, you would not.

In fact what scripture teaches us is in your hard-heartedness if you saw a sign from heaven. It would make you that much more wicked because you would look at that sign and you would say no. No, it's not real.

It's it's magic. It's it's fake. There has to be a naturalistic explanation for this. It's not gonna work. And so what happens is the signs actually increase unbelief and condemnation. See Jesus sighs just like he did in the last chapter.

If you remember when David preached last week, he sighed when he healed the mute, right? There's a connection here. Why does Jesus sigh when these men ask for a sign? Well, it's because these men just as the mute was a product of a sinful fallen nature, right the mute.

He he was not right. It was not good that he couldn't speak, right? It was not good that he couldn't hear. But in this case, he's sighing at these men because it's astounding. How blind and deaf they are and it would be better if they were mute.

Because then no one could hear them talk their foul words. They're leading people to hell. See the men of Nineveh would rise up and testify against this generation. Because they listened to Jonah who died after three three days in Matthew.

Jesus tells these say these Pharisees that they would receive nothing but the sign of Jonah and oftentimes I think that we mistake that and say well what that means is that Jesus is going to Die for three days and raise again.

That's gonna be the sign and while that is true That's not the whole picture because the whole picture is that the sign of Jonah was going to be that the Prophet as God was going to come and he was going to give the Message of repentance to the people and that they wouldn't listen.

Because Nineveh listened Nineveh tore their clothes and they grieved in sackcloth and ashes and they were given repentance. God gave him faith. They will be our brothers in heaven one day. We will see them.

We will see the people of Nineveh that Jonah prophesied to. But you know who we won't see the religious elites of Jesus day. They were a hardened generation. The men of Nineveh will testify against them and they will say you were given a greater prophet than Jonah.

You were given one who Jonah was only a shadow and a type of and you didn't listen. You didn't listen. Your condemnation is great. The Queen of the South will rise up against these men because the Queen of the South came from afar and sought the wisdom of Solomon and wanted to hear his wisdom and yet something much greater than Solomon was here and these Pharisees care nothing for the wisdom that Jesus Christ gives and So he sighs at their unbelief because what happens is the signs that have already been given have made these men go from bad to worse.

They're worse than they were when it started and Jesus given so many signs. That the Apostle John says that there could not be enough books to hold all the signs that he gave. It's not that Jesus didn't give signs from heaven.

It's that he was not a vending machine that gave signs on demand to hard-hearted men who wanted to blaspheme God. That's the fact of the matter. Do not be like these men. Do not be like these men. Hear the Word of God and let the Word of God fall on fertile soil and to grow and give its fruit and season.

If you're that way. Then you will be like a tree that does not wither and you will sit by the streams and you will sit among the righteous. The most hard-hearted people revile God. And I think the image the image that we See automatically is, you know, the the down-and-out person.

Who's screaming at the heavens in anger and maybe sitting and panhandling at the corner of the street? But that is not that is not the picture the scripture gives us of the most hard-hearted men who revile God.

They use religious cloaks to fool and destroy families over and over again. It's elders of churches.

It's deacons.

It's business leaders who go to church and who claim. They claim Christ and they come and they eat at the table. Every time the communion is offered and yet inside they are ravening wolves and they know the rules.

They know that they are placing their hope and their faith in themselves. To see these religious cloaks they fool and they destroy families. Because what happens is positions of spiritual leadership have tremendous accountability to go with them.

We give account as people who stand up here and want to proclaim the Word of God. We give account for the souls of the people who hear our words. And that's why it's extremely important that the words that are speak are not the opinions of Josh Rice.

But that they are doctrines that come out of scripture. The idea is to get in here and to look around the scripture and to look at what's going on and to try to hit The context just right and then make it apply to our lives today.

And that's a very dangerous task and the worst men in the world are the ones who are doing that. Who have no regard for Christ? They are the most hard. They are the most reviling and they are the most blasphemous.

Religious cloaks are demonic. You understand that because they repel obvious sins. And they what they do biblically. I had a hard time understanding this text and it clicked this week. You remember when Jesus talks about?

How the demons would leave and they would go through the waters and then they would come back and they would find the house clean swept and Seven would come in where there was only one before. The idea that that's what was happening with the religious leaders.

You understand when you have a life that on the outside for a time shows I have no obvious sins. I'm cleaned up. I say holy words. It sounds good to people and that might be a house that's clean swept.

It doesn't have the obvious guardrails of the guy with his teeth rotting out who's addicted to drugs. Who's sitting there screaming at people that person is not attracting people into his web of deceit.

You understand that but the one who has looks good on the outside who takes on his religious Holy robes and who says smart sounding words and Dazzling rhetoric to tickle people's ears and he says that he is showing the kingdom of God that man.

That's the one who has the house swept clean and there's eight demons inside instead of one. Because he is going about the countryside trying to send people to hell so that he can have money. That's what happens and that's who these men are.

They are ultra hard and they are destroyed. They are condemned and it's sad. It's very sad. And so we pray we pray that when and we should pray more often that when men fall. Who are in positions of authority?

We should pray that they're not pardoned like these men are because if they are they have no hope. But they can repent and they can come back into the fold. And so that looks lets us look at that. Maybe the harder category that we got to touch on a couple weeks ago.

Here comes again, which is the beloved. Hard-hearted the beloved hard-hearted. This is difficult.

He was.

Giving them orders saying watch out beware the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod now. That's very interesting indeed, right? What is the leaven of the Pharisees? Well, we just spent a lot of time talking about that right.

The leaven of the Pharisees is religious appearance with dead doctrine. Dead lives dead doctrine selfishness power-grabbing. What's the leaven of Herod? Well, we've seen that also in Mark as you look back a couple of weeks.

Herod the leaven of him was that he would listen with entertainment to John the Baptist as John the Baptist was sermonizing him. But he thought that it was a parlor trick. It was entertaining to him and that did not get into his heart.

He was hardened and he didn't care and ultimately he killed the Prophet of God and ultimately he would not take a stand when Jesus Came before him, but if you notice Jesus didn't say anything to Herod the leaven of Herod is people who like to play the religious game.

From the sidelines, but don't get involved. See the disciples are in a prime position. To be falling into the leaven of Herod because they are right around Jesus. They are a part of the crowd. They're going along with him everywhere.

It's not a sideshow though. The leaven of Herod is to think that being near in proximity to grace gives you grace and it doesn't. God gives grace to those who have faith and you have faith because because God gives you faith.

It's not a result of works so that no one can boast faith is a gift of God. So the beloved hardened who are warning warrants against this leaven. It's Orthodox confessions and it's religious curiosity.

The two are some similar though.

All right.

The two are similar if you want to look at who has the Orthodox confessions today that exhibit the Leaven of the Pharisees that would be organizations like the gospel coalition or Christianity today. They cloaked themselves in Orthodox confessions and that they teach a dead doctrine.

They teach a doctrine of works if you really get down to it. You got to be anti-racist. Okay, you're gonna have to be accommodating to people who hate God. All right, that's that's the leaven of the gospel coalition.

But we also have the leaven of Herod which today would look like people like Dennis Prager Elon Musk and Jordan Peterson. These are people who are entertained by Christianity. They actually kind of like the effects of Christianity.

But they're sideshow. They don't have faith and they blaspheme the Living God by saying you know what? I wish we could have all the benefits of Christianity with none of the God. That would be really nice wouldn't it?

But that's real national right? That's kind of the big political scene. Let's look closer to home. Who is the leaven of the Pharisees? Well, it's the seemingly pious Christian who is all hopped up on knowledge with no action.

No action.

Does that sound familiar to our camp? I think it does. I think I think that. In the reform camp we we get hopped up on knowledge. We really love our knowledge and we love to you know. Get together smoke a cigar and argue the finer points of supersessionism.

Alright, it's a thing that we love to do and what we can do is we can we can elevate ourselves in our intellect and think. Man, we're great because we know so much doctrine. But at the end of the day if there's no action that springs from that there's no faith.

Because faith always results in good works because we are Christ. Workmanship. Who are going to walk in what he's given us? That's Ephesians 2 10. There's also the co-worker who loves your tales of Christianity while he's going off looking at porn.

Disparaging his spouse and living for the moment. That's the leaven of Herod the man who comes in. He's been he's been looking at filth on the Internet all week. He's been going talking about how the ball and chain won't let him go play golf on Saturday, right?

That's the guy disparaging everyone around him, but he'll come into church. He's the leaven of Herod. It's a religious sideshow to him. Got to get me a little Jesus. I'm gonna take these elements here to cloak myself and make myself feel better all the while.

Living a life of filth and emptiness that leaven is hypocrisy. It's worldliness and it's a words only faith that eventually will take over and it will choke out the opportunity for true faith. If it's not checked and that's what Herod did he went from bad to worse.

He heard the testimony of John the Baptist. He did not do anything about it. And eventually he went to a place where even though he didn't want to he was so weak in his worldliness and so choked out. On the pleasures of the world that it killed the Prophet of God and then he was done.

Jesus wouldn't even speak to him after that. The condemnation was it time was up. So, how does how does Jesus prepare? Against the leaven with the people that he loves and these disciples don't see it, right?

We get that abundantly clear from the text. Do we not they don't see what's going on. It's very obvious. They don't understand they're worried about the bread. They're worried about how they don't have any food.

They're worried about everything. They shouldn't be worried about anything. They are literally walking around with God. Okay, he can do anything. But they don't see it. They don't understand. So what he does is the great thing I've tried to do this so many times in my career and I'll just tell you I'm not good enough.

I'm not talented enough.

But Jesus is the master teacher and in this section this blows me away as a teacher what Jesus does here. This is how he handles the disciples.

It's gentle.

But it's also very effective. He asked him questions.

He asked him questions over and over.

You'll see it in chapter in in verses 16 through 21. He first he says why are you discussing having no bread? You see what he's doing. Why are you discussing having no bread? Have you ever seen anything like this before?

Hmm yeah, I think they have. They've actually seen it twice right then. He says he chides them do not yet perceive or understand. No, he knows that they don't perceive or understand. He's asking him these questions because he's bringing it and then he rebukes them.

Do you have a hardened heart? Do you think the disciples understood what a hardened heart was? Yeah, they're seeing it all around. The Pharisees are following this around asking questions in their heart.

Not believing anything over and over again, he asked me you have a hardened heart and then he quotes scripture. Man, it's an incredible quotation. He says having eyes do not see and having ears. Do you not hear?

Two places is from and both of them have very similar context. Jeremiah 521 now hear this. Oh people who are simple-minded fools and without a heart of wisdom who have eyes but do not see. Who have ears that do not.

Hear.

This is a prophecy and a question to the people of Israel who don't understand what God is telling them. Ezekiel 12 to son of man you live in the midst of the rebellious house. Who have eyes to see but do not see ears to hear but do not hear for they are a rebellious house.

Do you see what Jesus is doing? When he quotes this passage to them, he's asking the disciples. Are you a rebellious people? Are you a rebellious house? Do you have ears to hear what God is saying. You have eyes to see what God has done and the obvious answer is no.

No, they don't have ears to hear and they don't have eyes to see because God has just demonstrated. But then they answer. He says this and he says when I broke the five loaves for the five thousand how many baskets full of broken pieces were picked Up and they said twelve and he said when I broke the seven for the four thousand just now.