Enlarging Our Vision

Good to see all of you here this morning and Got a big weekend and Monday is Memorial Day, and tomorrow we get to remember those that have sacrificed their lives in service to Our country, and who sacrifice themselves in a way that points us to the ultimate sacrifice, and that is Christ who laid down his life so that we might have our sins forgiven and be saved. So hopefully you'll take time to remember such things tomorrow on Memorial Day. also tonight, we'll be having our, Evening service, our iPods, night at, Bourne's and, most of you probably have an idea where that is, but you just go to this light right up here at this intersection and turn left and go about 1 mile.5 miles down Iowa until you get to Columbia and then just turn right on Columbia.

the place is very hard to miss.

It's right across the street from Hunter Park. And you're welcome to show up as early as 5 o'clock tonight. our service itself is going to hopefully start at 5:30. but if you show up at 5, we'll be able to take you around and show you the facility, and, then we'll start our service around 5:30, do some worship.

I'll be talking for a bit, talking big vision stuff, and, Carlos Cuer will be talking about some facility. Issues just what it is about the Bourne's facility that we find compelling and attractive and also what some of the existing challenges are and the work that still needs to be done before a final decision can be made. but we as elders are believing that moving to Barnes in the next several months, is very likely. the best next step for us to take in our journey as, a church, and we just want to invite you to, come and join us tonight, look at the facility together with us and hear the work that's been done, the things we've already discovered, the things that we're still looking to do and to find out.

Ask whatever questions you have, give us your feedback. And that'll all go into the mix of informing the elders' decision that hopefully will take place in the near future regarding. this particular option, for us. So that's tonight, and you're welcome to show up as early as 5 o'clock.

And by the way, there will be some refreshments, at the, the end of our service time this evening. Well, let me invite you to turn in your Bibles to Mark chapter 6. Mark chapter 6. we, we're just going to spend the day talking church, family stuff, but in the process we're going to spend some time in God's word this morning in a way that hopefully will minister to all of us on a bunch of different levels, but also maybe provide some perspective regarding where we are at this point of our church's journey.

we communicated to, to you back in January of this year. The, the elders essentially communicated to you, this expression of vision, and I, I put it on the PowerPoint here. here's the desire that we expressed. We want to reach considerably more people in our Sunday services than we are reaching now.

And we would like to obtain the use of a facility that allows us the room to accomplish this. We would view such a facility as the front porch. That all of our care groups and homes share in common and we would view such a facility as a key entry point through which we can usher people into the wholeness that we are experiencing here in the body life of Cornerstone. This facility here at Lyndon and wherever we may move from here and whatever permanent facility we may find ourselves at is not the be all and the end all.

It is merely the front porch for where the real action. is taking place, and that is in the homes and in our care groups, but our morning worship times are significant. There's no other thing that we do in any given week, no other single event that captures as many people as our morning services do. So this is an absolutely critical entry point into the rest of what is happening in the body life of Cornerstone.

By finding, we said back in January, a larger facility in which to house our worship services, we are wanting to widen the wide end of the funnel so that we can reach more people and get them launched. And this journey, that we're excited about, launched in their journey toward gospel conversion, gospel orientation, gospel community, gospel mission, and gospel glory. Now, based on that underlying vision, we made some statements to you back in January, or maybe February, but Here's 5 of those statements that we made to the congregation a few months ago.

That is that we want to leave the Linden Street campus within the next 3 years and relocate ourselves elsewhere.

We want to move toward ultimately acquiring a larger facility that we own which will serve as the location of our Sunday morning worship services, house our staff, and also provide space for other corporate endeavors as the Lord leads and provides. Our goal is ultimately to move to. To owning a facility that is a centrally located amidst our present church membership, b is in an area of population and people traffic, providing strategic opportunities for outreach and ministry, and C will allow us to reach and accommodate considerably more people in our Sunday services.

We communicated to you then that we want to begin taking steps immediately toward readying ourselves for such an acquisition and any intermediate facility options.

These steps will involve a increasing the size of the capital growth fund, and 2 raising our monthly budget in a tiered manner to get ourselves ready to handle the increased costs that will inevitably come with ownership and with intermediate measures taken along the way. And the final statement that we made, we're skipping two of them because those were regarding the university property which is now moot, but the final statement we made is that we are open to renting or leasing intermediate locations that might lie between our present status and the full acquisition of a property that we call our own.

So we communicated these things a few months ago. At the bottom of all of these statements is the fact that we want to reach considerably more people in our Sunday morning services than we are reaching now.

And the reason we want that is because we want to get people launched and the journey that we're excited about, the journey from brokenness to wholeness. the journey into gospel conversion and orientation and gospel community and gospel mission and gospel glory. This is the, what we want to be all about as a church and all of our venues, all of our ministry should serve this end, but this morning we're focusing on the role that our morning service plays in serving as an entry point.

for some into that journey.

Now as we think about facility kinds of issues, And the complications and the costs that go along with that. a valid question to ask is, is it wrong? Is it wrong to give time and attention to such things? Is it wrong for us as a church to want to reach more people in our Sunday services?

Is it wrong to want to move to another facility that enables us to reach more people? Is it wrong to be willing to pay increased costs in order to be able to reach more people on a Sunday morning? Is it wrong to make decisions that add complications and logistics to helping us to reach more people? On a Sunday morning.

In answering that question, we should probably flip the question, or these questions and ask, is it spiritual? Somehow to be content with the present number of people being reached in our morning services, is it spiritual somehow to not want to reach more people? Is it spiritual to want to stay as we are, knowing that in the process we're welcoming some, but anyone over a particular number, we're essentially sending. Away.

Is it spiritual for the sake of keeping costs low? Is it spiritual for the sake of avoiding complications and burdens? Is it spiritual for the sake of keeping life simple? To simply stay as we are and to be content with welcoming 430 people on Sundays, it's spiritual to be content with that.

I would suggest that that's not necessarily spiritual. In fact, it might be lazy. It might be selfish. In November of last year, I felt a rebuke from the Lord that we do not do well to just be content with those.

That we are reaching presently, we as elders felt a sense of calling from the Lord in our elders' retreat last year that we can do better than we are doing. We can reach more people than we are reaching. We owe that to the Lord and to the people of this community to reach out and to bring more people into the wholeness that we are. Learning of and experiencing here in the body life of Cornerstone.

There's a sense In which Christ back in November of last year, pointed to the multitude of people in the Inland Empire, and he said to us as elders, you feed them. You feed them. There are many in this community that are sheep without a shepherd. And I call you to feed them.

This instruction you feed them is actually a command that we find in Mark chapter 6. These are words that Jesus essentially spoke to his disciples, and we're going to see that command this morning in Mark chapter 6. The story of the feeding of the 5000. and guys, understand, I've, I've been one of the elders that's been awash in all the details that we've been sorting through in recent months.

And, and so I've, I've needed to go to a passage like this, but I just want you to know that like this story of the feeding of the 5000 has just given me perspective that's been helpful. And I want to try to pass that perspective on with the grace that God gives to me this story of the feeding of the 5000 provides insight for Cornerstone at this point in In our journey, the disciples in this story are called to care for a greater multitude than they even remotely thought themselves capable of caring for.

This command that Jesus gives to them saying, you feed them, he's looking at 12 guys who are standing close to a crowd of at least 7000 people. And he says to these 12 men, you feed them.

This is a humanly impossible command. Jesus is calling the disciples to feed a multitude that a few moments earlier, as the story unfolds, the disciples were wanting Jesus to send away. He's calling them to feed 7000 plus people. And that's not all that Jesus does in this story.

Ultimately, there are 7 things that we'll try to look at this morning that Jesus did that, that provided direction for his disciples. And I think us as well, 7 things that he did to enlarge the disciples' vision for reaching the multitude that was standing before them. The first thing that he does that we'll look at this morning is that Jesus showed compassion. He felt and he showed compassion for the multitude, and he embraced the opportunity to minister to them.

It says in verse 31, and Jesus said to them, understand in the context, the disciples had just returned from a, a ministry trip. Jesus had commissioned them all and sent them all out. So they went out, preached the gospel and healed people and so forth. And they, they've just Turned and they report to Jesus a little bit of how it went.

And Jesus responds by saying to them, Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest awhile. Jesus observed that they, they needed some rest. And so he invites them on a retreat. With him.

Let's go to a secluded spot. You and I, and we'll have a retreat. We'll rest a while, and Jesus knew the disciples needed some rest, and they needed to debrief and process how their ministry trip went. There's much to process.

And, and so Jesus says, guys, come on, let's get in the boat and, and Come away with me by yourselves to a secluded or a desolate place. And let's rest a while, for there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat. So there were a lot of people around and Jesus is like, let's get in the boat. Let's go to a desolate place and have a retreat.

So understand, guys, that, so they get in the boat and they take off and just understand that this story of the feeding of the 5000, from a human standpoint, it was an unplanned event. It didn't start off. in any way that you would have expected this outcome. It started as a journey to a retreat with Jesus.

In fact, if the disciples were to write a book on this incident of the feeding of the 5000, the title of it might have been something like, a funny thing that happened on our way to a retreat. An amazing thing that happened on our way to a retreat. So they get in the boat with Jesus. They travel about 4 miles across the Sea of Galilee to the desolate, to a desolate area on the other side.

But look at what happens when they get in the boat and they begin to head across the sea. It says they went away in the boat to a secluded place by themselves. But the people saw them going, and many recognized them and ran there together on foot from all of the cities and got there ahead of them. When Jesus went ashore, he saw a large crowd and he felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, and he began to teach them many things.

So again, they're going across the Sea of Galilee, about a 4 mile trip. When people saw them going and thought, we know where they're heading, and so we're going to get there. around the same time that they arrive at the shore, for them going around the sea, it would have been about a 7 mile journey. They really want to be with Jesus.

They really want to be wherever he's gone. That's where they want to be. And so while Jesus and the disciples in a leisurely way are making their way across the sea, the others, the crowd of people are running, they're racing, making the 7 mile journey. to the other side of the sea, going around so that they can meet up with Jesus and the disciples when they land.

And so they land. And they arrive at what is indeed a desolate place, as Jesus had said, but it's crowded with people. I don't know what the disciples would have thought when they saw the crowd. What would you have thought?

You get this chance to go on a retreat with Jesus. And you're excited, you're going to get to rest. We learned in the story that the disciples did not even have time to eat. So they're hungry, they're tired from their ministry trip, and they get to go across the sea and just have some alone time with Jesus.

And they finally get there and there's thousands of people. That's not what they expected. To see, and I wonder what the disciples thought. Were they irritated?

When they looked at this crowd of people, did they see obstacles? Did they see interruptions? Did they see an inconvenience? Did they just see people standing between them and a retreat with Jesus?

What did they see? Well, we don't know what their thinking was, but we do know that when Jesus saw the multitude, he saw sheep. who had no shepherd. In fact, the fact that they raced so quickly in such mass to be where Jesus was heading is in itself an indication of the spiritual hunger of these people.

This is not some planned event where, hey, we're sending out flyers, meet us over here. We're gonna have a service. No, this wasn't. even planned, and yet they wanted to be wherever Jesus was going.

And Jesus sees the crowd, and he sees sheep, but says he felt compassion, literally his bowels churned, he felt something physically. His being of pity and compassion for the crowd that, that he saw his heart was burdened and broken for them. And Mark alone tells us why he felt this compassion, and that is because they were like sheep. Without a shepherd.

And no one to lead them, no one to teach them in the ways of God's eternal truth, no one to lead them and shepherd them truly in the way of salvation. So Jesus saw as we ought to see. He saw sheep without a shepherd. I just wonder when you see people, when you run into people, What do you see?

Do you see interruptions? Do you see inconveniences? Do you see obstacles between you and wherever you're going and whatever you're doing? Or when you look around at the people of this community, do you see sheep, sheep without a shepherd, who need to be loved and ministered to Jesus?

showed compassion for the multitude. He embraced the opportunity to minister to them. It says here that he began to teach them many things. The other gospel accounts tell us that he also healed many that were brought to him.

So he's teaching and he's healing. There's a second thing that Jesus did to enlarge his disciples' vision for the multitude that's worth pointing out in the story, and that is that Jesus actually wanted to show hospitality to the multitude by feeding. them. This is really amazing.

This is completely unexpected on the part of the disciples. Jesus is teaching them. He is healing those that are brought to him. And he also has it in his heart to feed them a meal.

It says, and by the way, we don't really pick this up in Mark's account. So I'm taking you right now to John's account in John chapter 6, where Jesus actually brings up the issue of feeding them. It says, therefore, Jesus, lifting up his eyes and seeing that a large crowd was coming to him, said to Philip, Where are we to buy bread so that these may eat? This he was saying to test Philip, for he himself knew what he was intending to do.

So he comes over to Philip. He's like, Philip, where are we going to get, the bread. How are we going to be able to buy the bread? Where can we buy bread to feed this multitude?

And he's clearly communicating to Philip, I want to feed these people. I want to show them hospitality. I'm not content to teach them. I'm not content to simply heal them.

I also want to feed them. And what he's saying by that is, I view myself as the host of this occasion. I am the host, and you disciples with me, you are host also. And we want to feed these people.

I want us to feed them. This is an act of hospitality that Christ is wanting to engage in. Giving food to people, and dining with them was known then and even today as one of the ultimate acts of friendship. Jesus is wanting to convey by his actions to the multitude, basically this message, I want to do more than be your teacher, I want to do more than be your healer.

I want to be your friend. I want to be your host. I want us to enjoy friendship with one another. I would like to be the host here and break bread and provide a meal for you.

I don't want to just give teaching. I want to be a friend. I want to be a good host. Jesus' thinking is, what can I do for these people that would make them happy that they came, make them feel loved and cared for, and thought about and tended to, and that can convey the love in my heart for them.

He wants to feed them. And now what's interesting, guys, is nobody would have died if Jesus did not do this. People weren't lying on the ground, laying on the ground like half dead, starving because they're so impoverished. No one would have died.

Without this meal. Everyone in this crowd is no more than an hour away from being able to go somewhere and get something to eat, and they had money for that. So this is not a desperate need that people have. It's nice.

It's a nice thing. It's a courteous thing to provide for people, but it's not absolutely essential to their life and their well-being. Nonetheless, Jesus wants to provide this for them. So there's a 3rd thing Jesus does as the story continues to unfold, and that is that he called upon his disciples to feed the multitude.

I love this. It says, when it was already quite late, his disciples came to him and said, so they've been thinking about this. Jesus said something to Philip, and lodged the thought in Philip's mind. Philip's talking to the other disciples, and they're thinking, Jesus apparently wants these people to be fed.

And they come up with a plan, and they come and communicate Plan A to Jesus. Here's plan A. Jesus, this place is desolate, and it is already quite late. Send them away so that they may go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.

So this is Plan A. Send the people away. Let them go to the countryside and villages. Let them find something.

That they can buy. Let them buy that and let them eat it, and the unstated. Fourth part of their plan is, and let us get on with our retreat. OK.

It just so happens that this plan A, that the disciples came up with is the least costly plan to them. It is the least complicated plan for the disciples. It is the least time consuming plan for them. Not for the crowd, but for them.

This is the most logical plan. It is the most simple plan. It is the most sensible plan. And it's not the plan that Jesus wanted.

Jesus, verse 37, answered them and said, No, you give them something to eat. There are a few moments in the gospel accounts, guys, that I would love to have been an eyewitness of. If I can go back in time and be anywhere in the gospel accounts, there's a few events that I would love to be at and be an eyewitness of. This is one of them.

I would love to have seen the look on the disciples' faces. When they come up with this plan and Jesus says, No, we're not going to do that. You feed them. The amazing thing about this command is he doesn't tell them how it's going to happen.

He just drops this command on them. He doesn't say, Hey, you feed them, and by the way, I'm going to be doing a miracle. You're going to feed these 5000. This is going to be in Mark 61 day.

An amazing miracle lies in store. There's no explanation. Jesus is a master teacher. And he just drops this imperative on them and lets them twist in the wind a little bit and figuring out the logistics of how they're going to execute this.

He says, you feed them. And then he stops and lets them ponder how in the world can this be carried out. And that's the 4th thing that Jesus does here. And that is he lets his disciples struggle with how his vision for feeding the multitude would get executed.

He lets them struggle with that. He doesn't bail them out. He doesn't say, and here's how it's going to happen. He lets them think that over and huddle together.

And so apparently they did huddle together, and then they come back to Jesus, they already know he's rejected Plan A. And they now come to him with Plan B. And they don't like it. They don't like Plan B.

Here's Plan B, they said to him, shall we go? Shall we spend 200 denarii on bread? Shall we give them something to eat? Jesus, here's our plan.

here's the only way we can imagine that we can carry out your vision that we feed the multitude, and that is that we go, we leave this retreat place that you had invited us to, that we leave, we go somewhere else, we, we go to the countryside and villages, we find Places that are selling bread, we make all of those purchases, we spend 200 denarii, then we come back and then feed these people. And they're saying, we don't like this. Shall we do this? And John 6:7, write this down.

The disciples were saying that even 200 denarii was hardly enough for this crowd. If anything, at best, it would be enough to just give everybody a little. Just a little bit, a few bites, 200 denarii, which is about 8 months of wages for somebody to fully feed this crowd to a point of fullness would have been considerably more 400, 500 denarii. This is a massive need and the disciples are overwhelmed by it.

And Jesus simply drops this responsibility on them and says, you feed them. And they're thinking about the logistics of how to actually do that. And the only way they can think is that they go, they buy, they come back, and they feed, they don't, they can't imagine how that can be done. And they come to Jesus and say, shall we do this?

And so Jesus responds, and that leads us to the 5th thing that Jesus did to enlarge their vision for ministering to the multitude, and that is he asked his disciples to take inventory of the provisions they had for feeding the multitude. I'm just struck by the way Jesus performed this miracle. He could have just magically made food appear. But instead, he tells the disciples, I want you to go see this crowd.

I want you to go talk to these people. I want you to find out how much food is represented in this crowd. And it says, he said to them, how many loaves do you have? Go look.

So here's a crowd, go, go find out how much food is represented in Among the people in this crowd. Basically, this is Plan C, that the disciples are hearing and that is apparently Jesus intends to feed the multitude. From the reservoir of food that already exists amongst the people of this multitude, whatever the inventory of food is that is represented in this crowd, Jesus is wanting to take that and redistribute that and thereby feed everybody. Well, logically, that makes very little sense to the disciples.

They know that this is a spur of the moment gathering. This is an unplanned event. People have run for 7 miles in order to be here at this location to meet up with Jesus, who would have thought, Let's bring a meal. Let's have a picnic.

This was so spontaneous that the disciples rightfully would have thought, You're sending us to now go talk to this multitude and find out how much food is represented here. Nobody's going to have brought any food, but to their credit, they obey. And they begin to ask people, Do you have food? No, I don't.

Do you have food? No, no, I don't. And they work the crowd and they find out what the inventory of food is. And amazingly, guys, in a crowd this massive, They find one person.

One person, a lad. Who happened to bring 5 loaves and 2 fish, and I'm sure they were very discouraged. Jesus told us to find out how much we had. We were hoping against hope there would have been somehow a ton of food here, but there's not.

This is all we got. And so they come to Jesus. And in John's Gospel, we learned that they brought this lad to Jesus and they said, here's a lad who has 5 loaves. And 2 fish, and in John's Gospel they say, but what is that?

What is that in the face of so great a need, this can't even touch. The need of this crowd. So Jesus Makes the disciples do this work. Discovering, discerning the inventory of food that is already present, he didn't have to do that.

But he had them do that nonetheless, and the disciples, to their credit, bring that to Jesus, and they're probably just like, So we're going to have to come up with a plan D somewhere. But Jesus, amazingly, looks at the 5 loaves and 2 fish and says, this will be perfect. Perfect. This is all I need.

The 6th thing that we observed that Jesus does here is he miraculously provided the disciples with the provision that they needed to feed the multitude. He miraculously provided the disciples with the provision they needed to feed the multitude. It says, and he commanded them all to sit down by groups on the green grass, and they sat down in groups of hundreds and 50s. This is what I love about the story is the miraculous element, but also the mundane elements here.

Jesus could have Just miraculously caused food to appear in everybody's hands, but he doesn't do that. He wants the disciples to distribute that food. and so Jesus is actually thinking about seating arrangements here. He says, I want these people to sit down in groups with space between the groups so as to facilitate.

The most efficient distribution of food to everybody. He's thinking of logistics and how this provision, this feeding would take place. I just marvel that Jesus is thinking. Pragmatically about things like seating arrangements so that everyone can be served.

If there was no arrangements and it was chaotic, then everybody would not be served well. The distribution would not be efficient. Jesus wants everybody to be served well, and that requires somebody think about seating arrangements so that the disciples can distribute the food. In the most efficient way possible.

Jesus is thinking about that administrative detail. Jesus then took the five loaves and the 2 fish, and looking up toward heaven, he blessed the food. Literally, he spoke well of the food. I'm sure that meant a lot to, to the lad that that had brought the food.

Jesus, the lad would have known from whatever Jesus said in his blessing that Jesus is really excited about and grateful for this food that he finds it very useful to his purposes. He blessed the food, and he broke the loaves and kept giving them to the disciples to set before them, the people, and he divided up the two fish among them all. And so Jesus is, is giving the loaves and the fish to the disciples. Apparently they found 12 baskets somewhere.

and Jesus would be putting the bread and the loaves in those baskets, and it just keeps getting multiplied. I'm sure that was just a phenomenal thing for them, to witness. He divided up the loaves and the fish among them, and this miracle was so all-encompassing that everybody ate and was satisfied. in John's Gospel, we learn in John chapter 6, verse 11 that everybody ate as much as they wanted.

So everybody ate to the point of satisfaction and fullness. And not only that, but they picked up 12 full baskets of the broken pieces, and also of the fish. So it wasn't just everyone got fed, but everyone got fed to the full, and it wasn't just everyone got fed to the full, but everyone got fed to the full, and there were 12 full baskets left over after that. How big was this crowd?

Mark says there were 5000 men who ate the loaves. Matthew tells us there were 5000 men besides women and children. So telling us that there were women and children in the crowd in addition to 5000 men, that would easily put the absolute minimum number of this crowd at 7000, and many would speculate that it was far more than that. So this is a massive undertaking, a massive miracle.

that, that Jesus is performing here. He gave the disciples a command saying, You feed them. And then to their amazement, he totally provided for them to do exactly what he had impossibly commanded them to do. I'm sure after this occasion, The disciples never wavered in the face of any command from Jesus.

If Jesus said, hey, do something, it wouldn't have mattered to them how impossible that seemed. It's like if Jesus gives us a command, inside of every command he gives us is the wherewithal to carry that out to the full, to do it abundantly. With every command is the ability to not just do it, but do it abundantly to the full. They did more than feed the multitude.

They had much left over. There's that fullness, guys, inside of every command that Christ gives to us. And when he calls us to reach the people of this community through our care groups and through our homes and in the workplace and in our morning services when he calls us. To make disciples of all of the nations and to preach the gospel to others inside of those instructions is a fullness of provision, not just the capacity to do it, but to do it abundantly.

And all of that resource is there available for us. There's a 7th and final thing that Jesus does that would serve to enlarge His disciples and our vision for greater multitudes than we are reaching now, and that is that Jesus intended for his miraculous act of courteous provision to point ultimately to Him. again, No one would have died if this miracle did not get performed. No one would have died.

This is a, this is an act of hospitality. Just like someone comes into your home and you provide a meal for them. Usually you're not providing that meal because they're going to die if they don't eat. You're doing the friendly thing.

You're doing the courteous thing. You're welcoming them into friendship and providing for them in this way. This is a miraculous act of courtesy. This is a miraculous act of courteous provision.

And Jesus does this miracle. We know from John's Gospel, if you read the rest of John chapter 6, he performs this miracle ultimately to point everybody's attention to him. In fact, in John chapter 6, verse 35, Jesus says, I am the bread of life. He who comes to me will not hunger, and he who believes in me will never thirst.

And he is performing this miracle to point to Him as the ultimate bread. Now admittedly, if you read John 6, you realize that there were people in this crowd who made wrong use of this miracle. There were people who began to follow him because they wanted more bread. Rather than focusing on Him who is the bread of life.

There were people who became fixated on the bread and not on Jesus. There were people in this crowd who actually honestly didn't think much of the miracle. In fact, believe it or not, later in John 6, after this miracle, people who were actually here said, can you show us a sign? That would verify who you're saying that you are.

Show us a sign. This is after this amazing miracle here. There are people in this crowd that are being loved. In this courteous way by Jesus, who made wrong use of this miracle, who didn't even think it all that impressive, they're still waiting for some other sign that might convince them.

Nonetheless, Jesus viewed this act of courtesy. This miraculous act of courtesy as a miracle worth doing because it would point to him. He faults the people who followed him after that, saying, Truly, truly, I say to you, you seek me because you ate of the loaves, and you were filled. Don't work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.

For on him the Father God has set his seal. I am the bread of life. That's what Jesus is conveying. Just a few observations as we, shut this down this morning that I want to make real quick.

one of the things we learned from this story is that physical needs and material courtesies are important to Jesus. if providing them a meal was a need, It would not have been a capital N. needed. It would have been need with a small n at the beginning of that word.

As I've said a couple of times, no one would have died if they did not receive. This meal from Jesus. Jesus and other cases did big time life and death miracles, raising the dead, cleansing lepers, saving people from dying, big time, real need miracles. This honestly guys, was simply a miraculous act of courtesy.

That was not even meeting a need capital N, and yet Jesus viewed this as worthy of his consideration. Here is this most holy of occasions. Jesus teaching the multitude and pressing into this most holy and spiritual of occasions is a very mundane earthly matter, and that is rumbling tummies. And a, and a desire for food that's not absolutely even essential.

Everyone could have left and fed themselves, but Jesus is like, no, I don't want you to go away, to go get something for yourselves to eat, even though I know you can. I want to provide for you. I want to love you. I don't want to just teach you and heal you.

I want to be your friend. I want to feed you in a way that points to who I am and the fact that I actually want to feed you me. Physical needs, material courtesies are important to Jesus. You think about Jesus at the wedding feast at Cana.

They ran out of wine. Everyone had already eaten, they had already drank wine, and they just ran out. And Jesus could have said, I'm not gonna waste my power on such a thing. It's basically just imagine nowadays at a, at a get together and they run out of coffee.

Seriously, that's the equivalent. And Jesus viewed that he's like, what, this is actually the perfect setting for my first miracle, as I can begin to reveal myself. That's an amazing demonstration of the heart of Jesus Christ. Such things are not beneath him.

He could have said with all the poverty in the world, I'm not gonna waste my power on making more wine for people that have already had wine. To drink. He could have said, I'm not gonna provide a meal for this crowd of people. They all have money, they all can go somewhere within an hour and have something to eat.

I'm not gonna waste my power on that. No, he thinks about such things, and they mean something to him. They're not beneath his dignity, beneath his power, beneath his consideration. In the same way where we're at as a church, we're thinking about things like buildings.

No one would die if we had no building to meet in, right? If we had to meet outside, no one would die. I don't think. Maybe in August some might.

But isn't an absolute pressing need, life and death need? No, it's not a capital in need. It is a small in. If anything, but Jesus would say, that's not the need things that I would be concerned about, you're wanting to welcome people.

and to teach them, and this is an earthly material, physical type of thing to think about. And Jesus would say, I'm blessed and I'm honored by the fact that you're thinking about such things and how you can accommodate people and how to make them feel loved and cared for, and welcomed. The same Savior that turned water into wine and who fed the 5000 this meal on this occasion. That Savior, I think, would be pleased by the energies that we spend in thinking about such things about maybe moving to another location that expands our capacity to minister to more people and that we're even thinking through what do we want their experience to be like when they do come on to the campus of our church.

Jesus would say such things are a demonstration of the greatness of my heart. Jesus loves us in ways big and small, and we demonstrate him and his character when we do the same. A second observation I've already made, and that is that Jesus chose to show His greatness through courtesy. He showed His greatness in other settings by meeting absolute burning capital and needs.

But at the wedding at Cana, on an occasion such as this, the feeding of the 5000, he showed his greatness. Through courtesy Doesn't that reveal just as much sometimes about a person? Wow, they thought about that. I'm sure when we get to heaven, we're just going to be going, whoa, Jesus thought about this.

He thought about this. He's in heaven preparing a place for us. And when we get to heaven, we're gonna see he thought about everything, big and small. Those things mean sometimes it's the little things that mean.

Even more, and he chose this setting to be a venue in which to demonstrate the greatness of his heart. And when we give consideration to earthly things at times to consider how to welcome people and to make them feel loved and cared for, Jesus would say that honors me. Obviously such things can become a god, and we can depend on such things to do the work of sanctifying people. We can make an idol of such things.

Jesus would renounce that. But Jesus would also say that such things are not beneath my dignity. I want my people to think about such things. Also, a third and final observation is that sometimes great works of God involve complicated logistics.

it'd be nice, even in this moment in Mark 6, if Jesus just did this amazing miracle, our food just materializes, and Jesus didn't even say anything to the disciples and have them get frustrated over how do we do this and He could have just bypassed that and boom, everyone has this meal in front of them and it's all simple and it's exactly what's needed and there's nothing left over. There's no need for any clean up. But no, he lets the disciples see the need. He lets them come up with a plan.

He calls them to do the feeding, and he lets them struggle with the logistics of how they might be able to do what he's just told them to do. He lets them come up with their own plan. He called them to go and look and take inventory of what was in the crowd. He allowed them to come back to Him and present their report to Him of what they had found.

He allowed them to despair that even that provision, as small as it was, would even at all be sufficient. Jesus then thinks about and he orders everyone to sit in a particular pattern in groups of 150 in order to make it logistically simpler for all the disciples to distribute food to the multitude. Jesus blessed the food, then he distributed that to the disciples. And then the disciples distributed that to the people, and then there were fragments left over.

Someone had to gather that up. That's extra work for somebody. They had to put those in 12 baskets that they got from somewhere and then once they were gathered there, they didn't just sit there for the next several days. Someone had to do something with that.

Jesus was making work for somebody. Blessed work. Blessed work indeed. But work Nonetheless, this is a miracle that accomplishes a million things.

It shows the power of Christ to do the miraculous, but it also is a story that exalts the mundane. It exalts the mundane as a venue to showcase the greatness. of Jesus Christ. It exalts the mundane as a vehicle through which Christ demonstrates his greatness and His glory.

It exalts the mundane. The administrative, the logistical, it exalts such details as being worthy of the Lord's attention. Over the last several months, the elders have spent a lot of time In such details talking buildings and seating arrangements and leases and signs and parking spaces and restroom spaces and programming issues and audio visual and acoustics and we've been swimming in some of these details in recent days and weeks. And I've just personally found this story of the feeding of the 5000 helpful for me.

I think Christ would be pleased. I think he would be pleased. Tonight, we're asking you to come to Bourne's and just join us in pondering some of these things. And we can be encouraged in the thought that these issues are not beneath our Lord's.

Concern and attention, thinking through such things is simply a means by which we can show the greatness of Christ and demonstrate his love in a way that ultimately points to him. We should not become disenchanted with complications that may lie on the road ahead or in some cases costs that might lie. On the road ahead, costs that may seem to be going to rather mundane types of things and logistics. No, sometimes the great works of God involve such things, and we see that here in this story.

Some of us may prefer Simplicity and solitude and seclusion and retreat and the disciples would have said that's what we were really wanting. But what, in the process, though, there were some frustrations we encountered. We wouldn't trade that experience for anything. Christ called us to engagement.

And he calls us as believers to engagement on all fronts in our care groups, in the workplace, in our homes, in our neighborhoods, and In our morning services. And these are the things that we'll be pondering together with you. Tonight, let's look to the Lord in prayer and Just ask him to help us as a congregation to not become On the one hand, sidelined, away from the unimportant, distracted from the unimportant, and caught up in the mundane, but at the same time, may God spare us from the Gnostic.

notion of Thinking that mundane administrative details are somehow unworthy of Christ.

In ways large and small, we have a chance in the way that we go about thinking through this. In the weeks and months ahead, and then actually making it happen, and we got a chance to just really demonstrate the glory and the greatness of the heart of Jesus Christ. Lord, we come to you this morning, and we, we just cry out to you. We ask for your help, we ask for your perspective, we ask that what lies underneath all of our consideration of sometimes rather mundane details is that we would never lose sight of what we're really after is obeying your command, as you point to the multitude around us here in the Inland Empire, and around the world, you point To that multitude, and you say to us, you feed them.

Drive us, Lord, from our comfort zones to reach out and to engage and to minister and to love. In meeting real, real capital needs, and also loving. In a way where we are meeting and giving consideration to small in needs, and we are loving people in ways both large and small, and in all of those ways demonstrating. The greatness of our Savior.

Living and behaving and loving and caring in a way that points people's attention to you. You have done all of this for us, and now we get to turn to the world around us and to mirror this to them. At exactly this point. of our journey as a church.

May we be faithful. Help us, Lord. Thank you for this opportunity to give of our offerings to you this morning, Lord. Take every penny that is given.

And do much with it for The glory of the Lord Jesus Christ and the spread of this gospel throughout this community. And throughout the world We give ourselves to you at the same time in the name of Jesus, and all God's people said, Amen.