I know what some of you are thinking today. Some of you are thinking, "Only 17 shopping days left before Christmas." Others of you are wondering just how you’re going to get that Christmas letter out in time. You’re thinking, "Perhaps it should be a New Year’s letter instead."
Let’s face it: This is the season to feel overwhelmed. What to buy that aunt you can never think of a gift for? How to deal with those quirky family members you manage to avoid the rest of the year? Gridlock traffic near the malls, office Christmas parties, picking out a Christmas tree, putting up decorations.
Are you feeling overwhelmed yet?
And if we can rise above our own personal circumstances enough to see the bigger picture, we feel even more overwhelmed. We see problems far bigger and more complex than our ability to figure out. The war on terror, the imminent conflict with Iraq, the AIDS crisis in the continent of Africa, poverty and homelessness here in the US.
Are you feeling overwhelmed yet?
Feeling overwhelmed is simply a part of life. Sometimes we feel like the proverbial little boy trying to plug up holes in the dam with his fingers. Each time he sticks his finger in one hole, two more holes open up.
Following Jesus Christ as a Christian doesn’t make that sense of feeling overwhelmed go away. In fact, in some ways it gets worse, because we not only worry about the things we can see, but we also worry about the things we can’t see. We not only worry about things like our kids and our health, but we also have concerns about reaching lost people for Christ, about the vitality of our church, about the spiritual climate of our culture.
Today we’re going to talk about running on empty. The title comes from an old Jackson Brown song about a guy who feels like he’s constantly behind. I know how that guy feels. Today we’re going to look at a situation where some of Jesus’ followers felt overwhelmed. We’ve been in a series through the New Testament book of Mark called Following Jesus in the Real World. Today we’re going to find some principles that relate to us when we run on empty.
1. Feeling Overwhelmed (Mark 6:31)
Let’s look at what leads Jesus’ followers to be running on empty in v. 31. Last weekend Pastor Doug did a wonderful job talking about how Jesus sent his twelve apostles on a special ministry assignment. Jesus gave his 12 apostles authority and then sent them out to the towns and villages. This was part of their training, preparing them for the time when Jesus would ascend to heaven and he’s give them the keys to the car. They’ve returned from an effective and successful time of ministry, but they’re exhausted from the experience.
Mark’s comment about "so many people coming and going" makes it sound like the Ontario Mills Mall the day after Thanksgiving. So Jesus invites his followers--those who’ve trusted in him--to leave the crowds for a quiet place to rest. The Greek word "quiet place" here is literally "desert place." The "desert" had strong associations for the Jewish people, because it was in the desert where they encountered God in the book of Exodus, in the desert where they were tested and tempted. In Jewish thought, the desert was a place of proving and testing, yet also a place of renewal and restoration.
By calling his followers away from the crowd to a desert place, Jesus is reminding us that the essence of being a Christian isn’t doing stuff for Jesus, but it’s being with Jesus. Jesus is inviting them to hang out with him, to let down their guard, to not need to perform or act, but to simply be. Although their time of ministry was effective, they need to disassociate themselves from ministry for a while. They were feeling overwhelmed by the chaos, the coming and going of the crowd, the constant needs people keep bringing to Jesus.
Here we find the first principle. WHEN WE FOLLOW JESUS WE WILL SOMETIMES FEEL OVERWHELMED.
Sometimes I feel like the mythical figure Atlas, who in Greek mythology carried the world on his shoulders. We carry the burdens of our friends and our family the burdens of our church family and our community, the burdens of our nation. Sometimes it can feel crushing.
I feel that way sometimes. I look at the task of sharing the good news of Jesus with every nation and every language, and I feel overwhelmed at the sheer size of the task. I look at my unchurched friends and family who don’t yet establish a relationship with Jesus, and I feel responsible. As a pastor, I look at the needs of our congregation, the needs of our church budget, our need for more property, the people who aren’t growing and getting connected, and I feel like I need to fix these problems.
When we start feeling that way, we need to be reminded that following Jesus is first and foremost a relationship with Jesus. It’s not doing stuff for Jesus to impress him, it’s not conquering the evil of our world as a kind of Christian super-hero, but it’s being with him and being with his people in community. That’s hard for me to remember, because I’m more of a "do-er" rather than a "be-er."
When we feel overwhelmed as Christians, it’s time to get back to the essence of what following Jesus is all about. It’s time to just be with Jesus, to find a desert place to be with him. This is why our church offers retreats, like our Men’s Retreat coming up on April and our Women’s Retreat coming up on May, because we all need times to simply reconnect with Jesus.
When we follow Jesus we will feel overwhelmed sometimes, just like the first Christians did.
2. The Needs of Others (Mark 6:32-34)
But the best laid plans don’t always turn out like we plan. The crowd catches on to what Jesus and his followers are up to, and they do an end run to the desert, so they’re waiting when Jesus gets there.
It’s like a commercial I used to see on TV about a father taking his son to a very special, secret fishing hole. The father and so pack up their fishing gear and start hiking through the woods, but when they get there it’s so crowded that people are fishing elbow to elbow. So much for the secret fishing hole.
I felt a little like this last weekend. My wife and I had put off celebrating our 19th wedding anniversary because the weekend of our anniversary a few weeks ago we had other things happening. Our actual anniversary weekend, I wanted to take my oldest son to the Promise Keepers event "The Passage," and my wife had an opportunity to play in an orchestra she enjoys performing with. So we put off celebrating our anniversary until last weekend, the weekend after thanksgiving. Our plan was to farm our kids out to a few different families, jump on the motorcycle and cruise up the coast for the weekend, spontaneously staying wherever we felt like it. At least that was our plan until we heard it was going to rain, and then each plan to farm out our four kids fell through. We ended up going up the coast alright, but in the van with all four of our kids in the back. We told them they were just tagging along, but somehow we ended up at the Santa Barbara skate park so they could skateboard and roller blade. In other words, we didn’t have a bad time, but it certainly wasn’t exactly the weekend we’d originally planned.
So I can feel for Jesus’ exhausted and overwhelmed followers in this story. When Jesus sees the crowd, he has compassion on them. The Greek word Mark uses here is a graphic word that means, "He was moved to the core of his being." This is a deeply emotional word, a word that refers to the experience of affection and compassion for another person.
Jesus sees the people as sheep without a shepherd. Now this phrase "like sheep without a shepherd" comes from the Old Testament. When Moses was dying he commissioned his protégé Joshua to lead Israel, and Numbers 27:17 says that he did this so the people of Israel wouldn’t be like sheep without a shepherd. In 1 Kings 22:17, an obscure prophet named Micaiah says, "I saw all Israel scatted on the hills like sheep without a shepherd." The prophet Ezekiel speaks of Israel being scattered "because there was no shepherd" (Ezek 34:4). Each of these Old Testament references has military overtones, where Israel is like a leaderless army without a general to give them direction. In Jesus’ day, that’s what the crowd was looking for: A charismatic military leader who could mobilize them to rid themselves of Roman tyranny. But Jesus sees beyond their yearning for a general like Joshua. Jesus sees the crowd as needy and aimless, without direction or guidance.
Now this phrase "sheep without a shepherd" has also played a significant role in our church the last few years. Back in 1995 saw that in a church of our size the care needs of our people could no longer be met by just a few pastors or a handful of elders. Back in ’95 we were about half the size that we are today. And as our staff struggled with this reality, we came across this phrase "like sheep without a shepherd." That’s exactly how we felt about a lot of the people in our church, they were like sheep without a shepherd because we’d grown so much larger than any of us could manage. We knew many people slipping through the cracks, and that we needed to do something to help people feel more connected to our church family. That’s what led us to start calling our small group leaders "care pastors," to try to provide shepherds for smaller groups of people. We figured if majority of people’s care needs could be met in a small group led by a care pastor, then our staff and elders would be freed up to address the real critical care needs. So every since then we’ve called anyone who works with people in our ministry a care pastor. When our small group ministry is strong, we find that most people’s needs are met, but when our small group ministry isn’t strong, we find that many members are like sheep without shepherds. I’ll be honest with you: Our care group ministry isn’t as strong right now as it could be, so we have a lot of people in our own church who are like sheep without a shepherd. In fact, would you pray for this important part of our ministry to grow stronger, for God to raise up more care pastors who are willing to lead groups and to help our church members see the vital importance of being in this kind of group?
Look what Jesus did in v. 37 for these sheep without a shepherd: he taught them. The desert retreat is put on hold, as Jesus feels compassion for these desperate, leaderless people who are looking for a leader, any kind of leader. So Jesus tells them about God’s kingdom, giving them the direction and guidance they so desperately need.
Here we find another principle. WHEN WE FOLLOW JESUS, OTHER PEOPLE’S NEEDS BECOME A HIGH PRIORITY IN OUR LIVES.
Followers of Jesus align their priorities differently than those who don’t follow Jesus. Before I became a follower of Jesus, my basic approach to life was to use people and love things. After coming to faith in Jesus, that began to change, as I began to learn how to love people and use things. When you come to faith in Jesus, you begin to realize how important people truly are. You begin to realize what Christian author C. S. Lewis meant when he said, "You’ve never met a mere mortal." You begin to realize that houses will crumble, stock markets will crash, cars will break down, but when all is said and done, people will last forever.
It reminds me of the closing scene from the movie Schindler’s List. When Germany finally surrenders, Schindler knows that he’s a wanted man for using Jews as slave labor throughout the war. As he prepares to flee, he’s surrounded by over 1,000 Jews whose lives he saved. His accountant turned friend Itzhak hands Schindler a piece of paper and says, "We’ve written a letter tying to explain things in case you were captured. Every worker has signed it." Schindler begins to weep, saying, "I could’ve done more. I could’ve done more." His friend reassures him, "Eleven hundred people are alive because of you." Schindler looks at his car and says, "This car…what use is this car? Why did it keep it? It could’ve saved ten more people." Looking at his label pin he says, "This is gold. I could’ve saved more." Schindler did an amazing thing, preserving the lives of 1100 Jewish people during the darkest days of Germany, but he learned that people are more important thing things.Have you learned that lesson? When you follow Jesus, his character begins to rub off on you and you start treating people differently.
3. Facing Needs Beyond Our Capacity (Mark 6:35-37)
Let’s look what happens as the sun goes down in vv. 35-37. Jesus’ followers are finally running on empty. They’ve spent all their energy and passion on a ministry trip Jesus, when they arrived home there was so much commotion that they didn’t have time to eat, and now their retreat is spoiled because of the crowds. So they finally come to Jesus, saying, "Send them away before the sun goes down." They’re ready for a break, ready for some time with just them and Jesus. They also know that there’s no In ’n Out burger in the Galilean desert. If they wait too long, people will start growing faint from dehydration and hunger.
Jesus’ response is telling: "You give them something to eat." The disciples were saying, "It’s not our problem. They’re the ones who crashed our party. They’re the ones who didn’t think to pack a lunch." But Jesus says, "You meet the need."
As they look at the people, they exclaim, "It would take eight months of a person’s wages to feed these people!"
Here we find a third principle. WHEN WE FOLLOW JESUS, WE WILL FACE NEEDS THAT ARE FAR BEYOND OUR ABILITY TO MEET.
Jesus intentionally brings us into situations where we feel over our heads, where what we have seems insignificant compared to the need we face. I know that there’s a motto that’s common among Christians that says, "God will never give us more than we can handle." I suppose that there’s a certain amount of truth to that, but this story reminds us that what we think we can handle and what God thinks we can handle might be two different things. God brings us into many situations where he calls us to meet needs that are far beyond what we think we can handle.
A lot of people feel this way about their giving to the church. Our congregation’s budget has grown a lot over the last two years, and this year we took a huge step of faith to increase our budget by 12% to hire two new staff members. If you’ve been following the budget report in our church newsletter, we didn’t make our new budget the first quarter of the fiscal year that started back in July. When my wife Chris and I write out our monthly tithe check, it’s easy to become intimidated by the need, because compared to our budget, our monthly contribution seems so small and insignificant. I think the larger a church gets, the more people it impacts, the more tempting it is to think that you’re contribution doesn’t make much of a difference. That’s probably why the proportion of people who give to a church drops the larger a church gets, because more and more people begin to feel like the disciples did when they saw the sheer magnitude of the need. Perhaps that has something to do with why we didn’t meet our budget need the first quarter. In fact, we’ll be taking a special offering at our Candlelight Christmas Eve services to catch up.
Yet when we face an overwhelming need, Jesus sometimes comes to us and says, "You meet the need." We look and can’t imagine how what we have can even put a dent in the need. It’s like trying to empty the ocean with a teaspoon, an exercise in futility.
4. The Miracle of Multiplication (Mark 6:38-44)
Let’s look at what happens next. Now Jesus could’ve simply made bread materialize out of nothing. After all, we’re talking about the incarnate Son of God here. He could have done anything. But he doesn’t make bread appear from nothing. Instead he asks his followers to find out what they have. They come up with five loaves of bread and two fish, not even enough for a dozen McDonald’s fish fillet sandwiches.
Jesus breaks the people into more manageable groups, groupings of fifty and a hundred. Then he takes what the disciples gave him, thanks God for it, breaks the loaves, and gives it back to his followers with instructions to distribute it among the people. As they hand out the bread, miraculously everyone eats until they’re satisfied. Yet after everyone’s eaten and satisfied there are more leftovers than there were loaves and fish at the beginning.
This is what scholars call a "nature miracle." But this nature miracle is unique, because it’s the only miracle from Jesus’ earthly life that’s recorded in all four biographies of Jesus in the Bible. It’s also unique because it’s the only miracle of multiplication, where Jesus takes what someone gives him and multiplies it.
Notice that Mark never tells us when the miracle occurs. Does it happen when the disciples give the bread and fish to Jesus? Or when Jesus prays over it? Or when Jesus gives it back to his followers for them to distribute? Or not until they begin distributing it? Mark doesn’t tell us.
There’s also an intentional contrast here between this banquet in the desert and the banquet Pastor Doug talked about last week from earlier in this chapter. In vv. 21-29 of this same chapter Mark told us about the birthday banquet of King Herod. That banquet was only for the important and wealthy people, it was a banquet full of seduction and deceit, a banquet that ended with the violent death of a godly man named John, who’s head was served up on a platter. This banquet is in the desert instead of a palace; it’s a banquet for everyone, not just important people. It’s a banquet that ends with everyone being satisfied, with life instead of death. This is the banquet of the true king of Israel, not the pretender King Herod sitting in his temple. This banquet in the desert is also reminiscent of the story of Moses miraculously feeding Israel in the wilderness.
Here we find a final principle. WHEN WE FOLLLOW JESUS, GOD WILL MULTIPLY WHAT WE GIVE HIM FAR BEYOND OUR EXPECTATIONS.
They presented Jesus with just a few loaves of bread and two fish, and God multiplied it to feed thousands. I think Mark purposefully doesn’t tell us when the miracle occurs because when we give what we have to Jesus, the way it multiplies is often mysterious. It simply doesn’t make sense from a human perspective, and we can’t point to a specific time and place where it multiplied. But when we look at the overall effect of what we gave, we realize that the effect was far greater than what we initially gave Jesus.
Notice the sequence: The disciples are overwhelmed by a need that Jesus tells them to meet. So they give Jesus what little they have, he consecrates what they give him and then gives it back, with instructions to use what they’ve given to Jesus to serve others. Jesus doesn’t distribute the loaves and the fish, but the people who gave it to Jesus distribute it. When they gave it to Jesus, they surrendered ownership of it, but when Jesus gave it back, he gave it back to them to manage, not to own. They’ve become stewards of what now belongs to Jesus, and as stewards they give what Jesus told them to give, and amazingly it’s enough. In fact, not just enough, but more than enough with more leftovers than they ever dreamed of.
This is how it works with us. In the face of overwhelming needs, Jesus says, "You meet the need." We murmur that what we have isn’t nearly enough--we don’t have enough money, enough time, enough, resources, enough education. But we give it to Jesus anyway, and he sets it apart, consecrates it to God. But instead of keeping it for himself, he gives it back to us, this time trusting what now belongs to him back to us. This is the great paradigm shift, where as followers of Jesus Christ we realize that all we have belongs to Jesus. It’s not my house, my bank account, my kids, my clothes, my investments, my job. It’s his house entrusted to me, his bank account, his children, his clothes, his investments, his job. Just because I’m in possession of them doesn’t mean I own them any longer. I’ve given them to Jesus, presented what little I have to him. It’s as if everything I have has been stamped with the phrase, "Property of Jesus, entrusted to Tim."
This paradigm shift changes everything in how I view my life. It changes my giving in the church, it changes my time commitment to ministry. It changes the way I view the homeless person on the street, the way I view the kid in my son’s class whose parents can’t afford a coat in the winter. It changes the way I treat my motorcycle, my home, my groceries, my clothes. And this is a paradigm shift that takes a lifetime to really make completely.
And the wonderful, exciting thing about this shift is how when I use what Jesus has given back to me, it has far reaching effects that continue to blow my mind.
Whenever I read this story I think about another story, a story about a little girl named Hattie May Wiatt. I’ve shared this story with you before, but it bears repeating.
Several years ago Grace Baptist Church in Philadelphia had to turn away a little girl named Hattie May Wiatt from children’s ministry because of overcrowding. That day Hattie May Wiatt started saving her pennies to help the church make more room in their children’s ministry. Two years later, Hattie May tragically died. In her pocketbook next to her bed her parents found 57 pennies and a piece of paper with a note saying that the money was to help the church build a bigger children’s ministry. At Hattie May’s funeral, her mother gave that 57 cents and the note to Pastor Russell Conwell, the pastor of Grace Baptist Church. That Sunday, Pastor Conwell shared Hattie May’s story with his congregation. People’s hearts were touched; a realtor give the church a piece of land to expand the children’s ministry, asking for 57 cents for a down payment. A local newspaper carried the story, and soon news about Hattie May Wiatt’s 57 cents spread across the country. The pennies grew far beyond Hattie May’s initial 57 pennies. Grace Baptist Church not only built a new children’s ministry wing, but also a new ministry center, today seating over 3,000 people. Out of that movement of generosity from Hattie May’s example the church built Temple University in Philadelphia, and Good Samaritan Hospital. In fact, you can visit Temple University today and find a picture on the wall of Hattie May Wiatt, a little girl who’s 57 pennies were used by God far beyond the limits of her life.
God can take whatever we give him, no matter how small and insignificant it seems, and use it in incredible ways, far beyond our expectations.
Conclusion
Are you running on empty? Do you feel overwhelmed with people’s needs that are far beyond your capacity to meet? Do you feel like Atlas with the world on your shoulders and Jesus saying, "You give them something to eat. You meet the need?" If so, know that if you give what you have to Jesus, he can use it far beyond your wildest dreams. Although you might still feel overwhelmed from time to time, you’ll spend more time in amazement at how God has taken such small things from your life and used them to such great effect.
