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Sep 01, 2024

When Hunger Beats Hardness

Passage: Mark 8:1-21

Preacher: John Repsold

Series: Gospel of Mark

Keywords: sin, belief, bread, food, practice, leaven, spiritual hunger, hard-hearted

Summary:

For the second time, Jesus multiplies bread and fish, primarily for the benefit of those hungry for His word as well as disciples who tend to be hard of heart. This passage and message looks at how spiritual hunger can cure hardness of heart and how our God wants to do that with us today.

Detail:

When Hunger Beats Hardness

Mark 8:1-21

September 1, 2024

Fellowship Question:

  • Tell about a time when you remember being particularly hungry spiritually.

STORY:  Andrew as a 2-year-old.  Wouldn’t put a bib on to eat.  Became a power struggle.  So we put his plate on the table and as he sat in his highchair defiant through dinner, breakfast, lunch and who knows how many meals.  Hard-hearted me:  I watched Sandy tear up at every meal when he refused the bib.  Hunger finally won out, the bib went on and the plate found the highchair…and we haven’t had a problem with him wearing a bib since. Hunger can definitely beat out stubbornness. 

            Today’s passage of Scripture is about both hunger and hardness of heart.  So, turn to Mark 8.

During those days another large crowd gathered. Since they had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and said, 2 “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. 3 If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way, because some of them have come a long distance.”

4 His disciples answered, “But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?”

5 “How many loaves do you have?” Jesus asked.

“Seven,” they replied.

6 He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. When he had taken the seven loaves and given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people, and they did so. 7 They had a few small fish as well; he gave thanks for them also and told the disciples to distribute them. 8 The people ate and were satisfied. Afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. 9 About four thousand were present. After he had sent them away, 10 he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the region of Dalmanutha.

11 The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven. 12 He sighed deeply and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it.” 13 Then he left them, got back into the boat and crossed to the other side.

14 The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. 15 “Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.”

16 They discussed this with one another and said, “It is because we have no bread.”

17 Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

“Twelve,” they replied.

20 “And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

They answered, “Seven.”

21 He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

            This passage comes with a history: 7 chapters of stories and plot development by Mark.  One of the clear themes or focuses Mark began making in chapter 6 had to do with food, specifically bread. 

  • Mark 6:8--Sending of the 12-- “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts.”
  • Later in Mark 6—Feeding of the 5/15,000. Bread (which was synonymous with food and eating) is mentioned in the Greek 5 times.
  • Mark 6—Jesus walks on the water. Mark comments that the Disciples “were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened,” (vs. 52). 
  • Mark 7—the debate with the Pharisees about washing of hands before eating/bread.
  • Later in Mark 7—the Syrophoenician Gentile woman who is pleading for her demonically-oppressed little daughter. The whole discussion about giving the bread meant for someone’s children to the pet dog. 
  • Now we come to Mark 8 with the feeding of the 4,000.

Within 3 chapters, you have 18 of Mark’s 20 references to bread or “loaves” in his entire Gospel.  Clearly, something is going on.  Let’s find out what it is and how it can transform us.

            Mark begins this story with a reminder that it is basically a continuation or repeat of the Feeding of the 5,000.  “During those days another large crowd gathered.”  We don’t know how long after the feeding of the 5,000 this feeding is taking place.  But there is no indication that the people had come for a meal.  What hunger was driving them? 

  • A hunger to hear Jesus teach.
  • A hunger for the word of God coming with authority.
  • A hunger for the spiritual life, truth and transformation Jesus was offering.

In fact, they were SO hungry that they did what very few people today will do (unless there is a genuine spiritual revival):

  • They quit work to drink in the Word.
  • They left home to go to where they could hear the Word.
  • They forgot about the clock and calendar so they could pay attention to God.
  • They spent all day waiting for the words of Jesus.
  • They slept all night out in the open, on the hard ground, just so they wouldn’t miss out on the revival.
  • They went without meals because the meal they were getting for their souls was something they had never experienced before.

These are the marks of genuine spiritual revival.  When the Spirit of God is poured out in unusual fashion on a people, these symptoms always accompany the revival. 

  • Normal schedules cease.
  • People come day after day, night after night, to be near to God’s manifest presence.
  • Normal physical desire take a back seat to spiritual hunger.
  • Preoccupation with time gives way to passion for eternal realities. People lose track of time.
  • Desire for God overcomes normal desires for sleep as people worship for hours, as they wait patiently for the teaching of God’s Word.

And mark my words, this was one of history’s greatest revivals unfolding in the field.  Which is another sign of revival:  traditional places of preaching give way to non-traditional places like fields and forests and factories and stadiums. 

            This was a crowd of 4,000 after 3 days of sitting in the sun and sleeping on the hard ground.  And Jesus hadn’t dispensed a single sandwich or cup of wine.  They were there because they were hungry spiritually.  They were there because they wanted what God was serving more than another day’s wages, more than another meal, more than a comfortable bed and a good night’s sleep.  They were there for the Word of God. 

APP:  We cannot forget this and we dare not get this confused in ministry.  Jesus was never primarily concerned with meeting people’s physical needs.  That almost always came after he had addressed their spiritual needs.  Jesus knew that if their souls were changed, their bodies would be changed too.  But if meeting the bodily needs dominates, soul-needs usually languish.

ILL: 

  • Refugee Relief: people who are literally starving need food in order to hear/see/understand the love of Christ.  This was why Jesus fed the 4,000—so they literally wouldn’t faint on the way home.
  • Shalom Min. next door. How it began; how it has drifted; what is unfolding right now to bring back the soul-component.

This story reminds us that we serve a God of compassion. 

 2 “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. 3 If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way, because some of them have come a long distance.”

It is the compassion of God that drove Jesus to teach for 3 days.  It is the same compassion that moved Him to make sure they had enough food to give them strength to get home and go about their lives. Genuine compassion does not look merely or even predominantly at one’s physical needs.  It sees the soul and has compassion on what people most deeply need—God.

            Notice how Jesus is again bringing his disciples to the end of their resources. God does that for a reason.  It’s not to make us feel like fools or stress us out. 

Q:  Why did Jesus do the same thing weeks or months earlier with the feeding of the 5,000?

  • To show His power and greatness.
  • To teach them that ministry didn’t depend on them but God.
  • To involve them in the miracle.
  • To show that the God who fed all Israel for 40 years in the desert was with them right now doing a similar thing.
  • To build their faith and confidence in God no matter what the demand.

Q:  If they had really learned from the feeding of the 5,000, how could/should the disciples have responded this time to this need?  [What do we have?  Let’s give it to Jesus.  He can definitely handle this.]

Instead, this is what they actually said:

 4 His disciples answered, “But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?”

I wonder how long Jesus paused and didn’t say anything.  I wonder if he just stared at them and waited.  Jesus is more patient, longsuffering, kind, compassionate and gracious than I ever will be.  He just kindly asked again, “So what do you have?”  And they rummaged up 7 loaves of bread and a few small dried fish. 

Jesus gave virtually the same instructions as the previous time and then he gave thanks to the Father, multiplied the food and had the disciples serve it… as well as buss the tables.  Only in those days, you didn’t throw out the leftovers; you kept them for future meals.  So they collected 7 large baskets to have later.

            Then Jesus dismissed the crowd and he and the disciples got in a boat to cross the Sea of Galilee. 

            The difference here is that Jesus didn’t stay behind and come walking on the water later.  This time he joined them in the journey across the lake. 

            Mark now juxtaposes the spiritual hunger of the 4,000 with the hardness of the Pharisees.  Different sides of the lake; different responses to Jesus.  Whereas the crowd couldn’t get enough of Jesus words, the Pharisees weren’t interested in His teaching or the spiritual food they contained.  They wanted physical signs and wonders that would verify in their minds, supposedly, that Jesus had been sent from God. 

Q:  I wonder if they would have needed those ‘proofs’ if they had been with Him on the other side of the sea for 3 days of teaching?  Well, they at least would have experienced a miracle/sign as big as the crowd! But it is questionable whether or not they would have actually grasped the miracle and admitted that Jesus had been sent from God.  Even the disciples at this point were a bit hard of heart. 

  • As we’ll see in a moment, as committed to Christ as they were, there was still a level of hardness of heart, a blindness of spiritual eyes. 17-18--“Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? 18 Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear?”

APP:  I’m so glad God is patient with all different levels of human hardness and spiritual blindness.  Whether it was the inquiring disciples or the accusative Pharisees, Jesus kept giving truth and miracles.  And he keeps doing that today.

            But the same reality applies today as then:  those who are hungry for God will be exposed to more miracles than those who are critical of God.  God doesn’t do that as punishment.  He does it as a mercy.  To heap more proofs upon those who don’t want to believe or submit to His truth is to add judgment, not mercy. 

  • “To whom much is given, much is required,” still applies today (Lk. 12:48).
  • 11:21-- “Woe to you, Chorazin! Woe to you, Bethsaida! For if the mighty works which were done in you had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes.”

APP:  There seems to be an epidemic today of formerly “churched” adults who grew up in good, Bible-believing, God-honoring homes and churches but because of some disappointment in life (personal health crisis, disappointing marriage, some sexual confusion or church-hurt/wound, etc.) are angry at God and have, for all intents and purposes, turned their backs on Him…all the while still calling themselves “Christians.” 

            You cannot call yourself someone who belongs to Christ… a Christian…while rejecting the Lordship of Jesus and obedience to His commands.  Going down that road is like being a Pharisee:  you think yourself spiritual but you don’t want God telling you what to do.  It will only lead to greater hardness of heart.  It will only lead to more criticalness of God.  It will only result in you seeing fewer miraculous works of God in your life and believing more of the Enemy’s lies.

  • Son of a Bible College professor who is writing theology books trying to defend an egalitarian position on marriage and women pastors while separated from his wife and engaging in a polyamorous lifestyle. I can tell you right now:  he’s not hearing from God and not speaking truth!
  • Another pastor and author-acquaintance of mine who left his wife and family of 35+ years of marriage and multiple children for a younger model and is now critical of the church for not being forgiving and embracing of his new life. So he’s writing a book about how the church needs more grace and forgiveness.  While that may be true on a number of fronts, I can guarantee you that until there is genuine repentance on his part, his continued rejection of God’s already-revealed will and truth will only lead him further and further away from experiencing God’s power and hungering for His truth. 

Life can be very confusing, painful, unjust and unfair.  But God is neither the author nor implementor of evil.  We must hunger for His truth and heart more than we hunger for life to be all we want it to be or to make sense to our satisfaction.  That is true surrender to God.  That is true faith in Him, not ourselves. 

            Let’s now look at the core of Jesus’ reason for stringing together two miracles of feeding, two crowds of seekers and several encounters with critical Pharisees.  It is to give true seekers a warning.

14 The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. 15 “Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.”

I don’t know exactly how this conversation unfolded.  My guess is that it was probably around mealtime.  Maybe like me on a road trip, some of them liked to munch on the way. James may have asked, “Where did you put the bread, Peter?”  When Peter came up with a whole small loaf for all 13 in the boat, the smart comments and teasing probably started.  “Great planning, Peter.  Guess we know who won’t be eating today.” 

            So, Jesus uses their poor planning as an opportunity to impart another spiritual challenge: “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.” 

            Yeast/leaven can be used either positively (Mt. 13:33—of the kingdom) or negatively (1 Cor. 5:6-8) in the scriptures.  It is more often used negatively as a symbol or simile for sin, particularly in the O.T.  The entire week-long Feast of Unleavened Bread (Ex. 12-13, 23) was meant to remind Israel that they needed to be active and deliberate about purging their lives of sin. Jesus is here issuing another call to take precautions against the sin/leaven of certain people, namely the Pharisees and Herod.  He chooses a very religious group (Pharisees) and a very secular Gentile (Herod) to illustrate what all of his followers need to guard against. 

            In the parallel passage of this event in Matthew 16:12, we are told what the “leaven/yeast” of the Pharisees is exactly:  “Then they [the disciples] understood that He did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the doctrine of the Pharisees and Sadducees.”  Luke 12:1 sheds more light: “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, which is hypocrisy.” 

Two things here:

1.) Bad Doctrine/Belief:  distorted teaching of the truth of God.

2.) Hypocrisy: Bad Behavior/Living/Praxis/Practice of the truth. 

Either one will infect our lives with a fungus-like yeast that will impact every corner of our lives and relationships.

            Jesus came to give abundant life—life to the full (John 10:10).   But allowing wrong belief or sinful action to infect our lives will rob us, every time, of abundant life.  Jesus is warning his genuine, sincere followers that this is a constant danger for every one of us.  This is why we need each other—to speak into each other’s lives about what we’re believing, to correct errant belief, as well as to challenge errant actions and lack of actions. 

ILL:  A man I personally respected deeply for his compassion, medical professionalism and expertise.  He had a good marriage.  He raised a great and godly family.  He rose to the top of his career with a decades-long medical practice and became the chair of a department at one of this nations best medical schools.

            Like all of us, he struggled with his flesh.  His struggle happened to be same-sex attraction.  So, after keeping it under wraps for decades, rather than drill more into right doctrine, he found a “Christian counselor” who convinced him that the Bible really doesn’t condemn homosexuality.  His “doctrine” changed from 20 centuries of church teaching about sexuality to 21st-century Western culture acceptance of LGBTQ+ “theology”.

            What came next has robbed both him and his wonderful family of the fullness of life Jesus wants them to have.  He jettisoned his vows to God and his wife, divorced the love of his life for some 40 years, the mother of their numerous children.  He left his career and position at a prestigious medical school. He “came out” as same-sex attracted so as to “be true to himself.” 

            So, now his wife has to reconstruct her life in her senior years, single.  His kids have to redefine their relationship with them and their grandchildren.  And the parents of the grandkids now have to navigate what kind of influence they want their dad and his new theology to have in their own children’s lives…all the while figuring out how to love and honor their father who has abandoned one of the core truths of the Word of God and the life of a Christ-follower. 

            BE CAREFUL OF THE LEAVEN OF WRONG BELIEF/THEOLOGY because it will lead you to spiritual hardness and HYPOCRITICAL/WRONG ACTION! 

            Friends, none of us is perfect.  None of us hold 100% to perfect belief or perfect behavior.  But ALL of us must be on guard against bad belief/doctrine and bad behavior/sinful actions. 

  • When we smell it in our own souls, we must run from it.
  • When we see it in each other’s lives, we must challenge it.

The fact that Jesus had to warn his most sincere disciples about it is a sobering reminder that we, too, need to guard against these “leavens” of errant belief and errant practice. 

ILL: Like guardrails along the edge of a cliff-hugging mountain road, we need to construct spiritual guardrails in our lives. 

So let’s talk about how we do that…practically.

APP:  What can we do to protect ourselves from bad beliefs and bad practice?  [Responses.]

  • Study the Word…deeply.
  • Engage in regular, constant ‘feasts of unleavened bread’, i.e. consuming the Word and clean out sin. We will all get hardened hearts at different times and to varying degrees.  Only a continues pursuit of Christ will guard us from dull ears and callous hearts.
  • Cultivate a humble heart and be open to constant correction.
  • Be in deep, challenging, sharpening relationships. Don’t run from them.
  • Love God and His truth more than my opinions, my doctrines, my feelings, my affections, my inclinations, my preferences.
  • Love the voice and truths of Jesus more than anything else in life—food, rest, comfort, convenience, etc.
  • Live a submitted life—to Christ, the Word and divinely-ordained human authority (gov., employers, parents, spouses, church leaders, etc.).

APP:  Are our hearts soft enough to recognize and count on the fact that Jesus with us is more than enough for any need we may encounter?

What in life right now IS impossible for you to solve, meet, improve, manage? 

Hardened hearts…

  • worry instead of believe.
  • see limitations, not opportunities.
  • come up with human solutions instead of divine ones.
  • pull back in fear instead of step forward in faith.
  • look only at human ability, not God’s ability.

EX:  for Mosaic…

  • current finances: budget shortfall, upcoming missionaries, kitchen project.
  • Haven outreaches: leaders, volunteers, connecting points.
  • Growth in new believing singles, families, children and youth.

Your own life?  Let’s tell God what we have (a loaf?), bring it to Him, and affirm that we know He can do miracles we cannot.

PRAY