Sheep without a Shepherd

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Transcript:

Well, one of the skills that we need to master to be able to function in life is the ability to prioritize. You know, we have to figure out what’s really important and what’s really urgent, and we have to do this every night. Because it seems like no matter how organized we are, actually how organized Charla is, because she’s way more organized than I am, but no matter how much organization there is at our house, everything sort of falls apart between dinner and 7.

30. It’s just chaos at the house. And usually, you know, Carly Jo’s heart medicine alarm will go off at 6 o’clock, and at that time Charlie’s hanging upside down from the table by his legs, and Benjamin needs help with the shower sprayer.

And all these things are happening simultaneously. And you have to stop and in a split second go, okay, which one is most urgent? Then you realize, okay, I can give Carly Jo her heart medicine within 30 minutes.

We’re good there. Benjamin can wait. It’s not a life or death issue.

Charlie’s going to crack his skull open. So I’m going to go deal with him, then Carly Jo, then Benjamin, and then hope Madeline doesn’t get in the mix somewhere and do something crazy. And that happens constantly.

It probably happens for Charlie all day, but it just seems like that’s the worst period of time. We have to learn how to prioritize those things. I’m not just talking about prioritizing needs over wants.

We have to learn to prioritize needs sometimes. I remember a while back, over a year ago, when my sister and my brother-in-law were expecting my nephew. They’re expecting again, but they were expecting at that time the nephew who’s already here, Cecil, who you have seen and met.

They live in Purcell, and she was going to have the baby at Ada, just like we have. there came a time late one night when I was exhausted I believe it was a Sunday and so I was worn out from Sunday I needed sleep and I was getting ready to climb into bed and I got a call from my mother saying Chelsea hasn’t felt the baby in well all day and in our family that means trouble because I’ve experienced two miscarriages and a stillbirth and and she was there for all of those. And so she’s immediately panicking and they’re trying to get to Ada.

My parents are in the city. I needed sleep. But at that moment, my sister needed somebody to be there with her at the hospital. And so I had to think in that moment, which is more important, me getting some sleep or me being there for my sister.

And so I got redressed and hightailed it down to Ada and beat them there for that. And I was already there when they got there. So they didn’t have to be alone in the waiting room worrying until they were taken back.

And my sister needed that. And I had to say, you know what, this is a real need over here. I’m exhausted from the day.

This is a real need, but this need is a higher priority. And by the way, as you’ve probably figured out, the story turns out well, because Cecil runs around and now wrestles with Charlie today. And so he’s here and everything’s fine.

But I had to prioritize that need. It was a genuine need. I needed sleep.

I was exhausted. And yet my sister had this need for somebody to be with her. And this morning, I want to start a new series on how the Bible uses the picture of sheep and the shepherd to illustrate our relationship with God.

Back in the fall, in the series I did on the pictures of the church. I preached a message to you about being sheep of his pasture, and I haven’t been able to escape that idea, that concept. And I want to come and do a whole series on it, on some of the things that the Bible teaches about us being the sheep of his pasture, us being his sheep and him being our shepherd.

It tells us a lot about our relationship to God. And this morning, we’re going to look at Mark chapter 6. If you’ll turn there with me, Mark chapter 6, particularly in verses 30 through 34, it describes our relationship with God, particularly our relationship with God, the Son, Jesus, with Him being our shepherd and us being His sheep.

And one of the things that we see in that relationship is Jesus looking at our needs and being able to prioritize which needs are most important. Because as we come into this story, Jesus had some needs of His own that were some very real needs that were not all that different from the need I had when I instead went to be with my sister in the hospital, although Jesus’ need was similar, but it was much greater. And this story, as you turn there to Mark chapter 6, the story that this takes place in is probably familiar to you.

It’s one of the more famous miracles in all of Scripture, what we call the feeding of the 5,000, although I’m not a fan of that title because as I’ve told my kids as we’re working our way through the New Testament this year, it says that he fed 5,000 men and their families. I’m guessing, just my estimate, if most of the men were married and most had at least two children, which would be a nice small family in first century Jewish culture, then you’re looking at upwards of 20,000 people there Jesus fed. Now, 5,000 is miraculous, 20,000 is miraculous.

I just want to give Jesus the credit that he’s due for feeding all of these people. So this story that we call the feeding of the 5,000 was probably more like 20, 25, maybe even 30,000 people. But it is one of the most famous stories in all of scripture.

People tend to know this story, but what we’re not as familiar with are the events that led up to this story. When we read this, we skip over the beginning part a lot of times, or we just breeze through it real quickly, and we get on to the miracle part. And in that case, we’re acting a lot like the crowd that was there.

Hey, forget everything else. Just show us the miracle. If we ignore the first part of the story that sets the stage for it, then we miss Jesus’s motivation in the story.

And we miss how Jesus actually met a need for these people that was greater than food. Okay. A need greater than food.

Imagine that. Some of you may be thinking this morning, I wish he’d hurry up so we can get out of here and go to lunch. Jesus said there are needs that I know I’ve sat in the pews before thinking my big alarm clock here is telling me it’s tough.

I know what it’s like, but Jesus said there are needs that are greater than food even. There are needs that were greater than the physical needs that Jesus experienced and the crowd eventually experienced. So we want to look at this beginning part.

So I’m telling you that because we’re going to look really at verses 30 through 34 this morning. We can’t ignore the fact that it’s part of that story of the feeding of the 5,000. So I want you to know that that’s what this portion of the text is setting the stage for.

But I want us to focus on this part that we tend to ignore, because it shows us Jesus’ motivation. So starting in verse 30, it says, The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all that they had done and taught. And he said to them, Come away by yourselves to a remote place and rest for a while.

for many people were coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat. So they went away in the boat by themselves to a remote place. But many saw them leaving and recognized them, and they ran on foot from all the towns and arrived ahead of them.

And when he went ashore, he saw a large crowd and had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. Then he began to teach them many things. So you’ll notice there in the story, it says at the very beginning that Jesus and his disciples came together.

They were telling Jesus about the things that they had done, the things that they had taught. What they were doing was they were regrouping after Jesus had sent groups of the apostles out, two by two, groups of his disciples, to go and preach in all the little villages, to go and do miracles. That’s where he told them, you know, go to a house and preach if you have the opportunity.

if nobody in the village will receive you. That’s when he says the famous thing about shaking the dust off of your feet and keep going. So they had gone on this intense, exhausting time of ministry.

And now they were coming back to tell Jesus about what had happened when they had gone out to the villages to preach door to door and house to house. And to tell people, to call people to repent and tell them that the kingdom of God was coming. Now they were coming back together with Jesus, and they were discussing this time of ministry that had taken place previously in Mark chapter 6 and verses 7 through 13.

They were coming back, giving Jesus the report, and now they needed rest. They needed rest, and Jesus recognized that they needed rest. Jesus, by the way, needed rest as well. You say, how is that possible? Because he’s God.

Jesus was also a man, and so he got tired at times. All right? And if Jesus, by the way, if Jesus says it’s okay to rest sometimes, it’s okay for us to rest sometimes.

You need to, you don’t want to burn yourself out in ministry. Now, you don’t want to rest all the time either and rest out in ministry, but we need times a way to rest at times. So they needed rest, and they weren’t going to find it where they were, because there were so many people that were gathering around them that it says they didn’t even have time to eat.

I don’t know about you, but that’s a deal breaker for me. Right? I get cranky at home if we’re busy dealing with the kids and it’s been meal time and they’ve all eaten and the grown-ups haven’t had a chance to eat.

I get cranky. We call it hangry at our house. I know I didn’t invent that, but hungry and angry, it’s hangry.

That’s a deal breaker. They didn’t even have time to eat, and so Jesus said, let’s go somewhere else. Their need for rest was so great that he called them to go to a remote place.

Now, he’s not just saying far away. I found something interesting with this. The phrasing here, a remote place, some translations will say a desert place, some will say a deserted place.

The word there in Greek is related to the word, well, to a word that we use in a couple different ways. We’ll say that something is aromatically sealed, that means the air can’t get to it. It’s the same word that we get the word hermit from.

you know, a hermit that goes off to live in the woods by himself. Jesus is saying, you have spent all this time where the people were doing ministry, because it helps to be where the people are to do ministry. Now we’re going to go where the people are not to get some rest. We need to be away from everybody.

Like the kids watch The Little Mermaid. I want to be where the people are. Now, sometimes I want to be where the people aren’t.

And that’s just part of human nature. We need that rest sometimes. So he said, let’s go be hermits, basically.

Let’s go to a remote place and take a beat and rest. So he wanted them to be able to recuperate in the solitude. And we see there the need that Jesus and the disciples had. They were very real needs.

They needed food and they needed rest. And they needed these things so that they could continue and they could do their best in ministry. And they got on a boat hoping to find that rest. They were going to go out through the Sea of Galilee. I don’t know that they were going all the way to the other side, but they were going to a different place where there weren’t so many people.

And when they disembarked at the town of Bethsaida, some of the accounts in the other Gospels tell us where this took place, they found that crowds were already waiting for them. It’s possible they just got on the ship and went down to the next spot, you know, a couple miles down. But these people had seen them.

They’d run ahead of the ship. They’re running along the shore. They’re gathering their friends.

Jesus is on the move. and we want to go see what he’s going to do next. And so they’d run ahead of them.

Depending on how many miles this was, they might have been running an hour, two hours, three hours, but they made sure they were going to get to the next port before Jesus so they didn’t miss anything. They found these crowds waiting for them. And we know from John’s account, in John chapter 6 of the feeding of the 5,000, we know that these people were not there primarily for spiritual reasons.

It’s not Jesus abandoning his followers. These people were following Jesus because they wanted to see the show. They were following him because of the healings and because of the miracles.

These were not committed Christians. These were people that said, I can’t wait to see what he’s going to do next. And so they were there waiting to see the show.

And when Jesus came ashore, though, his response was different from what ours would have been. Or I should say mine. I don’t know.

Maybe you’re more spiritual than I am. My response would have been, again with this, I just need a moment. I would have been annoyed.

It would have said, and when Jared saw them, he had annoyance for them. Oh, but the Bible says Jesus saw the crowd. He had compassion on them.

And that compassion manifests itself in the way that Jesus laid aside his needs to take care of theirs. See, this compassion means that his heart was moved, and it was moved more by their needs than by his. And when we get to that point where we’re always going to have needs, and we could easily spend our days with our heads buried into our needs, trying to take care of our needs and our agenda, and ignore the needs of those around us.

But when we get to that point where our hearts are moved more by the needs of other people than they are by our needs, then that’s going to show up as compassion and we’re going to do something about it. So Jesus’ heart was moved by these crowds. Even though they were sinners, they were not especially spiritual, they were just there for the show, nevertheless, Jesus was moved with compassion for them.

And so, He decided to put His needs aside, His need for food, His need for rest, very real needs, He decided to put those needs aside and show some compassion for the people in the crowd. Now, I want to be very clear. It was not primarily through healing them, although that was an act of compassion, to heal these people who were sick or who were crippled, whatever the terminology was.

He didn’t primarily show compassion through healing them, although he did heal them. We see in the other accounts in Matthew and Luke that he healed them. It wasn’t primarily through food.

It wasn’t primarily their need for food that raised his compassion, although he did feed them eventually at the end of his teaching time. We see that in all four Gospels. Instead, look at verse 34, what stirred his compassion here.

It says, he saw a large crowd and had compassion on them. Why? Because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

It was their spiritual condition that aroused his compassion. It was their spiritual need that Jesus saw as so important that I’m going to put all these very real needs of mine aside, and I’m going to deal with your needs. It was because of the spiritual condition that they were in.

What stirred up his compassion was their spiritual state because they were like shepherdless sheep. Now, what drew me to this passage was that phrase, sheep without a shepherd. And I thought a lot about that phrase this week, but I didn’t realize until partway through the week that that’s an Old Testament phrase.

That’s not just a phrase that was invented there for the book of Mark. If we look at the Old Testament, in Numbers chapter 27, you don’t have to turn there with me, I’m just going to very quickly go through these, but you can also write these down and study them for yourselves later. In Numbers chapter 27, Moses was worried about what the fate of Israel was going to be after his death.

When I die, what’s going to happen to them? Because he said they were going to be like sheep without a shepherd. He said that in Numbers 27, 17.

They’re going to be like sheep without a shepherd. They’re going to run amok. They’re not going to know what to do.

In 1 Kings 22 and 2 Chronicles 18, the prophet Mechai told Ahab that his armies, If Ahab went into battle, his armies were going to be defeated in battle, and Israel was going to be scattered. His nation was going to be scattered like sheep without a shepherd. And then in Zechariah chapter 10, Zechariah the prophet warned that when the people turn to idols, they wander like sheep and suffer affliction because there is no shepherd.

So we see that this phrase or something similar to it is used at least those four times in the Old Testament. One of those is used in two different books. Same story, if you’re wondering, wait, there were four.

The Ahab story was in two different books. That phrase is used four different times in the Old Testament. And it’s always this idea of sheep without a shepherd.

When it’s applied to people, it’s always used as a picture of the people being separated from God and sort of wandering aimlessly toward destruction. and so when Jesus felt that the crowd were like shepherdless sheep he was really calling them well by calling them that he was saying that they were separated from God and that they were wandering toward their destruction and they didn’t even realize it and I’ve shared with you before about this I have no first hand knowledge of sheep I only know what other people have told me, what I’ve read, what I’ve researched. But sheep are stupid.

And sheep without a shepherd, sheep more than anything, they have trouble taking care of themselves without a shepherd. Sheep without a shepherd are prone to getting lost. I think that describes us apart from a spiritual shepherd. They are vulnerable.

I think that describes us pretty well. They’re prone to wander. Yeah.

They’re prone to get eaten. And the Bible says that the devil walks around as a roaring lion seeking whom he may devour. My kids were terrified.

It was Christmas Eve. We were on our way to Kohl’s because I needed to return something before Christmas because I wasn’t standing in the long return lines after Christmas. The kids and I were headed to Kohl’s and we were talking about this in the truck.

And they were terrified when they realized, wait a minute, the devil doesn’t live in hell. I said, oh no. And the devil’s not going to be in charge in hell either. He will be there at some point to be punished.

They said, well, where is he now? I said, he’s wandering loose, seeking whom he may devour. They were terrified by that.

Well, you know what? We ought to be. We ought to realize the reality that Satan desires to inflict whatever damage he can on God’s sheep when they go astray from the shepherd.

We’re vulnerable and we’re prone to wander. We’re likely to get eaten. So Jesus, his compassion led him to lay aside his needs in order to meet theirs because he recognized that these people were separated from God.

and they were wandering toward their destruction. And so how did He show them compassion? It says in verse 34 that He began to teach them many things.

He wasn’t just imparting information. It wasn’t just to make them feel smart. Luke chapter 9 in talking about the feeding of the 5,000 says, He spoke to them about the kingdom of God.

It wasn’t just spiritual information about how they could be more moral could do better, Jesus began to teach them the truth about the kingdom of God. These people who had traveled so far because they wanted to see miracles, they wanted to see healings, they wanted a show, maybe they wanted the food. We don’t know, but they were there for reasons that were not spiritual, but Jesus saw through all that and saw their spiritual need, had compassion, and said, what you need to know is about how to find the kingdom of God.

Because he was concerned about them being sheep without a shepherd. Their greatest need was to know God. So Jesus, who is God the Son, sacrificed his needs.

He put his needs aside to meet their need that he saw was the greatest need they had. And as miraculous as the feeding of the 5,000 was, we can’t afford to miss this beginning part of the passage. we can’t let the end overshadow the beginning this is just amazing that god the son had enough compassion on these crowds of people he had enough compassion on these sinners that he was willing to sacrifice whatever he needed to of these very real needs in order to help them find the kingdom because when jesus saw that need he said that’s number one that’s the most important need that they have.

And folks, not much has changed since the days of this crowd of people who were sheep without a shepherd. Our greatest need, our greatest need is still to have a restored relationship with God. Our greatest need is still to know God and to be reconciled to Him.

Now, there are other needs that may seem more urgent in the moment. There are other needs that may seem more urgent in the moment, but there’s no need that is more important in the long term than our relationship with God. Now that’s not just my opinion.

That’s not just some preacher standing up here spouting stuff off. Jesus believed that. And we can tell that Jesus believed that because He demonstrated it when He was there at Bethsaida.

He put His own urgent need for rest. How many of you have ever been so tired you couldn’t think straight because you’ve been working for days on end? How many of you have been that tired because you’ve been dealing with people for days on end? All right.

I see a hand back there. Jesus needed food and rest urgently. It was an urgent need.

But He put His own urgent need for rest on hold because of the crowd. I think at some point Jesus went and got His food and His rest. But even though it seemed urgent, It wasn’t as important as their need for God. It wasn’t their afflictions, their illnesses, their aches and pains.

It wasn’t those physical needs that aroused His compassion. It wasn’t their hunger that aroused His compassion. It was their distance from God.

It was their spiritual distance from God that caused Jesus to drop everything else He was doing and call His disciples to do the same in order to spend some time there with the maddening crowd and teach them about the kingdom. Because there was no need that was greater than that one. Jesus saw these people spiritually wandering, separated from God without a shepherd, and He was so moved by compassion that He began to try to shepherd them to the kingdom.

Folks, Jesus is the shepherd of the shepherdless. when we’re separated from God and we’re lost and we’re wandering Jesus came to be the shepherd of the shepherdless and to lead us into a relationship with God now for some of you today as as believers maybe thinking well how does this apply to me I already have a relationship with God and you very well may through through Jesus Christ if you trusted in him as your savior then the Bible teaches that that’s how you come to a relationship with God. You come through the Son.

But eventually we get to a point where we’ve been believers for so long and we’ve behaved like believers for so long, at least outwardly, that we become moral and we become upstanding and we start to think that God. . .

The idea creeps into our minds that God loves us extra special because of who we are and how we are. how we act. Folks, we need to resist the temptation to view our relationship with God in terms of performance.

It wasn’t the morality and the good behavior of these people that caused Jesus Christ to have compassion on them. It was their spiritual need. And this needs to be a reminder to us.

It needs to be a reminder to believers that apart from Jesus Christ, we’re all just shepherdless sheep, separated from God and wandering toward destruction. Our relationship with God has nothing to do with our goodness, has nothing to do with our performance. Our relationship with God has to do with the fact that Jesus sacrificed Himself and sacrificed His needs to usher us to the kingdom.

And so we follow Him today not out of a sense of obligation, not out of trying to earn anything, but simply because He’s our shepherd. Simply out of love for our shepherd because the sheep will follow the shepherd. That’s what we’re supposed to do.

And so if you’re sitting here as a believer this morning and thinking, what’s this have to do with me? Never forget. Never forget that at one point you were a lost sheep.

never forget that you at one point were separated from God that you were wandering aimlessly toward destruction when the good shepherd saw you and had compassion on you if we remember that that’s where we were when Jesus found us it changes the way we relate to him and it changes the way we relate to the lost sheep around us and this morning if you if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior. And you’re hearing this, and maybe you’re hearing this for the first time and thinking, wait a minute, Jesus had compassion for sinners? Because sometimes we as believers don’t portray that.

Maybe you’re hearing for the first time that Jesus had compassion on a group of sinners, a group of people who were separated from God, and Jesus cared enough that He put everything aside. What I want you to understand from this text, especially there in verse 34, when it says He had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd, I want you to understand this morning that there is a shepherd. There is a shepherd who loves you no matter how far you’ve wandered from God.

There’s a great shepherd who sees you. He sees the good and the bad. He sees the sin.

If you think, there’s no way He could love me after what I’ve done. Jesus loved that group of people. He saw their spiritual condition.

He knew they were separated from God and He loved them anyway. He had compassion on them. There is a shepherd who loves you, who sees you, who knows you intimately, and is moved with compassion for you.

and with that group of people he saw that their need was the kingdom same as ours a relationship with God that welcomes us into the kingdom you know what he didn’t just teach them about the kingdom that’s what he did this day but our shepherd didn’t come just to teach us about the kingdom our shepherd came to bring us there to lead us to the kingdom. He was so moved by compassion for lost sheep that He didn’t just sacrifice a little bit of sleep or a little bit of food as we see here in Mark chapter 6. Jesus was so moved with compassion for the lost sheep that He sacrificed everything He had.

Jesus Christ willingly went to the cross. to pay for my sins and to pay for yours, so that we could be forgiven, so that we could have a relationship with the Father, and so that we could have eternal life. If you’re new to this and unfamiliar with the idea of the cross, they beat Him and scourged Him and broke His body beyond recognition.

They forced Him to carry a Roman cross up a hill to the point where he did not have the strength to carry it anymore, and someone had to come and help him and carry it for him. Then they laid him down. After stripping him down and mocking him, they laid him down and they nailed him through his hands to that cross, to the cross beam.

And they nailed his feet to that cross. And then they raised that cross up in the air, and they stuck it down in a hole so it would stand upright, And they left him there to suffer in agony and humiliation for six hours. While they continued to mock, while they continued to spit, and while they continued to reject him, he prayed even for them.

He had compassion even on that crowd and said, Father, forgive them for they don’t know what they do. and every drop of blood that was shed on that cross was a payment for our sins the life that he laid down that he knew before he ever came to earth that he was going to go to that cross the life that he laid down there that he planned to lay down all along it was a sacrifice for us Jesus gave up everything because there was no greater need than for us to be reconciled to God. And this morning, if you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, you can start that relationship with God simply by recognizing that just like Jesus said about this crowd, that your sins have separated you from God, that because of God’s holiness and your sin, Those two things don’t mix.

You are separated from God and you’re like a sheep without a shepherd. And if you understand that, but you also believe that Jesus Christ died, He shed His blood and He died on the cross to be your one and only Savior and to pay for your sins in full. If you believe that, if you believe He died to pay for your sins in full and that He rose again to prove it, then this morning you can ask for God’s forgiveness and you can have it as the promise of God’s Word.

If you’ve never trusted Christ as your Savior, I hope you’ll understand the compassion that our shepherd had for you, that he was willing to sacrifice everything for shepherdless sheep so that we could be reconciled to God.