THRU THE BIBLE EXPOSITION

Mark: Jesus The Perfect Servant Of God

Part II: The Perfect Service Of Jesus, The Perfect Servant Of God, Mark 1:1-10:52

U. Christ's Work To Counter The Threat Of "Burn Out" In God's Service

(Mark 6:30-44)

I. Introduction

A. We learned in our first lesson in this series that Mark's Gospel presents the perfect service of God's Perfect Servant, Jesus, with Mark's focus of having rebounded unto upright service from personal failure.

B. Sometimes such failure arises from what various Christian organizations call "burn out," human exhaustion and emotional collapse from being stretched too thin with too few resources on a variety of levels in life.

C. Mark 6:30-44 reveals Christ's work to address this need in God's service with invaluable insight for us:

II. Christ's Work To Counter The Threat Of "Burn Out" In God's Service, Mark 6:30-44.

A. Jesus handled a lack of time to address livelihood needs by cutting back on ministry efforts, Mark 6:30-32:

1. After having spiritually equipped His disciples to preach the Gospel and to cast out demons (Mark 6:7-11), Jesus had sent His disciples out, and they ministered extensively throughout Israel, Mark 6:12-13.

2. When they returned to Christ, reporting all that they had done and taught (Mark 6:30), Jesus told them, "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest a while," Mark 6:31a. He knew they were stressed with ministry overload as many people were coming and going, being taught and having their needs met, so much so that the disciples and Jesus had not leisure even to take their meals, Mark 6:31b,c.

3. Thus, knowing that any human mortal cannot even serve God for long if he does not have enough time set aside to care for his basic livelihood needs, Jesus directed the disciples to lessen their ministry works. One must thus "come apart" and rest a while or he will "come apart" in ministry burn out!

B. Jesus handled a lack of leadership by exposing the needy to extensive teaching of God's Word, Mark 6:33-34:

1. Though Jesus and His disciples privately took a boat to a place away from the crowds, when the people saw them go, they followed their boat along on the seashore and met them when they landed, Mark 6:33.

2. Jesus recognized this action arose from a vacuum of godly leadership for the people (Mark 6:34a,b), so He felt compassion on them and addressed that vacuum by teaching the people many things, Mark 6:34c.

3. Jesus' teaching is God's Word (cf. Rev. 19:11-13, 16), so He revealed that a vacuum of good leadership in service is offset by an increased, edifying exposure to the teaching of God's Word.

C. Jesus handled a lack of material goods by trusting God to use what was handy and/or to add to it, Mk. 6:35-44:

1. After Jesus had taught the people for an extended period of time, the disciples noticed it was late, close to the evening meal, but that there were no resources nearby to feed the people. Thus, they asked Jesus to send the people away that they might go into the nearby villages and buy food, Mark 6:35-36.

2. Jesus replied, "You give them something to eat," and they answered, "Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?" (Mark 6:37 ESV) A denarius was a day's wage for a farm laborer, so the disciples wondered if Jesus wanted to spend "eight months of a man's wages" to buy this food, an unreasonable amount of money to spend in this situation, Bible Know. Com., N. T., p. 130.

3. Jesus asked, "How many loaves do you have? Go and see," so they investigated and reported they had five loaves and two salted and dried or roasted fish, hardly enough to feed the people, Mark 6:38 ESV; Ibid.

4. Christ then commanded that the people be organized to sit in manageable groups on the green grass to be fed (Mark 6:39 ESV). He then took the food they had, looked up to heaven, gave the typical meal blessing and broke the morsels and gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the people, Mark 6:40-41.

5. Everyone ate to the full, and they took up 12 full baskets of leftovers though the number of those who had eaten were 5,000 men, excluding women and children, Ryrie Study Bible, KJV, 1978, ftn. to Mk. 6:42-44.

Lesson: To counter "burn-out" in serving God, Jesus led His disciples to (1) lessen their ministry works if they lacked the time with those works to address their livelihood needs, to (2) turn to Scripture for nurture if they lacked leadership and (3) to trust God to make what they had enough or to add to it if they lacked material resources.

Application: To avoid "burn-out" in serving the Lord, may we (1) lessen our ministry works if we lack the time to fulfill all our ministry plans while also meeting our livelihood needs, may we (2) spend more time in Scripture if we face a vacuum of leadership and may we (3) trust God to make our current material resources sufficient or to add to them by His added supply if we note we humanly lack sufficient material resources.