He knew that if it was just his teaching, that the multitudes might come out for a while, but they would not last. John the Baptist did no miracles, and multitudes came out to hear John, but John's ministry only went but so far. And he knew that prayer would not fix everything, something that I know, but I'm still not learning as fast as I want to learn, because I still think prayer should fix everything, and I get so frustrated.
To hear more information about Cross Reference Radio, specifically how you can get a free copy of this teaching. But for now, let's join Pastor Rick in the Gospel of Mark Chapter 6 as he begins his message, Struggling to Obey. Mark's Gospel, Chapter 6, we are going to discuss this morning, struggling to obey. Well, that just got everybody hopefully involved, because all who name Christ as Lord do struggle.
That's why the verse that's been coming up, I think the last three times I've been in the pulpit, is out of Titus. They profess to know God, but in works they deny Him. They say they love the Lord, but really they have no intention of agreeing with Him. They want the salvation, but they do not want the struggle. They want the blessings, but they do not want the interference of Christ.
And these things, if you think that way, you're hurting yourself. The glory of our faith is to line up with Jesus Christ, everything that He says, regardless of how difficult, unpleasant it may be. And we all know this, that's why we applaud the martyrs who go to their death, and many times an awful death, because they will not walk away from what Christ has said, what He has spoken. So a brief review. Oh, we have to read the Word.
Don't want to miss that. Beginning at verse 45. He came to them, walking on the sea, and would have passed them by. And when they saw Him walking on the sea, they supposed it was a ghost, and cried out. But they all saw Him, and were troubled. But immediately He talked with them, and said to them, Be of good cheer, it is I.
Do not be afraid. Then He went up into the boat to them, and the wind ceased, and they were greatly amazed in themselves, beyond measure, and marveled. For they had not understood about the loaves, because their heart was hardened. Then they had crossed over, when they had crossed over, they came to the land of Gennesaret, and anchored there. And when they came out of the boat, immediately the people recognized Him, ran through that whole surrounding region, and began to carry about on beds those who were sick.
To wherever they heard He was. Wherever He entered, into villages, cities, or the country, they laid the sick in the market places, and begged Him that He might just touch, that they might just touch the hem of His garment. And as many as touched Him, were made well.
We have been watching the story Mark has preserved for us. From chapter 5, for example, we watched the apostles tossed in the storm, and of course the Lord saying to us today, from these events, that there are troubles and there are dangers, but I am Lord over these also. Continuing to watch Him in action, we saw Him faced with a maniac. There He faced with insanity, of course, He overcame that, cast out the demons, and continued to minister where He was permitted to minister. Then we watched His solutions as He dealt with disease and death. We watched Him be rejected in His hometown.
We learn in life what it's like to be disliked, even when we've not done anything to deserve being disliked. We watched Him grieve just for a moment when news of John's murder had reached Him, and then the hand of sovereignty as He multiplied the fish and the bread. It's an interesting miracle that was, because He multiplied baked bread and cooked fish. I mean, it's just these little things that stand out about the sovereignty and the power of Jesus Christ. It is supposed to encourage us to be strong, strong in our faith, even though when we have this sinful nature that works against everything that is holy and right. But again, the story now calls on me to ask myself, as I am faced with the record, of how would I perform? What does this have to do with me today? Why am I reading this story in Mark chapter 6 and hoping that God will speak to me through it?
Well, let's see if we find out. Look again at verse 45. I know we covered this in the last session, but it belongs in both paragraphs. Immediately, verse 45, He made His disciples get into the boat and go before Him to the other side, to Bethsaida, while He sent the multitude away.
So just again, a little more review. After He had fed the people there where they were, they were at Bethsaida, the house of the fish, a fishing village there on the lake of Galilee. After He fed them, they wanted to make Him their king, force Him to be their king. They had the golden goose, and they weren't ready to let it go. They did not want to crown Him for His holiness, that is, His person or His teachings, but it was the goodies that He offered.
That's what attracted a certain element in that multitude of upward 15,000 people. John tells us this in the sixth chapter of his gospel. Then those men, when they had seen the sign that Jesus did, said, This is truly the prophet who is coming to the world. Therefore, when Jesus perceived that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, He departed again to the mountain by Himself alone.
That is, of course, the parallel account that is given to us in the Gospel of John. No interest in submitting to Him. How can you submit to your king as someone you're supposed to submit to?
How can you force somebody to be a king? It contradicts. And yet we have many even Christians that insist that Jesus is their king, but they really are not interested in obeying the things they don't like. They want to cherry-pick the commandments, a very dangerous practice. And so, again, looking at how Jesus dealt with satanic influence that was contrary to God, even found in one of His beloved apostles. He said to Peter, when Peter was not looking, not submitting to Christ, not looking beyond this life, and he said, Be it far from you that you should go to the cross, not understanding that it is that cross that would bring about our forgiveness and our time in paradise without end. Mark, chapter 8, Jesus responded to Peter's words and said, Get behind Me, Satan, where you are not mindful of the things of God but of the things of men.
Of course, the Lord always looking at the Father, always interested in what God wants, He being God the Son. But Satan doesn't care for men. When he says Satan is mindful of the things of men, he doesn't mean Satan cares for men. He means Satan wants to get the eyes of people off of God and onto things that they can see. So they can live more in that Esau type of way.
What good is a blessing when I'm hungry? Spiritual things are secondary to Esau, but they were primary to Jacob. And they are supposed to be this way with us. Where he says here in verse 35, to the other side, to Bethsaida. Luke tells us they were in Bethsaida. So how could he send them from where they were? Well, two answers to that. The lesser one, I don't care for this one too much, but it is possible. There were two Bethsaidas.
Many scholars agree with that. That's fine, and that's not uncommon, and so he's sending them from one to the other. Because the name, again, House of the Fish is in a fishing village type town, not far-fetched. But what is really, I think, what really reconciles the verse is grammatically the Greek allows it to be translated this way. To go to the other side from Bethsaida. So he says to the other side of Bethsaida, where he's sending them.
Now we think linearly in this way. That if they're standing in the north, and he says go to the other side, he must mean he's sending them to the south. Or if he's standing in the west, and he says to the other side, it must be the east.
But that is not at all what is happening, and we'll bring some of that out in a moment. When he says go to the other side of Bethsaida, he's talking about where they came from, the Capernaum area, which was his base of operations. They will not land directly there, but they're going to go in that direction. John's Gospel, chapter 6, verse 17, again, parallel verse. They got into the boat, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was already dark, and Jesus had not come to them.
Now the Capernaum part is what I wanted, but I wanted to continue to read that part of this verse that spoke, that's giving us the environment. He's sending them away. The sun is setting. It's dark. They're on the sea. They've got about a six mile journey to get from Bethsaida to the area of Capernaum, Gennesaret, where they're going to land. And John, of course, adding Jesus had not come. So the scene is set. It's dark. They're without Christ in the boat.
That's what we're looking at this morning. Verse 46, and when he had sent them away, he departed to the mountain to pray. Jesus prayed every chance he got. He took the chance to pray whenever he could. Is this the one that would later cry out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me?
This is big news to me. We see him often, you know, getting away from the multitudes and just praying. And here, he says to his disciples, listen, Satan is influencing this. I'm not the golden goose. I want you men out of here.
Get in the boat. Go to the other side, and then he goes to pray. He knew that without the many miracles, there'd be far less interest in him. He knew that all the time. He knew that if it was just his teaching, that the multitudes might come out for a while, but they would not last. John the Baptist did no miracles, and multitudes came out to hear John. But John's ministry only went but so far. And he knew that prayer would not fix everything. Something that I know, but I'm still not learning as fast as I want to learn, because I still think prayer should fix everything.
And I get so frustrated when prayer seems to be ungranted on matters that are of great importance. In John's Gospel chapter 17, Jesus said to his father in prayer, while I was with them in the world, I kept them in your name. Those whom you gave me, I have kept, and none of them is lost except the son of perdition. Well, we have no reason to doubt he also prayed for Judas. I am of the mind that when he picked Judas, Judas was not the man he would end up being, although the Lord knew he would be, Judas had every chance to do the right thing. Anything other than that, then you charge God with sovereignly deciding that Judas should be born just to go to hell.
And that is not free will, and I believe in free will, and I not for one second do I believe that, even though the father knew it does not mean he caused it. And so here our Lord, praying all the time, yet also at one point in his ministry, saying to us, as much prayer, as much service, as much dying as you do for the father, there will be those times of great perplexity when you want to cry out and say, God, why have you forsaken me? And we can answer why he was saying, because he took our sin upon himself. He bore our judgment for us. He was preaching to us.
He was saying, even though I'm bearing your judgment on me, I am still calling on my father. So it's profound that there on the cross he is still praying. And the words that he prayed meant so much not to him, but also to the father. So we know that the one who walked on the water, who raised the dead, who stopped the diseases, who created the cooked fish and the baked bread, we know that to him our ungranted prayers are very meaningful to him.
That alone should be enough to sustain us. Now, when I'm going through tough times and God is not granting my prayers, I want him to grant my prayers. But in the back of my head I know that even if he says no, even if he remains silent, what it is that I am saying to him is very meaningful.
It's a very easy thing to prove, is it not? Just instead of praying, stop blaspheming him. You can't, because you know he hears you. You know that he is sovereign, and you love him.
And those words aren't going to come out of your mouth, no matter the pressure that is upon you. We know the mark of a true believer is belief in truth enough, enough truth to suffer and to endure, and no matter what is granted or not granted. Hell hates this.
I'm not fond of it myself, but I don't hate it, I submit to it. We know that our endurance in Christ Jesus mocks and frustrates and defeats a very ghoulish hell, and it does the same to the world. They hated that Daniel was the righteous man that he was, and so they looked at ways to stop him so that they could be corrupt without having him around to salt the environment. Believing without satisfaction, the Bible says, is enormous. James 5, verse 11, indeed we count them blessed who endure. We count them blessed who take a punch in the interest of the king because they hold to the truth.
Now the world takes punches too, but they don't hold to the truth, and that is what distinguishes us from them. And that is also a reminder to us that life is to be ministry for Christ. Life includes me being a family person, but it's much more than that.
That's not enough. If you get to heaven and say, well, I had a good family, it's not enough. There should be a burden for other people, for other lost souls also. And it is a tragedy when Christians become so focused on their family that they're no longer burdened by lost souls. Would you like a pastor that said something else? Would you like a preacher to come up and say, no, just take care of your family. Let everybody rot in hell. Of course not. When you hear it that way, you say that. That is not right.
That is wrong. I should have a burden for lost souls because I don't want to go to hell. Why would I want anybody else to? But to learn how to pull it off, to learn how to serve, to learn how to do it without burning out, without becoming self-righteous and judgmental, these are reasons why we expose ourselves to the Scripture and the characters in the Bible. Now, we're going to also be accused of being malicious and mean for just telling the truth. No matter how you say it, well, we can't let that stop us from telling the truth. You can't stop people from falling on your sword if they insist on falling on it. Verse 47, now when evening came, the boat was in the middle of the sea, and He was alone on the land.
Hopefully I can tie this all in for us as we move forward. The middle of the sea does not mean the center point of the Sea of Galilee. We learn how to read Scripture this way because Scripture explains it to us.
For example, back to John, chapter 6. Then the sea arose, a great wind was blowing, so when they had rode about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea. Well, the Sea of Galilee is larger than eight miles.
For them to be in the center would not fit. So, of course, what Mark is saying is they're in the middle of their trek, their journey, three or four miles. As I mentioned earlier, it's about six to Gennesaret, give or take a little bit more. And so that's all is kind of just sailing right along for us. Catch the nautical metaphor. Verse 48, then He saw them straining at rowing, when the wind was against them. Now about the fourth watch of the night, He came to them walking on the sea and would have passed them by.
Now the story gets really good, at least to me. Oh, first thing, when He saw them straining at rowing, for the wind was against them, He saw them distanced. It was no big thing for Him. It is for us, because when He doesn't show up, and I'm struggling, I'm saying, where is He? Why does God seem so far away? Why does He seem not to care? He says, I always see. I always care. I just don't do it your way.
I do it my way, because my way is better. And if you don't believe that, you're going to find out when you get to heaven. You're going to find out, as it says in the very beginning of our Bibles, and He saw that it was good. When God made man and woman, He saw that it was good. He did not see it as, hmm, we need to fix this.
This is broken. As they used to say, even back in the 70s and earlier, He made them Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve. And we should remind folks that, you know, for someone to say, well, I've always felt that I was, you know, the opposite sex from the time I was a kid.
Well, I had kind of thoughts like that, too. I always felt that other people's desserts should be mine since I was a kid. That doesn't make it right. That's how the world thinks. They think that they have a sensation that justifies sin. And God says, stop downsizing this stuff.
This is deadly. Sin is no joke. And we who preach the gospel should be very mindful of that. I wonder how many teens are in the sanctuary who right now just aren't even listening. I wonder how many adults in the sanctuary just aren't even listening. You know, at the preaching of God's word, you would hope that everybody would be on the edge of their seats waiting for God to just minister to them, albeit through a flawed vessel.
God can still pour from a cracked pot into cracked pots. So here's the story. Then he saw them straining and rowing, straining at the oars, all of them rowing together, not different. I want to go this way.
No, let me go that way. All rowing together. Even Judas is cooperating in this boat in the midst of this disturbed sea. They were struggling. What were they struggling to do? Well, survive, not capsize, which is one reason why they probably didn't turn around. But they're struggling together because he told them, go to the other side. He didn't say, go halfway out and if it gets rough, come back. See, this is how we get the lessons out. We read this. Why does the Holy Spirit preserve this language in this manner?
There must be a lesson here. That's why Jesus would say, have you not read what David did? And Paul would say, what about the bonds?
He would bring up stories from the Scripture because they are our instructions. Here they are, obediently struggling to roll forward and they're not getting anywhere. Sounds like serving Christ sometimes. Struggling. I mean, personally, as just a Christian man. Reading and rowing, that's my Christian life.
Reading what he said, getting my orders and then trying to roll forward with that. And yet, I find oftentimes I'm straining at rowing and I get upset with him for not making things easier because we're built, we're messed up. We weren't built that way originally.
We were ruined. Sin has done this to us. And as he has seen me so often, as he has watched the faithful strain to obey against the winds of life, he still does. This ability to keep rowing, to keep going on in the direction he sent me, it's not by accident. It's his influence. To face resistance in Christ is because of Christ. He wouldn't be able to do it without him. This ability comes from his very love for us and his focus on what he is going to do and use us to do it.
I mean, we pin medals on generals for sending thousands of men to their deaths on the battlefield. Does not Christ, our King of Kings, the Lord of Hosts, the Lord of Hosts is primarily a battlefield title for him. When the multitudes, when armies show up, he's the Lord of armies in heaven and on earth, in the physical and the spiritual realm. And so he has the right to order me to whatever destination he wants and he has the right to watch me struggle in an effort to comply with his orders. So when Jesus tells you, I want you to do this and you do not want to do it, you are struggling.
But is it willful? Thanks for tuning in to Cross-Reference Radio for this study in the book of Mark. Cross-Reference Radio is the teaching ministry of Pastor Rick Gaston of Calvary Chapel, Mechanicsville in Virginia. To learn more information about this ministry, visit our website, crossreferenceradio.com. Once you're there, you'll find additional teachings from Pastor Rick. We encourage you to subscribe to our podcast. When you subscribe, you'll be notified of each new edition of Cross-Reference Radio. You can search for Cross-Reference Radio on your favorite podcast app. That's all we have time for today, but we hope you'll join us next time as Pastor Rick continues to teach through the book of Mark, right here on Cross-Reference Radio. .
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