God’s Resources

Mark 6:30-44

Hopefully, the one of the main things the disciples had learned from their direct experience of being sent out two-by-two apart from Jesus was the lesson of God’s Divine arrangement.

Jesus had sent them out with nothing, that this lesson would become paramount to their own existence and welfare. Hopefully, they would notice no matter where they went they were never hungry, they always had a place to stay, and their ministry had a power greater than themselves.

In three words: It wasn’t them. (I mean, it WAS them, but then it really wasn’t. It was ALL God, and no one would know that more than the guys.) The people they ministered to or received from may have thought it had something to do with the disciples, but they knew it wasn’t. It REALLY wasn’t. It was God distributing His resources through His men. (In the greatest sense, it is quite possible the disciples were the first to begin to understand they themselves WERE God’s resources.)

Here’s the same lesson, part 2. (This MUST be a hard lesson for us to learn – and in my experience – it is.) It is very difficult for us to conceive of a sort of supernaturally natural ministry. It is far easier to conceive of mystical things than practical ones.

The feeding of the 5,000 is a marvelous event in history designed to capture more than our imaginations about how it may have happened. It is the only miracle contained in all four Gospels, but in a sense it is the most humble of miracles.

We see the disciples humbled again, (this must also be a key lesson in ministry,) and we see the humble dissemination of a piece of bread and a piece of fish to this huge crowd – and that provision supposedly originating from a young lad’s lunch. Does God use His Almighty power to do such humble things?

Yes, and more than that, He uses His Almighty power to humble us – but without disabling us. It would be impossible, (I think,) to conceive of a greater way to humble man and enable him at the same time.

-Pastor Bill