Recognizing Jesus and the High Calling of Discipleship // Mark 6:45-56

Pastor Evan Bialk focuses on the disciples' challenge to recognize Jesus during a storm after the feeding of the 5,000. He emphasizes how their expectations of the Messiah did not align with who Jesus truly was, leading to confusion and fear. Despite their struggles, Jesus approaches them, reassuring them of His presence, which highlights that even amid difficulties, He empowers and supports His followers. Ultimately, Pastor Evan calls believers to embrace their high calling of discipleship, acknowledging Jesus as the divine source of strength and purpose in their lives.

Transcript

All right, we're continuing in the Gospel of Mark this morning in chapter six, verses 45 through 56. And if you remember, last week, Pastor Rex, he shared the story of the feeding of the 5,000. And so we are coming in after that story. The feeding of the 5,000. He is preaching and teaching, and they've been doing that for a long.

He's been doing that for a long time. And people are getting hungry. I remember the disciples come up and say, hey, dismiss them so they can go get food. And he tells them that, no, you feed them. He gives them a directive there for them to feed them, and they have no idea how they would do that.

And he responds, hey, what should we do? Spend 200 denarii to feed all these people? Number one, they didn't have that, and so they had no idea. And he instructs them, says, bring me what you have, and that's five loaves, two fishes. And he multiplies that.

And it's a story reminiscent of. Of how he supplied nourishment to the people of Israel right with the manna in the Old Testament back in Exodus, it calls back to that. That he is. He is that provision and that multiplication. And the blessing he gives is a call back to that time in Exodus where the Lord is providing manna for the people of Israel.

And so where we're at right now and in verses 45 is immediately after that, immediately after the feeding of the 5,000. If you wouldn't mind standing, I'm going to read 45 through 56 for us.

Stand as we read the Word of God, verse 45. Immediately he made the disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side, to Bethesda. And while he dismissed the crowd, and after he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray. And when evening came, the boat was out on the sea, and he was alone on the land. And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them.

And about the fourth watch of the night, he came to them walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought it was a ghost and cried out, for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, take heart, it is I. Do not be afraid. And he got into the boat with him, and the wind ceased.

And they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened when they had crossed over. They came to the land of Gennesaret and moored to the shore. And when they got out of the boat, the people immediately recognized him and ran about the whole region and began to bring the sick people on their beds to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he came, in villages and cities or the countryside, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. And as many as touched it were made.

Well, you may be seated.

As we open the word this morning. I want us to see a few things here. Got a few things for us this morning.

The first thing I want us to see is the difficulty in recognizing Jesus. The difficulty in recognizing Jesus in verse 50, when he's walking intending to pass by them. In verse 50 it says that they were terrified, for they all saw him and were terrified because when they saw him walking on the sea, they thought he was a ghost. But. And then in verse 52, it gives a confession about the disciples that they did not understand about the loaves.

They did not understand what Christ had done, what Jesus had done about the loaves. And their hearts were hardened. And so this passage in Mark is showing us that despite everything that the disciples had heard, despite spending almost a year in ministry now with Jesus and seeing him perform miracles, when they saw him walking on the sea, they had a difficulty in recognizing who he was, the God of the universe, the divine. They had trouble recognizing Jesus. They had spent almost a year seeing him perform miraculous things.

And yet despite that, when they saw him passing by, they thought he was a ghost. And they had a difficult time in recognizing Jesus. Now I want to talk to us this morning about how this is true in our lives. A lot of times we see Jesus present in our lives or we see him passing by and we cry out terrified because we have the same problem. We have a hard time recognizing Jesus.

And it's. And for those in the room that are unbelievers, it is even harder for those who are in the world. Which is why it's so important for the church to be a light to those people because it is so difficult for them to recognize Jesus. It's difficult for a believer to recognize Jesus, a person. I mean, these are the disciples.

They walked with them and they're having a hard time recognizing Him. How much more difficult is it for a believer and a nonbeliever? One of those things I think that creates difficulty in recognizing Jesus is our expectations. Specifically, I want to talk about the disciples expectations of Jesus. Throughout all of Mark, we've gotten to A point where every time the disciples are confronted with who Jesus is, they have yet to confess that he is the Messiah.

We're almost there. It comes in a couple of chapters. But they have yet to confess that he is the Messiah, that he is the Christ, that he is the King, that he is the Creator, right? And it's because their expectations of a Messiah was not what they expected of what they found in Jesus. And this is the same problem that the entirety of Israel and the religious establishment was having with Jesus is because the expectations of a Messiah, their earthly expectations of a Messiah were not being met in Jesus, even though he was fulfilling all the prophecies and all of the.

All of the prophecies that have been laid out and all of the Old Testament testified to who he was and what he was going to do, it did not meet their expectations. Let's talk about their expectations. Their expectations, the messianic expectations of the day, was that there was going to be a person that was going to rise up and free them from the tyranny of Rome, reestablish the kingdom of Jerusalem. And we know that this is not the story of Jesus, right? He came to preach the gospel.

He came to create a different kingdom, right? Not an earthly kingdom, but a spiritual kingdom to free us not from earthly tyranny, but from spiritual tyranny, that is that we are dead in. And so his actions did not meet their expectations. And so every time they saw miraculous event that Jesus performed that didn't meet their expectations of what a Messiah should be, it caused them to harden their heart because it caused them to be confused about who Jesus was, which is why they still haven't made that proclamation, because they have not seen who Christ is yet. They did not recognize who Jesus was, which is why when he's walking, when he's walking over the water, when he's walking on the sea, they see him and they see a ghost because they don't recognize that he is the divine, that he is the God of the universe.

And so it terrifies them. And much like their expectations that Jesus doesn't meet their expectations. Jesus, a lot of times God does a lot of times doesn't meet our expectations. Isaiah 55, 8, 9 tells us that this is about God. God is speaking.

He says, for my thoughts are not your thoughts, neither are your ways my ways, declares the Lord. For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.

One of the major kind of accusations that is thrown out to God on why people don't want to follow Jesus is because of their expectations of who God should be, of what right and wrong should be.

Think about that even in your own life. I guarantee every single one of us is guilty of this, of where we build our expectation of who God is. And that's why when you read through scripture and you're challenged as a pastor, I'm gonna tell you that challenge is the Holy Spirit showing you where your expectation of God is wrong.

And so that's why we say we don't. We don't bend Scripture to our way of thinking. We bend. We bend our way of thinking to Scripture. Right?

We are transformed by Christ. We are transformed by the work of the Holy Spirit. We are transformed by reading His Word and being shown in areas where our expectations about Jesus and God are incorrect, are incorrect. A lot of times we see it today in culture, we see it today in progressive churches where people get up and they say, well, God is love. And so our expectation that God is love, that means he loves everybody.

And loving means embracing and affirming every aspect of your life and your identity, even if Scripture says it's sin. But what they fail to realize that there are other attributes to God. God is just, God is holy. And so there's a tension there where God loves every single person and he wants a relationship with every person. But God is also holy, and he cannot stand sin.

And so what did he do? He created a way, a bridge through Christ showing his love to the world. Right? John 3:16. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten son.

He showed love to the world through his son, Jesus Christ. But it was to call them out of sin, to redeem them out of sin, not to let them continue and embrace it.

Our expectations oftentimes don't align with God because we're inherently sinful. We're inherently sinful. We are born in sin. That leads us to my next point that makes it so difficult in recognizing Jesus is the fact that we are all born spiritually dead. The Bible is very clear about this, that we are born spiritually dead.

Scripture describes the unbeliever as both unwilling and unable to believe.

We are 100% at war with God when we are born. And that's why I tell people that kids ministry is our number one place for harvest. Because as cute as those kids are, they are sinners.

I've got five little sinners and one more cooking. All right? And if you're a parent in the room, you know this. Nobody has to teach a baby how to be selfish. They are.

Nobody has to teach a sibling to hit another sibling, right? They just do it. We're inherently sinful and we're born unwilling and unable to believe in Jesus. But the great thing is that the Bible also says that the Spirit is at work. The Spirit of God, the third Person of the Trinity, is at work in this world, revealing Jesus to those who would believe.

Ephesians 2:1:2 says, and you were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the Spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience.

But Romans 8, 9, 11 give us hope. So Romans 2:1 through 12 to demonstrates our situation and why it's so difficult to recognize Jesus. Because we were dead in the trespasses of our sins, and we were following the course of the world. We were following the prince of power of air. But Romans 8, 9, 11 says, you, however, are not in the flesh, but in the Spirit.

And if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you, anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong in him. But if Christ is in you, although the body is dead because of sin, the Spirit is life because of righteousness. If the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, he who raised Christ Jesus from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through his Spirit who dwells in you. We have hope. We have the ability to come to Christ because of the work of the Holy Spirit in our lives, opening our eyes to the work of Christ.

So one of the reasons it's difficult. So we've got expectations. Our expectations don't line up with who God is, and our expectations are wrong. And then we're also dead. So without the Spirit of God working in our lives, without the Spirit of God working in the world, we have no hope of even seeing Christ and coming to him.

The third thing, and this is not an exhaustive list, there's a lot of reasons why people don't come. But the third and final thing that I'm gonna talk about is our personal comfort and love of our sin. Hebrews 11:25 talks about the pleasures of sin for a season and how. And it's so true, because sin can be very pleasurable. And we love our sin.

We love to seek after our sin. It's one of the hard things. It's one of the hard things. As a believer, you're confronted with the sin in your. And it's one of the reasons why it's so difficult for a believer to sometimes overcome those sins.

In fact, it was difficult for Paul in Romans 7:15. He says, For I do not understand my own actions, for I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing that I hate.

Personal comfort and the love of our sin causes us difficulty in recognizing Jesus and who Jesus is. And it's oftentimes until we see Jesus fully and who he is and what he has done for us, that is when we can find freedom from our sin, when we give that. When we give that sin over to him, when we give up our own personal comfort, that is when we see Jesus clearly. There's other examples of this in the Bible with financial security. One of the things that makes it difficult to recognize who Jesus is and follow him is financial security.

You think back to the story of the rich young ruler. He comes up and he, and he talks to Jesus and he says, I want to follow you. What can I do to inherit eternal life? And Jesus says, follow all the law and the commandments. And he says, I've done that.

And he says, great, now go sell everything you have and follow me. And what does the guy do? He leaves dejected because he has a lot of stuff. He has a great wealth, and he leaves dejected and disappointed. And we don't see him following Jesus.

Financial security. The desire for financial security in this side of life often makes it hard to recognize who Jesus is and to follow him. Relationships. Another reason we that that kind of falls under this personal comfort camp is relationships. Sometimes we don't want to lose relationships.

We don't want to lose relationships. We don't want to make relationships awkward.

So we just don't talk about Jesus to our family, right? We don't. We don't talk to Jesus about our friends or to our friends. We don't talk about Jesus to our coworkers because we don't want to lose those relationships. We don't want, we don't want to create awkwardness, right?

And the Bible tells us two things about this. Matthew 10:37 says, Whoever loves his father or mother more than me, that is Jesus is not worthy of me. And whoever loves his son or daughter more than me is not worthy of me.

I think back to a story I heard, a story I heard this week about a Canadian father who had been arrested because his ex wife was trying to get their young daughter to transition into being a boy. And in Canada, if you didn't know this, in Canada it is. If anyone, any age, decides to do that, the state steps in and can arrest a parent if they try to block that. So this dad, he was arrested because he felt like the daughter was being pressured into this, and he did not want this for his daughter. And so he stepped in and tried to legally challenge it and block it.

And the result of that was him being arrested and thrown in prison for trying to love his daughter and protect his daughter. I think about that, and I don't know, nowhere in the story do. Do I think about or did I read that he was a believer or anything like that. But I think about how we should. That should be the love that we have toward our family, the love that we have toward our friends, that we know people.

We know people who are trapped in their sin. We know people are trapped in death, in spiritual darkness and in death. And we should love them. We should love them so radically that consequences don't matter. And when he asks, if you knew this was going to happen, why did you do it?

And he said, it's because when she comes back to me at 25 and asks me where I was, he says, I don't want to be there and say, well, you know, there's nothing I could do. So I didn't worry about it. He said, no, I want to be able to look at her and say, I fought tooth and nail to protect you. I fought tooth and nail to protect you. I went to prison trying to protect you.

And we should have that attitude when we're wanting to see people come to Christ. That's the attitude that Matthew 10:37 kind of gives us, that we should be willing to give up our own life for the lives of others.

So we also, John 12:25 talks about this, that whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. I think about this too. There's a story about Christians. When the black. The bubonic plague came out, the black plague came out.

The church was asked, believers in the church were asked, what should we do? Because everybody was abandoning cities, right? They were running for the hills, abandoning cities. And the church, the church was asked, what should we do? And we said, no, we're going to stay here.

The church stayed in the city and ministered to those who were sick. And many Christians died in doing that. But every person, almost every person that the church took in and helped, even though that Christian might die the plague later, the person that they nursed back to health. And through the plague, most of the time came to know Christ, their attitude was, I'm going to sacrifice my life and care physically, care, demonstrate a physical caring to this person, even though it might cost my life, so that they might see the love of Jesus. And that radical demonstration showed the love of Christ so that they might come to know Him.

The other thing is that there is a fact in life that God meets us where we are sometimes. God meets us where we are sometimes, but a lot of times we're too dense to see it.

God meets us where we are sometimes, but a lot of times we're too dense to see it at the time. And something that in my life has been really cool. When I went through seminary, they had us go through something called spiritual formation. And spiritual formation was a two year kind of ordeal. It was basically forced discipleship.

That's what we used to call it. But I ended up loving it. And during that time, during your second semester, they have you do something called life maps. And so the entire semester you're working on this life map. You're supposed to be praying through your life, examining from as early as you can think to where you are now and looking for points in your life where, like important points and important people in your life, you know, sin that you've had in your life, joyous like praises that you can point back to God on.

But throughout the whole thing, you're supposed to be asking, where was God in my life throughout all of these points, where was God in my life? And it was really cool because I got to sit in that and look at my entire life and see where God, even in the hard times, in the hard times and the good times, where God was in my life, even in the sid in my life, where I saw God calling me out of that, where I saw God calling me out of that, where he was in the times of grief, where he was in the times of mourning, where he was in the times of joy and blessing. And it was really cool. And it was eye opening. It was eye opening to.

It was eye opening to me, it was eye opening to the people. I shared that life map. And it gave me a different perspective and a different appreciation for how God has blessed me and been with me throughout my life. A lot of times we can be so focused on the present, A lot of times we can be so focused on the present in our present situation that Jesus is passing by us. And we're too dense to see it.

We're too dense to recognize that Jesus is there with us in our trials, in our sufferings. And our blessings, calling us out of sin, rejoicing us when we overcome with us. And it's one of the reasons why in marriage counseling, this is one of the things I have couples do, is sit and look at life and create a life map and share that with their partner. Because there are so many people who have not shared their life with their partner. They've.

They've. They've jumped into a relationship that is supposed to be a covenant relationship meant for all lifetime. But they have not genuinely shared where they've been in their life with their partner and how. And also recognize how Jesus has been in their life and how Jesus has led them to that person. And so I would encourage you, if you've never done that before, man, it is a great exercise for you to do.

But a lot of times we have a difficulty in recognizing Jesus. Just as the disciples did in that boat when he passed by. They had a difficulty in recognizing Jesus. The second point this morning is that just as we have a hard time recognizing God or we have a difficulty in recognizing Jesus, we're called to recognize Jesus in the difficulty. I know, that's just kind of.

So we have a difficulty recognizing Jesus, but we're called to recognize Jesus in the difficult Jesus. This passage clearly demonstrates that Jesus cares for his disciples, right? It says that he had gone up to the mountain to pray, and they were on the sea, and he was alone on the land, but he was watching them. Verse 48, he says, and he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. Jesus had commissioned them.

Jesus said, commission them. Or the verb here is in the Greek, is it not? Anon causo. And it means to force or compel. So when we read in verse 45 that it says he immediately made his disciples, that term made his disciples.

There's a lot more force to that. He forced them and compelled them. He made them get into the boat and go.

And he did this again to test his disciples, just as he tests us. And we're tested as believers. We talked about the feeding of the 5,000 and how there's a callback to Exodus and how the Lord provided manna to Israel. And in verse 37, when the disciples come to him, and when the disciples come to him and say, hey, everybody's hungry. We should make him disperse.

What is his response to them? In verse 37, he tells them, you give them something to eat. This implies that Jesus. Jesus believed that they had the power to do something about it. Jesus had.

Right. Earlier on in the Chapter. He had commissioned them. He had commissioned them to go out, to go out and preach and proclaim to people of repentance. And he had also given them power to cast out demons.

And we see that in verses 6 or chapter 6, 7 through 13, where he had sent out the apostles, he had. He had given them the power. He had empowered them to reach the world with the message of the gospel, including the signs that he was doing. And so in verse 37, they're coming back. They're participating in Jesus ministry again.

They had done these signs, they reported to them, and it was really cool. They cast out demons, they healed people, they anointed people with oil. They had done all this miraculous stuff under the empowerment of the Holy Spirit because Jesus had empowered him. And then the very next thing, he's feeding the 5,000, they're hungry, and he's. And they come to him and they say, do something about this.

And he turns around and says, you give them something to eat. And their response is, instead of walking into that and embracing the empowerment that Jesus had given them and providing them something to eat, what should we do? Spend money? How are we supposed to do this? They were still not recognizing who Jesus was.

And their empowerment for the mission that they had been put on, he's implying that they could have multiplied the bread and the fish.

And so he compels them to go out on this boat, and he's going to be testing them once again. And he goes up to the mountain to pray to the Father.

It doesn't say this, but I would imagine he's praying for them as well. He's praying to the Father, and he sees them in distress. Now, this is the middle of the night, and there's a storm on the sea. He's on the mountain. This is.

It's. There are no lights like we have now.

The implication is he spiritually sees them supernatural. In Proverbs 15:3, it tells us that the eyes of the Lord are in every place keeping watch on the evil and the good. And so he is seeing them because he's omnipresent. He is with the disciples on that boat, and he is seeing them supernaturally. And he sees them in distress.

And the storm is. There's an implication that the storm is supernatural as well, because in verse 48, there's a term that's used in the Greek called. That's basan izzo. And it's describing in verse 48 where it says they're making headway painfully. Some of their translations might be, say, straining or tortured.

And so Basonizo is the idea that they're making headway, straining, they're. They're being tortured in that. So there's this implication that the storm itself is supernatural, because this is at least. There's at least four really experienced fishermen, maybe seven on the boat there. And so this journey shouldn't have taken them more than a couple of hours from where they were to where they were going.

And now we're looking at several hours later, maybe eight to nine hours later, and they haven't made it across. Instead, they're straining and rowing against the waves. And the storm, something is preventing them.

And the Lord sees them in distress and he goes and he comes to them at the darkest part of the night.

In verse 48, it says he goes to them about the fourth watch of the night. So the Romans had four watches during the night, four night watches, one between 6 and 9pm one between 9 and 12pm or a.m. and one between 12am and 3am and 3 and 6. So he comes during the fourth watch, which is he's coming to them sometime between 3 and 6am and his intent here we see in verse 48 that he meant to pass by them. What does that mean?

He meant to pass by them. He sees them straining. He knew he sees them supernaturally straining against this kind of supernatural storm. And he is wanting to encourage them. He's wanting to go to them.

And in verse 48, says he meant to pass by them.

You know how the feeding of the 5000 is a call back to Exodus? Well, this right here is a call back to the Old Testament as well. The idea of passing by, the word here, par, means to pass by. And when connected to the divine, when connected to God, it refers to an epiphany or a theophany, or sometimes they're called christophanies, an appearance of God in the Old Testament, a physical appearance of God in the Old Testament. And the Old Testament records that God made striking and temporary appearances to select individuals or groups for the purpose of communicating a message.

In Exodus 33, 19, 34, 7, this tells us of Moses, who's asking God to show him his glory. And God responds by passing before him. It's such a funny story too, because God tells him, hey, if you look at my face, no one can look at my face, because if anybody looks at my face, they're gonna die. And so I'm gonna pass by you. I'm gonna confirm who I am.

I'm gonna pass by you. You can see my bag. And when he does it? It says God shoves him. God shoves him in a cleft of a rock and literally puts his own hand over Moses so that he is shielded from the glory of God as he passes by.

And then when he passes by, he lifts up his hand and Moses is able to see the back of God and the glory of God. And then again in First Kings 19, 11, 12, the Lord tells Elijah to stand on the mountain, for the Lord is about to pass by.

So when you see this in Mark, when we see this in verse 48, it's important to have the Old Testament context. If you have no idea what's going on in the Old Testament, you're gonna miss this. In verse 48, Jesus is wanting to show them that he is the creator of the universe, the Messiah. And so he is wanting to pass by them as God had done for Israel and for individuals and groups in the Old Testament, so that they would see and recognize who he is.

And so he is. He is wanting to pass by his disciple, and he is willing for them to see his transcendent majesty as a divine being, to give them reassurance. To give them reassurance. He is wanting to encourage them in the fight that they're currently in. He is wanting to reassure them that he is there with them.

But unlike the testimonies in the Old Testament, the disciples see more than God's back, as Moses did. They saw the face of God in the face of His Son.

And as he's passing by, his encouragement, his wanting to reassure them actually backfires, right? Because they get terrified. They get terrified. Verse 50. For they all saw him and were terrified.

And what is, what does Jesus do when he sees this? He is wanting to encourage and reassure them. He is wanting to demonstrate to them that he is the divine. He is wanting them to see him in the difficult. He is wanting to see.

He is wanting them to see that he is present with them in the difficulty. Even if he is not physically with him, he is there, and this kind of backfires. They think he's a ghost of phantom, and they're terrified. And he sees this and he is merciful to them. And instead of getting upset with them or rebuking them, a lot of times, a lot of times we get stuck in difficult places and we are afraid to go to God because we're afraid that God is going to rebuke us if we're stuck in sin, if we're struggling with something.

If you're an unbeliever, maybe this is you where you're stuck. And you feel like there is like, I can do nothing to get back into the good graces with God. I've done so much bad in my life that there's nothing that I could do. Or sometimes that we think that because of the terrible stuff we've done in life, God is going to punish us, right? God is going to punish us.

He's going to condemn us. But the Bible says there's no condemnation for those who are in Christ. That the punishment for all of our sins, past, present and future, was given to Christ on the cross.

And he looks at the disciples in this moment where they're terrified when they're not going to God. They're terrified, and they don't recognize him. They think he's a ghost. And he gets in the boat with them.

He gets in the boat with them in the midst of the storm, in the midst of their terror, he gets in the boat with them and he immediately, it says, he immediately spoke to them and said, take heart, it is I do not be afraid.

Jesus gets in the boat and he tells them to be resolute in the face of danger, to be courageous. The term here, tharsio, the Greek term, tharsio. To be resolute in the face of danger, to be courageous. And then when it says, it is I in the English, that's. It says, it is I take heart.

It is I be courageous, be resolute in the face of danger. It is I in the Greek, that is the ego emi, that is the I am. So he literally says, take heart, I am. He uses Yahweh, the name of God.

He tells them to take heart, be resolute in the danger, in the difficult that they are in. For God is with them.

And immediately he calms the sea. They get in the boat, and he calms the sea. And I want us to see that Jesus does not rescue his disciples out of the sea. He doesn't pick them up out of the difficult times and transport them miraculously, but instead he goes into the boat. He is with them, and he does not recognize his disciples.

He doesn't rescue them, but instead he enables them to continue on in their voyage.

He enables them to continue on in their voyage. Jesus doesn't take away the paths, the difficult paths that a lot of times we're placed in. Rather, he provides us the strength to walk down them.

Jesus doesn't. I want you to hear that Jesus doesn't take away the difficult paths that we're asked to walk down, but rather he provides us the strength to walk down those paths.

And so we are called to find and see Jesus in the difficult. In the difficult times. We are called to see Jesus and know that he is with us, that he is there. He cares for us deeply, he loves us, and he will give us the strength and power to get through those difficult times. My third point this morning and final one is that we are called to recognize the empowerment from Jesus and the high calling of discipleship.

Throughout this, Jesus is wanting his disciples to recognize the empowerment that he has given them to go and preach the Word. And he's also wanting them to recognize the high calling of discipleship. Verse 53 through 56 are a summary of his ministry over the last year. He is. He is.

It's when he lands in and people come to him and they lay the sick to Him. They bring him verse 56. And wherever he came, in villages and cities or countrysides, they laid the sick in the marketplaces and implored him that they might touch even the fringe of his garment. This is a summary of what has been building up. People are attracted to the miraculous.

People are attracted to the miraculous, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the miraculous will point them to Jesus. After all, I mean, we just saw the disciples, saw Jesus walking on water, something that only the divine can do, only God can do.

And they're not even recognizing who Jesus is. And so oftentimes in our own life is we see only things that God can do and we ignore them because we don't recognize Jesus in them. And as believers, as believers, he is wanting us to recognize the empowerment that we have from Jesus, just like the apostles did, and the high calling of discipleship that we are called to as well.

This is a call back again to the empowerment of the disciples and the empowerment to participate in Jesus work. We talked about how Mark 6, 7, 13, Jesus has empowered the disciples to go out and do the work. And in the feeding of 5,000, they had a chance to participate in that. And they did participate in it. But also I want us to look forward, looking to Matthew 28, 19:20, where God gives us the great commission to the to the disciples or to us.

Go therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always to the end of the age. And then following that great Commission. In Acts 1:8, Jesus says that you will receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you and you will be my witnesses in Jerusalem and all Judea, Samaria and to the end of the earth. He is both giving us the same calling he gave the disciples in Mark 6 and the same empowerment that he is giving.

We are to be Gospel oriented people. We are to be a Gospel oriented church, striving to see lost people saved and striving to see our brothers and sister in Christ grow in their relationship with Him. Mark is demonstrating to us that a critical facet of discipleship is serving others. And Mark is emphasizing that God provides and has provided a way to accomplish these acts of benevolence and more through the Holy Spirit. God empowers us to use this strength to reach the world for Jesus.

And we must recognize our own inadequacy and acknowledge the total inadequacy or the total apologize, the total adequacy of God and His power alone and otherwise. We as believers must recognize Jesus for who he is. We must recognize Jesus for who he is, the Divine, the Messiah, the Son of God, the Creator. We must set down our own expectations of who he is, our own expectations of who he should be, our fears, our worries, our personal comfort, and be willing to take up his mission and purpose for our lives.

And it is only then when we get to that point, it is only then that we will truly recognize and be in sync with God's will for our life. And only then when we see the true purpose for our lives is that is that when we live a gospel oriented life, recognizing and acknowledging who Jesus is, seeing him in the Divine as the Divine, seeing Him as the Creator, as God who has come to this world to bring redemption to the world. And it is our purpose to be the Light and be his witnesses to that truth. Let's pray.