Jesus the Good Shepherd

Well, good morning. If I don’t move that, you won’t be able to see me. I’m only this tall, and I’m not getting any taller while this goes on. It’s always a blessing to be with you here at Grace Fellowship. Pastor Paul, I believe, is in Ohio on a family trip, so he’s gone. Please be praying for their time there and that it would be a blessing. And it’s always good to be with you.

I came to Sunday school this morning at 9:00, and I have to say you have an excellent Sunday school hour. There were a dozen people or so in that room, all engaged in just what the words mean—Sunday school, right?—learning about our God and what it is to walk in faith as born-again believers in Jesus Christ. So if you’re not part of the class, it sounds like you’re starting a new book next week. That would be a perfect time—if you’re not in there and you’re thinking, “Well, I want to check out Sunday school”—I’m sure you can go to John or Chaz or Mike, ask them about the new book, and jump in. It’s a blessed time to learn. We’re called to be growing in this faith; it’s our calling.

So let’s pray, and then we’ll go to Mark chapter 6.

Heavenly Father, we bow before You, so thankful for this morning that we can come to the God of all creation—the Creator of all that is seen and unseen, the God who spoke into existence all that is and who holds it together at this very moment, even our next breath. You are the God who so loved the world that You sent Your only begotten Son, that whosoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. You are the God who is faithful to uphold us, sympathize with our struggles, and indwell us with the Helper, the Holy Spirit, who teaches, guides, and sharpens our walk of faith moment by moment.

Help us this morning not to take for granted that You’ve set aside a day when we can come and worship You in song and prayer, at the Lord’s table, and in the living Word. We desire to grow in our faith. So we pray that the Holy Spirit would do a work in us today—that the saints might be sanctified and the lost might be saved—all for Your glory. In Jesus’ name we pray. Amen.

So, Mark chapter 6. I realized Pastor Paul finished a series on the Gospel of Mark recently, and when I looked back to see when he was last in Mark 6, it was almost a year ago—November of last year. So I figured we’re safe to return to Mark 6, because this portion of Scripture, beginning in verse 30 (though we’ll start there and move into verse 33), just points to the majesty of Christ. It lifts Christ up as the God who saved our souls and whom we’re called to worship every moment of every day. It gives us another beautiful picture of who He is.

As we go there, I’d like to place a thought before us—an overarching theme, a big idea. In the context of our study this morning we will see Jesus, the Good Shepherd. Jesus the Good Shepherd. John records the words of Jesus: “I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd lays down His life for the sheep” (John 10:11). And just a few verses later Jesus says, “I am the good shepherd; I know My sheep and My sheep know Me—just as the Father knows Me and I know the Father—and I lay down My life for the sheep.”

So the Good Shepherd tells us about Himself: He knows you, you know Him, and He was willing—and did—die on your behalf. As we walk through Mark 6, your Bible probably has a heading in the New American Standard right above this section that says “Five Thousand Fed.” As we walk through the Scripture together today, I pray we see the Good Shepherd—the commendable Shepherd, the excellent Shepherd, the beautiful Shepherd—as He finds rest for His own, has compassion on the crowds, tutors His own, and feeds the multitude. Over and over we see the One you know, who says, “I know you just as I know My Father.” Imagine that.

Father, Son, and Holy Spirit—one God, three persons—have always existed from eternity past, in need of nothing, fully satisfied in Themselves. So when He created the heavens and the earth, when He created you, it changed Him not one bit—He has always been God, always perfect, always self-sufficient and self-satisfied in the Godhead. Anything He has done since then that leaves us in awe—“He made me!”—doesn’t change Him at all. Yet that same God says about you, “I know you like I know My Father.” Meditate on that for the rest of your life and try to grasp it. That’s who we’re looking at today: the Good Shepherd.

The first thing we’ll see is that He finds rest for His own. Beginning in verse 30:

The apostles gathered together with Jesus and reported to Him all that they had done and taught. And He said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a secluded place and rest a while.” (For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.) So they went away in the boat to a secluded place by themselves.

The context of the Good Shepherd seeking rest for His own comes right after He had sent the Twelve out in pairs (verses 7–13) and just before we learn of John the Baptist’s murder. Jesus had sent them with nothing but a staff—no bread, no bag, no money, just sandals and one tunic—and told them to preach repentance. They went out, cast out many demons, anointed and healed many sick people, and then returned exhausted. Jesus knew what it was to minister all day, to have crowds press in when miracles were performed. The days were long and tiring, and His disciples were spent. The Good Shepherd saw their need and said, “Come away with Me; let’s get some rest.”

One of the great blessings of my own life was serving as a bivocational pastor and traveling to Rwanda five times in ten years for pastor conferences and mercy ministry among some of the poorest believers in Africa. When the teaching was done each day, I would walk the village trails preaching the gospel. Crowds would gather—sometimes fifty, sometimes a hundred—and I would preach through a translator, answer their questions, show family pictures, and share the hope we have in Christ even in the face of suffering and death. By the time I walked back in the dark to the little guest house, I would collapse into the deepest sleep, only to wake again at dawn. That’s what Jesus saw in His apostles: worn-out ministers of the gospel. The Good Shepherd cared enough to say, “It’s time to rest.”

Do you need rest today? He sympathizes. Hebrews 4:15 reminds us we do not have a high priest who cannot sympathize with our weaknesses, but One who has been tempted in all things as we are—yet without sin. Jesus knows exactly how you feel because He has lived it Himself. His response to His weary disciples is the same response He has for you: “Come to Me… and I will give you rest.”

They went away in “the” boat—the one the fishermen always kept ready. Luke’s parallel account tells us they withdrew to a place near Bethsaida, a small town on the north side of the Sea of Galilee, outside the village on the rolling green hills. That’s where Jesus brought His closest followers to rest.

By the way, aren’t you glad He set aside Sundays? If He hadn’t, would we ever rest? He knows what we need.

Second, He had compassion on the crowd. Verses 33–34:

The people saw them going, and many recognized them and ran there together on foot from all the cities, and got ahead of them. When Jesus went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and He felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things.

Any rest the disciples got was brief. The crowd—eventually 5,000 men plus women and children, perhaps 15–20,000 in all—followed because they had seen His miracles of healing. So much for rest.

How would we have responded? We know how we usually respond when rest is interrupted. But the Good Shepherd felt compassion. The word for “felt compassion” literally means He was moved in His gut, deep visceral pain for their need. He didn’t see an annoyance; He saw sheep without a shepherd—helpless, harassed, and lost. And He began to teach them, because what lost sheep need most is the voice of the Shepherd.

Do we see the world around us that way? Do crowds annoy us, or do they move us with compassion because so many are lost and perishing? Jesus felt their lostness in His gut the way grief twists ours when we lose someone we love. That same compassion moved Him to teach them the words of life.

Third, He tutors His own. Verse 35–37:

When it was already quite late, His disciples came to Him and said, “This place is desolate and it is already quite late; send them away so that they may go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” But He answered and said to them, “You give them something to eat!”

That short command—“You give them something to eat”—is masterful tutoring. It stopped the disciples in their tracks. They had seen Jesus cast out demons, heal every kind of disease, calm storms, raise the dead. They themselves had just returned from a preaching tour full of miracles. Yet when Jesus said, “You feed them,” their first thought was, “Shall we go buy 200 denarii worth of bread?” They still didn’t get it. The lesson? Look to Jesus. No matter how impossible the situation looks, look to Jesus.

That brings us to the miracle itself—the only miracle (besides the resurrection) recorded in all four Gospels. Jesus asked, “How many loaves do you have? Go look.” They found five loaves (more like flatbread crackers) and two small pickled fish—a boy’s lunch. Jesus had the crowd sit down in orderly groups on the green grass. Then, looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke the loaves and kept giving them to the disciples to set before the people; He also divided the two fish among them all. They all ate and were satisfied—filled to the brim—and the disciples picked up twelve full lunch-sized baskets of leftovers.

With five crackers and two pickled fish, the Creator created food for 15–20,000 people. This was pre-fall, uncursed bread and fish—Eden-quality food—straight from the hand of the One who spoke the universe into existence. The same God who evaporates oceans, carries fresh water hundreds of miles through the sky, and gently drops it as rain on a farmer’s field multiplied a boy’s lunch so that everyone ate until they could eat no more, and still there were twelve individual portions left—one for each weary disciple who had started the day needing rest.

Nothing in life is too big for this God. Go to Him.

Jesus fed both the just and the unjust that day, and He calls us to love and serve both as well—with the heart of the Good Shepherd.

If you have never turned from your sin and trusted Christ, today is the day. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “He made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” Jesus took your sin on the cross so that you could be made right with God. Repent, believe, and be saved.

Let’s pray.

Heavenly Father, we thank You for this morning and for Your living Word. Thank You for the Gospels that reveal Jesus, the Good Shepherd who gives rest to His own, has compassion on the lost, tutors His disciples, and feeds the multitude with a word. You are the One we turn to for all things—our help when we are broken, our hope when we are helpless, our provider when we are hungry, our light for every step.

Sanctify the saints and save the lost, all for Your glory. In Jesus’ name, amen.