MARCH 7, 2021 SUNDAY MESSAGE
JOIN US LIVE AT 10 AM ON SUNDAYS!
Transcription (please disregard any errors):
Well, good morning, everybody. Good morning. Hey, my name is Anthony Dumas. I'm one of the elders here at Common Ground Northeast. And it's just good.
It's sunny there's chalk riding out onto the concrete. Spring is coming. And through 2000 and 22,021, it has been just a level of exhaustion, maybe frustration, maybe tiredness. And now we just have a new season. That's coming.
So what I want us first to do since we've got a crowd here, we've got people in the building, folks. Isn't that good? So on the count of three, we're going to loosen up a little bit. I just want you to cheer. Give God some praise.
We're here to give God praise, to give him love, to give him some excitement. And if you want to be excited because we're here, we've gotten through the last year. Or spring is coming or spring break is coming. Parents, whatever. On the count of three, just give God some praise.
One, two, three.
Amen at home. I hope that you maybe put something on the line, put the hands, the praises. And that's right now my one hand clap. For now. That's how my Zoom meeting clap when I'm happy when somebody says something.
Well, just thank you, guys. Today we're going to walk through. What if I had the title and anything would maybe be called exhaustive love. And so what we're going to look at is in context of how it looked for Jesus to do the miracle of feeding the 5000. And as we dig into this, the setup of the feeding is just as amazing as the miracle was itself.
So I'm going to pray for us. Heavenly Father, we just thank you for this time. We thank you for allowing us to come back in as a family and just praise your name, dear Lord, because that's what we're here to give you praise. Let the words come to my mouth, give you glory and give us strength in your name. We pray Amen.
So Eric has done an incredible job of helping us map out the gospel story, giving us a better way to explain that Jesus died for our sins. In part one. Remember last year we went through creation, rebellion and the promise through Abraham. And now when part two, we're going in redemption, which is the dealing with the life of Jesus. We will follow through the movement and act.
And then we will go to the renewal of God's creation. This week, I'm going to kind of pick up where Serena left off last week. She did an amazing job of discussing the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years and what strength it took of her and her part to touch the hymn of Jesus to be healed. So I'm going to start there. In Luke chapter eight, verses 42 through 45, as Jesus was on his way, the crowds almost crushed him.
A woman was there who had been subject to bleeding for twelve years, but no one could heal her. She came up behind him and touched the edge of his cloak and immediately her bleeding stopped. Who touched me? Jesus asked when they all denied it. Peter said, Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you.
But Jesus said, someone touched me. I know that power has gone from out from me. In the midst of all the chaos and all the excitement, Jesus healed his woman. Then he actually went on to heal the daughter of a synagogue leader at the same time. Now in that verse I just read, I don't know if you heard Jesus.
There's a physical cost for him to heal. And some of the things in that verse that we just read were the crowds almost crushed him. Master, the people are crowding and pressing against you. Someone touched me. I know that that power has gone out from me.
We know that Jesus was in the middle of it. Jesus dealt with the people with the healing, and we
know that he needed rest and respite. But he was teaching and healing everywhere that he went. So after this happened with the woman, Jesus left with his disciples and he was going to go back home to the comforts of home, go to Nazareth, see his people, maybe get some good Nazareth home cooking. See mom, see his boys have somebody giving some love.
And on the Sabbath he decided to do some praying and do some teaching. And so now we're going to go to Mark chapter six, verses one through six, Jesus left there and went to his hometown, accompanied by his disciples. When the Sabbath came, he began to teach in the synagogues and many heard him. And they were amazed. Where did this man get these things?
They asked, what's this wisdom that has been given him? What are these remarkable miracles he is performing? Isn't this the Carpenter? Isn't this Mary's son? And isn't this the brother of James, Joseph, Judas and Simon?
And aren't his sisters here with us? And they took offense at him. Jesus said to them, A Prophet is not without honor, except in his own town, among his relatives and in his own home. He could not do any miracles there, except lay hands on a few sick people and heal them. He was amazed at their lack of faith.
As Jesus just said again, he was amazed that they didn't have faith in him. This is his home. Can you imagine what a gut punch that must have been for Jesus to go home, to go where you think you're going to get the support and just that extra push that you need to go on another day. So Jesus, from there, they left and they went back towards Galilee to continue bringing the good news. And on their way back, Jesus gets hit again with another gut punch.
He finds out that his guy, that is his number one, his lead blocker if you're in football terminology, John the Baptist was beheaded and killed by Herod and was murdered. Matthew Chapter 14, Verses 13 and 14, they explained it just a little bit more. When Jesus heard what had happened, he withdrew by boat privately to a solitary place. Hearing of this, the crowds followed him on foot from the towns. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them and healed their sick.
Let's stop right here for a second and just put this in perspective of us as people. Jesus has healed so many people everywhere that he went. He was followed. He was pressed in, he was crushed on. He went home where he should have got support and he got dissed.
He got turned away. He got hurt. He left there on the way, leaving there. You find out your guy, your boy is murdered and you're in mourning. He goes to get on a boat to get away from everybody.
And people are already following where he's going and are already there. Jesus needed rest. So my first question for the day is, how have you coped with life when it seems like it's caving in on you again? How have you coped with life when it seems like it's caving in for you? So we're going to give you a few minutes and I'll give you a 32nd check when it's time to come back.
All right. Well, thank you. And if you are online, hopefully you gave us some good information that we can look at and just maybe a good discussion for later on, maybe in your house, Church or something like that. But do you already kind of see the layers that we're stacking up here? Jesus has just been around a lot.
He's been through a lot. And so now we're going to read the meat of what we're going for for our scripture, which is John six, one five.
And it says sometime after this, Jesus crossed the far shore of the Sea of Galilee. That is the Sea of Tiberius. And a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. Then Jesus went up on the mountainside and sat with his disciples. The Jewish Passover was near.
When Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming towards him. He said to Philip, Where should
we buy bread for these people to eat? He asked this only to test him for he already had in mind what he was going to do. Philip answered him. It would take more than a half years wages to buy enough bread for each of these people to get one bite.
Another of one of his disciples, Andrew Simon, Peters brother, spoke up here's. A boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish. But how far will they go among so many? Jesus said, have the people sit down? There was plenty of grass in that place, and they sat down.
About 5000 men were there. Jesus then took the lows, gave thanks and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. When they all had enough to eat, he said to the disciples, gathered the pieces that are left over, let nothing be wasted. So they gathered them, filled the twelve baskets with the pieces of the five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten.
After the people saw the signs Jesus performed, they began to say, Surely this is the Prophet who has come to the world. Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him King by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself.
Did you just hear that? So Jesus leaves. He gets in a boat to go someplace to get respite, to get peace. People know where he's going. They meet him there.
They beat him there and he turns around and he feeds them. And in the matter of feeding them, he was exhausted. He was tired, but not once in his text do you hear Jesus say, what about me? I'm tired. He found compassion and love for these people to the point that he took five loaves and two fishes and fed.
I saw commentary anywhere between 10% to 20,000 people and all. If you include women and children, what a miracle. This is one of the great miracles that Jesus did while he was here on Earth. And at that time Jesus was in mourning. He was tired, physically tired.
But he still had love and he had compassion. Mark eight verses one and two, say it like this. During those days, another large crowd gathered. Since they had nothing to eat. Jesus called his disciples to him and said, I have confession for these people.
They have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. So if you didn't know before that he was tired. Not only did he get off the boat, he's now spent three days with these people, healing, teaching, taken care of and prior to studying for this today, I don't know about you. I've always looked at this verse as like the miracle of feeding of the 5000, which is amazing in itself. But then when I started adding in all these other layers, it just became even more amazing to me because God reached out and he cared.
Jesus is tired. He's hurting. He's frustrated. He's probably furious because John is dead. He's surrounded by people that need him that want to hear from Him that want from here.
But he showed a greater love than what probably any of us could show on our best day. In my terms, I just like to say Jesus showed up and he showed out and he did what he had to do to take care of his people.
So when you think about this and when I think about this and when I've been reading this, think about and Unfortunately, Covet is taking this joy away from us. When you go to a concert, you go to a sporting event, you go to a theater and you're in those lines and or you're somewhere of public transportation, and you can't even take a full step and you have people around you and you just want to get away. You know what I mean? You want to get to where you have some space.
So think about this.
As we're talking about this, Jesus probably operated in that quite a bit. So when you think about all
these layers on top of this miracle and then you take the miracle itself. Jesus said that he took the bread. He set everybody down. He divided out the bread.
Then he did it with the fish. Then when it was done, he had them take what was left over. So that means that Jesus just didn't give orders to say, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to go take a nap. You guys handled his disciples.
Jesus was there to feed 10,000 plus people while he's tired, him doing the work and doing the clean up, making sure everything got right in order. I mean, is this not a miracle in itself to show the Majesty of Jesus? So question number two is, how do you handle loving when you have little or nothing left in the tank? How do you handle loving when you have little or nothing left in the tank? We'll give two minutes.
I'll give us, like, 30 seconds.
Well, thank you, guys.
Like I said, I know these questions have a lot of meat to them for two minutes. But I would love for you if you can, to continue to expound on them and try to really look for not the Facebook friendly answer. What's really inside when you ask these questions, who do you look to or like me sometimes don't look at all and just think about that. It actually made me laugh when I was thinking about this and I'm thinking about how we're talking about Jesus and being tired and continue to help.
Dads, no disks to us.
But I think of Moms, as soon as you go to take a bath, take a shower, try to go read your book in the room. Dad can be sitting right there. But what gets happened? What happens?
There's only one person that happens when I know it happens all over. But yeah, Moms, you get it. And I know when you're tired, you still have to bring that love out. So gracious. Thank you.
There is a snippet from a book written by a professor of sociologist. He was a co founder of the NAACP. His name was W. Eb. The Boys, and he wrote a book called Prayers for Dark People.
And there was a collection of prayers he wrote for his students at Atlanta University and the students that were in the high school in the Atlanta area. He wanted to support them and uplift them to deal with the troubling times that they were dealing with. And in one of the prayers, he wrote this now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year. It is today that we fit ourselves for greater usefulness of tomorrow.
Today is the seed time. Now are the hours of work and tomorrow comes a harvest and a play time. I'm going to read the first part of that again. Now is the accepted time, not tomorrow, not some more convenient season. It is today that our best work can be done and not some future day or future year.
Those marching orders that he gave to the young people in that prayer just seemed like they're good accomplishment to what Jesus was doing at this time. When he fed the $5,000. Jesus may have been tired, saddened, mourning and frustrating, but he looked outward. He cared outward. He loved.
He said he had compassion for people and he showed his compassion. I know we over these past year may be tired, may be flustered, but feeling the weight of the waves of COVID still to this day. But there are times that when we're tired that if we can still look outward, we're going to be able to love. And when Jesus went to the cross and he died and he was risen on the third day, one of the benefits was us was the Holy Spirit. So that's what I just want you to remember that when you do, when you are on empty, when you don't feel like you can give, when those times are tiring and you really want to say, what about me?
If you can look out and I know there are boundaries and borders we all want to protect. But yet on those times when we want to look out, the Holy Spirit will be there to have your back to help you get through whatever. No matter if it's just saying Hi or reaching out or using your gifts, times and talents, the Holy Spirit will be there to support you. And again, I just thank you. I thank everybody here.
And it's so good to see you and just remember that. And let's pray heavenly Father, we just thank you for the day. We thank you for Jesus, your Lord. We thank you for the Holy Spirit and the energy that he can help us with. Dear Lord, when there are times that we don't feel like we have it, we don't feel like we're in a place to love their Lord and God again.
I just thank you so much. And then your name we pray. Amen.
COMMUNION:
(1 COR. 11:23B-26)
“The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread, 24 and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, “This is my body, which is for you; do this in remembrance of me.” 25 In the same way, after supper he took the cup, saying, “This cup is the new covenant in my blood; do this, whenever you drink it, in remembrance of me.” 26 For whenever you eat this bread and drink this cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.”
ANNOUNCEMENTS:
SAVE THE DATE: The 2020 Marriage Retreat is scheduled to be Saturday and Sunday, November 7 and November 8!
PRAYER REQUESTS:
We are hosting prayer team meetings for both the congregation at large and individuals to sign up for individual prayer.
SUGGESTIONS FOR WORSHIP:
Coty Miller’s own “Praise & Worship” Spotify playlist and “Praise & Worship” YouTube playlist (slightly different from each other), both of diverse music that are being constantly updated!
Bethel Music :
Bethel Music’s hours of live music YouTube Playlist, also being constantly updated
Bethel provides chords to most (if not all) of their songs here (just have to register email, but free!)
Live worship moments from the Upper Room YouTube Playlist
Journal writing! (I’m a writer too, so sometimes creative writing and writing my thoughts to God is my form of worship.)
Declare and worship with truth by singing and praying scriptures.
WORSHIP NIGHT! Dedicate a night to worship with friends and family, your house church or neighbors, those who need prayer, love worship, or just enjoy music through a video chat platform like Zoom. You can have one person leading at a time (switching off to whoever else wants to lead) while others sing along, pray, or prophesy, etc.
Serving your community, both online, in person, or both, is a great way to worship God, from spreading encouragement and God’s Word online to physically serving food to others. If you are able to go out and serve, click here for opportunities.
COMMISSIONING:
As Jesus said in John 20:21,
"Peace be with you! As the Father has sent me, I am sending you."
Go, be the Church!
In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit.
Amen.