Sunday Worship Service October 27, 2024

Prelude
Call to Worship Psalm 107:9
Hymn JBC # 124 This is my Father’s world
The Lord’s Prayer
The Lord’s Supper
Hymn JBC # 213 Tell me the story of Jesus
Offering
Scripture Mark 6:30～44
Prayer
Sermon “They all ate and were satisfied”
Prayer
Hymn JBC # 21 Worthy of worship
Doxology JBC # 674
Benediction
Postlude


Today’s Bible passage shows Jesus’ disciples returning to Jesus’s side after completing their work.
It says that the Disciples report to Jesus all about everything they had done and taught to people that day.
These were the 12 immediate disciples of Jesus, who are called “the Apostles”.
In Mark chapter 6 verse 7 and onwards, the section before today’s passage, it talks about how Jesus sent them out to do works.
The work Jesus had sent the Apostles out to do was to tell others about the Kingdom of God, to teach, and to drive out demons, heal the sick, and more.
The Apostles were chosen by Jesus to become disciples, to receive power from Him and then to go out to many places and do works including to proclaim the gospel, heal sickness, and drive out demons.

Jesus hoped that through such work of the Apostles, people would come to know God’s Kingdom (the Gospel).
Listening to the Apostles (Jesus’ direct disciples), we might get the impression that they were exceptional people, different from us.
Certainly, the Apostles were chosen by Jesus, lived alongside Him and worked with Jesus in sharing the gospel, so we can say that they were special.
But, when we think about “being chosen by Jesus” and “receiving power from and being sent out by Jesus”, we as Christians living now are the same.
We have been chosen by Jesus and led to the Church. We have been chosen by Jesus, and been led to profess that Jesus is Lord.
I hope that as Christians, we recognize and are thankful for the honor of being chosen only by God’s Grace, and that we walk humbly in faith.

The Apostles each finished their work and returned to Jesus. They reported to Jesus all that they had done and taught.
When I think about this scene, what came to mind was us as Christians in the worship service, having been sent out to our daily lives, to do our works, then coming back to Jesus in worship.
For Christians, we come to this place of worship and meet Jesus, listen to Jesus’ Word, receive power from Jesus, and are sent out to our various works and everyday lives.
With gifts God has given each of us, we carry the Gospel (the Good News) with us as we are sent out from here each week.

And, just as the Apostles reported on all that they had done to Jesus, it could be said that we also look back on our lives and works during the past week, and tell Jesus about it here in this place of worship.
We can tell him things like “Over the past week, I did this. And this happened. This went well, but I also made some mistakes.” We can tell Jesus anything.
There would be some people here who do this every day at the end of the day in their prayer time to God.
When we tell Jesus all about what we have done, I imagine that he is looking on us with a gentle gaze, listening quietly to all that we have to tell Him.

In today’s passage, after Jesus had listened to the report from his disciples, he said this:
　　“Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.”(v.31)
　Today’s passage shows us that they were surrounded by a great crowd of people (people wanting Jesus and the disciples to teach them and heal them), and they were so busy they didn’t even have time to eat a meal.
Just like in this passage, what Jesus gives to us is rest. Rest for our hearts and bodies, rest for our minds and souls in God’s love. This is the true rest that Jesus gives to us.
We receive this blessing of true rest from Jesus firstly through our worship.
We receive this true rest for our body and soul from worshipping God, and then we are sent out from this place to our daily lives.
The passage says that Jesus and the Apostles boarded a boat and tried to go to a remote location, however, the crowd of people realized this and went ahead, arriving there before Jesus and the Apostles.

This was how much many people needed God’s healing. Everyone needed God’s blessing, and when Jesus saw this crowd, he felt great compassion.
Feeling compassion is not just feeling a sense of pity. Jesus feeling compassion for the crowd of people can be taken as meaning that he felt the pain, sadness and suffering that surrounded each of those people as if it were His own.
Jesus, as God who became man, is able to take our pain, suffering and sadness as if it were his own, just as he did for the crowd.
I hope that knowing that the God who can do these things is with us as our God brings us joy and thankfulness.
The passage says that Jesus had great compassion on them and began to teach them “many things”. At that time, Jesus was teaching them His words (the Word of God).

It says that Jesus looked upon them and saw that they were “like sheep without a shepherd” and had compassion on them.
A “sheep without a shepherd” has no one to give them directions in life, so they don’t know where to go or what to do, but just wander aimlessly.
So that these sheep without a shepherd could be shown a clear way of living and direction, Jesus taught the crowd God’s Word unstintingly.
God’s Word supports us throughout our lives, and forms our guiding principles. This year, our church theme is Standing on the Word of the Lord. Let us always hold the Word of God as our guide, as we continue to walk this path of faith.
Jesus continued to teach the people, but it was taking a long time, and the disciples said this to Jesus:

“This is a remote place,” they said, “and it’s already very late. 36 Send the people away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.”
　Jesus responded “You give them something to eat”.
The disciples said “Are we to go and spend that much (*two hundred denarii) on bread and give it to them to eat?”(verse 37). They must have thought “There’s no way we can do that.”
As an easy example for the present time, two hundred denarii would be about 2 million yen. The passage shows that just counting the men there were 5,000 people, and adding the women and children would make it about two or three times that number.
When we are faced with a difficult challenge, we use our experience or common sense to decide if we think something is possible or impossible.
Here and now, if we thought about spending two hundred denarii on bread and giving it to these people to eat, we wouldn’t even need to think about it, common sense says it’s impossible. (the common sense says such money is not available).

However, believers in God rely not on the world’s common sense (to begin with it is not as though common sense is always right), but on God’s word, living in faith and the hope that “If it is Your will, it will happen”.
What did Jesus do in today’s passage? Jesus asked his disciples to check what bread they already had.
The disciples checked, and found there were five loaves of bread and two fish. To the eyes of the people, there was no way this amount could feed this great crowd.
But Jesus saw things differently. Jesus saw these five loaves and two fish, and to Him, they were enough.

Jesus took the bread and the fish in His hands, look up to the Heavens and spoke a prayer of praise, then broke the bread and multiplied the fish and gave them to His disciples.
The disciples made it sure that this bread and fish would be handed to all the people who were gathered there. All the people there sitting in groups of fifty or a hundred ate, and all were full.
This is an amazing miracle. Yet, that great crowd was five thousand people counting just then men, and adding their families makes it about ten thousand or twenty thousand people.
In such a large crowd, many among them may not have realized that the bread and fish that they ate had been multiplied by Jesus’ prayer and blessing.
It may be that it was only the Apostles who and others who were close by would have known that it was really Jesus who had multiplied the food through a prayer of praise, and that it was originally only five loaves and two fish.
When we imagine this, we might think that we also often accept the many blessings we receive (blessings from God) without realizing that they are indeed God’s blessings.
The world around us is filled with God’s blessings, but isn’t it often the case that fail to realize that Jesus is blessing us abundantly and take these blessings for granted?
Let us open the eyes of our faith and consider the blessings that God is pouring out on us every day, even in this very moment.
If we believe this, these blessings from God become our own. Then, it is God’s hope that these blessings do not stop with just us, but flow through each of us and are passed on to others.
Let us go forward as believers and a church that is aware of God’s blessings that Jesus gives us, sharing these blessings with each other, and passing these blessings on to our neighbors and others abundantly.