Year 2 Day 340

Year 2 Day 340


Pray (ACts)


Read - Mark 8:8-9


Message - Alan Burke


Once more at the end of the feeding of this multitude just like previously in Chapter 6, we learn how not only those who were there were ate and were satisfied but also that there was much left over, far more than they needed. Some would spend lots of time looking at the significance of the basket fulls that were left over, the twelve baskets for the people of God representing the twelve tribes of Isreal, the seven baskets representing the seven Gentile nations that occupied the Promised Land during the time of Moses (see Deut 7:1 for the list) so it speaks of the including of the Gentiles, or actually there are many other allegorical interpretations. 


What we should see though, when all is said and done with this miracle, what our take away message should be with the super abundant provision of the Lord Jesus Christ to the five thousand in Chapter 6 and the four thousand here in Chapter 8 is… Jesus is himself is more than sufficient to do what he had come to do, more than able to provide for the temporal needs of those who gathered round him that day and more than able to provide for the eternal need for all who repent and believe. 


What this miracle does is that it shows us the compassion of Jesus but what is more, this miracle is here to show us the inclusion of the Gentiles in the plans and purposes of God. If you want to know who the Gentiles are, that’s us all those who by their birth are not Jewish. The feeding of the five thousand took place among the jews but here we are among the Gentiles, what we have seen throughout Mark is the include of the outsiders, think about it, the man with leprosy he was an outsider (1:40-45), the women with the discharge she was an outsider (5:24-34), the man possessed with legion an outsider he gets it (5:1-20). These four thousand people who had been with Jesus under His teaching they were outsiders but they too get. The people of God on the other hand who we would expect to be there, to have got it, the religious leaders, the Pharisees, teachers of the law, they don’t. And the disciples who are with Jesus, there is the danger that those closest are the ones who least have the eyes to see. 


We can face times that we doubt his goodness, that we focus on ourselves and our limitations, that we forget His grace towards us. But what we need to ever do is to look to the Lord our God, for the God that we come before though Jesus Christ by the power of the Spirit is able, even though to us what may ahead seem insurmountable, what we need to do is to look to Jesus. Let us think and look more and more to the compassion of our Saviour looking to Him, knowing that He is more than sufficient to rescue us from our greatest need, the sin that effects all of us. For he will bring us though all that we face all because of His great love for us seen in Christ Jesus to came to include us, the outsiders in the plans and purposes of God. 


Pray (acTS)


Sing


WSC
Q94 What is baptism?
Baptism is a sacrament, wherein the washing with water in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost, (Matt. 28:19) doth signify and seal our ingrafting into Christ, and partaking of the benefits of the covenant of grace, and our engagement to be the Lord’ s. (Rom. 6:4, Gal. 3:27)
​