Mark 6 says quite a bit about the disciples. The stories about the disciples are important for us because the Gospels were written for believers, for people who follow Jesus. So whenever we read about Jesus and the disciples, it is intentionally also for us.
When Jesus tells the fishermen, “follow me,” we understand (and we are right) that Jesus says this to everyone, and that believers are those who follow Jesus.
The Gospel of Mark was the first book of the Bible that I immersed myself in. I found out that when Jesus asked people to follow him, he asked a lot. Following Jesus is not something to add to your life. He changes your life. His call scared me.
The good news for me was that his own disciples did not do well at this. All of the Four Gospels, that’s Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, talk about the failures of the disciples. Of the Four, Mark is the hardest them. He is blunt about their shortcomings. I took so much hope from this for myself. Even the apostles struggled to get it right, so then I could be a disciple too. And so can you.
1 Jesus Sends out the Twelve – Mark 6:7–13
Calling the Twelve to him, he began to send them out two by two and gave them authority over impure spirits. These were his instructions: “Take nothing for the journey except a staff—no bread, no bag, no money in your belts. Wear sandals but not an extra shirt. Whenever you enter a house, stay there until you leave that town. And if any place will not welcome you or listen to you, leave that place and shake the dust off your feet as a testimony against them.” They went out and preached that people should repent. They drove out many demons and anointed many sick people with oil and healed them.
They have to travel pretty light, don’t they? They can take enough to walk, but not enough to spend the night. If the town they preach in doesn’t like them, they leave, right away. New Testament missionaries generally followed their example.
This story comes right after Jesus has been rejected in his hometown. Jesus assumes that since the twelve will preach as he preached, they will sometimes be rejected as he was sometimes rejected. That was just part of the picture. When Jesus met resistance, he went somewhere else. So also the disciples. So also the preachers in Acts.
The apostles preached that people should repent. One word. This was John the Baptist’s call. He preached a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. Many people came and were baptized by him in the Jordan River, confessing their sins.
Jesus preached, “the kingdom has arrived; repent and believe the good news.” That was Jesus. Repent and believe. That’s probably what the apostles preached, and Mark summarizes it with one word. Repent. That’s the gateway to life.
While the apostles are away preaching and healing, Mark tells us another story. Mark likes to layer his stories, like a sandwich. He starts one story, then tells another, then finishes the first story.
2 Who Is Jesus? – Mark 6:14–16
King Herod heard about this, for Jesus’ name had become well known. Some were saying, “John the Baptist has been raised from the dead, and that is why miraculous powers are at work in him.” Others said, “He is Elijah.” And still others claimed, “He is a prophet, like one of the prophets of long ago.” But when Herod heard this, he said, “John, whom I beheaded, has been raised from the dead!”
In Mark, as in Matthew and Luke, Jesus does not say clearly who he is. In Mark 1 we find out that he’s the Christ, the Son of God. We readers know who Jesus is. Demons always know, too. But people back then had trouble figuring it out, even the disciples. Herod thought Jesus was John the Baptist, raised from the dead.
3 John the Baptist Beheaded – Mark 6:17–29
I will not read this section. Sometime before this, Herod had already beheaded John, and we get the story here. This is another one of Mark’s sandwich stories. First Jesus sends out the Twelve, then we read about John the Baptist being killed, and then in verses 30–31 the Twelve come back. No other Gospel tells these two stories in this way. Mark is teaching us something – can see what it is?
John was sent – “I will send my messenger ahead of you” (Mark 1:2). In Mark 6, Jesus sent out the twelve. John preached a baptism of repentance (Mark 1:4). In Mark 6:12, the disciples went out and preached that people should repent.
After Jesus sent the disciples out, the Scripture tells us about John, whom Herod killed because John told him to repent for marrying his brother’s wife. Then the disciples return. The Scripture is teaching us that preaching repentance, as John and Jesus did, will get us into trouble.
John’s death was like Jesus’s death. Herodias schemed to do away with John, and the Jewish leaders schemed to do away with Jesus. Herod did not want to execute John, as Pilate did not want to execute Jesus.
Herod gave in to pressure from others and executed John. Pilate did the same. After John’s death, his followers came to take his body and lay it in a tomb. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it. John’s story is a picture of what will happen to Jesus, and the kind of thing that can happen to Jesus’ followers who call people to turn to Jesus.
4 The Twelve Return – Mark 6:30–32
The apostles gathered around Jesus and reported to him all they had done and taught. Then, because so many people were coming and going that they did not even have a chance to eat, he said to them, “Come with me by yourselves to a quiet place and get some rest.” So they went away by themselves in a boat to a solitary place.
This is the last layer of the sandwich. The Twelve are sent, then we hear about John’s death, and then the Twelve return. The message of the sandwich is simple: doing what the Twelve did can get you killed. That’s why Mark creates this sandwich.
The Twelve report back to Jesus, but they are tired and can’t rest properly, can’t even eat, so Jesus decides to take them away to be alone and rest.
5 Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand – Mark 6:33–44
Many who saw them leaving recognized them and ran on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.
By this time it was late in the day, so his [exhausted!] disciples came to him. “This is a remote place,” they said, “and it’s already very late. Send the people away so that they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.” But he answered, “You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “That would take more than half a year’s wages! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat?” “How many loaves do you have?” he asked. “Go and see.” When they found out, they said, “Five—and two fish.”
Then Jesus directed them to have all the people sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups of hundreds and fifties. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people. He also divided the two fish among them all. They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces of bread and fish. The number of the men who had eaten was five thousand.
This is the one and only miracle of Jesus that is told in all four Gospels.
This story connects Jesus to Moses. At the end of verse 34 Jesus feels sorry for the crowds, because they are like sheep without a shepherd. That is what Moses prayed. In Numbers 27:17, old Moses prays that God will choose a leader to replace him, because if God doesn’t do this, Israel will be like sheep without a shepherd. Jesus feels this: he is like a second Moses.
Feeding a large crowd in the wilderness, a crowd that has no other way to get food, sounds like Moses and manna in the wilderness, doesn’t it? This miracle makes Jesus a new Moses.
This story focuses on the disciples. This miraculous story is 10 verses long, 35–44. Most of that is conversation between Jesus and the Twelve. Jesus wants this crowd to be fed, and he wants it done by the disciples.
In verse 37 Jesus says, “You feed them.” In verse 38, he says, “How many loaves do you have – go find out!” This is wonderful, people. Jesus insists that the disciples feed this crowd, and he will work with whatever they have. He will use what they have.
As a church, and as individuals, we see needs in the church that we cannot meet. We know what it would take to meet the need, as the disciples did, and we don’t have it, as they didn’t. Let’s bring to the Lord what we have, even if it seems ridiculously small and useless. “How much do you have? Find out.” Jesus took it, and made it work.
Lots of this happens in our church. People do what they can do, and it works. Just right.
The disciples served the food. It is not clear that the crowd knew where the food came from. This miracle was to encourage and teach the disciples themselves. Jesus felt sorry for the crowd, and insisted on meeting the need through the disciples.
6 Jesus Walks on the Water – Mark 6:45–52
Immediately Jesus made his disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to Bethsaida, while he dismissed the crowd. After leaving them, he went up on a mountainside to pray.
Later that night, the boat was in the middle of the lake, and he was alone on land. He saw the disciples straining at the oars, because the wind was against them. Shortly before dawn he went out to them, walking on the lake. He was about to pass by them, but when they saw him walking on the lake, they thought he was a ghost. They cried out, because they all saw him and were terrified.
Immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take courage! It is I. Don’t be afraid.” Then he climbed into the boat with them, and the wind died down. They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.
I have called this sermon “Disciples: Successes and Failures,” and now you know why. The disciples have three boat rides in Mark. This is the second. Spiritually speaking, they do poorly in all three stories, each worse than the previous.
In the first story, Jesus said, “Don’t you have faith?” And they said to each other, “Who is this?” And they were very afraid.
Remember the debate in who Jesus is? Is he John raised from the dead? Is he Elijah? Is he a prophet like one of the prophets of old? No one seems to know!
In 6:49, they see him on the water, but they don’t recognize him; they think he’s a ghost. They are terrified. Then Jesus got into the boat, and storm ended. Then comes this dark sentence: They were completely amazed, for they had not understood about the loaves; their hearts were hardened.
They were amazed, which means they had learned nothing about Jesus from him calming the storm in Mark 4. They were supposed to learn about Jesus from the feeding of the 5000, but they had not learned from that, either. Their hearts were hardened. That means they are not just ignorant, they are resisting. Not good.
7 The Third Boat Trip – Mark 8:17–21
We’ll skip ahead for this story. Early in Mark 8, Jesus fed the 4000 much as he had fed the 5000 in Mark 6. Again, Jesus and the Twelve get into the boat afterward. The Twelve did not bring along any food for the boat trip.
Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember? When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” “Twelve,” they replied. “And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?” They answered, “Seven.” He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”
When Jesus taught the sower and the seed, he told the disciples that those outside have eyes but don’t see, they have ears but don’t understand. Jesus now wonders if the Twelve are no better than those outside.
What amazing is what’s already happened. The Twelve preached, they cast out demons, they healed people, and they fed 5000 people with a single lunch, and a bit later did the same with 4000. Surely disciples like this much be spiritual giants! No. There are important things about Jesus they do not see at all, they are not learning from what they do see, and it is not innocent. They are resisting the truth about Jesus.
We might want to gloss over these lines, not take hard hearts as seriously as we should, because after all these are the Twelve, it’s all okay. It is not all okay.
They are in spiritual trouble. They are failing. Success in ministry proves only the goodness of God. That’s all.
We might want to dismiss one or the other. That is, if their hearts are hard we would like to make their ministry a sham, something false and shallow. If their ministry is genuine, we might decide that their hardness cannot be that bad, there can’t be any real spiritual danger in it.
Let’s take both seriously. We cannot afford to leave this in Mark. This is us. We are useful and used by Jesus, real ministry, good things happening by his power, his authority working through us.
And, we have hard hearts, we resist God and the truth enough to put us in spiritual danger. This Scripture is a mirror for us. God by this chapter is showing us what we are like. We can have both going on in us.
8 Four Important Discipleship Teachings in Mark
First, the hard call of Jesus: follow me, deny yourself, take up your cross. The way Jesus called us to follow him was a sobering call. If we’re not ready to leave it all behind, including dying for him, we are not worthy of him. That’s what he said.
Second, the dubious performance of those Twelve. They did well in some things, and poorly in others. They often failed to understand Jesus, and often failed to live out what he was teaching. There were not model followers, not even close.
Third, Jesus was always faithful and loyal to his followers. He never traded them in for better followers. There is a wonderful line 2 Timothy 2: “If we are faithless, he remains faithful – he cannot deny himself.” As long as we will keep coming to Jesus, he keeps working with us. In spite of our short comings, he stays with us. I take so much comfort from this, and you should too.
Fourth, he never softened his call. His demanding invitation did not change. But he was faithful and loyal to the followers who had trouble living it out. Amen.
PRAYER: Father, thank you for giving us another picture of what Jesus was like. Thank you for making sure we got stories of the failures of the apostles themselves. And Lord Jesus, thank you for your faithfulness to them and all the ways you stood by them. Lord, we want to follow you. Help us to fight the fight, to run the race, and to keep the faith. Amen.
BENEDICTION: May God himself, the God of peace, make you holy through and through. May your whole spirit, soul and body be kept blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. The one who calls you is faithful and he will do it. Amen. Go in God’s peace to love and serve the Lord.