Mark 6:30-44

Speaker 6: Amen. Praise the Lord for that. Who would have thought a guy like Mark Lowery could write a song as powerful as that guy I know who Mark Lowery is. It's just a big old goofball. I mean, but that is one of the one one of the most powerful Christmas songs that has been written, and I appreciate Mr. Hammer singing that for us here this morning. I'll take your bibles if you have them and turn to the book of Mark. Mark, chapter number six is where we're going to be this morning. I almost said this evening again. Mark, Chapter six, verse number 30 and as you find your place, you wouldn't mind join me in standing in honor of reading God's word. Mark Chapter six Verse number 30. Bible says it says the Apostles gathered themselves together under Jesus and told him all things both what they had done and what they had taught. And he said under them, come you yourselves apart into a desert place and rest a while. There were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat. They departed into a desert place by ship privately. The people saw them departing, and many knew him and ran a foot further out of all cities and outwit them and came together under him. Jesus, when he came out, saw much people and was moved with compassion toward them because they were as sheep, not having a shepherd and began to teach them many things. They was now far spent. His disciples came on to him and said, This is a desert place. Now the time is far past. Send them away that they may go into the country roundabout and into the villages and buy themselves bread, but they have nothing to eat. He answered and said unto them, Give them to eat. They say on the hill, shall we go by 200 penny worth of bread and give them to eat? He says to them, How many loaves have you go and see when they knew they say, five and two fishes? He commanded them to make all sit down by companies upon the green grass. They sat down and ranks by hundreds and by fifties. When he had taken the five loaves, loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven and blessed and break the loaves and gave them to his disciples to set before them and the two fishes divided. He among them all. They did all eat and were filled, and they took up 12 baskets full of the fragments and of the fishes. They did eat of the loaves were about 5000 men. Let's pray or we thank you for the opportunity. We have to be here this morning. Thank you for this wonderful time of year. God, I'm so grateful for the people that are here this morning. Thank you for so many that have made the decision to come out this morning. I pray that you would bless them for their their faithfulness and their effort to come and give attention and recognize you on this Sunday morning. Lord, I pray that you would help us now as we look into your word that you give me the words you'd have to say the folks that are here to listen and apply, to hear their lives for us in Jesus name, I pray. Amen. All right, thank you. May be seated. Some of you might be trying to figure out why. On the day after Christmas, we're talking about the feeding of the 5000. Maybe in your head, you're thinking, OK, I think I think I know where he's going here. It's it's that miracle of feeding so many. And perhaps yesterday you hosted it seemed like five thousand at your house and you were wondering, Is this going to be enough food? Is it going to go far enough? And by some miracle, you know, there was enough food, maybe even some leftovers. Maybe, maybe you're looking at this and you're thinking. OK, maybe, maybe we're going to talk about, you know, giving to others and, you know, gifts and all of that. But that's that's not where I'm really going with this. Instead, I'd kind of like to just whet your appetite a little bit for her here at the Baptist Tabernacle. Since September, God has been working in my heart about what our theme and focus would be for the next year. And I'm not going to tell you what it is today, but if you're paying attention, you'll probably figure it out. We've got Vision Sunday coming up in a little bit. So so you'll get the whole the whole package then. But I think it's appropriate to today give a little bit of attention on the transition from this year's theme, which has been Grace Grace, that we have received grace, that we are to then show to others and how that relates to what we see here in the passage. A couple of years ago, we did a Sunday school class with our younger families on the tech wise family. You're like, Wow, he is really all over the place this morning. We've gone from Christmas. The grace to technology. Just bear with me. And in the book, the book talked about the need for a Sabbath. God created us with certain needs, with certain habits, things that are just needful for our lives. And one of those is the the need for a cycle of work and rest, work and rest. It's why God gave the people of Israel the Sabbath Day because he knew that they needed six days to do their work and then on the seventh day, they were to rest. And in the book, speaking of technology, it was saying that we need a digital Sabbath that we should have time every day, every week, every month, every year where we unplug, we have a time of rest for. All of the devices that are clouding our cloud in our lives, as we were thinking about that, that principle of work and rest, work and rest and the cycle that all of us depend on, you can see it even in the seasons where there is growth and maturity and then there's rest in decline and we see it in even in our modern work week. There's not too many people that work seven days a week. We all need the day of rest. And so if you can think back, if you're a member here at the church, you'd be aware of all these things. Think back to how long it's been since there seemed to be a period of rest. Here at the church. It's been a while. I'd say you'd have to go back before trunk or treat until you could find a spot in our calendar where it was kind of calm. But you remember we went from, we we we did trunk or treat, which had like twelve hundred people here, which was absolutely insane. We were expecting maybe seven or eight hundred and then twelve hundred show up. And of course, then there was that whole thing on the floor, one one afterwards that was not restful at all.

Speaker 5: We went straight from that to mission's conference admissions conference is a big deal here at the Baptist Tabernacles. There was a lot of work leading up to it going into it and then once the missionaries were here trying to be a blessing to them. Coming Wednesday night, Thursday Friday night, Saturday morning, Sun all day, Sunday, it's a busy time. They finished up with that. We had several special speakers. Yet Thanksgiving,

Speaker 6: where you know, you're gearing up for all of that and having everybody at your home or traveling.

Speaker 5: And then we went into December and the Christmas

Speaker 6: season, and if you look back on the

Speaker 5: bulletins from throughout this month, it's been something every week. Boom, boom, boom, boom. All the way up to the Christmas Eve candlelight service.

Speaker 6: And I was we were driving back from Stillwater to

Speaker 5: be here for that. And Lisa and I were talking and I was like, Man, I kind of wish we could just go home tonight and be in our house and have some rest. And she reminded me, she said, Gary, there's always visitors on Christmas Eve candlelight service. And sure enough, we had four families. Brand new never been here before visiting for candlelight service and leaving that night. I was just so energized and fulfilled, I was glad that you were there.

Speaker 6: Man, it's been one thing after another and you throw in a building project out in the teen room.

Speaker 5: It's been a busy time and it's not just here at church. I'm sure many of you can feel that in your own lives. If you're a student, you know that the end of the semester is just like push, push, push. Get those papers turned in. Get those tests done. Study, study, study. No doubt at your work, many of you work with finances, and I'm sure it is preparing and preparing for all of the the year end stuff and getting the taxes filed and trying to finish things up before the calendar flips over. This is a busy time of year, isn't it?

Speaker 6: Some rest.

Speaker 5: We need a time of rest, and Jesus knows how we are because he created us this way. And God never intended for us to be. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go without ever taking any time off. There needs to be a period of rest in all of our lives. And here in the book of Mark, we see that in the lives of the disciples. I love the book of Mark because bookmark is the shortest gospel.

Speaker 6: That's not why, OK, hold on. That's not why I love Mark.

Speaker 5: I love Mark because Mark is very minimalistic. He's very to the point. There's no fluff. There's no, you know, grand explanation of everything is just this happened and this happened and this happened and this happened. You'll see throughout the book of Mark the words immediately and straight away. And after this, and he wants you to have this idea or this feeling that Jesus ministry was short because it was it was only three years. And throughout those three years, Jesus was Go, go, go, go, go.

Speaker 6: You know, Jesus, you know that there were also periods where he rested,

Speaker 5: if Jesus needed rest and if we're going to see the disciples needed rest, then you and I need rest as well. You see rest is a gift that I would say is a direct

Speaker 6: result of the grace of God.

Speaker 5: The fact that he knows we need rest. He provides for us to have rest. He expects us to have rest. That's that's that's that's God's grace.

Speaker 6: Now we're not going to look at all of the apostles. We're having some problems here with this thing. Maybe I need to switch to something else. Is it cutting out for you, too? Yeah, it's me, I won't tell me the truth on these things, but Missandei appreciate that. Yeah.

Speaker 5: The the Apostles have just been sent out by God to act as evangelists. They've gone throughout

Speaker 6: the area of Judah

Speaker 5: to share the gospel, to share the message of the kingdom, which is always repentance and faith in Jesus. And as we look at verse number 30, we see that the Apostles are gathering together again. They are assembling with Jesus to give him a report of how their mission work has been transpiring. I imagine that this would have been a gathering, much like some of your gatherings where you're seeing people you haven't seen in a while, and there's a lot to catch up on. And you know, you're looking at pictures of the kids and the grandkids and you're hearing about how schools go and you're just catching up with people. Well, the disciples have been out and they come back and they're they're catching up. They're telling Jesus all that they had done. And according to the universe, from a throw all that they had taught, OK. And I think it's interesting when you

Speaker 6: look at the universal

Speaker 5: number 30 says they told him all things both what they had done and what they had taught. And you know, when you're serving God and you're obeying Jesus, you don't have a problem with opening up your life for him to examine and say, This is all that I've done. Lord, we've sought to serve you. We've sought to teach others about you, Lord, examine me and see what I've been doing, you

Speaker 6: know, with when we get away from God that we start to close ourselves off from him, or we don't want to read our Bible. We don't want to

Speaker 5: pray because we're ashamed of the things that are there in our life. But in the middle of verse, thirty one, as they are selling Jesus about all of this, Jesus has some direction for them, he says. To them in verse thirty one, come you yourselves apart into a desert place. And what? Rest. I love to rest, don't you love to rest? Have you ever noticed that when your life becomes a little more sedentary, rest

Speaker 6: is a little harder to come by?

Speaker 5: You say that doesn't sound right? No, that is right. Now when you've been working hard and and you've been really laboring at your job or at home, man, when when you lay your head on the pillow at night,

Speaker 6: you're like, you're out.

Speaker 5: But if I've just been a lazy loafer

Speaker 6: for whatever, you know,

Speaker 5: a couple of days I've been sleeping in, not working that hard. Then I lay down at night.

Speaker 6: I'm like. He go to sleep, I've got so much energy. You know, am I the only one who experiences this? OK, maybe I. But they've been working, they've been laboring. Jesus says, let's go rest. How great

Speaker 5: must it have been for the disciples after seeing all of the people who had come to Jesus

Speaker 6: during their ministry?

Speaker 5: The numbers of converts was beginning to grow and they had seen the desperation of the people at their time. They needed answers to life's questions. And the disciples had the answer. They had Jesus and they were introducing people to Jesus, and they were watching as people's lives were transformed, much like we were singing about just a moment ago. They were experiencing freedom. They were experiencing a liberation from the chains of sin. And Jesus comes along and the disciples are getting to have a part in all of this. It's so exciting to be able to have a part in something that God is doing. OK. Maybe you don't like it, but it's exciting for me. I'm going to be in the ministry if I'm going to serve God, I'm going to do this whole Christian thing. I want to be a part of something that's like being productive. I don't want to go to church on Sunday morning, Sunday night, Wednesday night and sit there be,

Speaker 6: you know, bummed and depressed that nothing's happening. Well, that's that's that's what we have here. No, it's not open your eyes. It's hardly a

Speaker 5: Sunday that goes by. We don't have new people here. There's not hardly an event that takes place here at the church that there there isn't a great response to. This is exciting, but it takes work contrary to what

Speaker 6: some people think. We're not just sitting in our offices all day, all week.

Speaker 5: The things that that are taking place here that you see, we're going to talk about this later on because it needs to be talked about. These things don't happen without a lot of hard work. Where's Matt? That's what the disciples are experienced. They are they are seeing results, they are saying seeing fruit, but it is not coming just by them sitting around the campfire, talking about how great Jesus is. No, they're going out and they're planting the seeds and they're seeing the fruits of their labor. But if you look at the end of December thirty one, we see the toll that this was taking upon them. It says there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat.

Speaker 6: We had a good friend in Virginia whose kids were real little and really curt. Maybe you can relate to what I'm about to say,

Speaker 5: but they said, Man, I just feel so busy. I don't even have time to chew my food

Speaker 6: before the kids need something from me. Yeah.

Speaker 5: I mean, that's where the disciples are. They didn't even have time to really eat. They're like eating in shifts, trying to find some time to devote to their own needs. Maybe you feel like that you're in the Christmas time going out shopping, making meals for people, going to all of the activities in the parties, in the performances and the family gatherings and trying to wrap presents and all of this other stuff. You're like, Man, I don't even feel like I have time to enjoy it. This is where Jesus says come apart and rest. Rest is essential in our life, our bodies and our spirits cannot operate successfully without times of rest. Some of you like to work out, you know the importance of having a rest day to give your body a chance to recover and rebuild. Jesus and his disciples have to depart privately, according to verse number thirty two, in order to avoid the crowds they're trying to get away. They're trying to sneak off so they can get some time to rest. But in verse number thirty three, we see that they are unsuccessful in their attempt to get away. The Bible says the people saw them departing and many knew him and ran a foot thither out of all the cities. Now we have to understand that the reason why they're having this response is because Jesus has been and done things for them that no one else had ever done. He has cared for them and loved them and taught them with authority and power and meaning. And no one else had ever done this for them. So as they see him leave, they start to panic. And the folks begin to panic. They start to run to try and catch Jesus. And we know that the disciples of Jesus are in a boat. They're heading on this boat to the other side. And I want you to try and get this picture in your head of what is happening in verse number thirty three, the Bible says they ran a foot there. They're out of all cities and out them and came together under him. How many of you had a Nokia cell

Speaker 6: phone many, many years ago in the brick? Anybody else had the brick? I loved my dad's Nokia cell phone. I thought it was the coolest thing ever. You know, had those those just the pixels on the screen. I remember the first time

Speaker 5: my dad got a text

Speaker 6: message on that. I'm like, This is done.

Speaker 5: No one see it. Text messages, you know?

Speaker 6: But anyways, we loved it

Speaker 5: because it had blackjack,

Speaker 6: you know, so I learned to play blackjack on my dad's Nokia phone. I don't still play blackjack, just in case you're wondering.

Speaker 5: But it also had snake emails play snake. OK. And you play snake and you go and you eat the little pixel, which I'm sure

Speaker 6: was supposed to be an apple or something.

Speaker 5: And every time you ate another pixel, what would happen to the snake? You get longer. All right. So imagine Jesus is sailing across the Sea of Galilee, and they're watching this crowd of people start to follow them like a snake. And every city that they come up on, the word spreads that Jesus is heading this way. And so more people come out of the city. And with every city, the crowd of people

Speaker 6: gets longer and longer and longer, like the snakes. That was a good illustration. I thought of that myself.

Speaker 5: So they reached the opposite side. Jesus sees the

Speaker 6: people waiting for him in verse number thirty four and says when he came out, so much people was moved with compassion toward them because they were sheep. Not having a shepherd begin to teach them many things like

Speaker 5: like, we talk about rest. I enjoy getting to sleep in a little bit every

Speaker 6: now and then. There is one major obstacle for me sleeping in and that is my children. And Carter, specifically the youngest one. You know,

Speaker 5: you still got that little pudgy kind of toddler baby ish look, the other two him like kids go away, OK, just leave me alone. Let me sleep. All right. But Carter comes in their car. This daddy.

Speaker 6: Can I have a drink? And my heart is just filled with compassion. You know what,

Speaker 5: I cannot help but to go and get that precious little angel a drink. You know, he says to me this morning, Daddy, I come to church with you. Yes, son, of course you can come to church with me. I mean, you can. If you've been a parent, you know what it feels like to have that compassion that overrules any kind of inconvenience or annoyance that you may have had for your children and your hardest move because you know that they are as children, having no parent.

Speaker 6: I'll be your parent. This is like you are his parent. Go get him a drink. But Jesus sees them, and he has compassion upon them.

Speaker 5: And so though they are on their way to vacation, they're on their way to rest. The people come and Jesus

Speaker 6: says, Hey, we're going to spend time with them. You see, no one love these people the way Jesus loved them. The Pharisees didn't love them. Herod didn't love them. The Romans certainly

Speaker 5: didn't love them. How could Jesus rest when so many people were looking to him for help? And like Pastor, this is like you're tearing down your own sermon. You said, we need rest. You said it's is vital to our success, but here's Jesus for going rest in order to be with these people, he's going right back to work.

Speaker 6: Now, hold on.

Speaker 5: Rest doesn't mean

Speaker 6: a lack of work. I haven't you, but my my day off is Friday, and that's the day I do all of my. Chores and whatever Alisha wants me to do. But I love when mowing season starts because I like getting on my mower, putting my headphones on. Jackson sits on my lap and we know, you know, and it takes us a couple of hours and it's just it's fun. I mean, it's it's restful to me when I

Speaker 5: get done mowing. Yeah, I'm tired, but it's a good tired. You see, there's there's a difference between,

Speaker 6: you know, fulfilling work and busy work. Right.

Speaker 5: So here's Jesus he's going to to start working again.

Speaker 6: But it's a fulfilling work. The disciples maybe not have understood it. Maybe the disciples were annoyed that they're back with the people again.

Speaker 5: And so at the end of the day, the disciples come to Jesus and they have something to say to him. We see in verse 35 the time as far past is there a desert place? It's getting late. So verse thirty six, the Bible says that they tell them, send them away. That they may go into the country roundabout in the village and buy themselves bread, but they have nothing to eat.

Speaker 6: Now, I don't know if the disciples are really concerned about the hunger of the people or if they're

Speaker 5: just trying to use the hunger of the people to get some time away

Speaker 6: for themselves. I don't know. The Bible doesn't really make it clear for

Speaker 5: us, but what it does say in verse thirty six is that they recommend that

Speaker 6: Jesus send the people away. Remember, in

Speaker 5: verse 30, they're coming back to Jesus. They're telling them about how they've been inviting people to him, telling him, telling them about him down in verse 36, just a few verses later. Now they're telling Jesus to send the people away.

Speaker 6: I can't help but think that if I was in their shoes. I would probably say just about anything to get some time to rest. I think this makes Jesus response even more interesting, though, because in verse number thirty seven, remember it was Jesus who told them

Speaker 5: to go into the desert to get rest. But then here, Anniversary seven is Jesus, who also tells them, Give them something to eat. Did Jesus not know, not realize when he told them to go get some rest that there would

Speaker 6: be a horde of people waiting for them in the desert? Sure, he knew.

Speaker 5: Of course he

Speaker 6: knew. They point out that the people are hungry. I'm sorry. Just give them to each one of them is a smart aleck. And he says, shall we go and buy them 200 penny worth of bread and give them to eat? I did the math on two hundred penny worth two hundred pennies. You think what? Two. Like. I won't even buy you a double cheeseburger plain at McDonald's. What is it now, it's like three, seventy nine, I used to order three double cheeseburgers plain for three bucks when I was in college. I know like super old now. I'm talking about how much burgers used to be a McDonald's like some kind of never mind. Two hundred penny worth would have been two hundred

Speaker 5: days

Speaker 6: wages, eight months worth of work. You could just take minimum wage and come up with around twelve thousand dollars to

Speaker 5: pay for these people to eat. The twelve thousand dollars wouldn't be enough to feed these people. But Jesus doesn't lose patience with his students, he asks them, how much food do you have to go and see? They go, they look. They find five loaves and fishes.

Speaker 6: Jesus orders the disciples. To get the people ready to eat, the people sit in groups of fifties and hundreds, according to number 40. And it's interesting if

Speaker 5: he's having them all sit down.

Speaker 6: What were they doing before? Standing up.

Speaker 5: Why are they standing up this whole time listening to Jesus teach? Well, they all want to get as close to Jesus as possible. I mean, you've been in a crowded situation where you're trying

Speaker 6: to get into the arena or the auditorium or the store

Speaker 5: before everybody else. You don't sit down because if you sit out, everybody's got to push past. All right. Standing and jockeying for position, trying to get up to the front of the line. That's what's happened when Jesus is speaking, people are moving around trying to get as close to Jesus as possible. And so he says, I have him sit down. Then he takes the food that they have. This is a this is really cool, I didn't know this is a first, but I want you to notice it because when you're taking the five loaves and the two fishes, he looked up to heaven and bless break the loaves and gave them to his disciples.

Speaker 6: OK, pause. All right, there we go. Thanks. All right. He break the what?

Speaker 5: The loves and gave them what's them, the loaves his disciples to set before them. What did he do with the fish?

Speaker 6: He divided them all. Divided among them all.

Speaker 5: Here's what you're supposed to see here. Just takes the bread. It divides. It's among the disciples. Then Jesus himself takes the fish and begins to serve the fish. OK. I don't know what you think of when you think of this story. Maybe you think of Jesus taking it and saying,

Speaker 6: Oh, you know, in

Speaker 5: the hands, the bread and the fish off to the disciples and says, All right, guys, go ahead. Or maybe you think Jesus is standing here taking bread and handing it to the disciples and taking fish and handing to disciples? That's not what Mark is painting. The picture of Jesus is taking the bread and giving it to his disciples to distribute, but then Jesus takes the fish and he distributes it himself.

Speaker 6: See? That's one of the miracles of Christmas, one of the beautiful things about Christmas with Jesus came to

Speaker 5: live a life just like you and I live. God is not up in heaven, detached and set apart from us so that he is unaware of what you and I are going through. God doesn't ask us to do things that he is unwilling to do himself.

Speaker 6: Jesus is demonstrating that for us,

Speaker 5: when you and I think of the work and rest cycle and you think, no, I don't want anything to interrupt my period of rest, I don't care if it is from God

Speaker 6: just saying, Hey, look, I need rest just as much as you do. But right now, there's a need. We're going to go meet this need. Guys, take the bread. I'll take the fish. Together, we will get this done. Together, we will get this done. You know what? I struggle with a lot. I mentioned it to Matt this morning. I struggle with feeling like it's all up to me. If I don't do it, it's not going to get done. If I don't do it, then things are going to fall apart. You know, one of the one of the benefits of believing that God is a gracious, graceful God is understanding that he doesn't expect that of me. We think about this, this topic of rest, one of the things that prevents so many of us from resting is the idea that I have to do it. You don't have to do it. God, please don't let this happen, but like if I died tomorrow. Baptist Tabernacle is still in God's hands. Right. The mission of the Baptist Tabernacle National is not as dependent upon Gary Boyd as Gary Boyd might want to think it is. I wonder what the disciples reaction was as they watched the bread in the fish be multiplied as Tamara and I were talking about the chosen. I cannot wait to see how they're going to do the feeding of the five thousand. What is that going to look like? You know, as Jesus breaks the bread, the fish begins to pass it out. How are they going to show that? Can't wait. You have not watched the chosen, please watch the chosen right. You didn't trust me. They finally watched it and they watched the whole thing in two days and that didn't trust me. We finally watched it, and now he loves it. OK? Just take my word for it. Watch the show anyways. It passed everything out. You know, the story, everyone gets a full meal out of it. Five loaves to fish that should have been barely enough to feed a child. Jesus takes it, feeds over five thousand men and then they have 12 baskets of food left over. What a miracle. That's a lot of work. Just passing bread out to 5000 men, plus their wives and their children. Well, we talk about them 15 twenty thousand people. When you've seen the fellowship hall on a Wednesday night dinner. I mean, we're feeding one hundred and fifty. It takes us a little bit of time to get everybody through the line. Imagine feeding that many people. It was hard work. Do you think it was fulfilling work? You think? It was worth it in the end. See, Jesus had to teach his disciples. That although ministry requires sacrifice, though, it requires hard work. The rewards are always greater than the sacrifice. Isn't this true with just about anything we talk about with Christianity? Holy Spirit convicts your heart of sin. And I can't give that up. I can't I can't let that go. That would be so hard. It would require great sacrifice in my life. He says, yeah, but the rewards are so much greater. The benefits are so much better. Well, I like my chains. Oh, freedom. Say, well, you know, if I got involved with that ministry that, well, that would require a lot of commitment. That would require a lot of investment and don't, you know, Pastor, that I work hard all week long. I'd really like to just come on Sunday and sit. But the rewards you ask some of those children's workers that are over there right now, teaching those kids, if that's not rewarding. What do you think I say? I think they'd say it's very rewarding that it's worth the investment in the sacrifice. Do you ever get tired of constantly having to be the one that's serving others? At home. You have to minister to your family at school. You have to minister to your classmates at work. You have to minister or serve your employees or your coworkers. You think, man, you mean I had to come to church and minister to. We see it can begin to seem like you are always ministering and never being ministered to. The disciples learned. When you're tired of giving. You're tempted to push people away. Remember? Wasn't until they had reached the end of their energy. That Jesus performed the miracle. See, they needed rest. They had been out preaching and teaching, so Jesus says, Let's go to the desert. We're going to rest. Disciples go out there. They are great. Here's more people. Who was it? Who performed the miracle? The disciples. That was Jesus. You see, when we talk about rest, it's not a lack of work. Rather, it's a redirection of our focus as to who is responsible for the work. Somebody said one time that you should work as if everything depended on you, but you should pray as if everything depends on God. This upcoming year, we're going to spend some time talking about. Refreshment. Rest re-energizing, recharging. We need to remember it's not that we're just going to take next year off. Rather, we're going to try and refocus our attention as to who is responsible. Or the Baptist Tabernacle fulfilling its mission. Who is the one who is the power behind the ministry of this church? Talk about the children's ministry, as Leah is our children's director, is it miss Leah's responsibility, make the children's ministry successful? She certainly has a role to play. But if the children's ministry is going to be successful reaching the hearts of children with the gospel, we need the Holy Spirit. We need God. It's all about the youth group youth group always gets a lot of attention, positive and negative. Very grateful for brother Clarence and Miss Brittany, I'm glad that they're getting some time away to rest with with her family during this Christmas time. Sure, brother Clarence has a role to play, Miss Britney has a role to play. But if our youth group is going to be successful in reaching the hearts of our teenagers, we need God. To do the work. Young marrieds, brother Matt's class still has more people than me. College and career, we're getting close, guys, I mean, we're so close, but let's be honest, when he gets, he gets a new student, he gets to when I get a new student, just one. That's the point of my ministry to the Singles. They're going to be successful. It's going to be because of gone. Senior adults brother has been your class. Our outreach efforts, our community involvement, the different just the mission's program, if it's going to be successful, we need God's help. It's up to him. Here's the beautiful thing. If it's up to him, that means I get to rest. In his ability. If it's up to me, then I'll never do enough. It'll never be good enough. But when I leave it up to him. And he can take five loaves to fish my measly pitiful efforts at serving him. And he can multiply it to do exactly what he wants to do in this community. And then this church. So I get the rest of him. I may have to pass out some bread or, you know, I may have to help gather people together into groups of fifties and hundreds. But when I realize it's not up to me to feed these people, I can forget the two hundred penny worth I can give God what I have. You can give God what you have and God can do miraculous things with it because I don't have enough. I don't have a lot. They didn't have a lot either. But the need is so big. Yeah, so is there. Collinsville is growing. We've got to keep up. Man just wanted to just buckle down and do more. Now we need to rest in God. We need to trust him. I mean, you talked to some of our teachers, they know the best they could tell you about the growth in the public schools. They don't know what to do with all the kids from all the people that are moving in. Our church has a wide open door to reach this community with the gospel. It is a big job. We can either get stressed out. Or we can rest. In your own life, maybe you look at your family. Your marriage is struggling. There's a big need for something to change. The man, I don't have it, it's not within me, I've gone to my limits in trying to make this thing work. God says rest in me. I can make the change. I can do the impossible. You have children in your home. Isn't that a daunting task? Isn't it? Some of you on the other side who worry about that anymore. So all of us are just getting started. When you think about the upcoming teenage years, you think about letting them go to college. You think this stresses me out, I got to do more, I got to work harder. Or you could rest in gone. Rest doesn't mean a lack of activity, but it does mean a change in focus. I want to be well rested in God's ministry. Don't you? I want our church to be well rested. Focusing on God's ability. This year, I hope that we'll be able to expand upon this and more thoroughly flesh it out this morning, maybe you need to make a decision to let go some things that you've been holding on to. There are some situations in your life that you just don't know the answer to. You've tried and tried and tried. And this morning you need to say, God, I'm going to rest in what only you can do. I'm not going to try and do what only you can do. I'm going to trust that you will do it. That's the case. I hope that you'll get some things right with him this morning. Let's pray. Heavenly Father, we thank you for this day. Thank you so much for the good attention of your people. Lord, we're so, so blessed God with the fact that you created us, you know our strengths and weaknesses and or you have a plan to absolutely maximize our experience with this life doesn't mean everything's going to be easy. There's me a lot of difficulties and trials, Lord, but as believers, we can trust that no matter what we face, no matter what is done to us, no matter what happens in our life, that you are capable of getting good out of it. Lord, I pray this morning we begin to come to grips with the fact that we're we can't do what needs to be done here at this church, in our lives or in our community. We need your help. Or we need to see a miracle the way that you perform miracle here for those people that were hungry. What I pray that today we would begin to rest in you and your ability or we thank you for this time. I ask that you would use your Holy Spirit to be at work in our hearts to Jesus name. Amen.

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