Jesus Does Not Disappoint
Mark 8:1-9
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
St. Mark 8:8-9 8 So they ate and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets of leftover fragments. 9 Now those who had eaten were about four thousand. And He sent them away.
Dear fellow redeemed in Christ our Lord… Everything’s going to be all right. Everything’s going to be all right. But it doesn’t always seem that way, does it? But it will; it is true: everything’s going to be all right. Jesus is with you. He will never disappoint you.
We learn that simple lesson in today’s Gospel. Four thousand people left their homes and their businesses to go hear Jesus. And not just for “one whole hour;” these people spent three days with Him just listening and learning. They hadn’t expected to stay quite that long or else they would have brought more food along with them. But there they were, out in the wilderness. Jesus hadn’t sent them away, so they just… stayed.
And that makes sense, doesn’t it, for what could be more important than sitting at the feet of God-in-the-flesh, the One who made you and who takes care of you and knows you better than you know yourself?
But now what? Did they stay with Jesus only to starve to death? Did they stay with Him only to be abandoned by Him and left to fend for themselves out in the wilderness? Well, of course not. Everything would be all right. They were with Jesus.
And with Jesus, dear friends, there is compassion. I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat. When Jesus calls you to repent and be baptized in His name for the forgiveness of sins, He doesn’t then wash His hands of you and move on to something else. He isn’t done with you once you enter His Church while He goes off to do “more important things.” No; He has compassion on His people. Always. He doesn’t need to be told what your needs are. He doesn’t wait until you pester Him long enough with your complaints. He loves to show mercy. That’s why the crowds followed Him out to the wilderness in the first place, because they had learned that Jesus was good and merciful and kind to all who come to Him. And so they followed Him. They stayed with Him. And Jesus did not disappoint.
Jesus’ disciples didn’t know how to help all those people; they didn’t know how to provide for all those people out there in the wilderness. They certainly couldn’t solve the food problem. Seven loaves of bread and a few fish wouldn’t feed four thousand people; everyone knows that. But Jesus didn’t disappoint. He took these little pieces of God’s good creation – these First Article Gifts – and miraculously multiplied them until everyone had received their daily bread from the hand of Jesus and by the hand of His apostles. Compassion. Providence. Sustenance. Everything turned out all right for those multitudes who had left their homes to follow Jesus and then faithfully stayed with Him.
Well, what might it look like today to follow Jesus and to stay with Him? First, it means recognizing that you have sinned against God and deserve His wrath and punishment. But the Gospel calls you to repent and believe in the merciful Lord Christ who died on the cross for your sins and rose again from the dead. By God-given faith in Christ, you are forgiven and you are justified. By faith and by Holy Baptism, you have entered Christ’s kingdom.
And now, as baptized believers in Christ, faithfulness takes the form of setting aside time to hear His Word and receive His Sacraments every Sunday, and maybe even in between. Simply speaking, the people of Christ yearn to be where Christ offers Himself in Word and Sacrament. For some, that might mean driving long distances to gather with those who confess the faith rightly. For others, it may mean it’s too far to drive very often, so you do the best you can, watching or listening to the service, reading and studying the Scriptures on your own.
In those “farther away” cases, faithfulness and staying with Jesus means you don’t just settle by joining a church that’s the “closest thing available” to ours or even compromise the true confession of the faith for the sake of family. In every case, our church and churches like ours will never be huge or rich or glorious in an earthly way, and we won’t have all the things that many bigger, false-teaching churches have. It’s a bit like taking a trip out into the wilderness, actually. And that can be quite a sacrifice…and a little unnerving.
Following Christ – staying with Christ – means giving a generous percentage of your income as an offering, so that the ministry of the Word can continue in our midst and around the world.
Following Christ and staying with Him means standing against the world and its godlessness and vain human reason. It would be so much easier to “go along to get along,” when so many voices all around you are telling you how foolish you are to stay with Jesus, and to believe everything He says in Holy Scripture. But Christians are called to live differently, to shine as lights in a dark world, lights that reflect both God’s truth and God’s love, without ever compromising either one.
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Following Christ and staying with Him means a constant battle with your flesh, a constant battle that you never really get to be done with here on this earth. That is true because you were once slaves to sin; and at that time, as St. Paul says to the Romans, you were free from righteousness. You went right along with the cravings and the desires of this depraved world.
But no longer! Now you are slaves to righteousness. Now you have come to Christ. So stay with Christ and live each day walking in His footsteps, saying “no” to sin and “yes” to righteousness, sacrificing one earthly comfort after another, refusing one sinful pleasure after another, all to follow Christ and to stay with Him.
Well, just how will that go for you? How will it end up? Everything is going to be all right. Jesus will not and does not disappoint you. Here you are, out in the wilderness, having left behind many of the comfortable things of this world. You have come to follow Jesus, to hear Him, and to stay with Him. Everything will be all right, because the same Jesus who had compassion on the multitudes in our Gospel has compassion on you, at all times.
He knows your needs. He knows what you’ve lost. He knows what you’ve given up and what you continue to struggle with. And as He did in our Gospel, He will supply your need, according to His good and gracious will for you.
Christ supplies you with a constant source of forgiveness and strength in His preaching and in His Sacraments. He supplies you with the constant gift of His Holy Spirit. And as you live as slaves, not of sin, but of God, Paul says that you have your fruit to holiness.
What does that mean? Well, Paul points out that, when you were slaves of sin, you were free in regard to righteousness. What fruit did you have then in the things of which you are now ashamed? What was the result when you followed your sinful cravings and indulged your sinful flesh?
As Christians looking back on the sins you’ve committed in the past, you see plenty of bad results, don’t you? When you were disobedient, when you mistreated your own body or someone else’s body, when you didn’t honor marriage or when you coveted something you didn’t have, looking back, you can see how that life resulted in ugliness; you can see how it produced rotten fruit.
But when you serve God as willing slaves, slaves who have been redeemed from slavery to sin and purchased for God, you may not have all the pleasures and the comforts that the unbelievers have. But there is good fruit, there is a good result in leading a godly life. For as much as the world mocks it, holiness is a good thing.
And the end of it, Paul says, is everlasting life. That’s what is waiting for you at the end of your time in the wilderness. That’s what God has in store for you who have followed Jesus and stayed with Him. No matter how gloomy things might appear in this world, everything will be all right. Jesus will not disappoint you. As David says in the 23rd Psalm, You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies; You anoint my head with oil; My cup runs over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me All the days of my life; And I will dwell in the house of Yahweh Forever.
That is as sure and certain as what our dear Lord Jesus has done for you and continues to do for you. His love for you is certain, and He made certain of it as He took your place on the cross, suffering and dying for the sins of the world – YOUR sins, and mine. His “It is finished!” means that everything that needed to be done to procure your forgiveness and salvation IS DONE. Fully. Completely, For all time. For all people. For YOU.
And then our good and gracious God generously and constantly gives you the full fruits and benefits of His passionate death and resurrection in His marvelous sacramental gifts of Baptism, Absolution, Gospel, and Supper; by these and these alone you will be kept in the one true faith. And by God-given faith you believe His Word and have everything you need to live this life until He calls you Home to the life of the world to come.
Jesus never disappoints. Ever. As you are in Christ and remain in Christ, you have His sure and certain Word that He will see to all your needs – every last one of them – as He sees fit and according to His will.
God grant it for Jesus’ sake.
In the name of the Father and of the + Son and of the Holy Spirit.
