Mark 6:30-34 — Sheep Without a Shepherd

FRANK EDWARDS: "I shall not want." In Hebrew it is two words, lo echsar, I will not lack. Today Mark shows us two groups of people who are lacking something. The apostles are so busy they have not had time to eat, and a crowd is like sheep without a shepherd. And one Shepherd sees exactly what each of them lacks. LINDA BROWN: Welcome to Dig Deeper. I'm Linda Brown, here with Frank Edwards, and this is step three of our sixteen steps through Psalm 23. Last time David told King Saul about the lion and the bear, and we heard the first half of the psalm's first line, "The LORD is my shepherd." Today, the second half, and we cross into the Gospel of Mark. Mark chapter six, verses thirty to thirty-four. Meanwhile, the apostles gathered around Jesus and brought Him news of all they had done and taught. And He said to them, "Come with Me privately to a solitary place, and let us rest for a while." For many people were coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat. So they went away in a boat by themselves to a solitary place. But many people saw them leaving and recognized them. They ran together on foot from all the towns and arrived before them. When Jesus stepped ashore and saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And He began to teach them many things. FRANK EDWARDS: Start with the word. Chaser means to lack, to run short, to be without. Israel used it for the wilderness years. In Nehemiah 9 the Levites pray, "For forty years You sustained them in the wilderness, so that they lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out and their feet did not swell." And in the manna story, "he who gathered little had no shortfall," the same verb. "I shall not want" is the wilderness memory of Israel, put into one sheep's mouth. LINDA BROWN: The setting of today's reading is a wilderness too. Mark says "a solitary place," twice in four verses. FRANK EDWARDS: The Greek word is eremos, the word behind "wilderness": empty country, no town, no market, nothing to buy. Mark used it in chapter one, when Jesus got up "while it was still dark" and "went out to a solitary place to pray." And it will matter when this same crowd gets hungry. Mark keeps putting the reader in the kind of place where Israel learned that God's people do not lack. LINDA BROWN: Mark is where we will spend most of this series. How does this passage fit into the book? FRANK EDWARDS: A few verses earlier Jesus sent the Twelve out two by two. They "preached that the people should repent," drove out demons and healed the sick. Mark then interrupts himself to tell another story while they are away, which we will come back to later in the series. Verse thirty picks up the thread. The ones he sent come back, and Mark calls them apostles at this exact point. Apostolos comes from a verb meaning to send out on a mission. LINDA BROWN: They come back with a lot to tell, and he listens to all of it before he says anything. FRANK EDWARDS: Back in chapter three, when he chose them, Mark gave two reasons. He appointed them "to accompany Him, to be sent out to preach." Being sent was half the calling. Being with him was the other half, and now they are back for it. And look at what they lack. Mark says "they did not even have time to eat." That is the first want in the passage, and it is a real one. LINDA BROWN: His answer is not a debrief. "Come with Me privately to a solitary place, and let us rest for a while." FRANK EDWARDS: The Shepherd sees the tiredness first. The word for rest means to stop and be refreshed, the same verb Jesus uses in Matthew 11: "Come to Me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." Psalm 23 moves straight from "I shall not want" to "He makes me lie down in green pastures." Rest is one of the things a sheep does not lack when it has this Shepherd, and here he is offering it in so many words. LINDA BROWN: Then the plan falls apart. People see the boat leave, run around the shore, and get there first. How does a crowd on foot beat a boat? FRANK EDWARDS: The Sea of Galilee is about thirteen miles long and eight across, ringed with fishing towns. From the shore you can watch a boat and guess where it is heading, and a crowd walking round the curve of a bay can arrive before a boat crossing it, especially into a headwind. So when the boat comes in to the quiet place, it is not quiet anymore. LINDA BROWN: Mark says they ran "from all the towns" and that they "recognized" the boat. Whatever drew them, they wanted him badly enough to run round a lake. FRANK EDWARDS: Recognized is a strong word, epiginosko, to know fully. They knew exactly who was in that boat. Jesus' name had become well known, and his apostles had just been through their villages. A crowd that lacks a shepherd runs toward one it has heard about. They could not have named what they lacked, but they knew where to look for it. LINDA BROWN: Here is where the passage turns. "When Jesus stepped ashore and saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd." FRANK EDWARDS: Compassion is splanchnizomai, built on the word for the inner organs. Something moves inside him. Luke 15 uses the same verb for the father who sees his son far off and runs to him. And then Mark names what this crowd lacks. Not food yet. Not healing. A shepherd. Sheep without a shepherd is the exact opposite of Psalm 23:1. The psalm says, The LORD is my shepherd, therefore I shall not want. This crowd has no shepherd, and so it wants for everything. LINDA BROWN: That phrase has a history, doesn't it? Sheep without a shepherd. FRANK EDWARDS: In Numbers 27, near the end of his life, Moses prayed for someone to lead Israel after him, "so that the congregation of the LORD will not be like sheep without a shepherd." God answered with Joshua, and in Hebrew Joshua and Jesus are the same name, Yehoshua, the LORD saves. Mark does not make anything of that, so we hold it lightly. Centuries later the prophet Micaiah saw "all Israel scattered on the hills like sheep without a shepherd." And in Ezekiel 34, looking at the failed leaders of his day, God said, "They were scattered for lack of a shepherd, and when they were scattered they became food for all the wild beasts." LINDA BROWN: For lack of a shepherd. The prophet uses the language of lacking too. And Ezekiel's list of what those leaders failed to do reads like a description of this crowd: "You have not strengthened the weak, healed the sick, bound up the injured, brought back the strays, or searched for the lost." FRANK EDWARDS: Then God makes two promises in the same chapter. "Behold, I Myself will search for My flock and seek them out." And, "I will appoint over them one shepherd, My servant David, and he will feed them." God himself will come, and a son of David will shepherd them. On this beach both promises step out of one boat. Jesus is David's Son, looking at the crowd with the compassion of God himself. The cure for the crowd's want is not a program. It is a Shepherd. LINDA BROWN: David has another psalm that uses this same verb, doesn't he? With lions in it. And its heading puts it in one of the worst moments of his life, when he was on the run from Saul and had to pretend to be insane before a Philistine king. FRANK EDWARDS: Psalm 34, and it is a lovely link back to last time. "Fear the LORD, you His saints, for those who fear Him lack nothing. Young lions go lacking and hungry, but those who seek the LORD lack no good thing." Lack, the same word as "I shall not want." The lion, the strongest hunter in David's world, can go hungry. The sheep of the LORD does not lack any good thing. The shepherd boy who fought lions knew which one he would rather be, and he wrote that line when he had almost nothing, running for his life. LINDA BROWN: So what does Jesus give this crowd first? Mark says, "He began to teach them many things." FRANK EDWARDS: The first thing the Shepherd gives a scattered flock is his word. The prophet Amos had warned of a hunger worse than an empty stomach: "not a famine of bread or a thirst for water, but a famine of hearing the words of the LORD." That describes this crowd better than any shortage of food. Mark gives us the headline of Jesus' teaching in chapter one: "The time is fulfilled," He said, "and the kingdom of God is near. Repent and believe in the gospel!" And people "were astonished at His teaching, because He taught as one who had authority." Jesus meets the deeper hunger first. On step five we will see him meet the other one too. LINDA BROWN: That raises the obvious question about the line itself. Does "I shall not want" mean every wish granted? FRANK EDWARDS: The passage itself answers no. The apostles wanted a quiet afternoon, and they did not get one. What they did not lack was the Shepherd, and everything the Shepherd knew they needed. Psalm 84 says, "He withholds no good thing from those who walk with integrity." Good things, as he judges good. Jesus says it about food and clothes in Matthew 6: "your heavenly Father knows that you need them." The Shepherd is not guessing at what his sheep lack. He knows, before they ask. Paul learned it from a prison cell: "I have learned the secret of being filled and being hungry, of having plenty and having need." And he wrote to a church that had given generously, "my God will supply all your needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus." LINDA BROWN: So the line is about the Shepherd more than the supplies. Lacking nothing because you have him, not because you have everything. FRANK EDWARDS: The two halves of the verse cannot be pulled apart. "The LORD is my shepherd" comes first, and "I shall not want" follows from it. A sheep with this Shepherd may be tired, or hungry for a while, or caught in a crowd it did not plan for, but it is not without what it truly needs, because it is not without him. LINDA BROWN: Does his invitation to the apostles still stand? "Come with Me privately to a solitary place, and let us rest for a while." FRANK EDWARDS: It stands, and the rest he offers is rest with him, not just time off. Jesus lived that way himself; Mark shows him slipping out before dawn to pray. And the same afternoon he did not resent the crowd that ruined his plans. He saw sheep without a shepherd and moved toward them. He sees the tired and he sees the lost, and he gives each what they lack. Hear the verse again, and then the line David wrote. "When Jesus stepped ashore and saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd." The LORD is my shepherd; I shall not want. [long pause] LINDA BROWN: For a way to take this into an ordinary week, the Apply This Today section in the app picks it up. Next time we go back to the psalm, to verses two and three, where every verb belongs to the Shepherd: He makes me lie down, He leads, He restores. FRANK EDWARDS: Dig Deeper is a free app, and you can find it at dig deeper dot A I. LINDA BROWN: Thanks for listening, and for reading Mark six today.