The Bread of Life

Transcript

Welcome to this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. We hope this message inspires you, roots you down deep into the Lord, into His Word, and may His Spirit be your guide as you enjoy this teaching. Thanks for joining us. Here’s the message. Trinity Church, this morning’s sermon passage comes from Mark chapter 6, verses 30 through 44. The apostles returned to Jesus and told Him all that they had done and taught. And He said to them, Come away by yourself to a desolate place and rest a while. For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. When He went ashore, He saw a great crowd, and He had compassion on them, because they

were like sheep without a shepherd. And He began to teach them many things. And when it grew late, His disciples came to Him and said, This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. Send them away to go in the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat. But He answered them, You, give them something to eat. And they said to Him, Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat? And He said to them, How many loaves do you have? Go and see. And when they had found out, they said, Five and two fish. Then He commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, He looked up to heaven and blessed them

and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And He divided the two fish among them all. And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of broken pieces and of fish. And those who ate the loaves were five thousand men. This Trinity Church is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Well, I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but over the last two weeks, we’ve been working our way through another one of Mark’s sandwiches. It was too big of a sandwich to put in one sermon, so I ended up breaking it up into three sermons. So if you remember two weeks ago, we looked at the first part of the story when Jesus sent His apostles in pairs out to do ministry on this mini commission. He sent them with the authority to teach and cast out demons.

The Interrupted Retreat

And as He sent them out to do ministry, He gave them very specific instructions. Take nothing with you except for sandals, a stick and a tunic. And of course, the whole reason why Jesus gave them these unique instructions was so that the apostles in every way would be dependent upon the Lord for their work. They would be completely dependent on the Lord to provide for them both physically and spiritually. Remember also, Jesus told His apostles that if anyone rejects you or does not receive your message, shake the dust off your feet, move into another town and do ministry. So that was the first part of the story. Well, then last week we came to the interruption to that first story with another story. This story was this dark and twisted narrative of the beheading of John the Baptist. Now Mark’s placement of this story, although very cryptic, was by creative design.

Mark was creatively painting this picture about the cost associated with calling people to repentance. This interruption story by Mark was revealing to the apostles and to us what gospel rejection looks like when pushed to its furthest extent. It might look like prison. It might look like persecution. It might even possibly look like death. So if John, who was the forerunner of Jesus’s ministry, the one prophesied about in the Old Testament, the herald of the good news concerning Jesus, was beheaded for calling Herod to repentance, then it’s only reasonable that the apostles and us, the followers of Jesus, would also face dark rejection for proclaiming the truth about Jesus’s sin and repentance. Well, this morning we now come to the second part of the first story, the second piece of bread in Mark’s sandwich. And it’s here in our text where the apostles return from their mini-commission to give

a report to Jesus concerning their ministry efforts. And again, I’ve broken up our passage into four sections, so we’ll look at the retreat interrupted, the response of Jesus, the reaction of the apostles, and the resources from heaven. So let’s begin first by looking at the retreat interrupted in verses 30 through 32. The apostles returned to Jesus and told Him all they had done and taught. And He said to them, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while. For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in a boat to a desolate place by themselves. So the apostles have now returned, and there is so much to share with Jesus in terms of their ministry, the fruit of their ministry. In fact, one of the evidences of their ministry fruit was the fact that people were coming

and going. As the apostles were out doing ministry, people began to follow after the apostles as the apostles followed Jesus. And this is, of course, how it should work. This is sort of a blueprint for effective ministry. We’ve seen this with the apostle Paul. When he wrote to the Corinthian church, he said, follow me as I follow Christ. This is the discipleship paradigm for Christians. So you have these people who have heard about Jesus from the apostles who followed the apostles all the way to where Jesus was. And after the apostles gave Jesus their report, Jesus told them to come away with Him to a desolate place so that they could rest for a while. Now a couple of things to notice. One is that the apostles were exhausted from all their ministry. See, the truth is, ministry in any capacity is hard and exhausting work.

We’ve seen this modeled over and over again with Jesus. Remember when Jesus was doing ministry on the shoreline of the Sea of Galilee? He’s been ministering to this large crowd. He’s been teaching. He’s been doing healings. And after he’s done with his ministry, he tells his apostles, let’s get in a boat and go to the other side of the sea. Jesus leaves the crowd of people because he is exhausted. The demands of ministry had begun to take a toll on him. And so he needed an escape plan. In fact, he was so exhausted that as they get in the boat and move across the sea, he falls asleep in the back of the boat. And he’s so tired, he stays asleep even in the midst of this dangerous and life-threatening storm. See, that’s because ministry work is hard. It’s physically draining. It was hard work for Jesus.

It was hard work for his apostles. And it’s hard work for us. Jesus had felt this exhaustion before, and he immediately recognized it in his apostles. And so he calls them to go to a desolate place. And the reason he calls them to go to a desolate place is because there would be no one there. See, that’s the thing about ministry. Ministry is all about people. So as long as there’s people around, there will always be ministry to do because all people have problems, including pastors who minister to people. And so in order for these apostles to get away and get their much-needed rest, they needed to escape from the people. Now the second thing to notice is that Jesus actually cares about their ministry fatigue. This is why he calls them away from the people in the first place. He wants them to experience rest.

He cares about their physical rest. Not only were they going out and doing work all around the region, but people kept coming to them, following after them, bringing them their questions and their needs. In fact, it was so crazy for these apostles, they couldn’t even eat. There was no time for them to chill and eat because people kept coming to them and demanding their attention. And so as is the typical pattern, they jump in a boat and they make their way to a desolate place to get away from the people for this sort of mini retreat. But despite their every effort to get away from the people and rest, things don’t seem to go according to plan. Look at verse 33. Now many saw them going and recognize them and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them.

So the plan was for them to get away from the people and relax. The apostles needed it. They were physically drained. Jesus recognized that they needed it. In fact, it was Jesus who constructed the plan for this retreat. But the plan seems to have backfired a bit because the people recognize the apostles and Jesus, the one the apostles had been talking about. They saw where they were going and they began to run after where Jesus and his men were headed. In fact, they’re so geeked to get to Jesus. They actually get there before Jesus and the apostles arrive. And this seems at first glance like an epic fail. They can’t seem to get away from the people. Jesus’s plan for the apostles for their retreat appears to have been a fail. But the truth is, none of this was a fail. None of this was a hiccup to Jesus’s plans.

Learning Through Exhaustion

In fact, this whole scenario is part of Jesus’s plan. See the truth is, the apostles needed physical rest, but there was something greater that Jesus wanted to teach his apostles. Something far more significant than the need for physical rest. And so Jesus uses what seemed to be a botched retreat to instruct his disciples in a way that will significantly shift their perspective in ministry. About a year ago, I received this invitation to attend a retreat for ministers. Now I’ve never really been a retreat type of person. I don’t have anything against retreats, it’s just never been my deal. But this retreat was specifically catered to people in ministry who were on the verge of burnout. My friend Jason had told me countless times about his experience at this retreat. He told me that this retreat is for 16 men who are in full-time ministry in various capacities.

That these men travel to the middle of nowhere Montana to get away to find rest and relaxation. At this retreat, they go fishing, they shoot shotguns, they light crazy fireworks, they sit in jacuzzis, they eat a whole lot of meat, and they just spend time connecting with other men in ministry who are exhausted. And because there’s no cell phone reception, for five days you’re forced to untether from your world and all of your problems. Now that seemed crazy and ridiculous to me at the time because one, I don’t fish, two, I don’t typically shoot shotguns, three, I don’t light crazy fireworks, and I just would never really leave my family for five days unless it was for ministry work. But at the time, I was deeply broken. I was on the verge of burnout. I had just stepped into full-time pastoral ministry at Trinity, and I was still in many

ways grieving everything that had happened in the previous year. And so I was physically and emotionally exhausted. And so my friends Jason and Cameron reached out and said, dude, you just gotta come. You gotta come and trust us. You don’t have to hang out with anybody. You don’t have to do anything. You could just come and read and sleep the whole time if you wanted to. And so that was great. That sounded amazing to me. There was no strings attached. In fact, these men were even willing to pay for me to go. The only deal was that for every meal, all the men had to come together and share that meal together. And so I talked it over with Heather. I brought it up to the pastors here at Trinity, and everyone encouraged me to go. And so I went on this retreat. I flew to the middle of nowhere Montana with the intention of sleeping, praying, and reading

a few books. And that was pretty much it. And so we landed in Billings, Montana with all these other men, and then we drive for about an hour and a half to this desolate place. We come to this big old house with all of these rooms on this massive property. And because it’s Montana, it’s big sky country, it was beautiful. So my plan was to just read and sleep. That was it. I needed some time for myself. I was exhausted. But my agenda that was centered on my needs to rest was quickly flipped. And of course, this makes sense because the very reason these 15 men were there is because all of them to varying degrees were burnt out on ministry and broken. And the truth is, it wasn’t physical rest that these men needed. It wasn’t physical rest that I needed the most. It was spiritual nourishment.

So my retreat, which was intended for me to get away from ministry, thrust me into the deep end of ministry, not only with these 15 broken men, but also with these eight interns who happened to be there. So over the next few days, I spent most of my time ministering to these men, reminding them of the gospel, pushing them into the love of Jesus, encouraging them to continue to press forward in the faith, retelling them the truth of their future hope and the promises of God. And to be honest, I cried and I mourned with many of these men whose marriages and ministries were completely falling apart. This whole retreat became for me, ministry. And throughout this whole ministry, all this hard work of ministry, the Lord revealed something so profound to me. He helped shape my perspective of ministry that has grounded me in my ministry efforts

today. And that is this, that oftentimes we are so exhausted that we think our greatest need is physical rest, when in fact our greatest need is God’s deep and timely grace. Our greatest need is spiritual nourishment. Now I’m not saying that we don’t need rest. We definitely need rest and God promises us the rest that we need. But sometimes the rest we are seeking is only found in the grace of God as we pour ourselves out to minister to other people’s needs. And that’s a paradigm that’s completely hard to understand. It doesn’t seem like it makes sense at all to pour out when we feel exhausted, to push in on ministry when all we want to do is retreat. But God supernaturally sustains us and provides us with real rest when we pour ourselves out for God’s people. Now listen, I left Montana not feeling physically exhausted.

In fact, I felt the opposite. I felt lifted up. I felt energized for ministry. I felt useful and fruitful. And the truth is, in the midst of all this ministry, I enjoyed my time. As I ministered to these men, these men ministered to me. And I had a lot of fun. I shot shotguns for the first time. I lit fireworks. I have photos to prove it all. I read two books. But listen, I went for physical rest and I ended up experiencing a rest that was far deeper than that physical rest. I experienced the grace of God that fills us up as we empty ourselves. I learned experientially this special grace of God that comes only from ministering to people who have deep spiritual needs when you’re running on empty. And that’s exactly what Jesus was beginning to instruct his disciples about. That’s exactly what he was teaching them.

The Good Shepherd

The apostles needed rest, but Jesus pushed his apostles beyond physical rest to help them experience the grace of God and the supernatural rejuvenation that comes from meeting people’s spiritual needs while running on empty. This was a principle these apostles needed to understand that would only make sense when they were pushed beyond their physical limits in ministry. And we’ll see a bit of that in our next verse with the response of Jesus in verse 34. When he went ashore, he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd and he began to teach them many things. So as Jesus arrives on the shore, he sees all these people and Jesus is moved with compassion. There’s something about the sight of this specific crowd that emotionally captures the heart of Jesus. And it’s in this moment of compassion where the much needed physical rest of Jesus and

the apostles is eclipsed by Jesus’s great love and compassion for the people. And what is it exactly that causes Jesus to be flooded with this instant compassion? He recognizes that the people in the crowd are like sheep without a shepherd. They are people without a pastor. And this phrase, sheep without a shepherd, it’s a very important phrase in this passage. In fact, sheep without a shepherd stresses the whole point of this narrative. See, some people, when they think of this popular passage of Jesus feeding the 5,000, think it’s about Jesus miraculously multiplying our scraps to meet the physical needs of people. And while it is true that sometimes God does take our scraps and multiply them to meet the needs of people, that’s not the main point of this passage. This verse is all about Jesus, the good and compassionate shepherd who spiritually provides for the needs of his sheep.

So it’s no coincidence that Jesus uses the phrase, sheep without a shepherd. It’s intentional. With this phrase, Jesus is creatively pulling our focus on Moses. See, in Numbers 27, 17, Moses prays this prayer to the Lord just before he passes off his ministry responsibilities to someone else. He says,

Who shall go out before them and come in before them? Who shall lead them out and bring them in, that the congregation of the Lord may not be a sheep that have no shepherd?

— Numbers 27

(ESV)

See, Moses, in many ways, was a shepherd for God’s people. Moses was the one who led God’s people, the sheep of God, out of captivity. Moses was the one entrusted by God to guide the people of Israel into the promised land. Moses was a shepherd. But there is a juxtaposition here between Moses and Jesus. And we will see that Jesus is, in every way, a greater shepherd than Moses.

And so as we continue to move through this passage, keep that perspective in mind as Jesus being the greater shepherd. Because we’ll see that pop throughout this whole passage. And so Jesus sees these people, he sees them as sheep without a shepherd. See the thing about sheep is, by design, they are helpless creatures. They can’t really do anything on their own. What happens when sheep are without a shepherd? They starve. They get lost. They fall off cliffs. They get devoured by wolves. They die. Ezekiel 34, 5 says, people without a shepherd will become food for all the wild beasts, and the sheep will be scattered. So Jesus looks at these people, and he sees them for what they actually are, helpless sheep, lost, walking close to the edge, subject to all types of danger, on a path of destruction and death. And that fills Jesus with compassion.

And see, Jesus sees these people as people without a pastor. And in this little tiny section here, it shows us something so magnificent about Jesus. It shows us his great love for lost people. Jesus has deep compassion for people who are on a path of destruction and death. It shows us that Jesus cares deeply for people without a pastor. And so Jesus, in his great love for the people, set aside his own rest. He set aside the rest of the apostles so that he can minister to these people who are without a pastor. And there is a sense of urgency with Jesus. It’s almost as if he’s saying to his apostles, listen, we can rest later. These people need help. They don’t have a pastor helping them, guiding them, protecting them, and leading them. That’s the work that we need to do right here. We can sleep later.

And of course, Jesus, who is the perfect shepherd, is fleshing out Isaiah 40.11.

He will tend to his flock like a shepherd. He will gather the lambs in his arms. He will carry them in his bosom and gently lead those that are with young.

— Isaiah 40

(ESV)

Jesus is the shepherd that leaves the 99 for the one lost sheep, which demonstrates his faithful love and his commitment to lost sheep. Which then makes sense that Jesus is also the kind of shepherd that leaves the comfort of physical rest to go after a crowd of 5,000 sheep without a shepherd, which demonstrates his deep, deep compassion for lost and vulnerable sheep. And just for a moment, contrast Jesus, the good shepherd, with the religious leaders of their day. The religious leaders were the ones entrusted to shepherd the people of God. But what kind of shepherds were these Pharisees? These religious leaders, they didn’t care for the people of God.

They weren’t concerned with wayward sheep. They could care less about going after lost sheep. In fact, many of these Pharisees were more concerned about condemning lost sheep than going after them. But Jesus saw them with compassionate eyes, and he engaged them as people without a pastor. Because the people who were supposed to be shepherding them were not doing their job. And look at how Jesus expresses his compassion for these people. What does Jesus do? He teaches them. And this should speak to us this morning about the ways in which we express our compassion towards lost people. How should we express our compassion towards people who are lost? Teach them about Jesus. When people are lost, we should give them directions. We should point them to the way, the truth, and the life. We should meet their spiritual needs by giving them the spiritual truth about Jesus.

Now this doesn’t mean that we don’t provide for their physical needs. We do, and we’ll see that in our text this morning. But meeting physical needs or felt needs without addressing spiritual needs is not really exercising compassion. Our compassion for people should be comprehensive, but it should also be sacrificial. Which means sometimes we should forgo our needs for rest to provide for other people their deep spiritual needs. And that’s what Jesus was trying to provoke in real time with his apostles. But it doesn’t seem that the apostles really get it yet. And we’ll see that in our next verse with the reaction of the apostles. In verses 35 through 37. And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, this is a desolate place and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves

something to eat. But he answered them, you give them something to eat. And they said to him, shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat? See Jesus, when confronted with the crowd, saw an opportunity to minister compassion to the people. But the apostles, when confronted with the crowd, began looking for an opportunity to get away. Now I can only imagine what’s going on in the mind of these exhausted apostles. Jesus, what’s the deal? It’s getting late, man. Remember we’re out here in the middle of nowhere. This place is dead. There’s no stores and there’s no restaurants. We’re tired and the people, they’re hungry and tired. Send them home to get some food and some rest. And that way we could get some of our much needed rest. We could pick this whole thing back up tomorrow, but for now, send them away.

See, Jesus knew that his apostles would respond like this because we would respond like this. I mean, think about when we’re physically exhausted, when we’re running on empty, when we’re running off of no sleep, we’re short tempered, we become cynical. We try to reason away every obstacle that comes between us and our bed. But Jesus looks to his apostles and says, you give them something to eat. And now the apostles are thinking to themselves, this is crazy. There’s 5,000 people here. How could we possibly provide for 5,000 people? I mean, what do you want us to do, Jesus? Go and spend a year’s worth of salary to go and buy them something to eat? And you can hear the cynicism and sarcasm reverberate off of their words. See, in their exhaustion and frustration, they had quickly forgotten everything Jesus just taught them on their mini commission.

Remember, he just sent them out to do ministry with no money and no food. He literally just tried to teach them to trust the Lord to supernaturally provide for everything they needed. And now all of a sudden, these apostles, these faithful ministers can think of only natural means for providing for the people. Now all of a sudden, they look to human resources to provide. Now they’re fiscally conservative. Jesus just supernaturally provided for everything they needed on their ministry tour. Could God not provide for these 5,000 people in the same supernatural way? You see, Jesus was challenging these apostles. Jesus was using this scenario as an instrument to grow their trust, to grow their concept of rest, to grow their priority of ministry, to grow their compassion, and most importantly, to grow their faith. Jesus continues to press in on these apostles to refine them for ministry work.

Supernatural Resources

And look at how Jesus ties this whole thing together in verses 38 through 44 with the resources from heaven. And he said to them, how many loaves do you have? Go and see. And when they had found out, they said five and two fish. Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. So they sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties. And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And he divided the two fish among them all, and they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. And those who ate the loaves were 5,000 men. This whole section here is amazing, and it’s not just amazing because of the miracle.

It’s amazing because of the way it’s constructed, because of all the little details here. So first you have the inclusion of the apostles for the instruction of the apostles. See, because the apostles were only looking to natural means to provide for the people. Jesus pushes his apostles down their natural and reasonable path. He asks them, what do you have? If you want to look only to natural resources that are readily available, then go and tell me what you have and bring it back here and then we’ll see what we can do. And so the apostles, still not figuring it out, come back with their natural resources. They come back with five loaves of bread and two fish. And it’s brilliant what Jesus does here. He takes their natural resources and supernaturally multiplies them to provide for the 5,000 people. Jesus, with this miracle, is moving these apostles out of the natural realm and into

the spiritual realm. See, he does this because they need to learn to maintain a supernatural perspective on life and ministry if they intend to do impossible things. And of course, this says everything about gospel ministry. If you only look to natural means to make people believe, if you try to convince people to believe, it won’t work. In fact, it’s impossible. No amount of worldly wisdom, no amount of pragmatism, no amount of giftedness or hipness can make spiritually dead people become alive to Christ. It won’t work. The work of conversion is supernatural work. It’s something that God supernaturally does, and so if you intend to do something impossible to help others come to faith in Jesus Christ, then you must maintain a supernatural perspective of that work. It’s supernatural work. And you see, this is why we should be praying more for people to come to faith rather than

trying to convince people through relevance or felt needs or pragmatism. Because when we pray, we are posturing ourselves in dependence for God to do the impossible supernatural work of drawing people to himself, of making people alive to himself. And before Jesus performs this supernatural work, he commands everyone to sit down in groups on the green grass. Now that seems rather specific for Mark to include this detail. Why does Mark point out this specific detail about green grass? Well, this is Mark’s creative way of pointing you to Psalm 23.

The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters.

— Psalm 23

(ESV)

See Mark, in the middle of this miracle does not want you to lose the main theme of this passage, that Jesus is the good shepherd, the one who lays them down on green grass.

And again, you get more imagery of this juxtaposition of shepherds. Moses was in the wilderness, leading his people out of physical captivity. Jesus was in this desolate place in the wilderness, leading his people out of spiritual captivity. Moses and his people were in the wilderness without food, but God sent down manna from heaven to provide for their needs. Jesus was in this wilderness with these people who needed food. So Jesus takes bread and two fish. He prayed to the Father in heaven, multiplied the food and provided it for their needs. But then Jesus takes it even further. Jesus, the bread of life, suffers and dies in the place of sinners to provide for their spiritual needs, to reconcile us to a holy God. See this miracle in every way foreshadows Jesus’s death. He took the bread and the fish. He looked up to heaven, blessed it, and broke the bread.

Does that sound familiar to you? It should. We can’t help but hear or be drawn to this image of the Lord’s Supper here. In fact, it’s the same language in 1 Corinthians 11.23. The Lord Jesus, on the night he was betrayed, took bread and when he had given thanks, when he blessed it, he broke it and said, this is my body, which is for you. This is a foreshadowing of Jesus’s redemption work on the cross. Jesus was constantly doing this. See these people in the crowd were just like us. We were sheep without a shepherd, helpless, lost on a path of destruction and death because of our sin. But God, the good shepherd, the perfect shepherd, loved us. He had compassion on us and met our greatest need by dying on the cross to pay for our sins. His body was broken for our sins.

See this miracle was more than just a miracle. This was also a metaphor of the gospel. And look at what the text says. It says, the crowd ate the food and were satisfied. John 6.35 says, I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me shall not hunger and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. Again, this is a picture of the gospel for those who are spiritually hungry, for those who are spiritually malnourished. If you take in Jesus, you will be spiritually satisfied and you will never be spiritually hungry again. I want to ask you this morning, do you have the bread of life? Do you want the bread of life that has been broken for you to give you eternal life? If you want him, you can have him. All you have to do is turn from your sins and trust in Jesus.

Listen, Jesus loved you enough to die for your sins. He is the good shepherd who goes after lost sheep. Are you lost this morning? Are you on a path of destruction and death? Are you walking too close to the edge? Are you longing to be spiritually satisfied? Come and find forgiveness of sin in Jesus Christ. He alone is the one who can offer you the forgiveness of sins. Come and find peace and the satisfaction that you’ve been longing for in all these other places but can’t seem to find it. Listen, satisfaction, real spiritual satisfaction is only found in Jesus Christ, the son of God who came from heaven, who came down from heaven to provide for humanity’s greatest needs, who lived a perfect life, suffered and died, whose body was broken on that cross but rose again from the dead to give you everlasting life.

Do you have the bread of life? Do you want that kind of bread that satisfies your soul? If you want him, you can have him. Trust in Jesus. Take him by faith right where you are. Ask God to do the supernatural work of opening your eyes to the reality of Jesus Christ, the good and perfect shepherd, the bread of life, and he will meet you. He will do it if you ask him. Let’s pray. Our Father and our God, thank you for this beautiful picture, this miracle, but this amazing metaphor that reveals to us that you are in the business of caring for people, that you are in the business of loving people, that you are moved compassionately for lost people. Thank you for revealing in your word to us this morning that you will provide for our greatest need through your broken body. Father, I do pray for those who are listening to your truth this morning, who are searching

to find satisfaction, who are looking to find peace with God. I pray, oh Lord and God, that they would taste the bread of life, that they would come to experience the only spiritual food that satisfies their soul, that they would come to know and trust Jesus Christ as their Lord and Savior. And Father, I also pray for those of us who are feeling ministry burnout, who are feeling the stress and fatigue of ministry. I pray, oh Lord and God, that you would supernaturally provoke us to continue to press on in ministry work. I pray, God, that when we are wrestling with physical exhaustion, that you would supernaturally nourish us, that you would show us what you want to show us through our ministry efforts, and that we might find real rest in the person and work of Jesus, who supplies and provides for our greatest need.

We pray all of these things in Jesus’s name. Thanks for joining us for this week’s sermon from Trinity Church in Portland, Oregon. If you’d like to learn more about us, you can visit our website at www.trinityportland.com.