And He commanded them all to sit down by groups on the green grass. 40They sat down in groups of hundreds and of fifties. 41And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward heaven, He blessed the food and broke the loaves and He kept giving them to the disciples to set before them; and He divided up the two fish among them all. 42They all ate and were satisfied, Mark 6:39-42 NASB
In verse 35 of Mark 6, the disciples remind us that this place is desolate and that the people are hungry. Jesus is about to show forth His amazing power by supernaturally multiplying five loaves of bread and two fish for 5,000 men (that's not including the women and children that were present). But before Jesus does that, He gives a command for the people to sit in groups of 50 and 100 on the grass. They sit in their individual groups and have their eyes fixed on what Jesus is going to do next. These people are told to sit in this place of hunger and desolation and wait on Jesus. Notice that Jesus doesn't remove them from the place of hunger and desolation like the disciples wanted Him to do. Instead, He's about to change the environment from being a place of hunger and desolation into a place of satisfaction and abundance. Some of these individual groups of 50 or 100 people may have come from different family backgrounds, may have differed on certain ideas about God, may have been rich or poor, or even experienced different traumas or blessings in their life. But at this moment they are all equal as they sit on the grass together waiting for Jesus to move. This is one of the greatest pictures of the global church of Christ throughout her history. People that are a part of individual local churches inside of their towns and cities have found great fellowship with one another in smaller groups of 50, 100, 200 or thousands of people. These groups experience hunger together, and they experience filling together; they experience desolation together, and they experience satisfaction together; they experience pain and sorrow together, and they experience joy and laughter together. But as they are experiencing these things as a local church together, they share a common bond with the rest of the global church that are also experiencing the same things. The local church is a part of something larger and greater. But the one thing that unites us all, and what makes the church of Christ so unique and holy compared to any other thing on planet earth, is the One we are all looking at. Just like these people who are sitting in groups watching and waiting for what Jesus will do next, the global church of Christ is doing the same thing. We have our eyes fixed on Jesus no matter if we are in place of hunger or desolation, or in a place of satisfaction and abundance; for Jesus Christ is our only hope. Every one of these groups of individual people ate and were satisfied by the miraculous hands of Jesus. Even though that place may have still been considered by some to be a desolate place; for those people that day, Jesus changed it into a place of miraculous abundance. What was the secret? Fixing our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith Hebrews 12:2 NASB Let us be like these people. Let us not try and escape the place of hunger and desolation; let us fix our eyes on Jesus and see Him move like never before. Questions to Consider: 1. Are you experiencing a time of desolation right now where you don't see any way out? Where are your eyes focused right now? 2. There are thousands of Christians across the globe that are experiencing persecution and intense trials. Would you take a moment and pray specifically for the underground church?
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