I've titled our sermon this morning.
See and understand When Jesus walked this earth, one of the
struggles that people often faced and they still face today
is lack of faith. That's an ongoing struggle.
We have lack of faith. When faith is lacking, it is
often because we do not see what God wants us to see or we choose
to look elsewhere. We choose not to trust.
If we're going to be able to see in a way that we can understand,
it will take faith. And maybe you're here this
morning and you're someone who's struggling to see and you feel
you don't understand. There needs to be a connection
to for that to happen. Faith is something we must
choose in our text this morning, which we will go into in a few
minutes. We will see the importance of
being able to see and understand, and it takes faith
for that to happen. The writer to the Book of
Hebrews and Hebrews 11 verse one and two and three writes this
now. Faith is the substance of things
hoped for, the evidence of things not seen, for by it the
elders obtained a good testimony.
By faith we understand that the world's were framed by the word
of God, so that the things which are seen were not made of things
which are visible. One comparison that we can
perhaps use would be that of a road map.
We have the GPS, so we don't use Rd. maps that much anymore, but
I remember very much when I relied on road maps, Rd. maps to
get anywhere. We'd go to Mexico to visit
family and I'd take a road map to travel through through the
States, and there were places I had never been to before.
I'd take a road that I'd never taken before.
But I looked at the map and I trusted what was written on that
map and I acted on that information.
Faith is believing that this is the reality that will come to
pass. Faith is the trust and
confidence that we're doing the right thing without having seen
the outcome yet. And everybody in this world has
faith at some level of some sort, even people who would say
without I don't believe the Bible.
That doesn't mean that they just believe in nothing.
They just have a different world view.
They have a faith system of some kind, a value system of some
kind by which they live. Jesus invites us to make him our
focus, to make him the object of our faith.
He wants us to see him, not physically as we see in our
physical eyes, but see him mentally or cognitive.
He wants us to see Him be sometimes asked, don't you see
well, see what? Well, the truth, Don't you see
this? And so he wants us to see him
that way, understand him. Jesus invites us to seek him, to
look to him, and to build our faith on him.
And it's important that we understand this correctly.
Our faith in God may be real, but our but our understanding
may still be shallow and maybe our understanding is immature
and may be flawed. Many people find themselves in
this predicament. I do too sometimes.
Some. For some believers, they believe
in God but are still very problem focused.
In other words, they have a tendency, as they say, to see
the glass half empty versus half full.
They're pessimists at heart. Maybe some of us here this
morning find ourselves in that place.
We sometimes find it easy to complain, to live as if faith is
not real. We say it is, but then our the
evidence is not really always there.
Jesus came to this world to bring us back into relationship
with God, to have faith in God and live our life accordingly.
And it's His will that we live in unity and harmony with him
and serve in a faith relationship.
We've been going through our sermon series and Mark, and this
morning we will look at Mark chapter 8, beginning verse 1 to
30. In this passage, we find several
stories that the writer Mark records and we want to see how
all of these different events, how they happened, how they
interconnect and build. 1 on the other, the stories of the
miracles that Mark wrote about, they were not written just to
let the reader out. And oh, by the way, Jesus can do
this. Oh, Jesus can also do that.
Sure, Jesus did those things. He performed miracles, and yes,
they were done for people, for the benefit of the people, but
there was a deeper purpose behind it all.
Jesus performed miracles to direct people's minds and hearts
toward God. He wanted his works to be the
signs through which people would see God working in him and
through him. But people were generally slow
in getting the purpose and the message and sometimes they got
the message all wrong. And then of course there were
always the Pharisees who refused to get the message for a large
part that people were not seeing and they were not understanding
or and they were slow and believing.
So this morning we want to read Mark chapter 8 beginning verse
one and it would like to turn into your Bibles and to your
whatever you use to begin reading Mark chapter 8 verse one
to the end of verse 30. In those days the multitude
being very great and having nothing to eat, Jesus called his
disciples to him and said to them, I have compassion on the
multitude because they have now continued with me 3 days and
have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry
to their own houses, they will faint on the way, for some of
them have come from afar. Then his disciples answered him,
How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the
wilderness? Pessimist point number one.
There he asked them, how many loaves do you have?
Jesus doesn't say, OK, by the way, just send them away.
Then he's how many loaves do you have?
They said 7, verse 6. So he commanded the multitude to
sit down on the ground. He took the seven loaves and
gave thanks and broke them and gave them to His disciples to
set before them, and they set them before the multitude.
They also had a few small fish, and having blessed them, He said
to set them also before them. So they ate and were filled, and
they took up 7 large baskets of leftover fragments.
Now those who had eaten were about 4000.
And He sent them away immediately, got into the boat
with His disciples and came to the region of Dalmanutha.
Then the Pharisees came out and began to dispute with Him,
seeking for Him a sign from heaven, testing Him, another
issue. But he sighed deeply in the
spirit and said, Why does this generation seek a sign?
Assuredly I say to you, no sign shall be given to this
generation. Then he left them, getting to
the boat, departed to the other side, It's gone again.
Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, and they did not
have more than one loaf with them in the boat.
Then he charged them saying, take heed, beware of the leaven
of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod, and the reason among
themselves saying it is because we have no bread.
Another issue. But Jesus being aware of it,
said to them, Why do you reason? Because you have no bread?
Do you not yet perceive or understand me?
Don't you see? Is your heart still hardened?
Having eyes you do not see and having ears do not, you do not
hear? You're not, Do you not hear?
And do you not remember when I broke the five loaves for the
5000, how many baskets full of fragments did you take up?
They said 12. Also when I broke the seven for
the 4000, how many large baskets full of fragments did you take
up? They said, 7.
He said to him, How is it you do not understand?
Then he came to Bethsaida. They landed again, and they
brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him.
So he took the blind man by the hand and let him out of the
town. And when he had spit on his eyes
and put his hands on him, he asked him if he saw anything.
He looked up and said, I see men like trees walking.
Then he put his hands on his eyes again and made him look up,
and he was restored and saw everyone clearly.
Then he sent him away to his house, saying, neither go into
town nor tell anyone in the town.
Now Jesus and his disciples went out to the towns of Caesarea
Philippi, and on the road he asked his disciples, saying to
them, Who do men say that I am? So the answer John the Baptist,
but some say Elijah, others one of the prophets.
He said to them, But who do you say that I am?
Peter answered and said to him, You are the Christ.
Then he strictly warned them that they should tell no one.
That's for the reading of God's Word.
You see, last Sunday we look at the story of Jesus teaching the
crowds on what defiles a person and it's not what you eat, what
defiles you, it's what you say, what defiles you, that the
actions and the words you say that defiles you.
The diet you have is not what defiles you and the the
Pharisees, they had this tradition.
You wash your hands this many times a certain way and and
that's how you do not get defiled and we won't go.
We don't did not take time last Sunday to go over the stories in
the end of Chapter 7, which we won't again today.
But basically Jesus healed a demon possessed daughter, a girl
from a Gentile woman from the she was demon possessed.
Jesus healed her and then Jesus also healed him healed a man who
was had a speech impediment. He couldn't talk and Jesus
healed both of these and he spent some time in that area.
And today we pick up the story in chapter 8 and what happens
there. A large crowd of people has
gathered there with Jesus and they're there three days.
It says in verse one to three, the multitude being very great
and having nothing to eat. Jesus called his disciples and
said to them, I have compassion on the multitude because they've
now continued with me 3 days and have nothing to eat.
And he said if I send them away Hungary to their houses, they'll
faint on the way. For some of them have come from
afar. Jesus cares.
That's the first thing we notice in this passage.
Jesus is a shepherd, who cares. One speaker I listened to
mentioned that the reason the people were with Jesus for this
amount of time was not because they all wanted healing.
Of course some obviously wanted healing, but to be with Jesus
for that amount of time. Three days listening to one guy
talk. That's a pretty good stretch.
Jesus was teaching, and every day for three days in a row they
had been listening to him. Now, if somebody came just for
healing, it would come and get healed and leave.
But no, they came for something more Jesus was getting.
Jesus was getting their attention.
They stayed with him, but what they were getting was not yet
the best that was to come. They were going to see who he
was. And John relates the story in a
bit different way. We're going to get to that in in
a little while. But what was happening here is
very interesting. Jesus teaching the people about
God, what God is, who God is and so on.
And oh, there's a food issue. He doesn't want to send them
away with nothing and makes one think, well, where was the
planning committee for this event?
Didn't they think of this? Look, if we, we would, we would
at least plan, would we not? I mean, if we're going to have a
guy come here to speak for three days and nobody goes home for
three days and we're far away from food sources, from
anything, wouldn't we plan at least?
Well, Jesus of course, knew what he was doing, but the disciples,
I'm wondering if they wanted what he was doing.
We're not told. But the point of the matter is
they have no food. They need food.
They're hungry. To send them away is not an
option. Now we've got to do something.
And Jesus says, I, I don't want to send them away.
I have compassion on these people and the disciples, true
to their nature. What are we going to do?
How can we satisfy these people with bread?
Here in the wilderness? We don't have bread.
And so Jesus, as he had done before in Chapter 7, he begins
in chapter 6. Rather, he begins with what's
available, which really is just nothing for 4000 people.
And he has a few loaves and two fish.
And as he did back then in chapter 6, he did it again back
then it said that he did it in Jewish territory, and this is in
Gentile territory. And he takes this bit of bread,
gives to the disciples. Well, thanks for it gives to the
disciples and they eat. And miracle of miracles, there's
a lot leftover. And just a bit of a side note
here, Mark Chapter 6, it says they gathered 12 baskets full.
And now and Mark it says they in Mark 7-8 it says they gathered 7
large baskets. And it's not original with me,
but somebody drew attention to the fact that there's a
difference between these baskets.
In chapter 6, the baskets were just baskets that carried food
and just small baskets. But the word basket in chapter 8
is different and that the Greek words are not the same and it
means something large like a hamper per SE.
And they acts Chapter 9, verse 25, where the apostle Paul is
lower over the wall in Damascus and he escapes the Jews who want
to kill him. There's the same word, use
baskets big enough for a person to sit in, in other words.
And so they have seven large hampers or whatever, full of
leftover. Well, Jesus did this miracle for
the purpose not only of feeding the crowd, He wants to send a
message. He saw the need of the crowd.
He cared for the need He could have at the outside, planned
something. He could have said on day 2, hey
guys, we're going to run out of food.
Day 2 is here. Send them away so they don't
starve. But no, he had a more important
thing. He wanted to show the crowd who
he was, what he was. Look, the point here is where
people see problems, Jesus sees opportunity.
Isn't that like us? Where we see problems, Jesus
sees opportunities. And we're sometimes the flip
side is also true. We see opportunities.
Oh, what an opportunity. Jesus sees problems.
You do that, you're going to have problems.
We don't always see the same way.
And so our seeing and understanding is different than
Christ seeing and understanding is.
You see, how we see influences how we determine and how we
respond. Well, Jesus was possibility
minded, opportunity minded, the Sysypus were scarcity minded.
You know what, we haven't got enough.
We're short, what are we going to do?
How well we see, how far we see and what we see depends on what
we look for. If we just look at the negative,
the dark, the difficult, that's what we'll find.
I'm not saying that there's no problems.
There's no issues. There are times we have to
simply call things as they are. This is not possible.
And some things, but oftentimes it's because we don't want to be
bothered. We don't want to wrestle.
We don't want to struggle. What would have been a better
thing for the disciples to say instead of where we're going to
find this saying, Lord, we're here to serve you.
You do this, Lord, we're here to serve.
That would have been faith. Are we so problem focused that
that consumes us? I have to confess, sometimes I
am. Jesus wanted to show the people
about his power and his glory. And so to wrap up this three day
teaching ministry event, He fed them and it says that he right
away got into the boat. He dismissed the crowd, got into
the boat and came to the region of Dalmanutha.
Now Jesus is again in Jewish territory, and we might say he's
in Pharisee country again. And after he arrived in this
place called Dalmanutha, who comes to see him?
The Pharisees, Mark says they came to test him back in March.
Mark Chapter 7. The Pharisees came all the way
from Jerusalem, engaged him in an argument all about the
cleanliness and washing of hands and those things, and Jesus put
them in their place, so to speak, and here they come to
test him. And notice what he says in Mark
chapter 1211, eight verse 12. But he sighed deeply in his
Spirit and said, Why does this generation seek a sign?
Surely I say to you, no sign shall be given to this
generation. And he left them, and getting
into the boat, departed to the other side.
Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread and did not have
more than one loaf with Him on this boat trip.
Then he charged them, saying take heed, be aware of the
leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod, and the reason
among themselves saying it's because we got no bread.
How much bread does He need to feed a crowd?
7 loaves. There are only 12 guys and 13
guys in the boat. Wouldn't one loaf suffice?
Somebody made your attention to that, but that's not what's
going on here. But just imagine this.
First the Pharisees, Jesus just walked away.
They asked for a sign to test and He refuses.
The crowd hadn't asked for anything.
They weren't there to test him. They had come to listen to him,
to see what this master has to teach the Pharisees.
They don't come to listen, they come to find fault.
Jesus had healed a number of people earlier, yes, on the
journey up to northern Tyre and Sidon, but here in Jewish
country, the Pharisees come to see a sign and he refused.
He knew why they came. They came with no good
intentions. And he's deeply concerned about
the life of the Pharisees, the teaching of the Pharisees, what
they're doing. They had religion, but not real
faith. They were very religious.
Everything has to be done a certain way, a certain pattern,
a certain way, and everything has to line up a certain way.
And Jesus says, you guys got it wrong.
And here you won't even engage them in a conversation.
And Jesus is concerned because they're leading people astray.
So Jesus wants the disciples to see and understand falsehood.
So he warns them. He warns them against the leaven
of the Pharisees. He knew what they were after.
They were only trying to bait Jesus and to catch him in some
statement they hoped he would make, and they would slam the
trap and he would be discredited.
And what what the Pharisees did, It affected Jesus deeply.
Jesus was human after all, like we are, and the things that
affect people affected him and he had limits.
He got tired as he sighed deeply, Mark writes.
He sighed deeply in the Spirit. Why does this generation seek a
sign? You know, sometimes in life
there are times you just walk away.
You just leave. There are times to just walk
away. There are people who make it
their mission to discredit, to give bad reputations on what
they don't understand and what they have no business even
talking about. The Pharisees were those kinds
of people. They were not there to
understand Jesus, to learn to get to know Jesus, even to
listen to Jesus is what can we find wrong with him?
And those kinds of people live then.
Those kinds of people live in our time.
There are people who will see and hear, never understand.
They will discredit the good that God is doing and that is
happening. He says no sign shall be given
to them. Sometimes when a contentious
person asks you a question, you already know why they're asking.
You can already guess what they've decided the right answer
is. They just want you to give a
response they can hook onto, and then they got you and set you up
for a fall. Jesus didn't fall for it.
So he leaves there. He leaves the religious leaders
behind, gets into the boat to their side.
And the disciples, uh oh, we have no bread with us except one
loaf. And Jesus used that as a
learning, as a teaching tool. Beware of the leaven of the
Pharisees. Beware of the leaven of Herod.
He starts talking about leaven. This is not maybe yeast that we
would have in a little cannon pour into the water and mix
them, put in a dough. I don't know if they had that
yeast or not, but writers suggest this was some sourdough,
a lump of sourdough. They mix them with fresh dough
and it kind of reacts with the dough and it puffs up.
And so you have, it's the yeast reaction in it.
Anyway, Jesus says beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the
leaven of Herod. And he wants the people to
beware and not fall for their teaching or not fall for the
pressure. In many cases, the Bible uses
the illustration of fermentation to illustrate the idea of
influence. Paul used that illustration in
First Corinthians chapter 5, where he responds to the issue
in Corinth of this man who's living sexually immoral.
And the congregation is actually approving of it or tolerating it
at least, and they're not accepting responsibility for it.
And Paul has a clear word of warning.
He says Your glory is not good. Do you not know that a little
leaven leavens the whole lump? Therefore purge of the old
leaven, that you may be a new lump, since you truly are
unleavened. For indeed Christ our Passover
was sacrificed for us. Therefore, let's keep the feast,
not with old leaven nor with the leaven of malice and wickedness,
but with the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.
So Paul had a good understanding of what Jesus was talking about
when Jesus talked about leaven. And this idea of leaven is very
relevant because if you have a little bit, you tolerate a
little bit soon. The whole thing is if infected
Jesus to the apostles, be careful.
Those guys are no good. Be careful of the leaven of the
Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.
There's no, there's no part. Let's meet part way.
Let's link hands on and and kind of compromise doesn't work that
way. He is warning them not to be
influenced or to be pressured by the ways of these religious
leaders nor the influence by King Herod.
And then he goes on and he he says to them, verse 17.
He says, but he's being aware of what they're talking.
We have no bread. He said to them, why do you
reason? Because you have no bread?
Do you not yet perceive or understand?
Is your heart still hardened, having eyes you do not see and
having ears do not hear? Do you not remember when I broke
the five loaves for the 5000? How many baskets full of
fragments did you take up? They said to him, 12.
Also when I broke the seven for the 4000, how many large baskets
of fragments did you take up? And they said seven.
He said to them, How is it you do not understand?
You see friends, even his disciples.
It sounds like a little bit of exasperation.
The voice of Jesus, He was a man and he had so much patience and
he never gave up on these guys. And I'm so thankful he didn't
because he doesn't give up and he doesn't give up on us.
If he had given up on them, then he could give up on us, but he
doesn't. How is it you don't understand?
But maybe we should ask the question to ourselves.
How is it we don't understand these men whom Jesus had chosen?
They too struggle to see and understand.
That's so often our situation as well.
We struggle to see and we struggle to understand, but that
doesn't mean that Jesus gives up on us or abandons us.
He continues to guide us and teach us.
And this story is a man. Jesus showed by his questions
what he was one of his disciples to get.
And Jesus asks 9 questions in this short passage. 9 questions,
especially the last one hits hard.
How is it you do not understand? He's not the problem.
The works are not the problem. The teachings are not the
problem. It's my own limitation that's
the problem. I wonder how the disciples must
have felt. Well, these questions, maybe
they were embarrassed, maybe confused, maybe puzzled.
How is it that you do not understand?
He asked. This was one of those lessons
they found hard to grasp. And Jesus wants his disciples to
see with eyes of faith. If we had to be part of a
ministry like Jesus did, how much would we complain?
I'm afraid plenty. We do now.
And much of it is because we have.
We don't see, we don't understand.
We want to, but we have too much stuff in our lives that doesn't
work. And so we have to have eyes of
faith. Jesus wants us to see with eyes
of faith. They'd seen enough miracles, the
feeding of the crowds, healings, and so on.
They'd seen a lot of stuff, but it seems like the lessons we're
not catching, we're not grabbing, not having the impact
that they should back in the gospel.
And and yeah, in the Gospel of John in chapter 6, verse 1 to
15, that same story is related, the feeding of the 5000.
And what Jesus did was he dismissed.
The crowd went off into the mountain to pray.
But if you read the story, it says he perceived that they were
going to come and make him king by force.
Mark doesn't talk about that. Mark is very brief, but why did
they want? Why did Jesus deal with that?
Because he didn't want to be their earthly king.
He saw that they were not seeing it from a from the, from the
right perspective. They saw him as a powerful man,
as the, as the, as the Messiah, but with a selfish motive.
But let's not be too hard on ordinary people.
Imagine this having a leader that if you have him as a
leader, he'll always be able to turn everything into what you
want it to be. That would be great, right?
No, it wouldn't be because we're sinful, sinful people bound by
sin nature and we need to be free, but that sin nature always
crops up and we would destroy ourselves.
Sinful nature's too unstable, too unpredictable to be left
unchecked. And Jesus can see how far he can
go with these people. Sinful nature will always try to
influence. Jesus is trying to get the
disciples to see from a different lens, from a different
perspective. And so he asked, how is it you
do not see? Jesus saw everything clearly.
And after Pentecost, the disciples would see too.
But at this point, there was still a lot long ways to go.
He did not want them to get caught up in the local, the
cultural, the ritual, the legalistic, the political, all
those things. It's easy to fall for these
pressures. He said there's so many things
you know, like well, in fact, John Chapter 7, his own brothers
says Joseph and Mary had had more children after Jesus was
born and they were married. His own brother said him show
yourself to the world do do something.
They wanted him to prove himself.
While we find Jesus moving on here in Mark chapter 8, he moves
comes into the land of Bethsaida and they bring a blind man to
him and they're begging Jesus heal him.
And Jesus response is very interesting.
Similar to the deaf man in Chapter 7, Jesus now led the man
away from the crowd like he did in seven.
It says here verse 22. Then he came to Bethsaida and
they brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch him.
So he took the blind man by the hand and let him out of the
town. And when he had spit on his eyes
and put his hands on him, he asked him if he saw anything.
He looked up and said I see men like trees walking.
Then he put his hands on his eyes again and made him look up
and he was restored and saw everyone clearly.
Then he sent him away to his house saying neither go into the
town nor tell anyone in the town.
Mark goes into quite a bit of detail how Jesus did this
healing and the man sees partially after the first act
and not clearly yet Jesus puts his hands on his eyes again and
then he's totally healed. We wonder why.
Why would Jesus do that? I mean, he had healed people
with just a word at other places, other times.
Why not now? We're not given the information
in the Gospel of Mark as to why one way or not another, but
scholars have ideas, and some point out that Jesus was doing
this by way of an object lesson. He had been talking to the
people a lot about seeing and hearing.
He did heal a deaf man in Mark Chapter 7.
He was hearing, hearing, healing a blind man.
But he does this in stages and he heals the man and the way
some people come to sight, instead of healing him with a
few words, he he heals him with spitting in his eyes something
that was considered maybe medicinal value.
Spit had medicinal value apparently, and touching him and
he saw something. And then do you see?
I see medic trees walking. And then he does it again.
And then he sees clearly. And it's true Christ's
intervention that he sees clearly.
And so it's with us. Many people struggle in life
don't see clearly. It's good if we know we don't
see clearly. That's a good thing.
But we don't have to stay there. Just like this man who could not
see. He was helpless, and so are we
until somebody helped him. And so are we.
We need someone to help us to see clearly and lift the fog
that's around us. Jesus had been with his
disciples for quite some time now, and repeatedly he had to
help them move past their limited sight.
He used the physical object lesson to highlight this.
You see these disciples, they had blind spots, but we don't,
do we? We don't have blind spots, do
we? You see when we have a blind
spot, we're not aware that we have a blind spot because we
need somebody to tell us, am I not seeing something that you're
seeing? The quickest way to get rid of a
blind spot is to admit we have one and ask somebody else, am I
doing something you don't understand or that you see is
different wrong? In this man's case, after the
second stage he's healed. Many people go through life
never see clearly. In the case of the disciples,
they still had a lot to learn and after the healing of this
blind man, Jesus now goes on again, this time to the towns of
Caesarea Philippi. In Mark chapter 8 verse 27, it
says now Jesus and his disciples went out to the towns of
Caesarea Philippi and on the road he asked his disciples
saying to them, who do men say that I am?
So they answered John the Baptist, but some say Elijah and
others one of the prophets, and he said to them, but who do you
say I am? Peter answered and said to me,
you're the Christ. Then he strictly warned them
that they should tell no one about him.
Jesus did not really need to ask his disciples, who do people say
I am? He knew who people said he was,
but he needed to hear it from them.
He wanted the disciples to tell him this is what people say you
are and it wasn't bad. Elijah, prophets and so on.
He had called his disciples to follow him, but he wanted to
hear from them. Who do you say I am?
And Peter says you're the Christ.
You see, that's the objective. If we get that right, we're
pointed in the right direction. The rest is a journey.
Some go quicker, some go slower, but we're all on a journey.
We may come from different cultural backgrounds,
traditional backgrounds, but if we're pointed to Christ, we're
pointed to him. And so we must see clearly who
Jesus is if we're going to follow him.
I trust that we here today, we do want to see Jesus for who he
who he is, not for what we would like him to be.
It's amazing how many people want to see Jesus just for the
unselfish ends. People want to politicize him,
make him do some financial health and wealth guru want
these all kinds of social fronts and platforms, some Jesus
movement, Jesus government. Jesus never came for any of
that. He didn't come to take sides.
He didn't come to push earthly temporal agendas, political
agendas. He came to restore humanity back
to God. He came to be the Christ, the
one who redeem us from our sins, who would die so we could live.
And throughout his earthly life and all these activities that we
read in the Gospels, Mark and Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, he
did these things to live out the calling that God had on his life
as a man where things went wrong with the crowds and even some
extent the disciples, they expected this and that from
Jesus, do this and that. But Jesus never engaged it.
He never fell for it. And then after only three years
of ministry, was killed as a young rabbi.
Of course, God had ordained, planned this would happen, but
he was going to use the earthly, sinful ways of men to bring it
about. Back then, when all this went
down, when this all happened, Peter, his fellow apostles, had
no idea what was going on. All they knew Jesus was the
Christ, and to them this meant power and control.
Even at the Last Supper, they still could not see clearly.
Little did they realize that Jesus was a completely different
person, had a completely different agenda than they
envisioned him to be. He was not some earthly Messiah.
In a way this may not to sound crass, but it's almost like, hey
Jesus, yay, what can we do with Jesus?
He's going to help us. We can do this for Jesus.
With Jesus. That's blindness.
That's not seeing who Jesus is. You see we don't get Jesus.
He's Jesus gets us. We don't get Jesus, He gets us.
He's not there to make us into something that's for us.
We're here for His purpose, not our own.
We need to see that. We need to understand that that
turns the tables. I'm placed here to serve him,
worship him, glorify him, honor him and everything I am and do.
The disciples got some of it. The Pharisees got none of it.
And the the crowds, they were fairly fickle.
But Paul has an understanding of this in in first Corinthians
chapter 13, he writes verse 11. When I was a child, I spoke as a
child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child.
But when I became a man, I put away childish things.
For now we see in the mirror dimly, but then face to face.
Now I know in part, but then I shall know, just as I'm fully
known. It's coming, It's going to
happen. We may not see clearly now.
We may be moving in stages, so to speak.
When you see dimly what sight is coming, and so is understanding.
Jesus wants us to see that He cares, wants us to see and
recognize Him for who He is. Wasn't to understand the dangers
of falsehood and see it with eyes of faith.
He wants us to see clearly. We must see Jesus where he is.
It's safe to say that after these had left this earth and
gone to heaven, the disciples, different points in time may
have reminisced. Yeah.
Now that makes sense.
Yeah. That boat journey about the
leaven, Yeah, that makes sense. But that healing, I understand
now. I believe the same holds true
today. If we want to be in relationship
with Jesus. It will not happen by asking
Jesus to bow to our wishes, our dreams, our wants, our goals,
our desires. It will happen as we repent,
receive him, and receive Him on His terms.
Jesus invites us to follow him, not in physical boats or on
desert treks, not where we see physical bread multiplied or
physical illness healed, but to places in life where our sight
is restored and our understanding grows.
The prophet Isaiah had a good grasp of God's love and mercies,
and he invited his audience to come to God and receive and
receive what they needed. It says in Isaiah chapter 55,
verse one ho, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters.
You have no money, Come by and eat.
Yes, come buy wine and milk without money and without price.
Why do you spend money for what's not bread and your wage
for what does not satisfy? Listen carefully to me and eat
what is good and let your soul delight itself in abundance.
May God give us eyes to see, minds to understand His message.
Let us pray, Lord, we're grateful for the teaching of
Your Word, who you are, what You came to do.
You came to claim us, to save us as your children, to heal us,
that we can walk with you. We thank you, Lord, that you're
our Savior. They've paid the debt of sin on
our behalf. We thank You that you guide our
steps, Lord. We pray, Lord, that our hearts
will be tuned to You and that we would experience the richness of
Your grace and presence in our lives.
We pray that You'll give us sight and understanding as to
what it is that You want to do in US and through us.
We thank in Jesus name, Amen.