This past week I have read through Matthew and Mark, which I just finished this morning. I was really struck by just how dense the Apostles were this time around. Some of the things they thought, some of the questions they asked left me wondering how they ever eventually got it.
For instance, the feeding of the five thousand and then the feeding of the four thousand. First off, for these miracles, I think the movies got this wrong, at least the ones I’ve seen. In the movies I’ve seen, Jesus gets the few loaves of bread, and the few fish, He prays over them, then He dumps massive numbers of loaves and fish from the basket. The Bible doesn’t say this. It says that He took the 5 loaves and few small fish, prayed a blessing on them, then divided those same loaves and fish and gave them to the disciples to pass them out. Put yourself in THAT position. You look at the small piece of bread in your hand alongside a third part of a small fish, then you look at the crowd of 15 to 20 THOUSAND people. I imagine Peter pinching off the smallest of morsels for the first couple of hungry attendees. And then in exasperation decides “this is ridiculous” and starts breaking off large pieces to get this over with. And then he notices, he has the same amount of bread and fish as he started with. It would seem that he has an infinite amount of food in these small morsels. Almost like the widow of Zarephath that fed Elijah, herself and her son over 2000 meals from an almost empty bowl of flour and almost empty jar of oil. After the disciples see this, it’s whole fish sandwiches for everyone.
And this happened not once, but also a second time. And they had basically the same question about how to feed all those people BOTH times.
Then, they were heading across the sea and noticed they only had one loaf of bread with them. They had also just come from a confrontation between Jesus and the Pharisees. Jesus, I think knowing he was going to confuse them a bit, said, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of the Sadducees.” And the disciples thought Jesus was upset that they forgot the bread. I think they heard the word “leaven” and tried to overthink it. So Jesus had to tell them He was talking of their teaching, not about actual bread, which He had shown was not a problem recently, two times, with much left over after the miracle.
The disciples were either asking really ignorant questions, or trying to be too smart and interpreting things completely off what seemed obvious. It is no wonder that Jesus got a bit frustrated with them at times, even saying things like, “Do you still not get it?” “Are you still so dull?” And, “How long must I put up with you?” I found myself asking the same question, and have asked the same thing of others around me. “How do you not get this?” “Can you not see where this is going?” And other such questions, thinking myself as someone who is wise.
And then I miss something that I should have understood, and I have to look at myself in the mirror and wonder, “How did you not get this?”
Though I am not there yet in this time through the Bible, I will get to The Acts of the Apostles. And the promises from the Old Covenant to the New will see fulfillment. Ezekiel says that God will put a new heart and spirit in us and cause us to walk in His ways. Jesus says in the Upper Room that He will send another Helper Who is the Spirit of Truth who will lead the disciples into all truth, and call to mind all that Jesus had told them. And then in 1 Corinthians 2:16 says that “we have the mind of Christ.” The Holy Spirit indwells us and we can now have an understanding that we didn’t have before. Not by our own merits, but because the One Who knows all things indwells our hearts and minds now too. We can, and should, study God’s Word as that is the sword of the Spirit, and is part of the full armor of God that we need to be putting on every day. But wisdom and understanding come from God. We must test all things by Scripture and hold fast to what is true.
As a family, we watched the movie “Luther” this past week in celebration for Reformation Day. One thing I think we can all agree on is that any objections to what we believe MUST be shown to be in error by Scripture, and not traditions of men, which can be so often wrong. We can debate over what the Scripture means, we can disagree on the non-essentials, and still be brothers and sisters in Christ. And this relationship is based in our being part of the body of Christ, having been crucified with Christ, and yet being alive by His life, and living by His faith.
Amen
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