Life of Christ 74
Meanwhile, the word had
gotten out, somehow, in Capernaum, that Jesus and His Apostles had gone there,
and many people thought this was their chance to be with Him, and so they
walked around the top of the Sea of Galilee to get there. A compassionate
Jesus, faced suddenly with a multitude in the middle of nowhere, shelved His
own plans and ministered to them.
As the day drew on there was no food to be had in this remote region for this great multitude of
people. He took of the food He had set aside for His own, divided it up, and
fed five thousand men, plus women and children.
That part of the story
is well known. The reaction to it, however, is not. 'Then those men, when they
had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that prophet that
should come into the world. When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come
and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed into a mountain himself
alone' (John 6.14-15).
On the surface this
refusal doesn't seem to make sense. After all, didn't He come to offer Himself
to Israel as her Messiah and King? Yes, but it wasn't a blanket offer. There
were requirements involved, namely, a spiritual repentance. This is what both
John the Baptist and Jesus preached. In this scenario there was no repentance.
Instead we find only a desire for the good life obtained on the cheap. The
multitude that watched Jesus turn five loaves and two fish into food for
thousands saw the perfect politician who could provide everything for nothing. Their
decision to throw a crown at Jesus' head had nothing to do with a spiritual
acceptance of His claims and His message. No, it was simply selfishness writ
large by a crowd. Of course, He couldn't accept it on these terms, and His
response is to walk away further into the wild country in order to, I'm sure,
commune with His Heavenly Father about this saddening turn of events.
The heartbreaking lesson
I find here is this: Jesus is less interested in what we do than He is in why
we do it. He came offering Himself to Israel as her King. This group of
thousands from a regionally important center in Galilee took Him up on it – for
the wrong reasons. And since it was for the wrong reasons it wasn't acceptable
to Him.
I am convinced that many
a
Christian I've known, including myself on occasion, have done right things
for wrong reasons, and we will find at the end that even these good actions
were not acceptable with Him. In my opinion, it is precisely this to which Paul
refers in I Corinthians 3:
11 For other foundation can no man lay than that
is laid, which is Jesus Christ.
12 Now if any man build upon this foundation
gold, silver, precious stones, wood, hay, stubble;
13 Every man’s work shall be made manifest: for
the day shall declare it, because it shall be revealed by fire; and the fire
shall try every man’s work of what sort it
is.
God will take all the of
the works I have done, ostensibly for Him, pile 'em up, light 'em on fire, and
see what can stand the test. Sadly, I'm sure that some of what I've built
through the years is nothing more than wood, hay, and stubble. I speak of things
done, perhaps, for the praise of man, or for self-glory. As I understand
Scripture, the motivation with which I do things for God is actually more
important than the things themselves.
Jeremiah said it this
way, 'I the Lord search the heart, I try the reins, even to give every man
according to his ways, and according to the fruit of his doings' (17.10). Five
times Scripture specifically links the reins and the heart. Reins are what
controls an animal, turning it one way or another. The motives and desires of
the heart (Jeremiah 17.9) are what control us, turning us one way or another.
God looks at those reins, at the heart, into the motivations of why we did what
we did more than He actually does at the thing itself.
It always comes back to
the heart, doesn't it? Finally, the crown is served up to Christ on a silver
platter, bestrewn with bread crumbs. Yet He cannot accept.
He commands you and I to
offer Him all sorts of things. The question before us is not are you offering
these things, but are they actually acceptable to Him. What is your motivation
behind what you are offering Christ? The answer to that is absolutely critical
in His eyes.
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