Whom Say Ye That I Am?

Life of Christ 81

          We are in a critical stretch in the ministry of Jesus Christ, and the Apostles, along for the ride, have run into a whole bunch of turbulence lately. We have seen recently the rejection of Jesus by His people via the unforgivable sin in Matthew 12. We have seen Jesus shift the concept of the kingdom, and postpone the millennial aspects of it in Matthew 13. We have seen Jesus' second and last rejection by His hometown, Nazareth, also in Matthew 13. We saw Jesus feed the five thousand, and then, in His own turn, reject their shallow and carnal offer to make Him a king in Matthew 14. We have seen the Apostles in the perfect storm of despair in Matthew 14. We have seen many so-called believers abandoning the Bread of Life in John 6. Jesus at this point is basically on the run, avoiding both Judea and Galilee, and spending time outside of Israel in Bethsaida, Syria, the Tetrarchy of Philip, and Decapolis. The Pharisees are after Him. The Sadducees are after Him. The Herodians are after Him. The high priest is after Him. Herod is after Him. John the Baptist just lost his head. To put it mildly, things are not going well.

          In this environment Jesus and the Apostles, who had briefly returned to Galilee at the beginning of Matthew 16, leave again, and head this time for the mountainous region to the north of Galilee around Caesarea Philippi. In this crucible of seeming defeat three earth shaking events will take place over the next week that will set the course for so much of our understanding of Jesus Christ, and that will launch so much of what blesses you and I in the 21^st century.

          Jesus, as His ministry shifted that spring, began to spend much more time alone with the Apostles. On this particular trip outside of Galilee they found themselves in a mountainous and beautifully green region. It was largely populated by wealthy Gentiles, and was known as a resort area. Today, the rough equivalent is the Golan Heights, which Israel won from Syria in 1967 during the Six Day War and has occupied ever since.

         Jesus, at some point along the trail, poses a question to the group. 'When Jesus came into the coasts of Caesarea Philippi, he asked his disciples, saying, Whom do men say that I the Son of man am?' (Matthew 16.13). When Jesus first burst on the scene two years prior the only rational explanation the Jewish populace could come up with was that He was a prophet. He was great, perhaps on par with Moses, and He could do miracles, similar to Elijah and Elisha. The Pharisees fought all of this tooth and nail, and had made much progress in convincing the people He was actually a heretical and wicked man, but there still remained many people who thought of Him as a prophet. 'And they said, Some say that thou art John the Baptist: some, Elias, and others, Jeremias, or one of the prophets' (Matthew 16.14).

          He then poses another, more personal, and more important question to the group. 'He saith unto them, But whom say ye that I am?' (Matthew 16.15). Before we look at the answer we must remind ourselves of the context of those days – defeat, rejection, failure, attack, pressure, exhaustion, doubt, fear, and flight. If there was ever a dangerous time for Jesus to ask His disciples this question it was right now.

          Many of us view God through the lens of our most recent life experiences. If things are going well then God is good. If things are going poorly we question our faith. Jesus purposely chose to test the Apostles' faith at the lowest point so far in their ministry. On one side was a long string of recently disastrous experiences. On the other side was two years worth of hearing Him preach, seeing His miracles, and observing His spotless life. Which side would win out?

          Peter, whom some wag has rightly called the mouth of the Apostles, answers for them. 'And Simon Peter answered and said, Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God' (Matthew 16.16). What a wonderful answer! In it, Peter puts his finger on two different aspects of Jesus, and expresses total and complete faith in Jesus' claims to each.

          Jesus' office was that of Israel's Messiah. This messiah had to fulfill the many Old Testament prophetic predictions regarding His arrival and ministry. He had to have been anointed with the Holy Spirit (Psalm 45.7), the word 'messiah' literally meaning anointed one. He was rightly Israel's king, which we have discussed at some length. He would save His people from their sins (Isaiah 53.5-6).

          Peter is here boldly and openly and unashamedly confessing that he believed that this Galilean carpenter fulfilled all of these roles, and was none other than Israel's long promised and awaited Messiah, the Christ.

          Jesus' nature was as the Son of God. Pharisaic rabbinism, hewing closely to the monotheism commanded in the Torah, rejected any God but Jehovah. What it failed to understand was that there is only one God, but that He is eternally existent in three persons. Jesus, along with claiming to be the Messiah, openly claimed to be God Himself. This is doctrinally orthodox according to how we understand the scriptures, but heretically blasphemous to the mass of the Jewish religious leadership and their public (see Life of Christ 80, The Jews Sought to Kill Him). For Peter to freely and fully confess his belief in this cardinal doctrine, the deity of Jesus Christ, meant he understood and believed, not just the office that Jesus held, of Messiah, but the nature of Who He was – Almighty God come in the flesh (Isaiah 9.6).

          Peter's great confession is the exact same confession that every person on Earth must needs make. Not coincidentally, it stands, at its root, in complete contradistinction to every other major religious system in the world.

          Last Wednesday night at our church I left the main service during prayer meeting, and went to spend some time with the children in their Patch the Pirate Club. I do this every week. I joke around with them a bit, listen to their childish prayer requests, pray with them, and return to the main service. Last week a precious little girl, the child of a Christian mother and a Muslim father, raised her hand to give a request. What she said touched my heart very much. In her childish, lisping voice she said, 'Pastor Brennan, pray that my dad and grandma will understand that Jesus is the Son of God.'

          In all of her simplicity, she has grasped the point that has thus far so tragically eluded her father and grandmother. Yes, they believe that Jesus existed, and that He did miraculous things, but they do not believe He was the Son of God. They swallow the line that the demonic angel fed Muhammad in that Saudi Arabian cave six centuries after Christ. 

O People of the Book! Commit no excesses in your religion:  nor say Of Allah ought but the truth.  Christ Jesus the son of Mary was (no more than) A Messenger of Allah, And His Word, which He bestowed on Mary, and the Spirit proceeding From Him: so believe In Allah and His Messengers.  Say not "Trinity":  desist: It will be better for you:  For Allah is One God:  Glory to Him:  (Far Exalted is He) above Having a son.  To Him (Allah) Belong all things in the heavens And on earth.

          The most important question you will ever answer in the entirety of your life is the question Jesus posed to His Apostles, 'Whom say ye that I am?'. On the flanks of majestic Mount Hermon Peter gave voice to a faith in Who Jesus said He was.

          Have you?

The Jews Sought to Kill Him

Life of Christ 80

    

      It is hard for those of us who love Christ to grasp how bitter the hatred was toward Him in His own day. History has completely vindicated Him at the expense of those who attacked Him. But beyond history, we who have been saved through His sacrifice have a warmly personal love for Him who loved us first. But the opposition that marked this point in His ministry, an increasingly virulent hostility, had its genesis in different reasons for different groups. I think it is helpful to understand a bit of it as we come into the section of His ministry that finds this opposition dangerously proliferating.

          'After these things Jesus walked in Galilee: for he would not walk in Jewry, because the Jews sought to kill him' (John 7.1). Jesus never sinned one time (John 8.46). He 'went about doing good' (Acts 10.38). Why then did He keep running into this resistance? What was behind it? What caused it?

          The underlying reason behind all of the opposition to Him was Satan. The devil rose up in rebellion against God in Heaven. God cast him out down to Earth. Satan didn't content himself with either Earth or with losing and he has been waging war against God ever since. This war has many fronts and many battles, but it isn't a stretch at all to say that since the Creation it has always revolved around Jesus Christ. 'And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel' (Genesis 3.15).

          We can see this in this viciousness with which Satan has attacked the Jewish people through millennia. Why? Simply because they are God's chosen people, and because one day one of them would be born the Messiah. It was Satan that motivated Pharaoh to kill the Jewish male children in Exodus. It was the same Satan that stirred up Herod the Great's paranoia, and pushed him to slaughter all the little boys in Bethlehem. We must never forget that Satan is a murderer (John 8.44), and that the one he wanted to murder, more than any other, was the ultimate seed of the woman Israel, Jesus Christ.

          I'm convinced that so much of what we see in politics and war in human history is simply the visible evidence of the invisible hand of the devil. Three times Scripture calls him 'the prince of this world.' Ephesians 6 tells us that our fight in this life isn't with earthly powers, but with spiritual ones. Daniel 10 tells us that Satan and his minions have divided up sections of the Earth to rule over. In this light, I believe that Satan's murderous intent is the real source of all the trouble that Jesus faced. He stirred up all of the human opposition that Jesus faced, from Herod the Great in His infancy all the way to Caiaphas in His maturity.

          Humanly speaking, there were three groups and one family arrayed against Him. The Pharisees, by far the largest group, were opposed to Him for doctrinal reasons. To the Jews, the greatest commandment is that there is only one God (Deuteronomy 6.4-5). Alone for centuries, they had struggled to learn the concept of monotheism, and finally succeeded in the years following the Babylonian Captivity, helped in no small part by the emerging movement of rabbinic pharisaism. This commandment was hugely important to them. Imagine how they felt, then, when this Galilean carpenter came along, and claimed to be God. Jesus couldn't be; there was only one God, Jehovah, and He was in Heaven.

          Actually, the truth is that the Old Testament is filled with clues or allusions to the concept Christianity calls the Trinity, and to the deity of the Messiah. For instance, in the very first chapter of the Torah, Elohim says, 'Let us make man in our image, after our likeness' (Genesis 1.26). The Psalms reference Jehovah's Son, such as 'the LORD hath said unto me, Thou art my Son; this day have I begotten thee' (Psalm 2.7) and a verse Jesus would later quote in His own defense, 'the LORD said unto my Lord, Sit thou at my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool' (Psalm 110.1). Then there is that indisputable reference to the Messiah, 'For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace' (Isaiah 9.6). To this day, of course, the Jews ignore all of these, just as they ignored them back in Jesus' day.

          It is true that Jesus didn't claim to be God immediately upon launching His public ministry. Wisely, He understood that He needed to establish a baseline level of belief in Himself first so that He didn't come across as a crackpot. The noonday sun will blind a man emerging from a dark room rather than enlighten him, and Jesus realized that the concept of His deity needed to dawn gradually on His followers. But that doesn't mean He didn't claim it. In fact, I think that is perhaps the most ignorant argument that theological liberals and biblical minimalists make against Him. He most certainly did claim to be God, did so repeatedly, and was clearly understood to make that claim by the Jews in His own day. As we shall see, this was the very reason that the Pharisees sought so urgently to kill Him at His trial (Matthew 26.63-66). He claimed to be God, and the Pharisees viewed that as heretical blasphemy and worthy of death.

John The Baptist Rebukes Herod, Giuseppe Fattori, 1865

        The Sadducees and Herodians were opposed to Him for political reasons. The former were a distinct minority in Israel, compared to the Pharisees, and many came from the priestly class. The rejected the pharisaic concept of the oral Torah, with its fence of traditional and extra-biblical protections around the garden of the Torah. Consequently, they fought constantly with the Pharisees. They embraced a strictly literal interpretation of it, though, curiously, they rejected any belief in an afterlife of any kind. They appealed to and focused on the here and now. Though not large in number, they were usually highly educated and wealthy, and so found often in positions of power and influence. The Pharisees, through the rabbis, controlled the religious direction of the common people. The Sadducees, through wealth and position, influenced the Jewish bureaucracy and the Sanhedrin.

          The Herodians, though again not near as numerous as the Pharisees, were a political party rather than religious group. As their name implies their loyalties lay with the various Herods, and thus implied a Jewish faction that wanted to side with Rome rather than against it, as the Zealots did (see Life of Christ 50, 'Jesus and Politics').

          Both of these groups viewed the rising popularity of Jesus as a threat to the status quo that they dearly wanted to maintain. The Sadducees, focused on the present world, and with wealth, power, and influence to protect, didn't want a political revolution. All this talk of a Galilean so-called Messiah, and the corresponding kingdom that went with it concerned them greatly. The Herodians, with all their eggs in the basket of that one family, didn't want anyone to upset that basket. You and I understand that Jesus didn't have political aspirations, as such, but the Sadducees and Herodians of His day did not.

          Well, what do you do with a highly popular man who has the ability to do miraculous things? If you cannot subvert him to your side you must assassinate him. This put them, in spite of all of their differences, directly in league with the Pharisees.

Christ Before Caiaphas, Mattias Stom, 1630

          The high priest was opposed to Him for financial reasons. The Sanhedrin was composed of 70 highly educated, powerful, religious leaders. They were, under Roman suzerainty, the body that ruled Israel politically and religiously. They were led by a high priest, the positional descendant of Aaron. Under the Romans, the high priesthood continued its long history of religious and political rule, but lost its moral integrity. By the time of Christ it had become an office in which the occupant was changed for political and financial reasons, and once the Romans found a compliant political underboss who wanted to use his position to make money they left him alone.

          In AD 6 Annas came to the high priesthood, and for the next 60 years he, five of his sons, and one of his sons-in-law, had the position. Scripture strongly implies that for these six decades the high priesthood was essentially a family business. Caiaphas was the high priest who judged Jesus at His trial, but he actively included Annas, the former high priest and his father-in-law in the deliberations (John 18.13 and 24). Later, after the Resurrection, when Peter was called on the carpet before the Sanhedrin, found himself faced with the entire family. 'And Annas the high priest, and Caiaphas, and John, and Alexander, and as many as were of the kindred of the high priest, were gathered together at Jerusalem' (Acts 4.6).

          In actuality, the high priesthood of Israel had become a family business, and it was a corrupt family business. All the Jews, inside and outside of Palestine (roughly eight million en toto) were commanded to tithe once a year to the Temple, but the Temple refused to accept any currency that had an image or face on it. Thus, before one tithed, they had to convert their national money to Temple currency. The high priest had a tremendous influence over the rate of that exchange, and it had become nothing more than a crooked opportunity to extort money.

          The other great profit making center of the high priesthood was Israel's sacrificial system. Hundreds of thousands of animals were slaughtered on the Temple precincts each year, and each of those animals was supposed to be without blemish. Of course, the Temple would provide you one, for a small fee, or you could bring your own. If you brought your own, however, you had to have a seal indicating it had been inspected and certified as without blemish. Guess who controlled the inspection side of things? Yep, you guessed it, the Temple did, which also put that under the purview of the high priest. It was ridiculously easy to fail your animal, and force you to purchase an inferior one at inflated Temple prices.

          Thus it was that between these two rackets the family of Annas had the entire Jewish over a financial barrel. It was no coincidence that one of the first public acts of Jesus' ministry was the cleansing of the Temple (John 2.14-17, see Life of Christ 27, 'He Drove Them All Out of the Temple'), and this certainly brought him to the attention of Annas, Caiaphus, and their cronies. Jesus would, yet again, at the very end of His ministry, repeat that cleansing process (Matthew 21.12-13) on the morning of His Triumphal Entry into Jerusalem the Sunday before He died. It wouldn't surprise me at all to learn that a slowly simmering hatred on the part of Israel's high priest was flipped into an open permission to the Pharisees, Sadducees, and Herodians to assassinate Jesus immediately following that last event. I do not know that this is the case, but the scriptural record is clear that the family that ran the high priesthood had great cause to hate Him, to fear Him, and to want Him completely out of the picture.

          Annas' family had money and power, and Jesus had hurt them. The Pharisees, the party of the people, viewed Jesus as heretically blasphemous. The Sadducees, the party of the elite, didn't want Him to rock the boat. The Herodians, the party of Herod, didn't want Him leading a revolution. So even though all of these groups hated each other, they hated Jesus more, and jointly determined that eliminating Him would solve a great many existing and potential problems. And Satan, pulling the strings behind all of this hatred, greed, spiritual blindness, rebellion, and lust for power, thought he had finally found a way to succeed at his aims.

          Reviewing this incredibly long post my mind cannot help but run to Psalm 2, which so eloquently describes God's reaction to those who would launch an attack on Him. 'He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision.' When Easter Sunday rolled around and the news arrived to the Pharisees that Jesus was resurrected the Pharisees had a bad day, to put it mildly. The Herodians probably ran around in a panic. The Sadducees, with their refusal to belief in any kind of a resurrection, had to be positively apoplectic. Caiaphas and Annas, I'm sure, shouted every bad word known to man and threw the messenger out of their office. But Satan, he who schemed and planned and fought for so long to kill Jesus, well, he had the worst day of all, didn't he?

          …and I cannot help but smile at the thought. Yes, the Jews sought to kill Him, and there are many sorrows wrapped up in that phrase. But He just wouldn't stay dead!

The Primacy of the Resurrection

Life of Christ 79

          We left Jesus, last time, west of Galilee along the Mediterranean coast line. We find Jesus, this time, east of Galilee, again in Gentile country, this time around the area called Decapolis. This region took its name as an association of ten cities, under Roman control of course. There were Jews in it but it was largely another Gentile area. Along the way on this trip we find the story of the feeding of the four thousand, and more miracles of compassionate healing.

          I highly doubt that Jesus took the direct route between Tyre and Sidon and Decapolis, as that would have involved traveling straight through Galilee. Instead, I believe He followed the northern arch above Galilee, through the Tetrarchy of Philip, and then down into Decapolis along the Jordan River.

          We can see that Jesus is making a conscious effort to avoid both Judea and Galilee. I will discuss some of the particulars behind this fierce opposition in my next post, but for the moment let us just realize that He is being attacked on all sides. Farrar, the 19^th century Anglican divine, whose theology is suspect but whose abilities as a religious historian and scholar are not, said it this way:

Every section of the ruling class - the Pharisees, formidable from their religious weight among the people; the Sadducess, few in number, but powerful from wealth and position; the Herodians, representing  the influence of the Romans, and their nominees the tetrarchs; the scribes and lawyers, bringing to bear the authority of their orthodoxy and their learning - were all united against Him in one firm phalanx of conspiracy and opposition, and were determined above all things to hinder His preaching, and to alienate from Him, as far as was practicable, the affections of the people among whom most of His mighty works were done.

         

          Following this continual circuit of mini-exile around the circumference of Galilee, Jesus and His Apostles take shipping back east across the Sea of Galilee, and touch briefly, for reasons known only to them, the little known town of Magdala. It is so little known that no one seems to know exactly where it was, although many have speculated that Mary Magdalene was from there.

          I find it fascinating that when He arrives in Magdala the Pharisees and Sadducees are waiting for Him (Matthew15.39-16.4). This indicates either that they have been following Him all along, dogging His footsteps as He travels completely around the circumference of Galilee, or else that the Pharisees and Sadducees have put their adherents on notice to watch for Him in every little hamlet of Israel. In either case, it shows the ferocity of their dedication to attack Jesus at every opportunity wherever He was to be found.

          When they arrive in Magdala, the Pharisees and the Sadducees, yoked into an unlikely alliance by their mutual hatred of Jesus, approach Him and ask Him to do a miracle. Jesus knew there was no valid reason to do one. He had just done a bunch of them on the circuit of His trip around the border of Galilee, but there was no need for His compassion here. There was nothing of a struggling faith that needed strengthened in spite of its doubt. And He is done, now, doing miracles of display to authenticate His claims as Israel has already clearly rejected those claims. Instead, there was only the presence of an active rebellion against Him and a virulent hostility. Remember, the Pharisees are the group that propagated the theory that He did His miracles because He was possessed of Satan. In a sense, then, what they are really doing is seeking to throw His miraculous ability smack into His face.

          His response, in this situation, is to give the folks in this little seaport community a weather illustration that they would all understand. When you are on land knowing the weather is largely a matter of convenience, but when you are on the volatile Sea of Galilee it was largely a matter of life and death. Due to its geography, which finds the Sea of Galilee hundreds of feet below sea level, cold air would often times flow from the year round snowcapped Mount Hermon down the ravines that fed the Jordan River, and stir up sudden ferocious storms on the relatively shallow Sea of Galilee. We see this illustrated in the Gospels repeatedly when the experienced fishermen that made up some of the Apostles were caught in flash storms on the lake.

          'He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather: for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to day; for the sky is red and lowring' (Matthew 16.2-3).

          What He is saying is this: you can look at the sky and see how that points to the weather because it is important to you, but you refuse to look at what is happening around Me spiritually, the fact that I can clearly do miracles, and what that points to about Me, and this is actually much more important to you than the weather. 'O ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky, but can ye not discern the signs of the times?' (Matthew 16.3).

          Jesus came looking for belief. Increasingly, He is find a rebellious hostility that mockingly asks Him for a miracle that, even if He did it, would not soften hearts a whit. So He points them to the one miracle that will be completely unanswerable – the Resurrection. 'A wicked and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given unto it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas' (Matthew 16.4).

          What is interesting about this is that we see in Jesus a pattern here, and when we notice Him repeating something it behooves all of us to sit up and take notice. Not long before He had done the exact same thing.

Matthew 12. 38 Then certain of the scribes and of the Pharisees answered, saying, Master, we would see a sign from thee.

39  But he answered and said unto them, An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas:

40  For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale’s belly; so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.

          Why does He do the exact same thing again? In my opinion, He is beginning to establish the absolute primacy of the doctrine of the Resurrection. As we move forward into the last year of His life we will find Him referencing it again and again and again, and what we see here is the beginning, or infancy, of the establishment of its importance as a doctrine.

          We must remember that at this time in His ministry He is primarily focused on preparing the Apostles to run the Church in His absence. Well, they clearly got the idea that the Resurrection was important for it runs from one of their writings to the other. Peter's sermon at Pentecost, fifty days after the Passover of Jesus' death, refers to it twice in Acts 2. Peter's next sermon, in the Temple days later, refers to it twice in Acts 3. Peter's next interaction, this time before the Sanhedrin, refers to it in Acts 4. Peter's next interaction, again with the Sanhedrin, refers to it in Acts 5. It is also found in Acts 10, 12, 13, 17, 23, and 24. It is found in Romans 4, 6, 7, 9, and 10. It is found in I Corinthians 6 and 15, and in II Corinthians 4. It is found in Galatians, Ephesians, Philippians, Colossians, I and II Thessalonians, II Timothy, and I Peter.

          The Resurrection is one of the two primary doctrines that mark Christianity as being different from the way in which every other religion in the history of humanity is the same. Christianity offers salvation by grace through faith while every other religion demands some semblance of good works, and Christianity is the only religion in the world with a founder who walked away from His own tomb.

          One of the wonderful things about spending so much time looking at the life of Christ in one year is that you get to see the themes of His ministry take shape, the things that are emphasized again and again. Jesus came looking for belief. His ministry was marked by compassion. He is after our heart. His outstanding characteristic was His obedience to His Heavenly Father. And one of those things that gets repeatedly emphasized is the Resurrection.

          Let us give it a place of primacy. Let us thank God for it. Let us look to see Christ live out His life in ours.

Great is Thy Faith

Life of Christ 78

      

          We come now to a story that I freely confess I used to dislike very much as a boy. In it Jesus projects such a harsh, mean attitude as to make Him nearly unrecognizable. But I think herein lies for us a wonderfully sweet lesson. Allow me to unpack it for you.

          Jesus is in the last summer of His ministry. He will spend these six months or so avoiding Judea completely, and Galilee quite often, by taking occasional side trips outside of Galilee's borders. Once again, His purpose is not just to avoid Israel's religious and political leadership, but also to spend time alone with the Apostles training them.

          In this story (Matthew 15.21-28) He is looking for the private opportunity with them that He had tried to set up across the Sea of Galilee in Bethsaida. That one was ruined, so to speak, when a crowd of thousands showed up, wholly uninvited, at their rural retreat. This time He and the Apostles travel west of Galilee into the Gentile region of Syria close to the Mediterranean Sea in which the cities of Tyre and Sidon were located (Mark 7.24).

          Upon arrival, word gets around that He is there, and even in these Gentile towns along the edge of Israel everyone knows who He is. Almost immediately, He is approached by a Gentile woman, the mother of a girl possessed of an unclean spirit.

          I can imagine the sudden hope that flooded the breast of this weary mother. For years she has battled with her daughter. For years she has run from false hope to false hope seeking desperately for a cure. For years she has held her daughter when the fits come upon her, held her back from hurting herself and others, held her back from school, from worship, from the market, from the neighborhood, from everything. She has heard, as have all, of this new Man claiming to be the Messiah in Israel, and that He has the ability to cast out devils, but she isn't a Jew nor does she have any means to chase Him down.

          Suddenly, against all hope, there He is, big as life, in her town. Screwing her courage to the sticking place, she respectfully approaches Him, and grants Him the title of Israel's Messiah, Son of David (Matthew 15.22). She explains the situation and waits hopefully for His response.

         Response? Ha! He doesn't give her one. He completely ignores her. The Apostles don't ignore her, however, though she probably wished they had. They implore Jesus to send her packing, 'Send her away; for she crieth after us' (Matthew 15.23). I have remarked much upon Jesus' compassion in this series. Where is this famous compassion now?

          Finally, He deigns to speak, not even addressing her, but addressing the Apostles, seemingly agreeing with their startlingly naked Jewish prejudice. 'But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel' (Matthew 15.24). Compassion? Hello?

          Her response is very simple, and, at this point, probably driven by sheer desperation. Otherwise, why would she put up with this? The text implies that she falls down at His feet, and cries out with great emotion, 'Lord, help me' (Matthew 15.25).

          Again, He answers her roughly, now finally addressing her directly, 'It is not meet to take the children's bread, and to cast it to dogs' (Matthew 15.26). Not only is He here refusing to help, but He is also calling her a dog, which in any language or culture is unflattering. Compassion? Jesus? No, not Him.

          I love this un-named woman. She reminds me of the guy in that old movie clip who approached a girl clearly out of his league.

          'What are the chances we'll end up together?'

          'Not good.'

          'What, like one in a hundred?'

          'More like one in a million.'

          Then, with a big goofy grin, he says, 'So you're telling me there's a chance.'

          This Gentile woman's optimism and perseverance in the face of such blatant hostility is precious indeed. 'And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters' table' (Matthew 15.27). At this, Jesus promptly shifts gears, heals her daughter, and commends her very highly.

          There are all sorts of unseemly characters and disreputable theologians that point to this story as the be all and end all justification for their own inherent racism. Others simply seek to use it to make Jesus look bad, stating that this shows us the real Jesus, one unmasked of His pretense of compassion and tolerance. I could not possibly disagree more strongly.

          It doesn't show an uncompassionate Jesus at all. An intellectually honest observer will note that Jesus did heal her daughter and commend her highly at the end. Nor does it show a racist Jesus. I suppose if this was the only story about Jesus that history shows us they might have a point, but it isn't, not by a long stretch. He repeatedly, in other stories, proves to be the opposite. After all, this is the same Jesus who dealt so wonderfully with the Gentile Samaritan woman at the well at the very beginning of His ministry. It is the same Jesus who healed the Roman centurion's servant when requested to do so. Furthermore, it is the same Jesus who went out of His way to assert the equality of the Gentiles with the Jews in the Kingdom (see my blog post Life of Christ 58). Additionally, this is the same Jesus who will shortly found the Church, an institution made in His likeness and emphatically against racism of all types.

          Well, if He isn't being uncompassionate and prejudiced here then why is He treating her so harshly? Very simply, for this reason: to test her faith.

          My kindergarten teacher still holds a sweet place in my memory, lo, these 35 years later. I can still remember my fear the first day of school, and she greeted me so kindly. She passed out hugs like candy. She gave me juice and graham crackers. She read me stories. For crying out loud, she let me be the gingerbread man in the school play that year. She was nothing if not compassionate. Yet she had the unmitigated gall and unfounded harshness as to expect me to pass the occasional test!

          Tests aren't an indication of harshness or prejudice. They don't reveal a lack of compassion. To the contrary, tests are actually an equal opportunity leveling of the playing field. They are a necessary means of revealing precisely where the student is at, and are absolutely essential to growing that student. I've been on both sides of the desk, as student and teacher, and I know that tests aren't a curse but a blessing. They aren't a hindrance but rather a help. They aren't a mistake born of the flaws of the teacher, but instead are actually the expressed wisdom of an experienced mentor.

          It was good for me to be tested way back in kindergarten, and all the way through. That doesn't mean I always enjoyed the tests I experienced over 19 years of formal education, but it does mean that they were designed to help me. And they did.

          This is exactly what we see in this story. Jesus is testing her faith, and after putting before her an exam of a very high level of difficulty what grade does He give her? 'Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith' (Matthew 15.28).

          Discouraged Christian, weary mother, lonely adult, frustrated teacher, saddened parent, questioning young person, worried senior citizen, homesick immigrant, poverty stricken young couple, let God test your faith.

          It is the only path to a great faith.

If you would like to listen to the audio version of this blog you are out of luck. It hasn't been posted yet.

Leave It To Beaver Land

Life of Christ 77

          Jesus is back in Galilee following the feeding of the five thousand, the forced attempt at making Him king, and Peter's successful and unsuccessful attempt at walking on water. He is being constantly shadowed by Pharisees from Jerusalem who were almost certainly charged with sending reports back to headquarters. At the same time these Pharisees were actively looking for opportunities to embarrass or harass Him, and when they discovered that He and His Apostles were not strict about ritually cleansing themselves from Gentile defilement they went on the attack (Matthew 15.1-9).

          The rabbinism of the Pharisees was not monolithic in belief about many things, but it was in its attitude toward the Gentiles. Even the rival schools of Hillel and Shammai agreed on 18 specific things a Jew should do to remain clean, or to cleanse themselves from defilement with Gentiles. For instance, if you came back from the public market you ought to take a ritually cleansing bath just in case you accidentally touched some bread that had been previously touched by a Gentile. The Sadducees, normally antagonistic toward the Pharisees' theological hullabaloo, poke relentless fun at them over this issue, saying that 'soon they would think it necessary to wash the sun' because its rays shone on the Gentiles also.

          The Pharisees had started centuries before for sincerely good reasons as a reaction against the growing hellenization of the Jewish people under Grecian influence. To do this they had erected a fence around the garden of the Torah. They called this the Oral Torah. They claimed it had been handed down from Moses, the first rabbi, and then later codified into the Mishnah section of the Talmud. There is, of course, zero scriptural support that Moses did this, and even if he had it wasn't scripture. In essence, then, these extra-biblical rules had no more support than the fact that they were traditional, yet in reality the Pharisees paid them such respect and obeisance that they had elevated tradition to the place of equal authority with the actual Torah. Thus, it really bothered the Pharisees that Jesus and His Apostles ignored these traditional decrees regarding ritualistic Jewish purity.

          'Then came to Jesus scribes and Pharisees, which were of Jerusalem, saying, Why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders? for they wash not their hands when they eat bread' (Matthew 15.1-2). We aren't talking about dirty dirt here. In fact, your hands had to be clean of physical dirt before you ever started in on ritualistically cleansing them of defilement. The idea was that you had to cleanse any imaginary defilement from your hands in case they had touched something a Gentile had also touched. For this purpose, one and a half eggshells of water were to be used, and after scrubbing the hands you were instructed to raise them so the now defiled water would drip off your elbows rather than off your fingertips for that would defile the hands all over again. So we see, then, that the Pharisees aren't questioning Jesus and the Apostles' conformity to the Law; they are questioning their conformity to tradition.

          Jesus responds by illustrating how bankrupt rabbinic tradition actually was. 'But he answered and said unto them, Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition? For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother: and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death. But ye say, Whosoever shall say to his father or his mother, It is a gift, by whatsoever thou mightest be profited by me; And honour not his father or his mother, he shall be free. Thus have ye made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition' (Matthew 15.3-6).

          The Torah required, under the general instruction of the sixth commandment, that children financially support their aging parents if such support is needed. This is absolutely a scriptural interpretation, not a traditionally extra-biblical one. Yet the Pharisees, for all their talk of obedience to the Torah, had ingeniously found a way out of it.

          If a Pharisee pronounced the word 'Corban' over his money and property he was essentially saying that he no longer owned it, and that he was going to give it to the work of God via the Temple – but it wouldn't go to the Temple until his death. Until then, he 'managed' it or held it in trust for the Temple. Sadly, it just wouldn't be a wise use of 'the Temple's money' to support his elderly parents. Voila! Said Pharisee has gotten around the sixth commandment. You can see how such a wicked system, while following the letter of the Law, completely contradicted the actual point of the sixth commandment.

          The problem wasn't that Jesus and His Apostles were violating tradition. The problem was that the Pharisees, with their slavish adherence to extra-biblical tradition, were violating the Torah. 'Ye hypocrites, well did Esaias prophesy of you, saying, This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips, but their heart is far from me' (Matthew 15.7-8).

          Then, as His custom was, Jesus used the subject they brought up to deal with a deeper problem. The Pharisees assumed they were inwardly righteous, as Jews, and that defilement came from what touched them externally. In that light, their complex system for avoiding defilement made sense. Jesus' view, however, was exactly the opposite. Eating bread that had been touched by Gentiles had nothing to do with whether you were defiled or not. After all, what you ate entered into your stomach and bypassed your heart entirely (Mark 7.18-19). No, defilement came from inside a man precisely because his heart was so wicked. 'For from within, out of  the heart of men, proceed evil thoughts, adulteries, fornications, murders, Thefts, covetousness, wickedness, deceit, lasciviousness, an evil eye, blasphemy, pride, foolishness: All these evil things come from within, and defile the man' (Mark 7.21-23).

          So with this by way of explanation let me give you two quick observations from this story. First, we must keep the heart front and center in our emphasis on holiness. I'm for externally visible standards. In fact, I'm so old-fashioned and extreme and legalistic and out of touch (at least if my mail is correct) as to believe that a lady ought not to wear pants and a man ought to have a short haircut. I'm also for personal separation from external defilement, and as I understand scripture that includes things like rock music and the American public school system. (Go ahead, write me about this. Really. I'm just dying to have another conversation about it.) But what I am not for is equating the observance of these separations with holiness or spirituality, nor am I for making them the point. They are nothing more than a wise use of principle, but they are not, in and of themselves, holiness. See, the problem of sin is a heart problem, and the solution, therefore, must be a heart solution. Paul explains, in that section of Romans which contains the greatest passage on holiness in the Scripture, that holiness is a heart issue. 'But God be thanked, that ye were the servants of sin, but ye have obeyed from the heart that form of doctrine which was delivered you' (Romans 6.17).

          Secondly, religious tradition may lend us insight, but we must never view it authoritatively. This is one reason I don't like the label 'traditional'. Yes, our church is considered a traditional one, and I'm considered a traditional preacher, but we don't do the things we do because they are traditional. We do them because we honestly believe them to be scriptural.

          The classic attack on a church like ours, or a ministry like mine, that thinks ladies should still dress like ladies, and that men should still look like men, and that we should still use the KJV, and that our music should still flow instead of rock is that we are trying to survive in a cocoon of the 1950's. Such an attack is laughably inaccurate. Our Bible is from 1611, or 1769, depending how you count it. Our music encompasses songs from the 17^th to the 21^st centuries. Our emphasis on modesty was the position of the church in every culture of which I am aware for almost two millennia until American culture shifted in the sixties. More importantly, though, such an attack is completely untrue. We aren't trying to mold people into Leave It To Beaver land. We are trying to be scriptural. If the byproduct is that we happen to still look like people think churches looked like in the 1950's, fine, but that isn't the goal by any means, let alone the model.

          It isn't critical that those who attack us, or fire away at me understand this. It is, however, critical that young people understand this. If we don't teach them the why's behind the what's we stand for they will throw them overboard when they think that the only reasons we had were traditional.

          By the same token, we must diligently study to make sure the reasons we have for holding our positions or structuring our churches and ministries the way we do are more substantial than mere traditions. As Baptists we profess that the Bible is our sole authority when the actual truth is that, far too often, tradition plays a huge role in why we do what we do. If that is, indeed, the case, let us refrain from attacking the man or church that shifts something that has no more to support it than mere tradition.

          Let us be true to Scripture rather than tradition. Let us be holy from the heart. In other words, let us not be Pharisees. Instead, let us be like Jesus.

If you would like to listen to the audio version of this blog you may find it here on our church website. Just press 'launch media player' and choose We Preach Christ 45, 'Transgression and Tradition'.

The Bread of Life

Life of Christ 76

          Following the feeding of the five thousand Jesus goes up into the mountains to pray and the Apostles get back into their boat and head for Capernaum. The crowd that walked overland, having been joined by others from Capernaum in the meanwhile who came by boat, spent the night in the wilds of Bethsaida. When Jesus failed to materialize the next morning they pile themselves into those boats and sail back to Capernaum. Jesus and the Apostles are already there, having returned in the night through the storm, and when some in the returning crowd find Him in the synagogue that day a very interesting conversation takes place (John 6.25-59).

          Jesus, who had just rejected their offer to make Him a king, explains to them that it was because they did so only for physical reasons. In other words, they only wanted Him as their king because He could manufacture food at will. 'Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled' (John 6.26). Consequently, He urges them to turn from the physical to the spiritual for all along that had been the battle ground about the kingdom. 'Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for the meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you: for him hath God the Father sealed' (John 6.27).

          It is absolutely critical to understand this point when studying this story for otherwise it becomes confusing indeed. The crowd is fixated on the physical, 'bread'. He tries repeatedly to turn them to the spiritual, 'bread of life'. To do this, He points them toward salvation by grace through faith emphasizing the spiritual kingdom that comes by belief. 'This is the work of God, that ye believe on him whom he hath sent' (John 6.29).

          In turn, the crowd that was so disappointed in His decision to reject the crown yesterday demands from Him today a new miracle. 'What sign shewest thou then, that we may see, and believe thee? what dost thou work?' (John 6.30). This is mindboggling to me. They still had miraculously produced crumbs in their beard from yesterday.

          But that's not all. Not only do they insist on a new miracle, but they insist on a particular one. They want Him to produce, not just ordinary barley loaves, but manna such as Moses did (John 6.31). In other words, they say, 'If you are really sent from Heaven then bring us some of Heaven's food.'

          Jesus, who was certainly able to produce manna if He wanted to, yet again sought to turn them from their pre-occupation with the physical to the spiritual. 'The bread of God is he which cometh down from heaven, and giveth life unto the world' (John 6.33). Their spiritual need, eternal life through faith in Himself, was more important than their physical needs.

          Unfortunately, this response only makes the crowd more restive. They reject His claim to having come from Heaven by mentioning His earthly parents (John 6.41-42). Again, Jesus tries to break through their fixation on the earthly and physical and temporal by pointing them to the spiritual eternal life available to them only through Himself. 'I am that bread of life. Your fathers did eat manna in the wilderness, and are dead. This is the bread which cometh down from heaven, that a man may eat thereof, and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven: if any man eat of this bread, he shall live for ever: and the bread that I will give is my flesh, which I will give for the life of the world' (John 6.48-51).

          He has, in essence, just told them that He will sacrifice Himself for their sake, but with their focus still stubbornly on the visual and physical they totally misunderstand. 'The Jews therefore strove among themselves, saying, How can this man give us his flesh to eat? Then Jesus said unto them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you. Whoso eateth my flesh, and drinketh my blood, hath eternal life; and I will raise him up at the last day' (John 6.52-54). He keeps saying to them, 'It's Me.' They keep refusing to grasp that faith in Him is the point. It wasn't yesterday's barley loaves or today's manna that was the point. He Himself, and their belief in Him was the point. 'This is that bread which came down from heaven: not as your fathers did eat manna, and are dead: he that eateth of this bread shall live forever' (John 6.58).

          Sadly, their ultimate inability and refusal to believe on Him, combined with His refusal to accept the crown and make manna, alongside His wording of eating His flesh and drinking His blood, caused many to simply give up on Him altogether, even some of those who previously had claimed to believe (John 6.66).

          In a sense, then, this is the high water mark of His acceptance, albeit of the completely misunderstood kind, by the Jewish people. He would never again kindle such popular enthusiasm. Edersheim says regarding this moment:

By some miracle more notable even than the giving of the Manna in the wilderness, enthusiasm has been raised to the highest pitch, and thousands were determined to give up their pilgrimage to the Passover, and then and there proclaim the Galilean Teacher Israel's King. If He were the Messiah, such was His rightful title. Why then did He so strenuously and effectually resist it? In ignorance of His real views concerning the Kingship, they would naturally conclude that it must have been from fear, from misgiving, from want of belief in Himself. At any rate, He could not be the Messiah, Who could not be Israel's King. Enthusiasm of this kind, once repressed, could never be kindled again. Henceforth there was continuous misunderstanding, doubt, and defection among former adherents, growing into opposition and hatred unto death.

          It is helpful to see the impact this has on the arc of Christ's life and ministry, but I'm not interested in simply informing your intellectual grasp of Jesus. All along in this series I have striven to find scriptural application that applies to you and me today. In this story the great lesson I see is this: we are to be less interested in what He does for us than we are in Who He is.

          Let us never, like the prosperity gospel crowd, be guilty of following for the what. But beyond their awful example, there is still a more normalized segment of Christianity that only follows Him so long as He makes their marriage, their kids, and their life better. Beloved, God doesn't want chased down for what He can do. He wants believed in for Who He is. If you follow Him only so long as He pours out your version of blessing you are no better than that crowd of 5000 men who wanted Him to be their king. And, sooner or later, like them, you too will go away.

          Follow Him for Himself. Love Him for Himself. Serve Him for Himself. Trust Him for Himself. Praise Him for Himself. It is about Him, not about what He can do for you.

          It isn't about the manna. It is about the Bread of Life.

If you would like to listen to the audio version of this blog you may find it here on our church website. Just press 'launch media player' and choose We Preach Christ 44, 'I Am the Bread of Life'.

Just When You Need Him Most

Life of Christ 75

         Jesus has just rejected the one thing He supposedly came to get, the throne of Israel. He then abandons the Twelve, storming off into the wilderness. The Apostles are left there, in the middle of nowhere, with twelve baskets of food, a puzzled and frustrated crowd, and night is drawing on apace. Their solution is to get back into the boat they just got out of that morning, and return to Capernaum where Jesus had said He would meet them later.

          In my opinion this night (Matthew 14.22-33) brings the Apostles to their lowest point, other than the crucifixion, of Jesus' entire ministry. In fact, I think they are nearly in despair. They have just returned from a preaching trip, and their private time with him has been ruined when the crowd showed up. They spend all day ministering to these people, and their emotions had whipsawed as He commands them to do the impossible, and then does it Himself. The reaction to Jesus' miraculous feeding of the five thousand was perhaps the pinnacle of His entire ministry, popularly speaking, at least in Galilee, and they excitedly watch as a delegation of leaders from the crowd approach Him, and seek to make Him king. In the Apostles' view this is the exact moment for which they have been working and praying - only to have Jesus snatch it away from them and then suddenly abandon them. Crushed, they get back into the boat and start rowing over to Capernaum, only to have a storm come up. These experienced fisherman row all night long, and have only gone the equivalent of 30 city blocks by three in the morning. They are emotionally spent and physically exhausted. Their dreams of glory and success have been smashed to smithereens. They are on their own, struggling mightily, and making zero progress. They couldn't go back and they couldn't go forward. It is the perfect storm of weather, circumstance, despair, loneliness, exhaustion, frustration, and abandonment.  

          Then, as if things weren't bad enough already, a ghost shows up. Well, what else could they possibly expect? It would never occur to them that it might be anything else. Until it turned out to be Jesus (Matthew 14.26-27).

          At this point Peter opens his mouth and says something that is both incredibly stupid and incredibly full of faith at the very same time. 'Lord, if it be thou, bid me come to thee on the water' (Matthew 14.28). Jesus does so bid, and thus it is that Peter becomes only the second person in all of human history to walk on unfrozen water.

          Some, hearing this, demand an explanation. I have none to offer other than that it wasn't ice that Jesus and Peter walked on. It was a rather violent storm so the water was moving around a great deal. It was late spring in a climate with typically mild winters so the weather was not conducive to an ice-encrusted lake. Not only that, but they had just rowed across the same water that morning, and I don't think they had an ice-breaker out in front of them while they did it. No, it was liquid water, mountainous waves of it, moving, in the middle of the night, accompanied by thunder, rain, and lightning. And Peter, of all people, walked on it toward Jesus.

          What did it feel like? I would imagine it was exhilarating. He had been a fisherman out on the sea all of his life. Had he ever imagined a moment like this? I don't know, but I can picture him whooping like a little kid as climbed the waves toward Jesus. Well, at least until he got his eyes off of Christ and onto the actual circumstances in which he was embroiled (Matthew 14.30). At that point whatever had been solidifying the water underneath his sandals ceased to work, and as fast as you can blink he began to sink.

          In sudden and complete desperation he looks back to Jesus and just has time to verbalize one phrase, 'Lord, save me' before the waters close over his head. 'And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him' (Matthew 14.31). Jesus then helps a shaking and soaked Peter back into the boat, climbs in Himself, and immediately the boat is at the docks of Capernaum (John 6.21). The reaction of the stunned Apostles is absolutely understandable, 'Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God' (Matthew 14.33).

          Beloved, Jesus comes just when you need Him most. This is His pattern all throughout the scriptures. For instance, consider Abraham, tasked with ritualistically sacrificing his only son, Isaac. He was stopped by the angel and found the substitionary ram only when the knife in his hand was poised in the air above Isaac's prone body. Consider Jacob, called to return home after an absence of 20 years. He finds Jesus suddenly physically present the very night before he is to face an angry Esau and 400 of his closest friends. Consider Moses, commissioned with leading a horde of millions into the hot blowing sands of the Sinai Peninsula. It is only as they are faced with terrible thirst that the Rock appears. This Rock would not only give them water and follow them around, but the New Testament clearly names It as literally being Jesus Christ (I Corinthians 10.14). Consider an uncertain Joshua, facing his first real test in front of Jericho. Moses is dead. The manna is stopped. The people are restive. It is fish or cut bait time. And then the Captain of the host of the Lord, who is none other than Jesus, appears. Consider the three Hebrew children unceremoniously thrown into the burning fiery furnace. When Nebuchadnezzar looked in he paused to rub his eyes and ask if they had thrown three men in or four. Three it was, yet four were there, 'and the form of the fourth is like the Son of God' (Daniel 3.25).

          This is how God works. He sends us into seemingly impossible situations, and then bails us out in a way that only He could. In the process we get the compassionate rescue and He gets the glory. We also get the lesson, and our faith is strengthened. Have you ever noticed that you can't buy strengthened faith in the store? You can only get it by going through the storm, and then watching Him show up just when you need Him most.
          Do you need Him today? Desperately? More than ever before? Good. He comes just when you need Him most.

         

If you would like to hear the audio version of this blog you may find it here on our church website. Just press 'launch media player' and choose We Preach Christ 43, 'He Walked on the Water'.

I Won't Be Your King

Life of Christ 74

  

        In His effort to avoid provoking either a premature religious or political confrontation Jesus is spending substantial portions of time, in this the last summer and fall of His ministry, outside of Israel. The first of these trips was a short boat ride across the northern tip of the Sea of Galilee into the wild country outside of Bethsaida. There He intended to spend time with the Apostles, hearing reports of their last preaching trip, and getting in some quality training time in private.

          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. 

The Feeding of the Five Thousand

Life of Christ 73

          We have arrived at the last year of Jesus' ministry. The next six months, through the summer and fall, will find Him primarily in Galilee, though He will take four separate trips away from Galilee, not down to Judea, but into neighboring territories. I think this is because the heat had been turned up, so to speak, both by Israel's religious leaders and her political leaders. We have seen the increasing hostility of the Pharisees, and now this hostility has practically turned into open warfare, at least in Judea (John 7.1). Additionally, Herod Antipas, son of Herod the Great, who ruled over Galilee, was also showing signs of aggression. He had recently murdered John the Baptist, and taken notice of Jesus (Matthew 14.1). Jesus, of course, wasn't afraid of opposition, either religious or political, but He knew the crisis point was still a year away, and in wisdom He avoided provoking that crisis until it was time.

          To prevent this unwanted attention Jesus and His disciples, who had recently returned from a preaching trip (Luke 9.1-6), leave Capernaum and head to the closest place outside of Herod's jurisdiction, Bethsaida, on the eastern border of Galilee. They traveled by boat, but word had somehow gotten out about where He was going, and a whole bunch of Jews from the Capernaum area traveled the relatively short distance overland along the top of the Sea of Galilee to find Him there.

          His original intention had been to spend some private time with the Apostles, but that plan was foiled by this large crowd that followed Him there. I have mentioned before that Jesus' life was marked by compassion, and this compassion drove Him to minister to this crowd of people all day long, preaching and healing (Luke 9.10-11).

          As evening drew on people began to be hungry. The Apostles wanted to send them away from the deserted area in which they found themselves toward the closest town, Bethsaida, in order to get something to eat (Luke 9.12). Jesus, on the other hand, instructs His Apostles to feed the people. Their reaction was incredulity. After all, they only have five loaves and two fish on hand. Purchasing food wasn't an option either, not only because they weren't standing next to a grocery store, but because they didn't have the money necessary to do so.

          Jesus proceeds to completely ignore their logical protest, and to instruct the Apostles to divide the large crowd up into manageable sections so that they can be fed. You know the story. He takes the small supply and continues handing it out to the Apostles until everyone has as much as they want with plenty left over.  

          What is the point? Was it just to dazzle the people into finally accepting Him? No, as evidenced by His actions afterward which I will discuss next time. Was it just to feed people in need? Partially, perhaps. His life was marked by compassion, certainly. But I think there was a larger purpose here, and one that was directly aimed, not at the crowd, but at the Apostles. In my opinion, almost everything He does from this point forward is aimed at growing the Apostles, and when you realize that this was the original purpose of the trip anyway this comes into even clearer focus. If I'm right then what core lesson is seeking to teach the Apostles? Simply this: God can give you what people around you need.

          Jesus has to get the Apostles ready for His absence, and ready to carry the weight of the infant Church. In the process of using them as the human foundation for the Church (Ephesians 2.20) He is going to ask them to do some things they aren't going to think is either reasonable or possible. He needs to convince them that, when He does, He will provide what is necessary to meet the need. To me, this is the lesson He is seeking to get across to them, and one I think is useful for us as well.

          God calls us constantly to minister to people who are in great need. Often, though, we find ourselves in the position of not having on hand what those people need. I think of the story in Matthew 17 of the man afflicted with the demonically possessed son. He brought his son to the Apostles but they couldn't cast the demon out. So many times when people come to me for help, whether their need is money, health, courage, wisdom, faith, or companionship I find that I don't have what they need.

          At the same time it is also true that God does have what these people need, and, just as with the Apostles on that deserted hillside outside of Galilee two thousand years ago, I can go to Him in order to get what they need. I love the way the Holy Spirit phrased it in Hebrews 4.16: 'Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.'

          Someone around you has a great need. In your humanity, you won't find within yourself the wherewithal to meet that need even when you have the desire to do so. Beloved, allow me to urge you to go to the Lord and ask Him to furnish you with what they need. If they won't believe Philippians 4.19 for themselves then do it for them.

          I say again, the great lesson I draw from the story of the feeding of the five thousand it this: God can give you what the people around you need.

If you would like to listen to the audio version of this blog you may find it here on our church website. Just press 'launch media player' and choose We Preach Christ 42, 'The Feeding of the Five Thousand'.