Lord God, as we are gratefully gathered here today (and also gathered through the technology you have given us), we pray that your Holy Spirit would have full reign in all of us, guiding my words and our hearts. May we not leave today the same as when we came, but closer to You and Your will. In Christ’s name, by the power of the Holy Spirit we pray, amen.
For those of you who know me well, you’ll know I enjoy football. In particular I’m a Steelers and Nittany Lions fan. But I’ll watch any football game if it’s good. This past Thursday night there was an excellent football game on between the Falcons and Buccaneers. The game went into OT, with the Falcons winning on a walk-off TD. However, things could have easily gone the other way. During one pivotal play of the game, Buccaneers QB Baker Mayfield didn’t see a wide-open receiver, who could have scored and helped seal the game the other way. I’m sure it was painful for Bucs fans to watch their QB miss something important that was right in front of him. But as we come to this passage of scripture today, we find that Baker Mayfield was not the only one to miss something important right in front of him.
As we approach the halfway point of Mark’s Gospel account, we saw last week that Jesus was willing to extend His mission of preaching, healing, and driving out demons beyond His own people the Jews, even to the Gentiles. He had indeed cast a demon out of a little girl, and healed a man with blindness. As we open this chapter, we find Jesus with a large crowd of people, teaching them about the Kingdom of God. Since we have no indication that Jesus has left the Decapolis yet, we can assume that Jesus is still in Gentile territory. And Jesus must have been a captivating teacher for the people to stay with him for 3 days!
Yet, as Jesus is over on this side of Sea of Galilee, a familiar problem arises – one we have seen already in a similar situation on the other side of the lake. The people are hungry. As we have seen before, Jesus is the Good Shepherd of His people. And as the Good Shepherd, He has compassion on the people who have come to Him, Jew and Gentile alike, telling His disciples “If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way, because some of them have come a long distance.”
But then there is the disciple’s response “But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?” Are you kidding me? It’s not as if these disciples weren’t there back in Mark 6 when Jesus fed the 5000! And as scholars note, it’s not as if the feeding of the 5000 and the feeding of the 4000 were simply a retelling of the same event. These were two separate miracles took that place at two different locations at two different times. Jesus Himself would refer back to the previous feeding of the 5000 later in this passage. So the disciples had seen Jesus provide enough food to feed a crowd before. How could they then wonder where they would get enough food?
It makes us wonder how the disciples could be so clueless. And yet, if we’re honest – if I’m honest – aren’t there times where we clearly see God’s provision at work in our lives, but then doubt God and wonder how our need will be provided? I know in my own life, God has protected me from car accidents and has provided in times of financial crisis, among other things. And yet, I’m so often prone to say “But will God keep me safe THIS time?” And “How will thing work out THIS time?” I’m sure many of us have had similar struggles at one point or another. It’s important for us to remember how God has provided for us in the past, in order for us to trust that He will provide for us in the future.
At any rate, the disciples were pretty slow on the uptake. Yet Jesus didn’t harshly rebuke them. Instead, He invited them to be a part of the solution. Once again, as with the feeding of the 5000, Jesus asks the disciples to give him what they have – and let Him do the rest. And so, the disciples hand Jesus 7 loaves of bread and some fish. And in Jesus’ hands, this small amount of food in miraculously multiplied to feed a crowd of over 8,000 people, including women and children. Not only that, but there were 7 large basketfuls of food leftover, which scholars note was likely even more than the 12 smaller baskets of leftovers from the feeding of the 5000.
It's also worth noting how Jesus took and gave thanks to God for the food before
breaking it. This would have been a standard Jewish tradition. However, it is significant that Jesus does this before the Gentiles who were present in the crowd. It was a powerful opportunity to point the Gentiles to God, to illustrate God as the one who provides all that we need. It would perhaps be similar to saying grace and thanking God for food in the middle of a crowded restaurant or marketplace today. If Jesus was willing to do that, are we? Are we willing to point others around us to the God who provides everything that we need?
After this feeding of the 4000, Jesus and His disciples finally wrap up their time in
Gentile territory, and cross over the lake back to Jewish territory in Dalmanutha. But as Jesus arrived back in Jewish territory, we find some familiar faces waiting for Him – the Pharisees. We remember that Jesus had been in conflict with the Pharisees before departing for Tyre in Gentile territory. But evidently, the Pharisees had been waiting for Jesus while He was away, and as He returned to Galilee, they began to question and test Him. Most of all, they demanded a sign.
A sign? How could they ask for a sign? Jesus had been all over Galilee doing miracles. The sick had been healed and demons had been cast out. For goodness’ sake, Jesus had just come from doing a miracle! And yet the Pharisees were demanding a sign? The signs were all around them! But they either couldn’t see or refused to see what was right in front of them. They were simply trying to put Jesus to the test. Jesus was exasperated at these Pharisees, and rightly so. Jesus knew, as He had said in His parable in Luke 16, ‘If they do not listen to Moses and the Prophets, they will not be convinced even if someone rises from the dead.’” Jesus wouldn’t play their game. He wouldn’t put on a show for the Pharisees. And so, Jesus left them, and got into the boat with His disciples to cross over to another part of the lake, and do ministry elsewhere.
Again, it’s easy for us to look down on the Pharisees. Instead of believing Jesus and the evidence that was all around them, they wanted Jesus to act according to their wishes, and they wanted Jesus to “prove Himself” to them. But church, we need to be careful that we don’t make the same mistake. It’s not right for us to demand that Jesus act according to our own wishes and expectations. When we try to get Jesus to act in the way we want, we are not following Jesus and making Him our Lord. We are trying to get Him to submit to us, rather than us submitting to Him. We are called to follow Jesus, not to try and make Jesus follow us.
Finally, as Jesus and His disciples left Dalmanutha and sailed across the lake towards Bethsaida, their next ministry destination, Mark records a rather strange conversation that takes place between Jesus and His disciples in the boat. As they are sailing along, Jesus says to His disciples “Be careful. Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and Herod.”
What is Jesus talking about here? For us today, who live in a culture where yeast is not used as much at home, it may help us to remember exactly what yeast is. Yeast is a kind of healthy bacteria that is used in things such as bread, helping it to leaven and rise. It doesn’t take much yeast – if only a tiny amount gets into a piece of dough, the whole batch will become leavened and rise. While yeast was used in a healthy way for baking, scholars note that the way in which yeast could so easily “leaven” a whole batch of dough caused yeast to be associated with corruption and evil. This was why the Israelites were told to be very careful to keep yeast out of their houses while celebrating the Passover, to avoid accidently creating leavened rather than unleavened bread. Such a view of yeast as representing evil and corruption would continue in the New Testament, where Paul would use yeast as an illustration in warnings to both the Corinthian and Galatian churches.
So if yeast was seen as a symbol of corruption and evil, then what was the “yeast” of the Pharisees and Herod? For the Pharisees, the answer seems pretty obvious. Jesus had been challenging the Pharisees and their legalist misinterpretation of the law. We’ve already seen numerous times how the Pharisees had created man-made traditions and lost the true spirit behind God’s law. For Jesus, these legalist false teachings were wrong, and were corrupting Jewish society.
But what of Herod? What yeast was he spreading? Well, we remember from Mark 6 how Herod was willing to hear the law through John the Baptist. But He refused to actually change His life and obey what He heard. If the Pharisees were misinterpreting the law, Herod was ignoring the law and doing what was right in his own eyes. For Jesus, this also was wrong, and could easily corrupt Jewish society. We remember as Matthew 5 says, Jesus had not come to abolish, but fulfil the law. In short, Jesus wanted His disciples to be on their guard against both legalism and lawlessness. He wanted them to avoid misinterpreting the law AND throwing the law out entirely.
But what do the disciples get from Jesus’ statement? Once again, they were only looking at the physical situation. Just as they completely missed how Jesus had provided food for a great crowd in the past, they completely miss here as well. They though Jesus was talking about physical bread, since they had only brought along one loaf. Jesus was dismayed by their response. We might be surprised by how harsh Jesus is. But once again, it’s not as if Jesus was teaching something new here. So many times when Jesus had done a miracle, there was spiritual significance behind it. The feeding of the crowds showed Jesus was the Lord being a shepherd to His people. The calming of the storm showed Jesus as the God of creation. Jesus expected that His disciples would understand that He was talking about something deeper than just physical yeast. But the metaphor went right over their heads.
How could the disciples not understand this? How could they only be focused on the physical and temporal, and not see the spiritual truth behind this? We don’t know. Yet this we do know – though the disciples were so slow to understand what Jesus was trying to tell them, Jesus didn’t give up on them. He never sent them away saying “I’m done with you. You’re not getting it. I’m looking for some new disciples.” No, instead Jesus bore with His disciples, even in their struggles to understand. And thanks be to God, that Jesus is the same today. For us today, Jesus walks patiently with us, and doesn’t abandon us when we struggle to comprehend His teaching.
Does this mean that we shouldn’t make an effort to understand? Certainly not! As 2 Peter 3:18 says, we are called to grow in the grace and knowledge of Christ. And as Hebrew 5 says, we should seek to move on from elementary teachings about Christ to greater, more discerning, and more mature knowledge, from “milk to solid food.” We are called to grow in our faith. We are called to learn and understand scripture, and how we are meant to live it out. But even when that is a struggle, we know that Jesus will not abandon us, but will walk with us.
As always, there is a lot packed into these passages from Mark, and it leaves us with many questions. Will we proclaim God as the one who is the provider of all things – not just to fellow Christians, but to those “Gentiles” in our lives as well? Will we look beyond our temporal circumstances and trust God to provide for us? Will we submit to Jesus, rather than demanding that Jesus submit to us and our expectations? Will we seek to avoid both errors of legalism and lawlessness? And will we seek to understand what Jesus is trying to teach us? May the answer to all these things be yes, as we seek to follow Jesus.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, while we like to think otherwise, we confess that we often struggle – like the disciples – to truly understand what you are trying to teach us. We often miss what is right in front of us. We often look at things from our perspective rather than trying to see Your perspective. We often do what is right in our own eyes rather than seeking to understand what is right in Your eyes. But Lord, we give thanks that You are gracious to us, even when we struggle to understand and follow you. Please help us to understand You, we pray, so that we may follow You day by day. Guide us by Your Word, and let Your Holy Spirit descend upon us and give us illumination and sanctification, we pray.
In Your name,
Lord Jesus, amen.
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