Verses 1-38
Chapter 8
8:1-10 In those days,
when there was again a great crowd, and when they had nothing to eat,
Jesus called his disciples to him and said, "My heart is moved with pity
for the crowd, because they have stayed with me now for three days, and
they have nothing to eat. If I send them away to their homes still
fasting, they will faint on the road; and some of them have come from a
long distance." His disciples answered him, "Where could anyone get
bread to satisfy them in a desert place like this?" He asked them, "How
many loaves have you?" They said, "Seven." He ordered the crowd to sit
down on the ground. He took the seven loaves and gave thanks for them
and broke them, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people.
So they set them before the crowd, and they had a few small fishes. So
he blessed them and told them to set them before them too. So they ate
until they were completely satisfied. They gathered up what remained
over of the broken pieces--seven baskets. There were about four thousand
people there. So he sent them away, and immediately he embarked on the
boat with his disciples and came to the district of Dalmanutha.
There are two things closely intertwined in this incident.
(i) There is the compassion of Jesus. Over and over again we see
Jesus moved with compassion for men. The most amazing thing about him
is his sheer considerateness. Now considerateness is a virtue which
never forgets the details of life. Jesus looked at the crowd; they had
been with him for three days; and he remembered that they had a long
walk home. He whose task it was to bring the splendour and the majesty
of the truth and love of God to men might have had a mind above thinking
of what was going to happen to his congregation on their walk home. But
Jesus was not like that. Confront Jesus with a lost soul or a tired
body and his first instinct was to help.
It is all too true that the first instinct of too many people is
not to help. I met a man once at a conference and was discussing with
him the dangers of a certain stretch of road on the way to the town
where we were. "Yes," he said. "It's a right bad bit of road. I saw a
crash on it as I drove here today." "Did you stop and help?" I asked.
"Not me," he said, "I wasn't going to be held up by getting mixed up in a
thing like that." It is human to want to avoid the trouble of giving
help; it is divine to be moved with such compassion and pity that we are
compelled to help.
(ii) There is the challenge of Jesus. When Jesus had pity on the
crowd and wished to give them something to eat, the disciples
immediately pointed out the practical difficulty that they were in a
desert place and that there was nowhere within miles where any food
could be got. At once Jesus flashed the question back at them, "What
have you got wherewith you may help?" Compassion became a challenge. In
effect Jesus was saying, "Don't try to push the responsibility for
helping on to someone else. Don't say that you would help if you had
only something to give. Don't say that in these circumstances to help is
impossible. Take what you have and give it and see what happens."
One of the most joyous of all Jewish feasts is the Feast of
Purim. It falls on the 14th March and commemorates the deliverance of
which the Book of Esther tells. Above all it is a time of giving gifts;
and one of its regulations is that, no matter how poor a man is, he must
seek out someone poorer than himself and give him a gift. Jesus has no
time for the spirit which waits until all the circumstances are perfect
before it thinks of helping. Jesus says, "If you see someone in trouble,
help him with what you have. You never know what you may do."
There are two interesting things in the background of this story.
The first is this. This incident happened on the far side of the
Sea of Galilee in the district called the Decapolis. Why did this
tremendous 4,000 crowd assemble? There is no doubt that the healing of
the deaf man with the impediment in his speech would help to arouse
interest and to collect the crowd.
But one commentator has made a most interesting suggestion. In Mark 5:1-20,
we have already read how Jesus cured the Gerasene demoniac. That
incident also happened in the Decapolis. Its result was that they urged
Jesus to go away. But the cured demoniac wished to follow Jesus, and
Jesus sent him back to his own people to tell them what great things the
Lord had done for him. Is it just possible that part of this great
crowd was due to the missionary activity of the healed demoniac? Have we
got here a glimpse of what the witness of one man can do for Christ?
Were there people in the crowd that day who came to Christ and found
their souls because a man had told them what Christ had done for him?
John Bunyan tells how he owed his conversion to the fact that he heard
three or four old women talking, as they sat in the sun, "about a new
birth, the work of God in their hearts." They were talking of what God
had done for them. It may well be that there were many that day in that
crowd in Decapolis who were there because they had heard a man telling
what Jesus Christ had done for him.
The second thing is this. It is odd that the word for basket is
different in this story from the word used in the similar story in Mark 6:1-56 . In Mark 6:44, the word for basket is kophinos (Greek #2894),
which describes the basket in which the Jew carried his food, a basket
narrow at the top and wider at the foot, and rather like a water pot.
The word used here is sphuris (Greek #4711),
which describes a basket like a hamper, a frail is the technical term;
it was in that kind of basket that Paul was let down over the wall of
Damascus (Acts 9:25);
and it describes the basket which the Gentiles used. This incident
happened in the Decapolis, which was on the far side of the lake and had
a large Gentile population. Is it possible that we are to see in the
feeding of the multitude in Mark 6:1-56
the coming of the bread of God to the Jews, and in this incident the
coming of the bread of God to the Gentiles? When we put these two
stories together, is there somewhere at the back of them the suggestion
and the forecast and the symbol that Jesus came to satisfy the hunger of
Jew and Gentile alike, that in him, in truth, was the God who opens his
hand and satisfies the desire of every living thing?
8:11-13 The Pharisees
came out and began to ask him questions. They were looking for a sign
from heaven, and they were trying to test him. He sighed in his spirit
and said to them, "Why does this generation look for a sign? This is the
truth I tell you--no sign will be given to this generation." He sent
them away and he again embarked on the boat, and went away to the other
side.
The whole tendency of the age in which Jesus lived was to look
for God in the abnormal. It was believed that when the Messiah came the
most startling things would happen. Before we reach the end of this
chapter we shall examine more closely, and in detail, the kind of signs
which were expected. We may note just now that when false Messiahs
arose, as they frequently did, they lured the people to follow them by
promising astonishing signs. They would promise, for instance, to cleave
the waters of the Jordan in two and leave a pathway through it, or they
would promise, with a word, to make the city watts fall down.
It was a sign like that that the Pharisees were demanding. They
wished to see some shattering event blazing across the horizon, defying
the laws of nature and astonishing men. To Jesus such a demand was not
due to the desire to see the hand of God; it was due to the fact that
they were blind to his hand. To Jesus the whole world was full of signs;
the corn in the field, the leaven in the loaf, the scarlet anemones on
the hillside all spoke to him of God. He did not think that God had to
break in from outside the world; he knew that God was already in the
world for anyone who had eyes to see. The sign of the truly religious
man is not that he comes to Church to find God but that he finds God
everywhere, not that he makes a great deal of sacred places but that he
sanctifies common places.
That is what the poets knew and felt, and that is why they were poets. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote:
"Earth's crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God;
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries."
Thomas Edward Brown wrote:
"A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!
Rose plot,
Fringed pool,
Fern's grot--
The veriest school
Of peace; and yet the fool
Contends that God is not--
Not God! In gardens! when the eve is cool?
Nay, but I have a sign;
'Tis very sure God walks in mine."
And still another poet wrote:
"One asked a sign from God; and day by day
The sun arose in pearl; in scarlet set;
Each night the stars appeared in bright array;
Each morn the thirsty grass with dew was wet;
The corn failed not its harvest, nor the vine
And yet he saw no sign!"
From him who has eyes to see and a heart to understand, the
daily miracle of night and day and the daily splendour of all common
things are sign enough from God.
8:14-21 They had
forgotten to bring loaves, and they had only one loaf with them in the
boat. Jesus enjoined them, "Look to it! Beware of the evil influence of
the Pharisees and of the evil influence of Herod!" They kept discussing
the situation among themselves, and saying, "We have no loaves." Jesus
knew what they were saying. "Why," he said, "do you keep talking about
the fact that you have no loaves? Do you not yet see and understand? Is
your mind completely obtuse? Do you not see although you have eyes? Do
you not hear although you have ears? Do you not remember? When I broke
the five loaves and gave them to the five thousand how many basketsful
of broken pieces did you take up?" "Twelve," they said to him. "When I
broke the seven loaves among the four thousand how many basketsful of
broken pieces did you take up?" "Seven," they said to him. So he said to
them, "Do you still not understand?"
This passage sheds a very vivid light on the minds of the
disciples. They were crossing over to the other side of the Sea of
Galilee, and they had forgotten to bring bread with them. We will best
get the meaning of this passage if we connect it closely with what goes
before. Jesus was thinking of the demand of Pharisees for a sign and
also thinking of Herod's terrified reaction to himself. "Beware," he
said, to translate it literally, "of the leaven of the Pharisees and the
leaven of Herod." To the Jew leaven was the symbol of evil. Leaven was a
piece of dough kept over from a previous baking and fermented. To the
Jew fermentation was identified with putrefaction and therefore leaven
stood for evil.
Sometimes the Jew used the word leaven much as we would use the
term original sin, or the natural evil of human nature. Rabbi Alexander
said, "It is revealed before thee that our will is to do thy will. And
what hinders? The leaven that is in the dough and slavery to the
kingdoms of the world. May it be thy will to deliver us from their
hand." it was, so to speak, the taint of human nature, original sin, the
corrupting leaven which kept man from doing the will of God. So when
Jesus said this, he was saying, "Be on your guard against the evil
influence of the Pharisees and of Herod. Don't you go the same way that
the Pharisees and Herod have already gone."
What is the point? What possible connection is there between the
Pharisees and Herod? The Pharisees had just asked for a sign. For a
Jew--we shall see this more fully shortly--nothing was easier than to
think of the Messiah in terms of wonders and conquests and miraculous
happenings and nationalistic triumphs and political supremacy. Herod had
tried to build up happiness through the gaining of power and wealth and
influence and prestige. In one sense, for both the Pharisees and Herod
the Kingdom of God was an earthly Kingdom; it was based on earthly power
and greatness, and on the victories that force could win. It was as if
Jesus by this detached hint was already preparing the disciples for
something very soon to come. It was as if he was saying, "Maybe soon it
will dawn on you that I am God's Anointed One, the Messiah. When that
thought does come don't think in terms of earthly power and glory as the
Pharisees and Herod do." Of the true meaning at the moment he said
nothing. That grim revelation was still to come.
In point of fact this hint of Jesus passed clean over the
disciples' heads. They could think of nothing but the fact that they had
forgotten to bring loaves, and that, unless something happened, they
would go hungry. Jesus saw their preoccupation with bread. It may well
be that he asked his questions, not with anger, but with a smile, like
one who tries to lead a slow child to see a self-evident truth. He
reminded them that twice he had satisfied the hunger of huge crowds with
food enough and to spare. It is as if he said, "Why all the worry?
Don't you remember what happened before? Hasn't experience taught you
that you don't need to worry about things like that if you are with me?"
The odd fact is that we learn only half the lessons of
experience. Too often experience fills us with pessimism, teaches us
what we cannot do, teaches us to view life with a kind of resigned
hopelessness. But there are other experiences. Sorrow came--and we came
through it still erect. Temptation came--and somehow we did not fall.
Illness took us--and somehow we recovered. A problem seemed
insoluble--and somehow it was solved. We were at our wits' end--and
somehow we went on. We reached the breaking point--and somehow we did
not break. We, too, are blind. If we would only read the lessons of
experience aright, it would teach us not the pessimism of the things
that cannot be, but the hope which stands amazed that God has brought us
thus far in safety and in certainty and the confidence that God can
bring us through anything that may happen.
8:22-26 They came to
Bethsaida; and they brought a blind man to him and asked him to touch
him. He took the blind man's hand and took him outside the village. He
spat into his eyes and laid his hands on him, and asked him, "Do you see
anything?" He looked up and said, "I see men, but I see them walking
looking like trees." Again he laid his hands on his eyes. He gazed
intently, and his sight was restored and he saw everything clearly. He
sent him away to his home. "Do not," he said, "even enter into the
village."
Blindness was, and still is, one of the great curses of the
East. It was caused partly by ophthalmia and partly by the pitiless
glare of the sun. It was greatly aggravated by the fact that people knew
nothing of hygiene and of cleanliness. It was common to see a person
with matter-encrusted eyes on which the flies persistently settled.
Naturally this carried the infection far and wide, and blindness was a
scourge.
Only Mark tells us this story, and yet there are certain extremely interesting things in it.
(i) Again we see the unique considerateness of Jesus. He took
the blind man out of the crowd and out of the village that he might be
alone with him. Why? Think about it. This man was blind and apparently
had been born blind. If he had been suddenly given back his sight amidst
a crowd, there would have flashed upon his newly-seeing eyes hundreds
of people and things, and dazzling colours, so that he would have been
completely bewildered. Jesus knew it would be far better if he could be
taken to a place where the thrill of seeing would break less suddenly
upon him.
Every great doctor and every great teacher has one outstanding
characteristic. The great doctor is able to enter into the very mind and
heart of his patient; he understands his fears and his hopes; he
literally sympathises--suffers--with him. The great teacher enters into
the very mind of his scholar. He sees his problems, his difficulties,
his stumbling-blocks. That is why Jesus was so supremely great. He could
enter into the mind and heart of the people whom he sought to help. He
had the gift of considerateness, because he could think with their
thoughts and feel with their feelings. God grant to us this Christlike
gift.
(ii) Jesus used methods that the man could understand. The
ancient world believed in the healing power of spittle. The belief is
not so strange when we remember that it is a first instinct to put a cut
or burned finger into our mouth to ease the pain. Of course the blind
man knew of this and Jesus used a method of curing him which he could
understand. Jesus was wise. He did not begin with words and methods
which were far above the heads of simple folk. He spoke to them and
acted on them in a way that simple minds could grasp and understand.
There have been times when unintelligibility has been accounted a virtue
and a sign of greatness. Jesus had the still greater greatness--the
greatness which a simple mind could grasp.
(iii) In one thing this miracle is unique--it is the only
miracle which can be said to have happened gradually. Usually Jesus'
miracles happened suddenly and completely. In this miracle the blind
man's sight came back in stages.
There is symbolic truth here. No man sees all God's truth all at
once. One of the dangers of a certain type of evangelism is that it
encourages the idea that when a man has taken his decision for Christ he
is a full-grown Christian. One of the dangers of Church membership is
that it can be presented in such a way as to imply that when a person
becomes a pledged member of the Church he has come to the end of the
road. So far from that being the case the decision and the pledge of
membership are the beginning of the road. They are the discovery of the
riches of Christ which are inexhaustible, and if a man lived a hundred,
or a thousand, or a million years, he would still have to go on growing
in grace, and learning more and more about the infinite wonder and
beauty of Jesus Christ. F. W. H. Myers, in his poem Saint Paul, makes
Paul say:
"Let no man think that sudden in a minute
All is accomplished and the work is done--
Though with thine earliest dawn thou shouldst begin it
Scarce were it ended in thy setting sun."
It is gloriously true that sudden conversion is a gracious
possibility, but it is equally true that every day a man should be
re-converted. With all God's grace and glory before him he can go on
learning for a life time and still need eternity to know as he is known.
8:27-30 Jesus and his
disciples went away to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. On the road he
asked his disciples a question. "Who," he said to them, "do men say
that I am?" They said to him, "Some say, John the Baptizer; others say,
Elijah; others, one of the prophets." He asked them, "You--who do you
say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are God's Anointed One." And he
insisted that they should tell no man about him.
Caesarea Philippi was outside Galilee altogether. It was not in
the territory of Herod, but in the territory of Philip. It was a town
with an amazing history. In the oldest days it was called Balinas, for
it had once been a great centre of the worship of Baal. To this day it
is called Banias, which is a form of Panias. It is so called because up
on the hillside there was a cavern which was said to be the birthplace
of the Greek God, Pan, the god of nature. From a cave in the hillside
gushed forth a stream which was held to be the source of the River
Jordan. Farther up on the hillside rose a gleaming temple of white
marble which Philip had built to the godhead of Caesar, the Roman
Emperor, the ruler of the world, who was regarded as a god.
It is an amazing thing that it was here of all places that Peter
saw in a homeless Galilaean carpenter the Son of God. The ancient
religion of Palestine was in the air, and the memories of Baal clustered
around. The gods of classical Greece brooded over the place, and no
doubt men heard the pipes of Pan and caught a glimpse of the woodland
nymphs. The Jordan would bring back to memory episode after episode in
the history of Israel and the conquest of the land. And clear in the
eastern sun gleamed and glinted the marble of the holy place which
reminded all men that Caesar was a god. There, of all places, as it were
against the background of all religions and all history, Peter
discovered that a wandering teacher from Nazareth, who was heading for a
cross, was the Son of God. There is hardly anything in all the gospel
story which shows the sheer force of the personality of Jesus as does
this incident. It comes in the very middle of Mark's gospel and it does
so designedly. for it comes at the gospel's peak moment. In one way at
least this moment was the crisis of Jesus' life. Whatever his disciples
might be thinking, he knew for certain that ahead lay an inescapable
cross. Things could not go on much longer. The opposition was gathering
itself to strike. The problem confronting Jesus was this--had he had any
effect at all? Had he achieved anything? Or, to put it another way, had
anyone discovered who he really was? If he had lived and taught and
moved amongst men and no one had glimpsed God in him, then all his work
had gone for nothing. There was only one way he could leave a message
with men and that was to write it on some man's heart.
So, in this moment, Jesus put all things to the test. He asked
his disciples what men were saying about him, and he heard from them the
popular rumours and reports. Then came a breathless silence and he put
the question which meant so much, "Who do you say that I am?" And
suddenly Peter realized what he had always known deep down in his heart.
This was the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of God. And
with that answer Jesus knew that he had not failed.
Now we come to a question which has been half-put and
half-answered more than once before, but which now must be answered in
detail or the whole gospel story is not fully intelligible. No sooner
had Peter made this discovery than Jesus told him he must tell no man of
it. Why? Because, first and foremost, Jesus had to teach Peter and the
others what Messiahship really meant. To understand the task that Jesus
had in hand and to understand the real meaning of this necessity, we
have to enquire at some length what the Messianic ideas of the time of
Jesus really were.
The Jewish Ideas Of The Messiah
Throughout all their existence the Jews never forgot that
they were in a very special sense God's chosen people. Because of that,
they naturally looked to a very special place in the world. In the early
days they looked forward to achieving that position by what we might
call natural means. They always regarded the greatest days in their
history as the days of David; and they dreamed of a day when there would
arise another king of David's line, a king who would make them great in
righteousness and in power. (Isaiah 9:7; Isaiah 11:1; Jeremiah 22:4; Jeremiah 23:5; Jeremiah 30:9.)
But as time went on it came to be pitilessly clear that
this dreamed-of greatness would never be achieved by natural means. The
ten tribes were carried off to Assyria and lost forever. The
Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and carried the Jews away captive. Then
came the Persians as their masters; then the Greeks; then the Romans. So
far from knowing anything like dominion, for centuries the Jews never
even knew what it was to be completely free and independent.
So another line of thought grew up. It is true that the
idea of a great king of David's line never entirely vanished and was
always intertwined in some way with their thought; but more and more
they began to dream of a day when God would intervene in history and
achieve by supernatural means that which natural means could never
achieve. They looked for divine power to do what human power was
helpless to do.
In between the Testaments were written a whole flood of
books which were dreams and forecasts of this new age and the
intervention of God. As a class they are called Apocalypses. The word
literally means unveilings. These books were meant to be unveilings of
the future. It is to them that we must turn to find out what the Jews
believed in the time of Jesus about the Messiah and the work of the
Messiah and the new age. It is against their dreams that we must set the
dream of Jesus.
In these books certain basic ideas occur. We follow
here the classification of these ideas given by Schurer, who wrote A
History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ.
(i) Before the Messiah came there would be a time of
terrible tribulation. There would be a Messianic travail. It would be
the birth-pangs of a new age. Every conceivable terror would burst upon
the world; every standard of honour and decency would be torn down; the
world would become a physical and moral chaos.
"And honour shall be turned into shame,
And strength humiliated into contempt,
And probity destroyed,
And beauty shall become ugliness...
And envy shall rise in those who had not thought
aught of themselves,
And passion shall seize him that is peaceful,
And many shall be stirred up in anger to injure many,
And they shall rouse up armies in order to shed blood,
And in the end they shall perish together with them."
(2Baruch 27.)
There would be, "quakings of places, tumult of
peoples, schemings of nations, confusion of leaders, disquietude of
princes." (4Ezra 9:3.)
"From heaven shall fall fiery words down to the earth. Lights
shall come, bright and great, flashing into the midst of men; and
earth, the universal mother, shall shake in these days at the hand
of the Eternal. And the fishes of the sea and the beasts of the
earth and the countless tribes of flying things and all the souls
of men and every sea shall shudder at the presence of the Eternal
and there shall be panic. And the towering mountain peaks and the
hills of the giants he shall rend, and the murky abyss shall be
visible to all. And the high ravines in the lofty mountains shall
be full of dead bodies and rocks shall flow with blood and each
torrent shall flood the plain.... And God shall judge all with war
and sword, and there shall be brimstone from heaven, yea stones
and rain and hail incessant and grievous. And death shall be upon
the four-footed beasts.... Yea the land itself shall drink of the
blood of the perishing and beasts shall eat their fill of flesh."
(The Sibylline Oracles 3:363ff.)
The Mishnah enumerates as signs that the coming of the Messiah is near,
"That arrogance increases, ambition shoots up, that the vine
yields fruit yet wine is dear. The government turns to heresy.
There is no instruction. the synagogue is devoted to lewdness.
Galilee is destroyed, Gablan laid waste. The inhabitants of a
district go from city to city without finding compassion. The
wisdom of the learned is hated, the godly despised, truth is
absent. Boys insult old men, old men stand in the presence of
children. The son depreciates the father, the daughter rebels
against the mother, the daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law.
A man's enemies are his house-fellows."
The time which preceded the coming of the Messiah was
to be a time when the world was torn in pieces and every bond relaxed.
The physical and the moral order would collapse.
(ii) Into this chaos there would come Elijah as the
forerunner and herald of the Messiah. He was to heal the breaches and
bring order into the chaos to prepare the way for the Messiah. in
particular he was to mend disputes. In fact the Jewish oral law laid it
down that money and property whose ownership was disputed, or anything
found whose owner was unknown, must wait "till Elijah comes." When
Elijah came the Messiah would not be far behind.
(iii) Then there would enter the Messiah. The word
Messiah and the word Christ mean the same thing. Messiah is the Hebrew
and Christ is the Greek for the Anointed One. A king was made king by
anointing and the Messiah was God's Anointed King. It is important to
remember that Christ is not a name; it is a title. Sometimes the Messiah
was thought of as a king of David's line, but more often he was thought
of as a great, super-human figure crashing into history to remake the
world and in the end to vindicate God's people.
(iv) The nations would ally themselves and gather themselves together against the champion of God.
"The kings of the nations shall throw themselves against this
land bringing retribution on themselves. They shall seek to
ravage the shrine of the mighty God and of the noblest men
whensoever they come to the land. In a ring round the city the
accursed kings shall place each one his throne with his infidel
people by him. And then with a mighty voice God shall speak unto
all the undisciplined, empty-minded people and judgment shall
come upon them from the mighty God, and all shall perish at the
hand of the Eternal." (Sibylline Oracles 3: 363-372.)
"It shall be that when all the nations hear his (the Messiah's)
voice, every man shall leave his own land and the warfare they
have one against the other, and an innumerable multitude shall be
gathered together desiring to fight against him."
(4Ezra 13:33-35.)
(v) The result would be the total destruction of these
hostile powers. Philo said that the Messiah would "take the field and
make war and destroy great and populous nations."
"He shall reprove them for their ungodliness,
Rebuke them for their unrighteousness,
Reproach them to their faces with their treacheries--
And when he has rebuked them he shall destroy them."
(4Ezra 12:32-33.)
"And it shall come to pass in those days that none shall be saved,
Either by gold or by silver,
And none shall be able to escape.
And there shall be no iron for war,
Nor shall one clothe oneself with a breastplate.
Bronze shall be of no service,
And tin shall not be esteemed,
And lead shall not be desired.
And all things shall be destroyed from the surface of the earth."
(Enoch5 2:7-9.)
The Messiah will be the most destructive conqueror in history, smashing his enemies into utter extinction.
(vi) There would follow the renovation of Jerusalem.
Sometimes this was thought of as the purification of the existing city.
More often it was thought of as the coming down of the new Jerusalem
from heaven. The old house was to be folded up and carried away, and in
the new one, "All the pillars were new and the ornaments larger than
those of the first." (Enoch 90:28-29.)
(vii) The Jews who were dispersed all over the world
would be gathered into the city of the new Jerusalem. To this day the
Jewish daily prayer includes the petition, "Lift up a banner to gather
our dispersed and assemble us from the four end?, of the earth." The
eleventh of the Psalms of Solomon has a noble picture of that return.
"Blow ye in Zion on the trumpet to summon the saints,
Cause ye to be heard in Jerusalem the voice of him that
bringeth good tidings;
For God hath had pity on Israel in visiting them.
Stand on the height, O Jerusalem, and behold thy children,
From the East and the West, gathered together by the Lord,
From the North they come in the gladness of their God,
From the isles afar off God hath gathered them.
High mountains hath he abased into a plain for them;
The hills fled at their entrance.
The woods gave them shelter as they passed by;
Every sweet-smelling tree God caused to spring up for them,
That Israel might pass by in the visitation of the glory of
their God.
Put on, O Jerusalem, thy glorious garments;
Make ready thy holy robe;
For God hath spoken good for Israel forever and ever,
Let the Lord do what he hath spoken concerning Israel and
Jerusalem;
Let the Lord raise up Israel by his glorious name.
The mercy of the Lord be upon Israel forever and ever."
It can easily be seen how Jewish this new world was to be. The nationalistic element is dominant all the time.
(viii) Palestine would be the centre of the world and
the rest of the world subject to it. All the nations would be subdued.
Sometimes it was thought of as a peaceful subjugation.
"And all the isles and the cities shall say, How doth the
Eternal love those men! For all things work in sympathy with them
and help them.... Come let us all fall upon the earth and
supplicate the eternal King, the mighty, everlasting God. Let us
make procession to his Temple, for he is the sole Potentate."
(Sibylline Oracles 3:690ff.)
More often the fate of the Gentiles was utter destruction at which Israel would exult and rejoice.
"And he will appear to punish the Gentiles,
And he will destroy all their idols.
Then, thou, O Israel, shalt be happy.
And thou shalt mount upon the necks and the wings of the eagle
(i.e., Rome, the eagle, is to be destroyed)
And they shall be ended and God will exalt thee.
"And thou shalt look from on high
And see thine enemies in Gehenna,
And thou shalt recognize them and rejoice."
(Assumption of Moses 10:8-10.)
It was a grim picture. Israel would rejoice to see her enemies
broken and in hell. Even the dead Israelites were to be raised up to
share in the new world.
(ix) Finally, there would come the new age of peace and goodness which would last forever.
These are the Messianic ideas which were in the minds of men
when Jesus came. They were violent, nationalistic, destructive,
vengeful. True, they ended in the perfect reign of God, but they came to
it through a bath of blood and a career of conquest. Think of Jesus set
against a background like that. No wonder he had to re-educate his
disciples in the meaning of Messiahship; and no wonder they crucified
him in the end as a heretic. There was no room for a cross and there was
little room for suffering love in a picture like that.
8:31-33 He began to
teach them that it was necessary that the Son of Man should suffer many
things, and should be rejected by the elders and chief priests and
scribes, and be killed and rise again after three days. He kept telling
them this plainly. And Peter caught him and began to rebuke him. He
turned round; he looked at his disciples; and he rebuked Peter. "Get
behind me, Satan," he said. "These are not God's thoughts but men's."
It is against the background of what we have just seen of the
common conception of the Messiah that we must read this. When Jesus
connected Messiahship with suffering and death, he was making statements
that were to the disciples both incredible and incomprehensible. All
their lives they had thought of the Messiah in terms of irresistible
conquest, and they were now being presented with an idea which staggered
them. That is why Peter so violently protested. To him the whole thing
was impossible.
Why did Jesus so sternly rebuke Peter? Because he was putting
into words the very temptations which were assailing Jesus. Jesus did
not want to die. He knew that he had powers which he could use for
conquest. At this moment he was refighting the battle of temptations in
the wilderness. This was the devil tempting him again to fall down and
worship him, to take his way instead of God's way.
It is a strange thing, and sometimes a terrible thing, that the
tempter sometimes speaks to us in the voice of a well-meaning friend. We
may have decided on a course which is the right course but which will
inevitably bring trouble, loss, unpopularity, sacrifice. And some
well-meaning friend tries with the best intentions in the world, to stop
us. I knew a man who decided to take a course which would almost
inevitably land him in trouble. A friend came to him and tried to
dissuade him. "Remember," said the friend, "that you have a wife and a
family. You can't do this." It is quite possible for someone to love us
so much that he wants us to avoid trouble and to play safe.
In Gareth and Lynette Tennyson tells the story of the youngest
son of Lot and Bellicent. He has seen the vision and he wishes to become
one of Arthur's knights. Bellicent, his mother, does not wish to let
him go.
"Hast thou no pity on my loneliness?" she asks. His father, Lot,
is old and "lies like a log and all but smouldered out." Both his
brothers are already at Arthur's court. "Stay, my best son," she says,
"ye are yet more boy than man." If he stays she will arrange the hunt to
keep him happy in the chase and find some princess to be his bride. The
boy has had the vision, and, one by one the mother, who loves him
dearly, produces reasons, excellent reasons, why he should stay at home.
Someone who loves him speaks with the tempter's voice, all unaware that
she is doing it. But Gareth answers,
"O Mother,
How can ye keep me tethered to you--Shame.
Man am I grown, a man's work must I do.
Follow the deer? Follow the Christ, the King,
Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King--
Else, wherefore born?"
So Gareth went when the vision called.
The tempter can make no more terrible attack than in the voice
of those who love us and who think they seek only our good. That is what
happened to Jesus that day; that is why he answered so sternly. Not
even the pleading voice of love must silence for us the imperious voice
of God.
8:34-35 He called the
crowd to him, together with his disciples, and said to them, "If anyone
wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and let him take up his
cross, and let him follow me."
This part of Mark's gospel is so near the heart and centre of
the Christian faith that we must take it almost sentence by sentence. If
each day a man could go out with only one of these sentences locked in
his heart and dominating his life, it would be far more than enough to
be going on with.
Two things stand out here even at first sight.
(i) There is the almost startling honesty of Jesus. No one could
ever say that he was induced to follow Jesus by false pretences. Jesus
never tried to bribe men by the offer of an easy way. He did not offer
men peace; he offered them glory. To tell a man he must be ready to take
up a cross was to tell him he must be ready to be regarded as a
criminal and to die.
The honesty of great leaders has always been one of their
characteristics. In the days of the Second World War, when Sir Winston
Churchill took over the leadership of the country, all that he offered
men was "blood, toil, tears and sweat." Garibaldi, the great Italian
patriot, appealed for recruits in these terms: "I offer neither pay, nor
quarters, nor provisions; I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches,
battles and death. Let him who loves his country in his heart, and not
with his lips only, follow me." "Soldiers, all our efforts against
superior forces have been unavailing. I have nothing to offer you but
hunger and thirst, hardship and death; but I call on all who love their
country to join with me."
Jesus never sought to lure men to him by the offer of an easy
way; he sought to challenge them, to waken the sleeping chivalry in
their souls, by the offer of a way than which none could be higher and
harder. He came not to make life easy but to make men great.
(ii) There is the fact that Jesus never called on men to do or
face anything which he was not prepared to do and face himself. That
indeed is the characteristic of the leader whom men will follow.
When Alexander the Great set out in pursuit of Darius, he made
one of the wonder marches of history. In eleven days he marched his men
thirty-three hundred furlongs. They were very nearly giving up, mainly
because of thirst, for there was no water. Plutarch relates the story.
"While they were in this distress, it happened that some Macedonians who
had fetched water in skins upon their mules from a river they had found
out came about noon to the place where Alexander was, and seeing him
almost choked with thirst, presently fined an helmet and offered it to
him. He asked them to whom they were carrying the water; they told him
to their children, adding, that if his life were but saved, it was no
matter for them, they should be well enough able to repair that loss,
though they all perished. Then he took the helmet into his hands, and
looking round about, when he saw all those who were near him stretching
their heads out and looking earnestly after the drink, he returned it
again with thanks without tasting a drop of it. 'For,' he said, 'if I
alone should drink, the rest would be out of heart.' The soldiers no
sooner took notice of his temperance and magnanimity upon this occasion,
but they, one and all, cried out to him to lead them forward boldly,
and began whipping on their horses. For while they had such a king they
said they defied both weariness and thirst, and looked upon themselves
to be little less than immortal." It was easy to follow a leader who
never demanded from his men what he would not endure himself.
There was a famous Roman general, Quintus Fabius Cunctator. He
was discussing with his staff how to take a difficult position. Someone
suggested a certain course of action. "It will only cost the lives of a
few men," this counsellor said. Fabius looked at him. "Are you," he
said, "willing to be one of the few?"
Jesus was not the kind of leader who sat remote and played with
the lives of men like expendable pawns. What he demanded that they
should face, he, too, was ready to face. Jesus had a right to call on us
to take up a cross, for he himself first bore one.
(iii) Jesus said of the man who would be his disciple, "Let him
deny himself." We will understand the meaning of this demand best if we
take it very simply and literally. "Let him say no to himself." If a man
will follow Jesus Christ he must ever say no to himself and yes to
Christ. He must say no to his own natural love of ease and comfort. He
must say no to every course of action based on self-seeking and
self-will. He must say no to the instincts and the desires which prompt
him to touch and taste and handle the forbidden things. He must
unhesitatingly say yes to the voice and the command of Jesus Christ. He
must be able to say with Paul that it is no longer he who lives but
Christ who lives in him. He lives no longer to follow his own will, but
to follow the will of Christ, and in that service he finds his perfect
freedom.
8:36 Whoever seeks to
save his life shall lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and
for the sake of the gospel shall save it.
There are certain things which are lost by being kept and saved
by being used. Any talent that a man possesses is like that. If he uses
it, it will develop into something still greater. If he refuses to use
it he will in the end lose it. Supremely so, life is like that.
History is full of examples of men, who by throwing away their
lives, gained life eternal. Late in the fourth century, there was in the
East a monk called Telemachus. He had determined to leave the world and
to live all alone in prayer and meditation and fasting, and so to save
his soul. In his lonely life he sought nothing but contact with God. But
somehow he felt there was something wrong. One day as he rose from his
knees, it suddenly dawned upon him that his life was based, not on a
self-less, but on a selfish love of God. It came to him that if he was
to serve God he must serve men, that the desert was no place for a
Christian to live, that the cities were full of sin and therefore full
of need.
He determined to bid farewell to the desert and set out to the
greatest city in the world, Rome, at the other side of the world. He
begged his way across lands and seas. By this time Rome was officially
Christian. He arrived at a time when Stilicho, the Roman general, had
gained a mighty victory over the Goths. To Stilicho was granted a Roman
triumph. There was this difference from the old days--now it was to the
Christian churches the crowds poured and not to the heathen temples.
There were the processions and the celebrations and Stilicho rode in
triumph through the streets, with the young Emperor Honorius by his
side.
But one thing had lingered on into Christian Rome. There was
still the arena; there were still the gladiatorial games. Nowadays
Christians were no longer thrown to the lions; but still those captured
in war had to fight and kill each other to make a Roman holiday for the
populace. Still men roared with blood lust as the gladiators fought.
Telemachus found his way to the arena. There were
eighty-thousand people there. The chariot races were ending; and there
was a tenseness in the crowd as the gladiators prepared to fight. Into
the arena they came with their greeting. "Hail, Caesar! We who are about
to die salute you!" The fight was on and Telemachus was appalled. Men
for whom Christ had died were killing each other to amuse an allegedly
Christian populace. He leapt the barrier. He was in between the
gladiators, and for a moment they stopped. "Let the games go on," roared
the crowd. They pushed the old man aside; he was still in his hermit's
robes. Again he carne between them. The crowd began to hurl stones at
him; they urged the gladiators to kill him and get him out of the way.
The commander of the games gave an order; a gladiator's sword rose and
flashed; and Telemachus lay dead.
Suddenly the crowd were silent. They were suddenly shocked that a
holy man should have been killed in such a way. Suddenly there was a
mass realization of what this killing really was. The games ended
abruptly that day--and they never began again. Telemachus, by dying, had
ended them. As Gibbon said of him, "His death was more useful to
mankind than his life." By losing his life he had done more than ever he
could have done by husbanding it out in lonely devotion in the desert.
God gave us life to spend and not to keep. If we live carefully,
always thinking first of our own profit, ease, comfort, security, if
our sole aim is to make life as long and as trouble-free as possible, if
we will make no effort except for ourselves, we are losing life all the
time. But if we spend life for others, if we forget health and time and
wealth and comfort in our desire to do something for Jesus and for the
men for whom Jesus died, we are winning life all the time.
What would have happened to the world if doctors and scientists
and inventors had not been prepared to risk experiments often on their
own bodies? What would have happened to life if everyone had wished for
nothing but to remain comfortably at home, and there had been no such
person as an explorer or a pioneer? What would happen if every mother
refused to take the risk of bearing a child? What would happen if all
men spent all they had upon themselves?
The very essence of life is in risking life and spending life,
not in saving it and hoarding it. True, it is the way of weariness, of
exhaustion, of giving to the uttermost--but it is better any day to burn
out than to rust out, for that is the way to happiness and the way to
God.
8:37 What profit is it
for a man to gain the whole world and to forfeit his life? For what is a
man to give in exchange for his life?
It is quite possible for a man in one sense to make a huge
success of life and in another sense to be living a life that is not
worth living. The real question Jesus asks is, "Where do you put your
values in life?" It is possible for a man to put his values on the wrong
things and to discover it too late.
(i) A man may sacrifice honour for profit. He may desire
material things and not be over-particular how he gets them. The world
is full of temptations towards profitable dishonesty. George Macdonald
tells in one of his books about a draper who always used his thumb to
make the measure just a little short. "He took from his soul," he said,
"and put it in his siller-bag." The real question, the question which
sooner or later will have to be answered is, "How does life's balance
sheet look in the sight of God?" God is the auditor whom, in the end,
all men must face.
(ii) A man may sacrifice principle for popularity. It may happen
that the easy-going, agreeable, pliable man will save himself a lot of
trouble. It may happen that the man inflexibly devoted to principle will
find himself disliked. Shakespeare paints the picture of Wolsey, the
great Cardinal, who served Henry the Eighth with all the ingenuity and
wit he possessed.
"Had I but serv'd my God with half the zeal
I serv'd my king, he would not in mine age
Have left me naked to mine enemies."
The real question, the question every man in the end will have
to face, is not, "What did men think of this?" but, "What does God think
of it?" It is not the verdict of public opinion but the verdict of God
that settles destiny.
(iii) A man may sacrifice the lasting things for the cheap
things. It is always easier to have a cheap success. An author may
sacrifice that which would be really great for the cheap success of a
moment. A musician may produce ephemeral trifles when he might be
producing something real and lasting. A man may choose a job which will
bring him more money and more comfort, and turn his back on one where he
could render more service to his fellow-men. A man may spend his life
in little things and let the big things go. A woman may prefer a life of
pleasure and of so-called freedom to the service of her home and the
upbringing of a family.
But life has a way of revealing the true values and condemning the false as the years pass on. A cheap thing never lasts.
(iv) We may sum it all up by saying that a man may sacrifice
eternity for the moment. We would be saved from all kinds of mistakes if
we always looked at things in the light of eternity. Many a thing is
pleasant for the moment but ruinous in the long run. The test of
eternity, the test of seeking to see the thing as God sees it, is the
realest test of all.
The man who sees things as God sees them will never spend his life on the things that lose his soul.
8:38 "Whoever is
ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation,
of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in the glory
of his Father with the holy angels." And he used to say to them, "This
is the truth I tell you--there are some of those who are standing here
who will not taste of death until they shall see the Kingdom of God
coming with power."
One thing leaps out from this passage--the confidence of Jesus.
He has just been speaking of his death; he has no doubt that the Cross
stands ahead of him; but nonetheless he is absolutely sure that in the
end there will be triumph.
The first part of the passage states a simple truth. When the
King comes into his Kingdom he will be loyal to those who have been
loyal to him. No man can expect to dodge all the trouble of some great
undertaking and then reap all the benefit of it. No man can expect to
refuse service in some campaign and then share in the decorations when
it is brought to a successful conclusion. Jesus is saying, "In a
difficult and hostile world Christianity is up against it these days. If
a man is ashamed under such conditions to show that he is a Christian,
if he is afraid to show what side he is on, he cannot expect to gain a
place of honour when the Kingdom comes."
The last part of this passage has caused much serious thought.
Jesus says that many who are standing there will not die until they see
the Kingdom coming with power. What worries some people is that they
take this as a reference to the Second Coming; but if it is, Jesus was
mistaken, because he did not return in power and glory in the lifetime
of those who were there.
But this is not a reference to the Second Coming at all.
Consider the situation. At the moment Jesus had only once been outside
Palestine, and on that occasion he was just over the border in Tyre and
Sidon. Only a very few men in a very small country had ever heard of
him. Palestine was only about 120 miles from north to south and about 40
miles from east to west; her total population was 4,000,000 or thereby.
To speak in terms of world conquest when he had scarcely ever been
outside such a small country was strange. To make matters worse, even in
that small country, he had so provoked the enmity of the orthodox
leaders and of those in whose hands lay power, that it was quite certain
that he could hope for nothing other than death as a heretic and an
outlaw. In face of a situation like that there must have been many who
felt despairingly that Christianity had no possible future, that in a
short time it would be wiped out completely and eliminated from the
world. Humanly speaking, these pessimists were right.
Now consider what did happen. Scarcely more than thirty years
later, Christianity had swept through Asia Minor; Antioch had become a
great Christian church. It had penetrated to Egypt; the Christians were
strong in Alexandria. It had crossed the sea and come to Rome and swept
through Greece. Christianity had spread like an unstoppable tide
throughout the world. It was astonishingly true that in the lifetime of
many there, against all expectations, Christianity had come with power.
So far from being mistaken, Jesus was absolutely right.
The amazing thing is that Jesus never knew despair. In face of
the dullness of the minds of men, in face of the opposition, in face of
crucifixion and of death, he never doubted his final triumph--because he
never doubted God. He was always certain that what is impossible with
man is completely possible with him.
-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)