New Thoughts (01/04/08-1/13/08)
Before I begin looking at this passage more directly, I want to think very briefly about a passage from much earlier in John’s account. For some reason, seeing it referenced amongst the parallel verses, it really caught my eye. Back there near the very beginning of the ministry of Jesus, we hear that He was invited to the wedding, along with His disciples (Jn 2:2). What is it about this that causes a touch of excitement? It is not that there is anything new or shocking revealed to me as I read it now. It is not because of some profound connection with the passage at hand. In fact, I would guess what I see in that today is much the same as what the Church has found in it through the ages.
There is, in the Church, a long-standing motif of the wedding banquet which will mark the consummation of our hopes. We have the picture of Jesus as bridegroom and the Church as bride, with the Father pouring out the bounties of heaven to celebrate the day of His Son’s wedding. I suppose we ought to view that wedding with eyes more attuned to the age and the culture from which the imagery comes. With that, we must recognize that this has been an arranged marriage. The Father has chosen His Son’s bride. Now, that’s powerful in itself!
Given that motif, it is certainly not terribly shocking that we should find the opening miracle of the Son’s earthly mission connected with a wedding. Consider, for that matter, that His conception was nearly the cause of another wedding being broken off. Mary and Joseph had been betrothed, legally bound together as husband and wife due, no doubt, to the contractual efforts of their respective fathers. Yet, that marriage had not thus far been consummated. It may be that Mary was not yet considered of sufficient years, but I rather doubt that. More likely, it was a matter of Joseph’s preparedness. He must first display a readied house to which he might take his bride, and he must also give evidence that he can properly provide for this wife. Until that is accomplished, she will remain with her parents, and they will see to it that she remains faithful. Such a shock, then, when she returns from visiting family in Jerusalem and is found with child! Joseph’s honor practically required that he think in terms of a divorce.
Of course, we know that the Spirit of the Living God kept him from pursuing that avenue, and assured him that in spite of appearances, all was well and honorable. But, there at the very conception of Jesus, we have this matter of marriage. Then, we see Him in Cana, attending this wedding to which He and His disciples had been invited, and we see Him, seemingly in spite of misgivings, offer up the first semi-public manifestation of His true lineage. And I would have to say that His choice of first miracle would be a shocking offense to many a church today! What! Providing wine to a bunch of drunken revelers? How dare He! We would certainly never do such a thing.
But leave that aside. There is something in that invitation that He received which I am not certain I have considered before. Recalling the circumstances of His birth, and the public perception of those circumstances which doubtless paralleled Joseph’s own suspicions, it seems that those rumors never fully departed from Jesus’ life. I don’t ever see His suspect parentage mentioned outright, but there are several occasions where His enemies seem to be hinting at those rumors of illegitimacy. As if such a sinful start could produce anything righteous!
Well, this wedding matter was a far more local matter. These weren’t the scholars and hoi polloi of Jerusalem society. These were the neighbors, friends of the family. With that in mind, doesn’t it seem as though there is something of healing and reconciliation in the fact that He was invited? There is something of an acknowledgement that whatever they might have thought of Him, what He has become has proven those thoughts meaningless if not baseless. That they invited His disciples as well is, it would seem, an acknowledging of His legitimacy and talent as a teacher. And, of course, what He was teaching was Torah and how one ought to live before God. So, to acknowledge Him a teacher was likewise to acknowledge His example. In their eyes, then, the inauspicious beginnings of His life had been washed away by what was plainly evident in His adulthood.
So, let me note that passage again: Jesus was invited to the wedding along with His disciples. The excitement I sense here is not, I think, anything to do with having been invited – at least not directly. As the bride and bridegroom in that wedding we look forward to, neither Jesus nor the Church would be concerned about being invited. It is, I think, in the significance of that Cana invitation that I see significance for myself. It is that same acceptance on my part that is reflected in my own invitation (albeit as bride) to the wedding of the Son.
In fact, forget for a moment our role as bride. The simple fact that we are invited to the wedding feast, even if we were no more than guests, would be sufficient cause for rejoicing. The King of all creation has seen you and I as fitting guests for His celebration. That is the point, or at least the picture, of many of the parables that Jesus would bring forth, and that is a large portion of the whole motif that the Church has adopted. We are invited to that final wedding feast! We are accepted. In spite of our inauspicious beginnings, something has been manifested in our maturity. In spite of the sin into which we were born, and in which we continued for so long, there is something that has changed in us. And, that change has manifested in us what was manifest in our Teacher: a certain righteousness and propriety of living before God. In us, it has assuredly not reached the perfection which Jesus manifested. But, there is sufficient of His influence evident in our lives for His Father to look upon us with acceptance and love. We are invited. That we are also declared the bride of His Son is icing on the cake in some sense.
Father, how fitting that You open and close the story of Your only Son with a wedding. How marvelous and beyond belief, as it were, that You have fit us to be such an integral part of that final wedding. It is beyond any possible expectation of mine that You would even invite me to be in that chamber, never mind as bride to Your Holy Son! Such love! Such healing, that You have washed away the stains of my beginnings, that You have so cared for me and prepared for me that I can be assured of this ending. Thank You.
There are a number of contrasts in the passage we have at hand, which I mentioned briefly in the preparatory parts of this study. However, I should like to look at them more closely. The first contrast I want to look at is that between fear and courage. The disciples were not the most timid of men, by any stretch. These were men who faced the Sea of Galilee with fair regularity. Consider that in Jewish thought the sea was symbolic of all that was deadly, and you are not far off in saying these were men who faced death daily. Look at the examples we have of them dealing with heavy seas both here and earlier when Jesus rebuked the storm (Mt 8:23-27). Wind and wave were raging against them and they did not just curl up in fetal position. They didn’t crumble. They did what they could to face the challenge. Only when it became clear that all their efforts could not hope to win through did they fall into fear in that earlier account. Only when the situation completely departed the realm of human experience did they do so this time.
No, these were men with solid backbone, but even men such as they know and understand fear. Fear can be a good thing in us. It is, after all, a part of what God created in us. Now, I know that Paul wrote to Timothy that God hasn’t given us a spirit of fear, but rather a spirit of power, love and sound mind (2Ti 1:7), but I think we press the point too far if we try and claim that fear is somehow a sinful intrusion in our lives. When it devolves into a ‘spirit of fear,’ when it so overshadows our lives that we become timid little mice in the face of every trial, then yes, there is an intrusion. But, on a more normal level, fear serves a good and useful function in the body.
If you would understand that fear is not always sinful, simply consider that it is fear that causes the greater part of the animal kingdom’s survival responses. That’s what it’s supposed to do. Fear is a warning of danger ahead. It is the body’s first-line defense against walking headlong into an obviously life-threatening situation. That is by definition a good thing. There are, to be sure, occasions when we must, in the interest of the greater moral good, overcome that first defense because we have a greater knowledge of the situation. This is, by and large, what we think of as courage. Courage, in many of these cases, is simply the recognition that one’s own personal safety is vastly outweighed by the total dangers present in the situation. It is the recognition that even if it winds up costing my one life, so many others will have been saved that the exchange was well worth it.
That is not always the definition of courage, of course, but I think that is often the underlying calculus of many of those we read about and think of as heroes. Honestly, I doubt many of them realize they have gone through that calculation in the midst of their actions, but then, the body does more calculus as we cross the street than we can generally imagine.
Here we have fear and courage set in contrast one to another. The apostles see something so totally unexpected, so completely unimaginable, that between them, they cannot possibly even hope to come up with a natural explanation for it. In real life, men don’t walk atop the water. That’s just plain scientific fact. Even a simple fisherman knows that much, probably better than most! How many friends and companions had they lost to these very waters over the years? No. Men may float for a time, but eventually they sink. So, what do we make of it when we see a man walking on water? Well, one thing we absolutely will not make of it is that this is a man we see. It cannot be and well we know it. Therefore, it must be something other than a man.
Well, a spirit, a ghost, certainly fits the physics better, doesn’t it? Spirits have not flesh and bone. They are weightless, and something walking on the water like that would have to be weightless. Therefore, it is really pretty reasonable for them to conclude that hey! This must be a ghost coming at us. Such spirits, in the general understanding, do not usually come for good purposes. Like the wind and the waves weren’t enough to deal with! Now this! What are we even supposed to do against such a thing? Yep, they were afraid, and I’m afraid you and I would have been, too.
What is problematic about this fear is that it admits of a degree of reverence for the thing feared. This is why we are called to fear God. We might also understand that we are to fear Him alone. Indeed, if memory serves it was C. S. Lewis who wrote that we will either fear God or we will fear everything else. OK. Sounds wonderful, doesn’t it? But, how do I put it into practice? If I am to truly fear God as He ought to be feared, then it is a reverential fear founded upon a full understanding (as full as my limited human capacity can manage) of Who He Is. If, as we keep seeing in Jesus, He is truly in command of wind, wave and every other phenomena of life, then the fact that He is for us is reason enough to lose our fear of all those same phenomena. If this Commander of all creation is truly Good, and we truly think Him so, then His great and very evident love for us ought to have us convinced by now that whatever the appearance of our circumstances, He watches over us yet, and we shall most certainly come through it all to meet Him. This is what lies behind Paul’s great declaration, “If God is for us, who can stand against us?” (Ro 8:31).
This is also what lies behind the rather intriguing point that courage is only used as a command in the New Testament. It is never given as a character trait. It is never given as an admonishment with regard to how we really ought to be. It is a commandment from the mouth of our Commander. Be courageous. More simply: Courage! Well, given that this is a command, let us consider those places where the command is given. The first thing I notice is that in all but one case, the command comes directly from the Christ, Jesus, Messiah, Lord and King.
The first we hear that word from Him, it is issued to a palsied man on his sickbed (Mt 9:2). I note the words of comfort in which the command is lain. First, the Son of Man refers to this poor man as ‘son.’ Now, I would imagine that the man being addressed is likely older than Jesus as earthly years are measured, yet Jesus calls him son. It is not some belittling thing from Jesus’ lips, though, it is a word of comfort. More importantly, as regards courage, Jesus gives him a reason to have courage: “Your sins are forgiven.” Notice what this sets aside – fear of God’s retribution. He has declared to this man that he need no longer cringe in abject fear of God’s just wrath, but has been forgiven by God. His fear of God can now consist solely in the reverence that is God’s due.
The next time we encounter the command to courage it is given to that woman whose suffering had gone on for so many years (Mt 9:22). She has felt the touch of healing already, but now she is afraid lest her presumption offend the Healer, perhaps lest He withdraw that power which had healed her. To her, Jesus says, “Courage! Your faith has healed you.” Again, hear how fear is directly addressed in this command. Woman, you are afraid that I might reverse the healing you have experienced. You are afraid that this may be some temporary thing, but take courage. It’s your own faith that has brought this to pass. OK, the theologian in me must point out that her faith is not really her own, having been given to her by God. Yet, it is her own for, as any gift that is given, the gift no longer belongs to the giver but to the one who has received it. It puts a man in a terrible light should he demand the return of a gift he is given. God is no man, that He should ever act to His shame. What He has given to us, we can truly consider our own, not as if we were the efficient source of that thing, but it is ours because He Who changes not has made it so.
Now, we come to the current scene out there on the waves, and again comes the command, “Courage!” What reason does Jesus give these awe-struck men, strained to the breaking point? It is the simplest of messages: egoo eimi! The more mundane translation of that message reads, “It’s Me.” What can be heard in that message, though, is “Me, I exist,” or simply, “I AM”. That’s the same message that dropped a Roman cohort to the ground in Gethsemene. Now, clearly when I call my wife on the phone and say, “It’s me,” the words may be the same, but the significance is radically different. The power of that statement is not in the words, my friends. It’s in the One Who spoke the words. In relationship to the matter of fear and courage, there can be no greater reason to set aside all fear and to stand courageous. “I AM.” God Is. He Is the Self-Existent One, the only One who need not add a reason to the fact that He Is. There is no, “I AM Because…” No! He is simply “I AM.” We can rest assured that, since He has no outside cause, no outside support, He not only IS, but He always has been and He always Shall BE. That which has no Cause has no fear of such cause being removed. Do you hear how that stands over against the woman’s fears? She was afraid that her healing would be removed, but her healing was a result of a gift of faith given by the only One Who changes not, Who shall not be removed from His place.
Now, we arrive at the one occasion we have of this command not coming from the lips of Jesus, and that is the occasion of Jesus encountering Bartimaeus (Mk 10:46-49). Bartimaeus, we will recall, was a blind man, but his hearing was good, and he had heard Jesus passing by. His voice was also in good repair, so he cried out to Jesus, acknowledging Him as the Son of David, and he called for mercy. The crowds tried to shut him up, but he would not be silenced. Jesus heard that persistent faith in his voice and responded, “Call him to Me.” Those closer to the man relayed the message thus, “Courage! Get up, He is calling for you.” Again, I would note a solid reason for courage in that message. The Light of the World is calling for you! The Source of Life is calling for you to come to Him! Courage! If Life Himself is calling you, what remains to be afraid of?
Now comes the time when Jesus has been correcting the aspirations of His apostles. They still have not quite fathomed what this kingdom is going to be about. They are still confined to an earthly sense of the matter. They are still looking for this great and decisive military victory with an immediate establishment of a new order with them high in the official ranks. Jesus has just explained how very wrong their ideas are. No, for them there is coming a time to weep and lament, a time when the very world system they thought would be overthrown will celebrate what seems to be its own victory over the King. But, their day is still ahead, and when they are given cause to rejoice, there will be none to take that joy away from them. I must insert at this point, that none could take that joy away from them for the same reason that woman had no cause to fear that her healing would be taken away. It is a gift of I AM, the Unchanging and Unchangeable One. Jesus then adds the prophetic warning that they will find themselves scattered by upcoming events, that they will even abandon Him, their Teacher, as unthinkable as that may seem to them just now.
It is only after all these messages of certain disappointment that He comes with these wonderful words. “I have told you what’s about to happen so that you may have peace. In Me, the I AM, your peace is established in spite of these events. Listen! In this world you can count on having tribulation. But, Courage! Know this: I have overcome the world” (Jn 16:33). Well, notice this! All His warnings to the apostles (and to us today) are about things that lay ahead of us. You will be scattered, you will abandon Me, you will have tribulations. But, the antidote for all the anxiousness that could inspire in us is simply this: when Jesus speaks of that victory they were so certain was just ahead, He gives them a marvelous surprise. It’s already happened! “I have overcome.” That battle is not ahead of them, it’s behind them! When God says that the battle belongs to Him, He means it! They never even noticed the fighting and it’s already over and guess what? God won!
The underlying message here is, “The kingdom is not as you thought. The victory is won but you are still going to face trials and tribulations. You are still going to be stretched to the breaking point by all that happens. You will still go to the grave in your appointed hour. But, peace! Courage! The kingdom is already secured and so, too, is your place in it.”
One last time, we encounter Jesus issuing that word of command, this time to a faithful servant who has long been imprisoned not for any offense of his, but really for his own protection. Paul, that one who had once threatened the followers of Jesus with death and worse, was now himself in a Roman prison, taken there to keep the Jewish mob from killing him for his supposed offenses against their idea of religion. Now came word that some amongst those erstwhile co-religionists had taken oath to kill him by subterfuge. They would call upon the authorities to deliver Paul to the temple for a hearing, but these oath-takers would lie in wait to kill him on his way. Things did not look good for Paul. He was encompassed by enemies. But, in the night the Lord Jesus came to him in his cell. “Courage!” Courage in chains? Yes. Courage in the midst of a thousand enemies, even as King David held to courage. “Listen, Paul. You have been faithful and steadfast to witness of Me here in Jerusalem. Know with certainty that you are still purposed by My unchanging, unchangeable purpose to bear that same witness in Rome” (Ac 23:11).
Now, I must note that Jesus didn’t offer him all sorts of rosy outcomes here. He didn’t tell Paul that all his problems would soon be over. He didn’t make any mention of a retirement villa that Paul could count on once that last mission was accomplished. Nope. The only message is that there is still work to be done. But, what cause for courage in this present situation! Paul still has an assignment to finish, given by the unchanging I AM. He Whose word does not go forth without accomplishing His purpose has just sent word that His purpose requires Paul in Rome. Well, Paul. Whatever things look like just now, you can count on one thing: you’re going to get to Rome. Thinking about all it took to get him there, all the things he had to pass through on the way, these words must have been needful comfort to him on many a long day.
The next contrast we are given is that between faith and doubt. The contrast is displayed in Peter’s response to that IAM of Jesus. Hearing that message, and recognizing the voice, Peter responds by saying, “If that’s You, then order me to come to You on the water.” Jesus does just that and now Peter’s stuck. There’s nothing for it but to obey that command, so he starts making his way. But, the wind is still in his ears and it serves to remind him that he can’t possibly be doing what he’s doing. Then, much like the old cartoons, he isn’t doing what he’s doing any longer. He’s sinking. It is in response to this that we read “O you of little faith, why did you doubt?”
I need to take note of the fact that my understanding of what Jesus was addressing here is changing even as I consider it this morning. I have always looked at this as though Jesus was addressing Peter’s sinking, but I begin to wonder. Part of what leads us to that conclusion is the way the passage gets translated. It sounds so accusatory. “Oh, you. Your faith is so small.” In reality, there is but one word there: oligopiste. It is literally, ‘little faith.’ Of course, it has that concept of faith in its construction, and faith is, at root, a matter of persuasion, of being convinced by the arguments. In relation to religion, it is particularly a matter of accepting as Truth what God has declared and making our reliance upon that which we have accepted. What changes here is that the word oligos has been joined to faith. Let us say puny rather than little. It really is a bit derogatory. But, the point of this whole thing is not that Peter is unfaithful, only that his faith is small and weak. In other words, it is not that he refuses to be convinced of the Truth, it is that he is skeptical. He lacks confidence in the truth. Doubt is but the fruit of that skepticism.
You see, the believer is convinced and can act on his convictions. The unbeliever is unconvinced and can act on his convictions. The skeptic, though, is simply not sure. He can see that it sounds good, that it can reasonably be expected to result in good, but he can’t bring himself to fully accept that it really is good. So, the skeptic becomes a man of two minds, in some degree convinced, yet not fully so; in some ways unconvinced, but not utterly so. In a word, he has his doubts, and now wavers between those two opinions.
Come back to this scene with Peter, though. Part of our view of that picture, as I said, lies in the translation of that name Jesus calls Peter. It leads us to immediately start thinking in terms of faith, particularly of faith such as the present day Church tends to view faith. In those terms, it seems like Peter’s faith is plenty strong when he steps out of the boat. And, thinking that, it seems that it was when his attention was taken off of Jesus and turned to the wind that his faith disappeared from him. But, hold on! To reach such a conclusion is just a manifesting of our own conceits. After all, for his faith to disappear like that leaves the whole matter in Peter’s hands. This is just symptomatic of our insistence that somehow, in spite of the mortal danger it would be to our soul, our salvation is still something that remains in our own hands, a result of our own efforts. But, faith is never that. Faith is a gift lest any many should boast that he has done just that which we want to boast of: saving himself.
No, it’s not faith that we are looking for here, it is skepticism. When did that skepticism begin to show? I would maintain that it showed up in the first reaction we see from Peter: “Lord, if that’s You.” It’s the old fleece game that Gideon played, and that so many continue to play today. But, what does Jesus say? He says, “My sheep know My voice and they follow Me” (Jn 10:27). Notice what it doesn’t say. It doesn’t say that His sheep suspect they may have heard Him and check it out. It doesn’t say that His sheep hear, but they need confirming signs before they will obey what they have heard. It certainly doesn’t say that His sheep hear His commands, but only act upon it if they feel led. But, Peter’s there with his fleece. He’s not convinced yet. He’s not utterly unconvinced that this spirit could be Jesus, but he’s not convinced it is, either. He’s skeptical. So, he sets a test for this specter. Hear it, perhaps, with a dash of attitude, “OK, then. If you really are Jesus, then prove it. Tell me to come out there.”
If I am hearing this event aright, then I am moved to suggest that Peter’s stepping over the brim of the boat was not so much an expression of faith, but rather of fear. His challenge has been called and what that call tells him is not only that this supposed ghost is in reality the same Jesus he has been with for the last year or two, but that this Jesus he has been with is somebody far greater than he had yet comprehended. A teacher, if his demands became too difficult, one could still walk away from. Well, if one were on dry land at the time, he could. But, what has just been made undeniably clear to Peter is that this Man is more than a man, more than a fine teacher, and for that matter more than a prophet. I think it may have been right there in that moment that Peter finally came to recognize the voice of his Shepherd, and to understand the absolute authority in His commands. He says ‘come,’ and there is no place for questions. There is no place for delay, or complaining about the impossibility of it. There is only obedience.
That is the underlying doubt that I think Jesus was far more concerned with addressing. The issue of first walking upon the waters and then falling was just a parable in real life. It was a parable of the skeptic’s condition. Like Peter, the skeptic feels an attraction to the things of faith. He cannot simply write off the spiritual as stuff and nonsense. At the same time, he cannot accept them at face value. He cannot commit himself to this heavenly kingdom business. He is too invested in the real world to do that.
This point strikes me particularly hard. As a relatively conservative Christian with strong Calvinist leanings seated in a highly charismatic church, and as an engineer to boot, there is much in me that at the very least feels like skepticism. Given the attraction that the charismatic movement tends to have for folks who want to put on their own show and call it the Spirit, perhaps that’s a healthy preservative. But, there is, as the saying goes, a fine line between the healthy skepticism of discernment (i.e. doubts formed by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit), and the unhealthy skepticism of the ‘realist’. Matters of discernment are a God-given gift to protect the whole of the body from the infectious disease of falsehood. Matters of upholding our own power of reason as superior to God’s, though, are another matter altogether, and it is terrifyingly easy for us to move from the one to the other.
It shows up in the attitude that is so absolutely certain of God’s opinion on a matter that it can no longer hear correction. Even if it were to come from God Himself, we would still hold that our own opinion was more valid. That may be the most severe of the symptoms, but in between, the verdict I hear Jesus deliver is that the skeptic is double minded. He is lukewarm. He is neither hot nor cold, and the ultimate verdict that Jesus declares is, “I wish you were either hot or cold, but as you are lukewarm, I will spit you out” (Rv 3:16).
When I hear Jesus asking Peter why he was skeptical, I hear Him asking me the same thing. In that question, I hear Jesus asking why, if we recognized His voice, we hesitated to rest in Him. I hear Him wondering why we always seem to have this need for the fleece, and if that first answer doesn’t quite fit what we’re looking for, fleece Him again. I hear the One who declares that His sheep hear His voice and follow Him asking, “I know you heard Me. Why, then, aren’t you following Me?” And, I hear the goat’s response. “When did You call and I did not follow?” But, I don’t hear it from my own thoughts, for I can recall any number of occasions without needing to ask.
It is there in every one of those moments we walk away from saying, “Oh! I should have said,” or “Oh! I should have done…” It is there in every one of those moments that we look back on and recognize that here was yet another missed opportunity. Here was one of those moments God prepared in advance for me to do something, and I simply walked by it and failed to do what I was created to do. And each time, as I look back upon one of those situations, I think Jesus is looking back at it as well, and that same question is on His mind: “Why did you doubt?”
What else can I blame my failure to act on? It is symptomatic of a heart that has not fully set itself upon the kingdom. It is symptomatic of a life that has still not put Him first and foremost. It is the course of a ship with two competing captains. It is the double-mindedness of the skeptic. Oh sure, Jesus. Sure that’s You I’m hearing right now, calling me to embarrass myself. Nah. It’s just my emotions playing with me. Better to remain calm, cool and aloof. Until the moment has passed and with its passing, certainty that I really shouldn’t have remained so calm and aloof forms.
In those moments, my hope is found once again in the Lord, and it is found in Him because He provides such an unvarnished picture of Peter, the original skeptic. Now, I don’t know that we really tend to think of Peter in those terms. We generally reserve the skeptic’s title for Thomas who doubted. But, it certainly seems that Peter is vying for the title here. It’s a ghost! It’s Your voice. If it’s You, prove it. Oop! He proved it. OK, I’ll do what You say. Wait! I can’t be doing what You say (even if I seem to be doing it at the moment). Oh, God! Save me!
Look, we may not face ghosts in the midst of a storm-tossed sea. That may not be our particular moment of existential crisis, where everything we think we think we know is challenged. But, that indecision, that uncertainty, even that sense of unbelieving wonder as we start out on the path the King has set for us; these are things I suspect we all feel in one degree or another. It is symptomatic of the fallen flesh, of sheep with bad hearing, or simply sheep that have grown so used to running free of their shepherds that they no longer really know what to do when the shepherd calls.
Sadly, I think that describes us entirely too well. We look at our fallen flesh, and excuse everything on its behalf. It’s not me, it’s my sin talking. Yes, and there’s some truth to that assessment – as an assessment. As an excuse, it’s utterly worthless. Our fallen flesh is no longer really the problem. It’s our willingness to keep allowing that flesh its lead. Indeed, our problem isn’t really even with bad hearing. We hear perfectly well. We simply refuse to pay attention to it. We are sheep in that last category. We have grown so used to running free of our Shepherd that we no longer really know what to do when He calls.
Does that sound harsh? It should. But, consider: we are in the church some two thousand years after its foundation. We look back on that message that, “these things will happen before this generation is gone,” and can’t help but wonder because, “everything is as it has always been”. We put our faith in Christ, to be sure, but we also put our faith in Him not coming back just yet. After all, He’s waited this long, the odds that He would return in my lifetime are negligible. He is Lord, yes, but He is an absentee Lord so far as our practices declare we are concerned. He’s been gone a long time, and He’s not really expected back any time soon. Oh, sure, we’ll sing, “Soon and very soon,” but, our actions and our reactions declare that proclaim that what we’re really counting on is a “Long and winding road that leads me back”. We’re not terribly interested in any sort of direct path to heaven, because we’ve simply got too much freedom here to consider putting on the real constraints of righteousness until we absolutely have to. Skeptics all, if not by our words then by our actions.
Worse, that skepticism has an impact on our capacity to progress in the things of the Lord. Consider Mark’s summarizing statement in covering this event. The reason they were so utterly astonished to see Jesus doing this was because their heart was hardened. In other words, they were being a bit dense. In other words, in spite of directly witnessing the power of heaven breaking through in such astonishing fashion already, their native skepticism prevented them from making the necessary and logical connection between what they had seen and Who they had seen. “They had not gained any insight…Their heart was hardened.” It was that same double-mindedness of skepticism getting in their way. It couldn’t be that so little had fed so many. Yet, it had happened. But, it couldn’t be done by a man, therefore Jesus couldn’t have been the one to do it. Yet, we had seen no other. We had seen Him take those loaves. We had ourselves taken the pieces from His own hands. Yet, it couldn’t have been Him. No man has the power to multiply provisions like that. Yet, we know He’s a man. And so the circling of the minds continued without reaching any real understanding. Their hearts were hardened against accepting the only possible consistent answer.
That phrase, the hardening of the heart, is somewhat foreign to us outside of the pages of Scripture. It’s no longer a description that makes sense to us naturally, as it were. That is in part because we no longer view the heart as the seat of understanding, but give it, if anything, the seat of emotions. Hardening of the heart is more likely to give us images of those suffering from hardening of the arteries than of those who are keeping themselves in the dark. Now, there is something in the term to keep the emotional aspect of the heart in sight. For, to harden is to make callous and insensate – incapable of feeling. Woe to the man whose heart is incapable of feeling! That man cannot hope to approach the image of his Creator.
Now, it might seem a bit obvious, but this term for becoming stone-like derives from a term for a type of stone. It derives, according to Strong’s, from poros, and the term itself, he gives the meaning of ‘to petrify’, alongside the implied sense of rendering stupid. Have you ever seen something that was petrified? On Hawaii, there is a stand of what used to be trees that had been petrified in an instant, encased and permeated by lava to such an extent that those trees had, for all intents and purposes, been transformed to stone. If you come across a fragment of a petrified tree you will be hard pressed to recognize it as having ever been anything so alive as a tree. It will not occur to you that sap could ever have run through such material, for who has ever heard of sap flowing through rock?
This is the description given to a heart that has been rendered insensate to the things of the Spirit. It has been petrified. The life-giving juices no longer run through it. If you could see it, it would strike you as impossible that they ever had! The heart, the understanding, has been covered with a thick, callous skin. Like the feet of one who is accustomed to walking barefoot, that skin is all but impervious to puncture. That may be good for a runner’s feet, but it’s a terrible condition for a believer’s heart.
Of course, thinking about this matter of petrifaction and stone, it’s not unnatural to think about our friend Peter, so named by this very One who has pulled that sinking stone from the waves just now. I can recall, on another occasion, reading that his name in Aramaic, was in particular a term for a rock that had been hollowed out. At that time, my thinking had been of something like a millstone, hollowed out by long years of grinding, and this is a pretty good description of the life of Peter. But, as I looked at the definition again for this study, I note that there is something more said about that hollow rock than simply that it has been hollowed out. There is a reason it was hollowed out: to be used for refuge or as a dwelling place.
If I move from the Cephas of the Aramaic to the Petros of the Greek, this hollowed out rock of refuge is spoken of as a large and solid stone edifice such as a cliff ledge. Here, then, is something hard and unyielding, something impervious to every threat of the enemy. Upon this rock I shall establish My Church and the gates of hell will not prevail against it. That is the message we hear from Jesus (Mt 16:18). But, listen. Consider this Peter whom Jesus has just named once again. Yes, He is named a cliff ledge, hard and unyielding. But, come on! Is this man we see in the pages of the Gospel really to be considered somebody so impervious to attack that the Church of Christ can stand upon him as its foundation and stand against all comers? Oh, he is most assuredly one of the stones in that foundation, but he is hardly the foundation! No, it is not the man Peter upon whom the Church rests securely, but upon the knowledge that he spoke, and more specifically upon the nature of that knowledge. “Flesh and blood did not give you this knowledge, but My Father in heaven revealed it to you” (Mt 16:17). That is the unshakable foundation which every power in hell combined cannot trouble!
So, here we have Peter, the rock, sinking in the waters. Hardly a surprise, that. Here, too, we have Peter, the stony one, rebuked for his skepticism, the hardening of his heart against child-like belief in what God is revealing. Does the parable of the scene begin to come out? The hardened heart, the skeptical mind, cannot give us a firm foundation, only Christ. The hardened, skeptical man of action that we have in Peter sinks upon the waves. The True Rock, the real Foundation, He can not only stand upon the waves, but He is even able to rescue the sinking skeptic! He is able to reach within the skeptic and replace that hardened, world-weary heart/mind with organs that are once more alive and flowing with the vital water of the Spirit.
Consider that petrified forest in Hawaii once more. The ‘trees’, many of them, still stand like so many monuments, like so many tombstones. Can we imagine a power that could, these many years after their entombing, reach into the very heart of those petrified trees and begin the sap to flowing again? Can we imagine a power that could replace the stony pulp that the heart of the tree has become with a core of soft, porous cellulite such as it began life with? Listen! It is just such an incompressible miracle that God performs on the understanding of man. When first He comes to rescue us from the devil’s slave pits, our hearts and minds are very much like that petrified forest. Nothing of the Spirit gets in any more, nothing of real understanding. We know what our prison experience has taught us, and nothing else. But, God! But, God by His sovereign will begins to pour out His own Holy Spirit into us. Don’t you even begin to think that you somehow started off this transformation by inviting Him to come in! Stuff and nonsense! Absolute rubbish! No! If He had not first begun the flow of the Spirit through your heart and mind, if He had not already reached in and replaced those petrified organs with living organs capable of accepting His Spirit flow, you would still be there. You would be standing, like those petrified trees, forever; a monument in caricature, looking almost like something alive, yet dead as can be.
Over against this petrified state of the brain, we are given the contrast of insight, a bringing together of thought, a collecting of one’s thoughts so as to make sense of them. It was the prevention of this which kept the disciples from grasping the full significance of the five thousand fed. Now, we can offer them some excuse saying that they have not had a moment to spare for the sort of thinking that might lead them into understanding, and that may be true. God, however, has recorded that the real reason they hadn’t put two and two together on this matter was that they were petrified in their understanding. They were incapable of heart knowledge, because the heart was still calloused and impervious to real understanding.
OK. That seems to stand in contradiction to what I just said of God’s work upon the unbeliever. What shall I say in my defense? I can only offer that this transforming of the stony heart to a lively, fleshy organ is not an instantaneous work, but a process. That process, it would seem works from the inside out. Looking at those trees again, it is as if the very center of the tree was the first to be restored, allowing a first trickle of sap to flow once again. But, it takes that initial flow to carry the transforming power to the surrounding tissue of the tree, and so, it will be some time before the outer bark becomes lifelike again. I think we might view our own transformation in similar fashion. That first flow of the Spirit through our hearts is sufficient to begin the restoration of life. It is sufficient to clear our vision to realize our true surroundings, and it is sufficient to awaken in our thoughts a desire for something better. But, that initial trickle of the Spirit must be given time to soften the surrounding tissue, and only as it spreads into that surrounding tissue can the tissue beyond that begin to be transformed. So, it is some time before the outer surfaces of the heart and mind are once more soft and alive to the things of God.
So, yes, God began the work in the disciples and yes, He has, according to His word, replaced their stony hearts with hearts of flesh. But, that outer edge has not yet felt the transformation. There’s still a callousness, a dullness that keeps them from really putting everything together in their thoughts so that they can see the big picture. This nature of thought is, as Zhodiates writes, the ‘activity of knowing’. It is neither the input of intuition nor the input of experience. It is what one does with that input. In this age of computers, we might think of it in related terms. I can put all the data I like onto my hard drive, and it will remain nothing but a collection of bits. It is only when a program makes use of that data, combining the bits from the executable in sector A with the input data stored over in sector B to create some meaningful output that I can really gain anything from all that was stored there.
Have you ever looked at raw HTML code? Then you know that without the executable code of a browser and a computer upon which to run it, you will never see the page that it describes. It takes the ‘activity of knowing’ that we might represent as the CPU running the instructions of the executable to interpret the descriptives of the HTML code and translating that into further instructions to present to the graphics engine which in turn, translates the whole mess into something the eyes of the display can comprehend, that the picture can be seen. And, of course, many of us will understand that the browser code can often wind up misinterpreting the HTML code’s intent such that the picture displayed is not what we expected.
Returning to this indictment of the apostles, they had not gained insight. They had perceived the activities of that miraculous feeding, but without perception. They had not become active in fashioning knowledge out of those events they had just witnessed. Those events were there in mind like so many puzzle pieces, but they had not yet taken time to arrange and connect those pieces into the intended picture. We might ask how such a thing could be. Is it just that they hadn’t had the time yet? Perhaps we can excuse them on grounds of their exhaustion? After all, we’d want the benefit of such excuses were we the ones in view. The reality, I suspect, is closer to what I read in the TLB today: They didn’t want to believe.
That is probably also far closer to the truth for us in those times when we’re scrounging for excuses to explain away our own failure to understand. Look. If we really believe, if we really allow ourselves to form a full picture of what this whole Gospel means, with all of its implications, then we’re going to have to respond. We’re going to push ourselves into that moment of crisis. If this is really God and He truly Is the way He says He Is, then we’re going to have to really assess how we should be living before Him. Table Talk magazine gives me that daily reminder that this life is lived out Coram Deo - before the face of God. Yet, so much of my day is spent ignoring that fact. So much of my time, even in study, can turn to issues of hiding from His face, rather than facing His Truth. If I really get hold of that full revelation of God which this Bible contains, if I ever allow myself to consider all that He is and all that it means, then I cannot continue to play those games. The fact that I do continue is proof not that He is incomprehensible, not that He is so hidden away that I can never discover Him, but rather that I, like these apostles on the waves, don’t really want to. I don’t want to get that close. It will require a higher standard.
Fine, so I’m a vile failure as a Christian, and I’m quite sure that nobody else reading this has ever suffered through similar concerns and issues. Well, I have to remind myself that even if everybody who ever read this happens to identify with my situation, that still gives no excuse. The simple fact of the matter is that whether I choose to face it or not, that higher standard is already required. Whether I cover my eyes and my nakedness to the best of my ability, or whether I willingly stand exposed to this God Who Is, it has not changed His vision of me. The only thing that changes is my awareness of that simple, brutal truth. The only thing that changes is whether I face that crisis and walk through it to a loving Father, or whether I cower in fear while that same loving Father looks on in tears.
So, there on the waters were the apostles, unwilling to face the fullest implications of what had just happened and now more is happening. Now, with wind and wave against them, they’ve got ghosts to deal with as well. But, that ghost, as it turns out, is their Teacher once more doing what is utterly impossible to do. Now, Mark mentions that as soon as Jesus got into the boat the wind stopped and the waves died down again, but this was nothing new for the disciples. He had done that before. This is not, folks, the thing that forced the Truth upon them. They had seen this before, and simply wondered what sort of Man He was. They had seen Him feed those thousands and just enjoyed the fact that they got to eat at the end of it all. Man, that Teacher of theirs was a great guy, wasn’t He? And, He could do all manner of things that no other magician could do. But, they hadn’t come to the conclusion that He was God.
A hardness of heart, an unwillingness to understand; but even the hardest, thickest skin can be pierced if enough force is applied. This man walking out to them across waves that they couldn’t even make headway against: That had the force to get through! Indeed, consider the entirety of the picture as we have it across the three accounts. It begins with Jesus walking across as heavy sea, as we might describe it. These weren’t calm waters. The waves were high and the wind was strong, and out there on the whitecaps stands a Man. Then, as if this weren’t unthinkable enough, Peter steps out of his boat and onto those same wild waters, and begins to do the same impossible thing, walking atop those waves! Of course, he falters, but this just reveals more of the greatness of the real Man. He not only keeps Himself above the waves, but pulls Peter up, as well, and then the two of them walk back to the boat arm in arm. It is only after they have clambered back over the gunwales that wind and wave stop – without a word, but the reason is not lost on these witnesses. It’s Him. He’s doing it. Though they don’t know how, they do know Who. So, yes, they sit there in stupefied awe at what has just happened, and lo! When they snap to again, they find that they are sitting on the shore in Bethsaida, right where they were supposed to have been!
Here comes that point of dawning comprehension. Here comes that force of sufficient strength to pierce the calluses. This Man they follow, He’s not just a man. This Messiah, and yes, they understood Him to be Messiah, was not just a hero. This One they were following had manifest control of wind and wave. No, more than control, He was impervious to wind and wave. He dominated wind and wave. Well, here comes insight, because all of that was still just a collection of facts. The real insight is found right here: If He has that power over wind and wave, and even over stormy Peter, He is in control of the worst chaos of life. He is just as impervious to my own ever-changing, stormy self and He is just as dominant over the storms of my life. He is in full control, and that ‘full’ leaves no room for any exceptions. Well, if this be so, then the riddle of Who He Is can only have one answer: He is God. And with that realization, if ever we truly get hold of it, surely we are undone!
Now, had I been out there in that boat, feeling the fear these men had felt when facing the impossibility of this apparition, I have to wonder how I would have responded. Part of me knows I would probably have been rooted to the spot by abject fear. Part of me thinks that same fear would have had me heading for the far side of the boat, jumping in, and swimming as best I might away from the cause of my fears. Let me suppose the apostles were made of sterner stuff, and would not have found themselves frozen in their fears. That they were fearful is beyond question. The screams are all the confirmation that’s needed. But, let us suppose they could at least react physically to the fear. One might envision them suddenly pulling at the oars to get the boat away from this thing. One might envision them, maybe, abandoning ship and abandoning each other in hopes of survival. One can picture, I suppose, any number of responses on their part, but whatever response they may have been considering, it was brought to a full stop by one thing: A familiar voice calling out.
It would not have been enough to simply have a voice calling out. That would have only added to their fear. It had to be a familiar voice, one they were used to hearing and used to heeding. That last part, I think, is key. There are voices we may be thoroughly familiar with, and yet totally unused to paying attention to. Whether we suffer from the problem ourselves or not, we are all familiar with the problem of selective hearing loss – that terrible malady that plagues our teenagers. They can hear the phone ringing however low it may be turned down and however far across the house. Even with the music up loud, still the quietest hint of the telephone reaches their attentive ears. Oh, but let the voice of a parent be ever so loud, particularly if that voice suggests a coming chore, and my goodness! They simply couldn’t hear the bellows!
No, the familiarity is absolutely necessary, but so too is the habit of hearing – actively hearing. That they had formed just such a habit when it came to Jesus is pretty clear by the account of the feeding. When He told them to bring what they had, they didn’t question Him. They did it. When He stood there with those five meager loaves of bread and told them to sit those thousands down to eat, they didn’t question His sanity. They did it. When He told them to start handing out the pieces of bread that He was breaking off of the impossibly short supply He had, they didn’t laugh Him to scorn. They did it. They were used to doing what He said, however improbable it might have sounded. So, when the command to courage came from His voice across the storm, training had conditioned them to obey. They would stop. They would move past the screaming and stand firm. They would not run from this One, for He had commanded fear out of them.
Where am I going with this? Well, it is certainly a lesson I can use in my own life. It is a lesson in multiple parts. First, there is the simple point that I need to train myself to not only hear what God is speaking, but to heed it. That is particularly true, I suppose, here in these studies, for it is here that I am most actively pursuing what He has revealed to man in Scripture. But, it is true in the activities of daily life, as well, and that is where I am far more likely to have screened my calls to avoid Him. What if He is calling me to do something? What if He is calling me to say something? What if a life would be saved if only I would hear Him and do what He says?
Here’s another side of that issue: How much would my attitude change if only I would listen to Him throughout the day? How much frustration would be left behind? How much more peace might I enjoy? Confession time: Things have been nigh unto intolerable of late. The trials that began back around Thanksgiving have barely let up. The pressures just seem to keep mounting and Jeffie’s getting darned tired of trying to deal with it all. Honestly, I’m ready to scream a lovely blue streak at least half the time, and the other half it certainly wouldn’t take much to prepare me either. I have been most unpleasant to be around, and that’s just for me! Whatever slim portion of patience and forbearance I might have managed to build up over the years has long since been used up, poured out, exhausted. No, my trials have not reached the proportions of Job’s trials, yet there’s still that feeling of “Job’s got nothin’ on me.”
Well, Jeff, where have you been turning in this midnight hour? That’s the problem. I know it’s the problem, and yet I do nothing with it. I am currently in the place of those apostles: caught in the storm, struggling with everything that’s in me to row my way back out, but losing ground all the way. For every wave I think I’ve surmounted, three more rear up. But, when Jesus shows up – I needn’t put it in terms of if He shows up, it’s definitely a when – He’s as likely as not to strike fear into me rather than hope. Look, I’ve seen how I’m reacting. It’s not pretty. It’s not Christian. Those aren’t the fruits of the Spirit I see pouring out. It’s not even that I’m somehow angry at God for what’s going on. It’s just fear. It’s just discovering how utterly powerless I am, how desperately needy, and I don’t like it.
Lord, for days running I’ve seen this study calling me to repentance, and I’ve been avoiding it. Oh, time’s run out for today. Gotta go. But, really, that’s where I need to come to. I’ve been training myself to ignore Your voice rather than to obey it. I can offer no excuse to You. I can only cry. I can only ask that You might, out of no other cause but Your own great mercy, forgive me yet again. God! How greatly I need the change that I cannot bring about! How greatly I need a strength far in excess of my own. How often have I thought myself ready for the storm, and yet here I am, and I see I was never anywhere near as ready as I thought! Lord, prepare me! You, my Savior, I cry out, “Save me!” Like Peter, I feel I’m sinking and sinking fast. If You are not for me, I am lost. Lord, soften this calloused heart to remember once more who You are. Soften this calloused heart to recall that my hope is in You, that You are, as I have been reminded even in today’s study, absolutely in control of what I’m going through.
God, Jesus, I ask you, then, to come. Climb in the boat with me and calm these troubles. At the very least, calm me, my Lord, by a clear sight of You beside me here. Yes, Lord, and bring me swiftly to your intended shore.
Holy Lord, these words; they are not even close to enough, but it is what I have. I am so at a loss these days. I am so at a loss and yet, there is my dear wife looking for her strong spiritual leader. There is my daughter, looking for her daddy. There is… God, I’m not worthy even of their opinion of who I am to them. I’m not capable of their opinion of who I should be to them. I am at a loss to handle my own problems, let alone theirs. Yet, You have placed those two in my household, under my leadership. It only increases my desperate need, Lord. I cannot lead these two! Not unless You send Yourself with me! Oh, Lord, don’t let me try and do this on my own! Don’t let me become one who does whatever seems good to himself. No! The risk is too great. God, I want to be one who does what seems good to You, a faithful servant both in Your household and in my own. I want it, and yet it seems so far from me. Yes, but in You all things are possible. Would You, then, make this impossible possible in me? Thank You, Lord, and may Your will be accomplished in me in full and in time. Amen.
By Matthew’s accounting, this marks the first point at which the reality of their situation started to break through what Mark describes as the hardened state of their hearts. Matthew’s conclusion speaks of them bowing down to Him in worship right there in the boat and confessing, “Truly, You are the Son of God!” You know, I have to admit that this is one occasion where I find the NASB thoroughly unsatisfying. “You are certainly God’s Son!” It just doesn’t convey much of anything. Perhaps they were just trying to avoid implying that the article was there. The phrasing, in this case, is Theou Huious ei. So, yes, the literal translation would be something like God’s Son you are. All of which is an aside of little value. So let me return to my original line of thought.
The confession we have in Matthew’s account is not, by the combined account, the first time that Jesus was recognized to be the Son of God. Recall the early days as John speaks of them, and there at the very beginning is Nathanael, whom Jesus declared to be a true Israelite in whom there was no duplicity. No sooner does he meet this One Who knows him by name then he confesses, “You, Rabbi, are truly the Son of God, the King of Israel” (Jn 1:49). OK. Quick aside. Here, the phrase is ho Huious tou Theou, the Son of God. So, perhaps my earlier premise is not far off. At any rate, that confession, strangely enough, is not counted as the first confession. That is reserved for Peter’s later answer to the question, “Who do you say I AM?”. What this does display, though, is that Nathanael understood the connection: that the coming King of Israel was more than just another king as Israel’s kings had been in the past. He was more than just a military hero like Israel’s heroes had been in the past. No, He was all those things, but more importantly, He Who would be Messiah would necessarily be The Son of God. Now, whether Nathanael conceived of this as an office or a physical (metaphysical?) reality, I cannot say, but he at least caught the connection.
This is held out, by the way, as a complaint against the accuracy of John’s account. The argument goes that the other Gospels do not give sign that Jesus was recognized in His office or in His person anywhere near so early as John presents that awareness. The more skeptical amongst the theologians would go so far as to say that even Jesus was not particularly aware of His office or His person in the earliest years of His ministry, but I think that can be discounted out of hand. The big issue is that John displays a Jesus who is openly admitting Who He Is, while the other Gospels seem to show Him doing His best to keep that under wraps. Look at this collection of verses from John’s account, and see how he develops this image of ho Huious tou Theou.
It begins with that confession from Nathanael, ‘truly you are the Son of God’. This is quickly confirmed (in Matthew’s account) by God the Father Himself, Who is heard proclaiming, “This is My beloved Son, my great delight” (Mt 3:17), which in and of itself should suffice to refute those who think John is completely out of sync here. The message from the Father comes in that very same setting where we have Nathanael’s confession. They are both spoken there in the Baptist camp. John simply keeps that message in the foreground. It is there, though more quietly, when Jesus deals with the blind man He had earlier healed. That man has stood up to the browbeating of the Sadducees with a surprising steadfastness. Jesus seeks him out later, for this man had been ‘put out’ of the Temple. I suspect we should understand this to mean that he had been put under the ban, excluded from Jewish society for all intents and purposes, but Jesus comes to him. Not only does He come to this man, He seeks out that man and finding him, says, “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” (Jn 9:35).
The story continues, of course, but I want to stop right there at that question, because it’s a question we all ought to hear for ourselves. Do you believe in the Son of Man? It’s not as simple a question as we might like to think. I know my immediate reaction is to answer, “of course I do!” But then I hear Martha’s confession when confronted with this same question. “I AM the resurrection. I AM the life. Do you believe this?” Now, I admit there is more in that question, but I think this will suffice for my point without detracting from the full question. Her response is, “Yes, Lord. I have believed You are Messiah, the Son of God, the One promised to come into the world” (Jn 11:25-27). Yet, it is clear that all the implications and ramifications of this have not really sunk in. See, there is this other point in Jesus’ question. “He who lives and believes in Me shall never die.” That is the most immediate clause to the question, ‘do you believe this?’ Well, poor Martha is standing outside the grave of her poor, dead brother. How can she possibly believe he is alive forever when he’s right there dead in the grave? So, she kind of skips that clause and professes her belief in the earlier portion. Yes, You are the resurrection. Yes, You are the life. But, Lazarus is still dead, and I’m still left here to mourn, and You are still late.
This is what happens to us. I can tell you quite plainly that this is much of what I have been seeing in myself as I have gone through these last months. Yes, Lord, I believe in You. I believe in You in this misty, philosophical, theological sort of fashion. But, when it comes to what that really should mean to me in this present situation, when it comes to believing against the evidence of my own eyes, I am so much like Martha here. I just have to turn and walk away. I’ll go tell somebody else that You are here for them. The part that’s hidden away in that action is the hurt we’re feeling because it really doesn’t seem like You’re here for me. My hope and my solace is in realizing that even Martha came around eventually.
Wow! Thank You, God! This is, I think, something new in my understanding of those sisters!
So, there is Martha, the logical one of the two. We always look at her as the busy one of the two, the one caught up in works, and that is the lesson normally drawn from this pair. Mary chose the better part. Martha was wrapped up in works, but Mary was caught up in devotion. Well, what it seems we are missing is the why. Why was Martha wrapped up in works? Was it because she thought this would somehow earn her entrance into God’s promises? No. I tell you it had nothing to do with that! She understood the Promise well enough. Her problem was simply that she was the logical, reasoned one. She saw a need and she did something about it.
That is her problem here in this scene, too; not that she got herself too busy doing, doing, doing, but that she is the logical one. Mary could go where her emotions led her, and that left her far more open to the things that Jesus meant in situations like this. Martha, being logical and reasonable, was more tied to what the senses were telling her. She had more trouble getting past the evidence of the physical world to touch the spiritual. OK, that sounds all new-age-y but, that’s probably just my poor attempt to explain what I’m getting at. I am not suggesting, really, that we must somehow divorce ourselves from reality. What I am saying is that there is something greater. What I am saying is that if we really believe that Jesus is the Son of God, if we really believe that God is the God, the Creator, then we cannot help but recognize that He is greater than creation.
A real and full acceptance of what God declares about Himself (and He does not, cannot, lie!) requires us to recognize that He can, of His own choosing, trump the natural order of reality at will. It is not required of Him to do so, but it is certainly within His capacity. I say it is not required of Him to do so because so often we have this sense that we can demand that God do what is possible to Him alone as if it were our will that directs His purpose and not His purpose that directs our will. The other side of that coin, though, is that when He has said specifically, directly and unequivocally that He is going to do something, however impossible it may seem, however much the evidence of our senses may scream at us that it cannot be done, the Truth of God demands that He will do it!
The distinction here is between what we know He can do and wish He would do, and what He says He has purposed to do and therefore most assuredly will be done. The former has a bad tendency of being the basis of our prayers. Lord, I know You can, therefore I demand You do. We are so far beyond our authority in that moment that we ought to fear the proverbial lightning strike for our audacity! At one and the same time, we see those things which God Himself has said He will do, and we look at the situation around us, and we refuse the implicit demand of God that we believe Him!
Martha! Martha! I hear that this morning in so personal a way! Jeffrey! Jeffrey! Do you not hear what I AM saying about Myself? Do you believe it? Oh, to come to you as a Mary, honestly with all my hurt, instead of playing the stoic Martha role. Lord, had You been here, this would not have happened. That’s the Mary response. I know what You are capable of, and I know Your heart. If You had been here and seen what was happening, You would not have allowed it to happen as it did. His ability to resurrect, after all, had already been on display. Lazarus wasn’t His first. See, Mary, in her emotionalism was far more honest with Jesus. Yes, she is hurt that He didn’t come sooner, didn’t stop the tragedy. Her problem isn’t in believing what He can do. It would appear she hasn’t yet realized that there is no limiting what He can do, not by distance, not by time. But, she doesn’t doubt His ability.
Martha has more trouble believing that. She can accept the theological stuff, but has a harder time when it comes to the more material application of that theology. She is one who understands herself as ‘having to live in the real world’. To her, Mary doubtless seems like one who is ‘so spiritually minded as to be no earthly use’. They are the twin errors, if you will, that bracket the course of true faith. Chances are that we trend toward one or the other of those two extreme positions.
Here in this moment, though, it is that fundamental question that plagues me. “Do you believe in the Son of Man?” Do you know Him well enough to believe in Him? That was the blind man’s immediate issue: Who is He that I might believe in Him? That is, in its way, Martha’s issue. Yes, I believe on that higher level, but I’m having trouble with applied belief. Worse yet, in those moments of doubt, I know I stand in proximity to the Pharisees and Sadducees, in spite of recognizing their errors. For, I too, stand ready to accuse the One the Father sanctified and sent into the world (Jn 10:36). No, I am not about to accuse Him of blasphemy, but I’m ready to accuse Him for not preventing whatever it is I think He should have prevented. I am ready to accuse Him for not protecting me in the manner I really want to become accustomed to. See, I’m no more thrilled to think, ‘in this world you will have tribulations’ than anybody else. It may be the Truth, but I’d prefer to think that somehow, following Jesus gives me an exception clause. There’s what you know and then there’s what you believe.
Very quickly, because it is no longer on the path that this is developing, I want to point out the root of the Pharisee’s accusation as John and Jesus record it. They accused Jesus of this charge because He had confessed a clear and obvious truth about Himself, “I AM the Son of God” (Jn 10:36). He was only confessing what He had already proven by myriad signs and fulfillments. He was only declaring the Truth, but rather than examine the Truth of His claims, those accusers opted to deny the possibility that those claims were true, and therefore settled on the verdict without any interest in the evidence. More importantly, though, this makes very plain to us that Jesus most assuredly understood Himself. It also makes it very plain that He wasn’t hiding that understanding from anybody. It doesn’t get any clearer. “I confessed that I AM the Son of God”!
But, let me return to this other issue of belief versus knowledge. Isn’t it interesting, in light of the distinction, that when John wraps up his Gospel, he doesn’t say that he wrote all this so that we could know that Jesus is really and truly Messiah, Son of God, but that we can BELIEVE it (Jn 20:31)! It’s not enough to know it. We’ve – no, strike that – I have to get beyond simply having the data and get involved in the activity of knowing. I have to get to the point the disciples reached out there in the boat and connect with that knowledge. Truly, You are the Son of God, with all that implies, with the reality that Who You Are absolutely trumps the evidence of my senses when my senses contradict Your promise. I have to believe it, and that, my friends, is the hard part. It’s easy enough when things are rolling along nicely and I’m surrounded by the abundance of God’s blessings. It’s a whole lot harder when the blessings are less visible. It’s a whole lot harder in the Job situations. But, Job was able. Mary, in spite of her hurt, was able.
That’s my message to me today. It’s time to believe. The last three months have been a whole heap of hurt. It is religiosity in its worst, least religious sense to pretend otherwise. But, its skepticism and the double-mindedness of doubt to stop there. It’s time to live the reality that truly, He Is the Son of God and truly, He is still in control even if it seems like everything’s out of control.
God, take me to that place today! You, Lord, have declared it. It is You Who is at work in me, both to will and to work. That is not my wish. It is Your declaration. So, my God, I cry out to You today to overcome my skepticism, to so work in me that I do overcome. Bring me to the place of real belief, Lord, else I perish! For, it is not in knowing You are You that I have life, but in believing it!
Now then, recognize something very, very important in the display of belief we see in the disciples. They bowed down in worship, Matthew tells us, and proclaimed Him God’s Son. It is of critical import that we realize that Jesus did not reject that worship. No mere man of God would ever accept such treatment! No prophet, no king, no priest, no servant of the Most High God would ever dare to accept what belongs to God alone. Jesus did. That He did so tells us unequivocally that He is not only God’s Son, but He is God – pure and simple. It is the culmination of all His teaching, it is the whole point of His ever having come and ministered to mankind in the flesh. He was not just a good man. He was not just an excellent teacher. He was not just a powerful prophet. He was and IS God. That is Whom the disciples were dealing with out there in the boat. That is Whom we are dealing with today – right now. That is Whom I am dealing with in the midst of my trials, my doubts, my hurts. And He is Able. He is not only Able, He is Willing.
Remember that one who came to Him? Lord, if you are willing, you can do this thing! How did Jesus respond? “I am willing.” And, it was done. What real reason do I have to think Him any less willing, any less able, in my situation in my day? None! So, let me stop for today with the most honest of confessions, “Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief!” And let me know – no, let me believe – that He has heard and answered even as I type!
[1/13/08] Worthy of mention: As much as I needed yesterday’s portion of study for myself, it turns out that all was in preparation for ministering to my wife as well. God, You are always worthy of mention! I thank You for the preparation, and I thank You once again for that time we shared.
Next topic: “He intended to pass them by.” In reading through the various translations of this text from Mark’s account, I came across this interesting suggestion, from the NET: It seems that the phrase here translated can prove a bit challenging when it comes to understanding what the write meant by it. They offer up two common theories in that regard. The first supposes that, as the writer writes from the apostles’ perspective on this, what we are hearing is their impression of what was happening. In other words, from where they sat, it looked as though Jesus intended to just keep on going and reach their destination ahead of them. I suppose it may well have seemed that way to them. But then, if they thought this apparition was just going to pass by them and keep going, I should think their fear might have been a little less pronounced. Indeed, wouldn’t they have been likely to keep silent to keep from attracting the attention of this unknown entity passing their boat?
The alternate theory is truly interesting. This perspective sees in Mark’s choice of words an allusion to Old Testament theophanies. In support of this, two particular verses are offered, both from the context of Moses’ mountaintop meeting with God. There on the mountaintop, God declares, “I Myself will cause all My goodness to pass before you, and will proclaim the name of the LORD before you” (Ex 33:19a). Then, after noting that to see His face would be more than Moses could hope to survive, He continues. “See! There is a place by Me, and you shall stand on the Rock. And it shall be that while My glory is passing by I will put you in the cleft of the rock and I shall cover you with My hand until I have passed by” (Ex 33:21-22). So, from this similarity in phrase, the theory comes to this: that Jesus intended to manifest His glory to them as an assurance to them in their struggle.
At first glance, this seems like a real stretch. But there is something that we might need to connect to that understanding, and that is the words Jesus chooses to announce Himself to those in the boat. In our English, it comes across as “It is I”. But, the underlying Greek might well be understood as “I AM”. In all fairness, I suppose to hear that claim to Godhood in this call to the apostles might be as much of a stretch as the theory about passing by. But, in combination, with those two supporting each other, perhaps it is not such a stretch after all.
Let me ask, just for a moment: If you were out in that boat, and this apparition amidst the storm offered no more than the improbable, “It’s me!” to calm your fears, how calm would those fears be? I don’t think it would have done much for me. I mean, I’m out there at the mercy of the elements, stressed and exhausted, and now faced by something not merely improbable, but utterly impossible. I have little to no reserve to draw upon and I am, as we might say, freaked to my core. And the best you can give me to calm down is, “it’s me!”? I don’t think so. That is not enough to counter the impossibility of what I’m seeing. If anything, it’s going to erode whatever remaining nerve I had left because now, not only are you doing the impossible, but you apparently know who I am. If I wasn’t screaming already, I would be now! Think about it! These guys thought they were seeing a ghost, an apparition which would tend to be associated with the devils that they were used to expelling. Well, if that devilish apparition is out there and approaching my endangered boat, and then, to top it off, starts making it clear that it knows who I am; phew! That’s not words of comfort, where I come from!
But, the power of “I AM” is a whole different matter. Those are the words that set the soldiers back. Those are words with a power that transcends theological understanding of the matter. When God pronounces His name, as He promised to do there with Moses, it really doesn’t matter any more what you know and understand about Him. The ultimate Power in the Universe and beyond has just announced Himself. All creation cannot help but acknowledge its Lord when that announcement is made. With that in mind, if this apparition we have been scared by says, “Fear not! I AM!”, we in particular who have been with Jesus, listening to Jesus and learning from Him, we who have been so anxiously pursuing Messiah, will be particularly tuned to hear the import of those two words. I AM. The Lord of all Creation is He Who is approaching your craft and you are His for He has chosen you. So, fear not, for His awesomeness is not set against you but for you. Therefore, My servants, My children, the command to you is “Courage!” And those in the boat, with this Truth set upon them would soon confess, “Truly, YOU ARE”.
With that introduction, I want to turn next to a collection of references that turn up in conjunction with the words Jesus speaks to the disciples. I offer them more or less as they hit me in preparing this study. I offer them, though, with the references saved until the end, because the power of the message is, I think enhanced if we are less distracted. So, here as I presented them to my wife some several days ago, is a reason for courage.
Take courage, your sins are forgiven. I AM the LORD your God. I uphold you and I say to you, “Fear not! I will help you.” Fear not! I have redeemed you. I have called you by name and you are most assuredly Mine! I will be with you when you pass through the waters. The river shall not overflow you. When you pass through the fire, it shall not burn you. You won’t even be scorched. See, I AM the LORD your God. I am the Holy One of Israel. I AM your Savior. Arise, and don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid. I know you seek Jesus Who was crucified. Don’t be afraid. Just go and tell My brothers.
Fear not! You and your wife have been heard. Fear not! You have found favor with God. Fear not! I bring you good news! Great joy! And this shall be for all people. Be strong and courageous. Don’t let them strike fear into you, for the LORD goes with you and He will not fail you or forsake you. Do not fear. From now on you shall catch men.
If God takes such marvelous care of mere grass which lasts so little time, is it not clear that His care for you is much greater? Why are you troubled and doubting? Look! See My hands, My feet. It is truly Me! Touch Me and see for yourselves, for spirits don’t have flesh and bones, and you can clearly see that I do. Ask in faith. Don’t let doubt creep in. For the one who doubts is like the surf: driven and tossed by every wind.
He laid His hand upon me and said, “Do not fear. I AM the first and the last, the living One. I AM He who was dead. But, behold! I am alive! Alive for all eternity! And see! I have the keys of death and of Hades in hand. I have explained all this that you may have peace in Me. The world will provide you plenty of tribulations, but take courage, for I have already overcome the world. Don’t be afraid! Your Father has already chosen – and with great pleasure – to give you the kingdom.”
Mt 9:2, Isa 41:13, Isa 43:1-3, Mt 17:7, Mt 28:5, Mt 28:10, Lk 1:13, Lk 1:30, Lk 2:10, Dt 31:6, Lk 5:10, Mt 6:30, Lk 24:38-39, Jas 1:6, Rv 1:17-18, Jn 16:33, Lk 12:32
There really isn’t a great deal to add to that, is there? I would remind myself, however, that in every case, every step of the way, there is a reason given to let go of fear and take up courage instead. That reason is never found in me. That reason is always found in I AM. I AM is your God. I AM upholds you, promises His help. I AM has redeemed you and called you His own. I AM will be with you, whatever you are going through. I AM, the Holy One, is your Savior, so rise up and don’t be afraid! I AM, Whom you are seeking was indeed crucified (and that, for your sins, that you might be redeemed), but fear not. I AM is yet the Living One, He was dead, it is true, but see for yourself! I AM is alive for all eternity! Oh, yes, you have tribulations, but understand and rejoice: I AM has already overcome! I AM has already chosen you to be given the kingdom.
The ruler of this present age is but a usurper. He thinks he is in control. No, he really doesn’t even believe that himself, because he knows better. But, he plays the game and plays it well enough to convince many that it is true. But the Truth is that the kingdom is not, never has been, and never will be his. The kingdom belongs to the King of all kings, and He, I AM, has already chosen you. It is His kingdom to do with as He pleases and His great pleasure is to bequeath His Kingdom to the bride of His Only Son. So, courage! Courage in the face of greatest trial. Though they come to put your body to death, I AM says, fear not! Fear rather the One (the only One) who can destroy more than your body, but Who alone stands as the righteous Judge over all Creation. Yes, He has authority to sentence your very soul to an eternal judgment. Aye, fear Him. Worship Him, for He will not share His glory with any other – not you, not the usurper in this present age –not any creature in all creation. And there is none who can wrest His glory from Him. So, fear Him. Give Him all your reverence and let none other even come under consideration. Holy, Holy, Holy is He, deserving of ALL honor, ALL glory. Yes, and He shall have it! Joyfully, then, come before Him and offer I AM your honor, offer Him whatever glory you think you may hold in your store, for I tell you, it is His and His alone!
