8
Food for 4,000 men
1 In those days, the multitude being very large and not having anything to eat, Jesus called His disciples and said to them: 2 “I have compassion on the multitude, because they have stayed with me three days now and have nothing to eat. 3 If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will give out on the way, because some of them have come a long distance.” 4 His disciples answered Him, “From what source could anyone satisfy these people with bread here in a wilderness?”* 5 He asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” And they said, “Seven.” 6 So He told the crowd to sit down on the ground; then taking the seven loaves and giving thanks, He broke them and gave them to His disciples to set before the crowd, and they did. 7 They also had a few small fish; so blessing them He said to distribute them as well. 8 Well they ate and were filled; they even took up seven hampers of broken pieces that were left over. 9 Now those who had eaten were about four thousand; and He sent them away. 10 Then He got right into the boat with His disciples and went to the region of Dalmanutha.†
Bad leaven
11 The Pharisees came out and began to argue with Him, requesting of Him a sign from heaven, by way of testing Him. 12 But He sighed deeply in His spirit and said: “Why does this generation seek a sign? I tell you emphatically, no sign shall be given to this generation!” 13 Turning His back on them, He got back into the boat‡ and went off to the other side.
14 (His disciples had forgotten to take bread; they did not have more than one loaf with them in the boat.)§ 15 And He charged them, saying, “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod.”* 16 So they started reasoning among themselves, saying, “It's because we have no bread.” 17 Being aware of it Jesus said to them: “Why are you reasoning because you have no bread? Do you still neither perceive nor understand? Do you still have hearts that have been hardened?† 18 Having eyes do you not see, and having ears do you not hear, and do you not remember? 19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many baskets full of pieces did you take up?” They say to Him, “Twelve.” 20 “And when I broke the seven for the four thousand, how many hampers full of pieces did you take up?” And they said, “Seven.” 21 So He said to them, “How is it that you still don't understand?”‡
A blind man
22 Then He came to Bethsaida; and they brought a blind man to Him and begged Him to touch him. 23 So He took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village; then spitting into his eyes§ and laying hands on him, He asked him if he saw anything. 24 And looking up he said, “I do see men, only they look like walking trees.”* 25 Then He put His hands on his eyes again, and made him look up; and he was restored and saw everyone clearly. 26 Then He sent him away to his house, saying, “Neither go into the village nor tell anyone in the village.”†
Jesus declares His death, and ministers on that basis
Peter is inspired
27 Then Jesus and His disciples set out for the towns of Caesarea Philippi; and on the way He questioned His disciples, saying to them, “Who are people saying that I am?” 28 So they answered, “John the Baptist; others Elijah; still others one of the prophets.” 29 He said to them, “And who do you say that I am?” So Peter answered and said to Him, “You are the Christ!” 30 Then He charged them that they should tell no one about Him.
31 He then began to teach them that the Son of the Man must suffer many things, and be rejected by the elders, chief priests and the scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again. 32 He said these things quite plainly. Then Peter took Him aside and began to rebuke Him. 33 But He turned, looked at His disciples, and rebuked Peter, saying: “Get behind me, Satan!‡ You have in mind men's values, not God's values.”
The cost of discipleship
34 He summoned the crowd, along with His disciples, and said to them: “Whoever wants to follow along behind me must deny himself and take up his cross and follow me. 35 Because whoever may resolve to ‘save’ his life will waste it; but whoever may ‘waste’ his life for my sake and the Gospel's, he will save it.§
36 Well, what will it profit a man if he gains the whole world, yet forfeits his soul? 37 Or what can a man give in exchange for his soul? 38 Yes, whoever is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of the Man will also be ashamed of Him whenever He comes in the glory of His Father with the holy Angels.”*
* 8:4 They had already forgotten the 5,000! † 8:10 This was on the western side of the lake, so the feeding of the 4,000 probably took place on the Decapolis side. ‡ 8:13 One gains the impression that the Pharisees had not let Him get very far from the boat. Was Satan concerned to ‘protect’ Dalmanutha? § 8:14 As with the 5,000, they did not keep the seven hampers of leftovers. * 8:15 These would be two different ‘leavens’. Matthew 16:12 explains that ‘leaven’ refers to doctrine. † 8:17 The verb is in the passive voice, so one wonders who did the hardening. ‡ 8:21 It is easy to criticize those disciples as slow learners, and indeed the Lord was evidently unhappy with them, but I wonder if we would have done any better. § 8:23 Dear me, how unsanitary! Jesus used a variety of procedures to heal people, and here He used two stages. * 8:24 Evidently he was not born blind, because he knew what men and trees looked like. † 8:26 Evidently he did not live in that village. A small handful (0.5%) of the Greek manuscripts, of objectively inferior quality, omit ‘nor tell anyone in the village’, to be followed by NIV, NASB, LB, TEV, etc. ‡ 8:33 From the parallel passage in Luke 9:18-22, where we have three present participles—‘answering’, ‘warning’ and ‘saying’—it is clear that Peter's two efforts form part of a single conversation. Well that scares me; that sends shivers up my spine. Within three minutes, or five at the most (we can see in Luke that this was a single conversation), Peter spoke two times. The first time it was God who put the words in Peter's mouth. It was Jesus Christ, God the Son on earth, who explained the true nature of the transaction—Peter did not speak on his own but moved by the Father. So far so good; that God can do something like that comes as no surprise. It is the second time that is bothersome, because this time it was Satan who put the words in Peter's mouth! Again, it is Jesus Christ, God the Son on earth, who explains the true nature of the transaction. When He uses the enemy's proper name, Satan, His meaning is inescapable. It really was Satan. Once again we are face to face with the most terrible truth that there is in this life, at least as I see it. The enemy has access to our minds, he can put words in our mouths. I wish in the worst way that it was not true, but my wishes do not change reality. § 8:35 What does the Lord mean when He speaks of saving or losing one's ‘life’? One does not lose one's soul for love of Christ. Nor is the reference to being killed. Rather, Jesus has in mind the life we live, the accumulated results of our living. All that I have done up to this moment plus all that I will yet do until overtaken by death or the rapture of the Church, whichever happens first—that is the ‘life’ that is at risk (in my own case). Let us look at our Lord's words a little more closely. There seems to be a contradiction here—if you lose, you save; if you want to save, you lose. How can it work? The parallel passage, Matthew 16:27, gives more context. “For the Son of the Man is going to come in the glory of his Father, with his angels, and then he will repay each according to his deeds.” Christ was thinking of the day of reckoning. In other words, “we will all stand before the judgment seat of Christ” (Romans 14:10) and “each of us will give account of himself to God” (Romans 14:12). “For we must all appear before the judgment seat of Christ, so that each one may receive his due according to what he has done while in the body, whether good or bad” (2 Corinthians 5:10). I understand that 1 Corinthians 3:11-15 is referring to the same occasion, the day of reckoning. After declaring that Jesus Christ is the only foundation, Paul speaks of different materials that one might use in building on it: “gold, silver, precious stones” or “wood, hay, straw”. (Although the primary interpretation of this passage presumably has to do with the performance of teachers and leaders in the church, I believe it clearly applies to the daily life of each believer as well.) The point is, our deeds will be tested by fire. If fire has any effect upon gold or silver it is only to purify them, but its effect on hay and straw is devastating! Okay, so what? Let us go back to the beginning. God created the human being for His glory; to reflect it and contribute to it. I suppose we may understand Psalm 19:1 and Isaiah 43:7 in this way, at least by extension. But Adam lost this capacity when he rebelled against God. For this reason the sentence that weighs against our race is that we “fall short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:23). But the Son came into the world to restore our lost potential. Ephesians 1:12 and 14 tell us that the object of the plan of salvation is “the praise of His glory” (see also 2 Corinthians 1:20). And 1 Corinthians 10:31 puts it into a command: “Whether you eat or drink, or whatever you do, do all to the glory of God.” Now then, the point of all this is not to ‘ruin’ our lives, to take all the ‘fun’ out of them (as many seem to think). God isn't being arrogant, unreasonable, too demanding. Quite the contrary—He is just trying to save us from throwing away our lives. Surely, because the glory of God is eternal (Psalm 104:31), and when I do something for His glory that something is transformed and acquires eternal value—it becomes ‘gold, silver, precious stones’. Works done for the glory of God will go through the fire without harm. On the other hand, what is done with a view to our own ambitions and ideas is ‘straw’. We all know what fire does to straw! To be a slave of Christ means to live with reference to the Kingdom; it means to do everything for the glory of God. In this way the slave ‘saves’ his life because he will be building it with ‘gold and silver’, which will pass through the fire at the judgment seat of Christ without loss. In contrast, the believer who refuses to be a slave of Jesus builds his life with ‘hay and straw’, which will be consumed by the fire—and so he ‘loses’ his life; he lived in vain; the potential that his life represented was wasted, thrown away. What a tragedy! * 8:38 The world in which we live is no longer ‘postmodern’, it is becoming increasingly anti Christian. In North America and Europe people have already been put in prison for preaching what the Bible says. To spend eternity in the Lake of Fire is the price you will pay for being ‘politically correct’ in today's world.