Feeding the 4000

Good morning.

Thanks for joining us this morning.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

Thank you for joining us and especially for singing in tenderness so well.

Some mornings, as uh I'm sure you know, on Sunday mornings, it's like hard to get out the door.

Uh, did any of you have a morning like that?

Wow.

Yeah, several.

Um my wife and I did this morning.

My son started, uh, I got out the door earlier because I just do that.

Maybe we should leave at the same time, but because my wife also works on Sunday mornings.

Um that used to be my excuse.

But anyway, uh my son started making an airplane out of clay.

And my wife said, You should stop doing that and get dressed while I go get dressed, and I'll come back and you know, we'll be ready to leave.

He didn't stop.

The the airplane became increasingly more detailed uh and more airplane-like.

And so my wife was running late, and then when she arrived, she needed me to watch the kids instead of continue reading the sermon.

And I was thinking, I bet lots of people are having Sunday mornings like this that come that are coming to church.

And this is that's an ordinary thing to experience, perhaps particularly on Sunday mornings.

In our house, our children have no symptoms of any sickness until either Saturday night or Sunday morning.

And then it's like they're like a WebMD homepage.

All that's to say, our attendance, our church attendance, uh it's a way of participating and laying down certain things like conveniences and just arriving to gather together to sing to the Lord.

And all of those mornings, you know, all of those different mornings that each of you have had, now, now think of that and how wonderfully you sang in tenderness.

Uh, and it even just sitting here, I was thinking, okay, I've got to, you know, get out of the rushing around to make the morning work headspace, to move into the preaching headspace.

And it was your singing of intenderness that uh God used to allow my spirit to do that.

This is something that I mean, and that's a close call, you know.

This is the second song.

You couldn't, you know.

Well, maybe sing the first song a little more, you guys.

The the point is that our spirits are, we we need the worship of the Lord.

And we need that from each other.

That's not a bug, it's a feature.

And so be encouraged to push through those inconveniences, come into the presence of the Lord together and sing together.

Who knows?

Who knows what can happen on a Sunday morning?

What the Lord might have for you, what the Lord might have through your voice for those sitting around you.

Who knows?

We're encountering a real God.

He promises to meet us.

In his word, inhabit our praises.

We're encountering a real God.

So let's expect to be surprised.

All right.

Now, with that, let's pray.

Father, we thank you for gathering us together, gathering your body, the church, together, for uniting yourself to us, laying down your life and making us one people by adopting us together, so that we might sing together to you as brothers and sisters in the same family, one that stretches back for ages and generations.

Lord, that we participate with now.

I pray that you would give us eyes through looking at your word to see you, who you are, Jesus, and what you have done for our hearts.

And I pray that that miracle of being able to see you might take place by your spirit.

Lord, it's not something we can manufacture.

And even this morning, I can't lay out the perfect words or the perfect sentences to make you be seen.

Lord, we come before you to ask your spirit to enliven our hearts, to give us eyes to see you.

Because in seeing you, we're transformed by you.

Lord, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

So the whole the whole point of Mark's gospel is for him to make this case that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

And he gives himself 16 chapters to make this happen.

Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

And so I want us to keep revisiting this question.

What would it take?

What would it require for you to be convinced that this man is the Christ, the promised Messiah, and the Son of God?

What type of stories would you need to hear about such a person to become convinced of that?

What actions would you need to see?

And then what would need to be recorded and relayed to you in a book so that you would read it and think, if this is true, then this man is the son of God?

It's hard to imagine what those questions are, and it's a it's a challenging problem.

And in this text, we see two stories in which Jesus brings his disciples and his adversaries face to face with this question of how it is that you could possibly see Jesus and understand him to be the Christ, the Son of God.

Now it's a challenge because that means we're encountering something that's utterly unique.

And that's a hard thing to realize when it happens.

Because when you're encountering something utterly unique, you have no categories to bring to it.

So it's like the first observer of a duck-billed platypus who says, look at this mammal nursing its young, and then continues watching it and it lays an egg.

And then you have no, it's like, okay, well, I thought I had a good category for this thing, and I have to go back now and it turns out I'm I'm looking at something that's unique among all of the categories that I brought to it to be able to observe.

And so I have to go over and to my ledger of animals and tape a piece of paper to the side and write in a whole new category.

You guys know what it's like.

But it's even more than that.

It's even more than just a strange new category.

This type of encounter with the Christ, the Son of God, because it's also relational.

It also involves you and what you think it would mean for your heart to encounter the Christ, the Son of God, because that's not something that you can just stand back and observe.

I don't think I've ever seen a duck-billed platypus.

Uh, and it it doesn't, whether or not they're in the category of mammal or whatever it is, it doesn't really affect my life.

It can just be sort of a strange new category.

But God, if this man is God, then that has these deep ramifications for me personally.

So not only are we discovering something, seeing something that's utterly unique, that transcends the categories of anything else that we've encountered, but it's also deeply personal.

So that it's more like the question, how do you know when you've met your wife?

How do you know?

Well, you see, that's that's a that's a type of question where it's like, well, it I also have to answer something about me and what I would think a relational fit with this person would be like.

I have to have some sense of who I am, and then what my encounter with this person would reveal and expose about me, and maybe perhaps even enliven aspects of myself.

This is what it means to encounter God.

We are seeing an utterly new category, and at the same time, we are being revealed to ourselves when we see him.

Now, Jesus brings this to a head today in these two stories, as I said, of one with his disciples who witness a miracle for the second time and they still don't see Jesus.

And then with the Pharisees who come to him and they demand a sign from Jesus, which means they want to see him in this particular way, but they're unable to see him as he lays himself out before them.

There's a blindness that we bring to our vision of Jesus.

And this is what's incredible and it sort of uh difficult, makes seeing Jesus so difficult, is we can lay out the same evidence.

He can lay out the precise evidence of who he is.

It is not a matter of what is out there for the way that Jesus reveals himself to us.

It's our own hearts that are blind.

We are non-conforming to a true vision of who he is.

So, what hope is there?

What hope is there that we might ever see Jesus Christ, the Son of God?

So let's look at this story and see how Mark provocatively forces us into this dilemma.

And then we'll see how Jesus, the man, resolves it for us.

So he shows himself to us.

Okay, so Mark 8:1.

Mark 8:1

In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered and they had nothing to eat.

Okay, give ourselves some context.

In those days, which days?

Jesus is in this time of ministry that's referred to as his retirement ministry.

Now, that's because he had sought to retire out of the Jewish regions and into Gentile regions.

And the purpose of this, it's he says in the beginning, was he was seeking to be alone.

And that means to be just with him and his disciples, so that he could have some space, because in the Jewish territory, he was constantly swarmed by crowds and people bringing others to be healed by him.

But as it turns out, in the Gentile territory, he was just as famous and became just as well known as in the Jewish territory.

So he's surrounded by just as many crowds, even during this, you know, uh misnomer of a retirement ministry.

So that's those days.

He's in a Gentile land and a crowd gathers around him.

And it as it happens, they have nothing to eat.

But we'll get to that part of the story.

The thing I want us to see now is that the first step in seeing Jesus, sort of necessary ingredient in seeing Jesus, is Jesus captures attention.

In whatever city, in whatever town Jesus goes to, he captures the attention of the masses.

That tells us something about what the experience of being in Jesus' presence is.

There is something novel about it, where we had to gather around and we we couldn't take our eyes off of Jesus if we were in his presence.

In fact, this crowd stayed and listened to Jesus teach.

This Gentile crowd stayed and listened to a man who said he was the savior of the Jews.

Come and speak for three days.

Now, when I was writing this, I wrote, I've stood up about three times in the writing of this paragraph to get coffee and eat food.

Because I don't know if you guys have ever written before, but you're required to get constantly distracted.

Like whenever you sit down to write, your mind is like, yeah, anything but that.

So look at how Jesus just captures the attention of this crowd.

They can't take their eyes off them.

Even their own hunger is like, nah, this is the this is more, there's something more here that I just have to see, I have to bear witness to.

I have to, he he has my attention.

So this crowd is gathered, and they have nothing to eat.

So Jesus says this to his disciples.

He called his disciples to him and said to them, I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days, and have nothing to eat.

And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way.

And some of them have come from far away.

The crowd is here, and Jesus calls to himself just his disciples.

And this is part of the purpose of the of this ministry among the Gentiles was to get this intimate time with just the disciples.

And so he's gathering some of that now, and he wants to show the disciples his heart for the crowd.

He wants to lay out, give, give the disciples his vision, show how he sees the crowd.

So he calls his disciples to them and he says, I have compassion on the crowd.

That's where he begins.

In case you are wondering, how is Jesus feeling about this crowd?

I have compassion on the crowd.

Now, why?

These simple reasons.

Because they've been with me now three days and have nothing to eat.

And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way.

And some of them have come from very far away.

Look, this is just a simple, ordinary human problem.

They're hungry, they need food.

And Jesus looks out at the crowd and he sees that problem.

What is the heart of Jesus like?

It looks out into the world.

And it no there's there's no um the text doesn't send anybody from the crowd of like, hey, uh, just want to let you know, great teaching.

We're hungry.

No, he he sees the need first.

You know, he sees the danger first.

He he his compassion gives himself an imagination for what is coming for the future of these people.

And he's concerned because I can't send them home.

Because if I do, they'll they're so hungry and they'll faint on the way.

And some of them, when I really think about some of them, they've they've come from so far away that they it'll just be too dangerous to send them away.

Now, what his compassion means, and his disciples understand this, his compassion means that it is not just that Jesus is creative to see other people's problems.

When he sees this problem of the crowd, he makes it his own.

Says, I see this issue and I will make it my problem.

I'll make this my problem.

We know that he's making it his problem in the way that we see him solve it, because uh him and his disciples, they have food.

Enough food that's sufficient for them.

So it could have not been their problem.

But instead, Jesus' compassion makes the problem of the crowd his own problem.

Now, look at how the heart of Jesus is shown.

Don't you see just in that movement, this tiny little glimmer of the gospel in the way that he looks at the crowd.

Where we see that Jesus is Jesus, the disciples must start to think Jesus is the type of person where he can't just allow somebody else's problem to just be theirs.

He moves into it in some way.

Okay, so here's what the disciples say.

Mark 8, 4.

And his disciples answered him, How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?

Jesus didn't say anything about uh feeding them yet.

All Jesus said was, uh, I have compassion on them because they're in this sticky situation.

The disciples are almost trying to head off the idea that this could be a problem that they would participate in in any way.

And yet, uh, and so that's their that's their answer.

How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?

Now, some points should be coming to mind, and perhaps you're getting deja vu right now, because this is the second time that Jesus has been in front of a crowd and fed them.

And in fact, the first time that Jesus did that, it was in front of a crowd of 5,000.

This time that Jesus is doing that, this crowd, it will later be reported, is only 4,000.

So it's like a 20% less miracle than the previous miracle of feeding 5,000.

So the disciples should look at this and say, oh, this is actually easier than the last time we were in a similar predicament.

Instead, they they ask this strange question, how?

How?

Well, what was the answer to that the first time?

What was the answer to that when they were in front of the Jewish crowd and there were 5,000 of them and they didn't have enough food to feed them?

And then Jesus multiplies the food so that there's leftover baskets of bread all around.

When they came to Jesus afterwards, it was like, how did you, you know, would you mind showing me how to do that one day?

I've always wanted to get in the bread business.

It was more my father's game.

Things like that.

How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?

What could possibly be the answer to that?

Another thing worth pointing out is, because we should kind of draw some distinctions between the feeding of the 5,000 and this feeding.

This time they're in such a desolate place that the disciples don't even recommend that they go and buy food on their own because the place is too desolate.

Last time they said we should send these people away, that way they can go buy their own food.

And Jesus says, Well, you feed them.

But this time there's this understanding the place is too desolate for them to be sent away.

So it's just their problem.

So Jesus asked them, How many loaves do you have?

They said, Seven.

Would have been sufficient to feed the twelve.

Mark eight, six.

And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground, and he took the seven loaves, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people, and they set them before the crowd.

We've seen this miracle before.

So what's different?

The way that Jesus organized the Jewish crowd, he said, divide them up by hundreds and by fifties, and uh set them out in these groups, and once they're organized, then we'll we'll feed them.

And he stands and he blesses the bread and he multiplies it and gives it to them.

Now that organizational structure was a way of telling this Jewish crowd, see, you, I'm going to organize you in the way that Moses organized the nation of Israel in the wilderness.

In the way that this nation was organized.

Once Moses organized them, then he stood as sort of the master of ceremonies over this banquet.

And God was the one who brought the manna from heaven.

So this would have been this object lesson to the Jewish people of saying, oh, we're being organized as Israel.

We're being organized just back into the nation that we were constituted to be.

And just as God provided then, we see Jesus providing now.

He's making this argument.

You know, Mark is laying out this argument.

Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

It's an identity claim in an object lesson that Jesus is making for this nation of Israel.

But this time he's with Gentiles, and he doesn't organize the people as the nation of Israel.

Because it wouldn't mean anything to them.

They aren't connected with this history in any way.

Instead, he just has a group of people because that's kind of what the Gentiles were.

They're just this group of people, it's kind of like everybody else.

What does this mean for everybody else?

And here is the surprise.

They get the bread just the same.

They receive the same bread from heaven.

This is what Jesus means: that he stands in front of the organized Israel to whom he had given the promises that have passed through generations.

And then he stands in front of the disorganized Gentiles who have been given no organizational principles from the Lord, who have not received the law, who have not received the promises, and yet here they are receiving the same bread.

They are sustained by the same gift of the Lord, by the same bread from heaven.

Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

He is over all.

This is the message that's being shown here.

And perhaps that's why it's it's almost, you can see that to be in the crowd would have been a wonderful thing, you know, because bread.

And to be one of the disciples, though, is to see something shocking.

It's to see Gentiles treated in accord with the promises of the nation of Israel.

Now, how can that be?

Christ must be something different.

You know, the question, well, there's a nice little detail here that we should hit on first.

Uh in Mark 8, 7 through 8, it goes on and says, And they had a few small fish.

And having blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them.

And they ate and were satisfied, and they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full.

The fish, I like the fish detail, uh, because the bread, you know, it's right on point with uh uh the manna from heaven.

It's like, you know, maybe even a little on the nose.

But the fish is just nice to have.

That's just a nice meal.

And so he sees the fish and he says, Yeah, I give him that too.

So what is it, how does Jesus give to his people?

How does Jesus give to the crowd that he has compassion on?

It's not just to a point of sustenance, it's even a point of enjoyment, ultimate satisfaction.

I'm I'm rereading The Lord of the Rings.

Um probably because of all of Amazon's marketing.

And I didn't want to watch a bad show, I've heard it's bad.

So I decided to reread the books.

And uh he describes the the there's a lot, it's a lot of feasts, you know, it's like 50% food descriptions.

If you were to take out the food descriptions, it's like a little novella.

And uh he describes that the feast at Bilbo's um birthday party, and uh he uses this great phrase and he says, the hobbits have reached this point where they were so full, but what they were doing, what they described is um filling out the corners, uh, which was just nibbling on their favorites uh as the night wore on.

And I I like that phrase, and I just consider like what was this meal like?

And it's like, oh, they they've reached a point because there are leftovers.

That means they reached out the filling out the corners point, you know?

It the point is it's it's celebratory.

That's the type of meal that you see at a birthday party.

A celebration.

There's abundance to it.

That is the way that Jesus has compassion on the crowd.

That's the that's Jesus' heart towards these people.

Okay, so bread would have been sufficient, fish is better.

Now, it's strange that Jesus didn't rebuke his disciples for asking how he fed, how he was going to feed these 4,000 people, because they had seen before that Jesus had already fed the 5,000.

And I was explaining how in the feeding of the 5,000, you know, in the feeding of the 4,000, it's great to be one of the crowd because you received the bread, but it but it's more shocking and wonderful to be one of the disciples.

Because perhaps the reason that they didn't anticipate Jesus feeding this group was because it was a group of Gentiles.

And they understood that his ministry, his ministry in this Gentile region was going to be one that was more restrained, and one that was more, quite frankly, just about them and about the disciples and Jesus getting more time together, but then Jesus sees the crowd and he has compassion on them.

And the shocking thing is that Jesus feeds the Gentiles.

He gives the bread to them as well.

The heart of Jesus is on full display here, and it's already breaking down the categories of what the disciples might have thought it meant that Jesus was the Messiah, that Jesus was the Christ.

You know, how could they consider this is the Messiah who is just for our people, and he is going to overthrow the Roman government, and he is going to re-establish our political reign in this land?

How could they have considered that that was the essence of who Jesus was when they had seen him stand in front of crowds of Gentiles and feed them the same bread that he had fed crowds of Jews?

Mark 8, 9, and 10.

There were about 4,000 people, and he sent them away, and immediately he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the district of Dalmanutha.

So he feeds them, and now that they aren't faint for the walk, he sends them away, and the disciples gather back in the boat, and they sail back across the Sea of Galilee into a Jewish region called Dalmanutha.

And here they encounter the Pharisees once again.

Mark 8:11.

Mark 8:11

The Pharisees came and began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him.

Now, the Pharisees have bookended Jesus' ministry in the Gentile region.

It began right after Jesus had had an interaction with the Pharisees when they were accusing him of not following the traditions of the elders.

And then we see this time where he's in a Gentile region, he just sails back, and upon sailing back, the Pharisees are the ones that are right there again, and they're seeking to argue with him.

And they're arguing with him in this unique way.

It says they began to argue with him, seeking from him a sign from heaven to test him.

They are demanding a sign from heaven to test him.

Now, this is right at the question of our sermon today.

What type of sign do you mean?

What would be sufficient?

What would be sufficient for you to see and then finally conclude this man is the Messiah?

This man is the Christ, the Son of God.

What sign could they possibly mean?

Mark 8, 12, upon this asking for a sign, Jesus sighed deeply, and he sighed deeply in his spirit and said, Why does this generation seek a sign?

Truly I say to you, no sign will be given to this generation.

Jesus had sighed just a couple of stories before, when we looked at this last week, when he encountered the deaf man, and before healing the man who was deaf and had a speech impediment, he sighs.

His spirit is grieved.

And here, when he encounters the Pharisees, we see him sigh again.

He sighs deeply in his spirit.

It's almost like he can't believe what he's hearing from the Pharisees.

Demanding a sign from heaven?

Why does this generation seek a sign?

Jesus wants to understand what is the motivation behind your seeking a sign to understand who Jesus is.

And the reason he wonders that is because Jesus has been laying out nothing but signs of who he is.

If we go across the sea, he's feeding the 4,000.

You know, maybe they got word of that.

He's healing crowds of people in these Gentile nations.

He's giving uh healing the deaf, and the deaf are hearing, the mute are speaking.

Before that, in the in the Jewish territory, Jesus had fed 5,000 people as this miracle of feeding.

We saw Jesus, even with uh someone who's a temple authority, Jairus' daughter has been healed by Jesus.

And the woman on the way to Jairus' daughter is healed by Jesus.

We see the man with the withered hand on the Sabbath day, his hand is now healed.

There's all these things that are just this clear evidence that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

So why does this generation seek a sign?

What is it that they could possibly see?

What does that sign seeking mean?

What does it reveal?

It means that they want to approach God like an object, like a duck-billed platypus, and say, you know, I kind of have this Messiah category, and I've studied it deeply.

And this Messiah category is going to reveal itself in this particular way.

But what they haven't done is they haven't considered this Messiah category, it says something deeply about me.

This Messiah will not just come to avenge me against my enemies, it will also come to save and pardon me from my own sin.

He will come to heal someone like me who needs healing.

But when you don't consider that you need healing, when you are not the one who needs a Messiah, you are just the one who can identify the Messiah by your own wisdom, then you're saying, Messiah, reveal yourself to me on my terms.

Reveal yourself to me in a way that confirms what I already think about myself.

Then I am the one who is still in charge of my destiny.

I'm the one who is still that who is still can trust my own interpretations of the way that scripture is laid out.

And I can know that I am in with the right people and I'm on the right side of what salvation will mean.

And I am the type of people who will be honored by the Messiah when they come.

Not the one who might perhaps be humiliated by their holiness.

So when they seek a sign on their terms, they are seeking a way of relating to the Messiah, which allows them to identify him and not need him.

Others had sought confirmation for who Jesus is.

John the Baptist's own disciples come to Jesus from John the Baptist, and they ask, Are you the one who is to come, or should we find another?

You know what it's like when you're looking for messiahs.

And Jesus answered them, Matthew 11, 4 through 6.

Listen to how Jesus answers them.

Which this shows us something.

We'll read it first.

Jesus answered them.

Okay, notice that.

Go and tell John what you hear and see.

The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk.

Lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear.

And the dead are raised up, and the poor have good news preached to them.

And then he says this strange phrase And blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

Jesus lays out sign after sign after sign.

And then he adds this tag which shows us what it means to see Jesus.

Blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

Unless you are able to receive Jesus on his own terms, as your Savior, which means you're in need of a savior, as the one who is truly holy, which means you are not, as the one who reveals and exposes things about yourself in your knowing of him, one who can deconstruct your prior categories so that you might say something as absurd as we say, which is that there once lived a man on the earth and he is God.

This is what we think as Christians.

There once lived a man on the earth and he is God.

Consider the absurdity of this.

You know, there's there's there's so many think of the implications.

There once lived a man and he is God.

What does that mean about history?

About what we about the way that we expect the world to unfold, about what other people are and what they're like.

What does it mean about every attempt to make meaning which does not acknowledge Christ as God?

It means that they're all doomed to failure.

They're all fruitless.

Do you sense the gravity, the intensity of what this means for our interpretation of the world?

There was a man, there was a man, just you could walk up and touch him, just like you or me.

And he is God.

This is the center of our claim.

If that's true, then we must be transformed by him.

Our understanding of him must begin with his revelation of us.

We must not be offended by him.

And his his very existence is offensive.

But blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

Almost every class because I thought I was going to encounter the argument that I hadn't heard yet that just destroys our faith.

You know, like somebody would have the three premises and a conclusion, and they would lay it, they would write it out on a chalkboard, and I would read it and go, oh no, I'm an idiot.

I've wasted so much time.

And then by about my junior year, uh, I'd realized, I think I've heard that's not very long, you know, junior year of your undergrad.

I I think I've heard them all.

I think I've heard all the arguments.

And still, that's basically held, to be honest.

I've heard all the arguments.

And one of the things that I wish I could give is the clean argument for here is how you know with certainty that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God.

But he doesn't reveal himself to us in that way.

What I'm doing in that project is I'm laying out a world in which I could so clearly understand the category, understand what it meant to encounter Christ, the Son of God, that I could lay out those parameters and then show, see, Jesus is this.

He is this thing.

So this thing that you already knew, Jesus fulfills that thing that you already knew.

But it's different than that.

The way that we know Jesus, it requires this act of his spirit for him to reveal himself to us and show us in a way that is so precisely catered to our need, he has to feed us before we know we're hungry.

He has to he has to make us see when we don't even know that we're blind.

Jesus goes on, and he answered them, When it is evening, you say, This is actually in Matthew, the same story, but in Matthew.

Matthew 16, 2 through 3, he answered them.

And in the morning it will be stormy today, for the sky is red and threatening.

Red sky at night.

Yeah, red sky in the morning.

That's right.

So this is that's it turns out that's in the Bible.

You know how to interpret the appearance of the sky, but you cannot interpret the signs of the times.

Now, what are the signs of the times?

Go and tell John what you see.

The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, dead are raised up, poor, the poor have good news preached to them.

Oh, look, this is all laid out just before you.

Don't be offended by me.

Don't be offended by me.

Then he says to them, the only sign, in Matthew, he says this, the only sign that I'm going to give to this generation is the sign of Jonah.

And what's the sign of Jonah?

Just kidding, it's not like that.

It's that just as Jonah was buried in the fish for three days and then rose again, so too will the Son of Man be buried in the heart of the earth, and he will rise again.

And what did that burial mean?

It meant that all of the blindness and sin that keeps us from seeing him will be dealt with.

All of the death that we live in, so that it doesn't matter what is put in front of us, what evidences are laid before us, our hearts are too dead to see it.

It doesn't matter how many times we would see Jesus feed a crowd of people.

If another crowd showed up the next day, we'd say, How are we gonna do it?

Because we haven't considered who is with us.

But when he is buried, our sin is buried.

With him.

And when he is resurrected, we share in his resurrection.

So that death itself would be destroyed, our hearts might be transformed, our eyes might be enlivened to be able to see him.

But blessed are those who are not offended by him.

But I think there's this.

To approach Jesus, we have to allow him to define his terms for us.

Define our terms for us.

Tell us who we are.

Receive who we are.

This is a risky thing.

Because that takes an incredible leap of faith to trust someone that they might be the Christ, the Son of God.

But look at his heart.

Look at his heart of compassion.

Okay, let's let's stop there.

Let's see if there are are there any questions today?

Okay, cool.

Question.

Answer.

So how are you guys doing?

This is such high pressure typing.

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast.

Okay.

Since we are dependent on Christ to reveal himself to us, why doesn't he reveal himself to everyone?

This isn't a question that we're given the answer to in any explicit terms in Scripture.

It has a parallel question.

Why does he reveal himself to any of us?

That one we get more of an answer for, because we see his compassion that stretches out towards the crowd.

Now, one of the ways that we could go at this question is, well, because he doesn't want to violate our free will.

And that's a common way of understanding this question.

Jesus values our free will so much that he desires not to violate it so deeply that he allows us the final say.

Now, that's not what the Bible says.

In fact, Paul writes himself into this moment in Romans 9 where he tees up this question exactly, and he gives himself the perfect opportunity to make that free will argument.

Like if you're reading Romans 9, you'll read up through this section, you're like, oh, okay, here it comes, the free will argument.

He's teed himself up perfectly for that.

And then he doesn't say it.

And instead, he says something much much stranger.

He says, Who are you, O clay?

To question the making, the fashioning of your maker.

The clay doesn't speak back to the potter and say, you're not permitted to make one vessel for honorable use and another vessel for dishonorable use.

It's not what the clay says.

It doesn't say anything.

It just gets molded.

Alright, so what's happening there?

By the way, um, if you're a young Calvinist uh or a new Calvinist, that can have a lot of meanings.

Young, let's stick with young.

Um, then you hear that and you think, this, I'm so excited about predestination.

Uh, I'm going to go and teach this to everybody by sheer tyranny of will.

And then you'll say, then by the way, tyranny of will, that's the same way God saves you.

Now, Paul explains that in this context, he says, I have unceasing anguish in my heart, because I see my own brothers who are not saved, and I wish that I myself could trade my salvation so that they might be saved.

So here's my point.

If you experience the truth of God's sovereign will, and the teaching of Scripture in this reality that there are people, there are objects of wrath which God has made who are doomed to destruction.

If you experience that teaching of Scripture emotionally such that you have unceasing anguish in your heart when you encounter that reality, then you understand it as well as Paul.

If you, which means that if you're trying to resolve that tension in your seeking to understand it, then you're trying to understand it in a way that Paul didn't understand it.

Some of the truths that we encounter in Scripture are not about our own emotional resolve.

Some of them are meant to put us into a place of, like Paul says, unceasing anguish at this reality.

There's another side to that point, which is if you hear that truth and you are uh so have become so comfortable with it or so inspired by it that you have no anguish, you just have sort of like a joy of winning an argument, then I would say you don't understand it.

And you should not speak about things that you don't understand.

Here's how this ties into our text for the day.

This very point forces us into the reality of our creaturliness and the reality of God's godness, his incredible transcendence above us, and our the fact of our being, which is that we are things that are made by him.

So, how does something that is made come to know and see its maker?

Well, it it has to do that in a way of utter humility, where at the same time it receives its sight of its maker, it is depending on its maker for that sight.

That at the same time it is approaching its maker, saying, saying, Now, now, Creator, God, um I have these signs that if you show them to me, then I will believe that you are God.

That's not what the creature says to its maker.

When the creature encounters its maker, it says, Show me what to see and teach me how to see.

And then Jesus says, Yes, you are relating to me in the appropriate way, in the way that I can be truly known, and your humanity can be expressed, and my godness can be expressed, and our relationship can become real in those terms.

And so Jesus would say things like, Oh, let me teach you how to see.

When the Messiah comes, just like I prophesied, then the poor will have good news spoken to them, and the lame will walk, and the blind will see, and the deaf will hear.

And that will mean that I have come as your Savior, despite your sin against me.

And then you see him on his terms, and then you see him.

Do you see how the horror of our predestination is also describing to us the very means by which we might see and experience the wonder of knowing God?

Do you see how those are related?

So they they have to be held together.

We have to see him as God to really see him.

I'm glad that question was asked because I feel like that was like my actual sermon for the day.

All right.

Paul writes, For I received from the Lord what I also delivered to you, that the Lord Jesus, on the night when he was betrayed, took bread, and when he had given thanks, he broke it and said, This is my body, which is for you.

Do this in remembrance of me.

In the same way also he took the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new covenant in my blood.

Do this as often as you drink it in remembrance of me.

For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord's death until he comes.

Come to him on his terms, to the feast that he throws, with the food that you didn't even know you needed, so that you might be satisfied.

Holy Father, I pray that you would bless this meal, that you would facilitate it as this banquet that you call us to.

And Lord, that we might come as your humble creatures and trust you as the God who does not abandon his creatures, but who comes and sacrifices even himself as one of us, so that we might know you eternally.

What wondrous love.

We lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.