The Diagnosis (Mark 7.1-23)
A couple years ago, Jack got sick. He was weak, he was dizzy, especially when he would lie down. It lasted a while, so we started getting worried. We took him to the doctor and she ordered a blood test.
We couldn’t get an appointment with her until the week after to check the results, so I brought the test results with me to church one day and asked Josh (a doctor-missionary who was attending Connexion at the time) to look at them. I watched him nervously as he looked over the results, because we had noticed a few things were out of range. He looked them over grimly, then said, “From what I can tell, it looks like he’s extremely dehydrated.”
All that worry, because Jack wasn’t drinking enough water. Sure enough, we made him drink a lot more water, and a couple days later he was fine.
A good diagnosis, however unexpected it might be, can target an illness, allow you to treat it efficiently, and also change your perspective on what’s actually going on; it helps you worry less about things that are no big deal, and to take seriously things that need to be taken seriously.
This is essentially what Jesus does for us in today’s text: he takes advantage of a criticism from the Pharisees to give them a scathing diagnosis of their real problem, and ours.
This passage falls perfectly in line with what Mark has been doing since the beginning of his gospel. One of his main goals in this book is to explain to us precisely who Jesus is. Jesus comes preaching the coming of the kingdom of God and calling people to repent of their sin, and he travels from place to place, teaching the crowds and performing miracle after miracle. In the text we saw last time—the second half of chapter 6—we saw him multiply bread and fish to feed five thousand, walking on water, and healing the sick in Gennesaret. And we saw that the particular miracles he performed, and the way he did it, shows us that Jesus is ushering in a new exodus—moving his people out of death and into life.
Mark’s going to continue in that same vein in today’s text: by showing us how Jesus diagnoses the problem of the Pharisees, and of all humanity, he sheds more light on exactly who Jesus is, and what he came to do.
The Pharisees’ Question (v. 1-5)
When we start chapter 7, Jesus and the disciples have landed near Gennesaret off the Sea of Galilee, and Jesus has been healing people all over the region. And apparently a group of Pharisees and some scribes from Jerusalem have come to Jesus and are watching what’s happening around him.
Just as a reminder: the Pharisees were a group of highly religious men who prided themselves on observing the law of Moses to the letter—they saw themselves, in a sense, as arbiters of the Jewish faith. The scribes were religious leaders, experts in interpreting the law. So they’re not the same thing, but their interests often aligned.
And when they observed Jesus’s disciples, they got worried—because they observed a certain behavior in them that, presumably, told them a lot about Jesus. If the disciples act a certain way, that says something about their Master.
Let’s read starting in v. 1:
Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, 2 they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. 3 (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands properly, holding to the tradition of the elders, 4 and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) 5 And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”
Now the obvious question to ask is, why is this such a big deal? I mean, in terms of hygiene it’s not great—always wash your hands before eating—but why would that make their hands not just dirty, but “defiled”?
It all comes down to the notion of purity. Not moral purity, but ritual purity. In the law of Moses, there were certain things that were designated “clean” and “unclean”—certain meats the Jews weren’t allowed to eat, certain things they weren’t allowed to touch. The list of things that could make you ceremonially unclean is, all things considered, reasonably short, and the list existed for a reason: to show that you can’t come into the presence of God in a carefree way. The Jews were called to think hard about what it means to belong to God’s people, and the notion of ritual purity helped them recall that truth. If they touched something that was unclean, they had to go through a process of purification before coming back before God to offer sacrifices.
Being ceremonially unclean meant that you were required to stay away from other people while you were unclean, and it meant that you were excluded from the presence of God, at least temporarily. We have no equivalent for this in our modern society: we have no experience that would exclude us from both our community and from God’s presence. Even if we did have something like that, most people today probably wouldn’t care—they’d just find another community or another god.
But for the Jews, this was a very big deal. If you were impure, you lost everything. If you were pure, you had access to everything. The stakes were incredibly high.
And what happens when the stakes of a given act or situation are high? We get nervous—we start to think of all the ways things could go wrong. So we start to make plans to keep that from happening.
This is, essentially, what happened over the centuries. The law of Moses forbade certain things—things they weren’t allowed to eat or touch—but over the years, the “elders”, the religious leaders, started adding things to that list, just in case. I understand this temptation completely—I myself would rather be too careful rather than not careful enough in most matters. But they added things God never intended to the list of “unclean” things.
Like the need to wash one’s hands before a meal. For hygiene, of course, it’s a good idea. But the law never said eating with unwashed hands made one unclean or “defiled.”
So that’s the context of this strange exchange between Jesus and the Pharisees. Jesus’s disciples are eating with unwashed hands, so the Pharisees and scribes ask him why he’s allowing it, as if the disciples are breaking God’s law by doing so. (They’re not.)
Now of course Jesus could have just explained to them everything I’ve just said, but he knew what was going on in their hearts, and he apparently decided to take advantage of their question. Because, as we see over and over again in the gospels, two things that Jesus cannot stand are religious people who live hypocritically, and religious people who miss the point of their religion.
The Pharisees’ Hypocrisy (v. 6-13)
The question of the Pharisees and scribes is a trick question, of course; they don’t think he’ll have a good answer. So Jesus does what he does so well: he ignores the trick question and turns the tables on those who asked it. V. 6:
6 And he said to them, “Well did Isaiah prophesy of you hypocrites, as it is written,
“ ‘This people honors me with their lips,
but their heart is far from me;
7 in vain do they worship me,
teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’
8 You leave the commandment of God and hold to the tradition of men.”
9 And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition!
Isn’t it interesting that Jesus tells the Pharisees that they “reject the commandment of God”? It sort of seems like they’re doing the opposite, doesn’t it? like they’re not rejecting the commandment, but rather taking it too far.
But if Jesus is telling the truth, by taking it too far, they are rejecting it. Let’s look at the example he gives and see if we can understand what he’s talking about.
V. 9 again:
9 And he said to them, “You have a fine way of rejecting the commandment of God in order to establish your tradition! 10 For Moses said, ‘Honor your father and your mother’; and, ‘Whoever reviles father or mother must surely die.’ 11 But you say, ‘If a man tells his father or his mother, “Whatever you would have gained from me is Corban” ’ (that is, given to God)— 12 then you no longer permit him to do anything for his father or mother, 13 thus making void the word of God by your tradition that you have handed down. And many such things you do.”
On the surface it may seem like Jesus’s example is coming out of nowhere; they were asking him about hand-washing, not about money given to God. But here Jesus shines a light on their whole attitude regarding the law. And their attitude makes a clear statement to God: that what he commands isn’t enough. It’s an attitude that tries to make sure God gets it right. Surely when God talked about ritual purity, and gave a list of things that could make people unclean, he meant that list to be a lot longer. So we’ll just go ahead and make that list as long as we can, just to make sure we’ve covered all the bases.
That’s the logic they apply to the law in general, Jesus knows, so he gives them an even worse example. The law says, “Honor your father and mother”—and it takes it very seriously, as we see in v. 10: according to the law, dishonoring your parents was punishable by death. (Hear that, kids?) Though its application changed over the years, the importance of honoring your parents continued all the way until your parents’ death; in their old age, when they can’t work anymore, it was the children’s responsibility to care for them, to contribute to their welfare.
But God also told the people to contribute financially to the tabernacle, and later, to the temple. This was a big part of the law as well.
So (here’s the Pharisees’ logic, taken to its conclusion), surely the commandment to give to God’s house is more important than the commandment to honor your parents. If you have to choose between one commandment or the other, which do you choose? After all, who is more important? God, or Mom and Dad?
God, of course. So all the money that would have gone to Mom and Dad, we can “dedicate it to God” (that’s what that word “Corban” means), so we don’t have to give it to Mom and Dad. Think of all the money we’ll save, when we can take two lines in our budget and shrink them down to one! And we’ll feel good and pious on top of it, because we’re giving to God.
You see the problem. Here’s tradition again, applying the law incorrectly in order to feed the egos of the obedient.
The problem is always the same. God commands a certain number of things (and make no mistake, his commands are strict, as we’ll see later). Then the religious leaders come along and establish tradition that goes beyond what the law says.
We all know that the Catholic Church elected a new pope this week, Pope Leo XIV. I know nothing about the man, besides the obvious; he seems like a nice man and it sounds like he’s done some good work.
But there are problems, not with the man himself, but with what he represents and what he says. I don’t have time to get into all of them right now, and I’m not trying to offend anyone—if you’re Catholic or come from a Catholic background, we love you and we’re happy you’re here—but the new pope’s speech gives us a very quick example of the kind of thing Jesus is talking about.
I won’t read the whole thing, merely give two select quotes. The first came early on in his speech:
“Therefore, without fear, united hand in hand with God and among ourselves, we move forward. We are disciples of Christ. Christ precedes us. The world needs his light. Humanity needs him as the bridge to allows it to be reached by God and by his love…”
To that, I say amen—there’s a need to specify who are the “we” who are disciples of Christ, but he’s right. Christ precedes us in our mission, and humanity absolutely does need him. He is the bridge between humanity and God.
So far, so good.
But this is how he ended his speech:
“Today is the day of the Supplication to Our Lady of Pompeii. Our Mother Mary always wants to walk with us, to be close, to help us with her intercession and her love. So, I would like to pray together with you. Let us pray together for this new mission, for the whole Church, for peace in the world and let us also ask Mary, our Mother, for this special grace.”
And he followed this with the famous Hail Mary. Only one prayer offered up by the new pope, and it was offered, not to our Savior Jesus Christ himself, but to Mary.
The Bible never encourages us to pray to Mary, but it commands us continually to pray to Christ, because Christ—not a pope or a priest—is the intermediary between God and man.
“…teaching as doctrine the commandments of men.” And what is the danger of this? That we might hear God say, “‘This people honors me with their lips, but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me.’”
Tradition in and of itself isn’t a bad thing; it can be immensely helpful and structuring. However, these leaders to whom Jesus is speaking put their tradition on the same level as the Word of God, treating disobedience to tradition with the same severity as disobedience to the Word of God.
It is an unbelievably arrogant way to behave, because it assumes that God didn’t get it right the first time. And the end result of this kind of behavior is always that our tradition will come and replace the Word of God, because our tradition comes from us, and we understand it. We like its rigidity because it makes us feel pious; it gives us concrete actions we can perform to prove our own worth to ourselves.
Treating God’s law this way takes the spotlight off of God, and puts it on ourselves. We do what we think is right, and we do it because we think it makes us holy. We assume that if we act a certain way, and obey these rules established by our tradition, God will look at us and say, “How amazing you are!”
But the point of the law was to show the incredible distance between God’s holiness and our sin; to show that sin is an active barrier to fellowship with God; in other words, the law existed to show us how good he is, not how good we are. “‘This people honors me with their lips,’” God said through the prophet Isaiah, “‘but their heart is far from me; in vain do they worship me, teaching as doctrines the commandments of men.’”
When you hold too tightly to the tradition of men, you leave the commandment of God. Which is a grave mistake because the commandment of God actually cuts far deeper, than our tradition.
And that’s where Jesus goes next.
Humanity’s Problem (v. 14-23)
This time, Jesus speaks to the crowd again and he does what he always does so beautifully: he takes a simple commandment from the law and turns it completely on its head. This is what everything so far in this chapter has been building toward. V. 14:
14 And he called the people to him again and said to them, “Hear me, all of you, and understand: 15 There is nothing outside a person that by going into him can defile him, but the things that come out of a person are what defile him.”
Now if you read v. 14 and 15 and you feel a bit confused, don’t feel bad. After all, the law of Moses explicitly said that there are plenty of things the Jews weren’t allowed to eat, or else they would become “unclean.”
Let’s face it: this parable (this teaching given through a picture) that Jesus tells in v. 14-15 is not very clear. That’s not a criticism of Jesus teaching. Remember what we saw about parables in chapter 4? We saw that the point of parables wasn’t usually to make things clearer, but on the contrary to make them even more obscure.
So it’s not at all surprising that the disciples would hear this and be confused, because it sounds as if Jesus is saying that God’s own laws of ritual purity are wrong. But the one thing the disciples almost always have in their favor is that when they’re confused, they ask questions. It’s the right thing to do. V. 17:
17 And when he had entered the house and left the people, his disciples asked him about the parable. 18 And he said to them, “Then are you also without understanding? Do you not see that whatever goes into a person from outside cannot defile him, 19 since it enters not his heart but his stomach, and is expelled?” (Thus he declared all foods clean.) 20 And he said, “What comes out of a person is what defiles him. 21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
Look at the picture he’s painting. We eat food; where does it go? Into the stomach, to be expelled. When we eat food, what does it miss? It misses the heart.
Obviously there are foods that can lead to heart disease; Jesus isn’t being scientific here. He’s speaking in spiritual terms.
In the Bible, the “heart” is the center of one’s person, the seat of our thoughts and will and emotions and conscience. The heart is what makes us who we are as individuals.
Do you see what he’s doing? He’s helping the disciples see the forest for the trees. He’s taking the focus off of the commandment itself, and directing their attention to what the commandment was trying to say.
What was the commandment on ritual purity trying to say? It was trying to show that there is a natural barrier to fellowship with God, that there is an unbridgeable chasm between God’s holiness and our sin. The commandments on ritual purity merely took that abstract concept and made it concrete, made it feel more real, more immediate. When someone became unclean and was required to go through the process of purification in order to offer sacrifices again, they felt what it’s like to be cut off from God, and how badly they needed to be purified.
All the Jews knew what this felt like, because the list of things that could make one unclean included quite ordinary things that would happen to everyone at least once. Almost definitely, they had all been through the rites of purification before, and knew what it felt like to be temporarily unclean.
So imagine what a hammer-blow it would be to hear Jesus say that what they felt during their ritual uncleanness, they should be feeling all the time. Why? Because it’s not what goes into a person that defiles him, but what comes out of him. V. 21 again:
21 For from within, out of the heart of man, come evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, 22 coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness. 23 All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.”
These are devastating verses, because they show that the real problem is far bigger than we imagined. Jesus says the real problem isn’t what we do: what we eat or drink, or even the sinful actions we perform. Evil thoughts, sexual immorality, theft, murder, adultery, coveting, wickedness, deceit, sensuality, envy, slander, pride, foolishness—these are all evil things, Jesus says. But they’re not even the main problem. Because where do these evil things come from? They come from within. From out of the heart of man.
What truly defiles us, Jesus says, is what comes out of us.
We see it all the time in children; when they get in trouble, what is their instinct? It is to defend themselves by throwing the blame onto something else. “I didn’t mean to, the cookie fell into my mouth!” “It wasn’t me, it was my sister; she took my fist and hit herself with it!” It sounds goofy, but parents, you’ll know—kids think of the dumbest things to lie about.
And really, we adults are no different, we just do it better. When we sin against God, we think of the most brilliant justifications for why we couldn’t help it. Why it wasn’t our fault. Why we couldn’t have done any differently. We do it so well that we actually convince ourselves that we’re not that bad; in the deepest parts of ourselves, we really are good people, and it’s the circumstance that made us disobey God’s clear commands.
If you read the Bible, you’ll notice two things that seem to be at odds. You’ll see that the Bible is both far more positive than we are in its view of humanity, and far more negative. It tells us that we have been created in God’s very own image. So it fights directly against everything in us that tells us we’re worthless, that we can’t do anything right, that God could never love us.
At the same time, it tells us that sin has so corrupted us that as bad as we often think we are, we’re actually worse. Jesus tells us here that everything wrong with our world doesn’t come from outside of us—not from Satan or demons or anything else. Everything wrong with us comes from inside of us.
Incredible potential, crushed by incredible evil.
It’s a doctrine we refer to as “total depravity”. Total depravity doesn’t mean that we’re all as bad as we could be, but that sin has sunk its fingers into every corner of our hearts and souls. All these evil things come from within, and they defile a person.
That sounds terribly grim; the problem is far worse than the Pharisees or the scribes had imagined. What possible hope could we have, knowing that the human heart is responsible for every wrong, every injustice, and that we are all infected with it? Look at the list that Jesus gives of what comes out of the heart of man in v. 21-22. It’s not exhaustive, but even so, not a single person in history could look at that list and not find themselves on their somewhere. Maybe I’ve never killed anyone or cheated on my wife…but I’m definitely guilty of coveting, of deceit, of envy, of pride, of foolishness.
What hope could we possibly have, if the real problem doesn’t come from outside of us, but from inside? Jesus called people to repent, to abandon their sins and to follow him. But how do we do that? I might be able to stick at least sort of closely to a pattern of behavior, but I can’t abandon my own heart; I carry it with me wherever I go. And this heart I carry around produces all these evil things.
What hope do we have?
Well, think about it this way: why would Jesus say this to his disciples? Jesus isn’t cruel; he doesn’t ever want to just frighten people for the fun of it. What is he trying to help them see?
He’s trying to help them see what they need to be rescued from, so they can understand what kind of Rescuer Jesus is.
Il est le Sauveur qui ne se contentera pas des comportements extérieurs, mais qui visera le cœur de l’homme. Il est le Sauveur qui ne se contentera pas de réhabilité les habitudes sociales ou morales de son peuple, mais qui prendra leur péché sur lui-même et leur donnera sa justice. Il est le Sauveur qui ne se contentera pas de maquiller les cadavres que nous sommes, mais qui nous ressuscite avec lui pour faire de nous des nouvelles créations.
Our diagnosis is incredibly brutal; it’s far worse than we thought. But when we have a diagnosis, we can welcome the cure.
The Diagnosis and the Cure
Now when we read this text, our temptation will be to rush to the cure as quickly as possible. If Jesus tells these things to the disciples to help them understand what kind of Rescuer he is, then we want to immediately go to the comforting truth that Christ really has paid for our sin.
But notice that he doesn’t go there quite yet. He doesn’t tell the disciples, “You see? You all have evil hearts—but don’t worry, I’m the Rescuer. I’ll die to change those hearts and pay for your sin.” He’ll get there eventually, and they will understand all that…but for now, Jesus lets them sit in the uncomfortable truth of what their problem is.
It makes sense. The cure for our sin is given freely in Christ. Our evil hearts that produce evil ways have been punished, once and for all. Our sin was nailed to the cross with Christ.
But we saw it last week, in Isaiah 55: to accept that cure means a radical reorientation of our priorities, of our view of ourselves, of everything we are.
And I’ve seen far too many people who look at this reorientation and say, “You know, that just seems like a lot.” And they reject the cure, because they don’t fully feel the weight of the diagnosis.
We cannot make the same mistake.
So the challenge to all of us this week, after spending time meditating on this text, is to sit in these truths for as long as we need to. To meditate on the reality that the sin which condemned us came from within us, and not from outside.
And then, once we begin to feel how desperate our situation was (and perhaps is still), to marvel at the fact that it is this kind of sinner Christ came to save. He took on himself, not only our sinful acts, but our sinful hearts. He didn’t just free us from condemnation; he died to make us new creations. He didn’t just teach us lessons, he made us alive.
Sit under the weight of your sin for as long as you need to, in order to fully understand the weight of his glory. And then come to him—perhaps even for the first time. Come to him and know that, when he described the darkness of our hearts, he knew perfectly well that it was those kinds of hearts he was dying for. Let us marvel at our Savior this week, and thank him for loving the unworthy.
“And They Lived Happily Ever After…” (Isaiah 55)
Most of you know I love movies—I love stories of all kinds, really, whether they’re movies or books or songs. But as the years pass, I find myself becoming less and less patient with stories that have easy, happy endings. Stories with happy endings make me feel good, but they don’t always ring true. Happy endings in real life are possible—they do happen, I know—but much of the time, people’s stories don’t end well. We march on from one painful event to the next, observing atrocities in the world from afar and witnessing disturbing behavior in the people around us, getting older and weaker as we go, before finally succumbing to the ugly reality that is death.
That’s the way life often is in a fallen world, so I have a hard time believing in happy endings.
But the fact that something is uncommon does not make it untrue. For all the unhappy endings we see over the course of our lives, there is one happy ending that is promised.
That’s what we’ve been looking at over these last two weeks: the plan God set in motion to ensure a happy ending for his people.
On Easter Sunday, we looked at Isaiah 53, in which God tells, centuries in advance, what exactly Jesus Christ would do for us. We saw that in response to the problem of our sin, our rebellion against God which separates us from him, God would send a suffering servant—a Savior, a Messiah, to come and suffer the consequences of our sin, in our place, in order to share with us his glory. This suffering servant described by Isaiah is the perfect description of Jesus Christ, who would come centuries later and do exactly what Isaiah said he would do.
Last week, we saw the first effects of Christ’s saving grace in Isaiah 54. God has given his people a new family situation, a reversal of fortune, from sterile and abandoned to protected and flourishing.
Today, we’re going to be looking at the final application of the good news of the gospel, in Isaiah 55. If Isaiah 53 explains the mechanics of the gospel (how it works), and Isaiah 54 explains how the gospel changes who we are, Isaiah 55 explains how the gospel is lived out in the Christian life.
And it is the only way. There are many different ways of applying what we see here in the minutest details of our lives—because we’re all different from one another—but there are a certain number of commonalities that will always be present if we are truly Christians. In other words, this passage describes not the end, but the beginning: Isaiah 55 describes what some have called “the basic Christian life”.
Context: Everyone, Everywhere, All the Time
Before we get started, we need to look at a bit of context that is really important. Last week, we saw that in Christ, God had brought about a new family situation for his people: instead of being barren, his people would be fertile; instead of being desolate and abandoned and under God’s judgment, his people would receive his salvation and compassion.
But of course, one might say, in chapter 54 he’s talking about God’s people, Israel, the people whom he had judged for their sin and subsequently forgiven, and promised a Savior. What does all of that have to do with the rest of the world, with people who are not members of Israel?
We see that pretty clearly at the beginning of chapter 55. V. 1:
“Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters—
So let’s not miss that very strong word “EVERYONE”. Next, v. 3-5:
3 Incline your ear [EVERYONE whom he just called in v. 1], and come to me;
hear, that your soul may live;
and I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David.
So the covenant God made with David, the covenant God made with Israel, he will extend to you who do not belong to Israel. And in case it wasn’t clear enough already:
4 Behold, I made him [DAVID] a witness to the peoples,
a leader and commander for the peoples.
5 Behold, you [the Messiah, the ultimate descendant of King David] shall call a nation that you do not know,
and a nation that did not know you shall run to you,
because of the LORD your God, and of the Holy One of Israel,
for he has glorified you.
So the “new family situation” that Eduardo preached about last week, we see here, extends to people from all nations. Those who have nothing, those who have no rightful claim to the blessings of the Messiah, but who are hungry for them. The covenant made with David is extended to all peoples, because he is (v. 4) “a witness to the peoples”—plural, not singular.
In general we need to be careful about taking Old Testament prophecies and applying them directly to our own lives—often, those prophecies were given to specific people at specific moments in history, and for specific reasons. However, because of what we just saw in the first five verses, I do feel comfortable applying this passage to us, and not only to the people of Israel: the chapter opens with God opening up these promises to all nations, to all peoples. And that includes us.
That being said, in this text Isaiah answers for us not one question, but four—four distinct questions that spring out of the gospel. They’re fairly simple, but profound in their impact on our lives. Here are the four questions:
• What is the call of the gospel?
• How can we access the life he promises?
• How can we be sure it will work?
• And finally: What will the result of the gospel be (for us and for God)?
That’s where we’re headed this morning.
For the last two weeks, we have been looking at the most monumental truths imaginable. They are truths which change everything—not just for today, but for all of eternity. They are truths that will right every wrong, that will fix everything broken, truths which tell us that no matter how hard it is to believe, a happy ending is possible for us, and it has been made available for us.
So if the promise of the gospel—that Christ lived, died and was raised in our place, for our sins, so that we might have peace and comfort and salvation in him, how are we to respond?
What Is the Call of the Gospel? (v. 1-5)
I remember when I was a new Christian being consistently surprised by what I read in the Bible. I had grown up in church, so I thought I knew this book pretty well. And that’s one reason why reading the Bible is, frankly, so much fun, so stimulating: I’m always running across passages I never would have expected.
Like this one. If you were to ask me, “What is the call of the gospel?”, at the beginning of my Christian life my answer probably would have been something like this: “The call of the gospel is to repent of your sin and believe in Christ.” And that’s not a bad answer—we’ll get to that answer a little later.
But it’s not how God frames this passage; that’s not how he starts. Listen to what he says. V. 1:
“Come, everyone who thirsts,
come to the waters;
and he who has no money,
come, buy and eat!
Come, buy wine and milk
without money and without price.
Do you see how that’s different from my earlier definition? The call of the gospel is not a command, it’s an invitation. Or rather, it’s a command that is an invitation. The only prerequisites for receiving the grace of God are being thirsty, being hungry, and being poor.
Come, everyone who thirsts! Come to the waters!
Come, everyone who is hungry! Buy and eat!
Come, everyone who has no money! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price!
What kind of king gives an invitation like that? An invitation to people from all nations, from all peoples—even people from enemy nations—to come in and be fed, with no payment, no tariffs, no interest?
This is the God we serve, whose first initiative is to feed those who come to him hungry, to give to those who cannot give back.
Now of course, he’s not talking about physical food and drink—God never promised we would never have times when we feel physical hunger or thirst. So what’s he talking about? If God invites those of us who are hungry and thirsty to come to him and eat, come to him and drink, then what exactly are we hungry and thirsty for?
He answers that question in v. 2-3:
2 Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread,
and your labor for that which does not satisfy?
Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good,
and delight yourselves in rich food.
3 Incline your ear, and come to me;
hear, that your soul may live;
and I will make with you an everlasting covenant,
my steadfast, sure love for David.
There is a universal desire in the human heart to be happy—to be satisfied. And there is a universal tendency in the human heart to pursue things that will never satisfy us.
The best meal, the best job, the best house, the best marriage, the best children, will never fully satisfy us. I could say that they will never satisfy us because we live in a fallen world and there will always be something that comes along to throw a wrench in the works—illness or financial trouble or broken relationships or sin. But that’s not even the real reason. These things we pursue will never fully satisfy us because they weren’t meant to satisfy us. We weren’t created to be satisfied by these things, and they weren’t created to fulfill that desire.
And yet we still spend most of our waking hours pursuing things that will, at best, give us momentary glimpses of the satisfaction we long for, like walking by a kitchen and smelling good food being prepared. That’s at best. At worst, they will disappoint us to such an extent that our capacity for satisfaction will shrink. We’ll be so frequently let down by these things that we’ll come to believe nothing will ever satisfy us.
Both of these options are substandard. “Why,” God asks, “do you spend money for that which is not bread—” (that which won’t fill us) “—and labor for that which does not satisfy?” It’s a rhetorical question, like when you ask a child who just ate a clot of dirt, “Why did you do that?” There’s no good answer to that question. And that’s the sort of question God’s asking here. Because there is no good reason to labor for that which does not satisfy. We do it, only because we don’t see any better options, and we’re trying to make the most with what we have.
So God offers us a much better option. He says, “Listen diligently, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food. Incline your ear, and come to me; hear—” Why? “—that your soul may live.”
That is what we want. That is what we hunger for. We want to live. So we travel, and we pour ourselves into things we think are worthwhile, and we pursue leisure, and we work on building relationships, and none of those things are bad—but we mistake those things for life, and they are not life.
What gives us true, lasting, satisfying life? Listening diligently to what God says, eating the food he gives us, resting in the covenant God has made with us, and running to the Savior he has glorified. That is what will satisfy us, because that is why we were created.
And living like this is the call of the gospel. It is not a weak call, and it is not a call that is without risk. But it is a call that is unequivocally invitational.
Are you hungry? Come and eat.
Are you thirsty? Come and drink.
Are you tired of working for that which does not satisfy? Come and live.
That is the call of the gospel.
So here is the second question:
How Do We Access This Life? (v. 6-9)
The call of the gospel is an invitation to come and live, and we saw in chapters 53 and 54 that God has provided a Savior who would make that invitation possible. He sent his Son to live our life and to die our death, to take our sin on himself, to be punished in our place and to give us his righteousness. The end result is that our sin dies on the cross with Christ, and all we have left is the righteousness of Christ that was given to us.
But there is a strange thing that happens when we talk about these truths. We talk about these truths as if because Christ has purchased our salvation for us, there’s nothing for us to do—and that is simply not true. We look at the finished work of Christ, and we assume that because his work is finished, ours must be finished too.
But that’s just not the case. And there’s a good reason. Even though his work is finished, our work is not, because we have a hunger in us that only God can satisfy, and if we want to be satisfied, we have to eat.
So what does that “eating” and “drinking” and “living” look like?
It looks like repentance. It looks like confessing our sin, turning away from our sin, and pursuing God’s ways instead of ours.
V. 6:
6 “Seek the LORD while he may be found;
call upon him while he is near;
7 let the wicked forsake his way,
and the unrighteous man his thoughts;
let him return to the LORD, that he may have compassion on him,
and to our God, for he will abundantly pardon.
8 For my thoughts are not your thoughts,
neither are your ways my ways, declares the LORD.
9 For as the heavens are higher than the earth,
so are my ways higher than your ways
and my thoughts than your thoughts.
In my opinion, these four verses are the best description of repentance in the Bible. Because they not only tell us what repentance is, but why repentance is necessary.
Repentance is seeking the Lord and calling upon him—asking for his help, because we know we need it.
Repentance is forsaking our wicked ways and unrighteous thoughts—turning away from them, to the point that these sins we used to pursue are simply no longer an option for us.
Repentance is pursuing an entirely new way of life, and entirely new way of thinking. Learning to think his thoughts rather than our own, learning to walk in his ways rather than our own. It’s absolutely vital for us to see that these famous verses—v. 8 and 9 (“For my thoughts are not your thoughts, and your ways are not my ways”)—come in the context of repentance. He’s not talking about the unknowability of God (although God is impossible for us to fully grasp). In v. 7 he calls us to forsake our ways, and then he tells us in v. 8-9 which ways to follow. You see the difference? He’s not saying, “You’ll never be able to understand me” (even if that’s true). He’s telling us that our ways are worthless, and he’s calling us to follow his ways instead.
And that is going to require a serious mentality shift on our part.
The closest thing I could think of to describe what’s going on is schizophrenia. I shouldn’t need to say this, but I feel I may: schizophrenia is real thing. It is an actual disorder of the brain, characterized by disruptions to thinking and emotions, and a distorted perception of reality. And that’s the really spooky part—we all suffer from disruptions to thinking and emotions from time to time, for a lot of reasons. But if you have a distorted perception of reality…how would you know? If you’re suffering from hallucinations and delusions, how would you know, on your own?
Think of how scary that is. You look at the world around you, you think something is happening…but in fact what you think is happening in he world and the reality of the world could not be farther apart.
I don’t want to frighten anyone, but in essence, that is what God is telling us here.
In terms of its ability to skew our perception, schizophrenia pales in comparison to sin. Every one of us needs to accept the fact that we don’t see things as they really are. We don’t think of things as we should. We don’t value things that are valuable, and we don’t pursue that which will satisfy us. Because we are still in this world, we do not see things as we should, reason as we should, or make decisions as we should. Our ways are awful. Our ways are so far from the right way that the only way God can describe it is by saying, “As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
Repentance, then, is the arduous, lifelong process of learning to see that nearly everything I think is wrong, and that everything God is telling me is right. “Incline your ear,” he says, “and come to me; hear, that your soul may live… Let the wicked forsake his way, and the unrighteous man his thoughts. As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways and my thoughts than your thoughts.”
If we can learn to recognize that our instincts are wrong, and that God tells us what is right, then with his help we can finally start doing something about it. Our ways are wicked, but we don’t have to keep walking in them. We can change. We can repent.
One of the hardest challenges of the Christian life is believing that true repentance is possible. We get discouraged far too easily; we don’t even think it’s possible.
I was in Evian this week at the pastoral conference for the AEEBLF, and someone told a story. A kid asks his dad if he can go play by the lake.
Dad says, “Yes, but don’t go in the water.”
“I won’t.”
“No, really—I know how much you like to swim. Don’t go in the water.”
“No no, I won’t.”
A couple minutes later the kid starts heading for the lake and the dad stops him. “I can see the swimming suit hanging out of your pocket,” he says. “Why do you have that?”
The kid says, “Well, just in case I’m tempted to go in, I don’t want to get my clothes wet.”
This is how we often approach temptation. We’ve given up before it even comes: we assume the temptation will be too hard to resist, so we assume that our sin is inevitable. Often we give in to temptation simply because we leave ourselves the option of doing so.
I see it over and over again: many of us tend to accept a lack of holiness as an ordinary part of the Christian life, and it’s not. God calls us to turn away from our sin—to forsake our ways and our thoughts, and to follow his—and he wouldn’t call us to it if we were unable to do it. We are capable of far more holiness than we think.
And we come to him and we repent and we pursue holiness—we pursue his ways instead of our own—not to get saved or to stay saved, but because he invites us to do it.
That’s not only why we repent, but how we repent! We already saw it in v. 1. “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Hear, that your soul may live!” Do you see how he describes it so much differently than we do? Repentance and holiness are not a burden; they are air for our lungs, food for our souls, life for our souls.
How much effort are people willing to put into physical exercise when they realize that it will help them live longer? When we realize that holiness is life—that it’s rich food, that it’s good drink—how hard will we work to be holy? What will our repentance look like then?
Which leads us to our next question—if God is inviting us to life, and if God is telling us how to access it, how can we be sure it will work?
How Can We Be Sure It Will Work? (v. 10-11)
The answer to this question is incredibly simple, to the point where it will make some people uncomfortable: it will work because God will make it work. V. 10:
10 “For as the rain and the snow come down from heaven
and do not return there but water the earth,
making it bring forth and sprout,
giving seed to the sower and bread to the eater,
11 so shall my word be that goes out from my mouth;
it shall not return to me empty,
but it shall accomplish that which I purpose,
and shall succeed in the thing for which I sent it.
The picture he gives here is almost comical because it’s so obvious. The world is very good at growing things. Rain works well. When it falls, it doesn’t immediately get sucked back up into the sky again. It falls and waters the earth and causes plants to grow, which give us fruit and grain.
In the same way, whatever God decides to do—and that’s what he means when he talks about his “word” that “goes out from my mouth”: he’s talking about his decrees, his declarations, his decisions—will always fulfill its intended purpose. If God says something, that thing will absolutely happen. His word will not return to him empty; it will succeed.
God says that if we come to him, and turn away from our sin, and follow him, then he will give us life. He will feed our souls, and he will make us holy.
Some of you need to hear this, because you’re convinced there’s something in you that is stopping you from living for God as you should. But God says here that that is a lie. There is no defect in any of us that can stop his promise from being fulfilled: his word will always succeed in the thing for which he sent it, and he said, “Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; incline your ear, and come to me; hear, that your soul may live; seek the Lord while he may be found; return to the Lord, that he may have compassion on you; forsake your ways, and follow mine.”
That is what God has said. That is his invitation to you. Do you really think there’s some handicap in you that could possibly stop God from giving you life if you come to him? There isn’t. His word will not return to him empty. It will do what he intends for it to do.
So no matter how you feel about yourself this morning, you can do this. You can respond to him in faith. You can change.
This is such good news. Which makes the final question incredibly easy to answer: What will the result of the gospel be for us and for God?
What Is the Result? (v. 12-13)
The result is joy for the world, and glory for God. V. 12:
12 “For you shall go out in joy
and be led forth in peace;
the mountains and the hills before you
shall break forth into singing,
and all the trees of the field shall clap their hands.
13 Instead of the thorn shall come up the cypress;
instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle;
and it shall make a name for the LORD,
an everlasting sign that shall not be cut off.”
This is an almost silly level of joy, like he’s describing an old Disney cartoon, where the trees and the flowers are singing and dancing. That is the goal he’s going for: that God might be recognized for the wonder-working, all-compassionate God that he is, and that the whole world might know his name, and respond with such joy that the earth itself sings in response.
This is what it will feel like to be in heaven. This is the result of the gospel: joy to the world, and glory to God.
Conclusion
In the light of the gospel we saw in Isaiah 53 and 54, here in chapter 55 we see:
• a call to live (v. 1-5);
• a call to repent (v. 6-9);
• a promise that God will do what he says here (v. 10-11);
• and a promise that the result will be joy, in the praise of his glory (v. 12-13).
Two calls, to promises.
I know that many of you here today are desperate for life, and you have been for some time. You always feel like there’s something holding you back. You want to be happy, but you don’t know how. And this text diagnoses the problem with laser focus.
One of the first questions we should ask when we’re going through a period of spiritual dryness is, “Is there any sinful pattern of behavior in my life of which I have not repented?” Now sometimes the answer will be no—sometimes we’re just going through a difficult time, or circumstances have worn us down. But the problem is that we will often assume that the problem is our circumstances. And we do that because the alternative is too painful. We don’t want to consider that we are the ones making life so hard on ourselves, that we’re having a hard time living because we keep going back to what kills us.
Do you see how this text changes the way we ought to think about repentance? We always think of repentance as “what I have to do in order to be saved,” when God describes repentance as “what I do in order to live.” That’s very different. Repentance is not the box to check in order to get into heaven; repentance is the life we live in order to be happy, forever. In order to be satisfied, forever. Repentance isn’t a task to accomplish but a life to enjoy. Is it hard? Of course it is. Most good things are hard, and they’re all the better for it.
So stop resisting. Discipline yourself. Listen to what God says in his Word, and come to him, so that you may live. Reject your ways and learn to follow in his. It will be a radical recentering of every area of your life—but it will be good. Water for the thirsty, good food for the hungry.
And believe that when you come to him, when you seek him, when you call on him, and when you repent, he will answer. He will have compassion on you. He will pardon you. He will feed you. He will give you life. It may not happen the way you expect, but it will happen. God’s word will not return to him empty.
This is the life he invites us into, that gives us a foretaste of heaven, where all the earth will rejoice in the glory of God’s name, through the finished work of his Son.
Texts like this remind us that as good as we think God is, he is infinitely better. So since he is so good, let us come to him and drink.
Easter 2025 - Isaiah 52.13-53.12
Happy Easter!
Some acts of rescue are so incredible that they leave you speechless.
We all remember Mamadou Gassama - the Malian spiderman - who scaled the facade of a building in 30 seconds to save a child clinging to the 4th floor balcony.
Everyone was just speechless, wondering how he did it.
Or, a few years earlier, the airline pilot who saved all his passengers when his plane's engines stopped over New York by landing on the Hudson River in the middle of New York.
Amazing. Mouths agape.
It's Easter. Easter isn't primarily about chocolate eggs, leg of lamb or flying bells (a tradition you'll have to explain to me).
It's a rescue and a rescuer that will leave the whole world speechless.
Let's go back a few verses before what has just been read - Isaiah 52:10
Easter is the moment when
"the Lord stretches out the arm of his holiness,
for all the nations to see,
And that even the ends of the earth shall see
the salvation of our God".
OK, tell us more. Well, verse 13
There will be a servant (a rescuer) who will succeed,
who will grow and gain in importance, who will be very highly placed.
Great! And verse 15 ...
Before him ... kings ... will shut their mouths,
Easter ... it's supposed to be the story of a rescue that leaves the whole world speechless.
Let's imagine it was up to you to write the rest of these verses.
What would you write?
What would God do that would leave the whole world speechless?
Maybe you'd like us to get up tomorrow, turn on the radio and learn that God has raised up a diplomat who has negotiated a peace agreement between the Ukrainians and the Russians, and another between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
"People would say, "That's the hand of God!”
Or a scientist who finally found a way to eliminate our carbon emissions.
"There's God at work!”
Or perhaps an economist who could convince Donald Trump to drop his tariffs.
"Hallelujah!”
If God were to stretch out his arm for all to see to save the world, what would you expect that to look like?
***
This morning, we are not going to meditate on one of the accounts written by the witnesses to the events of Easter, the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus, as Christians often do at this time of year.
Instead, we're going back 700 years before Jesus to find out how all this was anticipated by a prophet called Isaiah.
Isaiah lived through a period of political and military upheaval even worse than our own.
In its day, superpowers such as the Assyrian and Babylonian empires rose up and sought to dominate the world.
Against this backdrop of upheaval, Isaiah was commissioned by God to tell the people of Israel that they were going to be defeated by his superpowers and exiled far from home. Not because God couldn't protect them, but because they had turned away from God and this was their punishment.
But Isaiah was also responsible for announcing that this exile would not be the end.
God had a rescue plan for Israel and for all peoples.
He was going to intervene by sending his servant to carry out his plan.
Easter is the culmination of this plan.
Maybe you wouldn't call yourself a Christian this morning - welcome! You know that Easter has something to do with Jesus, his death, his resurrection, but you're wondering how these events, if they happened at all, help with anything. There are plenty of problems around us. A man who gets killed, then comes back, what's the difference?
Maybe you're a Christian, but if you're like me, you're sometimes tempted to think that the events of Easter are really what we needed most.
We have so many other problems that 2000 years later are still with us.
Where is the rescue plan that was supposed to leave us breathless?
Let's have a look together.
The first thing to notice is that this rescue plan revolves around a man, a servant, who will leave us speechless... in the face of his suffering.
Silent before his suffering (52.13-53.3)
Isaiah 53:1
53 *Who has believed our preaching?
To whom was the arm of the Lord revealed?
2 It grew before him like a young plant,
like a shoot emerging from dry ground.
He had no beauty or splendour to attract our attention,
and we weren't happy with the way it looked.
3 Despised and neglected by men,
a man of pain, accustomed to suffering,
he was like someone to whom you turn your head:
we despised him, we paid no attention to him.
Imagine if I told you I could show you a promotional video for a plan to save the world.
You'd probably look at me and say okaaay, what's he talking about?
Since you're being nice, you'll give me the benefit of the doubt.
You put on the video and you expect to see perhaps a scientific or medical discovery, or a brilliant political or economic project.
But after a few seconds you realise that it's not true.
These are images from death row.
We see a man walking, head bowed, escorted by prison guards towards his execution.
You tell me, but I think you've got the wrong video, this can't be it!
This is the reaction that Isaiah anticipates. Who believed our preaching?
He knows that his presentation of God's rescue plan will be almost impossible for many people to believe.
The exact opposite of what we would have proposed.
Saving the world should be a matter for great men and women who achieve great things.
If we had to choose one word to describe the man Isaiah presents to us, it would be 'loser'!
Isaiah sums up this man's life in a few words.
He grew like a young plant,
like a shoot emerging from dry ground.
There are a few potted plants in my house that we don't water any more because we don't notice them, and we don't notice them because we don't water them. There's just some dry soil and a little shoot that doesn't look like much.
This is the servant and saviour sent by God.
To many, he looks like ... a loser. You hardly notice him.
We're 1,000 km from the Hollywood hero with the well-sculpted muscles and the perfect smile.
"He had no beauty or splendour to attract our attention".
You see people panhandling in Paris metro stations. How tempting it is to simply look away. We prefer to ignore them.
Isaiah says that this is the servant of God.
"like a man whose head is turned away".
It will be rejected.
What's more, this rejection led to his death.
Let's go back a few verses.
Isaiah 52 verse 14 ... which says that :
14 Many were horrified when they saw it,
his face was so disfigured,
so different was his appearance from that of humans,
I don't know if any of you have seen Mel Gibson's film The Passion of the Christ, released some twenty years ago now.
It's a film that highlights the bloody side of Jesus' death.
It's striking to see that the Gospels, the eyewitness accounts we have of Jesus' death, are very sober about the bloody side.
They assume that we know that a crucifixion is horrible.
Isaiah gives us a clue as to how horrible it is.
Those who see this servant suffering will ask themselves: is this a human being we have before us? Is it possible for a man to undergo so many torments?
The Roman politician, Cicero, said that the mere word "cross" should be "removed not only from the body of the Roman citizen but even from his thoughts, eyes and ears."
It was so degrading.
Before the suffering of God's servant, Isaiah announces that we will be speechless.
***
We're supposed to ask ourselves: how can this be the world's rescue plan?
Indeed, Isaiah, who will believe your preaching?
It's absurd! It's grotesque!
How can this be saving the world?
***
Notice that we are not at the beginning of the book of Isaiah. There have already been 52 chapters.
These 52 chapters tell the story of the failure of strong men and conventional rescue plans.
They tell the story of the failure of ideas we would have invented ourselves.
It talks about powerful kings delivering Israel ... but only for a while.
There are plans for alliances with neighbouring countries to resist the invaders, which are collapsing.
God knows that strong men and human plans, however ingenious, offer no permanent security.
So when God sends us a weak and suffering man, it's because he knows it's the only solution. He is not naive. He alone sees reality perfectly.
***
But how does his suffering help us? That's the question.
This is the second point.
Mute in the face of her suffering ...
Silent before his sacrifice (53.4-9)
The servant suffers so terribly to undergo the punishment that our faults deserve.
As we prepared for Easter this week, I asked my daughters: can you think of anyone who was at the bottom, who suffered, before being at the top?
One of them replied: Aladdin!
Aladdin begins in the street and ends in the palace.
There is something in the parallel with Jesus, but in Aladdin, his suffering accomplishes nothing except to underline his elevation.
According to Isaiah, these excruciating sufferings of the servant accomplish something.
He highlights three points.
First the servant suffers ... in ...
Our place
Isaiah 53 verse 4
4 Yet "it was our sufferings that he bore,
it is our pain that he has taken upon himself.
It's the school holidays, but normally we meet up with our children when they leave school at 4.15pm, and an exchange takes place. We give them their snack, and they give us their schoolbag to carry, their sports bag, and sometimes their friends give us their schoolbag and their sports bag to carry too, and then they run ahead and we try to keep up by carrying all this load for them.
When God's servant suffers, it's because he too is carrying a burden for us, not just a few school bags, but our sufferings.
His pain on the cross was not his. It was ours.
To see Jesus overwhelmed by weakness is to see him overwhelmed by our weaknesses.
To see it bleed is to see it bleed ... in our place.
There's a logic of substitution, like when a player comes onto the pitch to sweat it out and give his all in place of another.
Jesus suffered in our place.
Isaiah explains why. It's because he doesn't just take our place. He takes ...
Our punishment
Verse 5
5 But he was wounded because of our transgressions,
broken because of our faults:
the punishment that gives us peace has fallen on him,
and *we are healed by his wounds.
6 We were all like sheep going astray:
everyone went their own way,
and the Lord has laid on him the iniquities of us all."
The Israelites had a ritual that they performed every year.
One day a year, a day called the great day of atonement, the high priest would take a goat, lay his hands on it and confess over it all the sins of the Israelites, as if he were transferring those sins from the Israelites to the goat. Then the goat was driven into the desert to die.
Symbolically, this animal underwent the punishment that the Israelites had to undergo in order to be forgiven.
This is where we get the expression "scapegoat" - someone who is condemned in the place of another.
What happens symbolically with the goat happens literally with Jesus. Some people have already seen me use this illustration. Imagine that my right hand is me.
And this book lists all my faults. Every impure thought, every hurtful word, every selfish act. Every single thing.
Spot - the burning fire of God's holiness and righteous anger at the evil I have done.
Now imagine that my left hand represents Jesus, innocent and perfect.
At the cross, God does this ...
My faults become Jesus' faults ... my punishment becomes Jesus' punishment, and the Father pours out his wrath for all the evil I have done ... on him.
He is wounded because of our transgressions,
broken because of our faults
the punishment that gives us peace has fallen on him,
If you're like me, you may be aware of things in your past or present life that you're ashamed to talk about.
If we have believed in Jesus, our guilt has been fully transferred to Jesus. I'm not talking about our feelings of guilt. Our real, objective guilt. He took it.
Our place, our punishment ...
And all this is ...
His choice
Verse 7
He was mistreated, he humiliated himself
and didn't open his mouth.
*Like a lamb being led to the slaughter,
to a sheep mute before those who shear it,
he didn't open his mouth.
The comparison with the lamb and the sheep does not mean that Jesus was unaware of what was happening to him.
It's the other way round.
In other words, he couldn't resist.
He did not protest. When accused, he did not defend himself.
Suffering this way is her choice
He moves towards death fully aware of what is happening to him ... without flinching.
The word that comes to mind to describe his attitude is heroic.
We all remember Arnaud Beltrame, the gendarme who chose to take the place of a hostage during a terrorist attack in the south of France.
Fully aware of what's at stake.
God's servant voluntarily chooses to sacrifice himself by suffering in our place for our sins.
It's heroic.
This sacrifice is breathtaking.
***
Let's take a step back.
How is it that of all the problems God could have targeted, he chose this one?
He is God. He could have sent his servant to solve any problem on the planet.
We may have some very specific ideas about who we think should be given priority.
He decided to send him to die for our sins. But why?
The Bible says that all other problems have their origin, more or less directly, in sin - rebellion against God.
If you're suffering and you tell yourself that it's not normal, then it is not normal.
Suffering exists because our world is at odds with its creator.
Adam and Eve in the garden, and everyone with them, said to God 'we don't want you', and God says 'ok' ... but know that it will mean you live in a broken world.
Sin is the root of everything.
You only have to read the news for two minutes to see the hold that sin has on our world. We can't get rid of it.
No matter how sophisticated or cultured a person or society is, you can't get rid of it.
History shows that we are incapable of doing this.
By targeting sin, God targets the source of all other problems.
It attacks the root.
He puts an end to the rupture that separates us from him and his goodness.
What should really leave us dumbfounded is that it doesn't solve this problem ... 'remotely'.
It's not as if he presses a button from the sky and the problem is solved.
He comes himself, the holy God, he who is offended by sin, in the person of the servant, to suffer for our sin, to carry out his plan of salvation.
It's a gesture of love that defies comprehension.
I know that there are people in this room who are suffering.
God has not stood idly by in the face of our suffering.
He is not insensitive to our suffering.
This servant, ignored, rejected and killed, is God himself, who took the form of a servant.
He experienced loneliness, shame and pain in his own flesh and soul. He did not sit idly by.
But it's not just that God sympathises with our suffering, because he has experienced our suffering.
No. He proposes a plan to resolve our suffering.
Since he solved the problem of sin, we know that one day all the other problems - misfortune, sickness, death - will also be solved.
Which brings us to the last point...
Mute in front of his sacrifice ...
Stunned by his Victory (53.10-12)
Isaiah 53:10
The Lord wanted to break him through suffering.If you make his life a sacrifice of guilt,
he will have descendants and live a long life,
and the will of the Lord will be done through him.
11 After so much trouble, he will see the light and be content.
By his knowledge, my righteous servant will bring justice to many;
he will bear their faults.
What does a successful rescue plan for the world look like?
How do you know if the plan has worked?
I don't know if any of you are familiar with the business jargon of 'KPIs'.
Key performance indicators.
These are the signs we look for to know whether a project is achieving its objectives or not.
What are the KPIs of God's plan? How do you know if it has worked?
So far in this message we've been talking mainly about Good Friday, the day of Jesus' crucifixion, as Isaiah had anticipated it 700 years earlier.
And now it's Easter Sunday !😊
Because the first KPI is ... resurrection.
After his death, the servant ... will have descendants and will live a long life.
Isaiah announces Jesus' resurrection 7 centuries in advance.
He will come out of the tomb to confirm that everything we have just said about the meaning of his death ... was not just hot air.
We could ask ourselves this question. Other people were crucified on the same day as Jesus. How do we know that Jesus' death was not just another death?
How do we know that this story of sins borne for us on the cross is not just a fantasy?
Thanks to his resurrection.
Jesus will leave the tomb, look at what he has accomplished and Isaiah says he will be "satisfied" with his work.
That's it! Mission accomplished! The plan worked!
It is as if Isaiah were saying that the servant will come out of the tomb, look around and be filled with satisfaction when he sees every person saved.
'Look, there's them over there, they were a thousand light years away from God before, but now they're part of our family'.
Then you here, you were so far away, so desperate, but now you are brothers, sisters. How happy I am!'
Ah, but there's him there too. Who would have thought, but he's there too! What a joy!
Mission accomplished.
Let's get rid of the idea that Jesus saves reluctantly. OK, I'll save him ... but not ... very much. Her ... I'm still very hesitant.'
No, when Jesus comes out of the tomb, he sees ... descendants ... he looks at us as family ... and he's satisfied!
Resurrection.
There is another related KPI.
Justification
Verse 11
"my righteous servant will bring justice to many".
How do we know that despite Jesus' death for our sins, God isn't going to get a bit fed up with us and our nonsense and push us away again?
How do we know that when the time comes for us to leave this earth, we won't be turned away at the entrance to his kingdom?
It's because he gave us ... his own righteousness.
We can approach the gates of heaven with as much confidence as Jesus does.
God sees us ... as perfect.
Finally, the third KPI. The third sign that the plan has worked.
Glorification
Verse 12 - last quote.
Therefore I will give him his portion in the midst of many
and he will share the spoils with the powerful:
because he stripped himself to death
and that he *was counted among the criminals,
because he bore the sin of many men
and that he intervened on behalf of the guilty.
I don't know if there are any Paris Saint Germain supporters here.
If... they manage to win the Champions League this year (I say if - I know they look promising), you can just imagine the scenes when they return to Paris! The victory procession. The players on the bus, cheered on by the crowd, all happy to share the glory of having won the trophy.
Like after the football World Cup in 2018 ... or the rugby World Cup in ... not the rugby World Cup.
This is the image that Isaiah leaves us with.
The victorious servant of God is exalted, acclaimed, recognised as the greatest, recognised in fact as God, and he will share with his people the joy and glory of his triumph.
Not just a temporary triumph ... until next season.
But an eternal triumph ... in his kingdom.
A kingdom in which all the other problems we would like God to put an end to will no longer exist.
It will be the world as it should be. Glory forever. And we will have access to it ... but only through the death of the servant.
I wonder if you're sure you'll be taking part.
All you have to do is trust the servant. Trust Jesus and then stand in awe of his success.
This is what we celebrate at Easter.
Mission accomplished for God's rescue plan.
It may not be the rescue plan we thought it was.
But it was the rescue plan we needed.
It's so easy in this world to sink into pessimism or cynicism.
It's best not to get your hopes up. You're bound to be disappointed in the end. That kind of attitude.
Let's content ourselves with cultivating our own garden, like Candide.
If God hadn't sent his servant, I could sympathise with that attitude.
I read the headlines and ... I don't feel like reading the headlines any more.
Too depressing.
But the fact is that God came into this world to suffer himself, in the person of the servant, to solve our most fundamental problem - sin - and to give us the certainty of endless glory.
That's the answer to pessimism! Good Friday. Easter Sunday.
Finally, I recently read the testimony of a certain Gilles who understood these things for the first time.
A friend explained to him the meaning of the cross and the love of Jesus, and invited him to pray with him for the first time.
Gilles remained silent, not knowing what to say, then after a long moment he simply said: "God, hats off. Hats off...hats off. God, really, hats off. Hats off, God"
Speechless before Jesus and his cross.
If we understand these things, can I suggest an activity?
It's not difficult.
We can try it out this afternoon or tomorrow - it's a bank holiday.
Just to remain silent ... to marvel ... at the cross .
Just keep your mouth closed in front of it.
Then, when we're ready, open our mouths again and tell someone about it.
Why not do it now? A few moments of silence. Then I'll lead us in prayer.
The All-Powerful Shepherd and the New Exodus (Mark 6.30-56)
When I became a Christian, I thought I already knew the Bible pretty well. I’d grown up in church, I knew all the stories, and had heard thousands of sermons over the course of my life. I’d grown up hearing that the Bible is the inerrant Word of God, inspired by the Holy Spirit to speak the message of God to human beings—including those human beings who received this Word and wrote it down for us. I knew that, and I believed it and accepted it, as I still do.
The big surprise came when I actually started reading the Bible seriously, and realized that there was a lot more to it than I thought. Not just in terms of the details, which were far more fascinating and complex than I’d imagined, but also—especially—in terms of the biblical narrative as a whole.
The more I read and studied the Bible, the more I realized that the Bible is a lot more than just a book, or just a collection of books, or even a Holy-Spirit-inspired collection of books, but rather it is a Holy-Spirit-inspired, self-referential and self-fulfilling collection of books.
To put it another way, the Bible was probably the first meta series in literature.
This is astonishing, because the 66 books contained in the Bible were written over a span of over 1500 years, by multiple different authors from radically different walks of life, in radically different contexts. And yet, all of the biblical authors came together to write, not a series of books, but one coherent story.
You can see this all over the Bible if you pay attention, and you can see it quite particularly in today’s text. But in order to see it, you need to do a little work.
So I want to do something a little different today. I want to preach two mini-sermons on this text. In the first, we’ll look at the passage somewhat superficially: to see what happens in this passage, and what we might tend to take from it after a quick read. The reason I want to do this is because this is the way many of us typically read the Bible. We’ll eat the whipped cream, but we’ll leave the ice cream. We’ll sit down, we’ll read the text, we’ll even take notes…but we’ll forget to zoom out and consider the rest of the Bible. So the things we come away with may be true—I trust that everything I say today will be true—but we’ll come up just a little short.
In the second, I want us to notice something that Mark is doing in this passage—something subtle, but I believe quite intentional—that will help us to see the bigger point he’s actually trying to make by telling the story in this way.
So let’s start with Sermon I, which I’m calling “The All-Powerful Shepherd”.
Sermon I: The All-Powerful Shepherd
Essentially, this passage contains two very well-known miracles of Jesus: the feeding of the five thousand, and Jesus walking on water. Let’s start at the first, in v. 30.
1. Jesus Feeds the Five Thousand (v. 30-44)
Our passage begins with the apostles returning to Jesus. If you remember last week, Jesus sent them out two by two to be his delegates, in a sense, to the surrounding regions. They went out, they preached the gospel, and they performed miracles. Now they’ve returned, and they’re telling him about everything they did while they were gone.
Clearly, after a long trip and a lot of work, they’re exhausted, so Jesus takes them away to get some rest. They get in a boat, and they head out on the sea of Galilee toward “a desolate place”, away from the crowds. But lo and behold, when they come ashore, there’s the crowd that they left behind—they’ve come on foot, and they’re waiting.
This would be up there with the most annoying things they could do, for me. I came here to rest, please just give us some peace and quiet!
But that’s not what Jesus does. In v. 34, we read:
34 When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things.
So his reaction is neither irritation nor impatience—he doesn’t even make the very reasonable appeal that the apostles need their rest. Instead, he has compassion on the crowd, these “sheep without a shepherd”. And he begins to teach them.
Jesus’s capacity for understanding weak people is just astounding.
So he’s teaching, and it gets late. His disciples come and tap him on the shoulder, saying, “It’s getting late and everyone’s hungry. Let them go so they can get something to eat.”
Jesus is as provocative as ever in v 37:
37 But he answered them, “You give them something to eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?” 38 And he said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” 39 Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. 40 So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties. 41 And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And he divided the two fish among them all. 42 And they all ate and were satisfied.
So if you’re new to the Bible and this isn’t really clear, Mark is describing a miraculous multiplication of food. Jesus takes five loaves of bread and two fish, and makes more bread and fish from the ones that he has, enough to feed five thousand men (so likely around twenty-thousand men, women and children).
How did Jesus do it? What did it look like? I have no idea—I would have loved to have seen it. All we know is that there were twelve baskets of food left over after these thousands of people have been fed.
Jesus shows us here that he doesn’t care only for the spiritual: after feeding the people with his Word, he also provides for their material needs.
And why does he do it? Because he is all-powerful—he is able to feed all these people. But most especially, he does it because he is the good shepherd. An ordinary shepherd will be vigilant to give his sheep everything they need. Jesus is an even better shepherd, because he doesn’t care for his people out of duty or obligation, but because he has compassion on them.
2. Jesus Walks on Water (v. 45-56)
After this, Jesus sends his disciples back into the boat to finally find some rest on the other side. Jesus goes to seek his own kind of rest—as it says in v. 46: After he had taken leave of them, he went up on the mountain to pray.
Then Mark sets the scene for maximum suspense: later that evening, Jesus is on land, and he can see the boat out on the sea. Mark says (v. 48):
And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them.
That’s the picture he gives us: the disciples struggling in the boat, rowing against the wind, and Jesus watching, knowing that they’re having a hard time. It’s the middle of the night, somewhere between 3 and 6 a.m.
And then in the second half of v. 48, we read:
And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, 49 but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, 50 for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.” 51 And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, 52 for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.
Jesus comes to them in the most unconventional way possible: by walking on the water. That is, he is literally walking on the surface of the water as if it were land. It’s an extraordinary display of his power.
Mark says that “he meant to pass by them” before they spotted him and started freaking out—which is odd. What was Jesus’s plan? Did he want to head to the other shore and be there waiting for them when they got there?
Mark doesn’t tell us, but we know that the disciples see Jesus, thinks he’s a ghost, and he comes to reassure them. He gets in the boat, and the wind stops—the sea is calm again. And, Mark says, “they were utterly astounded.” No surprise there—they’ve just seen one of the most incredible things anyone has ever seen. Once again, the good shepherd is at work: protecting his sheep from the storm.
Finally, Jesus gets back to business as usual. They had meant to go to Bethsaida, to the north of the sea, but the storm has pushed them further west, to Gennesaret. When they land there, people recognize him and come to him, and bring him their sick. Jesus’s power is so great that all people had to do was touch the fringe of his garment (like the woman with the discharge of blood in chapter 5). And (v. 56) “as many as touched it were made well.”
Conclusion
So here would be a typical conclusion to this sermon; it’s the exact conclusion I’ve heard in multiple sermons on this passage.
The big idea, according to this conclusion, is this: Jesus is the Good Shepherd who cares for his sheep, and he puts all of his incredible power to work in providing for their needs—their food, their healing, and their protection.
Now, that is absolutely true. That is exactly who Jesus is. And we can take incredible comfort in that, knowing that the power of God himself is constantly putting all of his power to work in providing for his people.
But that’s not all that’s going on here.
Mark gives us multiple, subtle hints that the main idea he has in mind is bigger than even that big idea we just pulled out. And it all has to do with the Exodus.
Sermon II. The New Exodus
So here is the second sermon—the sermon that hopefully goes a little deeper than the fairly superficial reading we did before.
Before we get started, I’d like to give a warning. It is possible to go too far when trying to dig deeper into a passage of Scripture, and make connections the author never intended to make. A classic example is the story of Rahab, the prostitute who protected the Hebrew spies in Jericho. Rahab asked for their protection when Israel came to take Jericho, and said she would hang a red cord out of her window so they could identify her. Some people will try to find meaning in the fact that the cord she hangs out the window is red—it must be a reference to sacrifice! It’s an allusion to the blood of Christ!
No, it’s actually just a red cord, chosen because the color red would be clearly visible against a stone wall. There is nothing in the story to suggest that this was an allusion to anything greater than that. We want so badly to find connections in the Bible that sometimes we make them up.
If you find yourself susceptible to this kind of thinking, that’s okay. Learning to read the Bible is like learning a language: you can learn the basics quickly, but becoming fluent takes time. Keep going. Read the Bible with others who know it better than you, to learn from them. Read, and pray, and be patient.
That being said, I don’t thing it’s a leap to make a number of connections in this passage; Mark makes multiple allusions to the Exodus. They are subtle, so you might not notice them if you’re reading quickly, but they’re also clear: once you see them you can’t unsee them.
1. The Savior Who Provides (v. 30-44)
Let’s go back to the feeding of the five thousand, in v. 30-44. Where are they when this miracle takes place? We’re not exactly sure, but we know that Jesus has intentionally brought his disciples across the sea to rest in “a desolate place” (v. 32)—a place where there is nothing, no commerce, no activity. And that’s where the people come to meet him.
Think back to the Exodus story. Israel lived under slavery for centuries, and when they cried out to God he heard their prayers and sent Moses to deliver them. Through a series of miraculous signs God performs, Israel is delivered from slavery and brought out of Egypt. But when they get where God is bringing them, they find themselves in a wilderness—with no idea how they’re going to eat or drink.
So God, providing for his people, sends them a bread-like substance they call manna, and quail—every day and every night. He provides water, gushing from a rock. (These stories appear in Exodus 16-17.) The whole time they are in the wilderness, the people of Israel have food to eat and water to drink. God provides for their need.
It’s difficult to miss the similarity with what Jesus does here. These people have come to him because they are hungry to know him, so he feeds their hunger by teaching. Then when they become actually hungry, he provides actual food—he miraculously produces enough bread and fish to feed everyone present.
Mark wants us to see that just as God provided for Israel in the wilderness, Jesus is providing for his people in this desolate place.
In addition, when everyone has had their fill, there are twelve baskets of bread and fish left over. What does the number twelve remind you of? Of course, if you know the story of Exodus, it will remind you of the twelve tribes of Israel.
Now I’ll be the first to admit that on its own, that would be a bit of a stretch. But this not the only time Mark mentions something like this.
Later on, in chapter 8, Jesus will perform a similar miracle, in which he feeds four thousand people. And once again, there’s more than enough food—there are leftovers. In chapter 8, there are seven baskets of food left over.
Seven, in the Bible, is the number of completeness, of wholeness.
Twelve baskets here, seven baskets there. And there’s a reason: God knew exactly what he was doing when he planned out how much food there would be left over.
In the first miracle, in our text today, Jesus is in Jewish territory—he’s preaching to Jews, and he’s feeding Jews. Twelve baskets, twelve tribes of Israel.
In the second miracle in chapter 8, Jesus is in Gentile territory—he’s preaching to non-Jews, and he’s feeding non-Jews. And this time, seven baskets are left: completeness.
First he comes to Israel, and feeds his people. Then he goes out into the rest of the world, and feeds them. Jesus didn’t come just to save the Jews; he came to save all his people. People from all nations, all tribes and tongues.
Mark didn’t make this stuff up, but he’s drawing our attention to it in this passage because he wants us to see the commonalities between the God who rescued the people of Israel from slavery in Egypt and this carpenter who came to preach the kingdom of God. He wants us to see the commonalities between the God who provided for his people in the desert and this Jesus who provided for his people in this other desolate place.
Jesus is the figurehead of a new Exodus.
2. The Savior Who Is “I AM” (v. 45-56)
Next, Jesus sends the disciples to the other side of the sea while he goes up to the mountain to pray. The winds pick up, the disciples are having a very hard time rowing against it. Jesus sees this and comes, walking on the water, toward the boat. They’re afraid, he tells them not to be afraid because it’s him, gets into the boat, and calms the storm.
There is a fairly obvious reference to the Exodus story here: Jesus displays his supernatural power over a body of water. He displays it here by walking on it. In Exodus 14, God displayed his supernatural power over the water at the Red Sea by parting it, allowing the people of Israel to pass through the sea on dry land.
Already this would be a significant thing to note. But it’s not all; it’s not even the most important. The most important allusion to the Exodus here is rather found in two subtle moments in v. 48-50. Let’s read those verses again:
48 And he saw that they were making headway painfully, for the wind was against them. And about the fourth watch of the night he came to them, walking on the sea. He meant to pass by them, 49 but when they saw him walking on the sea they thought it was a ghost, and cried out, 50 for they all saw him and were terrified. But immediately he spoke to them and said, “Take heart; it is I. Do not be afraid.”
Here’s the first allusion: look at the end of v. 48: “He meant to pass by them…”
Remember, earlier on we asked why Jesus meant to pass by the disciples. What was his plan? Why would he walk out there just to “pass by” them?
We find the answer in the words themselves. (I’m sorry, this is a little technical, but it’s important.)
This book was written in Greek, which was the common language of the Roman Empire at the time. Mark tells us that Jesus meant to “pass by” the disciples. In the Septuagint (the Greek translation of the Old Testament, completed in the 1st century B.C.), the same verb is used in Exodus 33, when God puts Moses in the cleft of the rock and “passed by” him, giving him a glimpse of his glory.
Mark’s choice of words is not accidental; what God did for Moses is what Jesus is doing for the disciples. He’s not passing by the boat to get past the disciples; he’s passing by the boat to be seen by the disciples. That they might see his power and glory and believe in him.
He hammers this point home even harder when he sees that the disciples are terrified. What does he tell them? V. 50: “Take heart; IT IS I. Do not be afraid.”
One night when Jack was a newborn, Loanne had a nightmare that Jack was gone and she couldn’t find him (a common nightmare for new parents). It was a nightmare for me too, because in her sleep, Loanne was feeling all around in the bed for Jack, clawing at the covers and smacking my arms and my face. I woke up, shocked to find myself assaulted, and all I could think to say to calm her down was, “It’s okay! It’s me! It’s me! It’s me!”
That’s not what Jesus is doing here; he’s not just calming the disciples’ fears by identifying himself. He’s echoing God’s own words to Moses at the burning bush in Exodus 3, when he told Moses who he was: “I AM.”
Any one of these things, taken on its own, can seem a bit far-fetched, like we’re grasping for connections. And Mark is subtle with his allusions. It’s harder to dismiss, however, when they keep piling up like this, and Mark says one final thing that convinces me that he is indeed making reference to something greater than just a couple of pretty astounding miracles.
It comes when Mark describes the reaction of the disciples to Jesus after he calms the waves. V. 51:
51 And he got into the boat with them, and the wind ceased. And they were utterly astounded, 52 for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.
Of course, if you know the story of Exodus, you’ll remember that the author speaks several times about the Pharaoh’s heart being hardened. I don’t think the disciples’ hearts were as hardened as the heart of the Pharaoh, who willfully refused to believe Moses despite everything he had seen. There’s no hint of malice in the disciples’ lack of comprehension.
But they were still not quite ready to fully believe; they didn’t understand yet. Not all who don’t understand have hard hearts; but in this case, the disciples’ hardness of heart caused them to not “understand about the loaves.”
So here’s the real question: what were they meant to understand about the loaves? When Jesus multiplied the bread and the fish, what were they meant to understand? When Jesus passed by them on the lake, walking on the water, what were they meant to understand?
It’s already fairly obvious from the context of the story, but it becomes even more obvious when you take all of Mark’s allusions to the Exodus into account. The disciples were meant to understand that Jesus is God.
Who fed the people of Israel in the desert, when there was no food? God did.
Who had power over the Red Sea? God did.
Who passed by Moses in the rock, giving him a view of his glory? God did.
Who provided atonement for the sins of the people, making them pure? God did.
And yet, the people of Israel consistently struggled to fully understand who God was, to fully believe in and trust him.
Now, look at today’s passage:
Who fed the crowds in a desolate place, when there was no food? Jesus did.
Who had power over the sea of Galilee? Jesus did.
Who passed by the disciples in the boat, giving them a view of his glory? Jesus did.
Who provided healing for the people in Gennesaret after they landed, purifying them of their physical ailments? Jesus did.
And yet, the disciples struggle to fully understand who Jesus is; they are afraid.
The point of all of this is that Jesus arrives on the scene in Israel, performing miracles and guiding through his teaching, and in so doing, he begins the process of bringing his people into a new Exodus.
The people of Israel were in bondage to slavery for centuries before God provided an exodus for them—a way of escape, of getting out of their slavery.
So if Jesus is ushering in a new Exodus, we have to ask: What are we getting out of? What are we escaping? What is Jesus setting us free from?
The Bible is the story of God bringing his people out of death and into life. He does it over and over: when he provides a means for Noah to escape the flood; when he brings Israel out of bondage in Egypt; when he rescues his people from foreign oppression; when he brings them out of exile in Babylon, back to Jerusalem.
All of these are hints of the greater Exodus to come: the exodus from what enslaves every man and every woman who ever lived. Jesus came to set his people free from sin and eternal death. Jesus came to bring us out of death and into life.
And there, we have the final connection. The Exodus wasn’t just an exodus, it was also an entrance: the people exited the slavery of Egypt, and ultimately entered into the promised land of Canaan. Jesus came to bring us out of death, and into life. He didn’t carry our sin on the cross only to let us escape eternal death. He was raised from the tomb to secure for us eternal life.
As wonderful as all the miracles of Christ were, they are merely signposts, pointing us to the greater miracle, the infinite miracle, of bringing people from every nation, tribe and tongue into eternal life, through his life, death and resurrection.
Conclusion
I can think of no better preparation for Easter week than this text. This passage tells us everything we should have in mind as we get ready to celebrate the death and resurrection of Christ.
And that’s really the call of this text—it’s giving us something to keep in mind. We always want to know how to respond to a text in the Bible, and there is always a response to what we read in the Bible. But sometimes, the proper response isn’t anything we do; it’s something we realize.
That is the case here. This text isn’t calling us to do anything; it’s calling us to understand what the disciples couldn’t. To see Jesus for the incredible, incomprehensible God that he is. To take rest and solace in the knowledge that the power Jesus has to feed five thousand men from a few loaves of bread and a few fish, the power he has to walk on water and calm a storm, is at work in his people to bring them closer to him.
So rather than springing into action after reading this text, our main response should be to pray. Pray that God would soften our hearts, so that we might understand who Jesus is. Pray that we might see his glory and believe. Pray that we might have eyes to see who Christ is, and be in awe of him.
If we see Jesus for who he is, we will be in constant wonder and worship of him. We will be transfixed not just by where we are, but by where we are going. We will be centered not on our circumstances but on his promises for our eternal life.
And at the same time, if we see Jesus for who he is, we’ll understand that he doesn’t just care about the big things; he cares about the small things as well. If you’re hungry, he will feed you. If you’re unsure of where to go, he will guide you. If you’re afraid, he will protect you. He won’t always give us everything we want to have; he won’t tell us everything we want to know; and he won’t always protect us from things that frighten us. But he will give us what we need to have; he will tell us what we need to know; and he will protect us from the things that will truly harm us.
We serve an incredible, gracious, awe-inspiring Savior, who has brought us into a new Exodus, guiding us out of death and into life, out of darkness and into light. Let us consider him, believe in him, trust him.