Sacrifice and offering You did not desire;
My ears You have pierced.
Burnt offering and sin offering You did not require.
7 Then I said, “Behold, I come;
In the scroll of the book it is written of me.
8 I delight to do Your will, O my God,
And Your law is within my heart.” Ps. 40:6-8
I highlighted the word pierced there because it is a Hebrew word Kara which means to open by hollowing out. Therefore this passage is translated "My ears You have opened" in every other version I looked up except my NIV 1984. Did they get it wrong? I suppose it is possible but the same word is used in Psalms 22:16 when the Psalmist prophesies of the crucifixion when He says, "They pierced my hands and feet..."
Why am I making a big deal about this? Look at the passage below...
2 “If you buy a Hebrew servant, he is to serve you for six years. But in the seventh year, he shall go free, without paying anything. 3 If he comes alone, he is to go free alone; but if he has a wife when he comes, she is to go with him. 4 If his master gives him a wife and she bears him sons or daughters, the woman and her children shall belong to her master, and only the man shall go free.
5 “But if the servant declares, ‘I love my master and my wife and children and do not want to go free,’ 6 then his master must take him before the judges. He shall take him to the door or the doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl. Then he will be his servant for life.
What I have been focusing on throughout our race through Mark is what Psalms and Exodus are saying here. A lot of people are working for Christ as slaves and frankly, not enjoying it. It is their duty, they know, but they look forward to the day of Jubilee when they will be freed from this difficult Christian life and rest forever in Heaven with Jesus ... their... ex-taskmaster? What if we were able to get a new paradigm where Jesus is such an amazing master that we fall in love with Him and given the chance we would rather serve Him than have our freedom. Wouldn't that make the Christian life "whistling while we work"? Wouldn't that make our reunion in Heaven with Jesus a little more to look forward to - i.e. A wedding feast? David says in Psalm 40 basically that all that duty stuff isn't what Jesus really desires. What He wants is us to say, "I know You own me because I had a debt I couldn't pay so I gave myself to the only one who could pay it. But now that I am here at your service, I find there is nothing better in this life than serving You because I found out what is so awesome about Jesus. So I am yours and I delight to do your will. "
CHAPTER 8
The word for today is patience or if you want longsuffering as we see Jesus putting up with the disciples lack of "getting it" time and time again.
1. Read Mark 8:1-10
Name 5 things that were different between this feeding and the one we saw in Mark 6:30-46
A.
B.
C.
D.
E.
Talk about the significance of any one of these differences.
Why might Jesus have had to exercise patience with the disciples in these verses?
2. Read Mark 8:11-13 and Matthew 16:1-4. This is the same account but Matthew expounds on it a little more. What actually is the sign that Jesus will give the Pharisees?
What is the sign of Jonah? (Matt. 12:40)
Read Matthew 27:62 - 64 and 28:12 - 15. How did they respond to that sign when it was given?
3. Read Mark 8:14-21
From what we have seen so far, what do you think is the yeast of the Pharisees?
Read Luke 23:8 and Jesus' response to Herod in Luke 13:32. Why might he have been grouped with the Pharisees on Jesus' comment about yeast?
How did Jesus once again have to exercise patience with the disciples?
4. Read Mark 8:22-26.
Did Jesus mess up the first time and have to redo it?
What do you think is the purpose for the 2 step healing?
5. Read Mark 8:27 - 33, 9:30-32, and 10:32-34. This may explain the above healing if you see it as a parable within a healing. How was Peter's vision of Christ blurry?
How was Peter's vision of Christ clear?
Read Matt. 16:17. How was his vision temporarily made clear?
Read Luke 24:19-27. Even after the death and resurrection of Christ tell about the irony of verse 21.
Read Acts 1: 6. Even after Jesus' death, resurrection, appearances and teachings for 40 days, what question did the disciples ask?
Why was their vision blurry? (see Acts 1:4-5)
Getting back to Mark, a normally patient Jesus calls Peter "Satan" in 8:33. Read Luke 4:9-13. What was the temptation behind this last temptation?
How did Peter's rebuking of Jesus or advice to Him compare with Satan's? (Could this have been "an opportune time"?)
Summary
Do you give up on people quickly. And you don't even have to die for them! Thank goodness Jesus doesn't give up on us. In this passage we see the disciples forgetting about the previous feeding Jesus just did several months ago. This new feeding was done in gentile land where the demoniac Legion had gone to tell everyone about his healing. Jesus was telling and showing the disciples that He had compassion on Gentiles as well as Jews - which in the future they will also forget. Christianity Today's book of the year -God's Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America , recounts the following instances...
"Not only was God supplying groceries; many Jesus People believed that at times he was actually multiplying the ingredients on hand. Marlon Finley remembered being at a Christian commune in Paducah, Kentucky, and seeing “one box of beef stroganoff . . . [feed] twelve people to capacity.” Brad Davis was living at a “discipleship house” run by the Agape Force in Southern California and claimed that more than thirty young people were fed by a single can of tuna. Kent Philpott recalled an incident at the Soul Inn in San Francisco in which he claimed that a single can of beef stew cooked over a hot plate fed dozens of homeless hippies—an experience that left him reaching for the phone years later to verify with a former coworker that he had not simply dreamed the incident. Within the ranks of the Shiloh organization, “the PBJ miracle” was a famous story of God’s provision in the group’s early days. One afternoon, Cathy Stewart recounted in a 1977 issue of Shiloh Magazine, she and another sister in the House of Miracles in Fontana, California, made a number of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for their housemates’ lunch. Having planned for two sandwiches per person, they were dismayed to suddenly see “all these people from the Riverside house [charge] in the front door .” They were amazed that, when all was said and done, no one had gone hungry: When we went into the dining room to clean up, a whole bunch of sandwiches were left on the platters. It was like seeing something you knew logically couldn’t exist. Everyone had two [sandwiches] and some brothers had eaten six or seven. It was just like the miracle of the loaves and fishes. James K. Foley belonged to a communal house ministry in Burlington, Vermont, that reported a similar experience . Foley claimed that “at one meal . . . 24 pieces of chicken were put in front of 20 people; everyone had at least one piece, some as many as four, and there were nine pieces left over. No, you wouldn’t believe it even if you saw it!”
Eskridge, Larry (2013-05-31). God's Forever Family: The Jesus People Movement in America (p. 81). Oxford University Press, USA.
The Jesus people's instruction manual was the book of Acts. Therefore they lived in communes, shared everything they had, and met daily worshipping and studying the Bible and then sharing Christ during the day. Although there have been pockets of revivals throughout the USA since that time, this was probably the only nationwide revival I have seen in my lifetime. I believe, because they lived totally dependent on God for everything, including their next meal, they saw more of the miraculous happen. I can testify to things happening on the mission field as I stepped out in faith, out of my comfort zone, that I would describe as miraculous. We are just too comfortable here in America to see such things very often.
Jesus was also patient with the disciples in the boat as they totally misunderstood His yeast comment. As a side note, have you noticed how many times Jesus crosses and recrosses the Sea of Galilee? I think that this may be because this is really the only opportunities for uninterrupted teaching of the disciples that he gets. On land He gets swarmed so much he can't teach, sleep or eat. Anyway, I believe the yeast He is speaking of is outside - in living. The Pharisees were all about attaining righteousness through obeying the laws, those in the Law of Moses and those they added as guardrails to protect the Law of Moses. That is why Jesus calls them whitewashed tombs or cups where the outside looks clean but the inside is dirty. It isn't what touches the outside or what comes in that makes us unclean, it is our sinful hearts. We need a new heart so from the inside, the Holy Spirit inside us, exudes to the outside. This is inside out living. The Pharisees wanted a sign to believe because seeing is believing right? Outside in, right? Wrong. When Jesus gave them the sign of Jonah,three days in the belly of the Earth than bursting out, did this convince them? No way. They posted guards around the tomb so it wouldn't happen and when it did they paid the guards to lie. That's because seeing isn't believing - believing is seeing.
The two step healing points to the importance of the Holy Spirit to see clearly. We are hard on the disciples but they don't have the Holy Spirit like we do opening their eyes. Even Peter's grand declaration was impossible without the Holy Spirit revealing it to Peter. That is hard to fathom as they have just spent 2 years with Him seeing Him feed thousands miraculously twice, calming storms, walking on water, raising the dead, etc and they still couldn't understand. Even after His death, resurrection, and teaching for 40 risen days, the disciples still wanted to know when He would set up His kingdom on Earth. They still didn't get it. No wonder Jesus said, "Don't leave Jerusalem until the Holy Spirit comes." 1Cor. 2:14 says that spiritual things can't be discerned without the Spirit. They are foolishness to the earthly mind (1Cor.1:18) because Satan has blinded everyone's minds. (2Cor. 4:3,4) Therefore God must open our minds before we can receive Him and understand things. (John 6:44). How much time to we spend crying out for God to open hearts before we share the gospel, preach, and teach. We are unknowingly eating the yeast of outside in thinking our clever words, delivery, arguments can win people. They can't. I actually think the best use of apologetics is to convince believers, not unbelievers.
Jesus coming to die made no Earthly sense to Peter.Even after telling the disciples 3 times, they didn't get it. How do you become king by dying? How can you redeem Israel by dying. Foolishness. Unwittingly, Peter was a mouthpiece for Satan who also said that Jesus didn't have to rise to power by death - He could just do miracles and wow people. But there is the rub - He would wow them from the outside - in rather than die and set up His kingdom inside them. No wonder Jesus warned them to beware of the yeast of the Pharisees.
So what is our excuse? We have the Holy Spirit and we still lack faith, forget, and sin! Yet He is patient and longsuffering with us too! What an awesome God! Lord, let me be patient with people like You are patient with me. And please help me to give you less and less opportunities to be patient with me.
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