Chapter # 6 Paragraph # 4 Study # 6
January 4, 2022
Moss Bluff, Louisiana
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Thesis:   Mark's record of Jesus' reaction to the disciples' "demand" that He return to His "promise of rest" is a record of Jesus dealing with "repentant" men whose "repentance" needs to become a matter of daily practice.

Introduction:   In our studies of the record of "The Feeding Of The Five Thousand", we have seen that Mark was presenting Jesus' dealings with extraordinarily flawed disciples in order to bring them to a true identity as apostles of Truth. The larger context highlights the fact that the disciples were crippled by their "hardness of heart" (Note well 6:52 and 8:17), which, in turn, was caused by their "lack of Jesus' compassion" (Note well 6:34 and 8:2), which, at root, was caused by their perverse "love" (Note well 9:34 compared with John 5:44 and Mark 10:37). Thus, it goes without saying that the divine solution will be found in God's active production of His "love" in the hearts of His people. Without this great grace upon us by Him, we will remain in our hopelessly corrupt condition.

So far in our studies, one fact stands out in stark clarity: God's "solution" will come by God's revelation of Himself to men and their "eating" of that revelation. Jesus "teaching many things to an unworthy crowd by reason of His compassion" and Jesus' sending forth The Twelve to preach and validate His Truth combine to tell us one thing: if we "eat" of the Bread from Heaven, we will live, and if we do not "eat" of that Bread, we will wither on the vine. Thus, last week we looked into the LARGE issue of "eating" as the primary metaphor for the sustaining of our lives by His Spirit.

Now, we come to the record of the disciples' response to Jesus' demand of The Twelve that they shoulder the task of "feeding" men out of a tender heart of compassion in spite of the unworthiness of those men. On the very face of it, this "demand" was, to an extreme degree, impossible for The Twelve. Yet, Jesus clearly intended for The Twelve to actually, physically, "feed" the massive crowd.

What is Mark doing here?

• I. Given The Reality Of The Condition Of The Twelve, We See A Critical Truth Which Both Begins And Sustains "Life" For Believers.
  • A. This "condition" was one in which The Twelve were blindly doing to the crowd what they saw the crowd doing to them.
  • B. This "condition" has its solution in the one truth which Mark initially introduced at the very beginning of his record.
    • 1. At the beginning Mark presented the "bottom line" of God's divine solution for the corruption that is in man.
      • a. That "solution" was for God to bring about "repentance" in the hearts of those whom He intends to save.
        • 1) Make no mistake, "repentance" is a gift from God as Luke clearly testifies that the Church recognized in Acts 11:18.
          • a) Luke made this a "thing" in his record by initiating the truth in Luke 9:45 and then bringing it to resolution in Luke 24:46.
          • b) Given the profundity of the problem, we should have no "problem" with the necessity of God's intervention with the "solution".
        • 2) Also, do not be deceived by the typical human "thing" of refusing to accept this Truth.
      • b. Throughout the Scriptures, God's initial steps in bringing men to Himself will always be His creation in them of a "repentance that leads to Life".
    • 2. Now, in this context of Mark's on-going record, we see Jesus "forcing" this truth upon The Twelve.
      • a. He, indisputably, "demanded of them" the fulfillment of a task that was extremely distant from their capacities.
        • 1) Consider the demand: it dealt with a massive number of people far beyond the focus upon 5,000 "men".
        • 2) Consider the disciples' reaction.
          • a) "They are saying" (Present tense in historical narrative of the verb for stating a most fundamental truth) to Him.
          • b) "Having departed" (intensive form of the verb involved in attempting to "do" what they have been commanded to do) in the sense of "Let's say we set out to do what You have required of us...".
          • c) "Should we buy 200 denarii of bread and shall we give to them to eat?"
            • i. This is the human attempt to make the impossible possible.
            • ii. But, the attempt is viewed by the disciples as impossible: consider the task itself (go out into this deserted place, buy, and transport, 200 day's wages (with our current $15/hour figure for a minimum wage, we are talking about $160/day times 200 -- $32,000 -- just over $2 per person) worth of bread and distribute it to them this evening.
            • iii. These disciples are not beyond telling Jesus that they consider His "demand" to be ridiculously impossible.
            • iv. How will twelve men scrape up $32,000 and then find a significantly large bakery to supply us with enough loaves to bring back with us (how will we carry such a load?) and then get it distributed before dark?
      • b. This is Jesus' putting The Twelve in the position of the first half of "repentance" (viewing the impossible task with a demand that they "do" this).
        • 1) The Twelve were operating on a flawed assumption: "repentance" is a "one-time thing" that continually produces "Life".
        • 2) Mark's/Jesus' addressing of this at this point has one point to make: "Life" is sustained by "eating" (regularly) of the True Bread that has its "essence" in "the promise of Life" being tied to "the practice of repentance".
          • a) This reality means that we must have a legitimate definition of repentance (which is not found in most of the "Christian" theology of the "Church" in these days).
          • b) This reality also means that "we are to dance with the one who brought us" (i.e. we are to never depart from the on-going practice of "repentance" on a daily basis.

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This is article #274.
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