Why do we, why do we stress the commission of Matthew so much? And of course, you know, going to say, of course, we're in a gossip, Matthew, understand that. But why do people so stress the great commission of Matthew and not talk about the way Mark and Luke and John end? And I want to give a, probably a five minute answer to that question. Probably speaking, broadly speaking, there are two gospels that are oriented toward disciple making. Very broad brush here, generalization. Two gospels are oriented toward disciples making, two people who already Christians are, Matthew and Luke. And Matthew and Luke both have plenty of teaching about the aftermath or they have lots of teaching. In Matthew, you kind of cycle back, says, make disciples and know how to do that, you cycle back through the book. In Luke, there's also a tremendous interest in disciple making. It's written, remember? Theophilus. It was written so you may have the assurer or the certainty of the things you believed. And then the book of Acts develops the life, there's my questioner. The book of Acts develops the life of the disciple, you see, you find out what it means by just reading through. You get lots of ethical teaching in Matthew and Luke. And so when a pastor or a preacher or teacher is talking to Christians, he's going to tend to stress Matthew and Luke because they have more ethical teaching about how to live out your faith. Mark and John are more evangelistic. And I'm not saying that you can't learn how to be disciple from Mark and John, but if you just read Mark and John, there is far less ethical teaching in Mark and John than there is in Matthew and Luke. There's lots of theology in John. And certainly the Gospel of Mark is Christ-centered. We might say, Mark is Christ-centered to the exclusion of other things that you can center on namely the ethical life or the way to conduct yourself. Each Gospel then has its own way of conveying things and its own focus, its own special interests in John. It's coming to faith and overcoming doubt through Thomas, which we'll see later. In Mark, as we'll see toward the end of tonight, he has his way of drawing you to meet Christ. And so what we have to do is here, each Gospel for what it is. And if you hear a lot of stress on disciple making in the resurrection of counts, it's because your pastor is probably interested in disciple making. He spends a lot of time in the Gospel of Matthew. So that's a good question, happy to answer that one. There is a question which we're really ready to get into through the question that we just got to. And that is why four Gospels? We've been spending all of our time or most of our time so far with Matthew, the little four age into Luke and Mark and John occasionally here and there, but mostly Matthew. Now we want to think about the other Gospels. And one question people ask sometimes is, why four Gospels? You don't my answer to that is, why only four? I mean, if you're going to have, if you ask the question about numbers, I just read this week that a hundred, this is one person's estimate, I don't know if it's true or not, a hundred and thirty books have been written about the sinking of the Titanic. How many books do you think have been written about World War Two? Probably thousands, right? How many about the Civil War? Hundreds? How many even, listen, how many books will be written about the Olympics? Probably quite a few. So the question really is not why four instead of this one, but we could really almost ask, if there's any question, why not more than four? Why not have more pages, why not have dozens of them? Well, of course there's an answer to that. You know, there were lots of Gospels written. In fact, way back to the beginning, I said, quoted origin, an early Christian leader who said the church has four Gospels, heresy, a great many. And excerpts or quotations or fragments of or the whole of fifty different Gospels have been found. There are four authoritative, inspired Gospels that give not only the events, but their interpretation, what happened and what it means. The church has given, it's thought to this a lot of times, and I have something here on your overhead which is, well, I'm not perfectly visible, but if you can see it, this is something from a book called The Book of Kells, which was a handwritten, illuminated manuscript, I forget the century right now, but this represents the four Gospels. And if you can see the picture, we have a human face, we have an eagle, this is an ox highly stylized, I will grant you and this would be a lion. And they used that picture to suggest that the four Gospels have four faces. And the face of Matthew is the human face because Jesus is the rabbi, the teacher in Matthew. And then the gospel of John is the eagle face because John soars high above the world. Now what they mean here is this, if you read John, it's different from Matthew and Luke. Matthew and Luke, you almost feel like Jesus is saying you, or you're watching it happen that day sometimes, you almost feel like you're at the start of the mountain, you just keep saying you, you, you, you about, I forget how many, a couple of dozen times, he just says you do this, you believe that, you watch out for the other thing. And you feel like there's no temporal distance. You feel like Jesus is talking right to you, or in some of the miracles you feel like you're there, the storm, let's see, but with regard to John, an event happens, and then people talk about it a long time, and then somewhere through the time of talking about it, somebody gets confused and doesn't understand, and then several times Jesus, John will say, well Jesus said this, and we didn't understand it at the time, but now we know what he meant was, like the temple that he spoke of was the temple of his body. We didn't know it, but now we understand, later on, we got the point. So he's saying, I'm looking at this from a distance, that's where the eagle idea comes from. He's getting the picture from a distance, the picture from eternity as well, in the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, the word was God, sort of the grand perspective. That's the idea of John, historically. And then Luke as the ox, you might think that would be insulting, perhaps to liken a gospel to the ox, but the ox is a very important, very beneficial animal, strong, patient, and the idea is of a bearer of burdens. And the origin of that concept is that Luke shows Jesus bearing the burdens of all sorts of people. See it's in Luke that we have, for example, when we were talking about the parables earlier, we have the parable in Matthew chapter, sorry, Luke chapter 15, you have parables of lost things, and you have a shepherd seeking a lost sheep, and then a woman seeking a lost coin. And there are a number of times where Luke almost seems to deliberately have a parable about a man, then a parable about a woman, or a miracle for a man, then a miracle for a woman. To make it clear, not that it's obscured in the others, that Jesus comes from men and women, and he heals rich and poor, and slave and free, and Jew and Gentile. To make it very clear, he seems to take pains to show Jesus performing miracles or teaching or interacting with every kind of person. He bears the burdens of all people, that's the gospel of Luke. And then the lion with mark, and that one's maybe a little bit harder to figure out, and I don't claim to understand everything from medieval views of the gospels. But maybe the idea of the forcefulness of Mark, and the way it sort of covers a lot of ground and rushes forward, Mark has a speed to it, and it rushes toward the cross. Almost half of the gospel mark takes place in the last week, and it seems like he's leaping over the territory, over the ground in order to get there, like a lion, at least that's what's said. Now, that's one picture that I have, but let me just show you another one, that comes from around the year 1200 AD, and this one is found in the Westminster Abbey Salter, and here we have maybe an even more astute picture, and this one shows one Christ, and then it has the same quartet of images we have, the human face, the eagle, again highly stylized, and I have to, sorry, I have to shift this, and then the lion and the ox. So four gospels, one Jesus, and that's a good, well, without getting into the issue of whether you can draw pictures of Jesus or not, and you can take that up with your educational program at your church and ask questions about that. But if it's legal to draw pictures of Jesus like that, then it's a good picture, and it shows theological insight, as we're there. So four gospels, one Christ, one message, developed each according to the interests of the author. Each gospel is universal, and each gospel has its special interests. In fact, let me give you a theme statement that is not in your notes right now. Each gospel has its own destination, its own audience then, destination and audience. Its own style, its own pace, and its own themes. Again, each gospel has its own destination, slash audience, style, pace, and themes before explore that. Each gospel is authentic as it develops in its own way. Each gospel is written by an apostle or a close associate of the apostles. Each gospel is coherent with the tradition of the life of Christ, let's explain that in a minute. Each gospel is factual. Each gospel is received by the church universal. There's no dispute, there's not some branch of christened them that has five or seven or three gospels, they're all universal. The gospels were all instant canon, and that's what I mean when I say they're coherent with the tradition of the life of Christ. You see, there's some books in the New Testament, like the book Revelation or the book of Hebrews or the book of Second Peter that weren't accepted everywhere they went immediately. People didn't know how to understand Revelation, and so some people didn't accept it right away. They debated whether it belonged in the Bible, and others, for example, he was nobody knew who wrote it, and that bothered some people because they thought you have to know who wrote it, that he was an apostle or close to the apostles, and so they debated it. Second Peter, because it's short, third John, because it's short. The gospels were never debated. There's no record of people wondering if Matthew really belongs. There's no record of people arguing the pros and cons of accepting the gospel of John. Again, there would be a few rare exceptions among heretics that were then refuted, but the church, the Orthodox church, did not debate this, and here's why. Because they already knew the gospel of Christ, they knew from the preachers, from the twelve apostles, and from the others who went out, they'd heard the story of Christ. The gospel didn't create the church. The church existed, let us say, the gospel of Thomas, sorry, the gospel of John did not create the church. The church was created at Pentecost. The church was created by faith by the gospel being proclaimed one by one, and then the four gospels were written years later. The church read in the gospels what it already knew and what it already believed, and it was reading more information, more detail, more sayings, maybe more events that they hadn't heard of, but it followed the contour of what they already believed. You with me? Question or comment on that? I know we don't think about these sorts of things all the time, but nobody has a problem with it. Okay. All right, let's keep going then. All right, what about the gospel of Mark then? What is its destination, its style, its pace, and its theme? Most people say the gospel of Mark was written for the Romans, and I think that that's probably the case. We know from church history and from places like 1 Peter, chapter 5, verse 13, that Peter was there at one time, and Mark was there. There are some Latin phrases in the gospel of Mark that would suggest the Latin audience. There are explanations of Jewish customs, like washing of hands, is explained. The word Abba is explained, air mix, sayings are explained, coins are explained, which all suggests that the people who read Mark were not in or near Palestine, but in another place. They're probably written for the Romans, and people have sometimes said the speed of Mark was attractive to a Roman because it had lots of action, a fast pace. Jesus is a doer, I don't really know if that's true or not, but it could possibly fit. The style of Mark is graphic. In the gospel of Mark, and only in Mark, we read that when Jesus was asleep in the boat during the middle of the storm, he slept on a pillow. That's Mark to tell us that. At the transfiguration we read in Mark and Mark alone, that Jesus' clothes were whiter than any wanderer on earth could make them. Mark and only Mark. In Mark and only Mark, we read that the 5,000 sat down on green grass. Now you've seen a couple of my pictures of Israel, you understand green grass is worth commenting on because if you've been to Texas and Arizona, it's not a given that grass would be green, right, or these parts of Texas, parts of Arizona. The grass was green, it's worth commenting on, and Mark comments on it. Not only is it graphic in details like that, but it's also graphic in the way it describes people's feelings and emotions. It's in Mark and only Mark that we read in chapter 321, that Jesus' own family wondered if he'd gone insane. He's out of his mind, would be a good translation of what they say. In Matthew, sorry, Mark 438, don't you care if we drown, remember that when we read that? Instead of master, we perish, it's in Mark, don't you care, there's their raw, ragged emotions or in 531 when a woman touches Jesus, and Jesus says who touched me, he says, what do you mean? They sound peeved at him for asking that question, or people all around, what are you asking this for? It also shows Jesus' emotional life, Jesus' size, Jesus' angry, Jesus' sounds frustrated if we could put it that way without implying in the least that he's sinned. In 919, he says, to them, how much longer must I put up with you? You feel his weirdness, and I guess that's comforting to me as a parent in my kids' age, that it's possible to say things like that without sinning, because Jesus said it without sinning. I'm not saying I do say it without sinning, but at least it's possible to say it without sinning, because it's not wicked to be weary over repeated disappointments, it can be sin can come from it, but it's not necessarily sinful. We read that disciples are terrified when they meet an angel, for example, stronger than the others, strong accounts of emotions. Mark just lays it all out there for us, Mark has his own pace, and here a literal translation will help you. Maybe you know this, maybe some of you know this. One of the words, there are two words that appear over and over and over again in Mark, in a literal translation, of course, from the Greek, they're more plain. You know what the words are? Straightway or immediately, right. That word appears a number of times, immediately he did this, and immediately he did that, or straightway depending on the translation. There's another word, and this is very much more clear in the Greek, and then in some few translations, and that is the word and. One paragraph after another in the Gospel of Mark is linked, but the Greek word for and is chi, and it kind of looks like, it looks like a K-A-I, so you could borrow a Greek New Testament and just open up and just see chi, chi, chi, chi, chi, chi, and then occasionally, the word for immediately or straightway, probably three out of four paragraphs are simply introduced with the word chi. If you've been listening to somebody who, now again, nothing intended negatively toward the Gospel of Mark at all, but if you've ever been in the presence of somebody who's a much better talker than a listener, and they're telling a story, and they tell the story, and you're just waiting to say, sorry, I've got to go now, but they say, they're telling their story, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, and then, there's no break. And the effect of and, and, and, and, and, with the exception of immediately, immediately, immediately, is to say, listen, we're just hurtling the pace of Mark is rapid. There's one thing that slows it down, there's the word again. The word again appears about 15 times, and we'll look at that word, not that word, but what it conveys. The idea that a lot of things happen twice, and people don't get it the first time, and then it has to happen again, and then maybe they'll get it the second time. So, that's the pace of the Gospel of Mark. What I really want to talk about, however, are the themes of Mark. One is special about the themes of the Gospel of Mark. The first great theme, the first special theme of the Gospel of Mark is Mark's Christology. One more time, Mark tells essentially the same story as essentially the same doctrine, same order as Matthew and Luke and John, but he does have his, his way of explaining certain things, and one of them is the question of who Jesus is. Now, Mark is like, again, like Matthew and Luke and John, Jesus is fully God, Jesus is fully man, same titles, same view of Jesus humanity, but there is a difference in the way that Mark develops things. The difference appears already in Mark chapter 1, verse 1, Mark chapter 1, verse 1. Mark 1-1 tells us the beginning of the Gospel of Jesus Christ, the Son of God. So, if you want to know who Jesus is, if you've read one verse, you know who he is, who is he? He is the Son of God, and he is the Christ. That's clear. However, in the first line, the reader knows, or if I'm reading to you, you, the auditor of the reader, know who Jesus is, but in the story, it's often or usually, indeed, almost always hidden. And the theme is sometimes called the theme of the Messianic secret. The Messianic secret is the idea that nine times in the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells people not to reveal who he is. Four times he tells a demon to be quiet until no one who he is. Sorry, three times. Four times he tells people to say nothing about his miracles. And two times he says to people to tell nothing about his, about Peter's confession or about his transfiguration, tell nothing about my identity as the Son of God. Now, people have puzzled over this, especially since nine times in Mark, I'll give you some references if you want. Let me just give you a few references. It's just a sample. And with regard to the demons, you could look at 125 and 134. Maybe I'll write it on the board. With regard to the demons, 125 and 134, it's three, I don't want to list all nine. This is a get you started. With regard to telling nothing about his miracles, here's, I'll just give you a couple, 143 to 45 and 543. And then with regard to his disciples, don't tell anybody, 830 and 999, that's six of them for you. There's a few more. And you can find them in introductions to the Gospel of Mark. There's a man named Vratus, spelled W-R-E-D-E, who had a very novel proposal as to why this might be the case. He said that, now you tell me if you think Vratus is a reliable person after I get them telling you this. He said that the reason why we have this messianic secret is that, maybe I'll give it away really fast, that Jesus never claimed to be divine during his lifetime. So already I guess you know whether he's reliable or not. Never claimed to be divine. And so once the church began to believe in Jesus' deity, then they had to explain why it is that people didn't know about it earlier. And so they said, well, we believe in Jesus always said it, but it was hidden because he told people not to tell. That's his explanation. There's a much better explanation for the quote-unquote messianic secret. Number one, would you want demons to praise you? Would you, if you were a teacher, if you were a Sunday school teacher, would you, how would you feel if there was a demon possessed person in your class saying, now listen up to Mrs. Jones, she's a woman of God, she's telling the truth, she's a wonder if she's a wise teacher, she's a holy woman from God, would you, what would you want? Would you like that? It's not hard to see why Jesus didn't want demons to be disclosing his identity. And why my Jesus have told is disciples not to tell who he was because they didn't understand it themselves, did they? So wait until you come to understanding. So from the beginning, there is sort of a question. We know who Jesus is, but when will people in the story come to know who he is? We know he is the Christ, the Son of God, but as you read through, the only person to get a clear idea of who Jesus is or something even approaching it initially is the demons. As you listen to the disciples in the Gospel of Mark, they ask the question over and over, who is this? Who is this who calms the wind and the waves? Chapter 4, verse 41, or in chapter 6, verse 51, in the storm, let's see, the first storm it's see, who is this who calms the wind and the waves? And then when Jesus comes to them walking on water a second time, and again things are calmed, they don't know who he is, who is this? The one person, a Gentile woman, in chapter 7, verse 24, and following, calls Jesus Lord, Sir, in the Gospel of Mark, Peter, of course, halfway through makes a confession of Jesus' identity. But if you look at the way Peter confesses Jesus' identity in Mark chapter 8, it's the briefest of the three Gospels, accounts of Peter's confession, who do people say that I am? And then Peter finally answers, who do you say that I am? Peter simply replies, you are the Christ, and it doesn't say there in 830, the Son of the Living God, it's a slightly weaker confession in the Gospel of Mark. And then of course it leads straight to Peter telling Jesus he must not go to the cross, and Jesus finds Peter taking him aside and rebuking him. So we are not quite sure if Peter really understood his confession, you go through the Gospel of Mark some more, the only unqualified confession of Jesus' identity, and the Gospel of Mark comes from the Centurion, chapter 15, verse 39, and there we read that after Jesus died, breathed this last verse 37, 38, the curtain of the temple was torn into from top to bottom, a centurion who was standing there said, surely this man was the Son of God. And notice even that is somewhat flawed, was the Son of God. It seems so difficult for people to appreciate who Jesus is in the Gospel of Mark. It's only when Jesus dies that people begin to get the point. You see in the Gospel of Mark it is Jesus the crucified that is held before us. You can't understand who Jesus is unless you understand that he's going to the cross. As long as Peter resists that he will not understand when Jesus finally dies as he says then someone says this is the Christ. Jesus in the Gospel of Mark is the Christ, the Son of God. He is the crucified Christ, the one who paid the ultimate price. The disciples aren't getting that real well in the Gospel of Mark. And in the Gospel of Mark the disciples, I'll say, have even more trouble understanding what Jesus is up to than they do in Matthew. That's the key word in Matthew for the disciples. Men have little faith, little faith ones, right? But it's a little bit more interesting in making it clear how little faith they had. It's not a contradiction, but a different emphasis in Mark. In Mark almost in the very beginning things begin to go just a little bit wrong. The disciples are with Jesus, but then understand them all that well. Peter doesn't understand in chapter 135 why Peter is alone, why Jesus is alone. When in chapter 3 verse 22 the scribes misunderstand what Jesus says in chapter 4 when Jesus teaches in parables that the disciples aren't understanding any better, that's small, that's not so bad. Things begin to get painful in Mark with regard to the disciples. We have a series of double events. I remember a little while ago I talked about the word again in the Gospel of Mark, the word again. Here's where it shows up. A lot of things had happened twice in the Gospel of Mark. The first one is that the disciples have failures on water. Take a look with me one more time at the first storm and then the second storm at sea. The first storm at sea is in Mark chapter 4 verse 35 and following. In that storm the disciples are in danger of sinking and Jesus says, as we've seen before, don't you have any faith and rebukes them and they don't seem to understand who Jesus is. Then in chapter 6, just a little while later, there's another storm in chapter 6 verse 45 and following. In the middle of the night Jesus comes as they're rolling across. They're straining, verse 48 says, at the ores the wind is against them and they cry out thinking that he's a ghost and they're terrified and he says, take courage, it is I don't be afraid. In the wind calmed, they were amazed, here's an odd thing, for they had not understood about the loaves for their hearts were hardened. Now, we'll get to the loaves in a second, but somehow they were supposed to know better. I'm going to put a quiz question to you. What is not here that's here in the Gospel of Matthew? Peter walking on water. See, in Matthew there's one, it seems like they learned a little bit from the first dormancy. They learned enough to know that Jesus is the master of the wind in the waves, but in Mark, we don't get Peter walking on the water. Why? Well, because Peter walking on water was not a perfect thing after all he did eventually sink, but remember, it was a little faith thing. He had enough faith to go to Jesus on the water. In the Gospel of Mark, that's not reported. What's reported is their terror, their supposition that it's a ghost and that somehow it's connected to the fact that they didn't understand about loaves. Two storms that see in Mark, they don't get the point of them at all. Now, let's look at the loaves and see how that's connected because Mark wants us to connect the two. In chapter 6, going back a little bit, there are two feedings in Mark. In chapter 6, there's the feeding of 5,000, we already talked about it a little bit. The feeding of 5,000 starts with a large crowd following Jesus late in the day, Jesus feels compassion, and in 37, 637, Jesus wants his disciples to feel how difficult the situation is, and he says to them, you give them something to eat. It's a remote place that the disciples say, send them away, but Peter says, you feed them, and the disciples say, listen, eight months' wages wouldn't be enough. How could we possibly spend that much on bread and give it to them to eat? Jesus says, how many loaves do you have as if to say, well, maybe there's enough food around. Well, they find 5 and 2, and Jesus doesn't relieve the tension. He simply says, well, 5 and 2, huh? Why don't you have the people sitting in grass and arrange themselves in groups? This might have taken a while, and they arrange themselves in groups, still only 5 loaves, still only 2 fish, they're sitting there, and Jesus starts to break the loaves. The miracle, the feeding of 5,000, I believe, took place in Jesus' hands. He just kept breaking and breaking and breaking and breaking and breaking the fish and breaking the bread, and distributing to those people who sat down, the disciples had to organize these masses, given them the idea, sit down, something's going to happen. I don't know about you, but if I was a disciple then and there, I would have been stricken with embarrassment and wondering, how is this ever going to turn out? And all those people are fed and baskets full of food left over, and as one of the other gospels tells us, not only 5,000, but 5,000 males plus women and children to boot. What an impressive thing. How could you ever forget if you went through that, right? Answer. Turn to chapter 8, verses 1 to 13, during those days another large crowd gathered. He even tells you it's another one to clue you in. This has happened before, right? As the disciples had nothing to eat, so Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, verse 2, I have compassion on these people because they've been with me three days and I have nothing to eat. If I send them home hungry, they'll collapse on the way, because some of them have come a long distance. They said, I have compassion on them. The disciples feel that Jesus wants to do something. And so, verse 4, they say, but where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them? Well, duh. It's just, hey, we're just there, see? And that's what's going on also in chapter 6, verse 52. The reason why they didn't understand about the wind was because they hadn't understood about the bread. The wind and the bread should teach the same thing. That takes care. God will take care of His ministry. God will give the power, He'll give the food, He'll give the deliverance, whatever it takes. He will take care of His Messiah. They had the bread, they didn't learn. They had a storm at sea that didn't learn. They had more bread, they didn't learn. They had another storm at sea, they didn't learn. Here's how bad it gets. In chapter 8, a little bit later, after the feeding of the 4,000, they get into a discussion some Pharisees come to test Jesus and ask Him for a sign and so forth, and then it says in verse 13 that He left them and got in the boat and crossed the other side, and the disciples had forgotten to bring bread except for one loaf they had with them in the boat. And Jesus is talking about the Pharisees who just seen these signs and they say, give us a sign and He says, now you be careful, watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod, and they say, He's mad at us for not bringing any bread. See you laugh and it is kind of funny, but it's even more sad than it's funny. And it's not just failure on water and not just failing with food, but of course we have in all the gospels failing to understand the cross and it's every bit as painful as anywhere else. In Mark, Jesus says, I am the Christ, I'm going to be crucified in Mark and Peter says, well now I just confess to the Christ but don't go to the cross, so that's pretty bad. And then in chapter 9, Jesus predicts his betrayal and death again and immediately after that, his disciples start to crawl about who will be the greatest. So wait a minute, we're going to the cross here, wrong debate, and then in chapter 10 he says it explicitly again and then James and John start asking if I can have a seat at your right and your left. Three times they failed to understand the cross, at least, and of course they fail and get somebody as well and they abandon Jesus. And then of course there's problems with children and they're very close, again, doublets are two very similar events in chapter 9, 35, they're quarreling about who will be the greatest right after he predicted his death. And so Jesus grabs a little child and embraces it and says, you know, be like a child. And then just, how many verses later, turn and look at it yourself. Chapter 9, verse 35 to 37, Jesus takes a child who welcomes one of these, welcomes me, and so forth. Chapter 10, verse 13, so just about 20 verses later, 25 verses later, some people bring their children to Jesus to be blessed and they rebuke him. Jesus was just hugging a child. Now they say, don't bother him with a child. From the gospel of Mark, the disciples seem to be learning almost nothing. About the best thing you can say about the disciples in Mark is that they stay with him. They would dog a determination, they may not understand, but at least they say we don't understand. At least they take pardon me, at least they take their ignorance to Jesus instead of taking it home. And probably the best thing that they do in the gospel of Mark, it is painful in some of these cases. It's painful when Jesus rebukes the Pharisees for their traditions. And the disciples say, would you please explain to us what you were just saying, they don't get it anymore than the Pharisees do. It gets so bad that Jesus really questions them hard on it. We're talking, I know I'm jumping around here, but in that scene that I started to discuss with you about the yeast of the Pharisees and Herod and they say, it's because we don't have any bread, let's just pick that up a minute and see where that leads in the end. In verse 17, I want you to count how many rhetorical questions there are here. In verse 17, Jesus asked them, you're going to count, why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? In verse 18, do you have eyes but fail to see ears but fail to hear? And don't you remember? When I broke the five lows for the 5,000, how many basket folds of pieces did you pick up? 12? And when I broke the seven lows for the 4,000, how many basket folds of pieces did you pick up? They said seven. He said, do you still not understand? How many questions? 10, 9, 8. Man, it all depends on your translation, I guess. I'm going to say eight or nine depending on how you divide up the phrasing of the thing. What kind of a question do we have here? What do you call these? What kind of question is this? These are rhetorical questions. What do you feel like if I asked you nine consecutive rhetorical questions and the only ones you can answer where how many basket folds 12? Seven. And every other question, including the last one, do you still not understand silence? What's the answer? Do you still not understand? Yes, they don't understand. There's no answer. The disciples are so obscure. What's the up to here? Well, there are some hopeful signs mixed in. And the hopeful signs are right in the midst of the same section where the disciples are failing, twice over to understand storms at sea, failing twice over to understand bread, failing to understand about children in section 6, 6, 7, 8, 9, there's some good things happening. It's not with the disciples, it's with other people. One of them is in chapter 7 verses 31 to 37. And here, there is the healing of a deaf mute. A deaf mute. Now we have to think about this a little bit. This is a person who can't hear and they can't talk, okay? So Jesus has a deaf mute brought to him. And the people who bring him, 732, begged Jesus to put his hand on the man. Now Jesus wants to do this, but he's got a problem. You know what it is. He wants to heal the man, but what's this problem? How does Jesus usually heal? Does he just heal? The man can't hear what he's going to say. The man can't take in instruction. You know, if Jesus wants to say, now listen, I'm about to heal you. He's not going to hear it. And if he wants to give him a theology or talk about his faith, the man can't hear it. So Jesus does some strange things and what they're doing is taking the place of speech. So here we go. In verse 33, he took him aside as if to get him alone, maybe he has a tiny bit of hearing who knows, but to focus with him, he put his fingers into the man's ears. And then it says, he spit and touched the man's tongue. Now we may say today, that sounds repugnant, but what he's doing is this. There was the tradition, I might have mentioned it to you earlier in the ancient world, that the clothes of a holy man or a great man, Alexander the Great or somebody else, would have that man's power. That's the woman touched his garments. So the hair, also the spindle, we would say saliva today, of a great man, a holy man, a powerful man was considered to have something of his essence. So when Jesus touches the man's ears, what he's saying to the man in a tactile way, as opposed to verbal ways, get ready for something. And then when he spits and touches his tongue, what he's saying is my power, he's employing my power, will be conveyed to your tongue, is getting the man ready, as if he were interviewing him. And then he looked up to heaven with a deep sigh, said, a faffa, which means be open, and the man's ears were open, his tongue was loosened, he began to speak plainly. Don't tell anyone Jesus said, people were amazed. Now I'm not going to explain this to you yet for a minute, until we look at a second healing, this one is also a healing of a person who has a perceptual difficulty. The first man couldn't hear, therefore couldn't talk. The second man can't see. This one is in chapter 8, verses 22 to 26, and you will notice that this miracle is different from any of Jesus' other miracles. Here's how it takes place. Jesus came to Bethesda, some people brought him a blind man, again he can't take care of himself, the deaf man has to be brought, the blind man has to be brought, and they begged Jesus to touch him. He took the blind man by the hand and let him outside the village, again we're looking to be alone with the man. And again, he just touches, and then when he had spit on the man's eyes, and again we might think if this is a fourth grade or second grade Sunday's good class, the kids are going to be saying, yuck, that's 20th century or in the first century, this is not disgusting, this is hopeful, this is a good sign, this is encouraging, the great man may use his power. So he spat in his eyes, and he put his hands on him and said, do you see anything? The man said, I see people, they look like trees walking around, now there are two things that we know that are very striking here. It's already striking that Jesus is spitting on him, I've said that's because of a century difficulty. It's striking that Jesus takes him away to be alone, but there's two more things that are striking.
It is a partial healing, that's not the way it goes, is it, is that the way it happens? We're used to, you know, is Jesus losing his touch a little bit, is he running out, is he running out of gas, it's just kind of too much power going out lately, I don't think that's what we're supposed to take as the point. We also know something else about the man, I see people walking around like trees, what does that tell us? He has seen before, he saw, he was blind, he's now getting partial sight. Okay, Jesus put his hands on the man's eyes once more, then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, he saw clearly, it says, when Jesus again sent him away saying, don't go into the village. And what are these things all about? Striking things, first of all, process, these miracles seem to take time, there's people being wet, there's touching, there's spinning, there's fingers in the ears, there's people holding each other's hands, there's sighing, there's talking, there's, it takes a while, you get the sense even with the man who is healed at once of the difficulty of hearing and speaking, that this transformation is not happening as rapidly, it's happening with difficulty, and second and in the second one, it takes place in two stages. The disciples are having a perceptual problem, right? The disciples don't understand, they don't see, they don't comprehend, an inter-collated interwoven use that word with you last week, I believe, interwoven with the disciples, not understanding, and not understanding, and still not understanding, we have two stories of people being healed of their incapacity to perceive gradually with difficulty in stages, now you understand what he's doing here, I call this a real parable, an enacted parable, these two men are coming with difficulty to understanding, just as the disciples come with great difficulty to understanding. Do you still not understand? Seems like the answer is no, and yet, and yet, that question, do you still understand that cascade, that burning cascade of rhetorical unanswered questions, is followed only nine verses later, by Peter saying, you are the Christ, does Peter understand his confession? He does not, but let's be a little simpler, no, how about not fully, how about not yet, how about not as well as he will, at least he understands, something like the man who sees men moving around like trees, in the gospel of Mark, the disciples come to understanding when, with great difficulty, when, after Jesus dies, when, after the resurrection, you can only understand, when you believe that Jesus is the crucified and risen Lord, only understand when you see him after his death and after his resurrection, that's why I say, Mark is an evangelistic gospel, it tells you you will not understand until you see him as the crucified and the risen, until then, you will understand very, very dimly at best.