Written by: Steve Flashman - Soapbox
Mark 7 v 31-37
Then Jesus left the area around Tyre and went through Sidon to Lake Galilee, to the area of the Ten Towns.
While he was there, some people brought a man to him who was deaf and could not talk plainly. The people begged Jesus to put his hand on the man to heal him.
Jesus led the man away from the crowd, by himself. He put his fingers in the man’s ears and then spit and touched the man’s tongue.
Looking up to heaven, he sighed and said to the man, “Ephphatha!” (This means, “Be opened.”)
Instantly the man was able to hear and to use his tongue so that he spoke clearly.
Jesus commanded the people not to tell anyone about what happened. But the more he commanded them, the more they told about it.
They were completely amazed and said, “Jesus does everything well. He makes the deaf hear! And those who can’t talk he makes able to speak.”
Notes
One of the things that convinces me of the credibility of Jesus and His claims to be God is not to do with His miraculous power but His determination to meet the needs of people away from the public eye. Jesus was never interested in building his reputation but only in connecting with people at the point of their need.
There is a yearning for personal interaction that has no strings attached in our society today. A new club culture is sweeping Britain at the moment that focuses on talking to each other rather than dancing! The new club fashion has a centre in Birmingham, and is an offshoot of ‘The Ministry of Sound’ – a 20 million pound trend setting establishment that has been taking the club scene by storm in London. The Birmingham branch is based in a converted church and holds 700 people. It has a state of the art sound system, a selection of cutting edge music – that means, no number ones (!) – and has a homely interior and cool clientele. This emerging underground scene is bringing people together in a new kind of way – “in the same way that God unites people in church” says DJ Phil Gifford.
THINKSPOT: Think about your own walk with God. Whatever your concerns are today. God has a unique plan for your life that fits your situation and no-one else’s – because you are special to him.
Mark 8 v 1-10
Another time there was a great crowd with Jesus that had nothing to eat. So Jesus called his followers and said,
“I feel sorry for these people, because they have already been with me for three days, and they have nothing to eat.
If I send them home hungry, they will faint on the way. Some of them live a long way from here.”
Jesus’ followers answered, “How can we get enough bread to feed all these people? We are far away from any town.”
Jesus asked, “How many loaves of bread do you have?”
They answered, “Seven.”
Jesus told the people to sit on the ground. Then he took the seven loaves, gave thanks to God, and divided the bread. He gave the pieces to his followers to give to the people, and they did so.
The followers also had a few small fish. After Jesus gave thanks for the fish, he told his followers to give them to the people also.
All the people ate and were satisfied. Then his followers filled seven baskets with the leftover pieces of food.
There were about four thousand people who ate. After they had eaten, Jesus sent them home.
Then right away he got into a boat with his followers and went to the area of
Dalmanutha.
Notes
Trust God to go completely over the top!
But that’s the way God works isn’t it? In John 10 v10, Jesus said that He had come to bring “an overflow of life”. He then went on to demonstrate what He meant by the things He did. One time He changed seven thirty gallon stone jars of water into wine – must have been a great wedding! On another occasion He met a bunch of disillusioned fishermen who hadn’t caught a sardine all night! He told them to put the net on the other side of the boat and suddenly their nets were bursting with the amount of fish jumping in! And our reading today is the account of how He fed four thousand people with seven loaves and a few fish and they had seven basketfuls of food left over! That’s over the top!
God’s extravagant creativity and love has no boundaries. Take a look at your fingerprints – they are unique. Every blade of grass is a different design. Every snowflake is unique. From the tiniest creature to the largest galaxy, God’s creativity is extravagant and unique.
The life that Jesus brings to us helps us to break out of the straight jacket of sin and discover the adventure of radical ‘over the top’ Christian living that is constantly supplied and resourced by God’s overflowing grace.
THINKSPOT: When you feel that your own resources have dried up and you have nothing more to give, look into God’s ‘over the top’ grace and love. There’s more than enough for everyone.
Mark 8 v 11-13
The Pharisees came to Jesus and began to ask him questions. Hoping to trap him, they asked Jesus for a miracle from God.
Jesus sighed deeply and said, “Why do you people ask for a miracle as a sign? I tell you the truth, no sign will be given to you.”
Then Jesus left the Pharisees and went in the boat to the other side of the lake.
Notes
Buy the latest DVD films and there will often be added features in the package. There may be interviews with the stars and footage of the making of the film. One of the most dramatic moments in Jurassic Park was when director Stephen Spielburg cleverly used vibrating water in a glass to warn of the imminent arrival of a tyrannosaurus rex! It’s a let down when you discover that the way they made the water move was somebody sitting underneath the car dashboard where the glass was standing plucking a guitar string to cause the vibration necessary to create the effect! When you see the making of the film, it all becomes clear and the mystery is taken away.
Jesus always refused to ‘perform’ for the benefit of spectators. He was never into Hollywood special effects to convince people to believe. Faith must always go deeper than the shallow, “seeing is believing” philosophy. Clearly in the case of the movies, what you see and what is true are two different things.
This is where any similarity with the way God operates comes to an end. God never performs magic tricks or clever illusion. Miracles are an everyday occurrence to Him. But because of His desire to have a genuine relationship with humans, He will not try to impress us with spectacular events on demand. He wants our love because of who He is.
Mark 8 v 14-21
His followers had only one loaf of bread with them in the boat; they had forgotten to bring more.
Jesus warned them, “Be careful! Beware of the yeast of the Pharisees and the yeast of Herod.”
His followers discussed the meaning of this, saying, “He said this because we have no bread.”
Knowing what they were talking about, Jesus asked them, “Why are you talking about not having bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your minds closed?
You have eyes, but you don’t really see. You have ears, but you don’t really listen. Remember when
I divided five loaves of bread for the five thousand? How many baskets did you fill with leftover pieces of food?” They answered, “Twelve.”
“And when I divided seven loaves of bread for the four thousand, how many baskets did you fill with leftover pieces of food?” They answered, “Seven.”
Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand yet?”
Notes
So in 30 years time we’ll all be clobbered by an asteroid. Planet earth will be destroyed and life as we know it will end. Well at least we’ve got 30 years to make the most of it! You only get one shot at it – life is not a rehearsal. And when you think about it, there are no guarantees, no insurance policies, no unbreakable contracts that tell you how long you’ve got! We’d all like to think we’d made our mark on the planet. So what’s it all about? Woody Allen says it for most of us, “I don’t mind dying, I just don’t want to be there when it happens!”.
Personally I think you need a lot of faith to believe that we are all here by chance and that there is no ultimate purpose to our existence. In fact, there is such a vast amount of evidence for the existence of God and the authenticity of the Bible, that you need more faith NOT to believe!
The problem with the disciples in our Bible reading today was that they couldn’t see beyond the external, material evidence to the end result. Jesus wanted them to see the bigger picture and to recognise truth, credibility and integrity by the fruit they could see.
THINKSPOT: All our thoughts, actions and words have a knock on effect, an end result. What impact will you and I make today in our drive to demonstrate the truth?
Mark 8 v 22-26
Jesus and his followers came to Bethsaida. There some people brought a blind man to Jesus and begged him to touch the man.
So Jesus took the blind man’s hand and led him out of the village. Then he spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on the man and asked, “Can you see now?”
The man looked up and said, “Yes, I see people, but they look like trees walking around.”
Again Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then the man opened his eyes wide and they were healed, and he was able to see everything clearly.
Jesus told him to go home, saying, “Don’t go into the town.”
Notes
How do they get away with it? They sit on the middle lane of the motorway doing 50mph and never budge. It’s infuriating! Some people deserve to get caught but always seem to get away with it. More serious miscarriages of justice hit the headlines daily making you wonder who are the good guys and who are the bad guys! And is there anyone really on the side of the victims? Every time you see a victim who didn’t deserve their fate or get angry when evil seems to win, and every time you hear about someone taking the blame for something they didn’t do, you’ve locked on to the central message of the Christian faith. Jesus faced injustice wherever He went and was determined to make His mark in countering it. Any physical disease, any evidence of injustice, racialism, abuse or neglect, Jesus is in the business of correcting the wrongs.
In our reading Jesus is in action again countering the symptoms of a fallen world. Man out of sync with the creator. Canadian rock star Bruce Cockburn had a point when he said: “Nothing worth having comes without a fight; Got to kick at the darkness till it bleeds daylight.”
THINKSPOT: When you make a mark in the world by countering injustice you’re involved in the work of the kingdom of God.
Mark 8 v 27-30
Jesus and his followers went to the towns around Caesarea Philippi. While they were traveling, Jesus asked them, “Who do people say I am?”
They answered, “Some say you are John the Baptist. Others say you are Elijah, and others say you are one of the prophets.”
Then Jesus asked, “But who do you say I am?”
Peter answered, “You are the Christ.”
Jesus warned his followers not to tell anyone who he was.
Notes
This has to be one of the most staggering conversations recorded in the Bible!
Jesus and His followers are standing outside Caesarea Philippi which was a powerful and influential city. There were great displays of Roman power in this place with architecture dedicated to showing off the power of the Roman Empire! The Greeks had their centre of worship to the god Pan and the Canaanites worshiped the Baal gods nearby on mount
Hermon.
And in the middle of this spectacle of human achievement; wealth and power; Jesus, a penniless Galilean carpenter asks His followers to believe He is the Son of God! It is remarkable that Peter recognises the identity of Jesus in this way because as a Jewish monotheist; it would be unthinkable for him to believe in more than one God. So he clearly believed that Jesus was God in human form.
And this truth is one of the keys that makes Christianity unique from every other religion and philosophy because the claims that Jesus made, have never been made by anyone else.
Today you can be confident in the God who came to where we are, so that He could take us to where He is.
THINKSPOT: Be confident in your faith – it is unique and the God we serve can never be duplicated or forged.
Mark 8 v 31-33
Then Jesus began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and that he would be rejected by the older Jewish leaders, the leading priests, and the teachers of the law. He told them that the Son of Man must be killed and then rise from the dead after three days.
Jesus told them plainly what would happen. Then Peter took Jesus aside and began to tell him not to talk like that.
But Jesus turned and looked at his followers. Then he told Peter not to talk that way. He said, “Go away from me, Satan! You don’t care about the things of God, but only about things people think are important.”
Notes
18 years ago a whole generation of people were lured into buying the chocolate bar that was “full of eastern promise” by the sultry eyes of model Vivienne
Tribeck. At 43 she now makes ceramics and lectures at the London School of Fashion having given up modelling shortly after the ads were released. Now the sweet makers are re running the ad and it’s having a similar effects as the first time round. The TV images persuade us to step out of our regular lives for a moment and step into this dream world of romance, mystery and magic. It’s a shame that although it was full of Eastern promise, the original ad was shot not in Morocco or Saudi Arabia, but in Elstree Studies. They shipped in sand from the desert and created various props to give the illusion of mystery, romance and magic that surrounded the ad campaign. It’s like life at times – it can be nice while it lasts, but always ends up as a let down.
Perhaps that’s why so many people have discovered a new reality in a spiritual dimension. And that’s why Jesus was so determined not to be side-tracked from His mission to planet earth to rescue us from sin, death and hell by paying the price for our sin through His death on a cross.
THINKSPOT: Don’t let anyone or anything side-track you in the work God has for you to do today.
word-on-the-web uses the Scripture text taken from the Youth Bible, New Century Version
(Anglicised Edition) copyright 1993 by Word Publishing Milton Keynes