Mark 8

1. Historical/Literary Background

“What manner of man is this” is the question the narrative as asked of Jesus.   He has already fed the multitudes on two occasions.  “He has done all things well”  another as said of Him.  Yet He is not without enemies and opposition.  His miracles and ministry has been the cause for both belief and offense.  Who is He and what is the people’s response towards Him?  They are divided.  His identity is not some trivial question as though who He is has no effect on the world one way or another.

Does the fact that Ceasar was emperor 2000 years ago have any effect on the way I live my life now?  So why should I be concerned with the one who called Himself Messiah have any effect on my life now?  Such questions are answered in this chapter.  The future begins now as you answer His question, “Whom do ye say that I am?”

2. What can we observe about God?

Compassion is God’s Motive

This is the second miracle feeding recording in Mark and it is distinguished by telling us of Jesus’ motive for seeing the people fed before they take the journey home.

I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat: (v1)

The disciples give us the detail that it occurs in the wilderness, an allusion to God feeding and caring for His people as they wandered in the desert 40 years.  These details play a part in answering the disciple’s question from Mark 4:41, “what manner of man is this?”.  Mark is taking the time to narrate out what John summarized in John 10, Jesus is doing what God does:

²⁵ Jesus answered them, I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father’s name, they bear witness of me.

³⁷ If I do not the works of my Father, believe me not.

John 10:25, 37

He is the man that walks on the sea, who commands nature, all manner of diseases, and even death.  What manner of man is this?  He is God, the son of God, God manifested in human flesh.  But what could possibly motivate transcendent God to dwell with man as a man?

“I have compassion on the multitude.”

Unlike the pagan gods of the world, our God has no need of human service.  He is not incomplete without human worship. His motivation does not lie in bartering and mutual back scratching for whatever benefit man can supply.  His motive is profoundly simple, His compassion towards those created in His image.

In Genesis 1, God told us He set humanity apart when He created them. Not only did he give them dominion over the earth and the privilege to manage it all, but He put his mark on human beings by making them in His own image.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth…

Genesis 1:26

Being stamped with His image speaks of our special place in the created order, insomuch He cares for our well being and is concerned with our sin.  In response to a world without hope, He has compassion.  His compassion is not stirred up when we avail ourselves to Him by some action, but simply because compassion is who He is and we are made in His image.

The question is raised in verse 4, “From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?”.  Humanly speaking there is no answer.  From the perspective of the OT, it was God who fed His people with manner in the wilderness.  We are to put both angles together as we watch Jesus feed the multitude.  What manner of man is this?  Mark is showing us through narrative.

God is Angry with Unbelief

When the Pharisees arrived with the purpose of arguing with Jesus, they demanded a “sign” of Jesus authority.  Jesus “sighed deeply” and replied with a rhetorical question in verse 12:

Why doth this generation seek after a sign? verily I say unto you, There shall no sign be given unto this generation.

Why would this generation of the Pharisees demand a sign and proof of Jesus’ authority? Why does Jesus refuse them and express aggravation with their question?

Like pieces to a puzzle, this small episode is a part of the next several episodes, and the questions that we raise are answer when one considers how they are put together.  The miracles Jesus has done so far with the feedings and the healings were not in response to someone demand that He proves His own authority but in response to faith.  In contrast the Pharisees are not asking in the interest of faith but in the interest of unbelief.  They’ve come to argue with Him, not to seek Him out humbly and submit to Him.  They have no intention to submit to Him thus showing their unbelief.

In a few chapters from now, the same generation of Pharisees will mockingly demand other sign as they relish in His agony on the cross,

 Let Christ the King of Israel descend now from the cross, that we may see and believe.

Mark 15:38

Is this the generation that seeks to submit before God and believe His word?  I find an intriguing observation that even our Lord “left him” to immediately find a blind man who submitted Himself to the benefit of Jesus’ ministry.  I believe we see God expressing His anger towards unbelief in these verses, His deep sighs of amazement when humanity attempts to switch places with Him, making themselves the judge and He the judged.

In this sense, unbelief is not merely a denial of God’s existence, but a willful, sinful continuation of the sin of Eden, making ourselves judges rather than submitting to Him.  Those who submitted themselves, confessing their need or their sin found help, but those who “demanded” signs or held to their offense against Him were not given signs.  We saw this also in Jesus’ home town of Nazareth:

…and they were offended at him.  …And he could there do no mighty work, save that he laid his hands upon a few sick folk, and healed them.  And he marvelled because of their unbelief. And he went round about the villages, teaching.

Mark 6:3, 5-6

God is incredibly patient with those who possesses even the smallest amount of faith.

On the boat ride after leaving the Pharisees, the story reveals the immaturity of the disciples faith.  Jesus warns them of the “leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod”, v14.  By this, He was warning them of their unbelief and how it spread.  But they supposed He was rebuking them about not bring enough bread to eat.

¹⁶ And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have no bread.

Their immature faith was unable to see past their physical world in front of them.  They could not perceive that Jesus was talking about something greater than just a trivial need to eat bread.  Jesus asks them,

18 Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? and do ye not remember?

Their eyes could not see past the day to day physical needs, they were so concerned with the immediate world around them, they are unable to perceive the weightier matters of trusting God.

Jesus taught them elsewhere:

Luke 12:23

²³ The life is more than meat, and the body is more than raiment.

But those who possess a weak faith will struggle with trusting God beyond what they can see or hear or understand. But the good news from this passage is God’s loving patience with those who possess even the smallest amount of faith.  He builds it, He molds it, and He grows it.

God shows us this as Jesus walks through Bethsaida and they bring a blind man to him, v22.  It’s curious of why Jesus doesn’t heal the man all at once the first time He touches Him, but instead heals him in stages, asking the blind man what he is able to see after the first time.  Only after the second touch from Jesus is he able to see clearly, v25.

Immediately after Jesus asks his disciples privately “Whom do men say that I am?”, v27.  These are the same men who could not see past their stomachs a little while ago.  These are the men who struggling seeing and hearing and understanding.  They are forgetful of what they’ve seen Christ do.  But, Jesus asks them personally, “whom say ye that I am?”, v29. This has been the question of the book of Mark.  Ever since Jesus calmed the storm and the seas, they asked “what manner of man is this?”

Their journey with Jesus has been like the blind man that was healed.  They hear Jesus preach a little, and the see Him work walk on the water, and they see Him speak with authority.  Every time the see and hear a little more of Jesus their picture of Him becomes a little more clear.  At first they struggle to understand and the see Him blurry, like the blind man who saw men walking a trees.   But Peter speaks for the rest of them and says, “thou art the Christ” v29.

God has been patiently working more faith into them.  And now that they possess a small measure of it, Jesus begins speaking to them more plainly:

“31 And he began to teach them, that the Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests, and scribes, and be killed, and after three days rise again.”

Peter stumbled at that saying. Even though he had the faith to say Jesus is the Christ, he didn’t have the faith to understand that Jesus must die.  Jesus gave him a sharp rebuke,  just like a gardener pruning away the dead leaves from a plant. Jesus is cutting away the deadness of unbelief in them.  God is patiently working on their faith.

3. How the Passage points to Jesus and the Gospel

God’s compassion on sinners is what motivates Him to send Jesus to the cross.

They spent three days with Him in the wilderness, He will spend three days in grave for them.  The disciples asked Him, “from where can you satisfy men with bread out here in the wilderness”, but once they get past the amazement of His power, another questions remains as to why?  Mark has been painting us a picture as best as he can through narrative who Jesus is.  What manner of man is this?  He calms the storms, He walks across the water, He feeds the multitudes, but why?  “I have compassion”.

We can rest assured that Jesus motive to for saving us is out of His compassion and not out of some mutual need from us.  He transcends into human form, lives a human life, and goes to the cross because of His heart for us.

Jesus gave His life to propitiate God’s anger.

Without Jesus’ compassion we are all doomed to the death our unbelief brings us to.  To go on in our unbelief and insubordinate life against God, what else could there be beside losing our own soul?  God made our souls, they are stamped with His image, yet if we refuse the one who makes and sustains life, what else could there possible be but death?

36 For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole word, and lose his own soul?

Would all the success and money in the world have any value once our life and soul is lost to eternal death?   What would a man give in exchange for his soul?  Would he not give everything?  Yet, our everything is not the price of our souls.  We possess nothing that can propiate or appease God’s wrath against the offense of our sin.  His just character demands it, and He will not allow His own character to be compromised.  He is willing to pay for the offense, but the payment must be just to the offence.

Only the though of the Son of God going to cross to die as sinners do is more outrageous than the outrage our sin has caused.  The compassion of Jesus for sinners is what drove Him there and the good news is that all sin, no matter how despicable, is not match for the propagating power of spilling the pure life-giving blood of Jesus.

All hope is given to the worst sinner, yet no hope is to be had for those who would be ashamed God’s Son.

38 Whosoever therefor shall be ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation; of him also the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels.

If it would shame you to belong to God at the expense of His Son’s life and agony, then there is no cure for that shame.  It is the unforgivable sin.  And though God is patient with the unbeliever, even His patience will not save the one who is ashamed of the Son of God.

God “knoweth our frame and rembereth that we are dust” (Psalm 103:14), and so He is patient, giving time to the ignorant that they might look upon Jesus and live.  His forbearance of the sin of the world from Adam’s fall, through every scandal, and every atrocity has held hell at bay until the Son of God had finally come to make a blood atonement.  His blood now flows as fountain of a never ending supply of life with the magnitude to cover every sin, past, present, and future.

But those who would pollute that fountain with their rejection and shame will lose their life that was once given to them from God.  They will face Son when “he cometh in the glory of Father” (v38) and then face the full judgement for their sin.

God’s patience (longsuffering) and wrath are ultimately revealed through Jesus.

On the cross we see both the kindness and severity of God.  In His agony, pain, and death God’s wrath was revealed to all who would hold onto their sin.  But for those would exchange everything for their soul, they gladly accept the gift of Jesus Christ, who exchanged His life for ours.

4. Application

How could I not be patient with those who offend or show indifference to my message?  My flesh would like pamper wounded pride and protect myself from rejection.  Yet I have benefitted from God’s longsuffering of my rejection of Him, until at last my would gave in to His wooing in Christ. I am the man who is blind who Jesus touched twice before I could see.   How could I not be grateful for His patience?  And how my gratefulness not be shown in the patient work of preaching the Gospel?

I know God is at work on my faith.  And though I still see men as trees, I will come to Jesus again for another touch until I am cured of the sin that stains my hearts.  For now, I know God as imputed righteous to me through Christ, yet the body of sin I must remain in until He appears again in the glory of His father.  May it please you, Father, the struggle against sin in my body and to bless me with victory against it that I may be a vessel ready for your use.  May your glory be manifested in me that I will recognize when Jesus comes in your glory.