MARK 8 COMMENTARYEDITED BY GLENN PEASE

Jesus Feeds the Four Thousand

1 During those days another large crowd gathered. Since they had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and said,

BARNES, "In those days - While in the wilderness, where he had cured the deaf-mute man.

Having nothing to eat - Having come unprovided, or having consumed what they had brought.

CLARKE, "The multitude being very great - Or rather, There was again a

great multitude. Instead of παµπολλου, very great, I read παλινπολλου, again a great,

which is the reading of BDGLM, fourteen others, all the Arabic, Coptic, Ethiopic, Armenian, Gothic, Vulgate, and Itala, and of many Evangelistaria. Griesbach approves of this reading. There had been such a multitude gathered together once before, who were fed in the same way. See Mar_6:34, etc.

GILL, "In those days,.... The Ethiopic version reads, on that day; as if it was on the same day that the deaf man was healed; and so it might be; and on the third day from Christ's coming into those parts; and so is very properly expressed, "in those days"; see Mar_7:31, compared with the following verse:

the multitude being very great: for the number of men that ate, when the following miracle was wrought, were about four thousand; see Mar_8:9. The Vulgate Latin, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions add, "again"; referring to the former miracle of the five thousand, who were fed with five loaves, and two fishes, Mar_6:44.

And having nothing to eat; what they might have brought with them being expended, and they in a desert, where nothing was to be had, nor bought for money:

Jesus called his disciples to him, and saith unto them; See Gill on Mat_15:32.

HENRY, "

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We had the story of a miracle very like this before, in this gospel (Mar_6:35), and of this same miracle (Mat_15:32), and here is little or no addition or alternation as to the circumstances. Yet observe,

1. That our Lord Jesus was greatly followed; The multitude was very great (Mar_8:1); notwithstanding the wicked arts of the scribes and Pharisees to blemish him, and to blast his interest, the common people, who had more honesty, and therefore more true wisdom, than their leaders, kept up their high thoughts of him. We may suppose that this multitude were generally of the meaner sort of people, with such Christ conversed, and was familiar; for thus he humbled himself, and made himself of no reputation, and thus encouraged the meanest to come to him for life and grace.

JAMIESON, "Mar_8:1-26. Four thousand miraculously fed - A sign from heaven sought and refused - The leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees - A blind man at Bethsaida restored to sight. ( = Matthew 15:32-16:12).

This section of miscellaneous matter evidently follows the preceding one in point of time, as will be seen by observing how it is introduced by Matthew.

Feeding of the four thousand (Mar_8:1-9).

In those days the multitude being very great, etc.

BARCLAY, "COMPASSION AND CHALLENGE (Mark 8:1-10)8:1-10 In those days, when there was again a great crowd, and when they had nothing to eat, Jesus called his disciples to him and said, "My heart is moved with pity for the crowd, because they have stayed with me now for three days, and they have nothing to eat. If I send them away to their homes still fasting, they will faint on the road; and some of them have come from a long distance." His disciples answered him, "Where could anyone get bread to satisfy them in a desert place like this?" He asked them, "How many loaves have you?" They said, "Seven." He ordered the crowd to sit down on the ground. He took the seven loaves and gave thanks for them and broke them, and gave them to his disciples to set before the people. So they set them before the crowd, and they had a few small fishes. So he blessed them and told them to set them before them too. So they ate until they were completely satisfied. They gathered up what remained over of the broken pieces--seven baskets. There were about four thousand people there. So he sent them away, and immediately he embarked on the boat with his disciples and came to the district of Dalmanutha.

There are two things closely intertwined in this incident.

(i) There is the compassion of Jesus. Over and over again we see Jesus moved with compassion for men. The most amazing thing about him is his sheer considerateness. Now considerateness is a virtue which never forgets the details of life. Jesus looked at the crowd; they had been with him for three days; and he remembered that they had a long walk home. He whose task it was to bring the splendour and the majesty of the truth and love of God to men might have had a mind above thinking of what was going to happen to his congregation on their walk home. But Jesus was not like that. Confront Jesus with a lost soul or a tired body and his first instinct was to help.

It is all too true that the first instinct of too many people is not to help. I met a

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man once at a conference and was discussing with him the dangers of a certain stretch of road on the way to the town where we were. "Yes," he said. "It's a right bad bit of road. I saw a crash on it as I drove here today." "Did you stop and help?" I asked. "Not me," he said, "I wasn't going to be held up by getting mixed up in a thing like that." It is human to want to avoid the trouble of giving help; it is divine to be moved with such compassion and pity that we are compelled to help.

(ii) There is the challenge of Jesus. When Jesus had pity on the crowd and wished to give them something to eat, the disciples immediately pointed out the practical difficulty that they were in a desert place and that there was nowhere within miles where any food could be got. At once Jesus flashed the question back at them, "What have you got wherewith you may help?" Compassion became a challenge. In effect Jesus was saying, "Don't try to push the responsibility for helping on to someone else. Don't say that you would help if you had only something to give. Don't say that in these circumstances to help is impossible. Take what you have and give it and see what happens."

One of the most joyous of all Jewish feasts is the Feast of Purim. It falls on the 14th March and commemorates the deliverance of which the Book of Esther tells. Above all it is a time of giving gifts; and one of its regulations is that, no matter how poor a man is, he must seek out someone poorer than himself and give him a gift. Jesus has no time for the spirit which waits until all the circumstances are perfect before it thinks of helping. Jesus says, "If you see someone in trouble, help him with what you have. You never know what you may do."

There are two interesting things in the background of this story.

The first is this. This incident happened on the far side of the Sea of Galilee in the district called the Decapolis. Why did this tremendous 4,000 crowd assemble? There is no doubt that the healing of the deaf man with the impediment in his speech would help to arouse interest and to collect the crowd.

But one commentator has made a most interesting suggestion. In Mark 5:1-20, we have already read how Jesus cured the Gerasene demoniac. That incident also happened in the Decapolis. Its result was that they urged Jesus to go away. But the cured demoniac wished to follow Jesus, and Jesus sent him back to his own people to tell them what great things the Lord had done for him. Is it just possible that part of this great crowd was due to the missionary activity of the healed demoniac? Have we got here a glimpse of what the witness of one man can do for Christ? Were there people in the crowd that day who came to Christ and found their souls because a man had told them what Christ had done for him? John Bunyan tells how he owed his conversion to the fact that he heard three or four old women talking, as they sat in the sun, "about a new birth, the work of God in their hearts." They were talking of what God had done for them. It may well be that there were many that day in that crowd in Decapolis who were there because they had heard a man telling what Jesus Christ had done for him.

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The second thing is this. It is odd that the word for basket is different in this story from the word used in the similar story in Mark 6:1-56 . In Mark 6:44, the word for basket is kophinos (Greek #2894), which describes the basket in which the Jew carried his food, a basket narrow at the top and wider at the foot, and rather like a water pot. The word used here is sphuris (Greek #4711), which describes a basket like a hamper, a frail is the technical term; it was in that kind of basket that Paul was let down over the wall of Damascus (Acts 9:25); and it describes the basket which the Gentiles used. This incident happened in the Decapolis, which was on the far side of the lake and had a large Gentile population. Is it possible that we are to see in the feeding of the multitude in Mark 6:1-56 the coming of the bread of God to the Jews, and in this incident the coming of the bread of God to the Gentiles? When we put these two stories together, is there somewhere at the back of them the suggestion and the forecast and the symbol that Jesus came to satisfy the hunger of Jew and Gentile alike, that in him, in truth, was the God who opens his hand and satisfies the desire of every living thing?

COFFMAN, "Topics which make up the subject matter of Mark 8 are: the feeding of the 4,000 (Mark 8:1-9), the Lord's refusal to give the Pharisees the kind of sign they wanted (Mark 8:11-13), questions concerning the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod (Mark 8:14-21), healing the blind man of Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26), Peter's confession of Christ (Mark 8:37-30), and the first announcement of his Passion, resurrection, and second coming (Mark 8:31-38).

THE FEEDING OF THE FOUR THOUSAND

This miracle, recorded only by Mark and Matthew (Matthew 15:29-39), is similar to that of feeding the five thousand which was recorded by all four evangelists; and yet there are very significant differences. As Cranfield noted, the ground of our Saviour's compassion in the first miracle was "the fact that the people are like sheep without a shepherd"; whereas, in this, "it is the fact that they have been so long without food."[1] Trench called attention to the fact that the multitude here had been with the Lord three days; whereas, in the other, no such time lapse had occurred. He also stressed that "the numbers fed are fewer, the supply of food larger, and the number of baskets of fragments left over is less" than in the former miracle, drawing the significant conclusion that "Legend grows; the new outdoes the old; but here it does not even stand on an equality with it."[2] Bickersteth pointed out that the people Jesus here fed were commanded to sit down "on the ground, not on the `green grass' as before. It was a different season of the year."[3] Pertinent as are all of these differences, one has to go back to Augustine for perhaps the most significant difference of all, namely, that the people fed in this miracle were Gentiles in the principal part, whereas those fed in the other were principally Jews. This key fact explains why two such miracles were performed, showing God's fairness in dealing with Gentiles as he had dealt with the chosen people; and it also explains the apostles' reluctance to suppose that Christ would do such a thing, especially in the light of their having witnessed the other miracle so recently. The entire pattern of the Lord's ministry at this point demanded this second miracle of feeding the

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multitudes. He had just abolished distinctions between clean and unclean meats and extended mercy to the daughter of the Gentile woman of Syro-Phoenicia, despite the apostles' reluctance to allow it; and in this marvel of feeding the four thousand, Christ wrought a wholesale wonder for the benefit of a whole Gentile multitude, just as he had done for Jews in the other case. The fact that both miracles were done on the same side of Galilee but with such diversity in the character of the multitudes benefited came about because the Jews were in that vicinity by reason of following Jesus from the west; but the Gentiles had followed from the Decapolis area in the east.

The significance of this miracle lies in the rich meaning of it for the Gentiles. Christ is the bread of life for all, not merely for Jews alone. The great overtones of the wonder which identified Christ as that Prophet like unto Moses and required all men to see in Jesus the very God himself - all these implications are as rich for the Gentiles as for the Jews.

[1] C. E. B. Cranfield, The Gospel according to St. Mark (Cambridge: The University Press, 1966), p. 255.

[2] Richard Trench, Notes on the Miracles of Our Lord (Old Tappan, New Jersey: Fleming R. Revell Company, 1943), p. 387.

[3] E. Bickersteth, The Pulpit Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1962), Vol. 16, p. 331.

In those days, when there was again a great multitude, and they had nothing to eat, he called unto them his disciples and said unto them. (Mark 8:1)

Here is another notable difference from the former miracle. In this instance, it is Christ who provided the initiative.

CONSTABLE, "Verses 1-3Jesus and His disciples were still in the Decapolis region east of the lake. Three days had passed and the crowds were now hungry, having exhausted the provisions they had brought with them. Perhaps Jesus waited three days to see if the disciples would ask Him to feed this crowd as He had fed the former one (Mark 6:31-44). They did not. Jesus' compassion for the multitude led Him to articulate their plight. Still the disciples did not ask Jesus to meet the need. Even the similar surroundings did not jog the disciples' memories.

SBC 1-9, "We have here—

I. A picture of the forsaken Church of Christ. (1) Much people were gathered round the Lord. Many are gathered round Him today. Few, if we think of the immense multitude of those who are called into the Church of Christ; many, if we think of the small number of the chosen in all ages, and especially in our own day. (2) They have nothing to eat, said the Lord in our Gospel about the four thousand hearers. The same words must be said of the people of Christ now. The soldier needs food, if he is not to grow weary and perish with hunger; the Christian soldier needs both physical and spiritual nourishment. He is in the wilderness. Where shall he find it?

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II. The Lord takes pity on His Church. He knows the condition and the need of His own; He knows it even before they themselves are conscious of it, and before they cry to Him He gives them enough and to spare. They gather up the fragments, and find that through His blessing they have become more than the original provision. Fear not then, little flock, for it is your Father’s good pleasure to give you the Kingdom.

R. Rothe, Nachgelassene Predigten, vol. i., p. 40.

BI 1=9, "In those days the multitude being very great, and having nothing to eat.

Christ knows and supplies our need

A little lad, during the American war, was his widowed mother’s comfort and joy. One day, as the poor woman was trying to scrape the flour from the sides and bottom of the barrel to help out the day’s supply, the lad cried, “Mother, we shall have some more very soon, I know! “Why do you say so, my boy?” asked the mother. “Why, because you’ve got to scraping the barrel. I believe God always hears you scraping the barrel, and that’s a sign to Him you want another.” And before the day was over the fresh supply had come.

Feeding the people

I. Now we read that some of our foremost scientists-men of learning and research, and I am not here to say one word against them or their noble labours-have, as it were, if not formally, tacitly agreed to banish God from His own creation. They continually declare we have nothing to do with God. He is the Unknown, and must remain forever Unknowable; we are Agnostics, we know nothing of Him. We summarise in a few words the net results of the development theory as applied to the food of man. Within the last ten years special investigations have been directed to the origin and growth of corn. I cannot now indicate the course and scope of these researches more than to say that we have two ways or prosecuting the inquiry-by the records of history, and by the deposits of geology. And their teachings in fine amount to this. Wheat has never been found in a wild state in any country in the world, nor in any age. It has no development, no descent. It has always been found under the same conditions as it is now-always under the care and cultivation of man-never existed where man did not cultivate it. Moreover, it has never been found in a fossil state. So, if we hearken to the teachings of geology, man existed long before his staff of life. The most minute investigations into the origin of wheat have failed to find it under any conditions in the least different from what it is with us today. The oldest grain of wheat in the world is in the British Museum, and this has been microscopically examined and subjected to the most searching analysis, but it is found to be in all respects exactly the same as the wheat you secured a fortnight ago in this parish in the Vale of Clwyd. So there has been no development within the records of history, and it has no existence in the deposits of geology. Again: the power and the means of perpetuating its own existence have been given to every living and growing thing, animal and vegetable, and this is carried on from age to age, without any interference on the part of man. The only great exception to this grand and beneficent law is the corn-the food of man. A crop of wheat left to itself, in any latitude or country, would, in the third or fourth year of its first planting, entirely disappear. It has no power to master its surrounding difficulties so as to become self-perpetuating. Thus it does not come under the law of the “survival of the fittest.” And what is still more singular-we have never more than a sufficient supply for some fourteen months or thereabouts, even after the most bountiful harvest, and it has been calculated that we are often within a week of universal starvation should one harvest totally fail. And how near this awful catastrophe we may have been this year even, God only knows. A shade too

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much, or a shade too little; and oh how little, and it might have been! And science informs us that the wheat has untold millions of enemies peculiar to itself. And no wonder it is a matter of universal rejoicings when another harvest has been scoured, and the farmer’s anxious labours have been crowned with success.

II. Man must work. And this is nowhere more evident than in the harvest. Man must plough and harrow, and sow and reap, and bind and gather into barns, and thresh and grind, and knead and bake, and the hundred and one other little things allotted as his honourable share in this grand concern; otherwise his body, with its mysterious relations to earth and sky, to time and eternity, to matter and spirit, will not receive the nourishment intended for its growth and work, though all the cycles of immensity were kept to shed their benign influences on field and meadow and homestead. And on the other hand, man may do all his part, and yet not one single grain could he gather into barn or rick if our heavenly Father did not cause the earth to revolve, the planets to move, the inconstant moon to wend its way along the star-bespangled firmament, the river to roll on its pebbly bed, the myriad laughing ocean in its cradle to ebb and flow, the entrancing landscapes of the sun-tinted clouds to sail in the balmy air, and the barriers of the dawn to be loosened that the golden rays of the lord of day may dance on the petals of the flowering wheat, and kiss the dew from the lips of the lily. Now sublimate this thought into the domain of the gospel, and you will have our part-our bodily and mental part, little though it be-in the spiritual and eternal life. For instance, you have power over your own limbs to come here to God’s house, to bow the knee, to blend your voice in psalm and litany, to kneel before the holy table and receive the visible symbols of His Divine presence, and demean yourselves in bodily and mental posture as men who feel that God is amongst you; but after all you will go away empty if the Holy Spirit be not here to carry the words from the lips of the preacher to the heart of the hearer, and your Holy Communion will be an ideal ceremony if God’s presence be not here to bless and satisfy the faithful worshipper. In one and the truest sense, all is of God, but He will not take you to heaven in spite of yourselves. “Work out your own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God which worketh in you both to will and to do of His good pleasure.”

III. These miracles are characteristic of our Lord Himself, His life, His work. Contrast this miracle of feeding the multitudes with our Lord’s refusal, at Satan’s bidding, to convert the stones of the desert into bread for His own sake. Our Lord’s temptations and sufferings and death were all for the sake of others-of us-of me a sinner-of the human family. (D. Williams.)

God’s food the only satisfaction

“And they were filled.” No true wealth except the harvest. All the gold and silver are simply means of exchange: they have a purchasing power; nothing is true wealth but the harvest. The harvest alone enriches, the harvest alone satisfies. If the harvest once failed, your gold and precious stones would soon become only so much dross to be flung away. Riches, pleasure, fame, empires even, do not satisfy; these things only increase the hunger of the soul, created to have its enjoyment and satisfaction in God alone. The food in which God is present alone satisfies. If God be here you will not go away empty. The Divine presence gives eternal satisfaction. “Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that which endureth unto everlasting life.” (D. Williams.)

Fragment gatherers

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The apostles-the agents who were chosen to distribute amongst the multitudes the food which Jesus blessed-were privileged to gather the fragments. Oh, what precious fragments all who help to administer bread to the perishing souls receive back themselves! The preacher, the teacher, the district visitor, if their own hearts be in the right place, what lessons of encouragement, self-discipline, and mutual love! what precious fragments in the respect, gratitude, and affection from those amongst whom they minister, do they not receive! Virtue is its own reward. Do good, and the basket of fragments is yours. The less the material, the greater the number fed, the more fragments. Strange arithmetic! But it is the rule of three and practice of God. This is true of all lives. Those who have large means, and do but little, bare no fragments to gather. (D. Williams.)

How many loaves have ye

The miracle was made less startling, less striking, by the actual manner of performing it. The moment of its beginning was veiled. The first recipients took common bread. The multiplication was imperceptible. It was only reflection which would convince. The transition was so gradual from the natural to the supernatural, from the common into the miraculous, that careless or superficial observers might rise from the meal half unaware that a Divine hand had been working. In all this we see much that is Christlike. As no man (Prophecy said) should hear His voice in the streets, so no man should be forced to track His path in the self-manifestation of His glory. There was nothing glaring or for effect, nothing (as we should now say) sensational, even in His signs. Christ sought rather to show how alike, how consistent, are all God’s acts; those which He does every day in Providence, and those which He keeps commonly out of sight in grace. When that which began in eating common bread changed imperceptibly into eating food multiplied by miracle, that was a type of God’s “two worlds,” the one seen, the other unseen, yet each the counterpart and complement of the other, and separated each from each by the thinnest possible veil of present mystery. Christ might have wrought this miracle without asking for, without making use of, the seven loaves. But He did not. In like manner, Christ might now, in His Church and in His world, dispense with everything that is ours; might begin afresh. Instead He asks for the seven loaves that we have. The applications of this truth are many and various.

I. We see it in inspiration. When it pleased God to give us a book of light, it was in His power to have made it all His own. But the human element mixes with the Divine. Bring forth all your gifts, such as they are, of understanding and culture and knowledge and utterance; bring them forth, all ye holy and humble men of heart, Moses and Samuel, David and Isaiah, Ezra and Ezekiel, Paul and John, Luke and Mark, Matthew and Peter; and then Christ, taking them at your hands, shall give them back to you blessed and blessing, to be to generations yet unborn the light of their life and the consolation of their sleep and of their awakening.

II. That which is true of the Book is true also of the life. “How many loaves have ye?” Christ puts that question to the young man, whose course is not yet shaped definitely towards this profession or that, and who would fain so pass through things temporal that he finally lose not the things eternal. Christ bids him to ponder with himself each particular of his character and of his history; gifts of nature and of education, gifts of mind and body, gifts of habit and inclination, gifts of connection and acquaintanceship, gifts of experience and self-knowledge; and to bring these, like a man-not standing idle because he has not heard or felt himself hired: not excusing himself from obeying because his loaves are but seven, or because they are coarse or stale or mouldy-but to bring them to Him who made and will bless. How many loaves

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have ye? Nothing? Not a soul? not a body? not time? not one friend, not one neighbour, not one servant, to whom a kind word may be spoken, or a kind deed done, in the name, for the love, of Jesus? Bring that-do that, say that-as what thou hast; very small, very trivial, very worthless, if thou wilt: yet remember the saying, “She hath done what she could.” There are others but too confident in their gifts and in their doings. It is not without its risk, even a life of charity, even a life of ministry. Are you quite sure, that, bringing out your seven loaves, you brought them to Christ for that blessing which alone gives increase? Nothing works of itself-nothing by human willing or human running-but only by the grace of Him who giveth liberally, and who showeth mercy. Most of all, that which would help Christ’s own work-to seek and to save that which is lost. “How many loaves have ye?” The question is asked of the man-it is asked also of the community. (C. J. Vaughan, D. D.)

Wherever there is anything new, unusual, or exciting going on, there the crowd is sure to collect. These people were in distressing bodily want. It seems a little singular that this multitude should have so forgotten themselves, as to hurry out thus unprovided into the empty wilderness. We should never see half the distress we do, if people were only a little more considerate and thoughtful. But it was to the credit of these people that the distress they suffered was incurred by what was commendable. With a right appreciation of Christ, it would be no unwisdom to perish in following after Him, rather than to live in ease by forsaking Him. There was no relief for the multitude in the common course of things. But man’s extremity is God’s opportunity. And what a picture is thus given us of the tenderness and goodness of our Lord! Jesus pities people in want of bread for the body, as well as those in want of food for their souls. He enters into our temporal as well as spiritual needs. Nor was His compassion a mere empty sentiment. It stimulated to action. It exhibited itself in deed. It set to relieve the distress that stirred it. It would not be right to expect such interpositions as a common thing. God has His own ways for dealing out to men their daily bread, which must be regarded; but his resources are not limited. But there is method in this marvellous relief. “So they did eat.”

1. There were directions given which had to be obeyed. And so there are commands to be observed in order to get the bread of life. There must be a coming down, a sitting in the dust at Jesus’ feet, a humiliation of self to His orders ant institutes.

2. He took what the people had, and added His power and blessing to it, and thus furnished the requisite supplies. They had seven cakes and a few small fishes. Grace was never meant to supersede nature, but to work upon it, to help it, bless it, and augment it. God is a frugal economist. He never wastes what already exists. He is never prodigal in His creations. We have eyes, and ears, and hearts, and understanding wills, which can be of good service in our salvation. All that they need is to be brought to Christ, submitted to His handling, bathed in His words of blessing, and filled with His power, to serve most effectually.

3. But the food He furnished was given to these hungry ones only through second hands. The bread and the fishes He “gave to His disciples to set before them, and they did set them before the people.” Christ has appointed a ministry-an office which is filled by men, who, by His authority and command, are set apart and ordained to officiate between Christ and their fellows. And where there has been no ministry, there has been no salvation. The bread of life no man can have, until it is ministerially conveyed to him. Be it through the living voice, or the written page, or the solemn sacrament, that voice implies a speaker, that page a writer, that sacrament an administrator, who is God’s appointed agent for the carrying of

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it to him who gets it. (J. A. Seiss, DD.)

Faith in Christ helpful against hunger

There be those who make sport of the thought that faith in Christ can help against the pangs of hunger, or the pinchings of bodily need. That a religious sentiment should serve to put bread in the mouths of the destitute, is to them ridiculous. And even unfledged apostles are often in such unfaith as to be in perplexity and doubt if He who saves the soul can also feed the body. The world, in its wisdom, does not know Christ, and so it doubts Him, and laughs at trust in Him. Well-meaning people get wrong in their Christology, and it sets them wrong at every other point. Let men learn that Jesus is the Saviour of bodies, as well as of souls; that He is the Lord of harvests and of bread, as well as of moral precepts and spiritual counsels; that He lives not only in a system of doctrines and religious tenets, but also in sovereign potency over all the products of land and sea, as well as over all the hidden principles of production; that He is not only a marvellous prophet of truth who lived in the time long past, but also an enthroned king of the living present, swaying His potent sceptre over all worlds, all nations, and all affairs, and dispensing His comforts, blessings, and rebukes untrammelled by laws in nature or the economies of earth; and doubt will cease as to whether faith in Him may not bring bread to the destitute, as well as pardon to the guilty, or hope of heaven to the dying. (J. A. Seiss, DD.)

A picture of man’s life

In the desert of this world he is in continual want, hungering and thirsting in the midst of its transitory delights, and longing to be filled with food. Sin offers itself, and the world tempts him with its barren show, but these cannot satisfy. Only when he follows Christ, knowing that he is sick, and owning that he is blind in soul, and maimed in will, and attesting by his stedfastness in continuing with his Saviour the earnestness of his desire for the help which comes from above, will Christ give him that water which whosoever drinketh thereof shall never thirst, and that bread, even Himself, which came down from heaven. In this miracle we are taught-

1. The promptness with which Christ succours us. We see this in His providing bread before the multitude hungered, and in His care lest afterwards they should faint by the way.

2. The motive causes for all God’s mercies to us, viz., our needs and our dangers.

3. The true effects of God’s mercy-what He gives us is that true food which really satisfies, and which alone can satisfy, the whole nature of man. (W. Denton, M. A.)

The multitude fed

Christ came into personal contact with human wants and woes.

I. Some characteristics of this miracle as contrasted with others.

1. The desire to grant this blessing originated with Christ Himself. How comforting to know that He does not mete out His mercies in the scant measure of our prayers.

2. A striking instance of prevention, rather than cure. From how many ills

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unthought of, dangers unseen, woes unimagined, are we daily delivered by the preventing grace of God.

3. Human intervention employed. Christ the source of supply; the disciples privileged to dispense His bounty.

4. Unbelief in the innermost circle of disciples.

5. A vast multitude were benefited.

II. The miracle itself.

1. Illustrates Christ’s care for the bodies of men.

2. The abundance of God’s bounty. The more we feed upon Christ, the Bread of Life, the more there is to feed upon.

3. The need of daily feeding on Christ. The miracle falls short here. To feed once for all is not sufficient. It is because they think it is that so many are spiritually sickly and weak. (R. W. Forrest, M. A.)

On the encouragement which the gospel affords to active duty

I. One singular feature in the character of our Lord-His superiority to all the selfish passions of our nature. This miracle demonstrated His power over nature, and taught those who witnessed it that if His kingdom were of this world He possessed the power to maintain it. They would naturally wish to assemble under such a Leader. It is at this moment, when all the vulgar passions of hope and ambition were working in the minds of the multitude, “that He sends them away;” to show them that His kingdom was spiritual.

II. The character of His religion. The systems of pretended revelation which prevail in the world encourage either superstition or enthusiasm, and have often separated piety from morality. They have drawn men from the sphere of social duty to unmeaning devotions. Christ assembles the multitude that He may instruct them.

III. We are the multitude described in this passage of the Gospel. We have heard that there was a great Prophet come into the world tot the purpose of spiritual improvement. He has spread before us, in the wilderness of human life, that greater feast, of spirit and of mind, which may save us “from fainting on our way.” The services we are called to perform in the cause of humanity. “That they who had eaten were about four thousand.” The number who have this day approached the same Lord, and heard the same accents of salvation, are countless millions of the family of God. (A. Alison, LL. B.)

Satisfaction for the food in the wilderness

I. Satisfaction. Is not the Church tired out, fainting? Is not the world a wilderness to you? Does not the Spirit of God make you feel the nothingness of everything upon earth? Christ the only satisfaction.

II. The thing that satisfies a man. Bread.

III. The place where these individuals were to have that satisfaction. (J. J. West, M. A.)

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Second miracle of feeding the multitude

It could hardly have been without some special reason that the same miracle should have been worked twice by Christ with scarcely any variation of detail, and twice recorded with so very great attention to detail. In each case, too, Christ Himself drew from the miracle teaching of the highest importance. Notice these points of similarity.

I. In each case Jesus, beholding the multitude of people, has compassion on them. That is the origin and source of help for man. Because of His compassion-

1. He came from heaven to earth to bring to famishing men the Bread of Life.

2. He sends to us His Church, by and through the ministry of which He gives us all the means of grace. He takes just what we have, water, bread, wine-all insufficient of themselves-and by His power makes them more than sufficient for our needs.

3. He looks at us not in the mass, but one by one. It is the individual soul which is the factor in the mind of God.

II. In each case, before working the miracle, He draws from the disciples a declaration of their inability to supply unassisted that which was needed.

III. In each case He takes, nevertheless, that which they have, and makes it sufficient. “How many loaves have ye?” “Seven.”

1. The gift of baptismal grace-the germ of all graces.

2. The seven-fold gifts of the Holy Spirit, bestowed in confirmation.

3. The Holy Communion.

4. All the means of grace. The Word of God. Opportunities of public worship.

5. The power of repentance.

6. The gift of prayer.

7. The ministry of the Church.

So that we have, after all, a great deal: if we use these gifts faithfully, by God’s blessing they will more than suffice for the wants of our souls.

IV. In each case He commanded the multitude to sit down. We must come to receive God’s blessing obediently, quietly, calmly. Need of this lesson in a busy, energetic age, so restless and so excited. We need more repose of mind and character. It is good to be “up and doing,” but there are times when it is well for us to sit still. The life most free from feverish excitement is the life most likely to profit by God’s gifts.

1. “Sit down” before you say your prayers, if you would really have them answered. Recall your thoughts, be patient and quiet and humble, try to remember to Whom you are about to speak, and what it is you are going to ask, what you really need.

2. “Sit down” before your acts of public worship. Let there be more restfulness about your worship, more repose of thought, more concentration of thought on what you are about to do.

3. “Sit down” before each communion you make (1Co_11:28).

(1) Let me calmly, honestly, and thoughtfully look into my past life, especially examining that part of it that has been lived since my last communion.

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(2) Let me see where I am, and what I am.

(3) Let me try my best to see my sins as they really are, and as they are recorded in God’s book.

(4) Let me truly repent of past sins, and make my humble confession to God, honestly purposing amendment of life.

V. In each case, either at His command or with His approval, the fragments are gathered up. God’s gifts, whether temporal or spiritual, are never to be wasted. He gives with a splendid liberality, but only in order that His gifts may be used. Gather up-

1. Fragments of time.

2. Fragments of opportunities.

3. Fragments of temporal goods.

4. Fragments of prayer, repentance, worship, grace. (Canon Ingram.)

Divine law of increase

Usually a single man needed three of these loaves for a meal, and here were more than a thousand supplied by each loaf. Nobody can tell how it was done, any more than we can understand how God began to make the world when there was nothing anywhere. It may be objected that the Lord does not feed us now in this way; that, if we want bread, we must work for it. But think about it, and you will see His power and kindness just as plainly in giving us food in reward for our labour. We plant single kernels of grain, and God makes each one grow into a great many. What is this but another way of multiplying the loaves? How hard and dead the seed looks when we put it into the ground. The rain and the sun find it there, and the yearly wonder begins. The seed swells and bursts; a wee pale root comes out and goes down into the earth; another shoots up to the surface. They look very tiny and weak, but a microscope shows that the tender cells are protected by tough coverings, sometimes even by particles of flint along the edges, so that they can push their way through the earth. One acre of soil, three inches deep, weighs a million pounds, and all that is stirred and lifted by these growing fibres. Up come the stalks, straight and slender, yet so tough and elastic that when the wind blows they can bend clear to the ground, and then spring back again, as the strongest tree can hardly do. Soon a spike of tiny flowers appears on top, then a cluster of kernels, and at last the whole gets yellow and ripe. Is not this work of God’s stranger and more beautiful than turning one piece of bread into a thousand just like it? (C. M. Southgate.)

So they did eat, and were filled

In the original it is, “They were fed to satisfaction.” That such a result followed, was the consequence of their being fed by Him alone who satisfies the empty soul, and filleth the hungry soul with gladness. There is need to be reminded of this in an age when men are pointed to other sources of satisfaction-to education, to culture, and to refinement, and bidden to find their highest enjoyment in these and such-like pursuits. If they bear no reference to Him towards whom all that is noblest and best in nature and art is designed to lead us, they will turn out to be but broken cisterns that hold no water. (H. M. Luckock, D. D.)

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Help in extremity

May we not learn from this miracle how Christ will exercise acts of special providence to help and succour those who are following Him? Dean Hook mentions a striking instance of this. There was an individual who gave up a profitable employment, acting under advice, and not from the mere caprice of his own judgment, because he thought, taking his temptations into account, he could not follow it without peril to his soul. And after many reverses he was reduced to such a state of distress that the last morsel in the house had been consumed, and he had not bread to give his children. His faith did not, however, forsake him; and when his distress was at its height, he received a visit from one who called to pay him a debt he had never hoped to recover, but the payment of which enabled him to support his family until he again obtained employment.

Man’s food supply

The question of the disciples has been the natural question of all thinkers at all times. The foremost difficulty to be encountered everywhere is the difficulty of getting daily bread for self or others in this wilderness, this land of thorns and thistles. We, indeed, raised above our fellows by centuries of civilization, only partially feel the direct pressure of bodily hunger, only occasionally realize the paramount necessity which governs the life of man-the necessity of procuring food. But, in fact, a vast proportion of all human effort and anxiety is directed to this one point; whatever else is left undone, this must be bone: only if there is any time and vigour over when daily bread is secured can it be spent on other things, on comforts and adornments for the body, on learning and improvement for the mind. There is, perhaps, no animal that has to spend so large a part of his time in procuring the food he needs as man. And when he has got it, it will not satisfy him as their daily food will satisfy the other creatures. No sooner is he filled than he finds out that man cannot live by bread alone; that he cannot be satisfied from any earthly stores; that he wants something more, and has another kind of hunger. This is, of course, because God has made him with a soul as well as a body, and has so made this soul and body that each requires its own proper food. Indeed, we must acknowledge that we are the most dependent of all creatures; we cannot go a few hours without suffering pangs of hunger, which must be stilled at any cost or risk, or else we die; and when this craving is appeased, then the hunger of the soul awakes, and it demands to be satisfied with something-it knows not what, perhaps; for God has made us for Himself, mede us to be satisfied with nothing less than Himself, made us to be entirely dissatisfied and discontented without Himself. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.)

This world a wilderness

Men often talk about this life as being a wilderness, and they are right; but do you know why, and in what sense? What is the wilderness to which our earthly life is like, the wilderness in which our Lord worked this and other miracles? Is it a great howling expanse of sand and rock, with nought but blazing earth below and blazing sky above? Is it the vast and terrible desert, where fiery death pursues the steps of the unhappy traveller, where doleful creatures cry, and whitening bones lie all about? If this were the wilderness, then would our life be very unlike one. The wildernesses of Palestine, like “the bush” in Australia, are not by any means always barren, or ugly, or desolate: often they are very beautiful, and very productive; only, their beauty and productiveness are so uncertain, so unreliable, so disappointing, that no one can live there or make his home there-unless, indeed, he receives his supplies from

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somewhere else. Now, our life is lust like the wilderness in this sense: very often it is full of beauty, of grace, of life, of promise; there are times when every element of hope and contentment seems present in abundance. But all this beauty and promise will not satisfy the soul of man, however much it may please his fancy and his taste. Suppose you found yourself in the wilderness among the grasses and flowers, could you feed on them? Could you sustain life on them? No; however lovely and luxuriant they might be, however grateful as elements in a landscape, they would not appease your hunger; your limbs would grow weak, your eyes would fail, your head would swim, and you would fall and starve and die amongst the dewy grasses and the many-coloured flowers. Even so would it be if you tried to satisfy your immortal souls with the pleasures and beauties, and joys and riches, of this life. We should be other than human if we did not like them, we should be very ungrateful if we did not give thanks for them-but, all the same, we cannot be satisfied with them; the old craving would return-we should feel ourselves discontented, miserable, perishing, amidst all the abundance of this world. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.)

God alone can satisfy

It is easy enough to please people in the wilderness it you go at the right time; the beauty of the landscape, the buoyancy of the air, the exhilarating sense of freedom and expanse-all these are delightful. It is easy to amuse people in the wilderness, with so many new things to be looked at and admired; it is easy to lead them on further and further from home, into a region where there are no barriers and few landmarks. But to satisfy them-that we cannot do; that can only be done, in the wilderness, by the Divine power of Christ, He only can feed the myriads of famishing souls which, even in listening to His words, have only felt their hunger growing keener. He can and will, and it makes no difference to Him how many the people, how few the loaves, they shall all be satisfied and go home in the strength of that food; He can and will, and it makes no difference to Him how many millions of souls are waiting upon Him for spiritual food-how feeble, apparently, and paltry the means of grace by which He designs to feed them. (R. Winterbotham, M. A.)

Scattering yet increasing

Good husbandry does not grind up all the year’s wheat for loaves for one’s own eating, but keeps some of it for seed, to be scattered in the furrows. And if Christian men will deal with the great love of God, the great work of Christ, the great message of the gospel, as if it were bestowed on them for their own sakes only, they will have only themselves to blame if holy desires die out in their hearts, and the consciousness of Christ’s love becomes faint, and all the blessed words of truth come to sound far off and mythical in their ears. The standing water gets green scum on it. The close-shut barn breeds weevils and smut. Let the water run. Fling the Seed broadcast. Thou shalt find it after many days-bread for thy own soul. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

The conditions of increase

The condition of increase is diffusion. To impart to others is to gain for oneself. Every honest effort to bring some other human heart into conscious possession of Christ’s love deepens my own sense of its preciousness. If you would learn, teach. You will catch new gleams of His gracious heart in the very act of commending it to others. Work for God if you would live with God. Give the bread to the hungry, if you would

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have it for the food of your own souls. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)

BURKITT, "This chapter begins with the relation of a famous miracle wrought by our Saviour; namely, his feeding of four thousand persons with seven loaves, and a few fishes.

And here we have observable, first, the tender care which Christ took of the bodies of men, to provide all necessaries for their support and comfort; he giveth us richly all things to enjoy. The great housekeeper of the world openeth his hands, and filleth all things living with plenteousness. How careful was our Saviour here that the bodies of poor creatures might not faint, nor be over weak and weary by the way! Therefore he would not dismiss them without refreshment.

Observe, 2. The original source and spring from whence this care that Christ had of the multitude did proceed and flow; namely from that sympathizing pity and tender compassion which the merciful heart of Christ did bear towards persons in distress and misery.

Learn hence, That the tender pity and compassion of Christ is not the spring and fountain of spiritual mercies only, but of temporal blessings also; I have compassion on the multitude who have nothing to eat.

Observe, 3. How the disciples, not seeing any outward, visible means for the people's support, conclude it impossible for so many to be satisfied with the little supply they had; namely, seven loaves and a few small fishes.

Learn thence, That a weak faith soon grows thoughtful, and sometimes distrustful at the sight of difficulties. Whence say the disciples, can these men be satisfied with bread? Not considering, that the power of God in blessing our food, is far above the means of food. It is as easy for him to sustain and nourish us with a little as with much; Man liveth not by bread, but by the blessing of God upon the bread he eats.

Observe, 4. That although Christ could have fed these four thousand without the loaves, yet he takes and makes use of them seeing they may be had.

Learn hence, That Christ did not neglect his own appointed ordinary means nor do anything in an extraordinary way, farther than was absolutely necessary. Christ was above means, and could work without them, and when they failed, did so; but when the means were at hand, he made use of them himself, to teach us never to expect that in a way of miracle, which may become at in a way of means.

Observe, 5. From our Lord's example, that religious custom of begging a blessing upon our food before we sit down to it, and of receiving the good creatures of God with thanksgiving. How unworthy is he of the crumbs that fall from his own table who with the swine looks not up unto, and takes no thankful notice of, the hand that

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feeds him?

Observe, 6. The certainty and greatness of the miracle: They did all eat and were filled. They did all eat, not a crust of bread, or bit of fish, but to satiety and fulness. All that were hungry did eat, and all that did eat were satisfied, and yet seven baskets remain; more is left than was at first set on. It is hard to say which was the greatest miracle, the miraculous eating, or miraculous leaving. If we consider what they ate, we may wonder that they left anything; if what they left, that they eat anything.

Observe lastly, Our Lord's command to gather up the fragments, Teaches us, That we make no waste of the good creatures of God. The fragments of fish-bones broken bread must be gathered up; the liberal housekeeper of the world will not allow the loss of his orts. Frugality is a commendable duty. God hath made us stewards, but not absolute lords of his blessings. We must be accountable to him for all the instances of his bounty received from him.

HOLE, "Verses 1-38

WHEN THE FIVE thousand were fed, as recorded in Mark 6:1-56, the disciples took the initiative by calling their Master’s attention to the needy condition of the crowd. On this second occasion the Lord took the initiative, and drew His disciples’ attention to their need, expressing His compassion and concern on their behalf. As on the first occasion so again now the disciples have simply man before them, and think only of his powers which are wholly unequal to the situation. They had not yet learned to measure the difficulty by the power of their Lord.

Hence the instruction which was conveyed by the feeding of a huge crowd with earthly resources of the tiniest order, was repeated. There were slight differences, both as to the number of the people and the number of the loaves and fishes used, but in all the essentials this miracle was a repetition of the other, as once more He fulfilled Psalms 132:15, and displayed the power of God before their eyes.

Having fed the multitude, He dismissed them Himself, and immediately after departed with His disciples to the other side of the lake, just as on the previous occasion. On His arrival certain Pharisees came with aggressive intent requesting a sign from heaven. He had as a matter of fact just been giving very striking signs from heaven in the presence of thousands of witnesses. The Pharisees had no intention of following Him, and hence had not been present so as to see the sign for themselves, still there was ample witness to it if they cared to listen. The fact was of course that on the one hand they had no desire to witness any sign that would authenticate Him and His mission, and on the other hand they had no ability to see and recognize the sign even when it was plainly before their eyes. Their utter unbelief grieved Him to the heart.

In verse Mark 8:34 of the previous chapter, when He was confronted with human weakness and disability of a bodily sort, He sighed: here confronted with blindness of a spiritual sort, He sighed deeply in His spirit. Spiritual incapacity is a far more serious matter than bodily incapacity. They were blind leaders of a blind generation

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and groping about for a sign. No sign would be given to them, for to blind men signs are useless. This was the occasion when, as recorded at the beginning of Matthew 16:1-28, the Lord told them they could discern the face of the sky, but not the signs of the times.

Let us not dismiss this matter as being something which only concerns the Pharisee: in principle it also concerns ourselves. How often has the true believer been troubled and disheartened, thinking God has not spoken, or acted, or answered, when really He has, only we have not had eyes to see. We may have continued beseeching Him for more light, when all the time all that was wanted was a few windows in our house!

The motive actuating these Pharisees was wholly wrong, since their object was to tempt Him. So the Lord abruptly left them and departed again to the other side of the lake, which He had left but a short time before, and the disciples were without bread. Thus for the third time they were face to face with the problem raised in the feeding of the five thousand and the four thousand, only on a very small scale.

Alas! the disciples no more met the problem in the strength of faith when it was on the small scale than when it was on the great scale. They too had not so far had eyes to see the power and glory of their Master, as displayed twice in His multiplication of the loaves and fishes. True faith has penetrating vision. They should have discerned who He was, and then they would have looked not to their paltry loaves or fishes but to Him, and every difficulty would have vanished. In the small crises that mark our own lives are we any better than they were?

The Lord’s charge about the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod is not explained to us here, as it is in Matthew, but we must note its significance. He referred to the doctrine of the two factions, which worked like leaven in those who came under the influence of the one and the other. That of the Pharisees was hypocrisy. That of the Herodians was utter worldliness. In Matthew we read of the leaven of the Sadducees, and this was intellectual pride which led them into rationalistic unbelief. Nothing does more effectually blind the mind and understanding than leaven of these three kinds.

The blind man of Bethsaida, of whom we read in verses Mark 8:22-26, exactly illustrates the condition of the disciples at that time. When the blind man was brought to the Lord, He took him by the hand and led him out of the town, thus separating him from the haunts of men, just as previously He had turned His back upon the Pharisees and those with them (verse Mark 8:13). Outside the town the Lord dealt with him, performing His work in two parts—the only time, as far as we remember, that He acted thus. As the result of the first touch he saw, “men as trees, walking.” He saw, but things were badly out of focus. He knew that the objects he saw were men, but they looked much bigger than they were.

Thus it was with the disciples—man was too great in their eyes. Even as they looked at the Lord Himself it would seem that His humanity eclipsed His Deity in their eyes. They needed, like the blind man, a second touch before they saw all things clearly. The presence of the Son of God amongst them in flesh and blood was the first touch

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that reached them, and as a result they began to see. When He had died and risen again and was ascended to glory, He laid His second touch upon them in shedding forth His Spirit, as recorded in Acts 2:1-47. Then they saw all things clearly. We may well earnestly pray that our spiritual vision may not be near-sighted and out of focus, lest the great trees, we think we see, turn out to be merely feeble little men strutting about. Such a state is possible for us, as 2 Peter 1:9 shows, and there is no excuse for us, since the Spirit has been given.

The blind man, when cured, was not to go into the town nor testify to any in the town; moreover the Lord Himself now withdrew with His disciples to Caesarea Philippi, the most northerly town within the confines of the land, and very near the Gentile border. Clearly He was beginning to withdraw Himself and the testimony to His Messiahship from the blind people and their yet more blinded leaders. Here He raised the question with His disciples as to who He was. The people hazarded differing guesses, but all imagined Him to be some old prophet revived, just a man, and none had sufficient interest to really find out.

Then Jesus challenged His disciples. Peter became the spokesman and answered confessing His Messiahship, but this only produced a rejoinder which probably astonished them greatly, and may astonish us as we read it today. He charged them to be silent as to His Messiahship, and began to teach them as to His approaching rejection and death and resurrection. Any testimony that had been rendered to Him as the Messiah on earth was now formally withdrawn. From this point He accepted His death as inevitable, and began to turn the thoughts of His disciples to that which was impending as the result of it. This was the orderly progress of things on the human side; and it does not contradict nor clash with the divine side— that He knew from the outset that which was before Him.

Moreover, the disciples were as yet hardly fit to bear further testimony, had it been needed. Peter indeed had some measure of spiritual sight, for he had just confessed Him as the Christ; yet the intimation of His approaching rejection and death raised a vehement remonstrance from this very man. In this Peter’s mind was being swayed by Satan, and the Lord rebuked this spirit of evil who was behind Peter’s words. Peter’s mind was set on “the things that be of men,” and so he answered very aptly to the man of whom we have just read, who saw men as trees walking. Though he recognized the Christ in Jesus, he still had men before him, and in this the other disciples were no better than he. So how could he go forth as an effectual witness to the Christ whom he recognized? No wonder, after all, that at this point He charged His disciples that they should tell no man of Him.

We may pause here, each to face the fact that we cannot effectually go forth in testimony unless we really know the One of whom we testify, and also know and understand the situation that exists, in the face of which the testimony has to be rendered.

In the closing verses of our chapter the Lord begins to instruct His disciples in the presence of the people as to consequences that would follow from His rejection and death. They imagined themselves to be following a Messiah who was to be received and glorified on earth; and the fact was, He was about to die and rise again and be for

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the present glorified in heaven. This entailed an immense change in their outward prospects. It meant the denying of self, the taking up of the cross, the losing of life in this world, the bearing of shame as identified with Christ and His words, in the midst of an evil generation.

The force of “deny himself” is hardly expressed by “self-denial,” which is the denying oneself of something. What the Lord speaks of is not that but the denial, or the saying of “no,” to oneself. Also, “take up his cross” does not mean bearing trials and troubles merely. The man who in those days took up his cross was being led to execution. He was a man who had to accept death at the hands of the world. To say “no” to oneself is to accept death internally, on one’s own spirit: to take up one’s cross is to accept death externally at the hands of the world. That is what discipleship must mean, since we follow the Christ who died, rejected of the world.

This thought is expanded in verses Mark 8:35-37. The true disciple of Christ is not aspiring to gain the whole world; he is ready rather to lose the world, and his own life in it, for the sake of the Lord and His Gospel. The perfect Servant, whom Mark depicts, gave His life that there might be a Gospel to preach. Those who follow Him, and are His servants, must be prepared to give up their lives in preaching the Gospel. If they should be ashamed of Him now, He would be ashamed of them in the day of His glory.

2 “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat.

BARNES, "I have compassions - I pity their condition. I am disposed to relieve them.

CLARKE, "Having nothing to eat - If they had brought any provisions with them, they were now entirely expended; and they stood in immediate need of a supply.

GILL, "I have compassion on the multitude,.... Christ is a compassionate Saviour both of the bodies and souls of men: he had compassion on the souls of this multitude, and therefore had been teaching them sound doctrine and he had compassion on the bodies of many of them, and had healed them of their diseases; and his bowels yearned towards them all;

because, says he,

they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat; for if they

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brought any food with them, it was all spent, and they were in a wilderness, where nothing was to be got; where they had no house to go into, nor bed to lie upon, and no provisions to be bought; and in this case they had been two nights and three days; which showed great affection and zeal in these people, and a close attachment to Christ, in exposing themselves to all these difficulties and hardships, which they seemed to bear with much patience and unconcernedness. The Vulgate Latin, Syriac, Persic, and Ethiopic versions prefix the word "behold" to this clause, as expressing admiration at their stay with him so long in such a place.

HENRY, "2. Those that followed him, underwent a great deal of difficulty in following him; They were with him three days, and had nothing to eat, that was hard service. Never let the Pharisee say, that Christ's disciples fast not. There were those, probably, that brought some food with them from home; but by this time it was all spent, and they had a great way home; and yet they continued with Christ, and did not speak of leaving him till he spoke of dismissing them. Note, True zeal makes nothing of hardships in the way of duty. They that have a full feast for their souls may be content with slender provision for their bodies. It was an old saying among the Puritans, Grown bread and the gospel are good fare.

JAMIESON, "I have compassion on the multitude — an expression of that deep emotion in the Redeemer’s heart which always preceded some remarkable interposition for relief. (See Mat_14:14; Mat_20:34; Mar_1:41; Luk_7:13; also Mat_9:36, before the mission of the Twelve; compare Jdg_2:18; Jdg_10:16).

because they have now been with me — in constant attendance.

three days, and have nothing to eat:

JOHN MACDUFF, ""I have compassion on the multitude."—Mar_8:2.

What a pattern to His people, the tender compassion of Jesus! He found the world He came to save a moral Bethesda. The wail of suffering humanity was everywhere borne to His ear. It was His delight to walk its porches, to pity, relieve, comfort, save! The faintest cry of misery arrested His footsteps—stirred a ripple in this fountain of Infinite Love. Was it a leper—that dreaded name which entailed a life-long exile from friendly looks and kindly words? There was One, at least, who had tones and deeds of tenderness for the outcast. "Jesus, being moved with compassion, put forth His hand and touched him." Was it some blind beggars on the Jericho highway, groping in darkness, pleading for help? "Jesus stood still, and had compassion on them, and touched their eyes!" Was it the speechless pleadings of a widow's tears at the gate of Nain, when she followed her earthly pride and prop to the grave? "When the Lord saw her, He had compassion on her, and said, Weep not!" Even when He rebukes, the rainbow of compassion is seen in the cloud, or rather, that cloud, as it passes, dissolves in a rain-shower of mercy. He pronounces Jerusalem "desolate," but the doom is uttered amid a flood of anguished sorrow!

Reader! do the compassionate words and deeds of a tender Savior find any feeble echo and transcript in yours? As you traverse in thought the wastes of human wretchedness, does the spectacle give rise, not to the mere emotional feeling which weeps itself away in sentimental tears, but to an earnest desire to do something to mitigate the suffering of woe-worn humanity? How vast and world-

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wide the claims on your compassion!—now near, now at a distance—the unmet and unanswered cry of perishing millions abroad—the heathendom which lies unsuccoured at your own door—the public charity languishing—the mission staff dwarfed and crippled from lack of needful funds—a suffering district—a starving family—a poor neighbor—a helpless orphan—it may be, some crowded hovel where misery and vice run riot—or some lonely sick-chamber, where the dim lamp has been wasting for dreary nights—or some desolate home which death has entered, where "Joseph is not, and Simeon is not," and where some sobbing heart, under the tattered garb of poverty, mourns, unsolaced and unpitied, its "loved and lost." Are there none such within your reach, to whom a trifling pittance would be as an angel of mercy? How it would hallow and enhance all you possess, were you to seek to live as a dispenser of Jehovah's bounties! If He has given you of this world's substance, remember it is bestowed, not to be greedily hoarded or lavishly squandered. Property and wealth are talents to be traded on and laid out for the good of others—sacred trusts, not selfishly to be enjoyed, but generously to be employed.

"The poor are the representatives of Jesus, their needs He considers as His own," and He will recompense accordingly. The feeblest expression of Christian pity and love, though it be but the widow's mite, or the cup of cold water, or the kindly look and word when there is neither mite nor cup to give, yet, if done in His name, it is entered in the "book of life" as a "loan to the Lord;" and in that day when "the books are opened," the loan will be paid back with usury.

"Arm yourselves likewise with the same mind."

COFFMAN, "Matthew's fuller account relates the countless miracles of healing which took place in the three days, thus explaining how it came about that so many people would remain in a desert place without food. What they were receiving from Christ was valued by them above food itself. See my Commentary on Matthew, p. 233.

I have compassion ... This is one of the great words regarding Jesus Christ. His compassion was the source of every blessing, even that of his coming into the world.

NISBET, "FULLNESS OF GRACE AND GOODNESS‘I have compassion on the multitude.’Mark 8:2Let us take the miracle of Jesus feeding the multitude as showing the fullness of His grace and goodness (Philippians 4:19).

I. The greatness of the multitude (Mark 8:1).—We might think that this would interfere with the blessing, but in Christ God provides for the world (John 3:16). Though many have come to the Gospel feast, still the invitation says, ‘Yet there is room’ (Luke 14:22).

II. The greatness of the necessity (Mark 8:1-2).—But the greatness of man’s extremity is necessary to display the greatness of God’s grace (Isaiah 59:16).

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Israel learned this at the Red Sea (Exodus 14:10); the disciples when they had been without Jesus the three days He was in the grave (John 20:20-28). There were only seven loaves, which were quite insufficient to satisfy so many. And is not this the case with all human things? Will human wisdom satisfy? (1 Corinthians 1:20); will human riches? (Matthew 19:22); will pleasure? (Ecclesiastes 2:1). The soul longs for immortality—this alone will satisfy it (Psalms 17:15).

III. The greatness of the Divine compassion (Mark 8:2).—The first thought of their want, you see, springs from Jesus Himself (Hebrews 2:17; Hebrews 4:15; Hebrews 5:2). He is full of compassion, and ready to supply the comfort that is needed (Psalms 145:8; 2 Corinthians 1:3-5). This reminds us of the father seeing the prodigal a great way off, and running to him (Luke 15:20).

IV. The greatness of the Saviour’s bounty (Mark 8:6-9).—By His word and blessing four thousand souls are fed; and this miracle was repeated, showing that His favours are renewed to correspond to our necessities (Lamentations 3:23; Isaiah 33:2; Psalms 34:9-10).

Thus in this simple narrative do you learn the fullness of Christ (Colossians 1:19), that ‘God is able to make all grace abound toward you’ (2 Corinthians 9:8).

—Bishop Rowley Hill.Illustration

‘Because this miracle closely resembles one which preceded it by no considerable interval of time, some have asserted them to be one and the same. But this could not be, as the scene of the two miracles was different; the time, also, at which they were wrought was different, and the number of the multitude was different, as was the food provided for them. Moreover, the chiding of Christ of His disciples afterward sets the matter beyond all dispute or doubt (Mark 8:19-20). There are, it is true, many points of likeness, but there are also some points of unlikeness. In the duplicate miracle the numbers fed are smaller, the supply of food is larger, while the fragments remaining are fewer. The miracles, therefore, are separate acts of omnipotence. That the feeding of the multitude should be repeated, and that two evangelists should record both instances, is an emphatic confirmation of the thoughtful and generous kindness of the Divine Bread-Giver and a decided testimony to the instructive nature of His action.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)‘MAN’S EXTREMITY IS GOD’S OPPORTUNITY’Such was their zeal that they continued with Him three days. To them His gracious words were esteemed more than their necessary food. But the time had now come when they must either be sent fasting to their own homes, or else a miracle must be wrought to meet their pressing need. Their extremity was verily His opportunity.

I. Christ’s compassion was touched.—His heart always moved before His hand;

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and the latter ever responded to the former. He did not think of Himself, albeit during that time, with but little interval, He had been either preaching to them or healing the sickly among them, denying Himself both refreshment and rest.

II. The unbelief of the disciples.—As usual, the disciples were full of unbelief; and they were as embarrassed at the thought of making provision for such a vast multitude as was Moses for the six hundred thousand footmen (Numbers 11:21-22).

III. Every need supplied.—The miracle was so broad that it embraced every one of them; it was exercised toward them regardless of the varieties of their moral character; it was directed to their lowest and highest need; and it was a sublime demonstration of His infinite love which would lavish the best blessings on sinful men both in time and eternity. And just as His disciples distributed to the people, so Christ now employs His ministers, who know the same wants and need the same blessings, to distribute them to others through the Sacraments and ordinances of His Church.

Illustration

‘Where shall they go who very long have stoodHearing the news of joy?Where in this town, that village, gather foodFor woman, man, and boy!Rumour had told that once before He fedFive thousand in the wild,And satisfied the hungry soul with bread,And all their fears beguiled.Can He, indeed, with such poor scanty store,For all that crowd provide—The bread and fish still growing more and more,Till none are unsupplied?Yes; He can press within a moment’s spaceThe image of the spring,Seed-time and harvest in one act embrace,And home the full sheaves bring.Our souls were faint; we deemed no helper nigh,When lo! He gave us bread;Calm breezes lulled the waters surging high,And all our terrors fled.’(THIRD OUTLINE)THE COMPASSIONATE SAVIOUROur Lord experienced our human emotions. Note:—

I. The occasion of Christ’s compassion.—His heart was touched by

(a) The spectacle of human want and suffering.

(b) The wide diffusion of the need.

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II. The qualities of Christ’s compassion.—It was

(a) Tender and sympathising.

(b) Practical and not sentimental.

III. The proof of Christ’s compassion.

(a) He interested His disciples in the state of the hungering multitude.

(b) He provided a supply suitable and sufficient for the wants of the thousands.

(c) He satisfied every hungering soul.

IV. Application.—See here a picture of

(a) The needs of the world.

(b) The grace of the Redeemer.

(c) The ministry of the Church.

Illustrations

(1) ‘We distinguish a twofold object in the miracles of Christ. The first a material one—the meeting of some immediate emergency, of some want of man’s earthly life which His love urged Him to satisfy; the other and higher one—to point Himself out to the persons whose earthly necessities were thus relieved as the One alone capable of satisfying their spiritual wants; to raise them from a single exhibition of His glory in the individual miracle to a vivid apprehension of the glory of His entire nature. Nay, it was to be a sign to all others, that they might believe in Him as the Son of God.’

(2) ‘May not the three days imply an earnest craving in some at least of this great multitude for spiritual food, so that in their eagerness to feed their souls, they forgot their bodily needs? But Jesus did not forget. They sought first the Kingdom of God and His righteousness, and that which was needful for the body was added unto them.’

3 If I send them home hungry, they will collapse on the way, because some of them have come a long distance.”

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CLARKE, "For divers of them came from far - And they could not possibly reach their respective homes without perishing, unless they got food.

GILL, "And if I send them away fasting to their own houses,.... Greek, "to their own house", or home; but all the Oriental versions render it as we do, in the plural, "their own houses", or habitations; and it seems from hence that they were now tasting, and at least had had no food all that day, whatever they might have the day before, which it not certain.

They will faint by the way; for want of food their strength will be exhausted, their animal spirits will fail, their nerves will be loosened, they will not be able to perform their journey, or get to the end of it:

for divers of them came from far; perhaps some had followed him from the coasts of Tyre and Sidon, from whence he came last; and others from Decapolis, through the midst of the borders of which he passed hither; and others from different parts, who had heard of his coming; See Gill on Mat_15:32.

HENRY, "3. As Christ has a compassion for all that are in wants and straits, so he has a special concern for those that are reduced to straits by their zeal and diligence in attending on him. Christ said, I have compassion on the multitude. Whom the proud Pharisees looked upon with disdain, the humble Jesus looked upon with pity and tenderness; and thus must we honour all men. But that which he chiefly considers, is, They have been with me three days, and have nothing to eat. Whatever losses we sustain, or hardships we go through, for Christ's sake, and in love to him, he will take care that they shall be made up to us one way or other. They that seek the Lord, shall not long want any good thing, Psa_34:10. Observe with what sympathy Christ saith (Mar_8:3), If I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way, for hunger. Christ knows and considers our frame; and he is for the body, if we glorify him, verily we shall be fed. He considered that many of them came from afar, and had a great way home. When we see multitudes attending upon the word preached, it is comfortable to think that Christ knows whence they all come, though we do not. I know thy works, and where thou dwellest, Rev_2:13. Christ would by no means have them go home fasting, for it is not his manner to send those empty way from him, that in a right manner attend on him.

JAMIESON, "And if I send them away fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way — In their eagerness they seem not to have thought of the need of provisions for such a length of time; but the Lord thought of it. In Matthew (Mat_15:32) it is, “I will not send them away fasting” - or rather, “To send them away fasting I am unwilling.”

COFFMAN, "These words were plainly spoken by the Lord in a move to arouse pity in his apostles and to elicit from them a petition for the Lord to relieve the increasingly critical emergency.

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Some of them come from far ... Throughout the cities of the Decapolis, as far as Damascus, the people had come; but the fact of their being Gentiles would appear to have blinded the apostles to the urgency of their plight. In Mark 8:17, Christ asked them, "Have ye your heart hardened?"

The apostles, having so recently seen Jesus feed an even greater multitude, should have requested Christ to do the same thing here; and the viewpoint of this interpreter is that they would have done so except for the Gentile character of that multitude. In the light of such an obvious truth, how ridiculous are the allegations of skeptics that the reluctance of the apostles is the ground for denying that two miracles occurred.

4 His disciples answered, “But where in this remote place can anyone get enough bread to feed them?”

GILL, "And his disciples answered him,.... The Syriac version renders it, "say unto him"; and the Persic and Ethiopic, "said unto him"; forgetting the late miracle of feeding five thousand with five loaves and two fishes, when they had now a less number, and more provisions:

from whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness? from what place, and by what ways and means can it be thought, that such a quantity of bread can be got at any rate in a desert, as to satisfy so large a number of hungry men? See Gill on Mat_15:33.

HENRY, "4. The doubts of Christians are sometimes made to work for the magnifying of the power of Christ. The disciples could not imagine whence so many men should be satisfied with bread here in the wilderness, Mar_8:4. That therefore must needs be wonderful, and appear so much the more so, which the disciples looked upon as impossible.

5. Christ's time to act for the relief of his people, is, when things are brought to the last extremity; when they were ready to faint, Christ provided for them. That he might not invite them to follow him for the loaves, he did not supply them but when they were utterly reduced, and then he sent them away.

6. The bounty of Christ is inexhaustible, and, to evidence that, Christ repeated this miracle, to show that he is still the same for the succour and supply of his people that attend upon him. His favours are renewed, as our wants and necessities are. In the former miracle, Christ used all the bread he had, which was five loaves, and fed all the guests he had, which were five thousand, and so he did now; though he might have said, “If five loaves would feed five thousand, four may feed four thousand;” he took all the seven loaves, and fed with them the four thousand; for he would teach us

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to take things as they are, and accommodate ourselves to them; to use what we have, and make the best of that which is. Here it was, as in the dispensing of manna, He that gathered much had nothing over, and he that gathered little had no lack.

7. In our Father's house, in our Master's house, there is bread enough, and to spare; there is a fulness in Christ, which he communicates to all that passes through his hands; so that from it we receive, and grace for grace, Joh_1:16. Those need not fear wanting, that have Christ to live upon.

8. It is good for those that follow Christ, to keep together; these followers of Christ continued in a body, four thousand of them together, and Christ fed them all. Christ's sheep must abide by the flock, and go forth by their footsteps, and verily they shall be fed.

JAMIESON, "From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness? — Though the question here is the same as when He fed the five thousand, they evidently now meant no more by it than that they had not the means of feeding the multitude; modestly leaving the Lord to decide what was to be done. And this will the more appear from His not now trying them, as before, by saying, “They need not depart, give ye them to eat”; but simply asking what they had, and then giving His directions.

COFFMAN, "Whence ...? Whence indeed are the supplies to feed any man or all men, if not from the Lord? The prejudice of the apostles is showing in this reply. They were not concerned at all with meeting the dire human need of the hungry multitude; they were Gentiles; so they dismissed the Lord's question with what amounts to a flippant remark that there was no place around there to buy bread for so many. However, Jesus had no intention of permitting such an attitude to prevail.

CONSTABLE, "Why did the disciples not catch on? Probably several months had passed since Jesus fed the 5,000. People tend to forget even great events. Moreover depending on Jesus rather than relying on self is a very difficult lesson to learn, especially when one has a limited perception of who Jesus is. Furthermore Jesus' reluctance to perform miracles may have discouraged the disciples from asking Him for help. [Note: Cranfield, p. 205.] Their question revealed their blindness. Rather than thinking about sending the crowds away, they despaired of finding enough bread to satisfy everyone in that wilderness (Gr. eremon, cf. Mark 6:32). At least they referred their question to Jesus this time (cf. Mark 6:37).

NISBET, "BREAD IN THE WILDERNESS‘From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?’Mark 8:4These words were the question of the disciples which drew forth the answer of beneficent miracle. These same words, in a deeper spiritual sense, are the question which the world has asked in all ages from the same Divine Compassion in regard to man’s pilgrimage through the wilderness of life.

I. The beneficent miracles.—The miracles of feeding the five thousand and the

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four thousand are, as miracles of the quasi-creative power, absolutely incomprehensible to us.

(a) They stand out, perhaps beyond all others, as wonders; while their meaning as signs of a Divine compassion and beneficence comes most easily home to us.

(b) They produced a wider and more startling effect than usual upon the mass of men. The multitude hailed Him with enthusiasm as the promised Messiah; they were (John 6:15) prepared to take Him by force to make Him their king.

(c) The spiritual significance of these miracles is brought out with especial clearness by John in connection with the feeding of the five thousand. In our Lord’s subsequent discourses to His disciples and to the Jews (John 6:26-65) He draws out the whole tenor of that significance.

II. The wilderness of life.—How can men be supplied in this wilderness of pilgrimage with the bread which, like the angel’s food given to Elijah (1 Kings 19:6-8), shall sustain them in their journey to the mount of God’s unveiled presence?

(a) We may not exclude from our thoughts the ‘daily bread,’ of ‘all things needful for our souls and bodies’ here, for which our Lord bade us pray.

(b) But it is on the spiritual sense that the miracle, as interpreted by our Lord’s own teaching, would bid us lay stress. It is a ‘spiritual food and sustenance’ which He gives, or rather which He is to us; or, to use St. Paul’s fuller description, it is in Him that we ‘all eat the same spiritual meat, and all drink the same spiritual drink’—the meat for ‘the strengthening,’ the drink for ‘the refreshing’ of our souls. This great truth we realise in its fullest sense in the Holy Communion. Not only by faith, but by spiritual experience, we know that through it we have the indwelling of Christ in us, which is our eternal life.

(c) It is to all human life that His promise applies. ‘He that cometh unto Me shall never hunger, and He that believeth on Me shall never thirst.’

—Bishop Barry.Illustration

‘“It is well known,” so runs the Homily, “that the meat we seek for in this Supper is spiritual food; the nourishment of our soul; a heavenly refection and not an earthly; an invisible meal and not bodily; a ghostly substance, and not carnal; so that to think that without faith we may enjoy the eating and drinking thereof, or that that is the fruition of it, is but to dream a gross carnal feeding, basely objecting and binding ourselves to the elements and creatures.… That when thou goest up to the reverend Communion to be satisfied with spiritual meats, thou look up with faith upon the holy body of thy God, thou marvel with reverence, thou touch it with the mind, thou receive it with the hand of thy heart, and thou take it fully with thy inward man. Thus, we see, beloved, that, resorting to this table, we must pluck up all the roots of infidelity, all distrust in God’s

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promises, that we make ourselves living members of Christ’s body. For the unbelievers and faithless cannot feed upon that precious body. Whereas the faithful have their life, their abiding in Him, their union and, as it were, their incorporation with Him.”’

(SECOND OUTLINE)THE BREAD OF LIFEThe multitude are an emblem of humanity, the wilderness of the world, and Christ’s miracle of the provision amidst the world’s barrenness and emptiness of the Bread of Life, eternal life.

I. The powerlessness of the world to supply the deepest wants of men.

(a) There are needs and pangs of spiritual hunger.

(b) The wilderness is silent to man’s appeal.

II. Satisfaction through Christ.—Coming into the world He satisfies these wants, and enriches the poor and hungering souls of men.

(a) The true Bread of Life is not from or of the wilderness, but is nevertheless in the wilderness.

(b) Christ, as the living bread, communicates Himself to our souls.

(c) They who in the wilderness eat of this bread are satisfied.

(d) To eat of this provision in the wilderness is a foretaste of the feast above.

Illustration

‘A lifeless body has no power of assimilating food. A feeble, living body can only assimilate a little, administered by degrees. But a body with the pulses of life beating strong and quick within it, a hungry and craving body, can assimilate it thoroughly and easily, and grow thereby. And the soul resembles the body. With a feeble, spiritual pulse we can apprehend Christ but feebly in the Holy Communion; but if there be a strong hunger and thirst after righteousness, a strong craving for the Bread of Life, a strong sense of spiritual poverty and indigence, a strong resolve formed in reliance on God’s grace, a strong faith which pierces the veil of things sensible and material, great will then be the comfort received from this Holy Communion, and in the strength of that meat we shall go forward, like Elijah of old, to the mount of God, the end and goal of our pilgrimage.’

5 “How many loaves do you have?” Jesus asked.30

“Seven,” they replied.

GILL, "And he asked them, how many loaves have ye?.... See Gill on Mat_15:34;

and they said, seven. Matthew adds, "and a few little fishes", which are here afterwards mentioned.

JAMIESON, "And he asked them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven — It was important in this case, as in the former, that the precise number of the loaves should be brought out. Thus also does the distinctness of the two miracles appear.

NISBET, "HUMAN AGENCY AND GOD’S WORK‘He asked them, How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven.’Mark 8:5Why did Christ ask that question? He Who could change the water into wine by a wave of His hand, by a whisper of His voice might have created and spread a banquet upon that grassy slope! But He would not. Why? Because a great solemn lesson would have been lost for all time.

I. God Himself depends upon human resources.—God will not save men by a miracle independently of themselves; He says to every single soul to-day, ‘What have you got? Bring what you have got, and I will stretch out My hand of blessing upon it.’ Do not we forget that this is God’s message?

(a) We go to God in prayer, and we forget that the first thing God says to us as we kneel down to pray is, ‘How many loaves have ye?’ What have you brought to those prayers of yours? What earnestness, what faith, what trust in God, what patience that can help you to wait for an answer? ‘How many loaves have ye?’

(b) We come to Holy Communion, and the same voice meets us there. We ask to be fed with the Divine food, but first God says, ‘How many loaves have ye?’ What faith, what repentance, what love and charity, what preparation for the Holy Feast? ‘How many loaves have ye?’

(c) And so through all life it runs: God always asks that question first. He will save no man independently of that man’s own personal effort.

II. The spirit of the miracle.—What was that spirit? for it speaks straight to the Christian to-day.

(a) The spirit of a wonderful tenderheartedness. ‘I have compassion on the multitude.’ That voice of God has never ceased to sound; there is not a single

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human being, at this moment, of whom He is not saying it. ‘I am so sorry for you in your sorrow, in your sin, in your struggles with temptations, in your home trials and burdens; I know them all, I have compassion still.’

(b) The spirit of hopefulness. The hopefulness of Christ was the very inspiration of the ministry of Christ. He never despaired of His task; He never despaired of a single soul, however dark that soul might be. The whole world might turn away from it, the whole world might condemn it, but Christ rose, from that glorious, beautiful hopefulness of His, above the darkest things of the world, and He saw in each one the possibility of rescue.

(c) There is the message of consecration: ‘Bring them hither to Me.’ That voice, too, has never ceased to sound; there is not one of you over whom it is not sounding: ‘Bring him—bring her to Me.’

—Bishop F. E. Ridgeway.Illustration

‘There are many people who are holding themselves back from the service of God because they will not hear the Saviour’s voice. “I have so little faith, so little holiness, I have so little time for service, I have so little money for alms, it is not worth my giving the time, the service, the money that I have.” And all the time the voice of Christ is rebuking us. Bring what you have got, don’t stop to think of how much more you might have; bring what you have got—your tiny fragment of faith, and repentance, and love, and desire for service, and prayer, and sacrifice—bring what you have, for God depends upon human resources. “How many loaves have ye? And they said, Seven.”’

6 He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. When he had taken the seven loaves and given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people, and they did so.

GILL, "And he commanded the people to sit down on the ground,.... See Gill on Mat_15:35;

and he took the seven loaves, and gave thanks, and brake them; See Gill on Mat_15:36;

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and gave to his disciples to set before them, the multitude,

and they did set them before the people; in which they were obedient to their Lord's commands, though they were so forgetful, unbelieving, and stupid.

NISBET, "THE DIVINE ECONOMY‘He took the seven loaves.’Mark 8:6The narrative is full of incident, and is most instructive to any Christian believer. It shows the sympathy of Christ, His generosity, His compassion. But what I want to direct your attention to to-day is rather the Divine economy.

Why did He take the seven loaves? Is He not Lord of heaven and earth? Does He not feed the multitudes—the whole world? Why should He take the few loaves that the disciples had put together for their own nourishment? He did not want them. And so we have this instance of the Divine economy—that out of the past comes the present; that the Lord does not Himself act with spontaneity, but He takes that which has been and makes that which is.

I. In nature.—Notice this economy regarding the fruits of the earth. Where does the harvest come from? The remains of the last year’s harvest. The Lord takes the seven loaves of last year, or the harvest before, and gives us the seven loaves of to-day.

II. In man.—And what is true in nature is also true in the nature of man. Whence come the great men of the ages nowadays? Do they drop out of heaven like an aerolite by chance? No; they are the product of the age—of the time. When the art of printing gave the opportunity, there sprang to its existence literature—the finest literature of the English land—but it was the seven loaves that had passed.

III. In the Christian Church.—Well, then, what is true of nature and of men must be true of the Christian Church also? Certainly. Do we not sing in our evangelical canticle, ‘Blessed be the Lord God of Israel?’ Is Israel’s God our God? Yes; the same God. We bless the God of Israel. The Lord never came to destroy the Law but to fulfil it, and our altars do not run with the blood of beasts, because the Lamb of God has been slain to take away the sins of the world; but we love the old.

IV. In our spiritual experience.—And we go back and we say, Yes, we see the seven loaves in our spiritual experience. Have you never found the seven loaves in your spiritual experience? What about Judah and the slavery and the tyranny of sin? Have you never known that? What about the Red Sea and the passing to liberty through blood? Have you never known that? What about the weariness of the wilderness? Have you never known that? What about the manna that came down from heaven, so that we may eat angels’ food? Is that out of your experience? What about the seeing of the promised country? Have you never climbed the hill and looked at the valley of time, and seen the heavens open? What about the rolling of Jordan? Have you never thought of the river of

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Jordan, and how you and I have got to pass through the flood? What about the heavenly Jerusalem that is the Mother of us all? Seven loaves!—spiritual experience.

Rev. A. H. Stanton.Illustration

‘We must never allow ourselves to doubt Christ’s power to supply the spiritual wants of all His people. He has “bread enough and to spare” for every soul that trusts in Him. Weak, infirm, corrupt, empty as believers feel themselves, let them never despair while Jesus lives. In Him there is a boundless store of mercy and grace laid up for the use of all His believing members, and ready to be bestowed on all who ask in prayer. “It pleased the Father that in Him should all fulness dwell” (Colossians 1:19).’

7 They had a few small fish as well; he gave thanks for them also and told the disciples to distribute them.

CLARKE, "And they had a few small fishes - This is not noticed in the parallel place, Mat_15:36.

GILL, "And they had a few small fishes,.... Which they also acquainted Christ with, and brought out unto him:

and he blessed, and commanded to set them also before them. It looks, by this account, as if the fishes were blessed, and brake, and distributed separately, alter the blessing, breaking, and distribution of the bread; and so the Syriac version renders it, "upon whom also he blessed"; and the Persic thus, "and he also blessed the fishes"; but, according to Matthew they were both blessed, and brake, and distributed together, as it is highly reasonable to suppose they were both ate together; See Gill on Mat_15:36.

COFFMAN, "One may only deplore the comment of a scholar like Cranfield who saw in this verse nothing more than awkwardness on the part of the sacred narrator. He said that the verse was "added rather awkwardly as an afterthought."[4] The fact of our Lord's blessing the fish, however, proves that he had not already done so, and that, for some reason, these had not been available at the initial giving of thanks. Perhaps, when the apostles saw what the Lord was doing, they warmed up a little for the occasion and brought out the fish also! It is impossible to understand this miracle without regarding the twin

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facts of the Gentile composition of the audience and the reluctance of the apostles.

ENDNOTE:

[4] C. E. B. Cranfield, op. cit., p. 256.

8 The people ate and were satisfied. Afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over.

GILL, "So they did eat, and were filled,.... Christ and his disciples, and the whole multitude: they not only had some, but they had all enough, a full meal. It was surprising that it could be divided so, is that every one should have a bit; but that they should all be satisfied to the full, is amazing:

and they took up of the broken meat that was left seven baskets; as many as there were loaves; See Gill on Mat_15:37.

COFFMAN, "And were filled ... Wycliffe rendered this passage "they were fulfilled," the original meaning of fulfill being to fill full.

Seven baskets ... The word for basket in this miracle is from a different Greek word than the word translated "baskets" in the other wonder and has a sharp difference of meaning. Both refer to wicker containers, but the one meant here is flexible and much larger. This was the type of basket used to let Paul down over the Damascus wall (Acts 9:25), and it has been surmised that these were the equivalent of what we would call "sleeping bags," and probably being the property of the Twelve. The baskets in view in the other miracle seem to have been the picnic type of basket, twelve of them having been given by the multitude to contain the fragments of the first wonder. This is another significant difference in the two miracles and cannot be explained as a matter of the sacred writers' using different words for the same thing. Christ himself referred to the baskets with this distinction (Mark 8:19-20). The shade of meaning in English would be more evident if "baskets" were used in the first instance and "sacks" in the second.

CONSTABLE, "Jesus' provision was again typically adequate and abundant but not excessive.

Some critics of the Bible have argued that Matthew and Mark told the story of one miraculous feeding twice and made mistakes that account for the differences in the accounts. [Note: E.g., Gould, p. 142.] However the differences between the

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two stories are so great that most readers believe Jesus fed two different groups of people on two separate occasions.

Another debatable point is whether this crowd was Gentile, since the location was primarily Gentile, and the former crowd was Jewish, in view of its location. Probably there were more Gentiles present on this occasion and more Jews on the other. This points to a mixture of Jews and Gentiles that Jesus helped and that believed on Him, prefiguring the mixed composition of the church and the kingdom.

9 About four thousand were present. After he had sent them away,

BARNES, "Four thousand - Four thousand “men,” besides women and children. See Mat_15:38. See this passage explained in the notes at Mat_15:32-39.

GILL, "And they that had eaten were about four thousand,.... That is, men, besides women and children, as Matthew observes; See Gill on Mat_15:38.

and he sent them away; some that came dumb, with their speech, and deaf, with their hearing; others that were maimed, with perfect healing of their wounds, and with their limbs sound and whole; others that came lame, he dismissed leaping; and others that were blind, with their sight restored to them, and all of them full.

JAMIESON, "And they that had eaten were about four thousand: and he sent them away — Had not our Lord distinctly referred, in this very chapter and in two successive sentences, to the feeding of the five thousand and of the four thousand as two distinct miracles, many critics would have insisted that they were but two different representations of one and the same miracle, as they do of the two expulsions of the buyers and sellers from the temple, at the beginning and end of our Lord’s ministry. But even in spite of what our Lord says, it is painful to find such men as Neander endeavoring to identify the two miracles. The localities, though both on the eastern side of the lake, were different; the time was different; the preceding and following circumstances were different; the period during which the people continued fasting was different - in the one case not even one entire day, in the other three days; the number fed was different - five thousand in the one case, in the other four thousand; the number of the loaves was different - five in the one case, in the other seven; the number of the fishes in the one case is definitely stated by all the four Evangelists - two; in the other case both give them indefinitely - “a few small fishes”; in the one case the multitude were commanded to sit down “upon the green grass”; in the other “on the ground”; in the one case the number of the baskets taken up filled with the fragments was twelve, in the other seven; but more than all, perhaps, because apparently quite incidental, in the one case the name given to the kind of baskets used is the same in all the four narratives - the cophinus (see on Mar_6:43); in the other case the name given to the kind of baskets used, while it is the

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same in both the narratives, is quite different - the spuris, a basket large enough to hold a man’s body, for Paul was let down in one of these from the wall of Damascus (Act_9:25). It might be added, that in the one case the people, in a frenzy of enthusiasm, would have taken Him by force to make Him a king; in the other case no such excitement is recorded. In view of these things, who could have believed that these were one and the same miracle, even if the Lord Himself had not expressly distinguished them?

COFFMAN, "Dalmanutha ... was the destination of the Lord and his apostles on this embarkation, which was a certain location in the borders of "Magadan" (Matthew 15:39) It is a mystery to this student of God's word why great scholars find here a "problem to which no really satisfactory solution has been found!"[5] What is the problem? Is it irrational to believe that ancient villages were known by various names now lost to history, especially in the light of the fact that many modern places are called by various names? Is it fair to assert that Dalmanutha was not in "the borders of Magadan," especially when the wisest scholars on earth cannot give us any certain information at all about where either was located? Is it honest to declare that Christ did not go to both places, if indeed they were two places and not one place with two names? Does not Matthew omit altogether the name of the place to which Jesus went, identifying it: only as some village in the borders of a district called Magadan? The problem here is not in the sacred text but in the malignant skepticism of some who criticize it. For more on this question see my Commentary on Matthew, p. 235.

ENDNOTE:

[5] Ibid., p. 257.

NISBET, "‘ALL THINGS COME OF THEE’‘And they that had eaten were about four thousand: and He sent them away.’Mark 8:9We may always conclude that a miracle had a deep abiding spiritual effect when, of the persons upon whom it was performed, nothing further is recorded. Of the Syro-Phenician woman, of the nobleman, of the centurion, of Jairus and his daughter, we hear no more. When, then, we read of the four thousand merely ‘that He sent them away,’ we may conclude they departed with the blessing of God resting upon them.

I. Admonition.—We learn from this passage that the duty of God’s ministers is to admonish men, in the words of their Divine Master, not to labour merely for the meat which perisheth, but for the meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of Man shall give unto them. The ordinance of labour imposed upon man at the Fall is not only good for him, but a necessity, and there is no great need to exhort the mass of our people to labour for the meat that perisheth. To reconcile these two duties, herein consists the difficulty. In order to profit by the Lord’s instruction, and so prepare our souls to receive Him as the Bread of Life, we must find time for searching the Scriptures, for self-examination, meditation, and prayer. It is to those only who seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, that the supply of all necessary things for the body and the soul is promised.

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II. And why will men not believe this?—Because, although this is the Divine promise, yet the fulfilment of it depends upon the Lord’s pleasure; and sometimes He sees fit to reduce men to the lowest distress before He extends to them His aid. The four thousand were three days in the wilderness before the miracle of relief was wrought. Our Lord thus tried His humble and devoted followers in the desert; so will He generally try and prove us before He visits us with His blessing; yes, in spiritual things as well as temporal.

III. ‘The earth is the Lord’s,’ but in the things of earth He gives us a property for threescore years and ten; and He condescends to receive back, as an offering from us, what He may at any time require for His service. When He gathers a congregation, He receives at our hands a house wherein He may meet His people in sacraments and ordinances; and He appoints His servant, the bishop, to take possession of the same in His Name; and when, at the Holy Eucharist, He makes a spiritual banquet for His people in the wilderness of this world, He requires us, first of all, to make an oblation to Him of what is required for the feast, even as He took the loaves from His disciples. Thus is the Lord provided: and then, at His Holy Table, round which perhaps only two or three are gathered together in His Name, the Lord Jesus, according to His promise, is present unto the end of the world. All comes from Him; it is He Who gives the sacred food, while employing the agency of His ministers to dispense His bounties to believers.

—Dean Hook.

10 he got into the boat with his disciples and went to the region of Dalmanutha.

BARNES, "Dalmanutha - In Mat_15:39 it is said that he came into the coasts of “Magdala.” See the note on the place.

CLARKE, "Dalmanutha - See the note on Mat_15:39.

GILL, "And straightway he entered into a ship, with his disciples,.... As soon as ever he had, dismissed the multitude, he took shipping with his disciples; for he was at the sea of Galilee, either at a place near it, or upon the shore of it; see Mar_7:31;

and came into the parts of Dalmanutha; which Matthew calls, "the coasts of Magdala"; See Gill on Mat_15:39. The Arabic version reads it, "Magdal"; and in two of Beza's copies it is read, "Madegada"; but the Syriac version reads, "Dalmanutha"; and the Persic, "Dalmanuth"; and the Ethiopic, "Dalmathy": it was a city in the coasts of Magdala, and is thought by Dr. Lightfoot to be the same with Tzalmon, or Salmon,

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a place often mentioned (f) in the Jewish writings.

HENRY, "Still Christ is upon motion; now he visits the parts of Dalmanutha, that no corner of the land of Israel might say that they had not had his presence with them. He came thither by ship (Mar_8:10); but, meeting with occasions of dispute there, and not with opportunities of doing good, he entered into the ship again(Mar_8:13), and came back. In these verses, we are told,

I. How he refused to gratify the Pharisees, who challenged him to give them a sign from heaven. They came forth on purpose to question with him; not to propose questions to him, that they might learn of him, but to cross question with him, that they might ensnare him.

JAMIESON, "Mar_8:10-13. Sign from Heaven sought.

And straightway he entered into a ship — “into the ship,” or “embarked.”

with his disciples, and came into the parts of Dalmanutha — In Matthew (Mat_15:39) it is “the coasts of Magdala.” Magdala and Dalmanutha were both on the western shore of the lake, and probably not far apart. From the former the surname “Magdalene” was probably taken, to denote the residence of Mary Magdalene. Dalmanutha may have been a village, but it cannot now be identified with certainty.

BI 10-23, "Seeking of Him a sign from heaven, tempting Him.

Seeking sign

I. The unreasonableness of this request.

1. In other matters they were not scrupulous of evidence-tradition.

2. They had the signs of the times-consisting in a combination of events giving fulfilment to their own Scriptures,

3. They had His miracles-unquestioned.

4. They had, even signs from heaven-At His baptism.

5. It was not evidence that was wanting.

6. Neither is it so yet.

II. The denial of their request.

1. Not because such a request would, in other circumstances, have been sinful. Gideon. Hezekiah.

2. But because it was unnecessary, it would not have convinced them, it was asked out of malice.

3. Our request must be for necessary things, from right motives.

III. According to the other evangelists, Christ pointed them to the sign of the prophet Jonas.

1. There are several points of resemblance between Christ and Jonas.

2. The point referred to by Christ was, no doubt, His resurrection. (Expository Discourses.)

The refusals of Christ

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We often speak of what He gave: we might also speak of what He withheld. The words of the Old Testament are applicable to Jesus Christ: “No good thing will He withhold,” etc. The refusals of Jesus were governed by three considerations.

1. Religious curiosity is not to be mistaken for religious necessity.

2. Religious confidence is not to be won by irreligious ostentations.

3. Religious appeals are not to be addressed to the eye, but to the heart. In applying these points show what Christ gave in comparison with what He refused. He gave bread, sight, hearing, speech, health; He gave His life, yet He refused a sign! Understand that, in some cases, not to give a sign is in reality to give the most solemn and dreadful of all signs. (Dr. J. Parker.)

Tempting God

It is a wicked and sinful practice for any to tempt the Lord, i.e., to make unlawful and needless proof of His Divine attributes, such as Power, Providence, Justice, Mercy, etc. This sin is committed-

1. By limiting and restraining God’s actions to ordinary means and secondary causes: tying Him to these, as if without them He could not or would not perform those things which He has promised to the godly or threatened against the wicked.

2. By neglecting the ordinary means appointed by God for the good and preservation of our souls and bodies, and relying upon God’s extraordinary power and providence to provide for us. Apply this to such cases as-abandonment of earthly calling; needlessly exposing oneself to danger; rejecting the means of grace.

3. By living and going on in any sin contrary to the Word of God, thereby making proof of God’s patience, whether He will punish or wink at disobedience. (G. Petter.)

Modern doubt

I. First of all, we discover the same sycophancy of spirit among sceptics now as was noticeable among the ancient Jews. The significant question those people asked concerning Christ was, “Have any of the rulers believed on Him?”

1. One of the maxims of the Talmud was this: “My son, give more heed to the words of the rabbis than to the words of the law.” Thus they pressed human authority above inspiration, and exalted traditions above the revelation from God.

2. Our times are not much better. Little men appear to imagine their proportions are vaster when they stand in the awe-inspiring shadow of big men. Hence we find all the motley company of sceptics aping masterly leaders, and trying to make the majesty of their intellects show most impressively.

3. Rabbis (in this sense) ought not to count for much with Christian people: “One is our Master, even Christ.” What God’s children are examining is truth, and not men. It must be remembered that there never was a system of even confessed error, no matter how miserable or how vile, that did not for the time being have some able advocates. We do not need to go back to Marcion’s day, nor to

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Basilides’ day, to illustrate this. Gibbon was gifted, and Brigham Young was a man of power-and Satan himself was one of the brightest of God’s angels.

4. Meantime, the cry lifted as to the supreme ability of not a few of these leaders of modern scepticism might as well be toned down to moderation.

II. Next to this sycophancy of spirit, we discover that modern doubt has for its characteristic the same disposition to criticise God’s Word which prevailed in Herod’s time. Our Saviour’s charge was, “making the Word of God of none effect.”

1. Those Pharisees and Sadducees had only the Old Testament, but they kept picking at it. The general principle of interpretation was very frankly avowed in those days: “The Bible is like water, the traditions are like wine; but the commentaries are like wine which has been spiced.”

2. The modern attack is just like this. The combat with opposers is not now that of theological philosophy, but of biblical criticism.

3. It is impossible to stop the mouths of carpers. The apostles themselves had to deal with strong and inveterate opposers. There were persistent Pharisees and indefatigable Sadducees. Paul himself even could not put down these disputants at will so completely that they should not harangue the populace. He could refute every argument, and overturn every position; but when he had silenced sense they kept up the uproar. Thus they made their sorry exhibition at Ephesus (see Act_19:32-34).

III. In the third place, modern doubt is characterized, like the ancient scepticism Jesus rebuked, by an aimless drifting into a series of continual disbeliefs. This was the ground for our Lord’s most terrible denunciation: “Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte; and when he is made, ye make him two fold more the child of hell than yourselves.”

1. Those old sects seem all to have known this tendency to reckless wandering in speculation, for they tried to force a system of checks at each exposed point against free thinking.

2. This generation of doubters in our time are as wandering in their purposes, and quite as devoutly blind in their career. The moment one begins to question, that moment he begins to travel. Yet is it seriously to be doubted whether he is going ever to reach that portal of God’s truth he talks of so glibly.

3. There is no settled direction which modern scepticism chooses. If there were, we might welcome the drift as perhaps being in the line of the truth, and indicating progress. But it makes one think of the eddies over the meadows after a freshet; it is unsafe to try to sail because nobody knows the channel. A thoughtful man would like to know beforehand where he is going.

4. It is best, also, to settle the value of an argument drawn from an example.

IV. This thought will find a further illustration, when we go on to consider a fourth characteristic of modem doubt: namely, the extreme malignancy of temper with which those who turn from the Christian faith afterwards attack its defenders.

1. Renegades are always the most belligerent allies on the other side.

2. It is often to advantage to read up the antecedents of some of our most prominent unbelievers. “You know who the critics are?” asks a shrewd character in Lord Beaconsfield’s story; “they are the men who have failed in literature and art.” Find an extremely ill-tempered disputant anywhere nowadays, who begins with innuendo and continues with abuse, and the explanation may be given

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almost instinctively this man did not succeed in the old life, and is angrily trying to retrieve his fortunes by attracting attention in a new.

3. For the temper of unbelief is simple selfishness.

4. Hence, there is no safety in yielding even just a little. “A double-minded man is unstable in all his ways.” Belief will not suffer itself to be divided. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

BURKITT, "Verse 10

Observe here, 1. The unreasonable practice of the wicked Pharisees in asking a sign of Christ: that is, some new and extraordinary miracle to be wrought by him, to demonstrate him to be the true and promised Messias: but had not our Saviour shewed them signs enough already? What were all the miracles daily wrought before their eyes, but convincing signs of his divine power: But infidelity, mixed with obstinacy, is never satisfied.

Observe, 2. Our Saviour's carriage towards these obstinate Pharisees, who persisted in their unbelief; He sighed deeply in his spirit, and mourned for the hardness of their hearts.

Learn thence, That to grieve and mourn for the sins of others, to be affected with them, and deeply afflicted for them, is a gracious and Christ-like temper. It is not sufficient to make an outward shew of grieving for others sins, but we ought to lay them to heart, and to be inwardly afflicted for them. Jesus sighed deeply in his spirit.

Observe, 3. A sharp reproof given by our Saviour to them. At the same time that our Saviour did inwardly grieve for the Pharisees wickedness, he did openly reprove them for it. It is not sufficient that we mourn for the sins of others, but we must prudently reprove them, as occasion is offered, and our duty requireth.

Observe, 4. Ths sin which the Pharisees are reproved for; namely, for seeking after a sign: that is, before their eyes, to prove the divinity of his person.

Learn hence, That it is a sin for any to require new signs and miracles for the confirmation of that doctrine which has been already sufficiently confirmed by miracles; yea, an heinous sin, which deserveth a sharp reproof and censure.

Observe lastly, Our Saviour's peremptory denial of the Pharisees presumptuous request; There shall be no sign given to this generation: this is no such sign or miracle as they desire or would have; no sign or miracle shall be wrought at their motion and suit. Although after this, Christ of his own accord, and at his own pleasure, wrought many miracles before their eyes. Such as willfully harden themselves against the light of their own consciences, are righteously delivered up to hardness of heart, and final impenitency. These hypocritical Pharisees shut their eyes against the most convictive evidence; and they are given up to their own obstinacy; our Saviour left them, and departed.

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11 The Pharisees came and began to question Jesus. To test him, they asked him for a sign from heaven.

GILL, "And the Pharisees came forth,.... Out of their houses; who dwelt in the coasts of Magdala, and parts of Dalmanutha, and came to Jesus, hearing of his being arrived in their neighbourhood:

and began to question with him; or to dispute with him, it being their manner to carry on disputations by questions and answers. The Persic version has the question they put, and about which they disputed, "if thou art the Christ"; in proof of which they required a sign:

seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him; See Gill on Mat_16:1.

HENRY, "And the Pharisees came forth,.... Out of their houses; who dwelt in the coasts of Magdala, and parts of Dalmanutha, and came to Jesus, hearing of his being arrived in their neighbourhood:

and began to question with him; or to dispute with him, it being their manner to carry on disputations by questions and answers. The Persic version has the question they put, and about which they disputed, "if thou art the Christ"; in proof of which they required a sign:

seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him; See Gill on Mat_16:1.

JAMIESON, "seeking of him a sign from heaven, tempting him — not in the least desiring evidence for their conviction, but hoping to entrap Him. The first part of the answer is given in Matthew alone (Mat_16:2, Mat_16:3): “He answered and said unto them, When it is evening, ye say, It will be fair weather; for the sky is red. And in the morning, It will be foul weather to-day: for the sky is red and lowering [sullen, gloomy]. Hypocrites! ye can discern the face of the sky; but can ye not discern the signs of the times?” The same simplicity of purpose and careful observation of the symptoms of approaching events which they showed in common things would enable them to “discern the signs of the times” - or rather “seasons,” to which the prophets pointed for the manifestation of the Messiah. The scepter had departed from Judah; Daniel’s seventy weeks were expiring, etc.; and many other significant indications of the close of the old economy, and preparations for a freer and more comprehensive one, might have been discerned. But all was lost upon them.

BARCLAY, "THE BLINDNESS WHICH DESIRES A SIGN (Mark 8:11-13)8:11-13 The Pharisees came out and began to ask him questions. They were

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looking for a sign from heaven, and they were trying to test him. He sighed in his spirit and said to them, "Why does this generation look for a sign? This is the truth I tell you--no sign will be given to this generation." He sent them away and he again embarked on the boat, and went away to the other side.

The whole tendency of the age in which Jesus lived was to look for God in the abnormal. It was believed that when the Messiah came the most startling things would happen. Before we reach the end of this chapter we shall examine more closely, and in detail, the kind of signs which were expected. We may note just now that when false Messiahs arose, as they frequently did, they lured the people to follow them by promising astonishing signs. They would promise, for instance, to cleave the waters of the Jordan in two and leave a pathway through it, or they would promise, with a word, to make the city watts fall down.

It was a sign like that that the Pharisees were demanding. They wished to see some shattering event blazing across the horizon, defying the laws of nature and astonishing men. To Jesus such a demand was not due to the desire to see the hand of God; it was due to the fact that they were blind to his hand. To Jesus the whole world was full of signs; the corn in the field, the leaven in the loaf, the scarlet anemones on the hillside all spoke to him of God. He did not think that God had to break in from outside the world; he knew that God was already in the world for anyone who had eyes to see. The sign of the truly religious man is not that he comes to Church to find God but that he finds God everywhere, not that he makes a great deal of sacred places but that he sanctifies common places.

That is what the poets knew and felt, and that is why they were poets. Elizabeth Barrett Browning wrote:

"Earth's crammed with heaven,

And every common bush afire with God;

But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,

The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries."

Thomas Edward Brown wrote:

"A garden is a lovesome thing, God wot!

Rose plot,

Fringed pool,

Fern's grot--

The veriest school

Of peace; and yet the fool

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Contends that God is not--

Not God! In gardens! when the eve is cool?

Nay, but I have a sign;

'Tis very sure God walks in mine."

And still another poet wrote:

"One asked a sign from God; and day by day

The sun arose in pearl; in scarlet set;

Each night the stars appeared in bright array;

Each morn the thirsty grass with dew was wet;

The corn failed not its harvest, nor the vine

And yet he saw no sign!"

From him who has eyes to see and a heart to understand, the daily miracle of night and day and the daily splendour of all common things are sign enough from God.

CONSTABLE, "Matthew noted that the Sadducees accompanied the Pharisees (Matthew 15:1). They came out from Jerusalem again to argue, not to learn. They asked Jesus to provide some confirmation of His divine authority and trustworthiness. They wanted an immediate, public, definitive proof that God was with Him (cf. Mark 11:30). They had previously concluded that His power came from Satan (Mark 3:22). The miracles that Jesus performed did not convince them. They were not requesting another one of these but a different type of verification, perhaps similar to those God gave the Israelites at Mt. Sinai to authenticate Moses as His servant. They did this to subject Jesus to a trial (Gr. peirazo) that would reveal His true character. They hoped to expose Him as a phony.

"'Sign' (semeion) consistently differs in Mark from 'wonders' or 'miracles' (dunameis). Nowhere in the Synoptics does 'sign' refer to a 'miracle' or is a miraculous event called a 'sign.' ... They sought a 'sign' in the OT Jewish sense, a confirmation or authentication of Jesus' ministry." [Note: Guelich, p. 413.]Probably the Pharisees wanted Jesus to give them indisputable proof that God confirmed Jesus' credibility. [Note: Ibid., p. 414.]

"The Pharisees were progressive, a party among, though not of, the people. Their goal was that Israel should become the righteous nation of the covenant. To this end they taught compliance with the 'tradition of the elders,' an oral code

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of conduct effectively adapting the law of Moses to later times and changing demands." [Note: Kingsbury, pp. 63-64.]

COFFMAN, "JESUS REFUSING TO PERFORM THE SIGN DEMANDED BY THE PHARISEES

This verse shows that Dalmanutha was on the western side of Galilee, for Jesus was back in the territory of his old enemies who immediately confronted him and demanded that he show them a sign "from heaven." Such a sign they had already received when God himself spake out of heaven upon the occasion of Jesus' baptism, saying, "This is my beloved Son in whom I am well pleased." What they no doubt meant, however, was some celestial display of gaudy and spectacular power totally lacking in moral value. Those hypocrites who found such miracles as feeding the multitudes, healing all manner of diseases, opening the eyes of the blind, unstopping the ears of the deaf, and raising the dead, to be in some manner insufficient, betrayed in this demand their own impenitence and spiritual blindness. By demanding some other type of wonder than the miracles our Lord had so generously performed among them, they were arrogating to themselves the right to decide the kind of proof Christ should provide regarding his divine Messiahship. There was no chance that Jesus would yield to such arrogance. The mighty prophets of the Old Testament had outlined the wonders that would occur when the Messiah came, and Jesus followed that pattern perfectly. The Pharisees were demanding some other kind of proof, but in so doing, they placed themselves at variance with their own Scriptures for which they pretended such great respect. See my Commentary on Matthew, pp. 237-38.

12 He sighed deeply and said, “Why does this generation ask for a sign? Truly I tell you, no sign will be given to it.”

BARNES, "Sighed deeply in his spirit - His heart was deeply affected at their wickedness and hypocrisy. The word “spirit” here is taken as the seat of the emotions, passions, affections. He drew groans deeply from his breast.

No sign be given - That is, no such sign as they asked, to wit, a sign “from heaven.” He said a sign should be given, the same as was furnished by Jonas, Mat_16:4. But this was not what they “asked,” nor would it be given “because” they asked it.

CLARKE, "And he sighed deeply in his spirit - Or having deeply groaned -

so the word αναστεναξας properly means. He was exceedingly affected at their

obstinacy and hardness of heart. See Mat_16:1-4.

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GILL, "And he sighed deeply in his Spirit,.... In his human soul; and which shows that he had one, and was subject to grief and sorrow, and all passions and infirmities, excepting sin. This deep sigh was on account of the hardness of their hearts, the malignity of their minds, and insincerity of their intentions; who had no view to come at truth by this inquiry, but to ensnare him:

and saith, why doth this generation seek after a sign? when so many have been shown among them, and they will not believe:

verily I say unto you, there shall no sign be given to this generation: such as they desired; namely, one from heaven. The Evangelist Matthew adds, "but the sign of the Prophet Jonas"; See Gill on Mat_16:4, Mat_12:40.

HENRY, " He denied them their demand; He sighed deeply in his spirit, Mar_8:12. He groaned (so some), being grieved for the hardness of their hearts, and the little influence that his preaching and miracles had had upon them. The infidelity of those that have long enjoyed the means of conviction, is a great grief to the Lord Jesus; it troubles him, that sinners should thus stand in their own light, and put a bar in their own door. (1.) He expostulates with them upon this demand; “Why doth this generation seek after a sign; this generation, that is so unworthy to have the gospel brought to it, and to have any sign accompanying it; this generation, that so greedily swallows the traditions of the elders, without the confirmation of any sign at all; this generation, into which, by the calculating of the times prefixed in the Old Testament, they might easily perceive that the coming of the Messiah must fall; this generation,that has had such plenty of sensible and merciful signs given them in the cure of their sick? What an absurdity is it for them to desire a sign!” (2.) He refuses to answer their demand; Verily, I say unto you, there shall no sign, no such sign, be given to this generation. When God spoke to particular persons in a particular case, out of the road of his common dispensation, they were encouraged to ask a sign, as Gideon and Ahaz; but when he speaks in general to all, as in the law and the gospel, sending each with their own evidence, it is presumption to prescribe other signs than what he has given. Shall any teach God knowledge? He denied them, and then left them, as men not fit to be talked with; if they will not be convinced, they shall not; leave them to their strong delusions.

JAMIESON, "And he sighed deeply in his spirit — The language is very strong. These glimpses into the interior of the Redeemer’s heart, in which our Evangelist abounds, are more precious than rubies. The state of the Pharisaic heart, which prompted this desire for a fresh sign, went to His very soul.

and saith, Why doth this generation — “this wicked and adulterous generation” (Mat_16:4).

seek after a sign? — when they have had such abundant evidence already.

There shall no sign be given unto this generation — literally, “If there shall be given to this generation a sign”; a Jewish way of expressing a solemn and peremptory determination to the contrary (compare Heb_4:5; Psa_95:11, Margin). “A generation incapable of appreciating such demonstrations shall not be gratified with them.” In Mat_16:4 He added, “but the sign of the prophet Jonas.” (See on Mat_12:39, Mat_12:40.)

CALVIN, "Mark 8:12.And groaning in his spirit. By these words Mark informs

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us that it occasioned grief and bitter vexation to our Lord, when he saw those ungrateful men obstinately resist God. And certainly all who are desirous to promote the glory of God, and who feel concern about the salvation of men, ought to have such feelings that nothing would inflict on their hearts a deeper wound than to see unbelievers purposely blocking up against themselves the way of believing, and employing all their ingenuity in obscuring by their clouds the brightness of the word and works of God. The words, in his spirit, appear to me to be added emphatically, to inform us that this groan proceeded from the deepest affection of his heart, and that no sophist might allege that Christ resorted to outward attitudes to express a grief which he did not inwardly feel; for that holy soul, which was guided by the zeal of the Spirit, must have been moved by deep sadness at the sight of such wicked obstinacy.

COFFMAN, "There shall no sign be given ... This means "no sign like they wanted" would be given and does not conflict in any way with the exceptions cited in Matthew and Luke, nor should it be supposed that the other two evangelists were reporting exactly the same incident as here. Such a demand by the Pharisees was probably made over and over. Matthew made an exception in that "the sign of the prophet Jonah" would indeed be given that generation, as did also Luke (Matthew 12:38f; Luke 11:29f). Mark's inclusion of this demand in a different context, strongly suggests that this Pharisaical demand was repeated. It would not have been right for Jesus to have yielded to such a demand, and therefore he refused. It would also have been utterly futile to have yielded. As Luke recorded, Jesus said, "If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, if one rise from the dead" (Luke 16:31).

CONSTABLE, "The Greek word translated "sighing deeply" is anastenazo.

"It describes Jesus' grief and disappointment when faced with the unbelief of those who, because of their spiritual privileges, ought to have been more responsive to him." [Note: Wessel, p. 688.]The spirit was Jesus' human spirit. The contemporary Jews who opposed Jesus constituted the generation to which He referred. He refused to give the type of sign they requested because the evidence that He had presented was more than adequate to convince an open-minded person. Jesus distinguished between miracles (Gr. dynamis) and signs (Gr. semeion) by using the second word here. He had given plenty of miracles to bolster faith. He would not give a sign to those bent on disbelieving. From this Mark's readers were to learn that Jesus' miracles were ample proof of His deity.

13 Then he left them, got back into the boat and crossed to the other side.

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GILL, "And he left them,.... As a perverse and hardened generation of men, and as such with whom it was not worth while to discourse:

and entering into the ship again; which brought him over, and waited for him:

departed to the other side; of the sea of Galilee, towards Bethsaida, Mar_8:22.

JAMIESON, "And he left them — no doubt with tokens of displeasure.

and entering into the ship again, departed to the other side.

The Yeast of the Pharisees and Herod

14 The disciples had forgotten to bring bread, except for one loaf they had with them in the boat.

CLARKE, "And he left them — no doubt with tokens of displeasure.

and entering into the ship again, departed to the other side.

GILL, "Now the disciples had, forgotten to take bread,.... At Dalmanutha, or Magdala, or whatever place in those parts they were at, before they took shipping, as was their usual method.

Neither had they in the ship with them more than one loaf; for thirteen passengers of them. The Persic version reads the whole thus: "and they forgot to take bread with them, not indeed one loaf, and there was no bread with them in the ship"; See Gill on Mat_16:5.

JAMIESON, "Mar_8:14-21. The leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, neither had they in the ship with them more than one loaf — This is another example of that graphic circumstantiality which gives such a charm to this briefest of the four Gospels. The circumstance of the “one loaf” only remaining, as Webster and Wilkinson remark, was more suggestive of their Master’s recent miracles than the entire absence of provisions.

SBC, "II. Ver. 14.—"Now the disciples had forgotten to take bread, neither had they in the ship with them more than one loaf." Dwell for a moment upon the circumstance of the disciples having but one loaf in the ship; you will find that there is an explanatory word in this verse, and that word is "forgotten." If these words are put together, we shall find a revelation of poverty which is far from being inapplicable to

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the circumstances of many in the present day. If forgetful, thoughtless, indolent men are assisted in their straits and embarrassments, we do but offer a bounty to incompetence and inconsideration, and thus do more harm than good.

BARCLAY, "THE FAILURE TO LEARN FROM EXPERIENCE (Mark 8:14-21)8:14-21 They had forgotten to bring loaves, and they had only one loaf with them in the boat. Jesus enjoined them, "Look to it! Beware of the evil influence of the Pharisees and of the evil influence of Herod!" They kept discussing the situation among themselves, and saying, "We have no loaves." Jesus knew what they were saying. "Why," he said, "do you keep talking about the fact that you have no loaves? Do you not yet see and understand? Is your mind completely obtuse? Do you not see although you have eyes? Do you not hear although you have ears? Do you not remember? When I broke the five loaves and gave them to the five thousand how many basketsful of broken pieces did you take up?" "Twelve," they said to him. "When I broke the seven loaves among the four thousand how many basketsful of broken pieces did you take up?" "Seven," they said to him. So he said to them, "Do you still not understand?"

This passage sheds a very vivid light on the minds of the disciples. They were crossing over to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, and they had forgotten to bring bread with them. We will best get the meaning of this passage if we connect it closely with what goes before. Jesus was thinking of the demand of Pharisees for a sign and also thinking of Herod's terrified reaction to himself. "Beware," he said, to translate it literally, "of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod." To the Jew leaven was the symbol of evil. Leaven was a piece of dough kept over from a previous baking and fermented. To the Jew fermentation was identified with putrefaction and therefore leaven stood for evil.

Sometimes the Jew used the word leaven much as we would use the term original sin, or the natural evil of human nature. Rabbi Alexander said, "It is revealed before thee that our will is to do thy will. And what hinders? The leaven that is in the dough and slavery to the kingdoms of the world. May it be thy will to deliver us from their hand." it was, so to speak, the taint of human nature, original sin, the corrupting leaven which kept man from doing the will of God. So when Jesus said this, he was saying, "Be on your guard against the evil influence of the Pharisees and of Herod. Don't you go the same way that the Pharisees and Herod have already gone."

What is the point? What possible connection is there between the Pharisees and Herod? The Pharisees had just asked for a sign. For a Jew--we shall see this more fully shortly--nothing was easier than to think of the Messiah in terms of wonders and conquests and miraculous happenings and nationalistic triumphs and political supremacy. Herod had tried to build up happiness through the gaining of power and wealth and influence and prestige. In one sense, for both the Pharisees and Herod the Kingdom of God was an earthly Kingdom; it was based on earthly power and greatness, and on the victories that force could win. It was as if Jesus by this detached hint was already preparing the disciples for something very soon to come. It was as if he was saying, "Maybe soon it will

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dawn on you that I am God's Anointed One, the Messiah. When that thought does come don't think in terms of earthly power and glory as the Pharisees and Herod do." Of the true meaning at the moment he said nothing. That grim revelation was still to come.

In point of fact this hint of Jesus passed clean over the disciples' heads. They could think of nothing but the fact that they had forgotten to bring loaves, and that, unless something happened, they would go hungry. Jesus saw their preoccupation with bread. It may well be that he asked his questions, not with anger, but with a smile, like one who tries to lead a slow child to see a self-evident truth. He reminded them that twice he had satisfied the hunger of huge crowds with food enough and to spare. It is as if he said, "Why all the worry? Don't you remember what happened before? Hasn't experience taught you that you don't need to worry about things like that if you are with me?"

The odd fact is that we learn only half the lessons of experience. Too often experience fills us with pessimism, teaches us what we cannot do, teaches us to view life with a kind of resigned hopelessness. But there are other experiences. Sorrow came--and we came through it still erect. Temptation came--and somehow we did not fall. Illness took us--and somehow we recovered. A problem seemed insoluble--and somehow it was solved. We were at our wits' end--and somehow we went on. We reached the breaking point--and somehow we did not break. We, too, are blind. If we would only read the lessons of experience aright, it would teach us not the pessimism of the things that cannot be, but the hope which stands amazed that God has brought us thus far in safety and in certainty and the confidence that God can bring us through anything that may happen.

COFFMAN, "REGARDING THE LEAVEN OF THE PHARISEES AND HEROD

Forgot to take bread ... This lapse on the part of the Twelve led to their misunderstanding Jesus' reference to "leaven," but Jesus here used that term as a reference to the teachings, philosophy, and life-style of the Pharisees, Sadducees (Matthew 16:6) and Herod. It is very significant that Christ found it necessary here to utter this warning to his apostles.

The leaven of the Pharisees ... has reference to their hypocrisy and deceit, and especially to the vicious campaign they had launched in an effort to refute Jesus' claim to be the divine Messiah of Israel. They were advocating the rejection of their Messiah with every cunning and lying argument possible. For a detailed catalogue of no less than twelve false charges they made against Christ, see my Commentary on Matthew, p. 240. Considering the power, respectability, and influence of those Jewish leaders, it was most appropriate that the Lord warn his apostles to prevent their deception by his unscrupulous foes.

The leaven of the Sadducees ... mentioned, not here, but in Matthew, coincided with that of the Pharisees as far as it regarded opposition to Christ; but their teaching had additional dimensions of secularity and materialism beyond that of the Pharisees. They did not believe in the existence of angels, nor in the

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resurrection of the dead, and were as cold-blooded a group of crass materialists as ever lived on earth.

The leaven of Herod ... This was the leaven of renunciation concerning all the vaunted hopes of Israel. The Herodians were a prominent sect of the Jews who were willing to give up their sacred inheritance and accommodate with the military power of the Romans, whose vassal Herod Antipas was. Herod Antipas (this son of Herod the Great) was also a profligate, licentious, and unprincipled prince whose sensuous life and dissolute family were a prime scandal of that whole generation.

How strange it is that the apostles failed, at first, to catch the Lord's meaning in these words. Needless to say, the same "leaven" is found in the teachings of men today.

BURKITT, "Verse 14Observe here, 1. How dull the disciples of Christ were under Christ's own teaching, and how apt to put a carnal sense upon his words. They apprehended he had spoken to them of the leaven of bread, what he intended of the leaven of the Pharisees doctrine.

Observe, 2. The rebuke our Saviour gives his disciples for not understanding the sense and signification of what he spake. Christ is much offended with his own people, when he discerns blindness and ignorance in them, after more than ordinary means of knowledge enjoyed by them: How is it that ye do not yet understand?

Observe, 3. The metaphor by which Christ sets forth the corrupt doctrines of the Pharisees and Herodians. He compares it to leaven; partly for its sourness, and partly for its diffusiveness. Now the leaven of Herod, or the Herodians, is supposed to be this: That because Herod was made king of the Jews, and lived at the time when the Messiah was expected, there were those that maintained the opinion that he was the promised Messiah; which opinion Christ compares to leaven, because as that diffuses itself into the whole mass or lump of bread with which it is mixed, so false doctrine was not only evil and corrupt in itself, but apt to spread its contagion farther and farther, to the infecting of others with it.

Learn thence, That error is as damnable as vice; and persons erroneous in judgment to be avoided, as well as those that are wicked in conversation; and he, that has a due care of his soul's salvation, will be as much afraid of erroneous principles, as he is of debauched practices.

Observe, 4. Our Saviour does not command his disciples to separate from communion with the Pharisees, and oblige them not to hear their doctrine but only beware of their errors; which they mixed with their doctrine. We may and ought to hold communion with a church, though erroneous in judgment, if not fundamentally erroneous. For separation from a church is not justifiable upon any other grounds than that which makes a separation between God and that church, which is either apostasy into gross idolatry, or in point of doctrine, into

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damnable heresy.

Observe, 5. The fault observed by our Saviour in his disciples, hardness of heart; Have ye your hearts yet hardened? There may be, and oft-times is, some degree of hardness of heart in sincere Christians; but this is not a total hardness; it is lamented and humbled for, not indulged and delighted in. As Christ is grieved for the hardness of heart in sincere Christians; but this is not a total hardness; it is lamented and humbled for, not indulged and delighted in. As Christ is grieved for the hardness of his people's hearts, so are they grieved also; it is both bitter and burdensome to them.

15 “Be careful,” Jesus warned them. “Watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and that of Herod.”

BARNES, "Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees - See Mat_16:6.

Of Herod - Of the Herodians - of Herod and his followers. Matthew, instead of “Herod,” has “the Sadducees.” It is not improbably that he cautioned them against them all. The Pharisees sought his life, and were exceedingly corrupt in their doctrine and practice; the Sadducees denied some of the essential doctrines of religion, and the Herodians probably were distinguished for irreligion, sensuality, and corrupt living. They were united, therefore, with the Pharisees and Sadducees in opposing the claims of Jesus. Matthew has recorded his caution to avoid the Pharisees and Sadducees, and Mark has added, what Matthew had omitted. the caution likewise to beware of the Herodians. Thus, the evangelists speak the same thing.

GILL, "And he charged them,.... When they were in the ship, and had just recollected themselves, that they had took no care to bring any provisions with them:

saying, take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees; and of the leaven of Herod: in Matthew, instead of "the leaven of Herod", it is read, "the leaven of the Sadducees": which are either the same, Herod and his courtiers being Sadducees, or favourers of them; or the Sadducees being sticklers for Herod, and his government, which the Pharisees had no good opinion of; or else distinct from one another; and so Christ cautions against the doctrines of the Pharisees, which regarded the traditions of the elders, and of the Sadducees, concerning the resurrection, and of the Herodians, who thought Herod to be the Messiah; and against the unreasonable request and demand of them all to have a sign from heaven, in proof of his own Messiahship; See Gill on Mat_16:6.

HENRY, "II. How he warned his disciples against the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod. Observe here,

1. What the caution was (Mar_8:15); “Take heed, beware, lest ye partake of the leaven of the Pharisees, lest ye embrace the tradition of the elders, which they are so

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wedded to, lest ye be proud, and hypocritical, and ceremonious, like them.” Matthew adds, and of the Sadducees; Mark adds, and of Herod: whence some gather, that Herod, and his courtiers were generally Sadducees, that is, deists, men of no religion. Others give this sense, The Pharisees demanded a sign from heaven; and Herod was long desirous to see some miracle wrought by Christ (Luk_23:8); such as he should prescribe, so that the leaven of both was the same; they were unsatisfied with the signs they had, and would have others of their own devising; “Take heed of this leaven” (saith Christ), “be convinced by the miracles ye have seen, and covet not to see more.”

2. How they misunderstood this caution. It seems, at their putting to sea this time, they had forgotten to take bread, and had not in their ship more than one loaf, Mar_8:14. When therefore Christ bid them beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, they understood it as an intimation to them, not to apply themselves to any of the Pharisees for relief, when they came to the other side, for they had lately been offended at them for eating with unwashen hands. They reasoned among themselves, what should be the meaning of this caution, and concluded, “It is because we have no bread; he saith this, to reproach us for being so careless as to go to sea, and go among strangers, with but one loaf of bread; he doth, in effect, tell us, we must be brought to short allowance, and must eat our bread by weight.” They

reasoned it - dielogizonto, they disputed about it; one said, “It was owing to you;” and

the other said, “It was owing to you, that we are so ill provided for this voyage.” Thus distrust of God makes Christ's disciples quarrel among themselves.

JAMIESON, "And he charged them, saying, Take heed, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees — “and of the Sadducees” (Mat_16:6).

and of the leaven of Herod — The teaching or “doctrine” (Mat_16:12) of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees was quite different, but both were equally pernicious; and the Herodians, though rather a political party, were equally envenomed against our Lord’s spiritual teaching. See on Mat_12:14. The penetrating and diffusivequality of leaven, for good or bad, is the ground of the comparison.

COKE, "Mark 8:15. And of the leaven of Herod.— See the note on Matthew 22:16. It seems evident from this passage, that the Herodians were of the sect of the Sadducees; for what St. Mark calls the leaven of Herod, St. Matthew, in the parallel passage, calls the leaven of the Sadducees. Herodian, therefore, was but another name for such sort of Sadducees as maintained the expediency of submitting to the innovations introduced by Herod and the Romans; for it may easily be thought, that those who favoured Herod and the powers who supported him, were generally of this sect. At the same time all the Sadducees were not Herodians, some of them shewing little of that complaisance to the reigning powers, for which their brethren were so remarkable: and this accounts sufficientlyfor the distinction between the Herodians and Sadducees, found Matthew 22:16; Matthew 22:46.

CONSTABLE, "Jesus evidently used the leaven in the loaf of bread as an object lesson to illustrate the pervasive corrupting teaching of the Pharisees and of Herod. Leaven was a common metaphor for corruption in both Jewish and Hellenistic circles. [Note: Lane, p. 280.] The teaching of the Pharisees was that Jesus received His authority from Satan rather than from God (Mark 3:22; cf. Mark 7:8-13). It was a denial of His role as God's anointed Servant, Messiah.

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The teaching of Herod Antipas, what he believed and articulated, was likewise that Jesus was not the Messiah. Herod told others that Jesus was just John the Baptist come back to life (Mark 6:14-16). The Pharisees and Herod, though so different from each other in many respects, promoted the same heretical view that Jesus was not the Messiah, much less divine. In short, this leaven was unbelief. Another view is that the yeast of the Pharisees was their hypocritical, self-righteous traditionalism and the yeast of Herod was his spirit of imperial pride. [Note: Bailey, p. 80.]

16 They discussed this with one another and said, “It is because we have no bread.”

GILL, "And they reasoned among themselves,.... Upon Christ's giving this caution, and recollecting with themselves, that they had forgot to buy any provisions, and take with them:

saying, it is because we have no bread; that he says these words; tacitly chiding and reproving us, for our want of thought and care; See Gill on Mat_16:7.

HENRY, "They reasoned among themselves, what should be the meaning of this caution, and concluded, “It is because we have no bread; he saith this, to reproach us for being so careless as to go to sea, and go among strangers, with but one loaf of bread; he doth, in effect, tell us, we must be brought to short allowance, and must

eat our bread by weight.” They reasoned it - dielogizonto, they disputed about it; one

said, “It was owing to you;” and the other said, “It was owing to you, that we are so ill provided for this voyage.” Thus distrust of God makes Christ's disciples quarrel among themselves.

JAMIESON, "And they reasoned among themselves, saying, It is because we have no bread — But a little while ago He was tried with the obduracy of the Pharisees; now He is tried with the obtuseness of His own disciples. The nine questions following each other in rapid succession (Mar_8:17-21) show how deeply He was hurt at this want of spiritual apprehension, and worse still, their low thoughts of Him, as if He would utter so solemn a warning on so petty a subject. It will be seen, however, from the very form of their conjecture, “It is because we have no bread,” and our Lord’s astonishment that they should not by that time have known better with what He took up His attention - that He ever left the whole care for His own temporal wants to the Twelve: that He did this so entirely, that finding they were reduced to their last loaf they felt as if unworthy of such a trust, and could not think but that the same thought was in their Lord’s mind which was pressing upon their own; but that in this they were so far wrong that it hurt His feelings -

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sharp just in proportion to His love - that such a thought of Him should have entered their minds! Who that, like angels, “desire to look into these things” will not prize such glimpses above gold?

17 Aware of their discussion, Jesus asked them: “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened?

GILL, "And when Jesus knew it,.... As he did immediately, by his omniscience; for as he knew the thoughts and reasonings of the Scribes and Pharisees, Mat_9:4, so he did those of his own disciples:

he saith unto them, why reason ye because ye have no bread? or imagine that I have given you this caution on that account; or are distressed because this is your case, as if you should be reduced to great difficulties, by reason of your forgetfulness and negligence:

perceive ye not yet, neither understand? the meaning of the parabolical expressions, which he had used them to; or his power in providing food for them, and supporting a great number of persons with very little food, of which they had some very late instances:

have ye your heart yet hardened? as after the first miracle; see Mar_6:52, for it might have been expected, that by a second miracle of the loaves, their understandings would have been more enlightened, and their faith increased, and that they would have relinquished their gross notions, their anxieties, doubts, and unbelief.

HENRY, "The reproof Christ gave them for their uneasiness in this matter, as it argued a disbelief of his power to supply them, notwithstanding the abundant experience they had had of it. The reproof is given with some warmth, for he knew their hearts, and knew they needed to be thus soundly chidden; “Perceive ye not yet, neither understand, that which you have had so many demonstrations of? Have ye your hearts yet hardened, so as that nothing will make any impression upon them, or bring them to compliance with your Master's designs? Having eyes, see ye notthat which is plain before your eyes? Having ears, hear ye not that which you have been so often told? How strangely stupid and senseless are ye! Do ye not rememberthat which was done but the other day, when I broke the five loaves among the five thousand, and soon after, the seven loaves among the four thousand? Do ye not remember how many baskets full ye took up of the fragments?” Yes, they did remember, and could tell that they took up twelve baskets full one time, and sevenanother; “Why then,” said he, “how is it that ye do not understand? As if he that multiplied five loaves, and seven, could not multiply one.” They seemed to suspect that the one was not matter enough to work upon, if he should have a mind to

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entertain his hearers a third time: and if that was their thought, it was indeed a very senseless one, as if it were not all alike to the Lord, to save by many or few, and as easy to make one loaf to feed five thousand as five. It was therefore proper to remind them, not only of the sufficiency, but of the overplus, of the former meals; and justly were they chidden for not understanding what Christ therein designed, and what they from thence might have learned. Note, (1.) The experiences we have had of God's goodness to us in the way of duty, greatly aggravate our distrust of him, which is therefore very provoking to the Lord Jesus. (2.) Our not understanding of the true intent and meaning of God's favours to us, is equivalent to our not remembering of them. (3.) We are therefore overwhelmed with present cares and distrusts, because we do not understand, and remember, what we have known and seen of the power and goodness of our Lord Jesus. It would be a great support to us, to consider the days of old, and we are wanting both to God and ourselves if we do not. (4.) When we thus forgot the works of God, and distrust him, we should chide ourselves severely for it, as Christ doth his disciples here; “Am I thus without understanding? How is it that my heart is thus hardened?”

JAMIESON, "have ye your heart yet hardened? — How strong an expression to use of true-hearted disciples! See on Mar_6:52.

COFFMAN, "The last clause of this verse carries the implication that the apostles had, in some degree, been hardened; and this would account for their failure to petition the Lord on behalf of the hungry multitude. The attitude of the world's Pharisees and Herods was somewhat with them. And what was the connection between the Pharisees and Herod Antipas, mentioned a moment earlier? To both classes, the world was all that mattered. The only kingdom was an earthly one.

Do ye not yet perceive ... The apostles' perception had failed on two counts: (1) They had failed to perceive that Christ could and would supply bread for the four thousand men. (2) They had failed to perceive that the one loaf which they had on board, WITH JESUS, was far more than enough! They had not learned the true lessons which their experiences were designed to teach. In this, the perceptive words of Barclay are significant. He said:

Too often experience fills us with pessimism, teaches us what we cannot do. ... But there are other experiences. Sorrow came, and we came through it still erect. Temptation came, and somehow we did not fall. Illness took us, and somehow we recovered. A problem seemed insoluble, and somehow it was solved. We were at our wits' end, and somehow we went on. We reached the breaking point, and somehow we did not break. We, too, are blind.[6]ENDNOTE:

[6] William Barclay, The Gospel of Mark (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1956), p. 192.

CONSTABLE, Verses 17-21Jesus strongly rebuked His disciples for their lack of spiritual understanding (cf. Isaiah 6:9-10; Jeremiah 5:21; Ezekiel 12:2). In view of the two miraculous feedings they had witnessed, they should have understood who He was. They did

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"remember" the facts (Mark 8:19-20), but they did not "understand" their significance (Mark 8:21). As God had provided bread abundantly for the Israelites in the wilderness, Jesus had provided bread abundantly for them in another wilderness. The conclusion should have been obvious. Jesus was the prophet that Moses predicted would follow him and supersede him. He was the divine Messiah.

"His rebuke was not because of their failure to grasp the meaning of His warning (Mark 8:15), but at their failure to understand the meaning of His presence with them." [Note: Grassmick, p. 138.]It was extremely important that the disciples perceive who Jesus is. Without that perception they could not enter into relationship with Him that was realistic and fulfilling. Jesus' use of questions forced them to interact with the implications of what they had heard and seen.

"In this way, Mark appears to say that being an 'insider,' even a 'disciple,' did not guarantee that one 'understood' or perceived the significance of Jesus and his ministry." [Note: Guelich, p. 427.]The incident ends with a question but no answer. Mark leaves the reader hanging. The answer is of utmost importance. Peter finally verbalized it in Mark 8:29. However the reader of this Gospel already knows the answer because of what Mark previously wrote.

MACLAREN, "THE PATIENT TEACHER, AND THE SLOW SCHOLARS

How different were the thoughts of Christ and of His disciples, as they sat together in the boat, making their way across the lake! He was pursuing a train of sad reflections which, the moment before their embarkation, had caused Him to sigh deeply in His spirit and say, ‘Why doth this generation seek after a sign?’ Absorbed in thought, He spoke, ‘Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees,’ who had been asking that question.

So meditated and spoke Jesus in the stern, and amidships the disciples’ thoughts were only concerned about the negligent omission, very excusable in the hurry of embarkation, by which they had forgotten to lay in a fresh supply of provisions, and had set sail with but one loaf left in the boat. So taken up were they with this petty trouble that they twisted the Master’s words as they fell from His lips, and thought that He was rebuking them for what they were rebuking themselves for. So apt are we to interpret others’ sayings by the thoughts uppermost in our own minds.

And then our Lord poured out this altogether unusual-perhaps I may say unique-hail of questions which indicate how deeply moved from His ordinary calm He was by this strange slowness of apprehension on the part of His disciples. There is no other instance that I can recall in the whole Gospels, with the exception of Gethsemane, where our Lord’s words seem to indicate such agitation of the windless sea of His spirit as this rapid succession of rebuking interrogations. They give a glimpse into the depths of His mind, showing us what He generally kept sacredly shut up, and let us see how deeply He was touched and pained by the slowness of apprehension of His servants.

Let us look at these questions as suggesting to us two things-the grieved Teacher and the slow scholars.

I. The grieved Teacher.

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I have said that the revelation of the depths of our Lord’s experience here is unexampled. We can understand the mood of which it is the utterance; the feeling of despair that sometimes comes over the most patient instructor when he finds that all his efforts to hammer some truth into, or to print some impression on, the brain or heart of man or boy, have been foiled, and that years, it may be, of patient work have scarcely left more traces on unretentive minds than remain on the ocean of the passage through it of a keel.

Christ felt that; and I do not think we half enough realise how large an element in the sorrows of the Man of Sorrows, and of the grief with which He was acquainted, was His necessary association with people who, He felt, did not in the least degree understand Him, however truly, blindly, and almost animally, they might love Him. It was His disciples’ misconception that stung him most. If I might so say, He calculated upon being misunderstood by Pharisees and outsiders, but that these followers who had been gathered round about Him all these months, and had been the subjects of His sedulous toil, should blurt out such words as these which precede the question of my text, cut deep into that loving heart. It was not only the pain of being misunderstood, but also the pain of feeling that the people who cared most for Him did not understand Him, and were so hard to drag up to the level where they could even catch a glimpse of His meaning, that struck His heart with almost a kind of despair; and, as I said, made Him pour out this rain of questions.

And what do the questions suggest? Not only emotion very unusual in Him, yet truly human, and showing Him to be our Brother; but they suggest three distinct types of emotion, all of them dashed with pain.

‘Why reason ye? Having eyes, see ye not? Do ye not remember?’ That speaks of His astonishment. Do not start at the word, or suppose that it in any degree contradicts the lofty beliefs that I suppose most of us have with regard to the Deity of our Lord and Saviour. We find in another place in the Gospels, not by inference as here, but in plain words, the ascription to Him of wonder; ‘He marvelled at their unbelief.’ And we read of a more blessed kind of surprise as having once been His, when He wondered at the faith of the heathen centurion. But here His astonishment is that after all these years of toil, and of sympathy, and of discipleship, and of listening and trying to get hold of His meaning, His disciples were so far away from any understanding of what He was driving at. He had to learn by experience the depths of men’s stupidity and ignorance. And although He was the Word of God made flesh, we recognise here the token of a true brother in that He was capable not only of the physical feelings of weariness, and hunger, and thirst, and pain, but that He, too, had that emotion which only a limited understanding can have-the emotion of wonder. And it was drawn out by His disciples’ denseness and inertness.

Ah! dear friends, does He not wonder at us? One of the prophets says, ‘Be astonished, O heavens!’ And be sure of this, that the manhood of Jesus Christ is not now so lifted up above what it was upon earth as that that same sensation-twin-sister to yours and mine-of surprise, does not sometimes visit Him when He looks down upon us; and has to say to us-as, alas! He has to say-what He once said to one of the Twelve, ‘Have I been so long time with you, and yet hast thou not known me, Philip?’ Is not the same question coming to us? Why is it that we do not understand? Wonder, then, is the first emotion that is expressed in this question. There is another one: Pain. And there again I fall back not upon inference, but upon plain words of another part of the Gospels. ‘He looked round upon them with anger, being grieved at the hardness of their hearts.’ It seems daring to venture to say that the exalted and glorified humanity of Jesus Christ to-day is, in any measure, capable of feeling analogous to that; but it will not seem so daring if you remember the solemn charge of one of the Apostles, ‘Grieve not the Holy Spirit of God.’ It is Christ’s disciples that pain Him

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most. ‘They vexed His Holy Spirit, therefore He fought against them.’ Brethren, let us look into our own hearts and our own lives, and ask ourselves if there is not something there that gives a pang even to the heart of the glorified Master, and makes Him sigh deeply within Himself? May I add one more emotion which seems to me to be unmistakably expressed by this rapid fusilade of questions? That is indignation. Again I fall back upon plain words: ‘He looked round about upon them with anger, being grieved.’ The two things were braided together in His heart, and did not conflict with each other There were infinite sorrow, infinite pity, and real displeasure. You must take all notions of passion and of malignity, and of desire to do harm to the subject, out of the conception of anger as applied to God or to Christ who is the revelation of God. But it seems to me that it is a maimed Christ that we put before the world unless we say that in the Love there lie the possibilities of Wrath. ‘Behold the Lion of the tribe of Judah, and I beheld, and lo! a Lamb!’ Wrath and gentleness are in Him inseparably united, neither of them limiting nor making impossible the other.

So here we have a self-revelation, as by one glimpse into a great chamber, of the deep heart of Christ, the great Teacher, moved to astonishment, grief, and indignation.

II. Now let me say a word about the slow scholars.

I have spoken of these questions as being rapid and repeated, and as a rain of what we may almost call fiery interrogation. But they are by no means tautology or useless and aimless repetition. If we look at them closely, I think we shall see that they open out to us several different sides and phases of the fault in His disciples that moves these emotions.

There is, first, His scholars’ stolid insensibility, which moves Him to anger, to astonishment, and to grief. ‘Are your hearts yet hardened?’ by which is meant, not hardened in the sense of being suddenly and stiffly set in antagonism to Him, but simply in the sense of being-may I use the word?-so pachydermatous, so thick-skinned, that nothing can go through them. They showed it is a dull, stolid insensibility, and it marks some of us professing Christians, on whom promises and invitations and revelations of truth all fall with equal ineffectiveness, and from whom they glide off with equal rapidity. You may rain upon a black basalt rock to all eternity, and nothing will grow upon it. All the drops will run down the polished sides, and a quarter of an inch below the surface it will be as dry as it was before the first drop fell. And here are we Christian ministers, talk-talk-talking, week in and week out; and here is Christ, by His providences and by His word, speaking far more loudly than any of us; and it all falls with absolute impotence on hosts of people that call themselves Christians. Ah! brethren, it is not only unbelievers who have their hearts hardened. Orthodox professors are often guilty of the same. If I might alter the metaphor, many of us have waterproofed our minds, and the ingredients of the mixture by which we have waterproofed them are our knowledge of ‘the plan of salvation,’ our connection with a Christian community, our membership in a church, our obedience to the formalisms of the devout life. All these have only made a non-transmitting medium interposed between ourselves and the concentrated electric energy that ever flashes from Jesus Christ. Our hardened hearts, with their stolid insensibility, amaze our Master, and no wonder that they do.

But that is not all. There is not only what I have ventured to call stolid insensibility, but, as a result of it, there is the not using the capacities that we have. ‘Having eyes, see ye not? Having ears, hear ye not?’ We are not like children that cannot, but like careless, untrained schoolboys that will not, learn. We have the capacity, and it is our own fault that we are dunces in the school, and at the bottom of the class. Use the power that you have, and ‘unto him that hath shall be given, and he shall have in

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abundance.’ There are fishes in the caverns of North America that have lived so long in the dark, underground channels, that the present generation of them has no eyes. We are doing our best to deprive ourselves of our capacities of beholding by refusing to use them. ‘Having eyes, see ye not?’ Our non-use of the powers we have amazes and grieves our Master.

Further, the reason why there are this stolid insensibility and this non-use of capacity lies here: ‘Ye reason about the bread.’ The absorption of our minds and efforts and time with material things, that perish with the using, come in between us and our apprehension of Christ’s teaching. Ah! brethren, it is not only the rich man that is swallowed up with the present world; the poor man may be so as really. All of us, by reason of the absolute necessities of our lives, are in danger of getting our hearts so filled and crowded with the things that are ‘seen and temporal’ that we have no time, nor room, for the things that are ‘unseen and eternal.’ I do not need to elaborate that point. We all know that it is there that our danger, in various forms, lies. If you in the bows of the ship are reasoning about bread, you will misunderstand Christ in the stern warning against ‘the leaven of the Pharisees.’

The last suggestion from these questions is that the cure for all that stolid insensibility, and its resulting misuse of capacity, and the absorption in daily visible things, is remembrance of His and our past-’Do ye not remember?’ It was only that same morning, or the day before at the furthest, that one of the miracles of feeding the thousands had been performed. Christ wonders, as well He might, at the short memories of the disciples who, with the baskets-full of fragments scarcely eaten yet, could worry themselves because there was only one loaf in the locker. ‘Do ye not remember, when I broke the loaves among the thousands, how many baskets took ye up? And they said, seven. And He said, How is it that ye do not understand?’ Yes, Memory is the one wing and Hope the other, that lift our heaviness from earth towards heaven. And any man who will bethink himself of what Jesus Christ has been for him, did for him on earth, and has done for him during his life, will not be so absorbed in worldly cares as that he will have no eyes to see the things unseen and eternal; and the hard, dead insensibility of his heart will melt into thankful consecration, and so he will rise nearer and nearer to intelligent apprehension of the lofty and deep things that the Incarnate Word says to him. We are here in Christ’s school, and it depends upon the place in the class that we take here where we shall be put at what schoolboys call the ‘next remove.’ If here we have indeed ‘learned of Him the truth as it is in Jesus,’ we shall be put up into the top classes yonder, and get larger and more blessed lessons in the Father’s house above.

18 Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember?

GILL, "Having eyes, see ye not?.... Meaning perhaps both the eyes of their bodies, and of their understandings: they had bodily eyes, and with them saw the miracles he wrought, and yet took little notice of them; and the eyes of their understandings were enlightened by Christ, and yet saw things but very darkly:

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and having ears, hear ye not? They had their natural hearing, and yet made but little use of it; and did not so diligently attend to the sound of Christ's words: and though they had spiritual ears given them to hear, yet were very dull of, understanding, and taking in things:

and do ye not remember? the interpretation of parables formerly given, and the miracles of the loaves lately wrought.

JAMIESON, "Having eyes, see ye not? and having ears, hear ye not? — See on Mat_13:13.

and do ye not remember?

COFFMAN, "The apostles were here afflicted with the natural blindness that so easily pertains to mortal life.

Do ye not remember ...? This question should be burned into every conscience. Do we not remember days of weakness and humiliation, our infancy and childhood, the countless times in life when only the divine will stood between us and death or sorrow? Can we not remember prayers answered, dreams realized, strength provided, and hopes fulfilled - all through God's gracious blessing? Do we not remember the solemn commitment of our souls to God when we believed and were baptized into Christ? Have we forgotten the holy intention that brought us to the Lord? Have we forgotten God?

19 When I broke the five loaves for the five thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

“Twelve,” they replied.

GILL, "When I brake the five loaves among five thousand,.... This, with what follows, chiefly regards the last question:

how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? do not you remember? have you forgot what was so lately done? surely you cannot:

they say unto him, twelve. Their memories were hereby refreshed, and they call to mind the exact number of the baskets of fragments that were taken up, which were above double the number of the loaves, the multitude were fed with.

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HENRY, "Do ye not remember that which was done but the other day, when I broke the five loaves among the five thousand, and soon after, the seven loaves among the four thousand? Do ye not remember how many baskets full ye took up of the fragments?” Yes, they did remember, and could tell that they took up twelvebaskets full one time, and seven another; “Why then,” said he, “how is it that ye do not understand? As if he that multiplied five loaves, and seven, could not multiply one.” They seemed to suspect that the one was not matter enough to work upon, if he should have a mind to entertain his hearers a third time: and if that was their thought, it was indeed a very senseless one, as if it were not all alike to the Lord, to save by many or few, and as easy to make one loaf to feed five thousand as five. It was therefore proper to remind them, not only of the sufficiency, but of the overplus, of the former meals; and justly were they chidden for not understanding what Christ therein designed, and what they from thence might have learned. Note, (1.) The experiences we have had of God's goodness to us in the way of duty, greatly aggravate our distrust of him, which is therefore very provoking to the Lord Jesus. (2.) Our not understanding of the true intent and meaning of God's favours to us, is equivalent to our not remembering of them. (3.) We are therefore overwhelmed with present cares and distrusts, because we do not understand, and remember, what we have known and seen of the power and goodness of our Lord Jesus. It would be a great support to us, to consider the days of old, and we are wanting both to God and ourselves if we do not. (4.) When we thus forgot the works of God, and distrust him, we should chide ourselves severely for it, as Christ doth his disciples here; “Am I thus without understanding? How is it that my heart is thus hardened?”

JAMIESON, "When I brake the five loaves among five thousand — “the five thousand.”

how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? etc.

COFFMAN, "Significantly, Christ here referred to two feedings of great multitudes, emphasizing salient features of both; and there can be no honest rationalizing of these accounts as descriptions of a single miracle. Only by a denial of the sacred record can one make the gospel narratives to be merely various accounts of a solitary wonder. For comment on Christ's use of two different words for "baskets" in these verses, see under Mark 8:8, above.

Mark left out of sight the fact that the apostles fully understood and appreciated the divine instruction they received in this connection; but it appears dramatically in Matthew's account.

THE BLIND MAN OF BETHSAIDA

This miracle is recorded only in Mark; but Matthew's account makes it clear enough that many mighty works were done in Bethsaida (Matthew 11:21), this doubtless being one of them.

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20 “And when I broke the seven loaves for the four thousand, how many basketfuls of pieces did you pick up?”

They answered, “Seven.”

GILL, "And when the seven among four thousand,.... That is, when seven loaves were broken among four thousand men,

how many baskets full of fragments took ye up? this surely you must remember, it being so recent an action, but just done, as it were:

and they said, seven; for this, as yet, could not have slipped their memories; though they had, been reasoning among themselves because of their straitness of provisions, as if these things had never been done.

JAMIESON, "How is it that ye do not understand? — “do not understand that the warning I gave you could not have been prompted by any such petty consideration as the want of loaves in your scrip.” Profuse as were our Lord’s miracles, we see from this that they were not wrought at random, but that He carefully noted their minutest details, and desired that this should be done by those who witnessed, as doubtless by all who read the record of them. Even the different kind of baskets used at the two miraculous feedings, so carefully noted in the two narratives, are here also referred to; the one smaller, of which there were twelve, the other much larger, of which there were seven.

21 He said to them, “Do you still not understand?”

Jesus Heals a Blind Man at Bethsaida

GILL, "And he said unto them,.... Since this was the case, and they so well remembered the miracles he had wrought, and the circumstances of them:

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how is it that ye do not understand? my words concerning the leaven of the Pharisees, of the Sadducees, and of Herod, as to imagine I spoke of bread, taken in a literal sense; or that I concerned myself about the scantiness of your provisions, when you, might have learnt from my late miracles, how able I am to support you, if you had not so much as one loaf with you: wherefore it argues great want both of understanding and faith, and shows great stupidity, ignorance, and unbelief, to give such a sense of my words, and to be anxiously concerned on the score of your provisions.

HENRY, "“Why then,” said he, “how is it that ye do not understand? As if he that multiplied five loaves, and seven, could not multiply one.” They seemed to suspect that the one was not matter enough to work upon, if he should have a mind to entertain his hearers a third time: and if that was their thought, it was indeed a very senseless one, as if it were not all alike to the Lord, to save by many or few, and as easy to make one loaf to feed five thousand as five. It was therefore proper to remind them, not only of the sufficiency, but of the overplus, of the former meals; and justly were they chidden for not understanding what Christ therein designed, and what they from thence might have learned. Note, (1.) The experiences we have had of God's goodness to us in the way of duty, greatly aggravate our distrust of him, which is therefore very provoking to the Lord Jesus. (2.) Our not understanding of the true intent and meaning of God's favours to us, is equivalent to our not remembering of them. (3.) We are therefore overwhelmed with present cares and distrusts, because we do not understand, and remember, what we have known and seen of the power and goodness of our Lord Jesus. It would be a great support to us, to consider the days of old, and we are wanting both to God and ourselves if we do not. (4.) When we thus forgot the works of God, and distrust him, we should chide ourselves severely for it, as Christ doth his disciples here; “Am I thus without understanding? How is it that my heart is thus hardened?”

JAMIESON, "How is it that ye do not understand? — “do not understand that the warning I gave you could not have been prompted by any such petty consideration as the want of loaves in your scrip.” Profuse as were our Lord’s miracles, we see from this that they were not wrought at random, but that He carefully noted their minutest details, and desired that this should be done by those who witnessed, as doubtless by all who read the record of them. Even the different kind of baskets used at the two miraculous feedings, so carefully noted in the two narratives, are here also referred to; the one smaller, of which there were twelve, the other much larger, of which there were seven.

22 They came to Bethsaida, and some people brought a blind man and begged Jesus to touch him.

BARNES, "To Bethsaida - See the notes at Mat_11:21.

And they bring a blind man unto him - The healing of the blind man of

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Bethsaida is recorded only by Mark.

Besought him to touch him - That is, to heal him, for they believed that his touch would restore his sight.

CLARKE, "To Bethsaida - See the notes at Mat_11:21.

And they bring a blind man unto him - The healing of the blind man of Bethsaida is recorded only by Mark.

Besought him to touch him - That is, to heal him, for they believed that his touch would restore his sight.

GILL, "And he cometh to Bethsaida,.... The city of Andrew, Peter, and Philip, Joh_1:44; a fishing town, which was situated by the sea of Galilee. Beza's ancient copy, and the Gothic version, wrongly read "Bethany". The Vulgate Latin, Arabic, and Ethiopic versions read, "they came"; Christ, and his twelve apostles, who landed at this place:

and they bring a blind man unto him; for Christ had been here before, and was known by the inhabitants of the place; who, as soon as they heard of his arrival, and knowing what miracles were done by him, brought a poor blind man, of their town, to him, to be cured by him:

and besought him to touch him; having heard of, or seen cures performed by him this way. This man is an emblem of such who are spiritually blind: he had no natural sight at all; he could see nothing; he had not the least glimmering of any thing, until he was touched by Christ: so men, in a state of nature, are quite dark, even darkness itself, until they are made light by the Lord: they have no sight, nor sense of themselves, of their sinful, lost, and dangerous estate and condition they are in; they know not because they are blind, that they are wretched, and poor, and miserable, and naked: they have no sight of Christ, neither of the glory of his person, nor of the fulness of his grace, nor of the nature, necessity, and suitableness of his salvation: they are quite blind as to any saving knowledge of God in Christ, the way of life and peace by him, and the work of the Spirit of God upon the soul; or with regard to any spiritual experience of the power of Gospel truths, or views of the glories of another world: and as this man seemed to be unconcerned himself about the cure of his blindness, only his friends were affected with his case, and brought him to Christ, and solicited a cure, so it is with unregenerate men, they are insensible of their case, and so thoughtless of it, and unaffected with it, and do not, of themselves, seek for a deliverance out of it; nor do they make use of means for that purpose; but it becomes their friends, relations, and acquaintance, that are spiritual, who know their case, and their need of Christ, and his grace, to bring them to him under the means, and pray unto him, that he would put forth the mighty power of his grace upon them, and give them spiritual sight to see in what a lost condition they are, and their need of him.

HENRY, "This cure is related only by this evangelist, and there is something singular in the circumstances.

I. Here is a blind man brought to Christ by his friends, with a desire that he would touch him, Mar_8:22. Here appears the faith of those that brought him - they doubted not but that one touch of Christ's hand would recover him his sight; but the man himself showed not that earnestness for, or expectation of, a cure that other blind men did. If those that are spiritually blind, do not pray for themselves, yet let

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their friends and relations pray for them, that Christ would be pleased to touch them.

JAMIESON, "Mar_8:22-26. Blind man at Bethsaida restored to sight.

And he cometh to Bethsaida — Bethsaida Julias, on the northeast side of the lake, whence after this He proceeded to Caesarea Philippi (Mar_8:27).

and they bring a blind man unto him, and besought him to touch him — See on Mar_7:32.

CALVIN, "This miracle, which is omitted by the other two Evangelists, appears to have been related by Mark chiefly on account of this circumstance, that Christ restored sight to the blind man, not in an instant, as he was generally accustomed to do, but in a gradual manner. He did so most probably for the purpose of proving, in the case of this man, that he had full liberty as to his method of proceeding, and was not restricted to a fixed rule, so as not to resort to a variety of methods in exercising his power. On this account, he does not all at once enlighten the eyes of the blind man, and fit them for performing their office, but communicates to them at first a dark and confused perception, and afterwards, by laying on his hands a second time, enables them to see perfectly. And so the grace of Christ, which had formerly been poured out suddenly on others, flowed by drops, as it were, on this man.

BARCLAY, "A BLIND MAN LEARNS TO SEE (Mark 8:22-26)8:22-26 They came to Bethsaida; and they brought a blind man to him and asked him to touch him. He took the blind man's hand and took him outside the village. He spat into his eyes and laid his hands on him, and asked him, "Do you see anything?" He looked up and said, "I see men, but I see them walking looking like trees." Again he laid his hands on his eyes. He gazed intently, and his sight was restored and he saw everything clearly. He sent him away to his home. "Do not," he said, "even enter into the village."

Blindness was, and still is, one of the great curses of the East. It was caused partly by ophthalmia and partly by the pitiless glare of the sun. It was greatly aggravated by the fact that people knew nothing of hygiene and of cleanliness. It was common to see a person with matter-encrusted eyes on which the flies persistently settled. Naturally this carried the infection far and wide, and blindness was a scourge.

Only Mark tells us this story, and yet there are certain extremely interesting things in it.

(i) Again we see the unique considerateness of Jesus. He took the blind man out of the crowd and out of the village that he might be alone with him. Why? Think about it. This man was blind and apparently had been born blind. If he had been suddenly given back his sight amidst a crowd, there would have flashed upon his newly-seeing eyes hundreds of people and things, and dazzling colours, so that he would have been completely bewildered. Jesus knew it would be far better if he could be taken to a place where the thrill of seeing would break less suddenly upon him.

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Every great doctor and every great teacher has one outstanding characteristic. The great doctor is able to enter into the very mind and heart of his patient; he understands his fears and his hopes; he literally sympathises--suffers--with him. The great teacher enters into the very mind of his scholar. He sees his problems, his difficulties, his stumbling-blocks. That is why Jesus was so supremely great. He could enter into the mind and heart of the people whom he sought to help. He had the gift of considerateness, because he could think with their thoughts and feel with their feelings. God grant to us this Christlike gift.

(ii) Jesus used methods that the man could understand. The ancient world believed in the healing power of spittle. The belief is not so strange when we remember that it is a first instinct to put a cut or burned finger into our mouth to ease the pain. Of course the blind man knew of this and Jesus used a method of curing him which he could understand. Jesus was wise. He did not begin with words and methods which were far above the heads of simple folk. He spoke to them and acted on them in a way that simple minds could grasp and understand. There have been times when unintelligibility has been accounted a virtue and a sign of greatness. Jesus had the still greater greatness--the greatness which a simple mind could grasp.

(iii) In one thing this miracle is unique--it is the only miracle which can be said to have happened gradually. Usually Jesus' miracles happened suddenly and completely. In this miracle the blind man's sight came back in stages.

There is symbolic truth here. No man sees all God's truth all at once. One of the dangers of a certain type of evangelism is that it encourages the idea that when a man has taken his decision for Christ he is a full-grown Christian. One of the dangers of Church membership is that it can be presented in such a way as to imply that when a person becomes a pledged member of the Church he has come to the end of the road. So far from that being the case the decision and the pledge of membership are the beginning of the road. They are the discovery of the riches of Christ which are inexhaustible, and if a man lived a hundred, or a thousand, or a million years, he would still have to go on growing in grace, and learning more and more about the infinite wonder and beauty of Jesus Christ. F. W. H. Myers, in his poem Saint Paul, makes Paul say:

"Let no man think that sudden in a minute

All is accomplished and the work is done--

Though with thine earliest dawn thou shouldst begin it

Scarce were it ended in thy setting sun."

It is gloriously true that sudden conversion is a gracious possibility, but it is equally true that every day a man should be re-converted. With all God's grace and glory before him he can go on learning for a life time and still need eternity to know as he is known.

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CONSTABLE, "The healing of a blind man near Bethsaida 8:22-26

Mark is the only evangelist who recorded this miracle. It corresponds to the healing of the deaf man with the speech impediment (Mark 7:31-36), the only other miracle that Mark alone recorded. This is the only miracle in Mark that was not instantaneous; it happened gradually. Sight is a common metaphor for understanding. The disciples should have seen the deaf man as a picture of themselves unable to comprehend what Jesus said. This blind man also represented them in their inability to understand what Jesus showed them (cf. Mark 8:21). Jesus could and would make them whole, as He healed these two physically limited men.

COKE, "Mark 8:22-26. And they bring a blind man, &c.— Two things are remarkable in this miracle: first, our Lord led the man out of the town, before he would heal him; and, when the cure was performed, he forbad him to return thither, or so much as to tell it unto any who lived in the town. The reason was, the people had for a long time been solicitous to have him acknowledged as the Messiah; and every new miracle which they beheld, moved them afresh to make the attempt. Nor could the inhabitants of Bethsaida complain of being ill used, though they were not permitted to be witnesses of the cure, since they had brought this mark of Christ's displeasure upon themselves, by their ingratitude, impenitence, and infidelity. See Matthew 11:21. And as for the man, he could not think it any hardship to be hindered from returning into the city, since it was not the place of his abode, Mark 8:26. Secondly, in giving sight to this blind man, Jesus did not, as on other occasions of the like nature, impart the faculty at once, but by degrees: for at first the man saw things but obscurely; then, by a second imposition of Christ's hands, he had a clear sight of every object in view. Our Lord's intention in this might be, to make it evident that in his cures he was not confined to one method of operation, but could dispense them in what manner he pleased. In the mean time, though the cure was performed by degrees, it was accomplished in so small a space of time, as to make it evident that it was not produced by any natural efficacy of our Lord's spittle or touch, but merely by the exertion of his miraculous power. The blind man's expression, after the first imposition of Christ's hands, may easily be accounted for, on the supposition that he was not born blind, but had lost his sight by some accident; for if that was the case, he might have retained the idea both of men and of trees; in which light, his words I see men as trees walking, express the indistinctness of his vision very properly. See Doddridge, and ch. Mark 7:33.

BURKITT, "Verse 22Here we have recorded a special miracle wrought by our Saviour at Bethsaida, in curing a blind man brought unto him.

Where observe, 1. What evident proof the Pharisees had of Christ's divine power and godhead: he had before caused the deaf to hear, the dumb to speak, and the lame to walk; now he makes the blind to see; yet did the Pharisees obstinately resist all means of their conviction, and continued in their opposition to truth, to their inevitable and unutterable condemnation.

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Observe, 2. The wonderful humility, the great condescension of Jesus Christ towards this blind man; He took him by the hand, and led him, himself. A great evidence of his condescending humility, and of his goodness and mercy; shewing how ready and willing he was to help and heal him; see here a singular pattern of humility and condescending grace and mercy in our dear Redeemer, in that he vouchsafed with his own hands to take and lead a poor blind man through the streets of Bethsaida, in the sight of all the people. Let us learn of him, who was thus meek, and lovely in heart.

Observe, 3. Our Lord leads the blind man out of the town before he heals him, not in the town where all the people might take notice of it. Thereby teaching us to avoid all shews of ambition, all appearance of vain-glory; in what we do. Even as Christ sought not his own glory, but the glory of him that sent him.

Observe, 4. The manner of the cure wrought upon this blind man; it was gradual, and by degrees; not instantaneous, and at once: he had first a dark, dim, and obscure sight, afterwards a clear, and a perfect sight. Christ thereby, gave evidence of his absolute and omnipotent power, that he was not tied to any particular means, or manner, or order of working; but wrought his miracles variously, as he saw to be most fit for the glory of God, and the benefit of his people.

Observe lastly, The charge, given by our Saviour not to publish this miracle in the town of Bethsaida; a place where Christ had so often preached, and wrought so many miracles; but the inhabitants had obstinately and contemptuously undervalued and despised both his doctrine and miracles; therefore we read, Matthew 11:21 that our Saviour denounced a woe against Bethsaida, assuring her, that it would be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon than for her. The higher a people rise under the means, the lower they fall if they miscarry. Such a people as have been nearest to conversion, being not converted, shall have the greatest condemnation when they are judged.

MACLAREN, "THE GRADUAL HEALING OF THE BLIND MAN

This miracle, which is only recorded by the Evangelist Mark, has about it several very peculiar features. Some of these it shares with one other of our Lord’s miracles, which also is found only in this Gospel, and which occurred nearly about the same time-that miracle of healing the deaf and dumb man recorded in the previous chapter. Both of them have these points in common: that our Lord takes the sufferer apart and works His miracle in privacy; that in both there is an abundant use of the same singular means-our Lord’s touch and the saliva upon His finger; and that in both there is the urgent injunction of entire secrecy laid upon the recipient of the benefit.

But this miracle had another peculiarity in which it stands absolutely alone, and that is that the work is done in stages; that the power which at other times has but to speak and it is done, here seems to labour, and the cure comes slowly; that in the middle Christ pauses, and, like a physician trying the experiment of a drug, asks the patient if any effect is produced, and, getting the answer that some mitigation is realised, repeats the application, and perfect recovery is the result.

Now, how unlike that is to all the rest of Christ’s miraculous working we do not need

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to point out; but the question may arise, What is the meaning, and what the reason, and what the lessons of this unique and anomalous form of miraculous working? It is to that question that I wish to turn now; for I think that the answer will open up to us some very precious things in regard to that great Lord, the revelation of whose heart and character is the inmost and the loftiest meaning of both His words and His works.

I take these three points of peculiarity to which I have referred: the privacy, the strange and abundant use of means veiling the miraculous power, and the gradual, slow nature of the cure. I see in them these three things: Christ isolating the man that He would heal; Christ stooping to the sense-bound nature by using outward means; and Christ making His power work slowly, to keep abreast of the man’s slow faith.

I. First, then, here we have Christ isolating the man whom He wanted to heal.

Now, there may have been something about our Lord’s circumstances and purposes at the time of this miracle which accounted for the great urgency with which at this period He impressed secrecy upon all around Him. What that was it is not necessary for us to inquire here, but this is worth noticing, that in obedience to this wish, on His own part, for privacy at the time, He covers over with a veil His miraculous working, and does it quietly, as one might almost say, in a corner. He never sought to display His miraculous working; here He absolutely tries to hide it. That fact of Christ’s taking pains to conceal His miracle carries in it two great truths-first, about the purpose and nature of miracles in general, and second, about His character-as to each of which a few words may be said.

This fact, of a miracle done in intended secrecy, and shrouded in deep darkness, suggests to us the true point of view from which to look at the whole subject of miracles.

People say they were meant to be attestations of His divine mission. Yes, no doubt that is true partially; but that was never the sole nor even the main purpose for which they were wrought; and when any one asked Jesus Christ to work a miracle for that purpose only, He rebuked the desire and refused to gratify it. He wrought His miracles, not coldly, in order to witness to His mission, but every one of them was the token, because it was the outcome, of His own sympathetic heart brought into contact with human need. And instead of the miracles of Jesus Christ being cold, logical proofs of His mission, they were all glowing with the earnestness of a loving sympathy, and came from Him at sight of sorrow as naturally as rays beam out from the sun.

Then, on the other hand, the same fact carries with it, too, a lesson about His character. Is not He here doing what He tells us to do; ‘Let not thy left hand know what thy right hand doeth’? He dares not wrap His talent in a napkin, He would be unfaithful to His mission if He hid His light under a bushel. All goodness ‘does good by stealth,’ even if it does not ‘blush to find it fame’-and that universal mark of true benevolence marked His. He had to solve in His human life what we have to solve, the problem of keeping the narrow path between ostentation of powers and selfish concealment of faculty; and He solved it thus, ‘leaving us an example that we should follow in His steps.’

But that is somewhat aside from the main purpose to which I intended to turn in these first remarks. Christ did not invest the miracle with any of its peculiarities for His own sake only. All that is singular about it, will, I think, find its best explanation in the condition and character of the subject, the man on whom it was wrought. What sort of a man was he? Well, the narrative does not tell us much, but if we use our

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historical imagination and our eyes we may learn something about him. First he was a Gentile; the land in which the miracle was wrought was the half-heathen country on the east side of the Sea of Galilee. In the second place, it was other people that brought him; he did not come of his own accord. Then again, it is their prayer that is mentioned, not his-he asked nothing.

You see him standing there hopeless, listless; not believing that this Jewish stranger is going to do anything for him; with his impassive blind face glowing with no entreaty to reinforce his companions’ prayers. And suppose he was a man of that sort, with no expectation of anything from this Rabbi, how was Christ to get at him? It is of no use to speak to him. His eyes are shut, so cannot see the sympathy beaming in His face. There is one thing possible-to lay hold of Him by the hand; and the touch, gentle, loving, firm, says this at least: ‘Here is a man that has some interest in me, and whether He can do anything or not for me, He is going to try something.’ Would not that kindle an expectation in him? And is it not in parable just exactly what Jesus Christ does for the whole world? Is not that act of His by which He put out His hand and seized the unbelieving limp hand of the blind man that hung by his side, the very same in principle as that by which He ‘taketh hold of the seed of Abraham,’ and is made like to His brethren? Are not the mystery of the Incarnation and the meaning of it wrapped up as in a germ in that little simple incident, ‘He put out His hand and touched him’?

Is there not in it, too, a lesson for all you good-hearted Christian men and women, in all your work? If you want to do anything for your afflicted brethren, there is only one way to do it-to come down to their level and get hold of their hands, and then there is some chance of doing them good. We must be content to take the hands of beggars if we are to make the blind to see.

And then, having thus drawn near to the man, and established in his heart some dim expectation of something coming, He gently led him away out of the little village. I wonder no painter has ever painted that, instead of repeating ad nauseam two or three scenes out of the Gospels. I wonder none of them has ever seen what a parable it is-the Christ leading the blind man out into solitude before He can say to him, ‘Behold!’ How, as they went, step by step, the poor blind eyes not telling the man where they were going, or how far away he was being taken from his friends, his conscious dependence upon this stranger would grow! How he would feel more and more at each step, ‘I am at His mercy; what is He going to do with me?’ And how thus there would be kindled in his heart some beginnings of an expectation, as well as some surrendering of himself to Christ’s guidance! These two things, the expectation and the surrender, have in them, at all events, some faint beginnings and rude germs of the highest faith, to lead up to which is the purpose of all that Christ here does.

And is not that what He does for us all? Sometimes by sorrows, sometimes by sick-beds, sometimes by shutting us out from chosen spheres of activity, sometimes by striking down the dear ones at our sides, and leaving us lonely in the desert-is He not saying to us in a thousand ways, ‘Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place’? As Israel was led into the wilderness that God might ‘speak to her heart,’ so often Christ draws us aside, if not by outward providences such as these, yet by awaking in us the solemn sense of personal responsibility and making us feel our solitude, that He may lead us to feel His all-sufficient companionship.

Ah! brethren, here is a lesson from all this-if you wish Jesus Christ to give you His highest gifts and to reveal to you His fairest beauty, you must be alone with Him. He loves to deal with single souls. Our lives, many of them, can never be outwardly alone. We are jammed up against one another in such a fashion, and the hurry and pressure of city life is so great with us all, that it is often impossible for us to secure

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outward secrecy and solitude. But a man maybe alone in a crowd; the heart may be gathered up into itself, and there may be a still atmosphere round about us in the shop and in the market and amongst the busy ways of men, in which we and Christ shall be alone together. Unless there be, I do not think any of us will see the King in His beauty or the far-off land. ‘I was left alone, and I saw this great vision,’ is the law for all true beholding.

So, dear brethren, try to feel how awful this earthly life of ours is in its necessary solitude; that each of us by himself must shape out his own destiny, and make his own character; that every unit of the swarms upon our streets is a unit that has to face the solemn facts of life for and by itself; that alone we live, that alone we shall die; that alone we shall have to give account of ourselves before God, and in the solitude let the hand of your heart feel for His hand that is stretched out to grasp yours, and listen to Him saying, ‘Lo! I am with you always, even to the end of the world.’ There was no dreariness in the solitude when it was Christ that ‘took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the city.’

II. We have Christ stooping to a sense-bound nature by the use of material helps.

No doubt there was something in the man, as I have said, which made it advisable that these methods should be adopted. If he were the sort of person that I have described, slow of faith, not much caring about the possibility of cure, and not having much hope that any cure would come to pass-then we can see the fitness of the means adopted: the hand laid upon the eyes, the finger, possibly moistened with saliva, touching the ball, the pausing to question, the repeated application. These make a ladder by which his hope and confidence might climb to the apprehension of the blessing. And that points to a general principle of the divine dealings. God stoops to a feeble faith, and gives to it outward things by which it may rise to an apprehension of spiritual realities.

Is not that the meaning of the whole complicated system of Old Testament revelation? Is not that the meaning of the altars, and priests, and sacrifices, and the old cumbrous apparatus of the Mosaic law? Was it not all a picture-book in which the infant eyes of the race might see in a material form deep spiritual realities? Was not that the meaning and explanation of our Lord’s parabolic teaching? He veils spiritual truth in common things that He may reveal it by common things-taking fishermen’s boats, their nets, a sower’s basket, a baker’s dough, and many another homely article, and finding in them the emblems of the loftiest truth.

Is not that the meaning of His own Incarnation? It is of no use to talk to men about God-let them see Him; no use to preach about principles-give them the facts of His life. Revelation does not consist in the setting forth of certain propositions about God, but in the exhibition of the acts of God in a human life.

‘And so the Word had breath, and wrought

With human hands the creed of creeds.’

And still further, may we not say that this is the inmost meaning and purpose of the whole frame of the material universe? It exists in order that, as a parable and a symbol, it may proclaim the things that are unseen and eternal. Its depths and heights, its splendours and its energies are all in order that through them spirits may climb to the apprehension of the ‘King, eternal, immortal, invisible,’ and the realities of His spiritual kingdom.

So in regard to all the externals of Christianity, forms of worship, ordinances, and so on-all these, in like manner, are provided in condescension to our weakness, in order

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that by them we may be lifted above themselves; for the purpose of the Temple is to prepare for the time and the place where the seer ‘saw no temple therein.’ They are but the cups that carry the wine, the flowers whose chalices bear the honey, the ladders by which the soul may climb to God Himself, the rafts upon which the precious treasure may be floated into our hearts.

If Christ’s touch and Christ’s saliva healed, it was not because of anything in them; but because He willed it so; and He Himself is the source of all the healing energy. Therefore, let us keep these externals in their proper place of subordination, and remember that in Him, not in them, lies the healing power; and that even Christ’s touch may become the object of superstitious regard, as it was when that poor woman came through the crowd to lay her finger on the hem of His garment, thinking that she could bear away a surreptitious blessing without the conscious outgoing of His power. He healed her because there was a spark of faith in her superstition, but she had to I earn that it was not the hem of the garment but the loving will of Christ that cured, in order that the dross of superstitious reliance on the outward vehicle might be melted away, and the pure gold of faith in His love and power might remain.

III. Lastly, we have Christ accommodating the pace of His power to the slowness of the man’s faith.

The whole story, as I have said, is unique, and especially this part of it-’He put His hands upon him, and asked him if he saw aught.’ One might have expected an answer with a little more gratitude in it, with a little more wonder in it, with a little more emotion in it. Instead of these it is almost surly, or at any rate strangely reticent-a matter-of-fact answer to the question, and there an end. As our Revised Version reads it better: ‘I see men, for I behold them as trees walking.’ Curiously accurate! A dim glimmer had come into the eye, but there is not yet distinctness of outline nor sense of magnitude, which must be acquired by practice. The eye has not yet been educated, and it was only because these blurred figures were in motion that he knew they were not trees. ‘After that He put His hands upon his eyes and made him look up,’ or, as the Revised Version has it with a better reading, ‘and he looked steadfastly,’ with an eager straining of the new faculty to make sure that he had got it, and to test its limits and its perfection. ‘And he was restored and saw all things clearly.’

Now I take it that the worthiest view of that strangely protracted process, broken up into two halves by the question that is dropped into the middle, is this, that it was determined by the man’s faith, and was meant to increase it. He was healed slowly because he believed slowly. His faith was a condition of his cure, and the measure of it determined the measure of the restoration; and the rate of the growth of his faith settled the rate of the perfecting of Christ’s work on him. As a rule, faith in His power to heal was a condition of Christ’s healing, and that mainly because our Lord would rather make men believing than sound of body. They often wanted only the outward miracle, but He wanted to make it the means of insinuating a better healing into their spirits. And so, not that there was any necessary connection between their faith and the exercise of His miraculous power, but in order that He might bless them with His best gifts, He usually worked on the principle ‘According to your faith be it unto you.’ And here, as a nurse or a mother with her child might do, He keeps step with the little steps, and goes slowly because the man goes slowly.

Now, both the gradual process of illumination and the rate of that process as determined by faith, are true for us. How dim and partial a glimmer of light comes to many a soul at the outset of the Christian life! How little a new convert knows about God and self and the starry truths of His great revelation! Christian progress does not

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consist in seeing new things, but in seeing the old things more clearly: the same Christ, the same Cross, only more distinctly and deeply apprehended, and more closely incorporated into my very being. We do not grow away from Him, but we grow into knowledge of Him. The first lesson that we get is the last lesson that we shall learn, and He is the ‘Alpha’ at the beginning, and the ‘Omega’ at the end of that alphabet, the letters of which make up our knowledge for earth and heaven.

But then let me remind you that just in the measure in which you expect blessing of any kind, illumination and purifying and help of all sorts from Jesus Christ, just in that measure will you get it. You can limit the working of Almighty power, and can determine the rate at which it shall work on you. God fills the water-pots ‘to the brim,’ but not beyond the brim; and if, like the woman in the Old Testament story, we stop bringing vessels, the oil will stop flowing. It is an awful thing to think that we have the power, as it were, to turn a stopcock, and so increase or diminish, or cut off altogether, the supply of God’s mercy and Christ’s healing and cleansing love in our hearts. You will get as much of God as you want and no more. The measure of your desire is the measure of your capacity, and the measure of your capacity is the measure of God’s gift. ‘Open thy mouth wide and I will fill it!’ And if your faith is heavily shod and steps slowly, His power and His grace will step slowly along with it, keeping rank and step. ‘According to your faith shall it be unto you.’

Ah! dear friends, ‘Ye are not straitened in Me, ye are straitened in yourselves.’ Desire Him to help and bless you, and He will do it. Expect Him to do it, and He will do it. Go to Him like the other blind man and say to Him-’Jesus, Thou Son of David, have mercy on me, that I may receive my sight,’ and He will lay His hand upon you, and at any rate a glimmer will come, which will grow in the measure of your humble, confident desire, until at last He takes you by the hand and leads you out of this poor little village of a world and lays His finger for a brief moment of blindness upon your eyes and asks you if you see aught. Then you will look up, and the first face that you will behold will be His, whom you saw ‘as through a glass darkly’ with your dim eyes in this twilight world.

May that be your experience and mine, through His mercy!

23 He took the blind man by the hand and led him outside the village. When he had spit on the man’s eyes and put his hands on him, Jesus asked, “Do you see anything?”

BARNES, "Led him out of the town - Why this was done the sacred writers have not told us. It might have been to avoid the collecting of a multitude, and thus to have escaped the designs of the Pharisees who were attempting to take his life, and chiefly on a charge of sedition and of exciting the people. On this account Jesus chose to perform the miracle alone, thus showing that while he did good, he desired to do it in such a way as to avoid the “appearance” of evil, and to prevent, at the same time, ostentation and the malice of his enemies.

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Spit on his eyes - Why this was done is not known. It was evidently not intended to perform the cure by any natural effect of the spittle. It was to the man a “sign,” an evidence that it was the power of Jesus. The eyes were probably closed. They were perhaps “gummed” or united together by a secretion that had become hard. To apply spittle to them - to wet them - would be a “sign,” a natural expression of removing the obstruction and opening them. The power was not in the spittle, but it attended the application of it.

Saw aught - Saw anything.

CLARKE, "And he took the blind man by the hand - Giving him a proof of his readiness to help him, and thus preparing him for the cure which he was about to work.

Led him out of the town - Thus showing the inhabitants that he considered them unworthy of having another miracle wrought among them. He had already deeply deplored their ingratitude and obstinacy: see on Mat_11:21 (note). When a people do not make a proper improvement of the light and grace which they receive from God, their candlestick is removed - even the visible Church becomes there extinct; and the candle is put out - no more means of spiritual illumination are afforded to the unfaithful inhabitants: Rev_2:5.

When he had spit on his eyes - There is a similar transaction to this mentioned by John, Joh_9:6. It is likely this was done merely to separate the eyelids; as, in certain cases of blindness, they are found always gummed together. It required a miracle to restore the sight, and this was done in consequence of Christ having laid his hands upon the blind man: it required no miracle to separate the eyelids, and, therefore, natural means only were employed - this was done by rubbing them with spittle; but whether by Christ, or by the blind man, is not absolutely certain. See on Mar_7:33 (note). It has always been evident that false miracles have been wrought without reason or necessity, and without any obvious advantage; and they have thereby been detected: on the contrary, true miracles have always vindicated themselves by their obvious utility and importance; nothing ever being effected by them that could be performed by natural means.

If he saw aught - Ει, if, is wanting in the Syriac, all the Persic and Arabic, and in

the Ethiopic; and τιβλεπεις, Dost thou see any thing? is the reading of CD, Coptic,

Ethiopic, all the Arabic and Persic.

GILL, "And he took the blind man by the hand,.... Not for the sake of touching him, in order to heal him, as they desired, but to be his guide:

and led him out of the town; to shun all appearance of vain glory and popular applause, being willing to do the miracle in a private manner; and because of the obstinacy and unbelief of the inhabitants of this place, who were not worthy to be witnesses of such a cure; see Mat_11:21;

and when he had spit on his eyes; not as a cause of healing him; for whatever use spittle may be of to such that have weak eyes, it can have no causal influence upon, or be of any service, in a natural way, to a blind man to restore his sight unto him:

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and put his hands upon him; as he sometimes did, when he healed persons of any disorder:

he asked him, if he saw ought; any object whatever, whether he could perceive he had any sight at all. Christ's taking the blind man by the hand, and leading him out or the town, and spitting on his eyes, and putting his hands upon him, and then asking him if he saw ought, are emblematical of what he does in spiritual conversion, when he turns men from darkness to light: he takes them by the hand, which expresses his condescension, grace, and mercy, and becomes their guide and leader; and a better, and safer guide they cannot have; he brings them by a way they know not, and leads them in paths they had not known before; makes darkness light before them, and crooked things straight, and does not forsake them: he takes them apart, and separates them from the rest of the world; he calls them out from thence to go with him, teaching them, that, when enlightened by him, they should have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, and the workers of them; for what communion has light with darkness? his putting spittle upon his eyes, may signify the means of grace, the eye salve of the word, which, when attended with a divine power, enlightens the eyes; and which power may be represented here by Christ's putting his hands upon the man; for the Gospel, without the power of Christ, Is insufficient to produce such an effect; but when it is accompanied with that, it always succeeds.

HENRY, " That the cure was wrought gradually, which was not usual in Christ's miracles. He asked him if he saw aught, Mar_8:23. Let him tell what condition his sight was in, for the satisfaction of those about him. And he looked up; so far he recovered his sight, that he could open his eyes, and he said, I see men as trees walking; he could not distinguish men from trees, otherwise than he could discern them to move. He had some glimmerings of sight, and betwixt him and the sky could perceive a man erect like a tree, but could not discern the form thereof, Job_4:16.

JAMIESON, "COFFMAN, "Took him out of the village ... Although not so stated here, this was, in all probability, for the purpose of privacy, as in the case of the deaf-mute, and for the same purpose of preventing any allegation that the spittle was necessary to the cure. Just why Christ occasionally resorted to such practice is not known to us; but, as in the case of the deaf-mute, it appears to have been necessary for the instruction of the blind man. Dummelow observed that:

The man was healed in stages, probably because his faith was imperfect. Jesus first strengthened his faith by partly healing him, and then; when his faith was adequate, completed the cure.[7]In this connection, it should be remembered that they were the citizens of Bethsaida who brought this man to Jesus; and that city was noted for its unbelief and rejection of the Lord.

ENDNOTE:

[7] J. R. Dummelow, Commentary on the Holy Bible (New York: The Macmillan Company, 1937), p. 728.

CONSTABLE, "Verse 23-24

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"Our Lord's action here is significant. Having abandoned Bethsaida to judgment (Matthew 11:21-24), He would neither heal in that village nor permit further testimony to be borne there (Mark 8:26). The probation of Bethsaida as a community was ended, but He would still show mercy to individuals." [Note: The New Scofield Reference Bible, p. 1059.]Jesus may have led the man out of Bethsaida so He could establish a personal relationship with him (cf. Mark 5:35-43; Mark 7:31-37) and perhaps to avoid publicity (cf. Mark 8:26). The man's willingness to follow Jesus demonstrated some faith. This was evidently one of only three miracles that Jesus did in private that Mark recorded. In all three cases, some disciples were present, as witnesses.

The English translations permit a rather unpleasant interpretation of what Jesus did, namely, spitting in the man's face and placing His hands on his head or shoulders. The Greek text encourages us to interpret the data differently. Probably Jesus applied a small quantity of His spittle to the man's eyes with His fingers. This action would have made it clear to the blind man that Jesus was restoring his vision. Perhaps the saliva told the man that this healing came out of Jesus' mouth (cf. Genesis 1:3; Genesis 1:6, et al.).

". . . the use of saliva was a well-known Jewish remedy for affections of the eyes." [Note: Edersheim, 2:48.]Jesus asked the man, "Do you see anything?" to get him to state what he saw for the disciples' benefit. Evidently the man had lost his vision; he appears not to have been blind from birth. He knew what trees looked like. Blindness from disease was and still is common in many Middle Eastern countries.

24 He looked up and said, “I see people; they look like trees walking around.”

BARNES, "CLARKE, "GILL, "HENRY, "JAMIESON, "CALVIN, "Mark 8:24.I see men. Our Lord had put the question to the blind man for the sake of his disciples, to inform them that the man had received something, but that hitherto nothing more than a slight commencement of the cure had been effected. The reply is, that he sees men, because he perceives some persons walking who are upright like trees By these words he acknowledges that his sight is not yet so clear as to distinguish men from trees, but that he has already obtained some power of seeing, because he conjectures from the motion that those whom he perceives to be in an erect posture are men; and it is in this

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respect that he says they are like trees We see then that he speaks only by conjecture when he says that he sees men

NISBET, "THE GRADUAL MIRACLE‘I see men as trees, walking.’Mark 8:24This particular miracle is the parable of our times.

I. It is so in reference to the things of God.—We pray indeed for grace to live as we ought, in the careful avoidance of known sin, and the diligent discharge of known duty; but do we seriously expect an answer to this prayer? Do we believe that an influence, a guidance, a control, a suggestion, a presence—call it what you will—is vouchsafed, is maintained, is continued day by day and through each day, as the direct reply of God to this petition? What can we say more, in regard to all these things, than that at best we ‘see men as trees, walking’? that we have a dim, dull, floating impression of there being something in them, rather than a clear, bold, strong apprehension of what and whom and why we have believed?

II. It is so in reference to the things of men, to our views of life, and to the relations in which we stand to those fellow-beings with whom the Providence of God brings us into contact. The blind man must come to Jesus, and come in faith; and which of all of us has done so? It needs a desire to be saved, and it needs a willingness to be saved in Christ’s way, and it needs a consciousness of deep defilement, and it needs a conviction that His blood cleanseth from all guilt, and that His Holy Spirit can set us free from all sin, to bring a man under the healing touch even once. Power out of weakness, peace out of warfare, light out of darkness, sight out of dim, groping, creeping blindness—this it is to be the subject of the first healing. God grant us all grace to come for it to Him Who is still on His throne of grace to grant repentance and to grant forgiveness.

—Dean Vaughan.Illustration

‘The man’s answer is in accord with later scientific discovery. What we call the act of vision is really a twofold process; there is in it the report of the nerves to the brain, and also an inference, drawn by the mind, which previous experience has educated to understand what that report implies. In want of such experience an infant thinks the moon as near him as the lamp, and promptly reaches out for it. And when science does its Master’s work by opening the eyes of men who have been born blind, they do not know at first what appearances belong to globes and what to flat and square objects. It is certain that every image conveyed to the brain reaches it upside down, and is corrected there. When Jesus, then, restored a blind man to the perfect enjoyment of effective intelligent vision He wrought a double miracle; one which instructed the intelligence of the blind man as well as opened his eyes. This was utterly unknown to that age.’

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25 Once more Jesus put his hands on the man’s eyes. Then his eyes were opened, his sight was restored, and he saw everything clearly.

BARNES, "CLARKE, "GILL, "HENRY, "But, 3. It was soon completed; Christ never doeth his work by the halves, nor leaves it till he can say, It is finished. He put his hands again upon his eyes, to disperse the remaining darkness, and then bade him look up again, and he saw every man clearly, Mar_8:25. Now Christ took this way, (1.) Because he would not tie himself to a method, but would show with what liberty he acted in all he did. He did not cure by rote, as I may say, and in a road, but varied as he thought fit. Providence gains the same end in different ways, that men may attend its motions with an implicit faith. (2.) Because it should be to the patient according to his faith; and perhaps this man's faith was at first very weak, but afterward gathered strength, and accordingly his cure was. Not that Christ always went by this rule, but thus he would sometimes put a rebuke upon those who came to him, doubting. (3.) Thus Christ would show how, and in what method, those are healed by his grace, who by nature are spiritually blind; at first, their knowledge is confused, they see men as trees walking; but, like the light of the morning, it shines more and more to the perfect day, and then they see all things clearly, Pro_4:18. Let us enquire then, if we see aught of those things which faith is the substance and evidence of; and if through grace we see any thing of them, we may hope that we shall see yet more and more,for Jesus Christ will perfect for ever those that are sanctified.

JAMIESON, "CONSTABLE, "Why did Jesus heal the man gradually in stages? Perhaps He did so to show that He could heal in any manner He chose. [Note: Calvin, 2:285.] Perhaps the man was fearful, and Jesus healed him as He did to accommodate his needs. [Note: Alexander Maclaren, "St. Mark," in Expositions of Holy Scripture, 8:326.] Perhaps He did so to illustrate for the disciples that He chose to give spiritual perception one step at a time. Perhaps He wanted to present Himself as the Great Physician. Probably Jesus had more than one reason.

"Is this miracle paradigmatic of Jesus' struggle with the disciples? Is Jesus' earthly ministry stage one, during which time Jesus must contend with the disciples who are at once committed to him but afflicted with incomprehension? Is the time following Easter stage two, when Jesus shall have led the disciples, like this man, to 'see everything clearly'?" [Note: Kingsbury, p. 102.]Mark was careful to record that the man "looked intently" (NASB). Human responsibility played a part in this healing as does gaining spiritual understanding. Nevertheless it is God who is ultimately responsible for the perception. Perhaps Jesus healed the man's optic nerve completely at first, but, as with children, the man had to learn to focus on objects. So Jesus touched the man's eyes a second time, which gave him the ability to see clearly. [Note: J.

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Dwight Pentecost, The Words and Works of Jesus Christ, p. 248.]

"The primary focus of this story, however, is on the man's total healing. The disciples show themselves to be in need of the second touch, and the story bespeaks their experiencing it. A time must come when they see all things distinctly." [Note: Guelich, p. 436.]

26 Jesus sent him home, saying, “Don’t even go into[a] the village.”

BARNES, "CLARKE, "GILL, "

HENRY, "IV. The directions Christ gave the man he had cured, not to tell it to any in the town of Bethsaida, nor so much as to go into the town, where probably there were some expecting him to come back, who had seen Christ lead him out of the town, but, having been eyewitnesses of so many miracles, had not so much as the curiosity to follow him: let not those be gratified with the sight of him when he was cured, who would not show so much respect to Christ as to go a step out of the town, to see this cure wrought. Christ doth not forbid him to tell it to others, but he must not tell it to any in the town. Slighting Christ's favours is forfeiting them; and Christ will make those know the worth of their privileges by the want of them, that would not know them otherwise. Bethsaida, in the day of her visitation, would not know the things that belonged to her peace, and now they are hid from her eyes. They will not see, and therefore shall not see.

JAMIESON, "CALVIN, "26.And he sent him away to his house. Christ does not suffer him to return to Bethsaida, where there were many that had beheld the miracle. This is conjectured by some to have been done, because Christ intended to punish the inhabitants of that place by depriving them of the enjoyment of his favor. Whatever might be the reason, it is certain that no miracle was performed by him in order to remain perpetually buried, but that he intended to have it concealed along with many others, till, after having expiated by his death the sins of the world, (435) he should ascend to the glory of the Father.

COFFMAN, "The understanding of this commandment to the blind man lies in the identity of the village he was forbidden to enter, namely, Bethsaida. Jesus was reported in Matthew to have said:

Woe unto thee, Bethsaida! for if the mighty works had been done in Tyre and Sidon which were done in you, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But I say unto you, It shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in

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the day of judgment, than for you (Matthew 11:21,22).The symbolism of this miracle therefore reflects upon the wicked unbelief of Bethsaida. In order to heal the blind man, Jesus had to take him by the hand and lead him out of the village. There are environments today where spiritual healing is a near impossibility, until men shall be led out of them.

Why was he not allowed to return to Bethsaida? More than enough had already been done for that wicked village; and Christ here heeded his own admonition regarding the casting of pearls before swine.

PETER'S CONFESSION AT CAESAREA PHILIPPI

This is a much briefer account of Peter's remarkable confession than is found in Matthew, indicating perhaps that Peter, who was Mark's mentor, had not stressed it as strongly as the other apostles, this possibly being due to considerations of modesty on Peter's part.

Peter Declares That Jesus Is the Messiah

27 Jesus and his disciples went on to the villages around Caesarea Philippi. On the way he asked them, “Who do people say I am?”

CLARKE, "And Jesus went out, etc. - See on Mat_16:13-20 (note).

GILL, "And Jesus went out, and his disciples,.... From Bethsaida and even from Galilee

into the towns Caesarea Philippi; in the jurisdiction of Philip, tetrarch of Iturea and Trachonitis; for this Caesarea was rebuilt by him and called so in honour of Tiberius Caesar; and the towns and villages adjacent to it are here intended: See Gill on Mat_16:13;

and by the way he asked his disciples; as they were going from Galilee to those parts:

saying unto them; whom do men say that I am? not that he needed any information of this; for he knew not only what was said by men but What was in them; but he put this question, in order to bring out their sense of, and faith in him,

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and to impart something to them which was necessary they should be acquainted with; See Gill on Mat_16:13, where it is read, "whom do men say that I, the son of man am?"

HENRY, "1. Christ enquired of them what the sentiments of the people were concerning him; Who did men say that I am? Mar_8:27. Note, Though it is a small thing for us to be judged of men, yet it may sometimes do us good to know what people say of us, not that we may seek our own glory, but that we may hear our faults. Christ asked them, not that he might be informed, but that they might observe it themselves, and inform one another.

COFFMAN, "Caesarea Philippi ... is mentioned only here and in Matthew 16:13, these being the only New Testament references to the place. It was built by Herod Philip and named after Caesar, with his own name added to distinguish it from another Caesarea on the seacoast. It was situated in a beautiful valley near the base of Mt. Hermon some twenty miles north of the sea of Galilee, and was founded upon a massive limestone ledge, or terrace, the same having probably suggested Jesus' metaphor of making Peter's confession of Christ as the Son of God to be the "ledge" or "rock" upon which he built the church.

Who do men say that I am ...? This is the most important question which confronts people of all generations; and it was particularly important that the apostles should be instructed in the all-important fact of WHO Jesus is, and was, and shall be forever.

BARCLAY, "THE GREAT DISCOVERY (Mark 8:27-30)8:27-30 Jesus and his disciples went away to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. On the road he asked his disciples a question. "Who," he said to them, "do men say that I am?" They said to him, "Some say, John the Baptizer; others say, Elijah; others, one of the prophets." He asked them, "You--who do you say that I am?" Peter answered him, "You are God's Anointed One." And he insisted that they should tell no man about him.

Caesarea Philippi was outside Galilee altogether. It was not in the territory of Herod, but in the territory of Philip. It was a town with an amazing history. In the oldest days it was called Balinas, for it had once been a great centre of the worship of Baal. To this day it is called Banias, which is a form of Panias. It is so called because up on the hillside there was a cavern which was said to be the birthplace of the Greek God, Pan, the god of nature. From a cave in the hillside gushed forth a stream which was held to be the source of the River Jordan. Farther up on the hillside rose a gleaming temple of white marble which Philip had built to the godhead of Caesar, the Roman Emperor, the ruler of the world, who was regarded as a god.

It is an amazing thing that it was here of all places that Peter saw in a homeless Galilaean carpenter the Son of God. The ancient religion of Palestine was in the air, and the memories of Baal clustered around. The gods of classical Greece brooded over the place, and no doubt men heard the pipes of Pan and caught a glimpse of the woodland nymphs. The Jordan would bring back to memory

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episode after episode in the history of Israel and the conquest of the land. And clear in the eastern sun gleamed and glinted the marble of the holy place which reminded all men that Caesar was a god. There, of all places, as it were against the background of all religions and all history, Peter discovered that a wandering teacher from Nazareth, who was heading for a cross, was the Son of God. There is hardly anything in all the gospel story which shows the sheer force of the personality of Jesus as does this incident. It comes in the very middle of Mark's gospel and it does so designedly. for it comes at the gospel's peak moment. In one way at least this moment was the crisis of Jesus' life. Whatever his disciples might be thinking, he knew for certain that ahead lay an inescapable cross. Things could not go on much longer. The opposition was gathering itself to strike. The problem confronting Jesus was this--had he had any effect at all? Had he achieved anything? Or, to put it another way, had anyone discovered who he really was? If he had lived and taught and moved amongst men and no one had glimpsed God in him, then all his work had gone for nothing. There was only one way he could leave a message with men and that was to write it on some man's heart.

So, in this moment, Jesus put all things to the test. He asked his disciples what men were saying about him, and he heard from them the popular rumours and reports. Then came a breathless silence and he put the question which meant so much, "Who do you say that I am?" And suddenly Peter realized what he had always known deep down in his heart. This was the Messiah, the Christ, the Anointed One, the Son of God. And with that answer Jesus knew that he had not failed.

Now we come to a question which has been half-put and half-answered more than once before, but which now must be answered in detail or the whole gospel story is not fully intelligible. No sooner had Peter made this discovery than Jesus told him he must tell no man of it. Why? Because, first and foremost, Jesus had to teach Peter and the others what Messiahship really meant. To understand the task that Jesus had in hand and to understand the real meaning of this necessity, we have to enquire at some length what the Messianic ideas of the time of Jesus really were.

The Jewish Ideas Of The MessiahThroughout all their existence the Jews never forgot that they were in a very special sense God's chosen people. Because of that, they naturally looked to a very special place in the world. In the early days they looked forward to achieving that position by what we might call natural means. They always regarded the greatest days in their history as the days of David; and they dreamed of a day when there would arise another king of David's line, a king who would make them great in righteousness and in power. (Isaiah 9:7; Isaiah 11:1; Jeremiah 22:4; Jeremiah 23:5; Jeremiah 30:9.)

But as time went on it came to be pitilessly clear that this dreamed-of greatness would never be achieved by natural means. The ten tribes were carried off to Assyria and lost forever. The Babylonians conquered Jerusalem and carried the Jews away captive. Then came the Persians as their masters; then the Greeks;

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then the Romans. So far from knowing anything like dominion, for centuries the Jews never even knew what it was to be completely free and independent.

So another line of thought grew up. It is true that the idea of a great king of David's line never entirely vanished and was always intertwined in some way with their thought; but more and more they began to dream of a day when God would intervene in history and achieve by supernatural means that which natural means could never achieve. They looked for divine power to do what human power was helpless to do.

In between the Testaments were written a whole flood of books which were dreams and forecasts of this new age and the intervention of God. As a class they are called Apocalypses. The word literally means unveilings. These books were meant to be unveilings of the future. It is to them that we must turn to find out what the Jews believed in the time of Jesus about the Messiah and the work of the Messiah and the new age. It is against their dreams that we must set the dream of Jesus.

In these books certain basic ideas occur. We follow here the classification of these ideas given by Schurer, who wrote A History of the Jewish People in the Time of Jesus Christ.

(i) Before the Messiah came there would be a time of terrible tribulation. There would be a Messianic travail. It would be the birth-pangs of a new age. Every conceivable terror would burst upon the world; every standard of honour and decency would be torn down; the world would become a physical and moral chaos.

"And honour shall be turned into shame,

And strength humiliated into contempt,

And probity destroyed,

And beauty shall become ugliness...

And envy shall rise in those who had not thought

aught of themselves,

And passion shall seize him that is peaceful,

And many shall be stirred up in anger to injure many,

And they shall rouse up armies in order to shed blood,

And in the end they shall perish together with them."

(2Baruch 27.)

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There would be, "quakings of places, tumult of peoples, schemings of nations, confusion of leaders, disquietude of princes." (4Ezra 9:3.)

"From heaven shall fall fiery words down to the earth. Lights

shall come, bright and great, flashing into the midst of men; and

earth, the universal mother, shall shake in these days at the hand

of the Eternal. And the fishes of the sea and the beasts of the

earth and the countless tribes of flying things and all the souls

of men and every sea shall shudder at the presence of the Eternal

and there shall be panic. And the towering mountain peaks and the

hills of the giants he shall rend, and the murky abyss shall be

visible to all. And the high ravines in the lofty mountains shall

be full of dead bodies and rocks shall flow with blood and each

torrent shall flood the plain.... And God shall judge all with war

and sword, and there shall be brimstone from heaven, yea stones

and rain and hail incessant and grievous. And death shall be upon

the four-footed beasts.... Yea the land itself shall drink of the

blood of the perishing and beasts shall eat their fill of flesh."

(The Sibylline Oracles 3:363ff.)

The Mishnah enumerates as signs that the coming of the Messiah is near,

"That arrogance increases, ambition shoots up, that the vine

yields fruit yet wine is dear. The government turns to heresy.

There is no instruction. the synagogue is devoted to lewdness.

Galilee is destroyed, Gablan laid waste. The inhabitants of a

district go from city to city without finding compassion. The

wisdom of the learned is hated, the godly despised, truth is

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absent. Boys insult old men, old men stand in the presence of

children. The son depreciates the father, the daughter rebels

against the mother, the daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law.

A man's enemies are his house-fellows."

The time which preceded the coming of the Messiah was to be a time when the world was torn in pieces and every bond relaxed. The physical and the moral order would collapse.

(ii) Into this chaos there would come Elijah as the forerunner and herald of the Messiah. He was to heal the breaches and bring order into the chaos to prepare the way for the Messiah. in particular he was to mend disputes. In fact the Jewish oral law laid it down that money and property whose ownership was disputed, or anything found whose owner was unknown, must wait "till Elijah comes." When Elijah came the Messiah would not be far behind.

(iii) Then there would enter the Messiah. The word Messiah and the word Christ mean the same thing. Messiah is the Hebrew and Christ is the Greek for the Anointed One. A king was made king by anointing and the Messiah was God's Anointed King. It is important to remember that Christ is not a name; it is a title. Sometimes the Messiah was thought of as a king of David's line, but more often he was thought of as a great, super-human figure crashing into history to remake the world and in the end to vindicate God's people.

(iv) The nations would ally themselves and gather themselves together against the champion of God.

"The kings of the nations shall throw themselves against this

land bringing retribution on themselves. They shall seek to

ravage the shrine of the mighty God and of the noblest men

whensoever they come to the land. In a ring round the city the

accursed kings shall place each one his throne with his infidel

people by him. And then with a mighty voice God shall speak unto

all the undisciplined, empty-minded people and judgment shall

come upon them from the mighty God, and all shall perish at the

hand of the Eternal." (Sibylline Oracles 3: 363-372.)

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"It shall be that when all the nations hear his (the Messiah's)

voice, every man shall leave his own land and the warfare they

have one against the other, and an innumerable multitude shall be

gathered together desiring to fight against him."

(4Ezra 13:33-35.)

(v) The result would be the total destruction of these hostile powers. Philo said that the Messiah would "take the field and make war and destroy great and populous nations."

"He shall reprove them for their ungodliness,

Rebuke them for their unrighteousness,

Reproach them to their faces with their treacheries--

And when he has rebuked them he shall destroy them."

(4Ezra 12:32-33.)

"And it shall come to pass in those days that none shall be saved,

Either by gold or by silver,

And none shall be able to escape.

And there shall be no iron for war,

Nor shall one clothe oneself with a breastplate.

Bronze shall be of no service,

And tin shall not be esteemed,

And lead shall not be desired.

And all things shall be destroyed from the surface of the earth."

(Enoch5 2:7-9.)

The Messiah will be the most destructive conqueror in history, smashing his enemies into utter extinction.

(vi) There would follow the renovation of Jerusalem. Sometimes this was thought of as the purification of the existing city. More often it was thought of as the

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coming down of the new Jerusalem from heaven. The old house was to be folded up and carried away, and in the new one, "All the pillars were new and the ornaments larger than those of the first." (Enoch 90:28-29.)

(vii) The Jews who were dispersed all over the world would be gathered into the city of the new Jerusalem. To this day the Jewish daily prayer includes the petition, "Lift up a banner to gather our dispersed and assemble us from the four end?, of the earth." The eleventh of the Psalms of Solomon has a noble picture of that return.

"Blow ye in Zion on the trumpet to summon the saints,

Cause ye to be heard in Jerusalem the voice of him that

bringeth good tidings;

For God hath had pity on Israel in visiting them.

Stand on the height, O Jerusalem, and behold thy children,

From the East and the West, gathered together by the Lord,

From the North they come in the gladness of their God,

From the isles afar off God hath gathered them.

High mountains hath he abased into a plain for them;

The hills fled at their entrance.

The woods gave them shelter as they passed by;

Every sweet-smelling tree God caused to spring up for them,

That Israel might pass by in the visitation of the glory of

their God.

Put on, O Jerusalem, thy glorious garments;

Make ready thy holy robe;

For God hath spoken good for Israel forever and ever,

Let the Lord do what he hath spoken concerning Israel and

Jerusalem;

Let the Lord raise up Israel by his glorious name.

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The mercy of the Lord be upon Israel forever and ever."

It can easily be seen how Jewish this new world was to be. The nationalistic element is dominant all the time.

(viii) Palestine would be the centre of the world and the rest of the world subject to it. All the nations would be subdued.

Sometimes it was thought of as a peaceful subjugation.

"And all the isles and the cities shall say, How doth the

Eternal love those men! For all things work in sympathy with them

and help them.... Come let us all fall upon the earth and

supplicate the eternal King, the mighty, everlasting God. Let us

make procession to his Temple, for he is the sole Potentate."

(Sibylline Oracles 3:690ff.)

More often the fate of the Gentiles was utter destruction at which Israel would exult and rejoice.

"And he will appear to punish the Gentiles,

And he will destroy all their idols.

Then, thou, O Israel, shalt be happy.

And thou shalt mount upon the necks and the wings of the eagle

(i.e., Rome, the eagle, is to be destroyed)

And they shall be ended and God will exalt thee.

"And thou shalt look from on high

And see thine enemies in Gehenna,

And thou shalt recognize them and rejoice."

(Assumption of Moses 10:8-10.)

It was a grim picture. Israel would rejoice to see her enemies broken and in hell. Even the dead Israelites were to be raised up to share in the new world.

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(ix) Finally, there would come the new age of peace and goodness which would last forever.

These are the Messianic ideas which were in the minds of men when Jesus came. They were violent, nationalistic, destructive, vengeful. True, they ended in the perfect reign of God, but they came to it through a bath of blood and a career of conquest. Think of Jesus set against a background like that. No wonder he had to re-educate his disciples in the meaning of Messiahship; and no wonder they crucified him in the end as a heretic. There was no room for a cross and there was little room for suffering love in a picture like that.

CONSSTABLE, "Verse 27-28Jesus and his disciples continued traveling north from Bethsaida toward Caesarea Philippi, where Herod Philip lived, that stood about 25 miles away. The disciples confessed their belief that Jesus was Lord near the place where the pagans confessed that Caesar was Lord. Jesus asked the question in Mark 8:27 with a view to asking the second question in Mark 8:29. In Mark, Jesus' questions often led to new teaching (cf. Mark 9:33; Mark 12:24; Mark 12:35). The popular answers to Jesus' first question all reflect an inadequate view of Him. They assigned Jesus a preparatory role but failed to recognize His consummative role. Evidently few people believed that Jesus was the Messiah, so the disciples did not even mention that possibility.

Verses 27-306. Peter's confession of faith 8:27-30 (cf. Matthew 16:13-20; Luke 9:18-21)

The healing of the deaf man with the speech impediment resulted in a confession of Jesus' greatness that fell short of identifying Him as God (Mark 7:37). The healing of the blind man was the incident that God used to open the disciples' eyes to the biblical messianic identity of Jesus that Peter articulated.

Mark further highlighted the cause and effect relationship between these last two events by structuring the pericopes similarly. First, he presented the circumstances (Mark 8:22; Mark 8:27). Second, he described partial sight and understanding (Mark 8:23-24; Mark 8:28). Third, he recorded the giving of sight and understanding (Mark 8:25; Mark 8:29). Fourth, he noted Jesus' command to remain silent (Mark 8:26; Mark 8:30). [Note: Wessel, p. 692.]

"Mark has placed at the center of his narrative the recognition that Jesus is the Messiah. The pivotal importance of this moment is indicated by the fact that already in the first line of the Gospel the evangelist designates Jesus as the Messiah. Yet between Ch. Mark 1:1 and Ch. Mark 8:29 there is no recognition of this fact in spite of a remarkable sequence of events which demanded a decision concerning Jesus' identity. ..."The recognition that Jesus is the Messiah is thus the point of intersection toward which all the theological currents of the first half of the Gospel converge and from which the dynamic of the second half of the Gospel derives. In no other way could Mark more sharply indicate the historical and theological significance of the conversation in the neighborhood of Caesarea Philippi." [Note: Lane, pp.

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288, 289.]

BURKITT, "Verse 27These verses relate to us a conference which our Saviour had with his disciples, touching their own and others opinion of his person.

Where observe, 1. The place where Christ and his disciples did confer; it was in the way as they walked together. Teaching us our duty to take all occasions and opportunities for holy conference, to good discourse touching spiritual things, when in the house, when in the field, when travelling in the way, Then they that feared the Lord spake often one to another. Malachi 3:16

Observe, 2. The conference itself: Whom do men say that I am? That is, What do the common people think and speak of me? Not as if Christ were ignorant what men said of him, or did vain-gloriously enquire after the opinion of the multitude concerning him; but with an intention more firmly to settle and establish his disciples in the belief of his being the true and promised Messias. The disciples tell him, That some said, He was John the Baptist, others Elias, others one of the prophets. It is no new thing, it seems, to find diversity of judgments and opinions concerning Christ, and the affairs of his kingdom. When our Saviour was amongst men, who daily conversed with him, yet was there then a great diversity of opinions concerning him.

Observe, 3. How St. Peter, as the mouth of all the apostles, and in their names make a full and oepn confession of Christ, acknowledging him to be the true and promised Messiah: Peter said, Thou art the Christ.

Whence note, That the veil of Christ's human nature did not keep the eye of his disciples faith from seeing him to be truly and really God.

2. That Jesus the sons of the virgin Mary, was the Christ, the true Messiah, or the person ordained by God to be the Mediator betwixt God and man: the Redeemer and Saviour of mankind: Thou art the Christ.

Observe, 4. The charge and special injunction given by our Saviour to tell no man of him: that is, not commonly and openly to declare that he was the Son of God and the true Messiah: because he was now in his state of humiliation, and the glory of his divinity was to be concealed till his resurrection. Christ had his own fit-times and proper seasons, in which he revealed the great mysteries of his kingdom to the world.

Observe, 5. The great wisdom of our Saviour in acquainting his disciples with the near approach of his death and passion; thereby to prevent that scandal and offence which otherwise they might have taken at his sufferings; the better to fit and prepare them to bear that great trial, and to correct the error which they had entertained touching an earthly kingdom of Christ: that the Messiah was to be a temporal prince.

Observe, 6. St. Peter's carriage towards Christ upon this occasion; He took him

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aside, and began to blame him for affirming that he must die. O how ready is flesh and blood to oppose all that tends to suffering! What need have we to be ortified against the temptations of our friends, as well as of our enemies! Satan sometimes makes use of good men as his instrument to do his work by, when they little suspect it. Little did Peter think, that Satan now set him on work to hinder the redemption of mankind, by dissuading Christ from dying.

Observe, 7. With what indignation Christ rejects Peter's admonition; Get thee behind, me Satan. Christ heard Satan speaking in Peter; it was Peter's tongue, but Satan tuned it, therefore Christ calls Peter by Satan's name. They that will do the devil's work, shall have the devil's name too. He that would hinder the redemption of mankind is Satan, an adversary to mankind.

From our Saviour's smart reproof given to Peter, we learn, That no respect to men's persons, or regard to their piety, must cause us, to flatter them in their sins, or move us to speak favourably of their sins. As well as our Saviour loved Peter he rebukes him severely.

O Lord! so intent was thy heart upon the great work of our redemption, that thou couldst not bear the least word that should obstruct thee in it, or divert thee from it.

MACLAREN, "CHRIST'S CROSS, AND OURS

Our Lord led His disciples away from familiar ground into the comparative seclusion of the country round Caesarea Philippi, in order to tell them plainly of His death. He knew how terrible the announcement would be, and He desired to make it in some quiet spot, where there would be collectedness and leisure to let it sink into their minds. His consummate wisdom and perfect tenderness are equally and beautifully shown in His manner of disclosing the truth which would try their faithfulness and fortitude. From the beginning He had given hints, gradually increasing in clearness; and now the time had come for full disclosure. What a journey that was! He, with the heavy secret filling His thoughts; they, dimly aware of something absorbing Him, in which they had no part. And at last, ‘in the way,’ as if moved by some sudden impulse-like that which we all know, leading us to speak out abruptly what we have long waited to say-He gives them a share in the burden of His thought. But, even then, note how He leads up to it by degrees. This passage has the announcement of the Cross as its centre, prepared for, on the one hand, by a question, and followed, on the other, by a warning that His followers must travel the same road.

I. Note the preparation for the announcement of the Cross (Mar_8:27 -Mar_8:30).

Why did Christ begin by asking about the popular judgment of His personality? Apparently in order to bring clearly home to the disciples that, as far as the masses were concerned, His work and theirs had failed, and had, for net result, total misconception. Who that had the faintest glimmer of what He was could suppose that the stern, fiery spirits of Elijah or John had come to life again in Him? The second question, ‘But whom say ye that I am?’ with its sharp transition, is meant to force home the conviction of the gulf between His disciples and the whole nation. He would have them feel their isolation, and face the fact that they stood alone in their faith; and He would test them whether, knowing that they did stand alone, they had courage and tenacity to re-assert it. The unpopularity of a belief drives away cowards,

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and draws the brave and true. If none else believed in Him, that was an additional reason for loving hearts to cleave to Him; and those only truly know and love Him who are ready to stand by Him, if they stand alone- Athanasius contra mundum. Mark, too, that this is the all-important question for every man. Our own individual ‘thought’ of Him determines our whole worth and fate.

Mark gives Peter’s confession in a lower key, as it were, than Matthew does, omitting the full-toned clause, ‘The Son of the living God.’ This is not because Mark has a lower conception than his brother Evangelist, for the first words of this Gospel announce that it is ‘the Gospel of Jesus, the Messiah, the Son of God.’ And, as he has identified the two conceptions at the outset, he must, in all fairness, be supposed to consider that the one implies the other, and to include both here. But possibly there is truth in the observation that the omission is one of a number of instances in which this Gospel passes lightly over the exalted side of Christ’s nature, in accordance with its purpose of setting Him forth rather as the Servant than as the Lord. It is not meant that that exalted side was absent from Mark’s thoughts, but that his design led him rather to emphasise the other. Matthew’s is the Gospel of the King; Mark’s, of the Worker.

The omission of Christ’s eulogium on Peter has often been pointed out as an interesting corroboration of the tradition that he was Mark’s source; and perhaps the failure to record the praise, and the carefulness to tell the subsequent rebuke, reveal the humble-hearted ‘elder’ into whom the self-confident young Apostle had grown. Flesh delights to recall praise; faith and self-knowledge find more profit in remembering errors forgiven and rebukes deserved, and in their severity, most loving. How did these questions and their answers serve as introduction to the announcement of the Cross? In several ways. They brought clearly before the disciples the hard fact of Christ’s rejection by the popular voice, and defined their own position as sharply antagonistic. If His claims were thus unanimously tossed aside, a collision must come. A rejected Messiah could not fail to be, sooner or later, a slain Messiah. Then clear, firm faith in His Messiahship was needed to enable them to stand the ordeal to which the announcement, and, still more, its fulfilment, would subject them. A suffering Messiah might be a rude shock to all their dreams; but a suffering Jesus, who was not Messiah, would have been the end of their discipleship. Again, the significance and worth of the Cross could only be understood when seen in the light of that great confession. Even as now, we must believe that He who died was the Son of the living God before we can see what that Death was and did. An imperfect conception of who Jesus is takes the meaning and the power out of all His life, but, most of all, impoverishes the infinite preciousness of His Death.

The charge of silence contrasts singularly with the former employment of the Apostles as heralds of Jesus. The silence was partly punitive and partly prudential. It was punitive, inasmuch as the people had already had abundantly the proclamation of His gospel, and had cast it away. It was in accordance with the solemn law of God’s retributive justice that offers rejected should be withdrawn; and from them that had not, even that which they had should be taken away. Christ never bids His servants be silent until men have refused to hear their speech. The silence enjoined was also prudential, in order to avoid hastening on the inevitable collision; not because Christ desired escape, but because He would first fulfil His day.

II. We have here the announcement of the Cross (Mar_8:31 - Mar_8:33).

There had been many hints before this; for Christ saw the end from the beginning, however far back in the depths of time or eternity we place that beginning. We do not sufficiently realise that His Death was before Him, all through His days, as the great purpose for which He had come. If the anticipation of sorrow is the multiplication of

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sorrow, even when there is hope of escaping it, how much must His have been multiplied, and bitterness been diffused through all His life, by that foresight, so clear and constant, of the certain end! How much more gracious and wonderful His quick sympathy, His patient self forgetfulness, His unwearied toil, show against that dark background! Mark here the solemn necessity. Why ‘must’ He suffer? Not because of the enmity of the three sets of rejecters. He recognises no necessity which is imposed by hostile human power. The cords which bind this sacrifice to the horns of the altar were not spun by men’s hands. The great ‘must’ which ruled His life was a cable of two strands- obedience to the Father, and love to men. These haled Him to the Cross, and fastened Him there. He would save; therefore He ‘must’ die. The same ‘must’ stretches beyond death. Resurrection is a part of His whole work; and, without it, His Death has no power, but falls into the undistinguished mass of human mortality. Bewildered as the disciples were, that assurance of resurrection had little present force, but even then would faintly hint at some comfort and blessed mystery. What was to them a nebulous hope is to us a sun of certitude and cheer, ‘Christ that died’ is no gospel until you go on to say, ‘Yea, rather, that is risen again.’

Peter’s rash ‘rebuke,’ like most of his appearances in the Gospel, is strangely compounded of warm-hearted, impulsive love and presumptuous self-confidence. No doubt, the praise which he had just received had turned his head, not very steady in these early days at its best, and the dignity which had been promised him would seem to him to be sadly overclouded by the prospect opened in Christ’s forecast. But he was not thinking of himself; and when he said, ‘This shall not be unto Thee,’ probably he meant to suggest that they would all draw the sword to defend their Master. Mark’s use of the word ‘rebuke,’ which is also Matthew’s, seems to imply that he found fault with Christ. For what? Probably for not trusting to His followers’ arms, or for letting Himself become a victim to the ‘must,’ which Peter thought of as depending only on the power of the ecclesiastics in Jerusalem. He blames Christ for not hoisting the flag of a revolt.

This blind love was the nearest approach to sympathy which Christ received; and it was repugnant to Him, so as to draw the sharpest words from Him that He ever spoke to a loving heart. In his eagerness, Peter had taken Jesus on one side to whisper his suggestion; but Christ will have all hear His rejection of the counsel. Therefore He ‘turned about,’ facing the rest of the group, and by the act putting Peter behind Him, and spoke aloud the stern words. Not thus was He wont to repel ignorant love, nor to tell out faults in public; but the act witnessed to the recoil of His fixed spirit from the temptation which addressed His natural human shrinking from death, as well as to His desire that once for all, every dream of resistance by force should be shattered. He hears in Peter’s voice the tone of that other voice, which, in the wilderness, had suggested the same temptation to escape the Cross and win the crown by worshipping the Devil; and he puts the meaning of His instinctive gesture into the same words in which he had rejected that earlier seducing suggestion. Jesus was a man, and ‘the things that be of men’ found a response in His sinless nature. It shrank from pain and the Cross with innocent and inevitable shrinking. Does not the very severity of the rebuke testify to its having set some chords vibrating in His soul? Note that it may be the work of ‘Satan’ to appeal to ‘the things that be of men,’ however innocent, if by so doing obedience to God’s will is hindered. Note, too, that a Simon may be ‘Peter’ at one moment, and ‘Satan’ at the next.

III. We have here the announcement of the Cross as the law for the disciples too (Mar_8:34 - Mar_8:38).

Christ’s followers must follow, but men can choose whether they will be His followers or not. So the ‘must’ is changed into ‘let him,’ and the ‘if any man will’ is put in the forefront. The conditions are fixed, but the choice as to accepting the position is free.

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A wider circle hears the terms of discipleship than heard the announcement of Christ’s own sufferings. The terms are for all and for us. The law is stated in Mar_8:34, and then a series of reasons for it, and motives for accepting it, follow.

The law for every disciple is self-denial and taking up his cross. How present His own Cross must have been to Christ’s vision, since the thought is introduced here, though He had not spoken of it, in foretelling His own death! It is not Christ’s Cross that we have to take up. His sufferings stand alone, incapable of repetition and needing none; but each follower has his own. To slay the life of self is always pain, and there is no discipleship without crucifying ‘the old man.’ Taking up my cross does not merely mean meekly accepting God-sent or men-inflicted sorrows, but persistently carrying on the special form of self-denial which my special type of character requires. It will include these other meanings, but it goes deeper than they. Such self-immolation is the same thing as following Christ; for, with all the infinite difference between His Cross and ours, they are both crosses, and on the one hand there is no real discipleship without self-denial, and on the other there is no full self-denial without discipleship.

The first of the reasons for the law, in Mar_8:35, is a paradox, and a truth with two sides. To wish to save life is to lose it; to lose it for Christ’s sake is to save it. Both are true, even without taking the future into account. The life of self is death; the death of the lower self is the life of the true self. The man who lives absorbed in the miserable care for his own well-being is dead to all which makes life noble, sweet, and real. Flagrant vice is not needed to kill the real life. Clean, respectable selfishness does the work effectually. The deadly gas is invisible, and has no smell. But while all selfishness is fatal, it is self-surrender and sacrifice, ‘for My sake and the gospel’s,’ which is life-giving. Heroism, generous self-devotion without love to Christ, is noble, but falls short of discipleship, and may even aggravate the sin of the man who exhibits it, because it shows what treasures he could lay at Christ’s feet, if he would. It is only self-denial made sweet by reference to Him that leads to life. Who is this who thus demands that He should be the motive for which men shall ‘hate’ their own lives, and calmly assumes power to reward such sacrifice with a better life? The paradox is true, if we include a reference to the future, which is usually taken to be its only meaning; but on that familiar thought we need not enlarge.

The ‘for’ of Mar_8:36 seems to refer back to the law in Mar_8:34, and the verse enforces the command by an appeal to self-interest, which, in the highest sense of the word, dictates self-sacrifice. The men who live for self are dead, as Christ has been saying. Suppose their self-living had been ‘successful’ to the highest point, what would be the good of all the world to a dead man? ‘Shrouds have no pockets.’ He makes a poor bargain who sells his soul for the world. A man gets rich, and in the process drops generous impulses, affections, interest in noble things, perhaps principle and religion. He has shrivelled and hardened into a mere fragment of himself; and so, when success comes, he cannot much enjoy it, and was happier, poor and sympathetic and enthusiastic and generous, than he is now, rich and dwindled. He who loses himself in gaining the world does not win it, but is mastered by it. This motive, too, like the preceding, has a double application-to the facts of life here, when they are seen in their deepest reality, and to the solemn future.

To that future our Lord passes, as His last reason for the command and motive for obeying it, in Mar_8:38. One great hindrance to out-and-out discipleship is fear of what the world will say. Hence come compromises and weak compliance on the part of disciples too timid to stand alone, or too sensitive to face a sarcasm and a smile. A wholesome contempt for the world’s cackle is needed for following Christ. The geese on the common hiss at the passer-by who goes steadily through the flock. How grave and awful is that irony, if we may call it so, which casts the retribution in the mould

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of the sin! The judge shall be ‘ashamed’ of such unworthy disciples-shall blush to own such as His. May we venture to put stress on the fact that He does not say that He will reject them? They who were ashamed of Him were secret and imperfect disciples. Perhaps, though He be ashamed of them, though they have brought Him no credit, He will not wholly turn from them.

How marvellous the transition from the prediction of the Cross to this of the Throne! The Son of Man must suffer many things, and the same Son of Man shall come, attended by hosts of spirits who own Him for their King, and surrounded by the uncreated blaze of the glory of God in which He sits throned as His native abode. We do not know Jesus unless we know Him as the crucified Sacrifice for the world’s sins, and as the exalted Judge of the world’s deeds.

He adds a weighty word of enigmatical meaning, lest any should think that He was speaking only of some far-off judgment. The destruction of Jerusalem seems to be the event intended, which was, in fact, the beginning of retribution for Israel, and the starting-point of a more conspicuous manifestation of the kingdom of God. It was, therefore, a kind of rehearsal, or picture in little, of that coming and ultimate great day of the Lord, and was meant to be a ‘sign’ that it should surely come.

BI 27-30, "Whom do men say that I am?

This conversation may be taken in three points of view

I. Jesus Christ the subject of universal inquiry. He appeals to all men.

1. By the variety of His works.

2. By the vitality of His teaching.

3. As the “Son of Man.”

II. Jesus Christ demanding special testimony. His followers are called-

1. To knowledge.

2. To profession.

3. To individuality of testimony.

III. Jesus Christ is revealed by His works rather than by verbal profession. (Dr. Parker.)

Personal religion

I. Christ put to the disciples themselves the question, “Whom say ye that I am?”

1. Christ would turn their thoughts from others to themselves.

2. He does not take for granted that because they externally follow Him, they know Him.

3. He examines them on the most important of all points.

4. He examines them through themselves.

5. He leads them to make a confession of their faith.

6. He puts them in a different class from the multitude.

II. To this question, Peter replied for all the disciples. Their answer was-

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1. Prompt. They had been convinced of His Messiahship.

2. Unanimous. The creed was very short-of one article, all held it.

3. Correct.

4. The result of Divine teaching.

5. On this answer the Church was to be built.

III. Christ prohibits them from publishing what they knew of Him, in present circumstances.

1. He would deal with them Himself.

2. The proof of His Messiahship was not complete.

3. The Jews were not prepared.

4. The apostles were not qualified. (Expository Discourses.)

Whom do men say that I am

I. The opinions that men entertained respecting Christ were of the utmost importance.

1. According to these, they would act, and be dealt with, in this the day of their visitation.

2. Without a knowledge of Christ they could not rely on Him for their own personal salvation.

3. Their opinions respecting Christ indicated their own true state and character. What think ye of Christ?

II. Christ was concerned for the opinions of men respecting Himself.

1. Having sown, He now looks for the fruit.

2. If He has not been a “savour of life unto life,” He has been a “savour of death unto death.”

3. He has shown us that we should Hot be indifferent as to human opinion respecting ourselves.

III. Christ held men responsible for their opinions respecting Him. As man’s judge, He deals with their belief.

IV. Christ applies to His disciples for an account of the opinions which men had of Him.

1. Not because He was ignorant, etc.

2. But He taught the apostles that it was part of their duty to mark the state of their fellow men.

3. We ought to look on the things of others, and especially their eternal interests. (Expository Discourses.)

The knowledge of Christ revealed by God

The claim of Jesus to be the Messiah should be examined.

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I. Such knowledge of Christ as the true Messiah cannot be communicated by man to man. We may have an acquaintance with ancient records of kingdoms and states that have passed away; we may acquire an intimate acquaintance with warriors, and heroes, and statesmen, and early monarchs, and yet be utterly uninfluenced and unaffected by what we learn; we may read of much that is heroic, and noble, and heart-stirring, in the achievements of many masterminds of days that are gone by, and only have our minds influenced, as by a bright and glowing dream. And so may it be with the Scripture records. We may be delighted, not only with the detail of ancient history, as recorded in the Bible, but we may be touched with the poetry and the pathos with which the Bible abounds, and we may acquire such an appetite for the Bible, in that sense, as shall induce us to come to it, as affording the most pleasant, and delightful, and intellectual study, and yet be unacquainted with Jesus, the Son of Man and the Son of God, and the one Mediator between our sinful souls and God; and instances are to be found, and ever have been, in which the mind has been stored with the truth, and the heart untouched by it. It is because we have reason to fear that this is too common, that we press upon you the fact that a merely intellectual acquaintance with the Bible is not such an acquaintance with Christ as will meet the necessity of your case. A speculative knowledge of Christ may be acquired by the exercise of the natural faculties; systems of theology may be conceived, magnificent and striking views may be obtained; and yet the heart of a man, as a sinner, may be altogether unmoved. He may contemplate the wondrous plan of redemption, as centred in Christ, and as achieved by Christ, “in the fulness of time”: but he may never feel the want of redemption. He may read, and be assured of the fact, that “God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life,” and yet never be in fear of perishing for want of Christ. He may read, and be well assured of the fact, that “God hath given to us eternal life, and that this life is in His Son”; he may go on, and read the next verse, in which it is affirmed, “He that hath the Son hath life, but he that hath not the Son hath not life,” and set remain destitute of the “life,” which God has given in Christ, because he as yet knows not that he is “dead in trespasses and sins.” He may know, and be ready to declare, without fearing contradiction, that Christ hath “abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light by the gospel”; but he may not know (or if he does, he is not influenced by the knowledge) that he is still subject to all the consequences of sin which Jesus came to remove. He may read in another place, that “the gift of God is eternal life,” and yet be ignorant that all his life he has been earning “the wages of sin,” which “is death.”

II. That revelation then, must be first general; and secondly, particular. “Blessed art thou, Simon Barjona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father, which is in heaven.” It is the prerogative of the Father in heaven to reveal His Son. Angels cannot tell what Jesus is; the highest intellect in heaven would fail to reveal it. But the Father does reveal it. But as we have seen that multitudes remain ignorant, though God has opened the page of revelation, we need a particular revelation. The Bible is a revelation from God the Father to us; but we need a revelation of Christ in us. During all lives, God has revealed Christ to us; but has He revealed Christ in us. It must be the result o! an express revelation from God the Father, through His own blessed Spirit, to our inward souls; it must be the everlasting Spirit “taking of the things of Christ, and showing them to us.”

III. That blessed are they who have such a knowledge of Christ, as a revelation from God. “Blessed art thou, Simon,” etc. There is no true state that can be deemed blessed, but that which results from a saving knowledge of Christ. He who has this revelation is blessed.

1. In the certainty of his knowledge. He hath the witness in himself.

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2. In the reality of the effects of the truth. “The truth has made him free.” He is “an heir of God, and a joint heir with Christ.”

3. In the final and eternal results which follow. “Eye hath not seen,” etc. (G. Fisk, LL. B.)

Who am I

I. The popular impression concerning Jesus.

II. The apostolic confession regarding Jesus.

III. The acceptance by Jesus of this confession.

1. The immense importance of the answer given to this question.

2. The utter inadequacy of any answer to this question save one.

3. The complete satisfaction which the true answer affords. (J. R. Thomson, M. A.)

“Whom say ye that I am?”

I. It is evident, from the history, that our Lord desired to awaken some sort of anxiety in the minds of His followers, and to excite their feelings of loyalty to truth and to Himself, so that they might be upon their guard against disaffection under any popular pressure, or any wild popular perversions of His character or mission.

II. This, then, was the great confession of faith, which has come down to us through the ages.

1. First, it will follow from a story like this, that it is of vast consequence what a man believes, and all the more if he be sincere in his creed.

2. We learn also that it is not enough to admit the bare record, and so simply consent to an historic Christ.

3. Again, to a human soul, struggling for its immortal life, Jesus the Saviour is everything at once, or He is nothing forever. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

28 They replied, “Some say John the Baptist; others say Elijah; and still others, one of the prophets.”

GILL, "And they answered,.... That some said he was

John the Baptist; which was the opinion of Herod, and others:

but some say Elias; that is the "Tishbite", whom the Jews in general expected in

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person before the coming of the Messiah and imagined that Jesus was he:

and others one of the prophets; as Jeremiah or Isaiah or some other. The Vulgate Latin reads, "as one of the prophets"; and so Beza's ancient copy as in Mar_6:15. All spake highly and honourably of him: the people in common did not look upon him as a mean person; they perceived by his doctrine and more especially by his miracles that he was an extraordinary one: the several persons which they differently took him to be and make mention of were such as were of great repute; as John the Baptist, who had lately, been among them and whom all held to be a prophet, and indeed was more than a prophet; and Elias who was so very zealous for the Lord of hosts and wrought many miracles in his day; and whose coming the Jews were in expectation of to usher in the Messiah; and none thought him less than one of the prophets; and all agreed he was an uncommon man; even one raised from the dead as he must be, if he was John the Baptist or Elias or one of the old prophets; but they knew him not at least did not confess him to be the Messiah; he not appearing as a temporal prince, they were taught to believe he would be; See Gill on Mat_16:14.

HENRY, "2. The account they gave him, was such as plainly intimated the high opinion the people had of him. Though they came short of the truth, yet they were convinced by his miracles that he was an extraordinary person, sent from the invisible world with a divine commission. It is probable that they would have acknowledged him to be the Messiah, if they had not been possessed by their teachers with a notion that the Messiah must be a temporal Prince, appearing in external pomp and power, which the figure Christ made, would not comport with; yet (whatever the Pharisees said, whose copyhold was touched by the strictness and spirituality of his doctrine) none of the people said that he was a Deceiver, but some said that he was John Baptist, others Elias, others one of the prophets, Mar_8:28. All agreed that he was one risen from the dead.

JAMIESON, "Mar_8:27-38. Peter’s noble confession of Christ - Our Lord’s first explicit announcement of His approaching sufferings, death, and resurrection - His rebuke of Peter, and warning to all the twelve. ( = Mat_16:13-27; Luk_9:18-26).

For the exposition, see on Mat_16:13-28.

COFFMAN, "Significantly, the popular appraisal of Jesus' identity had been eroded and compromised by the savage campaign of vilification and misrepresentation which the religious leaders were so vigorously prosecuting against Jesus. From implications in all the synoptics, and from the most powerful assertions in John, it is clear that in Jesus' early contacts with the people he was readily hailed as the Messiah, or the Son of God, or King of Israel, as in the case of Nathaniel; but the evil campaign of the Pharisees had taken its toll, and at this point, the popular view extolled Christ merely as a prophet, or Elijah, Jeremiah, or John the Baptist, thus according him a noble place of honor but falling short of hailing him as the Son of God. Satan was pleased to have the Lord hailed as some great one, as long as he was not recognized as the Greatest One.

The episode recorded here provides the watershed of Mark's gospel; Cranfield stated that here "the second half of the gospel begins."[8] To this point, the great thrust of the gospel was directed to the establishment of our Lord as a divine person, reaching its glorious climax in Peter's confession of "the Christ." The

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second half of the gospel is the road to Calvary, marked here at the outset with the first announcement of his Passion and a dramatic shift of the Master's teaching to the phase of personal instructions for the apostles and away from teaching the multitudes.

This verse regarding the popular opinions of our Lord's identity has been seized upon by skeptics who have made it the basis of alleging a contradiction between John and the synoptics; but such allegations are illogical and irresponsible. The point in the synoptics is not that Jesus had never been publicly recognized as the Christ but that the counter-campaign of the religious hierarchy which was directed against the general recognition of his Messiahship had, to this point, been very successful. Their campaign against it proves that the recognition of Jesus as the Christ was sufficiently widespread to demand their campaign. See more on this in my Commentary on Matthew, p. 243.

ENDNOTE:

[8] C. E. B. Cranfield, op. cit., p. 266.

29 “But what about you?” he asked. “Who do you say I am?”

Peter answered, “You are the Messiah.”

CLARKE, "Thou art the Christ - Three MSS. and some versions add, the Son of the living God.

GILL, "And he saith unto them, but whom say ye that I am?.... It was for the sake of this question he put the former; See Gill on Mat_16:15;

and Peter answereth and saith unto him, thou art the Christ; the Messiah that was long ago promised and so often prophesied of in the books of Moses and the prophets; and whom the Jews have so much and long expected. This confession of Peter's in which all the apostles agreed with him speaks out what Jesus really was, and exceeds the most exalted sentiments which the people had of him: he was not the harbinger of the Messiah but the Messiah himself; not Elias in whose Spirit his forerunner was to come and did come; nor any one of the prophets; but he who was spoken of by all the holy prophets; which have been since the beginning of the world. Not one of the various opinions of the people being just, and answering the true character of Jesus, he demands the sense of his disciples which is here given by Peter

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in their name, and which was right; and on account of which he declared Peter blessed and ascribed his knowledge of him not to flesh and blood but to the revelation of his Father. The Syriac and Persic versions add, "the Son of the living God"; and so Beza found it in one ancient copy; but it may be it is only taken from Mat_16:16; See Gill on Mat_16:16.

HENRY, "3. The account they gave him of their own sentiments concerning him, intimated their abundant satisfaction in him, and in their having left all to follow him, which now, after some time of trial, they see no reason to repent; But whom say ye that I am? To this they have an answer ready, Thou art the Christ, the Messiah often promised, and long expected, Mar_8:29. To be a Christian indeed, is, sincerely to believe that Jesus is the Christ, and to act accordingly; and that he is so, plainly appears by his wondrous works.

COFFMAN, "It is never enough to know what others believe regarding the identity of our Lord; and the answer to the question here pressed upon his apostles by the Saviour is exactly the pivot upon which the destiny of every soul on earth is turned. Peter, apparently speaking for all of the Twelve, confessed, "Thou art the Christ." The record in Mark is a summary which omits the following references to: the Son of the living God, Christ's confession of Peter, the promise to build his church on the rock, the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the gates of Hades, and binding and loosing on earth. This commentator's volume on Matthew has some eleven pages of text devoted to the discussion of these things and of such related topics as the primacy of Peter, the so-called Petrine succession, and other questions raised by Matthew's more complete account of this key episode. See my Commentary on Matthew, pp. 243-253.

Thou art the Christ ... is shorter than the confession as given by Matthew, "Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God"; but it is in no sense inadequate, summarizing, as it does in these four words, the grand total of the power and godhead of the Son of God. As Cranfield declared:

This title (The Christ), in spite of all the false and narrow hopes which had become attached to it (in the popular thought of that day), was peculiarly fitted to express his true relation both to the Old Testament and to the people of God.[9]ENDNOTE:

[9] Ibid., p. 270.

NISBET, "THE GREAT CONFESSION‘Whom say ye that I am? And Peter answereth and saith unto Him, Thou art the Christ.’Mark 8:29This incident arose out of a conversatfon ‘by the way.’ Happy are those journeys in which time is not wasted on trifles.

I. The variety of opinions about Christ.—Every kind of opinion appears to have been current, excepting that one which was true. We may see the same thing on every side at the present day. Christ and His Gospel are just as little understood

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and are the subject of just as many different opinions now as they were then.

II. The great confession.—St. Peter witnessed, ‘Thou art the Christ.’ His strong faith was not stumbled by our Lord’s poverty and low estate. His confidence was not shaken by the opposition of scribes and Pharisees, and the contempt of rulers and priests. None of these things moved Simon Peter. He believed that He Whom he followed, Jesus of Nazareth, was the promised Saviour.

Bishop J. C. Ryle.Illustration

‘“Whom say ye that I am?” Not one of us will get to heaven by what other people think and do; no use to us that other people serve God, it is what we think, what we do, how we serve Christ, and the lesson is a straight question for each of us. Who answered? Not “they,” but St. Peter. Just at that moment he saw the truth; he was afraid of nobody, stopped to think of nobody, answered just what was in his heart, warm, as such an impulsive heart would be. “Thou art the Christ”—a rush of words, so quick that they must have come of sincere belief, and the sudden conviction sent by God that all the wonderful things he had seen Jesus do were of God. On a dark night out over the sea there is nothing to be discerned. Suddenly a flash-light—searchlight—shines out full and steadily, and all sorts of craft appear—boats which had been there all the time, but unseen because of the dark. The light revealed them! So it was the light of God the Holy Spirit, which on the sudden shined in Peter’s heart, and he knew and saw Jesus as God (Matthew 16:17, and 1 Corinthians 2:10). Have we ever seen Jesus in that way? If not, it is because we are in the dark, our eyes cannot pierce the blackness of our sin, our habits, or it may be we are not looking! No light, however strong, could be of any use if we will not turn the way it comes. Peter was looking, so Peter saw; and we shall only have ourselves to blame if we end in the dark.’

(SECOND OUTLINE)WHO IS THIS?In this utterance it is evident all the twelve concurred. It is difficult for us to understand how decided an advance they have now made upon the position they had formerly occupied, and in what manner the great truth dawned upon their minds. Mark’s brevity here condenses the fuller saying of the Apostle, as recorded in the other gospels.

I. What think ye of Christ?—Consider the immense importance of the answer to be given to this question which Jesus puts to all readers and hearers of the Gospel.

II. Only one answer.—There is an utter inadequacy in every answer to this question save one. Your view of Jesus may be a just and scriptural view as far as it goes; but this is insufficient, unless you give the answer which St. Peter gave and Christ accepted.

III. Complete satisfaction.—The true answer to this question, when sincerely given, and this alone, can afford complete satisfaction. Upon the Divine character

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and the Divine mission of Christ you may build your earthly life and your immortal hopes.

Illustration

‘“In the Creed” (as Augustine reminds us), “the Faith is given to Christians to hold in few words, that by believing they may be made subject unto God; having been made subject, they live rightly; by living rightly, may cleanse their hearts; with a cleansed heart, may understand what they believe.… Call thy Faith to mind continually, look into thyself, let the Creed be as it were a mirror unto thee. Therein see thyself, whether thou dost believe all which thou professest to believe, and so rejoice day by day in thy Faith. Let it be thy wealth—let it be, in a sort, the daily clothing of thy soul; for this Faith is at once a garment and a breastplate—a garment against shame, a breastplate against adversity. But when we shall have arrived at that place where we shall reign, no need will there then be to say the Creed. We shall see God. God Himself will be our Vision; the Vision of God will be the reward of our present Faith.”’

CONSTABLE, "Verse 29Jesus stressed "you" when He asked this question. He wanted to know whom the disciples, in contrast to the multitudes, believed He was. Peter spoke for the disciples. The other disciples evidently agreed with his statement and made no objection. This is the first time in Mark that Peter acted as spokesman for the Twelve. Yet from this time on, Peter was the prominent representative of the other disciples. Peter's name appears twice in Mark before and 16 times after this incident. It occurs five times before this incident in Matthew , 18 times after, four times in Luke before and 16 times after, and four times in John before and 29 times after. [Note: Hiebert, p. 203, footnote 3.]

". . . Peter's name, 'Rock,' is ironic, for he thinks he is like a rock. He happens to be the opposite of what his nickname suggests, for he falls asleep and later falls apart under the incriminating remarks of a maid of the High Priest." [Note: Rhoads and Michie, p. 60.]"Christ" is the English transliteration of the Greek christos that translates the Hebrew masiah meaning "anointed one." Originally this Hebrew term had a broad meaning and included anyone anointed by God, including priests, kings, and prophets. Later in the Old Testament it came to have the technical meaning of the divine Davidic king who would appear to deliver Israel and establish a worldwide kingdom (Psalms 110:1; Daniel 9:25-26). In Mark, Jesus rarely used this term Himself (cf. Mark 9:41; Mark 12:35; Mark 13:21), and He never used it of Himself. Probably He avoided it because of its political connotations and the popular misunderstanding of it, but Jesus accepted the title when others applied it to Him (cf. Mark 14:6-62; John 4:25-26).

". . . the title . . . was particularly fitted to express his true relation both to the OT and to the people of God.... the title, applied to Jesus, designates him as the true meaning and fulfillment of the long succession of Israel's anointed kings and priests, the King and Priest ...; the Prophet anointed with the Spirit of God, who fulfills the long line of Israel's prophets, and the One in whom the life of the

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whole nation of Israel finds its fulfillment and meaning, in whom and for whose sake the people of Israel were, and the new Israel now is, the anointed people of God." [Note: Cranfield, pp. 270-71. See Bateman, pp. 537-59.]The timing of this question in Jesus' ministry was very important. The disciples had believed that Jesus was the Messiah from the beginning of their contact with Him (John 1:41; John 1:51). However their understanding of the Messiah then was the traditional one of their day, namely, that of a political leader. The multitudes likewise failed to understand that Jesus was much more than that. The religious leaders were becoming increasingly antagonistic. The disciples were about to receive new revelation regarding Jesus that would have costly implications for them. Therefore it was necessary for them to confess Jesus' identity clearly and unmistakably now.

Why did Mark only record that Peter said, "You are the Messiah," rather than his complete statement, "You are the Messiah, the Son of the living God" (Matthew 16:16)? Mark's emphasis throughout his Gospel was on Jesus' humanity, as we have seen. By omitting the last part of Peter's statement, Mark did not mean that Peter failed to acknowledge Jesus' deity. This is precisely what Peter was confessing. However in Mark the term Messiah includes the concept of deity, as it does in the Old Testament. When the disciples said they had found the Messiah before Jesus called them to be His disciples, they used the title in the popular way (John 1:41; John 1:51). Mark did not record those statements. He presented the disciples using the term "Messiah" in its true biblical meaning for his Gentile readers.

"For the Christians of Rome who read Mark, the confession 'You are the Messiah' was precisely their profession of faith ..." [Note: Lane, p. 292, n. 67. Cf. 1 John 5:1.]Peter's confession constitutes a high-water mark in the disciples' understanding of and commitment to Jesus. They still had much to learn about the significance of Jesus being the Messiah that the Old Testament promised and its implications. Nevertheless now Jesus could build on their faith and commitment.

". . . Jesus' identity is progressively unveiled in three stages, though only from the standpoint of the reader...."The first stage in the progressive disclosure of Jesus' identity is the confession of Peter on behalf of the disciples (Mark 8:27-30)." [Note: Kingsbury, p. 43. Cf. 10:46-11:11 (and 12:35-37); and 11:12-15:39.]

30 Jesus warned them not to tell anyone about him.

GILL, "And he charged them,.... His disciples, after he had declared his

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approbation of Peter's confession of faith, and signified he would build his church on that rock, and the gates of hell should not prevail against it: and promised Peter the keys of the kingdom of heaven; and that whatsoever was bound, or loosed by him on earth, should be bound and loosed in heaven; which are omitted by Mark, but related by Matthew, Mat_16:17, after this he gave a strict and severe charge,

that they should tell no man of him; that he was the Messiah, and the Son of God; See Gill on Mat_16:20.

HENRY, "This they knew, and must shortly publish and maintain; but for the present they must keep it secret (Mar_8:30), till the proof of it was completed, and they were completely qualified to maintain it, by the pouring out of the Holy Ghost; and then let all the house of Israel know assuredly that God has made this same Jesus, whom ye crucified, both Lord and Christ, Act_2:36.

CONSTABLE, "Verse 30Probably Jesus instructed the disciples to tell no one about Him for at least two reasons. First, such an announcement would have hindered His mission. Second, the disciples would not have been able to cope with the questions and opposition such an announcement would generate. They still held many popular misconceptions about Israel's Messiah that Jesus needed to correct. Jesus proceeded to continue preparing them so they could represent Him effectively.

"At the center of his Gospel Mark placed Peter's confession that Jesus is the Messiah. Up to this point the underlying question had been, 'Who is He?' After Peter's declaration on behalf of the Twelve, Mark's narrative is oriented toward the Cross and the Resurrection. From now on the underlying double question was, 'What kind of Messiah is He, and what does it mean to follow Him?' This crucial passage is the point to which the first half of the book leads and from which the second half proceeds." [Note: Grassmick, pp. 138-39.]

Jesus Predicts His Death

31 He then began to teach them that the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders, the chief priests and the teachers of the law, and that he must be killed and after three days rise again.

GILL, "And he began to teach them,.... For as yet he had said nothing to them about his sufferings and death, at least in express terms; but now they being firmly

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established in the faith of him, as the Messiah, he thought it proper to inform them,

that the son of man must suffer many things; meaning himself, as that he should be betrayed, apprehended, and bound, should be smitten, spit upon, buffeted, and scourged; and which things must be done, and he suffer them, because it was so determined by God, and foretold in the Scriptures:

and be rejected of the elders, and of the chief priests and Scribes; which composed the grand sanhedrim of the nation, and are the builders that were prophesied of by whom he should be rejected, Psa_118:22,

and be killed; in a violent manner; his life be taken away by force, without law, or justice:

and after three days rise again: not after three days were ended, and on the fourth day, but after the third day was come; that is, "on the third day", as the Syriac, Arabic, Persic, and Ethiopic versions read; and even the Pharisees themselves thus understood Christ, Mat_27:63, so the phrase, "after eight days", is used for the eighth day, being come, or that same day a week later; see Luk_9:28 compared with Mat_17:1.

HENRY, "II. These miracles of Christ take off the offence of the cross, and assure us that Christ was, in it, not conquered, but a Conqueror. Now that the disciples are convinced that Jesus is the Christ, they may bear to hear of his sufferings, which Christ now begins to give them notice of, Mar_8:31.

1. Christ taught his disciples that he must suffer many things, Though they had got over the vulgar error of the Messiah's being a temporal Prince, so far as to believe their Master to be the Messiah, notwithstanding his present meanness, yet still they retained it, so far as to expect that he would shortly appear in outward pomp and grandeur, and restore the kingdom to Israel; and therefore, to rectify that mistake, Christ here gives them a prospect of the contrary, that he must be rejected of the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, who, they expected, should be brought to own and prefer him; that, instead of being crowned, he must be killed, he must be crucified, and after three days he must rise again to a heavenly life, and to be no

more in this world. This he spoke openly (Mar_8:32), parrēsia. He said it freely and

plainly, and did not wrap it up in ambiguous expressions. The disciples might easily understand it, if they had not been very much under the power of prejudice: or, it intimates that he spoke it cheerfully and without any terror, and would have them to hear it so: he spoke that saying boldly, as one that not only knew he must suffer and die, but was resolved he would, and made it his own act and deed.

SBC, "Christ’s Intimation of His Sufferings.

The time from which Jesus began to speak to His disciples of His sufferings was the time at which His Apostles had made open confession of His Godhead. Here then is a point from which to reckon, and on which to reason. We may now start with the inquiry, What inducement led to, and what instruction may be gathered from, the recorded fact, that when Jesus had drawn from His disciples the acknowledgment of His Divinity, then, and not before, He began to tell them of His sufferings.

I. The Apostles could have had none but the most indistinct apprehensions of the office and mission of our Lord, so long as they were ignorant of the death which He had undertaken to die. Christ deferred speaking of His sufferings till His disciples

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had full faith in His Godhead. As much as to say, "It will be of no avail to speak to them of My death till they are convinced of My Deity. So long as they only know Me as the Son of man, they will not be prepared to hear of the Cross; when they shall also know Me as the Son of the Living God, then will be the time to tell of ignominy and death."

II. We seem quite justified in gathering from the text, that henceforward our Lord made very frequent mention of His Cross. And what is very observable is, that it seems to have been upon occasions when the disciples were likely to have been puffed up and exalted, that ever after our Lord took special pains to impress upon them that He must be rejected and killed. Learn to expect, and be thankful for, something bitter in the cup, when faith has won the victory, and you have tasted, in no common measure, the powers of the invisible world. Triumph would make us proud, if not followed by humiliation; and the Good Physician who gave His own blood to save us from death will in mercy prevent the fever, by opening a vein. When Christ shows us the crown, He loves us too well, not commonly to follow it with laying on the Cross.

H. Melvill, Penny Pulpit, No. 2,268.

BI, "That the Son of Man must suffer many things.

The rebuke of love

Let us not overlook this loving rebuke; for

(1) it cures Peter’s presumption;

(2) sets him to learn a new lesson on the heavenliness of sacrifice;

(3) prevents the greatness of his faith being spoiled by the earthliness of his hopes.

Faithful are the wounds of a friend: but the wounds which the Saviour inflicts are kindest of all. From Peter’s weakness let us learn how hard it is to see all truth at once. From Christ’s rebuke let us learn that the “heavenly thing” is not to seek for glory, but for usefulness, even if we can reach it only through a cross. (R. Glover.)

Peter rebuked Christ and Christ rebuked Peter-an altercation of more than mere words

It is charged with practical truths.

1. Man’s shortsightedness.

2. Man’s sentiment exaggerated.

3. Man’s audacity to think he can help or save Christ.

On Christ’s side:

1. He rebukes the oldest.

2. He rebukes the wisest-it was Peter who said, “Thou art the Christ.”

3. He shows that men are only worthy of Him in proportion as they enter into His spirit. (Dr. Parker.)

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Christ’s intimation of His sufferings

I. What there is to mark the time which our blessed Saviour thus selected, for giving prominence to a new and unwelcome subject of discourse. In the third year of His public ministry. Up to this time our Lord left the great truth of His Godhead to work its way rote the minds of His apostles. Now they had arrived at the conviction that He was none other than the ever-living God. What inducement led to, and what instruction may be gathered from, the recorded fact, that when Jesus had drawn from His disciples the acknowledgment of His Divinity, then, and not before, “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.” Now the apostles could have had none but the most indistinct apprehensions of the office and mission of our Lord, so long as they were ignorant of the death which He had undertaken to die. This made it appear remarkable, that our Lord should so long have withheld the express mention of His sufferings, As much as to say, “It will be of no avail to speak to them of My death till they are convinced of My Deity. So long as they only know Me as the Son of Man, they will not be prepared to hear of the cross; when they shall also know Me as the Son of the living God, then will be the time to tell of ignominy and death.” “Oh, how strange,” you may exclaim, “that the moment of discovering a Divine person in the form of a man should be the right moment for the being informed that this person should be crucified! To discover a Divine person is to discover what death cannot touch; and yet Christ waited till this discovery in regard of Himself, that He might then expressly mention His approaching dissolution.” But do you not observe, my brethren, what a testimony our Lord hereby gives to the fact, that the truth of His Godhead alone explains-alone gives meaning or worth to-His having died on the cross? He will say nothing of His death whilst only believed to be man; He speaks continually of His death, when once acknowledged as God. Are we not taught by this, that they only who believe Christ Divine, can put the right construction on the mystery of His death, or so survey it as to draw from it what it was intended to teach? Then we perceive, that He must have died as a sacrifice; then we understand that He must have died as an atonement to be the propitiation for our sins, to reconcile the world unto God. He could not have died for such ends had He been only man; but being also God, such ends could be answered and effected by His death, though nothing less, so far as we can tell, could have sufficed. Therefore, again and again, we say, Christ’s Divinity is the explanation of Christ’s death. We seem quite justified in gathering from the text, that hence forward our Lord made very frequent mention of His cross. If you examine, you will find so many as nine instances spoken of by the evangelists; though it was a topic which He had not before introduced. And what is very observable is, that it seems to have been upon occasions when the disciples were likely to have been puffed up and exalted, that ever after our Lord took special pains to impress upon them that He must be rejected and killed. Ah! my brethren, ought we not to learn from this keeping the cross out of sight till faith had grown strong and high privilege been imparted, that it is the advanced Christian who has need of persecution; and that grace, in place of exempting us from, is to fit us for trial? The disciples must have well known that if suffering were to be their Master’s lot, it would also be theirs. If, then and thence, Jesus spake of afflictions which should befall Himself, He must have been understood as likewise speaking of afflictions which would befall His apostles; and He abstained, you see, from dwelling on the tribulation which would be the path to His kingdom, till He found His followers strong in belief of His actual Divinity. And then take one more lesson from the peculiarity of the occasions on which, as we bays shown you, Christ made a special point of introducing the mention of His sufferings; occasions on which the disciples were in danger of being puffed up and exalted. Learn to expect, and be thankful for, something bitter in the cup, when faith has won

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the victory, and you have tasted, in no common measure, the powers of the invisible world. You may say, however, that it militates against much that we have advanced, that in point of fact, Christ’s mentioning His sufferings at the time when He did, produced not on the disciples the effect which our statement supposes. We have but too good proof, that though our Lord deferred so long as He did speaking of His sufferings, the apostles were still unprepared for the saying, and could neither understand it nor receive it. Even St. Peter, who had just made the noble confession which proved him ready and willing to hear tidings from Christ, no sooner hears of his Saviour being rejected and killed, than he begins presumptuously to rebuke Him; saying, “Be it far from Thee, Lord; this shall not be unto Thee.” Yet let it not be thought that Christ chose an unseasonable time, or tried an unsuitable means. The medicine may be what we want; but we, alas! may reject it, as not being what we like. The ease may be precisely such, that from that time forth, it is wholesome that we be admonished of appointed tribulation. We may only the more prove how the admonition is needed, by treating it with dislike, and trying to disbelieve it. When we find that there was such repugnance in St. Peter and his brethren to the cross, though Christ had waited so patiently for the fittest time to introduce it, we ought to learn the difficulty of taking part with the suffering Saviour, and submitting ourselves meekly, and thankfully, to the scorn and the trial of sharing His afflictions. And this lesson from man’s aversion to, and how much more the bearing of, the cross, should bring home to us with great force, our need of being continually disciplined by the Spirit of God. And yet it is not to pure and unmingled sorrow, that Christ would consign the more faithful in His Church. As St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, “as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ.” How beautiful is it in our text, that if Jesus then began to tell His disciples how He should die, He then began also to tell them how He should rise again from the dead. It is our unbelief, or our impatience, which makes us overlook the one statement in our eagerness to get rid of the other. If God lead you into the wilderness, it is, as He saith by the prophet Hosea, that there He may “speak comfortably to you, giving you vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope.” (H. Melvill, B. D.)

BARCLAY, "THE TEMPTER SPEAKS IN THE VOICE OF A FRIEND (Mark 8:31-33)8:31-33 He began to teach them that it was necessary that the Son of Man should suffer many things, and should be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed and rise again after three days. He kept telling them this plainly. And Peter caught him and began to rebuke him. He turned round; he looked at his disciples; and he rebuked Peter. "Get behind me, Satan," he said. "These are not God's thoughts but men's."

It is against the background of what we have just seen of the common conception of the Messiah that we must read this. When Jesus connected Messiahship with suffering and death, he was making statements that were to the disciples both incredible and incomprehensible. All their lives they had thought of the Messiah in terms of irresistible conquest, and they were now being presented with an idea which staggered them. That is why Peter so violently protested. To him the whole thing was impossible.

Why did Jesus so sternly rebuke Peter? Because he was putting into words the very temptations which were assailing Jesus. Jesus did not want to die. He knew that he had powers which he could use for conquest. At this moment he was

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refighting the battle of temptations in the wilderness. This was the devil tempting him again to fall down and worship him, to take his way instead of God's way.

It is a strange thing, and sometimes a terrible thing, that the tempter sometimes speaks to us in the voice of a well-meaning friend. We may have decided on a course which is the right course but which will inevitably bring trouble, loss, unpopularity, sacrifice. And some well-meaning friend tries with the best intentions in the world, to stop us. I knew a man who decided to take a course which would almost inevitably land him in trouble. A friend came to him and tried to dissuade him. "Remember," said the friend, "that you have a wife and a family. You can't do this." It is quite possible for someone to love us so much that he wants us to avoid trouble and to play safe.

In Gareth and Lynette Tennyson tells the story of the youngest son of Lot and Bellicent. He has seen the vision and he wishes to become one of Arthur's knights. Bellicent, his mother, does not wish to let him go.

"Hast thou no pity on my loneliness?" she asks. His father, Lot, is old and "lies like a log and all but smouldered out." Both his brothers are already at Arthur's court. "Stay, my best son," she says, "ye are yet more boy than man." If he stays she will arrange the hunt to keep him happy in the chase and find some princess to be his bride. The boy has had the vision, and, one by one the mother, who loves him dearly, produces reasons, excellent reasons, why he should stay at home. Someone who loves him speaks with the tempter's voice, all unaware that she is doing it. But Gareth answers,

"O Mother,

How can ye keep me tethered to you--Shame.

Man am I grown, a man's work must I do.

Follow the deer? Follow the Christ, the King,

Live pure, speak true, right wrong, follow the King--

Else, wherefore born?"

So Gareth went when the vision called.

The tempter can make no more terrible attack than in the voice of those who love us and who think they seek only our good. That is what happened to Jesus that day; that is why he answered so sternly. Not even the pleading voice of love must silence for us the imperious voice of God.

CONSTABLE, "Verse 31A. The first passion prediction and its lessons 8:31-9:29In this section, Mark recorded Jesus' first clear prediction of His passion (Mark 8:31), the disciples' reaction to it (Mark 8:32-33), and several lessons on

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discipleship (Mark 8:34 to Mark 9:29).

Verse 31Jesus' clear revelation of His coming suffering, death, and resurrection resulted from Peter's confession of faith. The disciples were now ready to receive what would have been completely incomprehensible if they still viewed Jesus as only a political Messiah.

Jesus referred to Himself as the Son of Man, a biblical messianic title (Daniel 7:13-14; cf. Mark 2:10; Mark 2:28). This was by far the favorite term that Jesus used to describe Himself in the Gospels. It appears 81 times. In its Old Testament usage this title presented Messiah as coming in glory but also suffering and dying. This title was not as popular as "Messiah" so when Jesus used it people unfamiliar with the Old Testament often did not know what He meant. "Son of Man" was an idiom in Jesus' day that most people would have understood as a circumlocution for "I." [Note: Ibid., p. 297.]

Here Jesus revealed that the Son of Man must (Gr. dei) suffer, because of God's purpose. Most Jews of Jesus' day believed that Messiah would establish His kingdom without suffering and dying.

"The necessity arises, first, from the hostility of men; secondly, from the spiritual nature of his work, which made it impossible for him to oppose force to force; and thirdly from the providential purpose of God, who made the death of Jesus the central thing in redemption [Isaiah 52:13 to Isa_53:12]." [Note: Gould, p. 153.]The three groups that would reject Jesus made up the Sanhedrin. The elders were its lay members. They were men of wealth and were the leaders of aristocratic families. The chief priests were the ranking priests and were mostly Sadducees. They occupied a hereditary office and supervised the temple and the sacrificial system. The chief priests included Annas, Caiaphas, and the leaders of the 24 divisions of the priesthood. The scribes or teachers of the law were the approved interpreters of the law, and they were mostly Pharisees. They were the theologians and lawyers of Judaism who were experts in Israel's laws. Together these three groups formed a united front as opponents of Jesus.

Jesus also announced His resurrection "after three days." Mark's readers would have understood this phrase as synonymous with "on the third day" (cf. Hosea 6:1-2; Matthew 16:21; Luke 9:22).

"Verse 31 is particularly important because it is the only explanation in Mark's Gospel of 'the messianic secret.' Jesus did not want his messiahship to be disclosed because it involved suffering, rejection, and death. Popular expectations of messiahship would have hindered, if not prevented, the accomplishment of his divinely ordained (dei, 'must') messianic mission." [Note: Wessel, p. 696. For further discussion of the "messianic secret," see Lowery, pp. 74-76.]

V. THE SERVANT'S JOURNEY TO JERUSALEM 8:31-10:52

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Having comprehended Jesus' true identity the disciples next turned south with Jesus and headed from Caesarea Philippi toward Jerusalem. This section of the Gospel traces that journey and stresses Jesus' preparation of His disciples for His coming death and resurrection.

"It is no coincidence that the narrator frames the journey to Jerusalem with two healing stories about blindness [Mark 8:22-26; Mark 10:46-52], for the journey surely seems dominated by Jesus' urgent efforts to deal with the disciples' blindness to the things of God." [Note: Rhoads and Michie, pp. 126-27.]Mark structured his narrative around three predictions of His passion that Jesus gave the disciples. Each unit begins with a prediction followed by the disciples' reaction. Then follow lessons that Jesus taught them about discipleship. Until now, Mark reported Jesus speaking in veiled terms (cf. Mark 2:20; Mark 4:33-34). From now on He spoke more clearly to both the disciples and the multitudes.

"This openness is theologically significant within the larger context of Jesus' messianic self-revelation in the Gospel of Mark. It points beyond Jesus' hiddenness, which reaches its climax on the cross, to his revealed glory. In the cross and resurrection of Jesus the secret of the Kingdom is thoroughly veiled as well as gloriously revealed. Mark exposes this tension, which is inherent in the gospel, through the reaction of the disciples to Jesus' sober teaching throughout Chs. Mark 8:31 to Mark 10:52." [Note: Lane, p. 294.]

32 He spoke plainly about this, and Peter took him aside and began to rebuke him.

BARNES, "He spake that saying openly - With boldness or confidence, or without parables or figures, so that there could be no possibility of misunderstanding him.

CLARKE, "And he spake that saying - Concerning the certainty and necessity

of his sufferings - openly: with great plainness, παρ ησια, confidence, or emphasis, so

that the disciples now began fully to understand him. This is an additional observation of St. Mark. For Peter’s reproof, see on Mat_16:22 (note), etc.

GILL, "And he spake that saying openly,.... Concerning his sufferings, death, and resurrection from the dead. He not only spoke it before them all, but in plain words, without a figure; so that it might be, and was clearly understood by them; and he spake it as the word will also bear, not only very freely, but likewise boldly, with an undaunted courage, with intrepidity of mind; being not in the least discouraged, nor

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showing any concern or fear about what was to befall him:

and Peter took him, and began to rebuke him. Peter might more especially be concerned at this free and open account Christ gave of his sufferings and death, because he had just now acquainted him, that he should have the keys of the kingdom of heaven; by which he might understand some high post in the temporal kingdom of the Messiah he expected; and immediately to hear of his sufferings and death, damped his spirits, and destroyed his hopes, and threw him into such difficulties he was not able to remove; and therefore he takes Christ aside, and very warmly expostulates with him about what he had said, and chides him for it, and entreats him that he would not think, or talk of such like things: the words of Peter are recorded by Matthew; see Gill on Mat_16:22.

HENRY, "II. These miracles of Christ take off the offence of the cross, and assure us that Christ was, in it, not conquered, but a Conqueror. Now that the disciples are convinced that Jesus is the Christ, they may bear to hear of his sufferings, which Christ now begins to give them notice of, Mar_8:31.

1. Christ taught his disciples that he must suffer many things, Though they had got over the vulgar error of the Messiah's being a temporal Prince, so far as to believe their Master to be the Messiah, notwithstanding his present meanness, yet still they retained it, so far as to expect that he would shortly appear in outward pomp and grandeur, and restore the kingdom to Israel; and therefore, to rectify that mistake, Christ here gives them a prospect of the contrary, that he must be rejected of the elders, and the chief priests, and the scribes, who, they expected, should be brought to own and prefer him; that, instead of being crowned, he must be killed, he must be crucified, and after three days he must rise again to a heavenly life, and to be no

more in this world. This he spoke openly (Mar_8:32), parrēsia. He said it freely and

plainly, and did not wrap it up in ambiguous expressions. The disciples might easily understand it, if they had not been very much under the power of prejudice: or, it intimates that he spoke it cheerfully and without any terror, and would have them to hear it so: he spoke that saying boldly, as one that not only knew he must suffer and die, but was resolved he would, and made it his own act and deed.

2. Peter opposed it; He took him, and began to rebuke him. Here Peter showed more love than discretion, a zeal for Christ and his safety, but not according to

knowledge. He took him - proslabomenos. He took hold of him, as it were to stop and

hinder him, took him in his arms, and embraced him (so some understand it); he fell on his neck, as impatient to hear that his dear Master should suffer such hard things; or he took him aside privately, and began to rebuke him. This was not the language of the least authority, but of the greatest affection, of that jealousy for the welfare of those we love, which is strong as death. Our Lord Jesus allowed his disciples to be free with him, but Peter here took too great a liberty.

COFFMAN, "It is never enough to know what others believe regarding the identity of our Lord; and the answer to the question here pressed upon his apostles by the Saviour is exactly the pivot upon which the destiny of every soul on earth is turned. Peter, apparently speaking for all of the Twelve, confessed, "Thou art the Christ." The record in Mark is a summary which omits the following references to: the Son of the living God, Christ's confession of Peter, the promise to build his church on the rock, the keys of the kingdom of heaven, the gates of Hades, and binding and loosing on earth. This commentator's volume on Matthew has some eleven pages of text devoted to the discussion of

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these things and of such related topics as the primacy of Peter, the so-called Petrine succession, and other questions raised by Matthew's more complete account of this key episode. See my Commentary on Matthew, pp. 243-253.

Thou art the Christ ... is shorter than the confession as given by Matthew, "Thou art the Christ the Son of the living God"; but it is in no sense inadequate, summarizing, as it does in these four words, the grand total of the power and godhead of the Son of God. As Cranfield declared:

This title (The Christ), in spite of all the false and narrow hopes which had become attached to it (in the popular thought of that day), was peculiarly fitted to express his true relation both to the Old Testament and to the people of God.[9]ENDNOTE:

[9] Ibid., p. 270.

CONSTABLE, "Until now, Jesus had only hinted at His sufferings (cf. Mark 2:20; Mark 4:33-34; Mark 7:14-15; Mark 7:17-23). The disciples were unprepared for this clear revelation that Messiah would suffer, die, and rise again. Peter understood it but refused to accept it. He could not reconcile this view of Messiah with the popular one. The word Mark chose to describe Peter's rebuke is a strong one (Gr. epitimao). It is the same one he used to describe Jesus silencing demons (cf. Mark 1:25; Mark 3:12). Peter reacted with "an air of conscious superiority." [Note: Swete, p. 180.]

33 But when Jesus turned and looked at his disciples, he rebuked Peter. “Get behind me, Satan!” he said. “You do not have in mind the concerns of God, but merely human concerns.”

GILL, "But when he had turned about,.... Upon Peter, and showed quick resentment at what he said:

and looked on his disciples; he cast his eye toward, them at the same time, and expressed to them the same displeasure in his countenance, they being of the same mind:

he rebuked Peter, saying, get thee behind me, Satan: for thou savourest not the things that be of God; things which were according to the will of God, as the sufferings of Christ were: they were according to the determinate counsel of his

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will; what he had determined in his purposes and council should be; and what he had declared in the Scriptures of truth, the revelation of his will, would be; and in which, according to them, he should have a great concern himself, Isa_53:6, and whereby all his divine perfections would be glorified, and therefore may well be said to be the things of God; and which ought to be savoured, minded, and attended to, as things of the greatest moment and importance: and which, though the apostle had often read of in the books of the Old Testament; yet either had not a clear understanding of them, as being the will of God; or however, they were greatly out of his view at this time, his mind being possessed with notions of a temporal kingdom, and of worldly honour and grandeur: wherefore it follows,

but the things that be of men; as were the notions of Christ's being a temporal prince, that would set up a worldly kingdom, and deliver the Jews from the Roman yoke, and make his subjects happy, with an affluence of all worldly things; and particularly his favourites, as the disciples were: these were schemes of men's devising, and were suited to the corrupt nature, and carnal inclinations of men; and these things at present too much possessed Peter's mind: wherefore the Lord rebuked him in a very severe, though just manner; being touched in his most tender part, and dissuaded from that which his heart was set upon, and he came into the world for; whose keen resentment is seen by using a phrase he never did but to the devil himself, Mat_4:10; See Gill on Mat_16:23.

HENRY, "3. Christ checked him for his opposition (Mar_8:33); He turned about,as one offended, and looked on his disciples, to see if the rest of them were of the same mind, and concurred with Peter in this, that, if they did, they might take the reproof to themselves, which he was now about to give to Peter; and he said, Get thee behind me, Satan. Peter little thought to have had such a sharp rebuke for such a kind dissuasive, but perhaps expected as much commendation now for his love as he had lately for his faith. Note, Christ sees that amiss in what we say and do, which we ourselves are not aware of, and knows what manner of spirit we are of, when we ourselves do not. (1.) Peter spoke as one that did not rightly understand, nor had duly considered, the purposes and counsels of God. When he saw such proofs as he every day saw of the power of Christ, he might conclude that he could not be compelled to suffer; the most potent enemies could not overpower him whom diseases and deaths, whom winds and waves and devils themselves, were forced to obey and yield to: and when he saw so much of the wisdom of Christ every day, he might conclude that he would not choose to suffer but for some very great and glorious purposes; and therefore he ought not thus to have contradicted him, but to have acquiesced. He looked upon his death only as a martyrdom, like that of the prophets, which he thought might be prevented, if either he would take a little care not to provoke the chief priests, or to keep out of the way; but he knew not that the thing was necessary for the glory of God, the destruction of Satan, and the salvation of man, that the Captain of our salvation must be made perfect through sufferings, and so must bring many sons to glory. Note, The wisdom of man is perfect folly, when it pretends to give measures to the divine counsels. The cross of Christ, the great instance of God's power and wisdom, was to some a stumbling-block, and to others foolishness. (2.) Peter spoke as one that did not rightly understand, nor had duly considered, the nature of Christ's kingdom; he took it to be temporal and human, whereas it is spiritual and divine. Thou savourest not the things that are of God, but those that

are of men; ouphroneis - thou mindest not; so the word is rendered, Rom_8:5. Peter

seemed to mind more the things that relate to the lower world, and the life that now is, than those which relate to the upper world, and the life to come. Minding the things of men more than the things of God, our own credit, ease, and safety, more

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than the things of God, and his glory and kingdom, is a very great sin, and the root of much sin, and very common among Christ's disciples; and it will appear in suffering times, those times of temptation, when those in whom the things of men have the ascendant, are in danger of falling off. Non sapis - Thou art not wise (so it may be read) in the things of God, but in the things of men. It is important to consider what generation we appear wise in, Luk_16:8. It seems policy to shun trouble, but if with that we shun duty, it is fleshly wisdom (2Co_1:12), and it will be folly in the end.

COFFMAN, "The words of Christ here do not mean that Peter was satanic and depraved, but that in opposing the cross he was unconsciously taking the part of Satan in opposing the divine will. He was looking at things in the light of mere human wisdom and not from the perspective of the will of God. As Erdman said:

The offense of the cross has never ceased. It is still human and natural to insist that the death of Christ was not necessary; but the preaching of the cross is the very wisdom and the power of God.[15]It should be noted that Christ did not pause to justify the cross by citing the benefits that would be achieved through such a means, setting forth the principle that it was the will of God, that being the only justification needed.

Turning about ... The presence of the other apostles was noted by Christ, and it therefore became necessary to rebuke Peter before them all and in terms that could leave no misunderstanding of the truth.

Get thee behind me, Satan ... This is generally interpreted to mean that Peter had gone out in front of the Lord in an effort to guide him, and the Lord was here ordering Peter to assume his proper place behind the Lord as a devoted follower and disciple.

ENDNOTE:

[15] Charles R. Erdman, The Gospel of Mark (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press, 1966), p. 134.

NISBET, "THE GREAT REBUKE‘Get thee behind Me, Satan.’Mark 8:33We see St. Peter who had just witnessed so noble a confession, presuming to rebuke his Master because He spoke of suffering and dying. We see him drawing down on himself the sharpest rebuke which ever fell from our Lord’s lips.

We have here a humbling proof that the best of saints is a poor fallible creature.

I. Here was ignorance.—St. Peter did not understand the necessity of our Lord’s death, and would have actually prevented His sacrifice on the Cross.

II. Here was self-conceit.—St. Peter thought he knew what was right and fitting for His Master better than his Master Himself, and actually undertook to show the Messiah a more excellent way.

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III. Here was zeal without knowledge.—St. Peter did it all with the best intentions! He meant well. His motives were pure. But zeal and earnestness are no excuse for error. A man may mean well and yet fall into tremendous mistakes.

Let us learn humility from the facts here recorded. We see that it is but a little step from making a good confession to being a ‘Satan’ in Christ’s way. Let us pray daily: ‘Hold Thou me up; keep me, teach me, let me not err.’

Illustrations

(1) ‘“Hinder me not,” still to the last,The faithful heart will say;“I must be striving, pressing on,And work while it is day.”’(2) ‘The words of St. Peter were a snare and suggestion of Satan, tempting the devoted Saviour to avoid the sufferings and death by which it was God’s will that we should be healed. Satan it is, our adversary the devil, who continually to us also holds out the inconvenience and irksomeness of obedience. He it is who, on the other hand, suggests the pleasure of sin, its ease, its pretended safety.’

The Way of the Cross

34 Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me.

CLARKE, "Whosoever will come after me - It seems that Christ formed, on the proselytism of the Jews, the principal qualities which he required in the proselytes of his covenant.

The first condition of proselytism among the Jews was, that he that came to embrace their religion should come voluntarily, and that neither force nor influence should be employed in this business. This is also the first condition required by Jesus Christ, and which he considers as the foundation of all the rest: - If a man be willing to come after me.

The second condition required in the Jewish proselyte was, that he should perfectly renounce all his prejudices, his errors, his idolatry, and every thing that concerned his false religion; and that he should entirely separate himself from his most intimate friends and acquaintances. It was on this ground that the Jews called proselytism a new birth, and proselytes new-born, and new men; and our Lord requires men to be born again, not only of water, but by the Holy Ghost. See Joh_3:5. All this our Lord includes in this word, Let him renounce himself. To this the

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following scriptures refer: Mat_10:33; Joh_3:3, Joh_3:5, 2Co_5:17.

The third condition on which a person was admitted into the Jewish Church as a proselyte was, that he should submit to the yoke of the Jewish law, and bear patiently the inconveniences and sufferings with which a profession of the Mosaic religion might be accompanied. Christ requires the same condition; but, instead of the yoke of the law, he brings in his own doctrine, which he calls his yoke, Mat_11:29 : and his cross, the taking up of which not only implies a bold profession of Christ crucified, but also a cheerful submitting to all the sufferings and persecutions to which he might be exposed, and even to death itself.

The fourth condition was, that they should solemnly engage to continue in the Jewish religion, faithful even unto death. This condition Christ also requires; and it is comprised in this word, Let him Follow me. See the following verses; and see, on the subject of proselytism, Rth_1:16, Rth_1:17 (note).

GILL, "And when he had called the people unto him,.... Who, it seems, followed him out of Galilee, from Bethsaida, and these parts; for it was in the way from thence to Caesarea Philippi, that Christ had this conversation with his disciples; who walked together alone, the multitude following at some distance; and the private conversation being ended, Christ called, or beckoned to the people, to come nearer to him:

with his disciples also; for what he was about to say, concerned them both:

whosoever will come after me; in a spiritual sense, as this multitude did in a natural one, and which is the same as to be a disciple of his:

let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow me; signifying, that his followers must deny themselves of worldly advantages, and suffer many things, as well as he, which he had been but just before acquainting his disciples with; See Gill on Mat_16:24.

HENRY, "1. They must not be indulgent of the ease of the body; for (Mar_8:34), “Whosoever will come after me for spiritual cures, as these people do for bodily cures, let him deny himself, and live a life of self-denial, mortification, and contempt of the world; let him not pretend to be his own physician, but renounce all confidence in himself and his own righteousness and strength, and let him take up his cross,conforming himself to the pattern of a crucified Jesus, and accommodating himself to the will of God in all the afflictions he lies under; and thus let him continue to follow me;” as many of those did, whom Christ healed. Those that will be Christ's patients must attend on him, converse with him, receive instruction and reproof from him, as those did that followed him, and must resolve they will never forsake him.

2. They must not be solicitous, no, not for the life of the body, when they cannot keep it without quitting Christ, Mar_8:35. Are we invited by the words and works of Christ to follow him? Let us sit down, and count the cost, whether we can prefer our advantages by Christ before life itself, whether we can bear to think of losing our life for Christ's sake and the gospel's. When the devil is drawing away disciples and servants after him, he conceals the worst of it, tells them only of the pleasure, but nothing of the peril, of his service; Ye shall not surely die; but what there is of trouble and danger in the service of Christ, he tells us of it before, tells us we shall suffer, perhaps we shall die, in the cause; and represents the discouragements not

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less, but greater, than commonly they prove, that it may appear he deals fairly with us, and is not afraid that we should know the worst; because the advantages of his service abundantly suffice to balance the discouragements, if we will but impartially set the one over against the other. In short,

SBC, "I. Such were the terms by which Jesus Christ sought to enlist men in His service. They came around Him attracted by His holiness, and curious to know more about Him. He offered them three attractions—self-denial, shame, and absolute surrender. Unless they were content with these, they could not enter His army. We have almost lost sight of the strangeness of the summons. "To take up the Cross" has become a religious phrase. We use it almost mechanically; nay, when we are most reverent, we almost hesitate to apply it to the trials of common life. We shrink from applying it to the man of the world, to the man of business, to the man of cultivated intellect, and perhaps it seems to be peculiarly strained if applied to the very young. And yet it contains the very lesson of Christianity.

II. To take up the Cross daily is to be prepared for what is most painful in the attempt to do your duty. The Cross is, like all burdens, heavy, exhausting, crushing. But it is more. It is degrading also. It fills us with shame. It crushes out of us our pride, and all that is false in our darling self-esteem. It makes us think less well of our energies at the very time that it taxes them most severely. It says to us, "You must dare to face this duty;" and in the same breath, "How poor and cowardly you must be to dread it!"

III. Some crosses are visible. They are borne, if borne at all, in the sight of others. With strong natures, pride sometimes comes to the help of conscience, and insidiously lends its strong arm to the support of the burden. But there are other kinds of crosses. There are those which no one ever sees, perhaps never suspects. These are not the least formidable. There is (1) the cross of truthfulness; (2) the cross of self-denial in little things; (3) the cross of humility; (4) the cross of temperance. Each heart has its own cross to bear. To many it is the burden of holding fast by God and leading a cheerful, happy life, in the absence of human sympathy. To be willing to take up the Cross is the very essence of the faith of Christ. By this test we may measure our own progress. No laxity in our practice can ever explain away the declaration of our Master, "He that taketh not his cross, and followeth after Me, is not worthy of Me."

H. M. Butler, Harrow Sermons, 2nd series, p. 197.

Mark 8:34-38

Saving One’s Life by Losing It.

When Christ is preached in our day, men are not ashamed of Him on precisely the same grounds that they were in the early days. Christ is represented by great churches that are emblazoned with art, that represent the wealth of the communities, that have about them a kind of historical charm and a flavour of antiquity, and men are not ashamed of Christ as of old, nor are they likely to be. Neither are men ashamed of Christ doctrinally. Whichever platform you put Him upon, whether you regard Him simply as a Man of genius or as semi-Divine, or as God manifest in the flesh, there is nothing that should lead men to be ashamed of Him. Look at the different ways in which men unconsciously to themselves are ashamed of Christ.

I. There are a great many men who are more or less studious, more or less

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thoughtful, more or less uneasy; it has been so for several years; they have been satisfied that they have not been living right, that they ought to come to a higher form of religious development, and they hope that the time will come when they can do this; but what is the reason that they never take this step in advance, and break out into that higher development? If you trace it, you find that oftentimes there is a sense of shame of their part. A man shrinks from letting the community know that he really is concerned about himself; and he is kept back by what may be said, and what may be thought.

II. There are a great many men who are hoping that they are Christians. They stealthily snatch at prayer; they turn to the Word of God, and read that a good deal, but they are not willing that it should be known. They are trying to live Christian lives secretly. There is connected with this a good deal of the element of shame, either directly or by inference.

III. We are growing old in this world. Things perish in the using. On everything in life is the mark of change. Spring comes out of winter and changes into summer. Summer with its growth moves into autumn. Autumn is swallowed up in the winding-sheet of winter. So of all things in human life. Youth running towards manhood; manhood declining towards old age; and beyond old age there is a life that grows broader and broader, brighter and brighter. After this life, all that encumbered men and bound them here shall be dropped away. There is a life of joy and glory; and to that men are invited, that they may become sons of God, and joint-heirs with Jesus Christ. And what is there in that of which any man should be ashamed? What is there not in it which every man should leap to acknowledge with gratitude?

H. W. Beecher, Christian World Pulpit, vol. xx., p. 202.

BARCLAY, "THE WAY OF THE DISCIPLE (Mark 8:34-35)8:34-35 He called the crowd to him, together with his disciples, and said to them, "If anyone wishes to come after me, let him deny himself, and let him take up his cross, and let him follow me."

This part of Mark's gospel is so near the heart and centre of the Christian faith that we must take it almost sentence by sentence. If each day a man could go out with only one of these sentences locked in his heart and dominating his life, it would be far more than enough to be going on with.

Two things stand out here even at first sight.

(i) There is the almost startling honesty of Jesus. No one could ever say that he was induced to follow Jesus by false pretences. Jesus never tried to bribe men by the offer of an easy way. He did not offer men peace; he offered them glory. To tell a man he must be ready to take up a cross was to tell him he must be ready to be regarded as a criminal and to die.

The honesty of great leaders has always been one of their characteristics. In the days of the Second World War, when Sir Winston Churchill took over the leadership of the country, all that he offered men was "blood, toil, tears and sweat." Garibaldi, the great Italian patriot, appealed for recruits in these terms: "I offer neither pay, nor quarters, nor provisions; I offer hunger, thirst, forced marches, battles and death. Let him who loves his country in his heart, and not

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with his lips only, follow me." "Soldiers, all our efforts against superior forces have been unavailing. I have nothing to offer you but hunger and thirst, hardship and death; but I call on all who love their country to join with me."

Jesus never sought to lure men to him by the offer of an easy way; he sought to challenge them, to waken the sleeping chivalry in their souls, by the offer of a way than which none could be higher and harder. He came not to make life easy but to make men great.

(ii) There is the fact that Jesus never called on men to do or face anything which he was not prepared to do and face himself. That indeed is the characteristic of the leader whom men will follow.

When Alexander the Great set out in pursuit of Darius, he made one of the wonder marches of history. In eleven days he marched his men thirty-three hundred furlongs. They were very nearly giving up, mainly because of thirst, for there was no water. Plutarch relates the story. "While they were in this distress, it happened that some Macedonians who had fetched water in skins upon their mules from a river they had found out came about noon to the place where Alexander was, and seeing him almost choked with thirst, presently fined an helmet and offered it to him. He asked them to whom they were carrying the water; they told him to their children, adding, that if his life were but saved, it was no matter for them, they should be well enough able to repair that loss, though they all perished. Then he took the helmet into his hands, and looking round about, when he saw all those who were near him stretching their heads out and looking earnestly after the drink, he returned it again with thanks without tasting a drop of it. 'For,' he said, 'if I alone should drink, the rest would be out of heart.' The soldiers no sooner took notice of his temperance and magnanimity upon this occasion, but they, one and all, cried out to him to lead them forward boldly, and began whipping on their horses. For while they had such a king they said they defied both weariness and thirst, and looked upon themselves to be little less than immortal." It was easy to follow a leader who never demanded from his men what he would not endure himself.

There was a famous Roman general, Quintus Fabius Cunctator. He was discussing with his staff how to take a difficult position. Someone suggested a certain course of action. "It will only cost the lives of a few men," this counsellor said. Fabius looked at him. "Are you," he said, "willing to be one of the few?"

Jesus was not the kind of leader who sat remote and played with the lives of men like expendable pawns. What he demanded that they should face, he, too, was ready to face. Jesus had a right to call on us to take up a cross, for he himself first bore one.

(iii) Jesus said of the man who would be his disciple, "Let him deny himself." We will understand the meaning of this demand best if we take it very simply and literally. "Let him say no to himself." If a man will follow Jesus Christ he must ever say no to himself and yes to Christ. He must say no to his own natural love of ease and comfort. He must say no to every course of action based on self-

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seeking and self-will. He must say no to the instincts and the desires which prompt him to touch and taste and handle the forbidden things. He must unhesitatingly say yes to the voice and the command of Jesus Christ. He must be able to say with Paul that it is no longer he who lives but Christ who lives in him. He lives no longer to follow his own will, but to follow the will of Christ, and in that service he finds his perfect freedom.

CONSTABLE, "Jesus addressed the crowds as well as the disciples because the requirements are the same for anyone who contemplates discipleship. Some in the crowd were thinking about becoming Jesus' disciples but had not yet made up their minds.

"He stated two requirements which, like repent and believe (cf. Mark 1:15), are bound together." [Note: Grassmick, p. 140.]One negative requirement is self-denial, replacing one's own preferences and plans with God's priorities and program. [Note: See Michael P. Green, "The Meaning of Cross-Bearing," Bibliotheca Sacra 140:558 (April-June 1983):117-33.] The other positive requirement is following Jesus faithfully and publicly even though that would mean shame, suffering, and perhaps physical death (cf. Mark 1:17-18; Mark 2:14; Mark 10:21; Mark 10:52).

Four explanatory clarifications follow, each introduced by "for" (Gr. gar, Mark 8:35-38) plus an encouragement (Mark 8:38). They are appropriate warnings for present disciples and those considering discipleship. For believers they apply to the loss of reward and for unbelievers to the loss of eternal life, salvation. Both types of people were in Jesus' audience when He said this.

COFFMAN, "The cross was not merely for our Lord but for all who would enter into eternal life.

Deny himself ... Egocentric pride is the bane of human life; and `God's plan of salvation requires the renunciation of self by all who would be saved. It is not merely confessing Christ that is "unto salvation," but confessing "Jesus as LORD" (Romans 10:9) that makes the difference. No man who ever lived can be saved as Joe Doakes or John Doe, or Susie Smith. Salvation is "in Christ." One is saved not in his own sinful human identity but "as Christ," "in him" and through positive and complete identity with him.

Take up his cross ... Cross-bearing is the soul's assumption of the role of Jesus Christ throughout life, the reception of his Holy Spirit, the indwelling of "the mind that was in him" (Philippians 2:5), the permitting of the word of Christ to dwell in the soul richly (Colossians 3:16). Taking up the cross has no reference to the wearing of any ornament, nor to the trials of life, nor the common misfortunes of humanity, but to the conscious acceptance of the Saviour's total will.

The teaching in this passage is not a prescription of martyrdom for all who would be saved; but, in this original context of the words, it surely carried that implication. Cranfield said: "The meaning here is that the disciple must be ready

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to face martyrdom";[16] nor should it ever be ruled out completely as potentially applicable to every Christian.

Whosoever would save his life ... The point of the final clauses here is that any disciple who would save his life by denying the Lord will lose eternal life, while any disciple who might lose his life through faithfulness to Christ and the gospel would gain eternal life.

ENDNOTE:

[16] C. E. B. Cranfield, op. cit., p. 282.

NISBET, "CHRIST’S FOLLOWERS‘And when He had called the people unto Him with His disciples also, He said unto them, Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself, and take up his cross, and follow Me.’Mark 8:34Here is the one rule which binds us to-day. There are three points in it—they are not all the same—‘Let him deny himself,’ ‘Let him take up his cross,’ ‘Let him follow Me.’ A man may deny himself in no Christian spirit.

I. Self-denial is the secret of success in everything. The notion people have that the faculties of a man ripen by a certain amount of indulgence, is a mere deceit of Satan. Every one knows that the strength and perfection of a man—I do not speak now of religion, but of everything—comes out of self-denial.

II. There wants something more.—‘Let him take up his cross.’ The popular form of interpretation of this will not quite do. It is not that we should bear our sickness patiently, or our loss of fortune, or our loss of friends: it is an active something. He who presently marches before—you have it in the tenth chapter of Mark—walks before His disciples, steadfastly going towards Jerusalem, whilst they, mourning and perplexed, follow after Him; He is doing a voluntary act. And the taking up the cross must betoken, not mere endurance, but something active, and it means for us the doing our duty. That is the cross to the flesh, and the inclination, the purpose of duty, which we are bound to perform and to carry through.

III. And we are also to follow Him.—And here, again, is no repetition—to follow Him in His patient obedience to God, in His gentleness and goodness, but above all, in His love which embraces all mankind, and which ought to soften and sweeten every hour of every life that can justly be called Christian. Here, then, is the precept: ‘Deny thyself, bear thy duty, and bear it in the spirit of love and obedience in which Christ moved towards His death for us.’

—Archbishop Thomson.Illustration

(1) ‘The Church Pastoral Aid Society’s Magazine, acknowledging a poor pensioner’s gift, says that it is touching to hear of the self-denial of the Christian

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poor. “We confess that we acknowledge with peculiar pleasure the gift which has just come to us from a resident in one of the slum parishes aided by the Society in South London. In itself it is only a trifling sum—three shillings—but it represents in self-denial a really large amount, and who shall say that it does not come to us big with the possibilities of blessing behind it?” The Vicar of the parish, in sending it on, writes: “I enclose herewith postal order for 3s., the gift to the C.P.A.S. from one of my parishioners, a man who has only a very small pension for himself and his wife, but who has saved this out of it from the little he usually spends on tobacco.”’

(SECOND OUTLINE)TWO ANTAGONISTSAs in the natural character, selfishness and affection are two opposite principles, so in the spiritual life, self and the Divine love are the two great antagonists which do battle in man’s heart.

I. Aspects of selfishness.—It is evident that the selfishness of one man is not the same as the selfishness of another.

(a) There is a man whose self lies in his intellect. That man has to submit his own intellect absolutely to the teaching of the Holy Spirit and the Word of God.

(b) Another man’s self is pleasure. That is the man who must be continually learning to say ‘No’ to himself. He must put the strongest rein upon the neck of his own desires.

(c) But there is another form of self, and the more dangerous, because it takes the aspect of religion. A man lays down for himself a certain way of salvation, and begins in his own strength, goes on in his own wisdom, and ends in his own glory, turning his self-complacent virtues into saviours. That is self’s stronghold—the last to be discovered and the most difficult of all to be conquered.

II. Taking up the cross.—‘What is the cross?’ What is it which a man is to ‘take up’? Not some very great thing, which is to come by-and-by. That is what people are looking for. There is some cross to-day—there will be some to-morrow. What is it? Have not you got far enough to answer the question for yourselves? If I speak generally, I should say that it is any afflictive dispensation. As, for instance, sickness, poverty, disappointment. But if I had to define it accurately, I should say it must be a trial which has something humiliating in it; something which brings a sense of shame; something which lingers; something which is painful to the old nature—for that is exactly what the cross was.

II. Follow Me.—And this I understand not so much as a separate command as something which determines the character of the other two. For what is it worth to deny one’s self how much soever, or to take up a cross however hard, if it be not done in reference to Christ—with an express and deliberate intention toward Christ?

Illustration

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‘To understand our relation to Christ we must bear in mind both His humiliation and His glory. The conjunction of these two experiences is warranted and required by our Lord’s own language of prediction, and by the recorded facts of the Gospel. He has already endured the Cross, despising the shame. He has already taken His place upon the throne; and His elevation to royal dignity is the pledge of His coming at the appointed time to judge mankind. We have to consider the twofold revelation, not only as matter of fact and belief, but as affecting our own religious position and prospects. It is made known to us that the manner in which we are related to Christ in His humiliation will determine the manner in which we shall be received by Him when He comes in His glory.’

BI, "Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself.

Following Christ

Here Christ very distinctly sets before all men the conditions of discipleship in His school, and of citizenship in His kingdom. It is not a kingdom of earthly splendour. If any would come after Him, they must expect hardships, self-denial, cross-bearing, and scorn. Their rest and reward were not yet. He was, indeed, the Messiah; but it was by a rough pathway that He would bring His followers to glory. Notice-

I. The unhesitating way in which Jesus assumes to be our rightful Leader. Elsewhere He is man’s Teacher, Master, Friend, Saviour. Here He invites followers, and offers and claims to lead.

1. Man needs a Leader; life’s byways are many; the labyrinth is deep; its duration is short; the stake is great. Man’s native tendency is not upward.

2. Jesus has a rightful claim to be our Leader. He proves it by the greatness, and wisdom, and perfection of His person and character.

II. The sobering way in which Jesus announces the cost of following Him. “Whosoever will”-this points to obstacles to be overcome, and trials to be borne. To be a true follower of Christ one needs the courage of deep conviction and strong desire. This may seem stern. So it is. But it is not arbitrary or unfeeling. There are two reasons for denying self.

1. The “self” in us is to be denied, because it is wrong. Personal salvation, without the denial of the old nature, the sinful self in us, would be a contradiction.

2. The new spirit that is in us requires it. The follower of Christ has gone over to His side, and become His servant and soldier. But his new work is not easy. It was not easy to the Saviour, for it cost Him humiliation, and privations, and obloquy, and pains.

III. The cheering way in which Jesus sets before us the rewards of faithfully following Him. While Christ was the greatest of all preachers of self-sacrifice, He uniformly recommended it by pledges of future good. The reward He promises is not of any lower or sensual kind. It is that of activity, calling into right and glad exercise every power we possess. (H. M. Grout, D. D.)

Following Christ

I. Its essential conditions.

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1. It must be absolutely a voluntary choice-“Whosoever will.”

(a) This is a condition universally recognized in the New Testament.

(b) It is a condition that underlies the whole plan of salvation.

(c) It is a condition from which there can be no deviation.

2. It must be absolutely an entire surrender.

(a) A surrender of every part of our being to Christ as Master.

(b) A surrender of every object which He requires to be given up.

II. Its essential principles.

1. Holiness, suggested by the necessity of the surrender of “self.”

2. Implicit obedience is suggested by the necessity of taking up the cross.

3. To love Christ, suggested by the necessity of being ready to lose life far Christ’s sake.

4. The avowal of Christ, suggested by the words of Jesus in Mar_8:38. (D. C. Hughes, M. A.)

The Master’s summons to His disciples

Like a commander addressing his soldiers. Full of clear vision and resolve.

I. The aim. To overcome spiritual error and Satanic influence, and establish God’s kingdom.

II. The conditions of its attainment. These are open to all.

1. Self-denial.

2. Cross-bearing.

3. Obedience and imitation.

II. Incentives.

1. Christ’s example and inspiration. He says not “go” but “come.” He goes before, and shows the way.

2. The endeavour to save the lower “self” will expose to certain destruction the higher “self”; and the sacrifice of the lower “self” and its earthly condition of satisfaction will be the salvation of the higher “self.”

3. The value of this higher life cannot be computed.

4. Recognition of Christ on earth is the condition of His recognition of us hereafter. (A. F. Muir, M. A.)

Come after Me

There is a wonderful spell in such a call. All history, profane as well as sacred, has shown us this. The great Roman general realized its force when he called to his soldiers, who shrank from the hardships of the Libyan desert, and promised to go before them, and to command them nothing which he would not first do himself. Even so Christ designed to help His followers by the assurance that He would first suffer that which they would be called to bear (H. M. Luckock, D. D.)

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Conditions of discipleship

There was an eagerness among many of the people to come after Him. The wistfulness of a considerable proportion of the northern population had been awakened. They were ruminating anxiously on Old Testament predictions, and filled with vague expectancy. They saw that the Rabbi of Nazareth was no common Rabbi. He was a wonderful Being. It is not strange, therefore, that they pictured out to themselves all sorts of possibilities in connection with His career. To what was He advancing? Whither was He bound? Was He on His way, or was He not, to the throne of the kingdom? The Saviour by and by gives sufficiently explicit indications of the ultimate witherhood of His career; but meanwhile He brings into the foreground the moral conditions of adherence to His person and His cause. “Whosoever will come after Me, let him deny himself,”-let him be prepared to say No to many of the strongest cravings of his nature, in the direction more particularly of earthly ease, comfort, dignity, and glory. (J. Morison, D. D.)

Following Christ

I. The matter wherein we must follow Him.

1. His holy doctrine.

2. His holy life. Some of His actions were not imitable.

(1) His miraculous works.

(2) His mediatorial acts.

The things wherein we must follow Christ.

1. In that He never sought His own praise and glory, but the praise and glory of God that sent Him (Joh_7:18; 1Co_16:31).

2. In that He contemned His own will for His Father’s (Mat_26:39).

3. In daily and frequent prayer to His Father (Mar_1:35).

4. In fervent zeal to His Father’s house (Joh_2:17).

5. In His faith and confidence.

6. His charity and love of man, shown in many ways.

II. The manner wherein we must follow Christ.

1. We must follow Him in faith.

2. In ardent affection.

3. Sincerely.

4. Wholly.

5. Constantly.

III. The reasons or motives thereunto.

1. The equity of the precept.

2. Great is the danger of not following Christ our Leader.

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(1) If we look at ourselves.

(2) At danger of false guides.

(3) At the world as a guide.

3. Argue from the safety of following Christ our Guide. (T. Taylor, D. D.)

Essence of self-denial

In the parish where Mr. Hervey preached, when he inclined to loose sentiments, there resided a ploughman well-informed in religious matters. Mr. Hervey being advised by his physician, for the benefit of his health, to follow the plough in order to smell the fresh earth, frequently accompanied this ploughman in his rural employment. Mr. Hervey, understanding the ploughman was a serious person, said to him one morning, “What do you think is the hardest thing in religion?” To which he replied, “I am a poor illiterate man, and you, sir, are a minister. I beg leave to return the question.” “Then,” said Mr. Hervey, “I think the hardest thing is to deny sinful self;” and applauded, at some length, his own example of self-denial. The ploughman replied, “Mr. Hervey, you have forgotten the greatest act of the grace of self-denial, which is, to deny ourselves of a proud confidence in our own obedience.” Mr. Hervey looked at the man in amazement, thinking him an old fool; but in after years, when relating the story, he would add, “I have since clearly seen who was the fool: not the wise old Christian, but the proud James Hervey.”

Self-denial may be manifested

(1) in the subjection of our own opinions in religious matters to the authoritative announcements of Scripture. If we believe God only where we can see the truth and propriety of what He states, we do Him no honour.

(2) In the renunciation of worldly and social advantages. If the Spirit dwelling in us be not mightier than that which is in the world, we cannot be Christ’s disciples. If we have the true principle of Christianity, it will rise within us in proportion to the demand upon it.

(3) In foregoing the love of ease and quiet and wealth. The ignorant must be taught; the knowledge of Christian principles spread; the wiles of the devil exposed. In the spiritual army, all must be warriors, if they would be victors.

(4) In the abnegation of our own honour. The end of all our actions and sufferings is, that every crown earned and won may be placed on the head of Him who wore for us the crown of thorns. (J. Leifchild.)

Incentives to self-denial

1. Necessity for salvation. Having become corrupt through apostasy, we must be wrought on a different mould.

2. Grateful imitation and return. Christ’s love draws out ours.

3. Spiritual and eternal recompense. Even this world’s goods will be restored, if God sees we would benefit by possessing them. But in most cases the reward is wholly spiritual-the favour of heaven instead of the friendship of mortals-the blessed experience of being on the side of God and right. (J. Leifchild.)

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Self-denial

I. What is meant by “himself.”

1. Things outward: things concerning the outward man, yet so near him, as they are, after a sort, himself; not only his riches, but his name, his liberty, his life; all of which must be denied rather than Christ and His truth.

2. Things inward, which can hardly be distinguished from himself.

(1) He must deny the wisdom of the flesh, which is enmity to God.

(2) He must deny his own corrupt will, which is contrary to God’s will.

(3) He must deny all his carnal passions and affections, as carnal love, hatred, fear.

(4) He must deny all his own wicked inclinations.

(5) He must deny all wicked habits and sins.

II. The difficulty of this precept.

1. Consider the nearness of things to be denied. Were it only in things without us, as to part with riches, it were difficult enough; but when it leads us out of our own wisdom and judgment, what a hard province proves it.

2. Natural pride and self-love is such, that it is with us as with Solomon (Ecc_2:10). We are so far from crossing ourselves, that we endure not any other should cross us; Haman is sick on his bed because Mordicai denies him obeisance; if John deny Herod his Herodias, he will die for it; if Jonas his gourd, he will be angry to the death; such impatience is in our nature, if we be crossed in our wills.

3. Distrust in God, and trust in the means, makes the precept yet more difficult: we see not easily how we can do well without friends, wealth, liberty, favour, preferments. Wisdom is good with an inheritance (Ecc_7:1-29). We cannot live by promises, something we would have in hand.

III. The necessity of self-denial.

1. The context affirms a twofold necessity: in the words going before-without it a man cannot be a disciple of Christ: and in the words following-no man can take up his cross who has not denied himself.

2. The true wisdom cannot be embraced before the other be displaced, no more than light can be manifest before darkness be chased away.

3. The gospel offers Christ as a Physician, man must therefore deny the means he can devise to help himself, before he come to see what need he hath of Christ.

4. No obedience can be acceptably performed to God without self-denial, for many commandments are hard and difficult.

5. Whence is all the denial of Christ at this day, but want of self-denial.

IV. The aids to self-denial. The Lord has not left us destitute of means, if we be not wanting to ourselves.

1. Strength to overcome ourselves is not from ourselves, therefore, we must remember that the Spirit is given to those who ask.

2. Consider what an advantage it will be to take ourselves in hand before our lusts be grown strong in us, and how they are far mole easily denied in the first

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rising then when they have seated themselves with delight in the affections and members, and are grown from motions to acts, from acts to customs, from customs to habits, from habits to another nature.

3. As it must be the first, so also the continued acts of a Christian to stand in the denial of himself, seeing the enemy continually uses our own natural inclinations against us; he ploughs with our own heifer.

4. And because they are not denied till the contrary be practiced, our care must be that the room of our hearts must be taken up with good desires, and the lustings of the Spirit which will keep out the desires of the flesh.

5. Whereas distrustfulness of heart rivetteth us with the world, labour daily for the strengthening of faith in the providence of God, and bring thy heart to lean upon that and not upon inferior means.

V. The motives to self-denial.

1. Look to Christ, He denied Himself for us, we cannot deny too much for Him.

2. Look to the world, it will leave and deny us.

3. Look to the examples of the saints who have denied themselves.

4. Look to hypocrites forsaking much for God’s favour; we have Baal’s priests tormenting themselves to uphold their idolatry.

5. Look to the end of our self-denial; there meets us God’s promise with a full hand; all will then be made up with an infinite advantage

VI. The marks of self-denial.

1. One in regard to God; it will cast a man wholly out of himself (Psa_73:25).

2. The second in respect of Christ, for Christ, he can want as well as abound (Php_3:8).

3. The third, in respect of the Word of God, it is ready for all God’s will.

4. The fourth, in respect to himself, he that hath denied himself will desire no way of prosperity but God’s own, and will ascribe it all to God.

5. The fifth mark is, in respect to others; he that hath denied himself lives not to himself, but procures the good of others, and advances to his power every man’s good. He looks not on men as they are affected to himself, but as he ought to be affected to them.

6. The last note of self-denial is the life of faith, beyond and without all means of help. As nothing gives more glory to God than faith, so nothing takes so much from man. (T. Taylor, D. D.)

Self-denial

Self-denial is a Christian principle, and yet no new thing, since in some form it must form a part of the lives of most men. Thus, when Garibaldi was going out to battle, he told his troops what he wanted them to do, and they said, “Well, general, what are you going to give us for all this?” He replied, “I don’t know what also you will get, but you will get hunger, and cold, and wounds, perhaps death.” They stood awhile in silence, and then threw up their hands; “We are the men!” Faith in Christ puts in action, and strengthens a desire to conquer self, which seems inherent in human

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nature.

The disciple’s cross

The world in general has got ready a cross for each of Christ’s disciples. So determined is it in its opposition, and so remorseless in its hate. It has resolved that every Christian shall be crucified, in one way or another. If the body cannot be got hold of and transfixed, the heart may. Every true Christian must be willing to accept this treatment for Christ’s sake. He must take up his cross, and walk with it, as it were, to the place of execution, ready for the last extremity. It is the dark side of the case; and the phase of representation under which it is exhibited was no doubt suggested to our Lord by the clear view He had of the termination of His own terrestrial career. “A Christian,” says Luther, “is a Crucian.” The Saviour pictures to His hearers a procession. He Himself takes the lead with His cross. He is the chief Crucian. All His disciples follow. Each has his own particular cross. But the direction of the procession, when one looks far enough, is toward the kingdom of heavenly glory. (J. Morison, D. D.)

The cross to be expected

Be prepared for afflictions. To this end would Christ have us reckon upon the cross, that we may be forewarned. He that builds a house does not take care that the rain should not descend upon it, or the storm should not beat upon it, or the wind blow upon it; there is no fencing against these things, they cannot be prevented by any care of ours; but that the house may be able to endure all this without prejudice. And he that builds a ship, does not make this his work, that it should never meet with waves and billows; that is impossible; but that it may be light and staunch, and able to endure all weathers. A man who takes care for his body does not care for this, that he meet with no change of weather, hot and cold, but how his body may bear all this. Thus should Christians do; not so much to care how to shift and avoid afflictions, but how to bear them with an even quiet mind. As we cannot hinder the rain from falling upon the house, nor the waves from beating upon the ship, nor change of weather and seasons from affecting the body, so it is not in our power to hinder the falling out of afflictions and tribulations: all that lies upon us, is to make provision for such an hour, that we be not overwhelmed by it. (T. Manton, D. D.)

Necessity of discipline

When God built this world, He did not build a palace complete with appointments. This is a drill world. Men were not dropped down upon it like manna, fit to be gathered and used as it fell; but like seeds, to whom the plough is father, the furrow mother, and on which iron and stone, sickle, flail, and mill must act, before they come to the loaf. (H. W. Beecher.)

Affliction, our present portion

The Christian lives in the midst of crosses, as the fish lives in the sea. (Vianney.)

Difficulty not confined to religion

Is religion difficult? and what is not so, that is good for anything Is not the law a

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difficult and crabbed study? Does it not require great labour and perpetual drudging to excel in any kind of knowledge, to be master of any art or profession? In a word, is there anything in the world worth having, that is to be got without pains? And is eternal life and glory the only slight and inconsiderable thing that is not worth our care and industry? (Archbishop Tillotson.)

The cross is a reality

The crusaders of old, it is said, used to carry painted crosses upon their shoulders; it is to be feared that many among us take up crosses which sit just as lightly; things of ornament, passports to respectability, a cheap exchange for a struggle we never made, and a crown we never strove for. But let us not deceive ourselves. None ever yet entered into the kingdom of heaven without tribulation; not, perhaps, the tribulation of fire, or rebuke, or blasphemy, but the tribulation of a bowed spirit and a humble heart; of the flesh crucified to the spirit, and of hard conflict with the powers of darkness; and, therefore, if our religion be of such a pliable and elastic form as to have cost us neither pains to acquire, nor self-denial to preserve, nor effort to advance, nor struggle to maintain holy and undefiled-we may be assured our place among the ranks of the risen dead will be with that prodigious multitude who were pure in their own eyes, and yet were not washed from their filthiness. (D. Moore, M. A.)

Meaning of the cross

Carrying a cross after Christ means, for one thing, enduring suffering for Christ. “Cross” was the name once given to the most fearful engine of agony for the body; and the words “cross,” “crucial,” “excruciate,” etc., have come into our language from that material cross, and they now point, in a general way, to what has to be suffered, not in the body, but in the soul. To carry a cross for Christ means, for another thing, having a great weight on the mind for Christ’s sake. To carry a cross for Christ means, for another thing, that this suffering and heavily-weighted condition should be open, not secret; for the cross bearer is seen. It means, for another thing, that the man who is willing to carry the cross for Christ is willing to suffer scorn for Christ. No one carried a cross in the old Roman days but one who was the very refuse of society. To be willing to carry a cross for Christ means willingness to suffer ignominy, willingness to “go forth without the camp, bearing His reproach.” To carry a cross for Christ has another meaning. It means that for Christ’s sake the person who does so takes up a trial that comes to him in the course of God’s providence, and not through his own choice, or fault, or folly. A man does, from a sublime motive, some evil thing that good may come. Then he suffers the penalty. When he does so, that is not suffering a cross. When a man is a violator of the Petrine law; when he is a busybody and a meddler in other men’s matters, and suffers the proper penalty; when a man does a right thing at a wrong time, or in a wrong place, or in a wrong way, and suffers the penalty; when a man tries to help out the cleansing efficacy of Christ’s blood by some nostrum of his own, as if the great Lord of the universe had mistaken the proportions in which health and sickness, light and darkness, fire and frost, ease and pain, should be distributed, and suffers a complicated penalty thereby and therefrom, that penalty is not a cross in any one instance. Penalty is penalty, and nothing else. Whatever the cause may be in which you are acting or suffering, penalty is penalty, not a cross taken up for Christ. But when, for the sake of principle, for the sake of profession, for the sake and in the course of carrying out the laws of a Christian calling, any man has to suffer something sharp, or to bear something

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gaffing, for Christ’s sake, that is a cross. (Charles Stanford, D. D.)

Taking up the cross

I. What is this cross? By the cross is not meant any affliction which belongs to the common calamities of nature; but that suffering which is inflicted for the profession of Christ and His truth.

1. From Him: His fan to sift and purge us.

2. For Him: endured for His cause and glory.

3. His in His mystical body; not natural.

4. Not in respect of merit, but of sympathy.

II. Why is it called the cross?

1. Because of the union between Christ and the Christian, so it is a part of Christ’s own cross: for as all the members suffered with Christ on the cross, as their Surety; so He suffers with them as His members.

2. That we should never think of the troubles for Christ, but cast our eyes also upon the cross of Christ, where we shall see Him sanctifying, sweetening, and conquering all our sorrows.

3. That in all our sufferings for Christ we should support our faith and patience in beholding what was the end of Christ’s cross, and to expect the same happy end of our crosses for Christ-the crown.

III. What is it to take up the cross? It is not to devise voluntary affliction for ourselves. Neither is it to pull the cross upon our shoulders. For-

1. Christ did not carry His cross till it was laid upon Him.

2. Our rule is to use all good means for the preservation of our bodies, health, wealth, and comfort.

3. Every bearing of affliction must be an obedience of faith, and as such based upon a commandment of God. No soldier must of his own head raise war against his own peace, nor set fire upon his own house; this is not the part of a good soldier, but of a mutinous fellow. So no soldier of Christ must be superfluous in suffering.

4. We may not tempt God by running before Him, but follow Him going before us. If without sin and with good conscience we may escape danger, and do not, we run upon it, and it becomes our own cross, and not Christ’s. It is enough to suffer wrong; we must not offer wrong to our own persons. We are not bound to seek the cross, nor make it, but to bear and take it up. Nor to fill the cup for ourselves, but to drink it when God reaches it. To take up the cross, therefore, is, when a cross meet us in our way, which we cannot without sin escape, we must now take knowledge of God’s will, God’s hand, God’s time, and God’s voice calling us to suffer. Now God laying on the cross, we must not pull away the shoulder, nor hide ourselves from the cross under the covert of sinful shifts, nor avoid it by any unlawful means, but take it up, and buckle to the burden.

IV. The necessity of the cross.

1. To the godly afflictions are often as necessary as meat and drink; for prosperity is as a dead sea (Pro_1:32). Standing waters contract mud, and breed vermin; a

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still body fills with bad humours. Fallow and unstirred grounds are fruitful in weeds; therefore God in great wisdom by trials shakes them out of security, and makes them more watchful of themselves; scouring makes metals brighter and more useful.

2. Another reason why the Lord hath yoked the Christian to the cross is, because He will thence fetch a strong argument to confound Satan (Job_1:9); He will have it appear that His servants love Christ and religion for itself, not for wealth or ease.

3. Comfort to the saints in their suffering.

(1) In that they have such a partner.

(2) In that we have Christ Himself at the other end of the cross, helping and supporting us. He is of power to carry the heavy end, and bear off the weight from us.

(3) In that we have all the saints our companions. How can we sink having so many shoulders under our burden.

V. What is required in taking up the cross?

1. A continual expectation and a standing unfearfully in the station wherein God hath set us, with a strong resolution not to be discouraged, though crosses come never so thick. Expected evils smart less.

2. A contentedness to abide under a great burden, as a man stands under the burden he hath taken up.

3. Love of God, notwithstanding the cross.

4. Humility and silence; not disputing the matter with God.

5. Joy and rejoicing, not in the smart of the cross, but in waiting the sweet fruit of it. (T. Taylor, D. D.)

BURKITT, "Verse 34

Observe here, 1. How our blessed Saviour recommends his religion to everyone's election and choice, not attempting by force and violence to compel any person to the embracing of it. If any man will come after me: that is, if any man chooses and resolves to be a Christian.

Observe, 2. Our Saviour's terms propounded; namely, self-denial, gospel-suffering, and gospel-service.

1. Self-denial; Let him deny himself. By which we are not to understand, either the denying of our senses in matters of faith, or the renouncing of our reason in the matters of religion; but a willingness to part with all our earthly comforts, and temporal enjoyments, for the sake of Christ, when called thereunto.

2. Gospel-suffering; He must take up his cross. An allusion to the Roman custom, that the malefactor who was to be crucified, took his cross upon his shoulder, and carried it to the place of execution.

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Where note, That not the making of the cross, but the patient bearing of it, when God has made it, and laid it upon our shoulders, is the duty enjoined. Let him take up his cross.

3. Gospel-service; Let him follow me, says Christ: that is, obey my commands, and imitate my example. He must set my life and doctrine continually before him, and be daily correcting and reforming his life by that rule and pattern.

Observe, 3. The reasons urged by our Saviour to induce men to a willingness to lay down their lives for the sake of Christ and his holy religion; He that will save his life, shall lose it; and he that is willing to lose his life for the gospel's sake, the same shall find it.

Intimating to us, 1. That the love of this temporal life is a great temptation to men to deny Christ, and to renounce his holy religion.

And, 2. That the surest way to attain eternal life, is cheerfully to lay down our temporal life, when the glory of Christ, and the honour of religion, requires it at our hand.

35 For whoever wants to save their life[b] will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it.

CLARKE, "For whosoever will save his life - On this and the following verses, see Mat_16:24, etc.

GILL, "For whosoever will save his life,.... Life is a valuable thing, and all that a man has he will give for it; self preservation is a principle in nature; and it becomes every man to take all lawful methods to save his life, when it is threatened, or is in danger: but whoever is willing to save it, when it is called for to be laid down for Christ's sake; and rather than lay it down, will deny Christ, and give up a profession of him, and his Gospel,

shall lose it: he shall not enjoy it with honour and comfort now, and much less with peace, pleasure, and happiness hereafter, but shall be under the power of the second death:

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but whosoever shall lose his life for my sake and the Gospel's; that is, shall willingly part with it when he is called to it, rather than deny Christ and his Gospel,

the same shall save it: though he will lose it now, he will find it again in the resurrection of life; for he will rise to eternal life; when such, who have apostatized from Christ, will rise to shame, and everlasting contempt: this man will have greatly the advantage over such; they will die the second death, or be destroyed soul and body in hell; and he will live for ever with Christ, in endless pleasure and glory; See Gill on Mat_16:25.

HENRY, " They must not be solicitous, no, not for the life of the body, when they cannot keep it without quitting Christ, Mar_8:35. Are we invited by the words and works of Christ to follow him? Let us sit down, and count the cost, whether we can prefer our advantages by Christ before life itself, whether we can bear to think of losing our life for Christ's sake and the gospel's. When the devil is drawing away disciples and servants after him, he conceals the worst of it, tells them only of the pleasure, but nothing of the peril, of his service; Ye shall not surely die; but what there is of trouble and danger in the service of Christ, he tells us of it before, tells us we shall suffer, perhaps we shall die, in the cause; and represents the discouragements not less, but greater, than commonly they prove, that it may appear he deals fairly with us, and is not afraid that we should know the worst; because the advantages of his service abundantly suffice to balance the discouragements, if we will but impartially set the one over against the other. In short,

(1.) We must not dread the loss of our lives, provided it be in the cause of Christ(Mar_8:35); Whosoever will save his life, by declining Christ, and refusing to come to him, or by disowning and denying him after he has in profession come to Christ, he shall lose it, shall lose the comfort of his natural life, the root and fountain of his spiritual life, and all his hopes of eternal life; such a bad bargain will he make for himself. But whosoever shall lose his life, shall be truly willing to lose it, shall venture it, shall lay it down when he cannot keep it without denying Christ, he shall save it,he shall be an unspeakable gainer; for the loss of his life shall be made up to him in a better life. It is looked upon to be some kind of recompence to those who lose their lives in the service of their prince and country, to have their memories honoured and their families provided for; but what is that to the recompence which Christ makes in eternal life to all that die for him?

CONSTABLE, "Verse 35Jesus used the word "life" (Gr. psyche) in two ways in this verse. The translation of this Greek word as "soul" here has caused some people to conclude that Jesus was only warning about the loss of salvation. He was not. In its first occurrence in each clause, "life" refers to one's physical life. In the second part of each clause "it" means the essential person that continues to exist beyond the grave. Likewise "lose" has two meanings. In the first clause it means the loss of reward for believers or the loss of salvation for unbelievers. In the second clause it means loss of physical life.

Jesus meant that if a person wants to retain control of his or her life now, he or she will suffer the loss of something more valuable in the future. Conversely if a person will relinquish control of his or her life to follow God's will faithfully, he or she will gain something of greater ultimate worth. [Note: See Narry F. Santos, "Jesus' Paradoxical Teaching in Mark 8:35; 9:35; and 10:43-44," Bibliotheca

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Sacra 157:625 (January-March 2000):15-25.]

"The calm assertion, 'for my sake,' reflects Christ's consciousness of His unique supremacy which justly claims the absolute allegiance of His disciples. And the gospel's, added only in Mark (cf. Mark 10:29), points to the message which he accepts and propagates at the cost of himself. The two form two sides of one great reality. Christ is known to us only through the gospel, and our adherence to the gospel means our loyalty to Him." [Note: Hiebert, p. 209.]"In the second half of Mark 'the gospel' always denotes the message announced by the Church, of which Jesus is the content (Chs. Mark 8:35; Mark 10:29; Mark 13:10; Mark 14:9), precisely as in Ch. Mark 1:1." [Note: Lane, p. 309.]

36 What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?

GILL, "For what shall it profit a man,.... In the long run, in the issue of things, who by denying Christ, and his Gospel, may not only save his life for the present, but procure for himself great riches and wealth:

if he shall gain the whole world; were that possible to be done, and which the ambitious, worldly man is desirous of; yet supposing he: had his desire, of what avail would this be in the upshot of things, should the following be his case, as it will,

and lose his own soul? which is immortal and everlasting, when the world, and the glory of it pass away, and so is of more worth than the whole world. The world can only be enjoyed for a season, and that with a great deal of fatigue and trouble; but the soul continues for ever; and if it is lost and damned, its torment always abides, and the smoke of it ascends for ever, its worm never dies, and its fire is never quenched; See Gill on Mat_16:26.

HENRY, "(2.) We must dread the loss of our souls, yea, though we should gain the whole world by it (Mar_8:36, Mar_8:37); For what shall it profit a man, if he should gain the whole world, and all the wealth, honour, and pleasure, in it, by denying Christ, and lose his own soul? “True it is,” said Bishop Hooper, the night before he suffered martyrdom, “that life is sweet, and death is bitter, but eternal death is more bitter, and eternal life is more sweet.” As the happiness of heaven with Christ, is enough to countervail the loss of life itself for Christ, so the gain of all the world in sin, is not sufficient to countervail the ruin of the soul by sin.

BARCLAY, "FINDING LIFE BY LOSING LIFE (Mark 8:36)8:36 Whoever seeks to save his life shall lose it; and whoever loses his life for my sake and for the sake of the gospel shall save it.

There are certain things which are lost by being kept and saved by being used. Any talent that a man possesses is like that. If he uses it, it will develop into

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something still greater. If he refuses to use it he will in the end lose it. Supremely so, life is like that.

History is full of examples of men, who by throwing away their lives, gained life eternal. Late in the fourth century, there was in the East a monk called Telemachus. He had determined to leave the world and to live all alone in prayer and meditation and fasting, and so to save his soul. In his lonely life he sought nothing but contact with God. But somehow he felt there was something wrong. One day as he rose from his knees, it suddenly dawned upon him that his life was based, not on a self-less, but on a selfish love of God. It came to him that if he was to serve God he must serve men, that the desert was no place for a Christian to live, that the cities were full of sin and therefore full of need.

He determined to bid farewell to the desert and set out to the greatest city in the world, Rome, at the other side of the world. He begged his way across lands and seas. By this time Rome was officially Christian. He arrived at a time when Stilicho, the Roman general, had gained a mighty victory over the Goths. To Stilicho was granted a Roman triumph. There was this difference from the old days--now it was to the Christian churches the crowds poured and not to the heathen temples. There were the processions and the celebrations and Stilicho rode in triumph through the streets, with the young Emperor Honorius by his side.

But one thing had lingered on into Christian Rome. There was still the arena; there were still the gladiatorial games. Nowadays Christians were no longer thrown to the lions; but still those captured in war had to fight and kill each other to make a Roman holiday for the populace. Still men roared with blood lust as the gladiators fought.

Telemachus found his way to the arena. There were eighty-thousand people there. The chariot races were ending; and there was a tenseness in the crowd as the gladiators prepared to fight. Into the arena they came with their greeting. "Hail, Caesar! We who are about to die salute you!" The fight was on and Telemachus was appalled. Men for whom Christ had died were killing each other to amuse an allegedly Christian populace. He leapt the barrier. He was in between the gladiators, and for a moment they stopped. "Let the games go on," roared the crowd. They pushed the old man aside; he was still in his hermit's robes. Again he carne between them. The crowd began to hurl stones at him; they urged the gladiators to kill him and get him out of the way. The commander of the games gave an order; a gladiator's sword rose and flashed; and Telemachus lay dead.

Suddenly the crowd were silent. They were suddenly shocked that a holy man should have been killed in such a way. Suddenly there was a mass realization of what this killing really was. The games ended abruptly that day--and they never began again. Telemachus, by dying, had ended them. As Gibbon said of him, "His death was more useful to mankind than his life." By losing his life he had done more than ever he could have done by husbanding it out in lonely devotion in the desert.

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God gave us life to spend and not to keep. If we live carefully, always thinking first of our own profit, ease, comfort, security, if our sole aim is to make life as long and as trouble-free as possible, if we will make no effort except for ourselves, we are losing life all the time. But if we spend life for others, if we forget health and time and wealth and comfort in our desire to do something for Jesus and for the men for whom Jesus died, we are winning life all the time.

What would have happened to the world if doctors and scientists and inventors had not been prepared to risk experiments often on their own bodies? What would have happened to life if everyone had wished for nothing but to remain comfortably at home, and there had been no such person as an explorer or a pioneer? What would happen if every mother refused to take the risk of bearing a child? What would happen if all men spent all they had upon themselves?

The very essence of life is in risking life and spending life, not in saving it and hoarding it. True, it is the way of weariness, of exhaustion, of giving to the uttermost--but it is better any day to burn out than to rust out, for that is the way to happiness and the way to God.

COFFMAN, "These verses stress the incomparable value of the soul, worth more than the whole world; and if, through disloyalty to Christ, one should forfeit his soul to eternal night, there is nothing with which he could hope to reclaim it. The loss would be irrevocable. Even if he should have gained the planet itself, such would be insufficient to purchase again the forfeited life.

The overwhelming significance of the teachings in this entire paragraph lies in the absolute loyalty to his Person which was required by Jesus Christ. Only God could righteously demand and receive such adoration and fidelity from men; and therefore the passage is heavily freighted with overtones of the Saviour's godhead.

NISBET, "PROFIT AND LOSS‘For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?’Mark 8:36Christ does not ask men how they will answer at God’s bar for their lives, only how they will answer for their conduct to themselves, and how the gain and loss will stand at the final settlement.

I. The supposed gain.

(a) A limited use only of the world can be made. True, Christ speaks of ‘the whole world,’ and thus gives the worldling the benefit of the supposition that he can gain it entirely. But the gain of the whole world is an utter impossibility to any man; and were it a possibility, very little use could be made of it by him. Others must necessarily share in it.

(b) The gain of a world cannot satisfy a man. An outward thing, however great

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and grand it may be, cannot possibly fill the inward soul.

(c) The holding, moreover, is not for ever. Supposing a man could gain the whole world, his tenure of it is short indeed; and then, when a man seems to need the world most, it gallops away from him, and leaves him to his fate. When this happens, all former profit, real or supposed, is at an absolute end.

II. The actual loss.

(a) That of a man’s soul. But what is a soul? It is a man’s conscious being. God is the maker of the soul; and He made it in the likeness of the Triune, filling it with life and immortality. It is, therefore, the gem of creation—the wonder of the universe!

(b) The standard of its value. The worth of a thing is tested by the price any one thoroughly understanding it will give for it, or will require as an equivalent for it. But man cannot appraise the value of his own soul (Micah 6:6-7). God has done this for him in a wonderfully gracious and perfect manner (John 3:16).

(c) The loss of it is beyond all calculation. As the worth of the soul immeasurably transcends all that material wealth and carnal grandeur of which the wildest ambition can form a notion, its loss, then, must rank next to the loss of its God!

Illustration

‘Thus sublimely but mournfully Robert Hall describes the final solemnities of a lost soul: “What—if it be lawful to indulge such a thought—would be its funeral obsequies? Where shall we find the tears fit to be wept at such a spectacle? or, could we realise the calamity in all its extent, what tokens of commiseration and concern would be deemed equal to the occasion? Would it suffice for the sun to veil his light, and the moon her brightness? to cover the ocean with mourning and the heavens with sackcloth? Or, were the whole fabric of nature to become animated and vocal, would it be possible for her to utter a groan too deep, or a cry too piercing, to express the magnitude and extent of such a catastrophe?’

(SECOND OUTLINE)THE IMPORTANCE OF LIFEThis familiar passage is somewhat obscured in the Authorised Version.

I. There is a contrast to life and soul which the original does not contain. ‘Life,’ in Mark 8:35, and ‘soul,’ in Mark 8:36-37, are the same word, and ought to be translated by the same word throughout. The Authorised Version does not represent the distinction between the two words rendered ‘lose.’ In Mark 8:35 a man may lose his life in his master’s service; but he cannot ‘forfeit’ it (Mark 8:36) except by his own default. The text teaches—

II. The paramount importance of life in its fullest and highest sense. Anything a man has may perish, but he remains; or, he may perish and his possessions survive.

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III. The practical application.

(a) Have we the principle of real life in us?

(b) Nothing can compensate for loss of this true life.

(c) Life in Christ, the gift of God, by the merits of Christ.

Rev. Barton R. V. Mills.Illustrations

(1) ‘When Lysimachus was engaged in a war with the Getæ, he was so tormented by thirst that he offered his kingdom to his enemies for permission to quench it. His exclamation, when he had drunk the water with which they furnished him, is striking. “Ah, wretched me, who, for such a momentary gratification, have lost so great a kingdom!” How applicable is this to the case of those who for the momentary pleasures of sin, part with the Kingdom of Heaven!’

(2) ‘There is such a thing as a man holding his soul in his own custody; and there is such a thing—and it is no matter of fiction, but it is a thing which is happening every day—there is such a thing as a man selling his soul to the devil! It is a fearful thing—that there should be going on, every day, a traffic in the world like this! a traffic, not of material commodities, but a traffic of souls! A little pleasure, a little money taken, and the prize actually given—a soul! an undying soul! a soul, with all its capacities of joy and anguish, for ever and ever!’

BURKITT, "Our Saviour had shewn in the former verses the great danger of seeking to save our temporal life, by exposing to hazard our eternal life. This he confirms in the words before us by a double argument: the first drawn from the excellency of eternal life, or the life of the soul: the second from the irrecoverableness of this loss, or the impossibility of redeeming the loss of the soul by any way or means whatsoever. What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?

Learn, 1. That Almighty God has intrusted every one of us with a soul of inestimable worth and presciousness, capable of being saved or lost, and that to all eternity.

2. That the gain of the whole world is not comparable with the loss of one precious soul; the soul's loss is an inconceivable, irrecompensible, and irrecoverable loss.

GREAT TEXTS OF THE BIBLE, "A World for a Life

For what doth it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his life (RVm. soul)? For what should a man give in exchange for his life (RVm. soul)?—Mar_8:36-37.

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1. The text is often spoken of as if it stated a problem in profit and loss. But the point of it may be missed in that way. For a man may have some profit and suffer some loss, and balance the one against the other. Christ says it is all profit or all loss. It is in fact an exchange. We have a life and barter it for a world. It is a double exchange, or an attempt at it. First the life is given for the world—“What doth it profit a man, to gain the whole world, and forfeit his life?” And then, when the bargain is seen to be a bad one, the attempt is made to barter the world for the life—“What should a man give in exchange for his life?”

We are not to understand these two verses, says James Vaughan,1 [Note: Sermons, iv. 1.] as if they conveyed exactly the same truth. The thoughts are two—and perfectly distinct. The first—supposing a man to have his “soul,” is, “What shall it profit him if, for any advantage whatsoever, he loses it?” And the other, supposing he has “lost” it, “How can he get it again?”

2. This does not raise the question, once much debated, whether it is possible to make the best of both worlds. In that question the two worlds are taken to mean the present and the future, and between these there is no opposition. If a man does not make the best of this world, by finding God in it and living for Him, he will not make the best of the world to come; nor will he make anything of it. In our text the question is between finding pleasure in this world apart from God, or finding God in this world and all our pleasure in Him.

So we have first the World, next the Life, and then the double exchange between these two.

I

The World

What is the World? It is this world we live in. God made the world: did He not make it to be enjoyed and used by man? Undoubtedly He did. But not that the world should be enjoyed to the exclusion of the Maker of it. Suppose that you invite some one to your table. You furnish the table. But what would you think of the guest who occupied himself entirely with the table, eating and drinking without once lifting up his head to hold conversation with you? God made man chiefly for conversation and communion with Himself. And when a man prefers to occupy himself with the good things of this world, he is gaining the world and losing his own soul.

To gain the world is to gain (1) the riches of the world, as the rich young ruler (Mar_10:22), or as Demas; (2) the honours and fame of the world, as Nebuchadnezzar (Dan_4:30), or as Herod (Act_12:21-23); (3) the sinful pleasures of the world (Heb_11:25; Pro_23:31); (4) the amusements and follies of the world (Ecc_11:9).1 [Note: R. Brewin.]

At Aix-la-Chapelle is the tomb of the great Emperor Charlemagne. He was buried in the central space beneath the dome; but the manner of his burial is one of the most impressive sermons ever preached. In the death-chamber beneath the

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floor he sat on a marble chair—the chair in which kings had been crowned—wrapped in his Imperial robes. A book of the Gospel lay open in his lap; and as he sat there, silent, cold, motionless, the finger of the dead man’s hand pointed to the words of Jesus: “What shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?”2 [Note: H. H. Griffiths.]

I built me my own little world,

Not God—but my world was fair;

I perfumed it fragrant with blossoms,

I hedged it around with care.

And I said, “It is well; it is quarried

Strong now, as strong love dare plan;

A home for two hearts it is carven,

Built by the will of a man.”

And I shouted and sang “Jubilate!”

The heart within me was light,

It heard not the brooding footstep

That bringeth the blinding night.

It saw not the cloud from the sun-set

A man might hold in his hand,

Yet it swam on nearer and blacker,

To darken my pleasant Land.

And a wind span out o’ the East—

God has four—a sword his breath,

And he shook my portals and pillars

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With a shaking that meaneth death.

God o’ four winds! Thine east wind smote it;

My fair world trembled and fell:

Still I stood—at my feet in ashes

Lay the World I loved so well.1 [Note: Agnes H. Begbie, The Rosebud Wall, 21.]

II

The Life

What is the Life? The word psyche, here translated “life,” and often translated “soul,” is the equivalent of nephesh in Hebrew, the conscious life of feeling and desire. The New Testament distinguishes this life from merely physical animation on the one hand, and from the higher life of the pneuma on the other. Thus the life or soul ( øõ÷Þ ) holds a mediating position between the body ( óῶìá ) and the spirit ( ðíåῦìá ), and the word is used with a lower or a higher reference in different contexts. So says Swete, and gives examples of the lower reference (Mat_2:20; Mat_6:25; Joh_10:15 ff.; Rom_11:3; Php_2:30), and of the higher (Mat_11:29; Mar_14:34; Joh_12:27; Heb_6:19; 1Pe_1:22).

Life, says Menzies, stands here, not for one of several elements of the human person, as with Paul, but for the whole sentient life of the individual. Christ does not mean, says Stopford Brooke,1 [Note: The Gospel of Joy, 266.] a personal, selfish thing inside of you which was in danger of hell-fire or punishment, and which had first to be saved from them, and then put into a comfortable position in heaven. But He did mean all those qualities and their harmonies which make up in a man, in a society or in a nation, a character like the character of God, our Father.

What an incalculable depth of gratitude we owe to our authorized English translation of the Bible! But it has done us all the same a few wrongs; and among these not the least considerable is that often, even in the same passage, it has translated one word in the original at one time “soul” and at another time “life.” The result is we have got into the habit of thinking that a man’s soul is something mystical, something vague, something different from that actual, breathing, struggling human life which he knows so well. But it is not so. The soul is nothing else than the life, the sum of vital powers which we expend. To save your soul is nothing else than to preserve your life; to make the best of yourself; to lose your soul is nothing else than to defile, to spoil, to waste your vital powers, to make the worst of yourself. Of course, if this is to be true, you must remember that your soul is yourself and yours beyond the grave; and to save your soul is to make the best of yourself considered as an immortal being.2 [Note: Bishop Gore.]

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What is it to lose the soul? It is (1) to lose Christ and all spiritual enjoyments; (2) to lose heaven and all its joys for ever; (3) to lose all rest and peace to all eternity (Rev_14:11); (4) to lose all hope of ever bettering our condition (Rev_9:6); (5) to lose the very world itself (Luk_16:23-24).3 [Note: R. Brewin.]

Large numbers of men hardly seem to have a life to forfeit; they can hardly be said to live; their intellect has never felt the thrill which comes with a true intellectual awakening; their conscience has never discovered how august duty is; the infinite mystery and glory of the eternal Kingdom which environs every man has never been revealed to them; there are the germs and the possibilities in them of a very great life, but the germs have never been quickened, the possibilities are remote from realisation.4 [Note: R. W. Dale.]

I remember some years ago being present at a meeting held in honour of an old teacher who was passing into retirement. A large company had gathered together, among them men who had made their mark in public life. Several of these rose and spoke in the old man’s praise. He was not a man of unusual attainments or of notable gifts, but he had evidently done these men, who were paying him honour, a service they had come long distances to acknowledge. As I listened to the words of generous eulogy I discerned what it was that drew them all to respectful gratitude. The words they quoted with deepest feeling were not his pregnant comments on men and things, not his wittiest jests, and not his wisest counsels. They were the words in which they had felt the trembling of a deep passion, all the deeper for a shy man’s reticence, which believed that each of them had a spiritual nature to be created anew in the image of Christ. These men, busy in the keen struggle of life, one by one bowed down in reverence before the man whose years had been spent, and whose duty had been fulfilled, under a supreme sense of the value of the soul.1 [Note: W. M. Clow.]

III

The Exchange

The exchange is to give the man himself, all that makes him a man, for the things that are without. And when the discovery is made that the exchange is a bad one, it is the futile attempt to get back the man in exchange for the things. But it may be considered in respect of the physical life, the intellectual life, the moral and social life, and the spiritual life.

1. The Physical Life.—Does it profit a man if he gain the world and forfeit his physical life? Is the loss of bodily strength, physical vigour, nervous energy, and all the capacity for enjoyment which these things bring—is that loss sufficiently offset by the gain of a whole world? The other evening I counted over in my mind no fewer than thirteen men who within recent years had died under fifty-two years of age literally from the pressure of overwork. These were all highly successful men, not licentious nor drunkards, and not all of them were irreligious men. But in gaining their little world they had simply toiled and struggled for themselves, denied themselves hours of relaxation and rest. Late and soon they

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were at the daily grind of getting without spending, and, physically depleted, they died, not only in the prime of manhood, but in the summit of success, when, humanly speaking, there was everything to live for. They had gained a world, and had forfeited the only life which could enjoy it. At their funerals, I doubt not, remarks were made on the mysterious Providence which had cut short their days in the meridian of their maturity. But, as a matter of fact, there was no mysterious Providence about it. The men had died by their own acts, by the surrender of the righteous claims of their physical life in the struggle to gain a world. Well, was it worth while? Does that bargain pay? Is money of so much matter to any man that he should make himself a suicide for that one end?1 [Note: D. Sage Mackay.]

One summer afternoon a steamer crowded with passengers, many of them miners from California, was speeding along the Mississippi. Striking suddenly and strongly against the wreck of another vessel, which, unknown to the captain, lay near the surface of the water, her bow was stove in, and she began to fill rapidly. Her deck was a scene of wild confusion. Her boats were launched, but did not suffice to carry off one-fourth of the terrified passengers. The rest, divesting themselves of their garments, cast themselves into the river, “some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship. And so it came to pass that they escaped all safe to land.” All except one. Some minutes after the last of them had quitted the vessel, another man appeared on her deck. Seizing a spar, he also leaped into the river, but, instead of floating, as the others had done, he sank instantly, as if he had been a stone. His body was afterwards recovered, and it was found that he had employed the quarter of an hour in which his fellow passengers had been striving to save their lives, in rifling the trunks of the miners. All round his waist their bags of gold were fastened. In one short quarter of an hour he had gained more gold than most men earn in their lifetime.2 [Note: A. C. Price.]

2. The Intellectual Life.—You can see men dying, dying as trees sometimes die, not from the roots but from the top. It is a melancholy sight. Their intellect is dying year by year as they become richer. Fifteen years ago their intellectual interests were vigorous, varied, and active; now they are narrow, monotonous, and languid; their whole strength has gone into the pursuit of wealth, and all their higher intellectual faculties are withering. I do not mean merely that very much of the book knowledge that they had when they left school or college has been lost—loss of that kind is almost inevitable, and no great harm comes of it. I remember hearing a very able man, who was a high wrangler (I am not sure whether he was not a senior), I remember hearing him say, “I should be very sorry if I remembered all the mathematics I knew when I took my degree.” But men not only lose their book knowledge, they lose their very intellectual life. Through this passionate devotion to business some of the intellectual powers decay, and you can see them decaying, and that, I say, is a melancholy thing; they keep their eyesight, their hearing is as keen as ever; but their higher faculties are fast going; they are no longer able to feel the enchantment, the fascination, the wonder of the great creations of genius—Milton’s majestic song, the meditative verse of Wordsworth, the sweet music of Shelley, the storm winds that sweep through the verse of Byron, the childlike charm of Charles Lamb, the

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political vision of Edmund Burke and the gorgeous pomp of his rhetoric—have lost all power to console, to charm, to animate them.1 [Note: R. W. Dale.]

The late George Romanes, one who himself stood in the first rank of scientific knowledge, and who enjoyed a singularly large range of acquaintance among men of light, has put it on record in his posthumous thoughts about religion that he has found it in his own experience true,—and he passed the greater part of his life in unbelief, though, thank God, that unbelief passed into belief at the end—and in that of his friends, that wide knowledge does not make a man happy; for man is personal, he was made for God, “and unquiet is the heart of man until it rests in Thee.”2 [Note: Bishop Gore.]

Only the other day a well-known man told me that some years ago he had sent a copy of his first book, then just published, to a prominent master of finance, a man who, from nothing, had amassed a colossal fortune. Some time after, my friend met this man, who, in congratulating the author, remarked that “he should feel particularly flattered by the fact that he had read the book at all.” “Why so?” inquired my friend. “Because,” replied the millionaire, “it is the only book of any kind I have read in five years!”1 [Note: D. Sage Mackay.]

3. The Moral and Social Life.—The records of recent days, involving the downfall of so many men high up in public estimation, have revealed, as with flaming fingers, how possible it is in these days to secure reputation and wealth and influence at the expense of integrity and honour. In the fierce struggle for wealth men have deliberately trampled their principles, and in gaining a world they have forfeited their moral ideals.

And what is true of the moral life of the individual is not less true of the social life. There is the steady effort which the capitalists in England are now making for mastery; there is the effort which labour is making against the capitalists. It is not my business here to approve or to blame either section, but it is my business to say that if either side, during the strife, or after the victory, lose their soul—if they lose the sense of justice between man and man; if they forget that men, being God’s children, are brothers one of another, knit together by love; if in victory, they are greedy of self-interest or cruel; if they do wrong to freedom, if they are not magnanimous, if they become incapable of forgiveness—there will be no true advantage to themselves in their success, and they will do harm to mankind.2 [Note: Stopford Brooke.]

There was one living who, scarcely in a figure, might be said to have the whole world. The Roman Emperor Tiberius was at that moment infinitely the most powerful of living men, the absolute, undisputed, deified ruler of all that was fairest and richest in the kingdoms of the earth. There was no control to his power, no limit to his wealth, no restraint upon his pleasures. And, to yield himself still more unreservedly to the boundless self-gratification of a voluptuous luxury, not long after this time he chose for himself a home on one of the loveliest spots on the earth’s surface, under the shadow of the slumbering volcano, upon an enchanting islet in one of the most softly delicious climates of the world. What came of it all? He was, as Pliny calls him, “tristissimus ut constat hominum,”

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confessedly the most gloomy of mankind. And there, from this home of his hidden infamies, from this island where on a scale so splendid he had tried the experiment of what happiness can be achieved by pressing the world’s most absolute authority, and the world’s guiltiest indulgences, into the service of an exclusively selfish life, he wrote to his servile and corrupted Senate, “What to write to you, Conscript Fathers, or how to write, or what not to write, may all the gods and goddesses destroy me worse than I feel that they are daily destroying me, if I know.” Rarely has there been vouchsafed to the world a more overwhelming proof that its richest gifts are but fairy gold that turns to dust and dross, and its most colossal edifices of personal splendour and greatness no more durable barrier against the encroachment of bitter misery than are the babe’s sandheaps to stay the mighty march of the Atlantic tide.1 [Note: Farrar, Life of Christ, i. 136.]

4. The Spiritual Life.—But it is of the diviner regions of life that our Lord was especially thinking. If the signs of failing health, of approaching death, are not hard to recognise in the physical, they are not harder to recognise in the spiritual, sphere. There is less reverence in worship, there is less care for it, there is less heart in it; Christ, the living Christ, is not so constantly present to the thought; there is less of exultation in Him; His glory is gradually becoming dim, and it seems to have descended from the heights, and to have taken its place with no splendours about it among common men. Faith in Christ is less vigorous and intense, and there is less concern that other men should have faith in Him. If a man who was an effective Sunday-school teacher at twenty is only a Bank Director or a Town Councillor at fifty, if he has no spiritual gift and can do no spiritual work, honourable and Christian as his present function is if fulfilled in a spirit of loyalty to Christ, he has suffered loss of life, loss of rank. If, however, with the public functions he still possesses and exercises the spiritual gift, and exercises it faithfully, then it is well with him, his life is fuller and richer than before.2 [Note: R. W. Dale.]

A man must live; we justify

Low shift and trick to treasure high

A little note for a little gold

To a whole senate bought and sold

By that self-evident reply.

But is it so? Pray tell me why

Life at such cost you have to buy?

In what religion were you told

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A man must live?

There are times when a man must die.

Imagine, for a battle cry,

For soldiers, for soldiers with a sword to hold—

For soldiers with the flag unrolled—

This coward’s whine, this liar’s lie—

A man must live?

BI 36-37, "For what shall it profit a man?

The worth and excellency of the soul

The soul of man is of inestimable value.

1. In respect of its capacity of understanding.

2. In respect of its capacity of moral perfection.

3. In respect of its capacity of pleasure and delight.

4. The high price which God the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost have set upon our souls. (Dr. Scott.)

The gain of the world compared with the loss of the soul

I. The gain supposed.

1. It is an uncertain gain-“If.”

2. It is a difficult gain.

3. It is a trifling gain.

4. It is an unsatisfactory gain,

5. It is a temporary gain.

II. The loss sustained.

1. The loss of heaven.

2. The loss of happiness.

3. The loss of hope.

III. The inquiry proposed.

1. Will the pleasures of sin compensate you for eternal pain?

2. Will any worldly gain compensate you for the loss of the soul?

3. Christ shunned the offer, you accept less.

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4. Or will you ask, “What must I do to be saved?” (H. F. Pickworth.)

I. The manner of propounding this truth. The manner of propounding is by a continued interrogation, which not only carrieth in it more strength than an ordinary negation, but stirreth up the hearer to ponder and well weigh the matter, as if he were to give his judgment and answer; as if the Lord had said in larger speech, “Tell me out of your own judgments and best understanding, let your own consciences be judges whether the whole world were a reasonable gain for the loss of the soul, or whether the whole world could recover such a loss, or no.”

2. In the manner note another point of wisdom, namely, in matters of much importance, as is the losing of the soul; or else of great danger, as is the winning of the world, to use more than ordinary vehemence.

3. Our Saviour in the manner teacheth how naturally we are all of us inclined to the world, to seek it with all greediness, and so have need of many and strong back biases.

II. The matter affords sundry instructions:-

1. The more a man is addicted to gain the world, the greater is the danger of losing his soul. They that will be rich fall into many temptations and snares.

2. Desire to be rich and gain the world stuffeth the soul with a thousand damnable lusts, everyone able to sink it to hell.

3. Desire of gain threatens danger and singular detriment to the soul; because it brings it almost to an impossibility of repentance and salvation; Mat_19:20: “It is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to be saved.”

4. As it keeps out grace in all the means of it, so it eats out and casteth it out of the heart, as the lean kine ate up the fat, and were lean and ill-favoured still. (T. Taylor, D. D.)

Gaining the world

What a man loses this side of the grave by this unholy bargain.

1. A good conscience.

2. His communion with God.

3. His hope in the future.

Some are selling their souls-

1. For pleasure.

2. For the world.

3. For business.

4. For fear of ridicule. (J. Vaughan, M. A.)

A sum in gospel arithmetic

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I propose to estimate and compare the value of the two properties.

I. The world is a very grand property. Its flowers are God’s thoughts in bloom. Its rocks are God’s thoughts in stone. Its dew drops are God’s thoughts in pearl. How beautiful the spring with bridal blossoms in her hair. “Oh,” you say, “take my soul! give me that world.” But look more minutely into the value of this world. You will not buy property unless you can get a good title. You cannot get a good title to the world. In five minutes after I give up my soul for the world, I may have to part with it. There is only one way in which I can hold an earthly possession, and that is through the senses: all beautiful sights through the eye, but the eye may be blotted out-all captivating sounds through the ear, but my ear may be deafened-all lusciousness of fruits and viands through my taste, but my taste may be destroyed-all appreciation of culture and of art through my mind, but I may lose my mind. What a frail hold, then, I have upon any earthly possession! Now, in courts of law, if you want to get a man off a property, you must serve upon him a writ of ejectment, giving him a certain time to vacate the premises; but when death comes to us and serves a writ of ejectment, he does not give us one second of forewarning. He says, “Off of this place! You have no right any longer to the possession.” We might cry out, “I gave a hundred thousand dollars for that property”-the plea would be of no avail. We might say, “We have a warrantee deed for that property”-the plea would be of no avail. We might say, “We have a lien on that storehouse”-the plea would be of no avail. Death is blind, and he cannot see a seal, and cannot read an indenture. So that first and last, I want to tell you that when you propose that I give up my soul for the world, you cannot give me the first item of title. Having examined the title of a property, your next question is about insurance. You would not be silly enough to buy a large warehouse that could not possibly be insured. You would not have anything to do with such a property. Now, I ask you what assurance can you give me that this world is not going to be burned up? Absolutely none. Geologists tell us that it is already on fire, that the heart of the world is one great living coal, that it is just like a ship on fire at sea, the flames not bursting out because the hatches are kept down. And yet you propose to palm off on me, in return for my soul, a world for which, in the first place, you give no title, and in the second place, for which you can give no insurance. “Oh,” you say, “the water of the oceans will wash over all the land and put out the fire.” Oh no, there are inflammable elements in the water-hydrogen and oxygen. Call off the hydrogen, and then the Atlantic and the Pacific oceans would blaze like heaps of shavings. You want me to take this world for which you can give no possible insurance. Astronomers have swept their telescopes through the sky, and have found out that there have been thirteen worlds, in the last two centuries, that have disappeared. At first, they looked just like other worlds. Then they got deeply red-they were on fire. Then they got ashen, showing they were burned down. Then they disappeared, showing that even the ashes were scattered. And if the geologist be right in his prophecy, then our world is to go in the same way. And yet you want me to exchange my soul for it. Ah no, it is a world that is burning now. Suppose you brought an insurance agent to look at your property for the purpose of giving you a policy upon it, and while he stood in front of the house, he would say, “That house is on fire now in the basement”-you could not get any insurance upon it. Yet you talk about this world as though it were a safe investment, as though you could get some insurance upon it, when down in the basement it is on fire. I remark, also, that this world is a property, with which everybody who has taken it as a possession, has had trouble. Now, between my house and this church, there is a reach of land which is not built on. I ask what is the matter, and they reply that everybody who has had anything to do with that property got into trouble about it. It is just so with this world; everybody who has had anything to do with it, as a possession, has been in perplexity. How was it with Lord Byron? Did he not sell his immortal soul for the purpose of getting the

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world? Was he satisfied with the possession? Alas, alas, the poet graphically describes his case when he says:

“Drank every cup of joy, heard every trump

Of fame; drank early, deeply drank; drank draughts

Which common millions might have drank. Then died

Of thirst, because there was no more to drink.”

Oh yes, he had trouble with it, and so did Napoleon. After conquering nations by the force of the sword, he lies down to die, his entire possession the military boots that he insisted on having upon his feet while he was dying. So it has been with men who had better ambition. Thackeray, one of the most genial and lovable souls, after he had won the applause of all intelligent lands through his wonderful genius, sits down in a restaurant in Paris, looks to the other end of the room, and wonders whose that forlorn and wretched face is; rising up, after awhile, he finds that it is Thackeray in the mirror. Oh yes, this world is a cheat. Talk about a man gaining the world! Who ever gained half the world?

II. Now, let us look at the other property-the soul. We cannot make a bargain without seeing the comparative value. The soul! How shall I estimate the value of it? Well, by its exquisite organization. It is the most wonderful piece of mechanism ever put together. Machinery is of value in proportion as it is mighty and silent at the same time. You look at the engine and the machinery in the Philadelphia Mint, and as you see it performing its wonderful work, you will be surprised to find how silently it goes. Machinery that roars and tears soon destroys itself; but silent machinery is often most effective. Now, so it is with the soul of man, with all its tremendous faculties-it moves in silence. Judgment without any racket, lifting its scales; memory without any noise, bringing down all its treasures; conscience taking its judgment seat without any excitement; the understanding and the will all doing their work. Velocity, majesty, might; but silence-silence. You listen at the door of your heart. You can hear no sound. The soul is all quiet. It is so delicate an instrument, that no human hand can touch it. You break a bone, and with splinters and bandages the surgeon sets it; the eye becomes inflamed, the apothecary’s wash cools it; but the soul off the track, unbalanced, no human power can readjust it. With one sweep of its wing it circles the universe, and over-vaults the throne of God. Why, in the hour of death the soul is so mighty, it throws aside the body as though it were a toy. It drives back medical skill as impotent. It breaks through the circle of loved ones who stand around the dying couch. With one leap it springs beyond star, and moon, and sun, and chasms of immensity. Oh, it is a soul superior to all material things. I calculate further the value of the soul by the price that has been paid for it. In St. Petersburg, there is a diamond that Government paid two hundred thousand dollars for. “Well,” you say, “it must have been very valuable, or the Government would not have paid two hundred thousand dollars for it.” I want to see what my soul is worth, and what your soul is worth, by seeing what has been paid for it. For that immortal soul, the richest blood that was ever shed, the deepest groan that was ever uttered, all the griefs of earth compressed into one tear, all the sufferings of earth gathered into one rapier of pain and struck through His holy heart. Does it not imply tremendous value? I argue also the value of the soul from the home that has been fitted up for it in the future. One would have thought that a street of adamant would have done. No, it is a street of gold. One would have thought that a wall of granite would have done. No, it is the flame of sardonyx mingling with the green of emerald. One would have thought that an occasional doxology would have done? No, it is a perpetual song. (Dr. Talmage.)

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The chief thing forgotten

So short-sighted and foolish is man! I once read of a woman whose house was on fire. She was very active in removing her goods, but forgot her child, who was asleep in the cradle. At last she thought of the poor babe, and ran, with earnest desire, to save it. But it was now too late; the flames prevented her from crossing the threshold. Judge of the agony of mind which wrung from her the bitter exclamation: “Oh, my child! my child! I have saved my goods, but lost my child!” So will it be with many a poor sinner, who spent all his life in the occupations of the world, while the “one thing needful” was forgotten. What will it then avail for a man to say, “I secured a good place, or a good trade, or profession, but I lost my soul? I made many friends, but God is my enemy. I heaped up riches, but now they must all be left.”

Profit and loss

What is the good of life to us if we do not live? what is the profit of being a man in form and not a man in fact? what is the worth of existence if its worth is all, or, for the most part, outside of us and not in us? There are two remarks which might be made in illustration of this question, in the sense in which I take it.

I. The gain here spoken of is nominal, imaginary.

II. The loss is real, and it is the greatest conceivable.

I. I shall only have time here to say a few words with regard to the latter point. As to the former I will only say, that to lose the soul, not to live man’s higher life, is really also to lose the world, whether you mean by it the material world, or the activities and pleasures of human life. It is only in an imaginary, entirely illusory way that any man who loses his soul gains the world. We gain as much of the world as really enriches us, really enters in the shape of thought and feeling into the current of our existence, really affords us unmixed and enduring satisfaction, and we gain no more of the world than this. We have of the world not what we call our own, but what we are able to enjoy and no more. It is not to gain the world, to gain riches which can buy anything the world contains, unless you can buy along with it the power to enjoy it. Thus rich men gain the whole world and do not gain it at all. They have no delight in books, no interest in public affairs, no zest for amusements. They have gained the world, and do not possess it. Their world is almost the poorest conceivable. It does not enrich them. It does not occupy their affections, or fill up their idle hours; it does not lend stir or variety or charm or value to their existence. Cultivate and expand the mind: in proportion as you do so, though your fortunes remain stationary, you gain the world. On the other hand, an educated man may be poor-the inhabitant of a garret or of a cottage; but the world which exists for him, in which he lives, is rich and spacious. In the observation of nature, in the study of books, above all in the study of man, he finds deep, unfailing delights. The seas which break on the shores of other lands, the storms that sweep over them, the streams that flow through them, the people who inhabit them, are all full of interest to him, and possess him And are possessed by him. In comparison with that of a man devoid of intellectual life, his world is one full of a thousand various pleasures, and occupations, and possessions. Without something higher and better than even intellect and mental culture and activity, you cannot gain the world, except in a poor and illusory manner. Only if you have the soul to scorn delights and live laborious days, not for fame but for the good of others, to spend riches and health and intellect and life, not in ministering to selfish tastes, be they either fine or coarse, but in doing good, helping others to be better and happier, in being to them a minister of the things which God has given you, and a herald to them of the glad tidings of God’s love, and man’s fellow feeling

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and charity;-only if you have such a soul can you truly gain the world, enjoy its best, purest, most various, and abundant pleasures and satisfactions, and also have the sting taken out of its worst trials and afflictions. The luxury of doing good in the love of goodness, of giving rather than receiving, is the best and richest which the world affords. It was a luxury to enjoy which the Son of Man advised one whom He loved well, one who had gained the world and had large possessions, to sell all that he had and give it to the poor, and come and follow Him. The gain here spoken of, then, is illusory.

II. The loss is real and immense.

1. In the first place, the soul is lost by not being exercised. Life which is not effort, growth, increase, is not life at all; it is life lost. Souls are not in danger of being lost when they are without such light as we enjoy. They are lost. There is no contingency in the matter. Where man’s higher life has not been called forth, the loss is not what may be, but what is-it is condemnation and death. Only compare a savage of any country with a Christian of your own land, and see if the loss is nothing or little. I speak of the heathen abroad, because what is to be said of them has its application at home. Use the body, exercise your limbs, observe the laws which govern the use of your physical nature, and you will thus best secure its health and soundness. In the same way it does not save the soul to entertain, as many do, a constant and worrying anxiety as to the soul. Use the soul, exercise your higher life, and you will thus save the soul, thus promote your higher life.

2. I remark, in the second place, that the soul is lost when it is perverted and corrupted. It is perverted and corrupted in the sphere of the lower life. In this sphere souls are doubly lost, as a citadel for which contending armies strive for weeks and months is doubly lost when those who ought to hold it are driven out and those who ought not to hold it enter in. They are lost as a friend is lost who becomes a foe; they are lost as guns are lost in battle when they are turned upon their retreating owners. When, instead of a man having passions and commanding them, passions possess the man and command him, all human life, all higher life is lost; it is gradually or rapidly narrowed, curtailed, darkened, debased, emptied of its worth and value. The soul is perverted in the sphere of the lower life. It is more important, perhaps, to remark that it is perverted and corrupted in its own sphere. It reminds us that souls are perverted in their own sphere-perverted not only by passion but by religion. If the light that is in you be darkness, how great is that darkness! If your religion is false, where can you be in contact with truth? Souls lost through passion often keep a mysterious reserve of goodness in which there is hope. It is not so where religion is not love, but sect and party, selfishness, spiritual pride, bigotry; where religion, instead of demolishing every wall of partition between man and man, and between man and God, erects new barriers and new divisions. Man’s higher life of faith and goodness is here under a double curse-it is cut off at once from nature and from grace, it is severed at once from the world and God, it has neither pagan health nor Christian beauty, neither natural bloom nor spiritual glory.

3. It is easy, I remark in conclusion, to exhaust the world and life in all directions but one. As for the great mass of men, they are by their very condition denied all, or almost all, that makes life attractive, beautiful, enjoyable. Even much study itself is a weariness of the flesh. As we think of all this, we are tempted to say-Surely every man walketh in a vain show; they are disquieted in vain. Other life is vain-man’s true life is not vanity, nor vexation of spirit. For all men, rich and poor, learned and ignorant, for the drudge toiling in darkness in a mine, for those whose labours are in the lofty fields of science, there is a life possible, not remote, far off, unnatural, but their own life, man’s true life, life of faith and goodness,

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Christ’s life in the unseen and eternal, from which vanity is remote, to which vexation cannot come, in which the rich find the true use of riches, the learned and gifted of their gifts, the poor an untold wealth in poverty, all men the grandeur, worth, sacredness of this mortal existence. In the same way, I will add, is immortality brought to light also. Flesh and blood may turn again to clay, all human glory may fade; but truth and righteousness and love are Divine and cannot die. A life which is filled by these is a part of the life of God, who inhabiteth eternity. (J. Service, D. D.)

Selling one’s soul

I. Let us examine, in the first place, this fine human possession, which the devil wishes to obtain, called, by all of the evangelists who report Jesus’ words, a man’s “own soul.”

1. Think of this: Each of us has a whole soul to himself. There is that within us which has measureless capacities. There is within us, too, that which has marvellous susceptibilities. A human heart can weep and sing, groan and laugh, shudder and shiver. There is, also, that within us which has untold possibilities. Each birth begins a history, the pages of which are not written out at once. It can be a Nero or a Paul, a Saul or a David, a Bunyan or a Byron, a star or a shadow.

2. Think of this next: This soul is entirely each man’s own. We might have expected such a thing, for all God’s gifts and creations are perfect. He gave each human creature one soul, and then he placed the individual owner in dominion over it. Hence, He respects the property title in all His dealings with it. “Behold, I stand at the door and knock” (see Rev_3:20). Even the devil has no power to steal away a man’s soul unawares.

3. Then think of another thing: Great estimates have been set upon the value of a human soul.

4. Then, again, think of this: If lost, this soul of ours is all lost at once. When a soul is sold to the devil, it resembles real estate, in that it carries all improvements with it. For the sale of soul transfers all the powers of it. The intellect enters perdition unchanged. Moreover, this ruin carries with it all the soul’s sensibilities. We can suffer here; but no one can picture with language how the finally lost at last learn to suffer. The sale of the soul, furthermore, carries with it all its biographies. Our souls are our biographies incorporated in existence. Each fibre of being is a thought, a word, or a feeling. He who sells his soul to the devil sells his father’s tenderness and his mother’s tears, his chances of good, his resolutions of reform, his remembrance of Sabbaths, his own fruitless remorses over sin, his educations, his embellishments-his all.

II. Now let us, in the second place, turn to consider the devil’s price for a soul, called, by the evangelists all alike, “the whole world.”

1. Observe the rather fine show it makes.

2. But now, on the other hand, it is just fair that men should note some delusive reserves concealed in this luring price. For example, remember that the devil never offered the entire world to anybody except Jesus Christ (see Mat_4:8-9). He never said anything like that to a common man. Let us give even Satan his due. One lie there is he has not yet told upon this earth. He has offered no man the whole world. Nor has any one person ever had it. Nor does anybody keep what he gets.

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3. Still further: observe as you contemplate this lure of the devil, which he calls his price, the painful drawbacks one meets in the enjoyment of it after it is attained. The world we get attracts jealousy the moment we have it in possession. Mere possession of “the world” brings satiety. One of the kings in Europe, it is recorded, wearied and disgusted with luxurious pleasures, offered a vast reward just for the discovery of what he called “a new sensation.” The princes of the earth are not contented. Rasselas was restless even in the Happy Valley. The gain of this world engenders a fresh craving for more. Poetic justice at least was that when the Parthians rewarded Crassus for the infamy of his avarice by pouring melted gold down his throat until he was full of it; then he had enough, and died. Then love is lost in the strife of desire.

III. All that remains now to be considered, is the grand offer of Christ, as He attempts to arrest the ruinous bargain He sees going rapidly on toward its consummation.

1. First, What does the Saviour say? The answer is found in the context. From this we learn that Christ’s offer for a man’s soul, is the soul itself. It is as if He said, “Give Me your soul, and I will secure the everlasting possession of it to yourself; if you will lose your life-or soul-to Me, I will see that you shall save it.” He will take nothing away in this transfer but our imperfections and our sins.

2. Then what will the Saviour ask? Only this: “Come to Me; repent of sin; trust Me for an atonement; enter upon My service; try to do good; rest in My love; perfect yourself for heaven.”

3. Can the Saviour be actually in earnest? The Son of God became the Son of man in order to make this offer for human souls. (C. S. Robinson, D. D.)

Loss of the soul-its extent

I. It is an entire loss. When Francis

I. lost the important battle of Pavia, he described it by saying, “We have lost all but honour.” But there is nothing to qualify or mitigate the loss of the soul. It is the loss of losses, the death of deaths-a catastrophe unequalled in extent, and unparalleled in its amount through all the universe of God.

II. A loss without compensation. The great fire of London consumed six hundred streets, thirteen thousand dwellings, and ninety churches, and destroyed property to the amount of seven and a half millions of pounds sterling. Yet that calamity was in some sort changed into a blessing; for the rebuilding of the city, in a superior style of architecture, and with more regard to sanitary arrangements, banished forever the fearful plague which had previously made such havoc. But for the loss of the soul nothing can countervail so as to make amends for it.

III. Irreparable. Other losses may be repaired. Lost friendships may be regained or replaced; lost health may be restored; lost property recovered; but the loss of the soul can never be retrieved. When Sir Isaac Newton had lost some most important and complicated calculations, the result of years of patient thought and investigation, by the burning of his papers, the loss to him was immense; and yet, with patience equal to his genius, he could say to the favourite animal that caused it, “Diamond, Diamond, thou little knowest the labour thou hast cost me!” But what is the loss even of years of patient philosophic investigation and profound mathematical research, compared with the loss of a human soul, capable of conducting, in some degree, similar investigations, and of repeating and repairing them if lost?

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IV. Cast away. The second death. (J. J. Given, M. A.)

How awful the charge of souls

Ministers have taken even the care of immortal souls, their education for eternity, their discipline for heaven! Have we ever essayed, however vain the effort, to take the dimensions of a soul, to sound its depths, and explore its vast capacities? Look at the infant child that appears but little raised above the level of mere vegetable life. Mark the gigantic strides by which he rises in a few short years to such wonders of intelligence, that he dives into the hidden mysteries of nature, calculates the distance of the stars, and, by the magic of his telescope, sees world ascending above world, and system towering above system, up to the footstool of the throne of God! Into what, then, may a soul expand, when, free from the prison house of flesh, it is let out to expatiate amidst its native heavens! Or, what may such a nature be in its ruins, in a fall corresponding to such a height! These, then, are the mighty concerns with which we have professedly engaged to intermeddle. For the perdition or salvation of beings on so immense a scale, we shall have to render an account. (H. Woodward, M. A.)

All gain is loss when a man does not save his soul

He who possesses all things without God, has nothing. No man is so foolish as to be willing to purchase an empire at the price of his life; and yet the world is full of those pretenders to wisdom, who give up salvation and immortal life for a vain pleasure, a handful of money, or an inch of land. How much are the greatest conquerors to be pitied, if, whilst intoxicated with their victories and conquests, they ravage and lay waste the earth, their own souls are laid waste by sin and passion, and destroyed to all eternity. (Quesnel.)

The price of the soul

An appeal to the instincts of common sense, which comes specially home to a commercial nation like the English. The selling price-the market value of everything is challenged. All schemes and proposals-whether in the realm of politics or of commerce-are met with this question. The eager desire for profit carries men away till there is no room left for any other purpose in life. For money men will almost dare to die. There are men who for money’s worth will sell others’ lives-ship owners the lives of their sailors, mothers the happiness of their daughters. But there are more precious treasures at stake sometimes than even flesh and blood. Some will tamper, for money’s worth, with what involves the loss of the soul. This is a gain which it is dead loss to win; a price which it is suicidal to pay-selling for money that which no money can buy again; giving-like the foolish Glaucus-golden armour for brazen; trading on capital; embarking, with rotten securities, on a bubble scheme. No amount of earthly gain can free the soul from death and judgment. The moral life once gone-its vitality not destroyed but ruined and turned against itself-how shall it be recovered? Even now there is a foretaste of this awful state. At times there is within the heart a very hell of sin; jealousy, covetousness, cruelty, selfishness, all combining to make such a hell within the breast as a man would shrink from disclosing even to his most lenient friend. Plain sober reason, then, obliges us to consider Christ’s question. (H. B. Ottley M. A.)

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What shall it profit …

To be good, nay, to pursue goodness as our ruling aim, is to make, or gain our souls. To be bad, or not to follow after that which is good, is to unmake or lose the soul. And hence, whatever other aims we may lawfully, or even laudably, place before us, this should stand first with us all. For what are we profited if we should achieve the highest distinction-what are we profited should we become great poets or artists, great scholars or statesmen, if we did not use our powers for good ends? Or, to use the sacred familiar words, “What is any man profited if he should gain the whole world only by the loss of his own soul?” Nay, more; what is the world profited if he should lose that? I often think of Sir Walter Scott kissing Lockhart, that bitter man of the world, and saying to him with his dying breath, “Be good, my dear, be good.” For Scott had gone far both to gain the world, and to lose it; only to discover at last-as sooner or later you will discover-that nothing but goodness is of any real worth. To be good, to do our duty in a dutiful and loving spirit, is the crown and top of all performance. And nothing short of this, nothing apart from this, will be of much comfort to us through life or in death. For, whatever England may do, it is very certain that God “expects every man to do his duty”-his duty to himself, to God, and to his neighbour-not only on this exceptional day or that, but every day. (S. Cox, D. D.)

Losing the soul

If you yield to temptation and fail in the hour of trial, if you cease from the work and retire from the strife, whatever else you may gain, you will be losing your soul-losing possession of it, losing command of it, losing hope for it. You will be adjudging yourself unworthy of the life eternal, condemning yourself to live in the flesh and walk after the flesh, instead of living and walking in the spirit. All that is noblest, purest, best in you will die for want of sustenance or want of exercise. All that is loftiest and noblest in thought, in morality, in religion, in life, will lose its power over you, its charm for you, and will fail any longer to quicken responses of love and desire within you. If you would know to what depths you may sink should you relinquish your aim, you have only to recall an experience which can hardly be strange to any man of mature years who has kept his soul alive. For who has not met an early friend, after long years of separation, only to find that by addicting himself to sensuous or selfish aims, by cherishing a vulgar and worldly spirit-or, in a word, by walking after the flesh-he has belied all the fair promise of his youth, and grown insensible to the charm and power of all that you still hold to be fairest, noblest, best? Speak to him of the open secrets of beauty, of purity, of truth, of love, and he stares at you as one who listens to a forgotten dream; or perhaps-as I once saw a poor fellow do-bursts into tears, and exclaims, “No one has spoken to me like that for an age!” If you would waken any real interest in him, elicit any frank response, your whole talk must take a lower range; you must come down to the level on which he now lives and moves. What has the man been doing with himself all these years? He has been losing his soul, suffering it to “lust in him unused.” He has exchanged his “immortal jewel,” not for the whole world-though even that were a losing bargain-but for a little of that which even the world confesses to be vile and sordid and base. To that base level even you may sink, if, amid all trials and temptations and defeats, you do not steadfastly pursue the high spiritual aim which Christ invites and commands you to cherish; if you do not seek above all else to be good, and do not therefore follow after whatsoever things are just, true, pure, fair. Hold fast to that aim, then; that by your constancy you may gain and possess your soul. (S. Cox, D. D.)

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Loss of the soul

And what is it to lose a soul? It is to let weeds grow there instead of flowers. It is to let selfishness grow, suspicious, curious tempers grow, wantonness grow, until they have all the field to themselves. Set these in full force within a being, and add, if you will, a whole universe of possession: it is hell You may think that these are only strong rhetorical words. It is just as simple literal fact as that two and two make four. I do not think that you will need to look far around you in the world for the proof of it. (J. B. Brown, B. A.)

Monuments of soul ruin

Often, when travelling among the Alps, one sees a small black cross planted upon a rock, or on the brink of a torrent, or on the verge of a highway, to mark the spot where men have met with sudden death by accident. Solemn reminders these of our mortality! but they led our mind still further; for, we said within us, if the places where men seal themselves for the second death could be thus manifestly indicated, what a scene would this world present! Here the memorial of a soul undone by yielding to a foul temptation, there a conscience seared by the rejection of a final warning, and yonder a heart forever turned into a stone, by resisting the last tender appeal of love. Our places of worship would scarce hold the sorrowful monuments which might be erected over spots where spirits were forever lost-spirits that date their ruin from sinning against the gospel while under the sound of it. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Lost, in seeking for gain

One summer afternoon, a steamer crowded with passengers, many of them miners from California, was speeding along the Mississippi. Striking suddenly and strongly against the wreck of another vessel which, unknown to the captain, lay near the surface of the water, her bow was stove in, and she began to fill rapidly. Her deck was a scene of wild confusion. Her boats were launched, but did not suffice to carry off one-fourth of the terrified passengers. The rest, divesting themselves of their garments, cast themselves into the river, “some on boards, and some on broken pieces of the ship and so it came to pass that they escaped all safe to land.” Some minutes after the last of them had quitted the vessel, another man appeared on her deck. Seizing a spar, he also leaped into the river, but instead of floating as the others had done, he sank instantly as if he had been a stone. His body was afterwards recovered, and it was found that he had employed the quarter of an hour, in which his fellow passengers had been striving to save their lives, in rifling the trunks of the miners. All around his waist their bags of gold were fastened. In one short quarter of an hour he had gained more gold than most men earn in their lifetime; but was he advantaged thereby, seeing that he lost himself? And though you should gain power, or rank, or fame, or learning, or great wealth; though your life should be one prolonged triumphal procession, all men applauding you; though all your days you should drink unrestrained of the cup of the world’s pleasures, and never reach its bitter dregs; yet what shall you be advantaged if, nevertheless, you lose yourself, and, at last, instead of being received into heaven, are cast away? (R. A. Bertram.)

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Great loss for momentary gratification

When Lysimachus was engaged in a war with the Getae, he was so tormented by thirst, that he offered his kingdom to his enemies for permission to quench it. His exclamation, when he had drunk the water they gave him, is striking. “Ah, wretched me, who for such a momentary gratification have lost so great a kingdom!”

What shall a man give in exchange for his soul

Think what a solemn question these words of our Lord Jesus Christ contain! What a mighty sum they propound to us for calculation!

I. Every one of us has an undying soul. This is not the only life we have to do with-we have every one of us an undying soul. There is a conscience in all mankind that is worth a thousand metaphysical arguments. What though we cannot see it? Are there not millions of things which we cannot see, and of the existence of which we have nevertheless no doubt? I do ask you to realize the dignity and the responsibility of having an immortal soul; to realize that in your soul you have the greatest talent that God has committed to your charge. Know that in your soul you have a pearl above all price, the loss of which nothing can ever make up.

II. Anyone may lose his own soul. Weak as we are in all things that are good, we have a mighty power to do ourselves harm. You cannot save that soul of yours, remember that. We are all by nature in great peril of losing our souls. But someone may ask, How may a man lose his soul? The answers to that question are many. Just as there are many diseases which assault and hurt the body, so there are many evils which assault and hurt the soul. Numerous, however, as are the ways in which a man may lose his own soul, they may be classed under these three heads.

1. You may murder your own soul by open sin, or serving lusts and pleasures.

2. You may poison your own soul by taking up some false religion.

3. You may starve your own soul to death by trifling and indecision. But, does it take much trouble to ruin a soul? Oh, no! There’s nothing you need do! You have only to sit still, etc. But are there many, you ask, who are losing their souls? Yes, indeed, there are t But, who is responsible for the loss of your soul? No one but yourself! But, where does your soul go when it is lost? There is but one place to which it can go.

III. The loss of any man’s soul is the heaviest loss he can suffer. No man living can show the full extent of the loss of the soul, nor paint it in its true colours. Nothing can ever make up for the loss of the soul in the life that now is. The loss of property and character are not always irreparable; once lost the soul is lost for evermore. The loss of his soul is irretrievable! Does any one of you wish to have some clear idea of the value of a soul? Then go and see what men think about the value of a soul when they are dying. Go and read the sixteenth chapter of St. Luke. Measure it by the price that was paid for it eighteen hundred years ago. We shall all understand the value of a soul one day. Seek to know its value now. Do not be like the Egyptian queen, who, in foolish ostentation, took a pearl of great value, dissolved it in some acid, and then drank it off. Do not, like her, east away that precious soul of yours, that pearl above all price, that God has committed to your charge.

IV. Any man’s soul may be saved. I dare say the proclamation is startling to some; it was once startling to me. “How can these things be?” No wonder you ask that question. This is the great knot the heathen philosophers could never untie-this is the problem which sages of Greece and Rome could not solve-this is a question which

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nothing can answer but the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ.

1. Because Christ has died upon the cross to bear men’s sins.

2. Because Christ still lives.

3. Because the promises of Christ’s gospel are full, free, and unconditional.

Application:

1. Do not neglect your own soul.

2. Come to Christ without delay.

3. To all who have sought to have their souls saved, and have found Jesus a Saviour, “cleave to the Lord with purpose of heart,” etc. (Bishop Ryle.)

The soul

The soul is excellent in its nature. It is a spiritual being, “it is a kind of angelical thing.” The mind sparkles with knowledge, the will is crowned with liberty, and all the affections are as stars shining in their orbs. How quick are the motions of a spark! How swift the wings of cherubim! So quick and agile are the motions of the soul. What is quicker than thought? How many miles can the soul travel in an instant? The soul being spiritual moves upward; it has also a self-moving power, and can subsist when the body is dead, as the mariner can subsist when the ship is broken; it is also immortal-a bud of eternity. (T. Watson.)

Preciousness of the soul

It is a misapplication of forces for the nobler to spend itself upon the meaner. Men do not usually care to spend a pound in the hope of getting back a groat and no more, and yet, when the soul is given up for the sake of worldly gain, the loss is greater still, and not even the groat remains. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Soul a jewel

The soul is a jewel, a diamond set in a ring of clay; the soul is a glass in which some rays of the divine glory shine; it is a celestial spark lighted by the breath of God. (T. Watson.)

Winning the world

I do verily believe, that the winning of the whole world of power, is in itself so slight a gain, that it were fair to strike the balance, and say there is little left; for even Alexander himself envied the peasant in his cottage, and thought there was more happiness on the plains among the shepherds than in his palace amongst his gold and silver. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

A witness to the worth of the world

Alexander, I summon thee! what thinkest thou: is it worth much to gain the world? Is

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its sceptre the wand of happiness? Is its crown the security of joy? See Alexander’s tears! He weeps! Yes, he weeps for another world to conquer! Ambition is insatiable! The gain of the whole world is not enough. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Profit and loss

I. What is a man profited if he should gain the whole world? Power over extensive empires. Power over great riches. Treasures of knowledge and pleasures. What will it profit him when he comes to die? In the day of judgment? when he gets to hell?

II. The losing the soul. Its intrinsic value. Its capabilities. Where the soul must go to that is lost.

III. The practical lesson. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

Gaining the world pretty sport

This world is like the boy’s butterfly-it is pretty sport to chase it; but bruise its wings by an over-earnest grasp, and it is nothing but a disappointment. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

37 Or what can anyone give in exchange for their soul?

GILL, "Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul? To deliver it out of its miserable state and condition; all the riches of the world, and the whole world itself, are not an equivalent to it, or a sufficient ransom for it; riches will not profit in the day of wrath, or deliver a soul from damnation, and ruin: wherefore, if he had the whole world, he could not redeem his soul with it; and he has nothing else to give for it, and therefore it is past all recovery: See Gill on Mat_16:26.

BARCLAY, "THE SUPREME VALUE IN LIFE (Mark 8:37)8:37 What profit is it for a man to gain the whole world and to forfeit his life? For what is a man to give in exchange for his life?

It is quite possible for a man in one sense to make a huge success of life and in another sense to be living a life that is not worth living. The real question Jesus asks is, "Where do you put your values in life?" It is possible for a man to put his values on the wrong things and to discover it too late.

(i) A man may sacrifice honour for profit. He may desire material things and not be over-particular how he gets them. The world is full of temptations towards profitable dishonesty. George Macdonald tells in one of his books about a draper who always used his thumb to make the measure just a little short. "He took from his soul," he said, "and put it in his siller-bag." The real question, the

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question which sooner or later will have to be answered is, "How does life's balance sheet look in the sight of God?" God is the auditor whom, in the end, all men must face.

(ii) A man may sacrifice principle for popularity. It may happen that the easy-going, agreeable, pliable man will save himself a lot of trouble. It may happen that the man inflexibly devoted to principle will find himself disliked. Shakespeare paints the picture of Wolsey, the great Cardinal, who served Henry the Eighth with all the ingenuity and wit he possessed.

"Had I but serv'd my God with half the zeal

I serv'd my king, he would not in mine age

Have left me naked to mine enemies."

The real question, the question every man in the end will have to face, is not, "What did men think of this?" but, "What does God think of it?" It is not the verdict of public opinion but the verdict of God that settles destiny.

(iii) A man may sacrifice the lasting things for the cheap things. It is always easier to have a cheap success. An author may sacrifice that which would be really great for the cheap success of a moment. A musician may produce ephemeral trifles when he might be producing something real and lasting. A man may choose a job which will bring him more money and more comfort, and turn his back on one where he could render more service to his fellow-men. A man may spend his life in little things and let the big things go. A woman may prefer a life of pleasure and of so-called freedom to the service of her home and the upbringing of a family.

But life has a way of revealing the true values and condemning the false as the years pass on. A cheap thing never lasts.

(iv) We may sum it all up by saying that a man may sacrifice eternity for the moment. We would be saved from all kinds of mistakes if we always looked at things in the light of eternity. Many a thing is pleasant for the moment but ruinous in the long run. The test of eternity, the test of seeking to see the thing as God sees it, is the realest test of all.

The man who sees things as God sees them will never spend his life on the things that lose his soul.

NISBET, "THE VALUE OF A SOUL‘What shall a man give in exchange for his soul?’Mark 8:37The value of a soul!

I. How God has taught it.

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(a) At Bethlehem I stand with the shepherds beside the Holy Child, I try to grasp the mystery of God Incarnate, and I cannot; my brain grows dizzy at the effort, when, lo! there comes to me one simple thought that is the solution of it all, that Child lying in His mother’s arms. Well, whatever else it means, I know that it means this, it is God’s message to the world, in the eloquence of childhood to tell me the value of my soul.

(b) At Calvary. I go to Calvary, and I try to grasp the mystery of the atoning sacrifice, and I cannot; and once more there comes to me the same solution. What means it but that it is God’s message to the world, written in the very blood, to tell me the value of my soul?

(c) At the altar. And still, when I go in and out amongst the ministries of the Christian Church, when I kneel to take the Sacrament, sometimes the thought arises in me, How can this thing be? and I put it away from me deliberately; or because I know my poor, my limited intellect cannot grasp the mystery of God, and I say, Well, this at least is one meaning of it, and to this I cling, that is, God’s message, repeated with wondrous patience, with wondrous persistence, to assure me of the value of my soul.

It seems to me that if these thoughts are the outcome of the Master’s question, then still another thought must follow.

II. The responsibility of the possessor for the great possession.—The thought of the value of my soul suggests to me the task of its education, its culture, its training. There is a spiritual power of perception. A wondrous thing that may be used or may be dulled and blunted by disuse. A wondrous power to catch the faint, far-off footsteps of my God in the history of my life; to hear the faintest whisper of His voice.

—Bishop F. E. Ridgeway.Illustration

‘I once read of a woman whose house was on fire. She was very active in removing her goods, but forgot her child who was asleep in the cradle. At last she thought of it and ran to save it, but it was too late. The flames prevented her crossing the threshold. Judge of her agony of mind as she exclaimed, “Oh, my child! my child! I have saved my goods, but lost my child!” So will it be with many who forget the “one thing needful.”’

(SECOND OUTLINE)THE DISCIPLINE OF THE SOULIt is extraordinary how many people seem not to know that the religious sense must be trained and exercised steadily, systematically, patiently, if it is to be of any use to us. The consciousness of the presence of God is not a thing to be gained lightly and easily. It must be striven for and worked for, we must make sacrifices to gain it. Have we done so already; are we doing so now?

The soul has its own organ—prayer. We cannot realise the presence of God

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without prayer, nor pray without realising the presence of God.

I will add a few practical suggestions as to the strengthening of our soul-life.

I. We must not pray by fits and starts.—An athlete who exercised his muscles assiduously one week out of three would not gain much in strength. We must be careful to pray and meditate every day, and, as far as possible, at stated times.

II. It is never wise to overstrain.—Prayer should be frequent, but short; and there is no need of irksome rules.

III. In work that should occupy the mind.—Give the mind to it. Offer your task to God when you begin and when you finish it, but do not interrupt it to pray or meditate.

IV. Build the practice of the presence of God upon the promised presence of Christ. I lay great stress on this. The promise, ‘Lo, I am with you alway, even to the end of the world,’ is to be believed quite simply; and it is often much easier to pray to Christ, and to hear His voice in answer, than to address ourselves to God the Father. It is on account of this possibility of a real communion with Christ that we value so highly the Sacrament of the Eucharist. The strengthening and refreshing of our souls by the Body and Blood of Christ is the most blessed experience of the spiritual life. Many people miss this blessed experience because they persist in turning their backs on the Holy Table.

Rev. Professor W. R. Inge.Illustration

‘Man has this wonderful power of establishing relations with God, of entering into communion with Him. Of this there can be no reasonable doubt. The truly religious people of all ages and countries tell us that they know it is so. They know that to speak to God is not the same thing as to talk to oneself. They know that our prayers and thanksgivings are heard and answered. It is not evidence that can be tested or used to convince other people; it is too intimate and personal for that. But if we are ever tempted to listen to arguments against the reality of such communion with God, our heart, as the poet says, answers, “like a man in wrath, I have felt.”’

38 If anyone is ashamed of me and my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, the Son of Man will be ashamed of them when he comes in his Father’s glory with the holy angels.”

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BARNES, "Ashamed of me - Ashamed to own attachment to me on account of my lowly appearance and my poverty.

And of my words - My doctrines, my instructions.

This adulterous and sinful generation - This age given to wickedness, particularly to adultery.

In the glory of his Father - In the day of judgment. See the notes at Mat_26:64. The meaning of this verse is, Whosoever shall refuse, through pride or wickedness, to acknowledge and serve Christ here, shall be excluded from his kingdom hereafter. He was lowly, meek, and despised; yet there was an inimitable beauty in his character even then. But he will come again in awful grandeur; not as the babe of Bethlehem, not as the man of Nazareth, but as the Son of God, in majesty and glory. They that would not acknowledge him here must be rejected by him there; they that would not serve him on earth will not enjoy his favor in heaven; they that would cast Him out and despise him must be cast out by him, and consigned to eternal, hopeless sorrow.

CLARKE, "Whosoever - shall be ashamed of me - Our Lord hints here at one of the principal reasons of the incredulity of the Jews, - they saw nothing in the person of Jesus Christ which corresponded to the pompous notions which they had formed of the Messiah.

If Jesus Christ had come into the world as a mighty and opulent man, clothed with earthly glories and honors, he would have had a multitude of partisans, and most of them hypocrites.

And of my words - This was another subject of offense to the Jews: the doctrine of the cross must be believed; a suffering Messiah must be acknowledged; and poverty and affliction must be borne; and death, perhaps, suffered in consequence of becoming his disciples.

Of him, and of his words, in this sense, the world is, to this day, ashamed.

Of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed - As he refused to acknowledge me before men, so will I refuse to acknowledge him before God and his angels. Terrible consequence of the rejection of Christ! And who can help him whom the only Savior eternally disowns. Reader! Lay this subject seriously to heart; and see the notes on Mat_16:24, etc., and at the end of that chapter.

All the subjects contained in this chapter are very interesting; but particularly:

1. The miraculous feeding of the multitudes, which is a full, unequivocal proof of the supreme Divinity of Jesus Christ: in this miracle he truly appears in his creative energy, with which he has associated the tenderest benevolence and humanity. The subject of such a prince must ever be safe; the servant of such a master must ever have kind usage; the follower of such a teacher can never want nor go astray.

2. The necessity of keeping the doctrine of the Gospel uncorrupt, is strongly inculcated in the caution to avoid the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod: the doctrine of the cross must not only be observed and held inviolate, but that doctrine must never be mixed with worldly politics.

Time-serving is abominable in the sight of God: it shows that the person has either

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no fixed principle of religion, or that he is not under the influence of any.

GILL, "Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me,.... As suffering, crucified, and put to death; things he had been speaking of before: whoever through scandal of the cross, and fear of men, will be ashamed of Christ, and dare not profess faith in him, but shall conceal and keep it to themselves:

and of my words; the doctrines of the Gospel, of remission of sins by his blood, of justification by his righteousness, and of salvation alone by him, with every other truth relating to him, or connected with these;

in this adulterous and sinful generation; which was so both in a moral and spiritual sense; for both corporeal and spiritual adultery prevailed among them, And particularly the Scribes and Pharisees adulterated the word of God by their false glosses, in which they acted a very sinful part; and such was their authority, that few durst contradict them, or profess doctrines which were the reverse of them. Wherefore our Lord assures his disciples and followers, that should they be deterred by these men from a free and open profession of him, and his Gospel, by which it would appear that they were ashamed of both,

of him also shall the son of man be ashamed; will not own such an one for his; he will take no notice of him; he will not confess his name; but, as one that he is ashamed of, he will turn away from him; not so much as look at him, or say one favourable word to him, or for him; but bid him be gone from him, as a worker of iniquity: this he will do,

when he cometh in the glory of his Father; the same that the Father has; being his Son, of the same nature with him, and equal to him; and as mediator, endued with power and authority from him, to judge the world; and when he will be accompanied

with the holy angels; who will descend from heaven with him, and be employed on earth by him; See Gill on Mat_16:27.

HENRY, "What that is that men do, to save their lives, and gain the world, he tells us (Mar_8:38), and of what fatal consequence it will be to them; Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of me, and of my words, in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him shall the Son of man be ashamed. Something like this we had, Mat_10:33. But it is here expressed more fully. Note, [1.] The disadvantage that the cause of Christ labours under this world, is, that it is to be owned and professed in an adulterous and sinful generation; such the generation of mankind is, gone a whoring from God, in the impure embraces of the world and the flesh, lying in wickedness; some ages, some places, are more especially adulterous and sinful, as that was in which Christ lived; in such a generation the cause of Christ is opposed and run down, and those that own it, are exposed to reproach and contempt, and every where ridiculed and spoken against. [2.] There are many, who, though they cannot but own that the cause of Christ is a righteous cause, are ashamed of it, because of the reproach that attends the professing of it; they are ashamed of their relation to Christ, and ashamed of the credit they cannot but give to his words; they cannot bear to be frowned upon and despised, and therefore throw off their profession, and go down the stream of a prevailing apostasy. [3.] There is a day coming, when the

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cause of Christ will appear as bright and illustrious as now it appears mean and contemptible; when the Son of man comes in the glory of his Father with his holy angels, as the true Shechinah, the brightness of his Father's glory, and the Lord of angels. [4.] Those that are ashamed of Christ in this world where he is despised, he will be ashamed of in that world where he is eternally adored. They shall not share with him in his glory then, that were not willing to share with him in his disgrace now.

BARCLAY, "WHEN THE KING COMES INTO HIS OWN (Mark 8:38; Mark 9:1)8:38 "Whoever is ashamed of me and of my words in this adulterous and sinful generation, of him also shall the Son of Man be ashamed when he comes in the glory of his Father with the holy angels." And he used to say to them, "This is the truth I tell you--there are some of those who are standing here who will not taste of death until they shall see the Kingdom of God coming with power."

One thing leaps out from this passage--the confidence of Jesus. He has just been speaking of his death; he has no doubt that the Cross stands ahead of him; but nonetheless he is absolutely sure that in the end there will be triumph.

The first part of the passage states a simple truth. When the King comes into his Kingdom he will be loyal to those who have been loyal to him. No man can expect to dodge all the trouble of some great undertaking and then reap all the benefit of it. No man can expect to refuse service in some campaign and then share in the decorations when it is brought to a successful conclusion. Jesus is saying, "In a difficult and hostile world Christianity is up against it these days. If a man is ashamed under such conditions to show that he is a Christian, if he is afraid to show what side he is on, he cannot expect to gain a place of honour when the Kingdom comes."

The last part of this passage has caused much serious thought. Jesus says that many who are standing there will not die until they see the Kingdom coming with power. What worries some people is that they take this as a reference to the Second Coming; but if it is, Jesus was mistaken, because he did not return in power and glory in the lifetime of those who were there.

But this is not a reference to the Second Coming at all. Consider the situation. At the moment Jesus had only once been outside Palestine, and on that occasion he was just over the border in Tyre and Sidon. Only a very few men in a very small country had ever heard of him. Palestine was only about 120 miles from north to south and about 40 miles from east to west; her total population was 4,000,000 or thereby. To speak in terms of world conquest when he had scarcely ever been outside such a small country was strange. To make matters worse, even in that small country, he had so provoked the enmity of the orthodox leaders and of those in whose hands lay power, that it was quite certain that he could hope for nothing other than death as a heretic and an outlaw. In face of a situation like that there must have been many who felt despairingly that Christianity had no possible future, that in a short time it would be wiped out completely and eliminated from the world. Humanly speaking, these pessimists were right.

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Now consider what did happen. Scarcely more than thirty years later, Christianity had swept through Asia Minor; Antioch had become a great Christian church. It had penetrated to Egypt; the Christians were strong in Alexandria. It had crossed the sea and come to Rome and swept through Greece. Christianity had spread like an unstoppable tide throughout the world. It was astonishingly true that in the lifetime of many there, against all expectations, Christianity had come with power. So far from being mistaken, Jesus was absolutely right.

The amazing thing is that Jesus never knew despair. In face of the dullness of the minds of men, in face of the opposition, in face of crucifixion and of death, he never doubted his final triumph--because he never doubted God. He was always certain that what is impossible with man is completely possible with him.

CONSTABLE, "Verse 38"Whoever" means unbelievers or believers (cf. Mark 8:34). For unbelievers living when the Son of Man returns to set up His kingdom, Jesus being ashamed before the Father will result in their loss of salvation. For believers living then, it will mean their loss of reward. This is the first explicit reference in Mark to Jesus' return in glory. Being ashamed of Jesus, rejecting His claims, has serious consequences.

". . . this conflict between Jesus and the disciples on the way to Jerusalem exemplifies the clash between the values of the disciples and those of Jesus." [Note: Rhoads and Michie, p. 91.]

COFFMAN, "This verse is actually the conclusion of this paragraph, having no connection whatever with Mark 9:1. The paragraphing here has spawned much error. Mark 8:38 and Mark 9:1 regard utterly different subjects, and one may regret the gratuitous extension of this paragraph by the later versions to make Mark 9:1 appear in this context. Mark, it would appear, reported Jesus' admonition against men's being ashamed of him, either because Jesus himself repeated the admonition in this context, or because it was an oft-repeated warning by Jesus which Mark considered to be appropriate in context. Either way, it is authentic and inspired. A similar warning was recorded by Matthew 10:32-33.

That human pride should lead men to be ashamed of the sinless Son of God and his holy teachings is one of the mysteries of iniquity; yet the fact of its doing so is evident everywhere. Satan has indeed deceived and deluded men in whom such being ashamed occurs.

When he cometh in the glory of his Father with the holy angels ... This is a clear and dramatic reference to the second coming of Christ at the end of the dispensation when he shall appear apart from sin and with the purpose of executing eternal justice upon his creation. The presence of the holy angels in conjunction with the second coming is affirmed throughout the New Testament. It appears in the parables of the kingdom (Matthew 13) and in the writings of Paul (2 Thessalonians 2:7f). It is the function of the angels to separate the

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precious from the vile at the time of the final judgment (Matthew 13:41,49). Therefore, the coming of Christ in this verse must be identified with "the judgment" so frequently mentioned by Jesus (Matthew 12:41,42, etc.).

Mark 9:1 states: "And he said unto them, Verily I say unto you, There are some here of them that stand by, who shall in no wise taste of death, till they see the kingdom of God come with power."

Cranfield identified this verse as an "independent saying,"[17] thus giving scholarly confirmation of evident implications of the text itself. This verse can have no connection whatever with the verse (Mark 8:38) to which it is artificially joined by the unjustifiable distortion of the paragraph. The second coming of Christ in glory with ten thousand of his holy angels did not occur during the lifetime of the Twelve; therefore the coming of the kingdom of God in this verse is impossible of understanding as a reference to Mark 8:38.

Having incorrectly joined the two verses (Mark 8:38 and Mark 9:1), the commentators have found it impossible to give a logical interpretation. Cranfield took notice of no less than eight radical and diverse explanations of Mark 9:1, which is here summarized:

1Jesus here taught that the second coming would occur within a very short while (this interpretation demeans the Lord of glory).

2The seeing of the kingdom of God come with power refers not to physical seeing of it but to intellectual perception of it!

3The "taste" of death mentioned in Mark 9:1 does not refer to physical death but to spiritual death.

4The persons who will not taste of death until the kingdom comes with power are those who will be alive and caught up, without death, at the second coming.

5The coming of the kingdom with power refers to the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D.

6Others have thought of Pentecost and the spread of the gospel.

7The coming of the kingdom promised here is a visible manifestation of the Rule of God displayed in the life of the Elect Community.

8Mark 9:1 is a reference to the Transfiguration!

Cranfield, Erdman, and others favor understanding the Transfiguration as the fulfillment of Mark 9:1; but there is no way that such a view can be satisfactory. As Bickersteth said, "The solemnity of these words (Mark 9:1) forbids us to limit them to an event that would occur within eight days."[18] Only the most imaginative devices can construe the transfiguration of Jesus Christ, witnessed by only three persons, as the coming of the kingdom of God with power.

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All of the above interpretations are advocated by renowned scholars; and the very proliferation of their explanations suggests a fundamental misunderstanding. It is the opinion here that "the kingdom of God" is a reference to the church of Jesus Christ. The failure of the scholars to see this derives from their failure to include the light which falls upon this place from the parallel in Matthew where Christ used the terms "church" and "kingdom" interchangeably (Matthew 16:18,19). For an extended examination of this thesis, the reader is referred to my Commentary on Matthew, pp. 337-341.

Understanding the church and the kingdom as one and the same thing satisfies all the teachings in Mark 9:1. The kingdom of God coming with power on Pentecost took place at a time after both Jesus himself and Judas had tasted death, and also within the lives of the others. There is no other explanation that this student has ever encountered which so completely fulfills all the requirements of the sacred text as does this.

[17] Ibid., p. 285.

[18] E. Bickersteth, The Pulpit Commentary (Grand Rapids, Michigan: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1962), Vol. 16 (II), p. 1.

BURKITT, "Verse 38That is, whosoever shall deny or disown me, either in my person, my gospel, or my members, for any fear or favour of man, he shall with shame be disowned and eternally rejected by me at the great day.

There are two passions that make persons disown Christ and religion in the duty of temptation; namely, fear and shame. Many good men have been overcome by the former, as St. Peter, and others; but we find not any good man in scripture guilty of the latter: namely, that denied Christ out of shame. This argues a rotten, unsound, and corrupt heart.

If any man thinks it beneath his honour and quality to own the opposed truths and despised members of Jesus Christ, he will think it much more beneath him, his honour and dignity, to own them at the great day.

Learn hence, That it is not sufficient that we own Christ by believing in him, but we must honour him with an outward professing of him also.

Secondly, That such as are ashamed of Christ's doctrine or members, are ashamed of Christ himself.

Thirdly, That such as either for fear dare not, or for shame will not, own the doctrine of Christ, or the members of Christ now, shall find Christ ashamed to own and confess them at the great day. Whosoever is ashamed of me, and of my words, in this adulterous and wicked generation, of him also shall the Son of man be ashamed, when he cometh in the glory of his Father, with the holy angels.

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COKE, "Mark 8:38. Whosoever therefore, &c.— Jesus fitly inculcated the necessity of self-denial from the consideration of a judgment to come; the most awful and important event in the whole compass of our duration, and which, the word of God directsustobelieve,willbeattendedwith the most awful circumstances. His intention was, that we should fortify ourselves with this reflection, that it is eligible to endure a littlenow, when that little, through grace, may preserve us from enduring unspeakably more hereafter, and lead us to the possession of infinite and endless joys. Wherefore, if our great Master should ever honour any of us so far as to call us forth to suffer for him, let us do it bravely, and be true to God, to religion, and our own souls; having our eyes always steadily fixed on the bright crown, the white robe, the triumphant palm of the noble army of martyrs. The first verse of the next chapter should properly be joined to this. See its connection in the note on Matthew 16:28.

Inferences.—How apt is unbelief to raise, and to stop at difficulties, as if they were too great for Christ to surmount, (Mark 8:4.) and how prone to misconstrue his dispensations, and to forget the years of the right hand of the most High! How unreasonably does it reject the plainest and properest evidence which Christ has given, and want to be gratified in some extraordinary way of its own suggesting! Mark 8:11. But faith, and not fancy, is to be encouraged; and all this unbelief, whether in the total, or only in a particular degree, argues such hardness of heart, as calls for lamentation and severe reproof. Yet, alas! how great is its remainder in too many of God's people? Mark 8:17. How does an evil leaven exist, and attempt to insinuate itself into them; and what need have they to be warned, and to be continually watching against it; and that with respect to corrupt doctrine, as well as practice, because of the bad influence which principles have upon the heart and life! This works and prevails, to the ruin of obstinate sinners; for if they persist in infidelity and impenitence, Christ will never gratify their curiosity or humour to reclaim them. He will turn away from them in righteous indignation, and leave them to the heavy judgment which they deserve.

But, on the contrary, how ready is this Lord of love to bear with his people's infirmities; to help and heal, and save those who are sensible of their wants, and apply by faith to him for mercy! He sometimes relieves them in an instant; at others in a more gradual way, Mark 8:23. Sometimes in a public, at others in a more private manner; as may be most for his glory, and their good: and all his gracious discoveries to them, are at the most seasonable times, when they are fittest to receive them, and most likely not to abuse them. But, if Satan gets an advantage, and they, through his influence, and the carnal workings of their own hearts, make a wrong use of them, Christ will shew his dreadful displeasure, Mark 8:33.

The hand of our blessed Saviour, Mark 8:23 may be considered as an emblem of his healing grace, and of the conduct of his ministers. He here uses it to three purposes. 1. That he may be a guide to the blind man, while he continues blind. 2. That he may apply the remedy to him. 3. That he may give him imposition of hands, Mark 8:25. A man may imitate Christ herein. 1. By treating the person spiritually blind with a charitable mildness before his cure. 2. By applying to him

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the remedy of evangelical truths with all discretion. 3. By praying, and doing good offices for him.

Retirement of some sort or other, is absolutely necessary after conversion, Mark 8:26. When a man has once received the knowledge of the truth he must meditate upon it, feed on it, and let it take deep root in his heart.

How low were the disciples' notions about the nature of Christ's kingdom! and how slow of understanding, believing, and consenting to the plainest notices which he gave them of his sufferings and death! Mark 8:32. But we must receive a humbled as well as an exalted Saviour. If we would have him for our own, we must be ready to suffer with him; and not be ashamed to own him, by a professed subjection to him, however we may be reproached for it, as ever we hope to be glorified with him, and to be owned by him, when he shall come in the illustrious pomp and grandeur of the last day. What are all the sufferings and shame of this present state, compared with the glory that shall be then revealed? What is all the gain which we can make in this life, compared to the eternal loss of our souls? Fatal and dreadful experience this, when, after having enjoyed pleasures, riches, or empire a few years, men find, by losing all in a moment, that all is nothing, and that whatever they possessed here, is altogether unprofitable for the other life!

How tremendous and alarming is our Lord's threatening! Mark 8:28. We may flatter ourselves, if we please, here below, and by trivial reasons excuse ourselves from giving testimony to the word of Christ, and to himself in his servants: the day of the Lord will disperse all those thin clouds with which we cover ourselves, and expose to open view the base interests which we shall have preferred to those of God and his Gospel. How much happier will it be to represent to ourselves that awful day in all its terrors, whenever a regard to an adulterous and sinful generation would lead us to be ashamed of Christ and of his word! So shall we be bold to confess and acknowledge that Son of man, that Son of God, below; who will reward us fully above, for all that we suffer for his sake, when he cometh in the glory of his Father, with the holy angels.

REFLECTIONS.—1st, The compassions of Jesus flow without ceasing towards the wretched and indigent. Vast multitudes followed him; and, so eager were the people to attend him, that neither toil nor hunger discouraged them. He therefore who graciously fed their souls with his heavenly doctrine, is again pleased by a miracle to feed their almost famished bodies. We have seen it recorded in nearly the same words, Matthew 15:32; Matthew 15:39 and may learn, (1.) To count nothing hard in the way of duty, while we are following Christ. (2.) To trust him with our bodies as well as our souls, and verily we shall be fed. (3.) Not to be discouraged if we do not sometimes see any immediate prospect of relief under our difficulties: the Lord can open an unexpected door of deliverance for us.

2nd, Dalmanutha was a place not far from Magdala, Matthew 15:39. Thither our Lord bent his course.

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1. The Pharisees there met him, and, cavilling as usual, demanded a sign from heaven; as if all other miracles did not sufficiently prove his divine mission: not that they desired to be convinced, but sought a pretence for their infidelity. Therefore, 2. Christ refused to grant their request. Not that he could not work the miracle they sought, but because he knew the wickedness of their intentions in asking it; and therefore sighed deeply, as grieved for the hardness of their hearts, and expostulated with them on the unreasonableness of their infidelity, when such amazing signs had been given them for their conviction already: and, denying their request, he abandons them to their ruin. Note; They who will not submit to the evidence of the Scriptures, are justly given up to the blindness of their minds, and left to perish in their unbelief.

3. On this he took occasion, as they were crossing the lake, to caution his disciples against the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod; which they, having taken scarcely any bread with them, interpreted literally as a rebuke for their carelessness, and an admonition not to apply to the Pharisees for relief, or to eat of their bread. And while they were casting the blame of their negligence upon each other, Jesus, who perceived their folly and stupidity, sharply rebuked them for their uneasiness in this matter, as arguing great unbelief of his power, which they had seen so wonderfully and lately exerted, whereof he reminds them; and therefore it was strange that they should be so senseless, and their hearts yet so hardened, as not to perceive, that he intended not his discourse concerning bread literally, which he could so easily supply, but of the doctrines of the Pharisees and Herod, which were to be shunned as dangerously pernicious. Note; (1.) It is amazing to think of the hardness of our hearts in general; that, after multiplied experiences of God's goodness, we are apt again to distrust his care the moment new difficulties arise. (2.) The more we know and understand what Christ is, and has done for us, the more will our hearts be engaged to trust him in every emergence.

3rdly, The miracle recorded, Mark 8:22-26 is related by St. Mark alone, and is probably selected from the innumerable multitude of others, because some circumstances in it are singular.

1. The application was made to Jesus by a poor blind man's friends, who led him to the Saviour, desiring that he would touch him, persuaded that this would effectually work a cure. Note; In our prayers we should not cease to pray for poor blind sinners, intreating the Lord to open the eyes of their mind.

2. He took the blind man by the hand, and led him out of the town, choosing to heal him secretly, and perhaps in just judgment upon the place, where so many miracles had been wrought, and yet the people continued in their infidelity.

3. He healed him; and this he did, not by a word, but in an unusual manner, and gradually. He spat on his eyes, and, asking what he saw, some glimmerings of light broke in upon him, and he beheld men as trees walking, his vision being yet indistinct and confused; but when Jesus had put his hands upon his eyes, and bid him look up again, then he saw every object clearly. Thus often is he pleased to work in the heart: at first the light, like the dawning day, breaks upon the soul,

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and some glimmerings of spiritual things are perceived; of the danger and guilt of sin; the necessity of caring for the soul; the want of a Redeemer, &c. Afterwards our views enlarge; we gain deeper discoveries of our own corruption, and Christ's all-sufficiency; we enter into spiritual liberty, and then into fuller liberty; till at last, if we be faithful to the grace of God, we come to the most perfect day in glory, and know even as we are known.

4. He charges the man not to return to Bethsaida, nor acquaint any one there with his cure: their obstinate impenitence under the miracles that they had seen, rendered them unworthy of any more of those mighty works. They who slight their own mercies, justly forfeit them.

4thly, In the journey of Christ, and his disciples to the towns of Cesarea-Philippi, we are told,

1. The inquiry of Christ concerning the opinion which the people entertained of him, and what were the sentiments of the apostles in particular. They inform him of the general veneration in which he was held, though men's opinions concerning him were divided; some supposing him the Baptist risen from the dead; others Elias; others one of the former prophets returned. With regard to themselves, St. Peter, in the name of the rest, professes their faith in him as a much greater character, even that of the divine Messiah. Hereupon Jesus commanded them to keep this for the present secret, the time being not yet come for declaring in such express terms his pretensions; lest the people, prepossessed with notions of a temporal Messiah, should be excited to an insurrection, or his enemies be exasperated to attempt to cut him off immediately, before he had finished his work.

2. Christ hereupon informs them more freely and openly than he had done before, concerning the sufferings that he must endure, to wean them from those vain imaginations concerning the temporal kingdom which they expected, and to prepare them for so afflictive an event. Peter's heart, fired at the mention of this, could not bear to hear of his Master's death, when he had just entertained the most sanguine hopes of his greatness; and therefore, taking him aside, expressed his astonishment that he should talk in such a manner; for which Peter got a severe and just rebuke before his fellow-disciples, to check their aspiring views, as well as his own. Christ tells him, that he acted as his bitterest enemy in opposing his sufferings: Satan could do no worse: and he shewed an utter want of discernment concerning the nature of the Messiah's kingdom, and the great ends that God designed to accomplish by that death which he was about to undergo. In truth, Peter's eyes were so fixed on temporal grandeur, that he could relish nothing which seemed to contradict his aspiring views. Note; The cross is ever displeasing to our fallen nature, and we are too apt, like Peter, to be seeking for ourselves ease or greatness: hence in suffering times so many are offended.

3. He takes occasion hereupon to declare the terms of discipleship, and to suggest arguments to engage his faithful followers to meet courageously the persecutions which they must expect in his service. Self-denial, readiness to take up the cross, and conformity to the pattern of a suffering Saviour, are absolutely required of

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every follower of Jesus: nor must we count our lives dear to us, when his service requires us to part with them. Not that our sufferings, or even death itself, will be our loss; no: they will prove our greatest gain, and we shall find in life eternal an abundant recompense: whereas, if through fear or dread of suffering in this world, we save our lives by base compliances, our loss will be irreparable and eternal; we shall perish without remedy; and the gain of ten thousand worlds will never countervail the loss of an immortal soul: and as sure as ever we are ashamed of the cause of Jesus, and disown him by our unfaithfulness, so surely may we expect to be disowned by him in the great day of his appearing and glory: let us therefore count the cost, and with full purpose of heart cleave unto the Lord.

BI, "Whosoever therefore shall be ashamed of Me and of My words.

Ashamed of Jesus

I. Inquire into the nature of the crime of being ashamed of Christ, and of His words. The duty opposed to the crime is expressed by confessing Christ before men; therefore to be ashamed of Christ and of His word, is to deny or disown Christ and His doctrine before men. There have not wanted some in all times to justify the prudence of concealing our religious sentiments, and to encourage men to live well with the world in an outward compliance with its customs, provided the heart be right with God. It is also added that to suppose it necessary for men to own their religious sentiments at the peril of their lives, is making God a hard master. What does our confession avail Him who can see the heart? But yet these are but excuses, and founded in ignorance of the nature of religion, and of the great ends to be served by it. Were we to estimate our religion by the service or benefit done to God, we might part with it all at once. He gets no more by the sincerity of our hearts than by our outward professions; and therefore upon this view we may bid adieu to both. If you think, however, that there is something in inward sincerity that is agreeable in His sight, that renders men acceptable to Him, I wonder, at the same time, you should not think hypocrisy and dissimulation with the world odious in His sight, and such vices as will render us detestable to Him. To suppose inward sincerity consistent with an external hypocrisy toward the world, is itself a very great absurdity. For what is hypocrisy But how comes it to be necessary for a man to say anything about his religion? To a clear resolution of this question we must consider the nature of religion, and the ends to be served by it. The duties of religion respect God but also the well-being of the world. Religion is a principle of obedience to God, as Governor of the world. It cannot therefore possibly be a mere secret concern between God and every man’s conscience, since it respects Him in so public a character, and must extend to everything in which God, as Governor of the world, is supposed to be concerned. For surely it is impossible to pay the proper respect and obedience which is due to the Governor of the world, whilst we deny Him, in the face of the world, to be the Governor of it. But further: if any religious obedience be due to God as Governor of the world, it must principally consist in promoting the great end of His government. Again: if it be really, as it is, impossible for us to do God any private service by which He may be the better, it is very absurd to imagine that religion can consist, or be preserved by any secret belief or opinion, how cordially soever embraced. What thanks can be due to you for silently believing God to be the Governor of the world, whilst you openly deny it, and in your actions disclaim it? Even this principle, which is the foundation of all religion, has nothing of religion in it, so long as it is inactive, and consists in speculation, without bringing forth fruits agreeable to such a persuasion. Lastly: if it be any part of religion to promote religion

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and the knowledge of God’s truth in the world, it cannot be consistent with our duty to dissemble, or to deny our faith. The man who hides his own religion close in his heart, tempts others, who suspect not his hypocrisy, to throw theirs quite out; and whilst he rejoices in this sheet anchor of a pure inward faith, he sees others who steer after him make shipwreck of their faith and their salvation. Under this head I have one thing more to observe to you, that there are in this vice, as indeed in most others, very different degrees. While some were contented to hide themselves, and dissemble their acquaintance with Christ, St. Peter openly denied Him, and confirmed it with an oath, that he knew not the Man. Thus some for fear in those days of persecution, denied their Lord; and some in these days, such is our unhappy case, are so vain and conceited, as to he ashamed of the Lord who bought them. Among these, some openly blaspheme Him; others are content to make a sport of His religion; whilst a third sort profess a pleasure in such conversation, though their hearts ache for their iniquity, but they want the courage to rebuke even by their silence the sin of the scorner. All these are in the number of those who are ashamed of Christ. Secondly: to inquire into the several temptations which lead men to this crime of bring ashamed of Christ and of His words. The fountain from which these temptations spring is plainly enough described in the text, “This adulterous and sinful generation.” And we know full well, that there is not a natural fear lurking in the heart of man, but the world knows how to reach it; not a passion, but it has an enchantment ready for it; no weakness, no vanity, but it knows how to lay hold of it” so that all our natural hopes and fears, our passions, our infirmities, are liable to be drawn into the conspiracy against Christ and His word. But the other kind of temptations come upon our invitation: we make our faith a sacrifice to the great idol, the world, when we part with it for honour, wealth, or pleasure. In this circumstance men take pains to show how little they value their religion, and seek occasions to display their libertinism and infidelity, in order to make their way to the favour of a corrupt and degenerate age. This behaviour admits of no excuse. But whenever infidelity grows into credit and repute, and the world has so vitiated a taste, as to esteem the symptoms of irreligion as signs of a good understanding and sound judgment; that a man cannot appear to be in earnest concerned for his religion without being thought a fool, or suspected to be a knave; then there arises another temptation to make men ashamed of Christ, and of His word. No man likes to be despised by those about him. There is a contagion in ill company, and he who dwells with the scorner shall not be guiltless. Had our Lord been merely a teacher of good things, without any special commission or authority from the great Creator and Governor of the world, it would have been highly absurd to assume to Himself this great prerogative of being owned and acknowledged before men. When, therefore, we read that our Lord requires of us to confess Him before men, the true way to know what we are to confess, is to reflect what He confessed Himself; for it cannot be supposed that He thought it reasonable for Himself to make one confession, and for His disciples and servants to make another. Look, then, into the gospel, and see His own confession. He confessed Himself to be the only Son of God, to come from the bosom of the Father to die for the sins of the world; to have all power given to Him in heaven and earth; to be the Judge of the world. (The Practical Pulpit.)

Our great work for Christ is to confess Him

But this confession of Christ-this not being ashamed of Him and of His words-is different in different generations and different societies. In the earliest age of all, the offence was the offence of the cross-that men should not he ashamed to confess that they believed that He who was crucified was the Son of God, and that they hoped to

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be saved by His very cress. Since then, this offence has ceased in outward form, but in reality it has reappeared under different forms of religious cowardice. In licentious ages and societies men have been ashamed of the self-denying words and example of the Lord; in superstitious ages, of upholding the purity of His religion; in heretical ages, of manfully contending for the faith of His true godhead; in later periods of our history men seem to have been ashamed of confessing that we are saved through Christ alone; and in this age, and in learned and scientific societies, are not men ashamed of confessing those words of Christ, and of His servants, which assert the supernatural in our holy religion? (M. F. Sadler.)

Ashamed of Jesus

I. The persons described. Those who, from shame-

(1) Decline to assume a profession of the gospel;

(2) Do not maintain a consistent profession of the gospel;

(3) Abandon the profession of the gospel.

II. The doom threatened. It is certain, awful, just. (Plans of Sermons.).

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