Mark 8 - Following Christ
Our Lord Jesus Christ fed 4000 people again with just 7 loaves of bread and a few small fish when they were in mission trip to minister to the crowd. Then the Pharisees came and began to argue with Him demanding a sign from heaven or rather a better meaning now : proof that He is really from God. Envy & unbelief is a dangerous thing, it will spread & rot the heart, twist the mind & the whole character of a person, so even when there’s a miracle that no one else had done, they would still find fault with it. This is not about a doubt in the sense of seeking the truth from God in the beginning of a journey as one is still getting to know God & how to build relationship with God, we can ask when we have doubt & God will answer us. The Pharisees was already given answers & work of miracles from God, such as healing the sick, casting out demons & multiplication of food, the context is that they experienced it & they still refuse to believe continuously.
In contrast, the blind man & Peter had faith that Jesus Christ is the saviour, that He is the Messiah. They too experienced it and they believed Him. So He begun to tell them the future about His death & resurrection as they are now ready to receive more revelation about Him. Our relationship with God could also be similar, first when we believe, we might have a lot of questions & God will answer them, when we experience Him in our lives, we know in our hearts that He is real & it is true even when we can’t explain it logically or we use the word “coincidentally”. I’d like to believe that God was involved because He is willing to respond & build relationship with us as well.
At the end of the chapter, Jesus Christ corrected Peter about his previous wrong mindset of thinking that a Messiah would be super powerful & probably act in a militant way. Our Lord Jesus Christ overcame death by laying down His life willingly on the cross, no one forced Him, He did it out of love & obedience to our Father in Heaven knowing that this will reconcile the humankind to God. He suffered, denied Himself & took up the cross for our sake, that’s how He is a Messiah.
It is an encouragement to read this again as it reminds that as follower of Christ, suffering is one of the sign that we are not far from Him but ofcourse I’m not encouraging people to intentionally look for things to suffer… As an example, when we were wronged or hated for the sake of preaching the gospel of God, we would feel humiliated or sad, but that’s a blessing as we are doing God’s will. Let us be encouraged then to keep on sharing the gospel of the Jesus Christ & continue to build an intimate relationship with our God.