The prophet sees the Lord extending Himself to all peoples
in grace but finding rejection only. Oddly,
the first people to whom we see Him reaching is the Gentiles, those who were
not called by His Name, those who did not seek Him. Next He turns to the Jews, His own people,
but they were busily worshipping other gods and cannot turn to Him. He accuses them of following their own
devices, a phrase we find also in the confession in Morning and Evening Prayer
in the Prayer Book, "We have followed too much the devices and desires of
our own hearts." We do that when we
depart from His worship and begin to use methods that belong to the pagan
world. There is such a syncretism in the
church today when we use Asian forms of meditation and physicality in our lives
that are acts of worship in that culture.
We need to be careful about what we bring into our lives and we need to
offer our worship as He has commanded. The
Lord promises judgment on all but also a new people that He will raise up for
Himself.
The people were following Jesus because He was healing the
sick and they had seen the signs. They receive
a blessing and reward for following Him, the feeding miracle we see here. We are told the Passover feast was at hand so
many of these would have been pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem to keep the
feast. Here they follow Him away from
Jerusalem because of what they had seen.
He goes up onto the mountain with the disciples and asks where they can
buy food to feed this multitude. Philip's
response focuses not on the issue of where but how, where would the money come
from to buy such an enormous quantity. Andrew
sees a boy with a few fish and a little bread and asks what good that would
do. Why did Andrew even mention the boy
and his bit of provision? Jesus,
however, asks the people to sit and John tells us there was much grass in that
place. The important action Jesus makes
is to give thanks for what they have. He
offers it first to the Father for blessing and then to the people and a new
sign is given, the third of John's signs.
The people see the sign and make a right interpretation, they believe He
is the Prophet, the one like Moses that had been promised, He had miraculously
fed them in the wilderness.
You have a reputation for being alive but you're dead. Sometimes churches can look very much alive
while at the same time being dead in the eyes of the Lord. We have surely seen vibrant churches or
ministries die a puzzling death. Often
the problem is that we become so attached to signs and wonders that we leave off
the Word of God, we tolerate sin or we develop a spirit of pride that somehow
we are special, anointed or that the power comes from us rather than the
Lord. There is always a danger of that
happening in our lives. Jesus tells the
church at Sardis to wake up and repent, that there are only a few there whose
names are written in the book of life. Where
have we wandered off and followed too much the devices and desires of our own
hearts and failed to follow Him?
No comments:
Post a Comment