Mark 8

Mark 8

“With the example of Christ, the road to life is marked by death.”

Preston Rhodes, our site pastor in Missoula, proclaimed the truth of what it means to deny yourself, just as Jesus clarifies here at the end of Mark 8. Seeing clearly what His mission is and what it means to save eternally, Jesus embodies the difficult task of living an others-centric life, culminating in the cross. A lifestyle He set the example for His disciples to similarly mirror. This teaching is timely for the disciples, though, as their lack of understanding presents blindness in the spiritual sense. Furthermore, for simply letting our minds settle on the things of men, Peter earns perhaps one of the starkest rebukes Jesus makes to His followers and yet is a failure we ought to be wary of in our age still.

In Chapter 8, Jesus performs two miracles: feeding a crowd of thousands for the second time and providing sight to a blind man, the only progressive method of healing we see in scripture. Fascinatingly enough, the subject of discussion between Jesus and His disciples going from the first miracle to the next is another kind of blindness: spiritual blindness. They had a brief run-in with more Pharisees who tested Jesus to provide a sign from heaven just before. “The Pharisees tempted Jesus to perform a miraculous sign just as Satan tempted Him to do so in the wilderness” (Guzik, 2018). The Pharisees had heard enough of the chatter about Jesus to spark intrigue, yet their motives were made clear in desiring not mercy but the satisfaction of the flesh.

Let’s tuck this interaction with the Pharisees away for a moment and come back to Jesus’s interactions with His disciples. Reflecting on the encounter mentioned above, He exhorts His disciples to “watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees” (Mark 8:15b), speaking to the power of pride and arrogance to corrupt a man holistically. The brief word goes completely over the disciples' heads, though. Recognizing this, Jesus responds with questions of the heart: “Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember?” (v.17b-18). To Jesus, the disciple’s lack of understanding is more than simply that; it’s a heart issue and is to be taken seriously.

Jumping forward once more, Jesus explains what it means to be Christ; His coming suffering, death, and resurrection. This doesn’t land as Jesus would have hoped, though, as the disciples didn’t simply understand what He was talking about, but they protested it. After hearing Peter’s words of rebuke, Jesus turns around to the group and rebukes Peter in return, calling him and his thoughts Satanic. The disciples clearly struggle to wrap their minds around the spiritual reality (and subsequent victory) that is to come through this physical reality of our savior's suffering. Yet Peter’s opposition in letting his friends suffer and die is direct opposition to the will of God and his salvation being made available as he did “not have in mind the things of God, but the things of men.”

Read: Romans 8:6-11

This is the heart issue Jesus has been mentioning all along. Blindness could be chalked up to legitimately not understanding and perhaps be aided by time marinating in the Word and asking others and the Spirit to help us understand. However, letting our minds settle on the flesh is more than simply not understanding; it is direct opposition to the will of God, obstructing and distorting our view of Christ. The Pharisees wanted a “sign from Heaven'', a request made out of the same arrogance causing them not to believe in the stories they had heard about Him from all over the countryside. Even in the disciples, simply not wanting their friend to die may have seemed like a friendly gesture, yet in this case, it meant refusing salvation to the rest of the world. The crazy part is Jesus was doing this in part to model the life we ought to live. In the death of our old selves and those dreadful deeds of the flesh, we take on the resurrection of life in Christ. This life Jesus calls us to come and die is not easy. Yet for us, it means salvation and a new heart containing the desire to please God and the ability to do so as we gain the righteousness of Christ and eternal life. Let us not be people who live in opposition to the things of God, but in remembering Christ’s sacrifice, let us humbly take up our cross and follow Him. Pray God would open your eyes to areas you are living in opposition to Him and His will, and consider the following:

As you read the text, what is the Lord saying to you?

What does it mean to keep the things of God in your mind?

Are you holding on to something God is asking you to put to death?

Like the Pharisees in verse 11, are you masking sinful requests with spiritual banter in your prayers?

Or, like Peter in verse 32, do you mask opposition to God in spiritual banter with your community?