Metropolitan Tabernacle Pulpit · Sermon No. 1822
“When I broke the five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets full of fragments did you take up? They said unto Him, Twelve. And when the seven among four thousand, how many baskets full of fragments did you take up? And they said, Seven. And He said unto them, How is it that you do not understand?” Mark 8:19-21.
THE disciples had come on board the vessel and had forgotten to bring bread with them—good men’s memories sometimes fail them. For that reason they were greatly disturbed in mind and they supposed that Jesus was also disquieted and that He had shaped His speech so as to give them an indirect rebuke when He mentioned the leaven of the Pharisees. How little they understood His mind, though they had been so long a time with Him! His thoughts were not occupied about bread for Himself and neither was there any carking care in His heart about bread for them. His mind was at perfect rest about all secular things and, even as to all spiritual things, He was by no means tossed about. Notwithstanding all His trials and His sorrows, I suppose that there never was a serener mind than that of Jesus Christ our Lord. His heart was great as an ocean and though visited with terrible tempests, yet it was the Pacific Ocean, still. They might be troubled about bread, but He was resting about that and all things else. The winds which tossed the little lakes of their little minds into boiling cauldrons did not suffice to create a ripple upon the surface of His mighty soul!
Is it not well for us at this hour that it is so? We are fluttered and dismayed, but the mind of our great Lord is fearless and undisturbed. “He will not fail nor be discouraged.” The child cries because the ship rolls, but his father at the helm smiles at the storm—and what a mercy it is for the child that father can smile, for if the captain were weak, where would the vessel be? If the father’s heart failed him, where would his boy look for comfort? Calm face of Jesus, we look up to You and we are quieted!
The Master wishing to comfort His servants had them consider what they already knew and review what they had already seen. Usually the eyes of the Christian should be directed forward—it is foolish to try to live on past experience—it is a very dangerous, if not a fatal habit, to judge ourselves to be safe because of something that we felt or did 20 years ago. Yet, for all that, we may look back to gain practical lessons for times of service and comfortable lessons for hours of trial. Like the archer, we may draw the string back that it may shoot the arrow onward with greater force.
The Master asks His followers whether they had used their eyes. “Having eyes, see you not?” They had seen two wonderful miracles, by which thousands of persons had been fed—had they really seen them? Had they been satisfied just to look at the bread and the fish—and at the feasting multitude—and then to let the whole scene melt away from them? Had they really heard the voice of what the Lord had done? “Having ears, hear you not?” Had they missed the message altogether? Then He adds, “Perceive you not yet, neither understand?” Do you not know what My action meant when I multiplied the loaves? Do you not see how it reveals My all-sufficiency? Have you not read between the lines, this Word of God—that God feeds all things—that He opens His hands and supplies the needs of every living thing? Have you not yet discovered, by those two miracles, that there is nothing impossible with your Lord?
May we not also have missed our Lord’s meanings full often? May we not have walked through a palace of wonders without observing the gleams of Glory, the flashes of Eternal Light? Our unbelief is the undeniable evidence that we have not learned all that we ought to have learned, for the outcome of spiritually seeing, perceiving and understanding is faith. He that believes little has learned little. He that doubts and is troubled, is but a baby, still needing to learn the rudiments of holy scholarship!
The Lord further asks them that tender question, “And do you not remember?” Brothers and Sisters, we remember much that we ought to forget—and we forget much that we ought to remember! Down the stream of memory floats trash from the city of Sodom and we diligently gather it! But down the same stream descends costly timber from Lebanon and we suffer it to drift by us! Our sieve holds the chaff and rejects the corn. It ought not so to be. Let us look back upon the whole of our past lives at this hour with a careful, leisurely glance, and see whether there is not enough in our diaries to condemn our doubts and bury our cares—or at least to shut up our anxieties in a cage made of the golden bars of past mercy and fastened in with jeweled bolts of gratitude! “The Lord has been mindful of us; He will bless us.” Let us glory in what the Lord is going to do and magnify His name for His mercy which is yet to be revealed!