Year 5, Day 155: Mark 8

Theological Commentary: Click Here

Discipleship Focus: Information

Information: This is the initial phase of become a disciple of Jesus.  Before we can do anything meaningful we must begin to understand what we are doing.  We may never gain full understanding of God and His ways, but God calls us to study Him, His Son, and His ways as the foundation of being His follower.

Today I’m going to look at the disciples and their discipleship process.  Our chapter starts with the feeding of the 4,000.  This has a similar theme as to the feeding of the 5,000 except that there are some significant differences.  To see a list of those differences and why they are important, see the theological commentary to which I link above or see the first thought in this post: Matthew 15:35-39

After the feeding of the 4,000 the Pharisees argue with Jesus.  Jesus then gets in the boat and tries to give His own disciples a warning to not become like the Pharisees.  But the disciples completely miss the point.  When Jesus warns them about the Pharisees, they think that Jesus is talking about bread and how they forgot to bring bread.  The disciple miss what Jesus is saying.

I think that this point leads me back to the concept of information.  Information is the first step in being able to imitate Jesus and go out into the world and do as God is asking of you.  But we need to stop and remember how important it is to actually get the information right!

This might seem like a simple lesson.  But remember where this story lies in the grand scheme of things.  This story lies right before the transfiguration.  The transfiguration marks the beginning of the end.  After the transfiguration, Jesus heads to Jerusalem and gets crucified.  This means that the feeding of the 4,000 happens somewhere in the middle of Jesus’ ministry and probably closer to the end than the beginning.  Which means that the disciples have had more than a year – if not more than two years – of training under Jesus at this point.  They still miss what Jesus is saying.

It is so easy for us to think that after we’ve been walking with God for several years then we must know everything.  The sad reality is that we don’t.  We don’t know what God has in store for us.  We don’t know our future context.  We don’t know what God is calling us into after we get done with where God has placed us now.  The truth is that we don’t know a lot more than we actually do know!

This is why it is important to remember that information always precedes imitation of Christ.  Before we can imitate Christ better, we need to learn what it is that God wants us to imitate.  We have to submit to God so that we can learn what He is saying to us.

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