Mark 7

Mark 7:1-23

XIV “Ye leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men. . . . Full well do ye reject the commandment of God, that ye may keep your tradition.”- Mark 7:8; Mark 7:9. Mark 7:1-23. THE narrative of these first twenty-three verses of the seventh chapter of Mark’s Gospel stands in striking contrast to that of the last twenty-seven verses of the previous chapter. That was the story of the gathering to the Lord of His apostles. This is the story of the gathering to the Lord of His adversaries. The respective beginnings show this. “And the apostles gather themselves together unto Jesus.” “And there are gathered together unto Him the Pharisees, and certain of the scribes, which had come from Jerusalem.” The first was the gathering of friends whose mission was to help Him. The second was the gathering of foes, whose purpose was to hinder Him.

That this story is of special importance there can be no doubt. These men who gathered to the Lord came officially from Jerusalem. The sending out of the twelve had drawn new attention to Jesus, impressing even Herod in the royal palace. The movement in Galilee was evidently growing, and that rapidly. The religious leaders in Jerusalem were perturbed, and sent a deputation to investigate. The occasion of controversy, apparently a trifling one, was nevertheless a most revealing one.

In it, the religious ideal for which these men stood, is clearly manifested. The way in which our Lord dealt with them is singularly arresting in its anger, satire, directness, and scorn; and in that careful explanation of the meaning of His method which He subsequently gave to His disciples. In this incident two opposing ideals of religion are seen coming into conflict; that of the Pharisees and scribes, and that of Jesus. Theirs was that of the punctilious observance of traditions; His was that of simple obedience to the commandment of God. He shocked them in the habits of His disciples; they shocked Him in their disregard of the will of God.

Now there is a sense in which this story does not startle us. This is due to the fact that this whole question of ceremonial washings appears to us as patently futile, and we have a sense of real satisfaction in the way in which our Lord dealt with these men. But in that very feeling of satisfaction there is peril. It may be that our satisfaction results from a very superficial understanding of what our Lord really meant. If we can disengage the elemental principles from the incidental circumstances, we may be startled, perchance, quite as much as these men were.

If our Lord were here to-day in bodily form, He would not say to us the things He said to these men, because we should not say to Him the things they said. But I am not at all sure that He would not shock very many of those who bear His name, not so much by what He would do, as by the apparently religious things He would not do. That method of statement may bring us nearer to the real meaning of this story.

Let us then endeavour to understand this clashing of ideals revealed in the controversy between the deputation from Jerusalem, and Jesus. This we will do by considering, first, the history and intention of tradition; secondly, the genesis of obedience to tradition as Jesus laid it bare on this occasion; and thirdly and finally, the effects of tradition as our Lord revealed them.

It is pertinent therefore to our enquiry that we first simply ask what was meant by tradition upon this occasion, and in this atmosphere. What were these traditions to which our Lord made reference, not here alone, but again and again in the course of His public ministry, always in order to denounce them? They were precepts orally transmitted, illustrating, applying, expounding the written law. Some of the later Jewish teachers of that period claimed that the traditions were orally given by Moses. Earlier teachers had claimed that the traditions came from the elders who were associated with Moses. I am not proposing to argue this matter, but simply say that neither position was warranted.

The history and development of the traditions to which our Lord made reference here, and to which these men themselves made reference, were largely Pharisaic. The whole Pharisaic movement was born in the period of Jewish history, of which we practically have no record in our Bible. It was born, of an intensely religious conviction. It is sometimes said-and the definition is morel accurate than we are always willing to admit that-the Pharisees were originally the Puritans of their age. In that period the people had been gathered together and localized at Jerusalem, under different leaders; and Babylonian and Greek influences were threatening altogether the lonely separateness of the Hebrew people. The Pharisees were men who at this time had banded themselves together to maintain, by all means in their power, the distinction between the Jewish people and the nations surrounding them.

There arose at the same time the order of the scribes, who were always associated with the Pharisees. Not all scribes were Pharisees, and not all Pharisees were scribes; but there was the closest association between them. The work of the scribes was that of taking the law of God, illustrating it, and applying it to local circumstances, and local situations. As men enquired: What does the law of God mean for us at this point, or this juncture? the scribes interpreted the law of God.

Gradually they formulated precepts to meet the new conditions. These precepts constantly increased in number, in an attempt to keep pace with the ever-growing complexity of the conditions of life, until there had grown up a great body of traditions; traditions which in the first place were intended to be interpretations of the law, and applications of the law to local circumstances; traditions which in the second place became interpretations of traditions, and applications of traditions; and traditions in the third place, which were interpretations of interpretations of interpretations of traditions! So the movement ran, until there existed between the people of God and the law of God such a mass of tradition, that the law of God itself was out of sight, and practically forgotten.

Into the midst of this ideal of religious life Jesus came. The intention of tradition was that of the maintenance of religion. Here therefore we must make a very necessary distinction, which distinction our Lord made so graphic and patent in the words of our text, between the traditions and the law of God. That distinction must be made even in the highest realm of the consideration of tradition. The law of God must be kept separate and apart, quite alone from any human interpretation of it, which is a tradition. The law was given, and men in such sincere and devout ages, obediently desiring to maintain the law, interpreted the law to men. That was tradition, human tradition, human interpretation of the law.

To leave the Hebrew atmosphere, it may be that some may think this can have very little application to us. Certainly in the beginning of the Christian era, within the Christian Church, there were very few traditions. Those early Christians lived in such close relationship with the first Christian movement, that traditions were very few. That is wonderfully illustrated in the book of the Acts of the Apostles, in which-if there be one thing that is more manifestly and gloriously surprising than another is seen the freedom of life in the Spirit. A particular Church doctrine cannot be based upon the Acts of the Apostles. A formulated creed cannot be found in the Acts of the Apostles.

The warrant for any particular liturgical service cannot be deduced from anything there written. The Spirit is the Spirit of freedom, the Spirit of love, Who fulfils Himself in a thousand ways, but has always the one life. As the book of the Acts is read from that standpoint, we are greatly impressed with the fact that if we would make our appeal for anything that is .traditional, we cannot go to the book of the Acts of the Apostles for our confirmation.

But traditions came within the Christian Church; they grew in number; and had exactly the same intention, that of maintaining the strength and character of the life. Systematic expressions of the belief of the Christian Church, are but systematic expressions of belief, and are to be numbered among the traditions of the Christian Church; sincere, wonderful, but human interpretation only. When some man or number of men, some college; apostolic band, or council of the Church, gathered together and formulated into definite expression the doctrines of the Church, they were giving their traditions, and human interpretations. So also came in process of time certain definitely declared forms of Church polity, as men wrought out the things they believed concerning the true method of the government of the Church, in order to its fulfillment of life and service. Thus there grew up in process of time such forms of Church life as differed from each other by traditions. That most wonderful of all, the Book of Common Prayer, is one of the more modern illustrations of what I mean.

It is a wonderful compilation! It is impossible for any man to join in a service where it is used without feeling that he is being brought into the true atmosphere of reverent worship; but it is a tradition, a set form of worship arranged by men.

Sometimes these traditions take other forms: uniformity of dress, modes of common speech; until the Church of God to-day is a mass of tradition, conflicting, contradictory, as great as were the traditions that had covered up the Hebrew religion in the time of Christ.

Here again the necessary distinction must be made between the revelation which is given to us, which is authoritative and final; and these traditions. The revelation is that of the Old Testament Scriptures interpreted by the New, and never apart from the New; and that of the New Testament Scriptures, in their revelation of Christ, and in their declaration of the principles of Christian service in the great writings of the Apostles and others. We must remember to distinguish between these, and traditions which are but human interpretations of them. Every creed of the Church, Athanasian, Nicene, or any other, is but an attempt to interpret the things of the Oracles of God; reverent attempts, made necessary in some hour of crisis, when for the crystallization of truth into the phrases and terms of the hour, men were making an attempt which had to be made; but after all, they were human interpretations, and nothing more.

Notice in the second place, what our Lord said to these men concerning the genesis, not of tradition, but of obedience to tradition: “Ye leave the commandment of God, and hold fast the tradition of men.” This is a most startling announcement. He declared in that statement that the movement which leads men into subjugation to tradition is one of departure from the commandment of God. Directly a precept made for an occasion becomes a binding tradition to be subsequently obeyed, it is evil. Directly a creed formulated for an hour is crystallized into that which is to dominate the thought of men for subsequent ages, it is a curse. Directly a form of worship, or a form of church organization made necessary by the exigency of an age, is stereotyped into something that is to arrest the mind and soul of men perpetually, it becomes an evil thing. Men only submit to such when they pass out of immediate relationship with God.

The individual soul never submits to the partial human interpretation, if that soul is living in immediate fellowship with God. The corporate Church of God, living in fellowship with the living Head, knowing His truth and righteousness and prevailing power, will never suffer itself to be brought under the trammels of human teachers or the arrangements of human office-bearers. Ever and anon we have seen such a corporate Church of Jesus Christ, almost always to be spoiled within a decade by tradition. The first movement toward the mastery of the soul by tradition is the movement of that soul away from immediate, direct, first-hand fellowship with God.

All this line of thinking is illuminated strangely and wonderfully by the habit of Jesus. Follow Him along the way of His earthly ministry, from that strange and wonderful hour when hearing the voice of the Hebrew prophet, He emerged from the silent seclusion of Nazareth, and commenced the work of public teaching; and watch Him carefully. The whole truth may be summarized by declaring that Jesus violated these traditions systematically, intentionally, resolutely. Gather out the instances which reveal His attitude toward the Sabbath, and it will be found that the first cause of quarrel between Himself and the rulers was His violation of the tradition concerning the Sabbath.

Then observe that again and again, in spite of the objection which they raised, which was bitter with the bitterness of great anger and hatred, He resolutely set Himself to do the same thing, over and over again. He wrought His wonders of healing on the Sabbath, violating their traditions, and trampling them under His feet, shocking them with the irreligiousness, as it seemed to them-of His attitude toward the Sabbath.

I am not for a moment inferring that our Lord violated the Sabbath. He never did so; but He violated their false conceptions concerning it. He flung Himself persistently, in habit, word, deed, and attitude, against all those traditions that stood between the soul of the people and their God.

Let us come away once more from the immediate and the incidental, and see the application of this teaching. In the examples already taken, mark the continuity of religious principles. No man who is living in true fellowship with God will consent to be mastered mentally by any creed that ever yet has been prepared for him. The proportion, in which a man knows the high life of fellowship with God, is the proportion in which he knows that no creed his brother may write for him, no creed he may write for himself, can be final. No man or company of men, no Church living in true fellowship with God, will consent that its polity be stereotyped, or will confuse form with power, or life with the method of its expression. I have sometimes said, and shocked some of my friends by saying it, that I could hold a brief for every known form of Church polity on the basis of the New Testament.

I could argue at length, if not eloquently, for Baptists. I could do the same for Presbyterianism, for Episcopalianism, and of course for Congregationalism. And I never forget that my argument would be based upon this fact, that life is more than a form of expression. Life may change its form of expression under different circumstances, with the coming of different needs. Consequently I can never quarrel with my brethren who are not following my conviction so far as Church polity is concerned. But I must never allow myself to be mastered by any polity when it interferes with my relation to life in the Lord Jesus Christ.

Depend upon it; the souls who are enslaved by some form of ecclesiastical polity are weak and anaemic. The soul of man has immediate, first-hand fellowship with God. I hold that to be peculiarly true of any order of service that ever yet has been arranged for the worship of the saints, of any uniformity of dress, or manner of speech that has been adopted by the saints.

This teaching of Christ flings itself with force against every habit of excommunication on the basis of human creeds. It makes its undying protest against the habit of isolation on ecclesiastical grounds. It denies the possibility of stereotyped orders of service, so that there is no room for the movement of the life of God. It smiles with patience on all peculiarities of dress and modes of speech that are supposed to be symbols of sanctity, and of relationship to Christ. And the smile is not satirical, it is sympathetic.

Further, in this word of Jesus spoken long ago, there is a deeper note. He revealed here not only the genesis of obedience to tradition as being that of departure from God; but He revealed in the most startling way the effects of obedience to tradition. All we have already said needs qualification by way of explanation. His violation was not for the sake of violation. He only violated the tradition because it violated the law which it was intended to honour.

As we come to the remainder of this story, we hear the things He said as they reveal the real reason of His satire, His anger, His ruthless violating of all human traditions. He made it perfectly clear first of all that the tradition of man misses its own aim. Men are still defiled, wash they never so often. The inner life is never reached by external ceremony. External observance is only valuable as an expression of an inner life, and the expression of the inner life cannot be stereotyped. Consequently if the tradition be made, that there must be ceremonial ablution before men eat a meal, what is the value of it?

Unless the ablution be an outward physical sign of inward spiritual cleansing, it is worthless. When the washing of baptism is the outward and physical sign of the inward and invisible grace, then it is useful and in its proper place. But when a man shall imagine that the ablution, the washing of baptism makes him a child of God, an inheritor of the Kingdom of heaven, he is mastered by a tradition that is blighting him, and robbing him of the faith he desires to realize, and misses his aim.

More than that, it stultifies its own purpose. The law of God, which tradition was intended to interpret and maintain, is insulted by it. Here again is an illustration with which we are very familiar, and yet how much light it throws upon the time in which Jesus lived, and then upon our own times. Their tradition was that a man might escape responsibility for father or mother by declaring that that which he could give to help them, was Corban, dedicated, given to God. Look at the picture Christ presents. A man who had a responsibility in material things, for a father and a mother, escaped his responsibility by declaring that that which might have helped them was dedicate to the Temple.

Oh! the anger, the scorn of Jesus! He says, “Full well do ye reject the commandment of God that ye may keep your tradition.” The deepest thing any human life knows of a man’s relationship to God-his duty to father and mother-is to be violated in the interests of his duty to God; and this is what tradition does! Thus Jesus declared that me are brutalized by tradition. Men mastered by tradition become the slaves of these human interpretations, and the very springs of compassion are dried up, and all the finest parts of the nature are destroyed. Thus religion is destroyed, when men are mastered by traditions.

These things persist. However excellent the intention of tradition, however valuable the precept in the hour when it was formulated for a local circumstance or condition; if that tradition take the place of the law of God; if that opinion of the past interfere between the soul and its immediate contact with God; if that expression of truth, or order of Church government, or method of worship coming from the past, exclude the soul from immediate fellowship with God, make impossible that hearing of the soul that catches the wind that bloweth where it listeth, destroy that freedom of life that only comes where the soul has direct access to God; then the tradition blights and blasts, however good its first intention may have been.

So finally, looking at the whole scene of the past, again being arrested by the earnestness of Christ here, by the directness of His word and the almost fierce invective of it, and the satire of it; let us remind ourselves that Christ’s conception of religion as that of the direct obedience of the soul to the direct law of God, is the only one which can ensure to the soul its full realization of its own life. It is only in proportion as we individually find our way into that relationship which our Lord came to make possible as Saviour, and for evermore interpret through the Spirit, that life can be fulfilled.

This conception of life is at once difficult and easy. It is difficult. It seems to us so much simpler to live by rule than by principle, so much easier to find human sanction than to discover the will of God, so much easier to take an order from priest, or pope, or council, than to discover the will of God. There are moments of stress and strain when almost every man, while not likely to become a Romanist, wishes he could persuade himself to be one! If we only could make ourselves believe that the word spoken to us by another were the infallible word! But we cannot!

It is against that pernicious tendency that Christ flung Himself. We must deal with God directly, immediately. The moment we admit any kind of tradition, or the exercise of authority that is based upon tradition, to come between the soul and God, we are impoverishing the soul, rendering it anaemic, weak, and sickly. This conception of life is difficult.

But it is also easy, because when once the soul dare break through the trammels, and become utterly careless of human opinion, and walk with God, it finds a path of reason, a path of power, a path of joy. I repeat, when once a soul dare break through the trammels. That is the point of difficulty. We are so much in the power of tradition that there are some who dare not stay away from a service because people might imagine they were irreligious! I believe there are a great many services most regularly held, that Jesus Christ would never attend! What we need to-day, if I know the temper of my own I time, and the spirit of my own age, more than anything else is a return to that fine independence of soul which is created by loyalty to the Saviour and King, that brings men and women back to God, bursting the bonds and trammels of tradition.

In the moment of the soul’s yielding to Him, will come the great hour in which the world will see the Kingdom of God, and the glory of its King. Let us become freemen by becoming His bond-slaves. Let us know the destruction of every yoke of bondage, by wearing the one yoke that He places upon us. Let us practice our bondage, and so realize our freedom.

Mark 7:24-37

XV “He hath done all things well.”- Mark 7:37. Mark 7:24-37 - Mark 8:1-26. IN this paragraph we have the story of the last things in the public ministry of Jesus, prior to the confession of Peter at Caesarea Philippi, and the new teaching and method which followed that confession.

The story contained in this paragraph may be divided into two parts. The first gives the account of a Gentile ministry of Jesus which was new, and must have been startling to His disciples, and to others. He travelled north, away from the earlier scene of His labour, so far as Tyre, and there He healed the daughter of the Syrophoenician woman. Then, proceeding still further north, and bearing to the northeast, He came to Sidon, travelling in a southerly direction through Decapolis, the country of the Ten Cities, all the while in Gentile territory, exercising a ministry among these Gentiles similar to that which He had been exercising among the Hebrew people. All this is contained in chapter seven, from verse twenty-four to the end of the ninth verse of chapter eight.

The second part of the paragraph, commencing at the tenth verse of chapter eight, and ending at the twenty-sixth verse, takes us back again into a hostile atmosphere. As He returned across the sea to Dalmanutha, He was immediately met by Pharisees and Sadducees demanding a sign. Then, once more crossing the sea in company of His disciples, He warned them, and dealt with their blindness. The brief story ends with the account of their arrival on the other side-on the northeastern shore of the lake-again in Gentile territory, and the opening of the eyes of the blind man.

The text, “He hath done all things well,” is resolutely borrowed from the context. The words were spoken by the Gentiles, and had special reference to the healing ministry which Jesus had been exercising in Decapolis, of which Mark gives no account, but which Matthew records quite clearly, and to this wonderful miracle, the opening of the ears of the deaf man, and the straightening out of his twisted tongue. It was in the presence of these evidences of His power that these Gentiles said, “He hath done all things well.”

If, however, I admit that I resolutely borrow the text from its context, let me hasten to add it is not ruthlessly so taken; for accepting the conclusion of these Gentiles, I propose simply to make a wider application of it; to let this declaration cover the whole of these events, and so form a fitting conclusion to that survey of the public ministry of our Lord which at this point ceases. By its use in this way, I desire to fasten attention upon Him.

In these events we see Him in His relation to humanity in its varied needs. We will take that outlook, ignoring the racial division which we have already recognized as between the Gentile and the Jew; simply looking at Him as He stands confronting these varied phases and illustrations of human need. Such a meditation will constrain us at the conclusion to return to the text and say, “He hath done all things well.”

We know these stories, and are indeed very familiar with them. We glance at them once again, desiring, as we move in front of the pictures they present in imagination, specially to observe the need represented.

The first picture is that of the Syrophcenician woman. Out of the mass of detail that we have here in Mark and in Matthew, let us attempt to gather the central value. The revelation of need supremely represented here is that of the sorrow of a mother. Any careful reading of the story must bring something of pathos into the voice, as the account is read of how the woman besought Him that He would cast the demon out of her little daughter. Leave the Lord out of view for the moment, and all the difficulties which gather about the story, and see that one woman in agony about her child. Admit the disabilities under which she laboured, which these evangelists are both careful to point out, Mark speaking of her as a Greek, which simply means a Gentile, and not a Greek only, but a Syrophcenician.

Matthew does not speak of her as a Gentile, neither adds the fact that she was Syrophcenician; but, taking the more general term, he at once says a Canaanitish woman. Humanity is revealed as we look at the woman, and the elemental superiority to racial disadvantage is seen in the agony of the mother heart. Oh yes, she was a Greek, and not a Hebrew, but she was a mother! She was a Syrophcenician, a Canaanitish woman, one of the accursed race, but she had a heart, and it was a mother’s heart! There, flashing out on the canvas, is this revelation of a touch of humanity that is independent of advantage, and superior to disadvantage, mightier than racial differences; and in the wail of the woman we have the cry of the heart of a mother.

The next picture that Mark gives, is that of a man deaf, and having an impediment in his speech. This is a picture of personal disability. The whole point of the picture, however, as it occurs here in the Gospel, is not that of the man’s personal disability. It is rather that of the fact that this man in this Gentile region was brought to Jesus by his friends. It is never safe to base too much upon the argument of silence, but at least it is an interesting fact to note that the man made no appeal to Christ. He did not come to Christ on his own initiative.

His friends brought him, and besought Jesus that He would touch him. So while the man stands central in the picture, in some senses, I look again, and in the sympathy of these men for their friend, men outside the company of Israel, outside that racial relationship which was religious in its function, I see something human. I am again impressed by the elemental superiority over racial disadvantage. Oh, yes, these men were Gentiles, but they were men. Oh! yes, these people also probably were of the Canaanitish race, but they had sympathy in their heart; witness their effort to bring their friend to Jesus.

The next picture is one full of life, colour, and movement. It is that of a great multitude, at least four thousand people, gathered together; and it is a picture of these people hungry. Do not spiritualize the word too soon. There are spiritual values undoubtedly in these miracles of feeding, but let us begin on the true level-a literal hunger, a physical hunger, a need for food. The hunger of these people was the outcome of their attraction to Jesus, and their determination to stay by Him. Mark the words of Christ, “because they continue with Me now three days, and have nothing to eat.” Here was a situation of real need, arising within the material and the physical.

These people were hungry, and it was the hunger of health, and thus ought to be met and satisfied, lest journeying back, they faint. This was an experience of physical weakness!

The next is a very different picture. It is that of a deputation, an official deputation, almost certainly, of the Pharisees and Sadducees. Mark says “Pharisees” only, but comparing the account with Matthew’s Gospel, which is necessary for the understanding of some subsequent things, we find the Sadducees came with them, demanding a sign from Him. Who were these men who came to Jesus? The religious leaders of the hour, the men who were religious teachers in Jerusalem, the spiritual rulers of the people, men whose office it was to interpret to the people the law of God, to reveal to the people the way and the will of God,

They were in conflict; with each other, these Sadducees and Pharisees. The Pharisees stood for the spiritual ideal of religion. While they trammelled that ideal by tradition, and hindered its working, nevertheless they stood for spiritual things; or if we may borrow, for the sake of illustration, a somewhat questionable word, they stood for the supernatural in religion. On the other hand, the Sadducees were the rationalists, who denied angels, spirits, and resurrection, everything in the nature of the supernatural. The Sadducees were men who believed in a religion that was entirely ethical, and who never admitted the relation of the ethical to the spiritual. The representatives of these opposing parties came together to Christ to prefer the same request. The thing they asked was a sign from heaven.

What is the supreme revelation of this picture? It is that of spiritual inferiority in spite of advantage. That statement is only forceful as it is immediately put back into contrast with what we saw concerning the Syrophoenician woman. In the case of the woman we saw the elemental need of humanity superior to all social and racial disadvantages. In these men we see deterioration; and failure, and spiritual inferiority, in spite of religious advantages. Here were men asking for a sign, who had seen His signs; men who had listened to His words, and followed Him from Judaea and from Galilee; men who had watched the working of His power in the marvels that He had wrought, had seen Him healing disease, casting out demons, raising from the dead; and infinitely more wonderful than all, banishing the power of sin, forgiving it, and demonstrating His right and authority to forgive in the results that followed.

They had seen Him dealing with every form of human malady, material, mental, moral. Yet these men said: “Show us a sign.”

Once again I pass on, and the next picture is that of the disciples, alone with Jesus in the boat, for I think the warning and the conversation took place as they crossed over the sea to Bethsaida. This is a picture of the misunderstanding of the loyal-hearted. It is a picture of men who loved the Lord, and were loyal to the Lord, and as He Himself with infinite grace did say upon, a later occasion, men who abode with Him in His temptations; but they had not understood Him. As they crossed over the sea, Jesus warned this little group of His disciples, His apostles, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees.” They immediately connected His reference to leaven with material bread. They said, “We have no bread.” Now what they really meant by that I cannot tell. It may be some one can tell me!

I have been trying to find out how they connected the word of Jesus with bread. If I judge by the Lord’s answer it is as if they thought He was rebuking them for carelessness; for in effect He said, Do you not yet see that I am able to provide for that physical need? Why should you trouble about that? Did I not feed five thousand and four thousand?

Yet I am still in some difficulty. What did they imagine He meant by the leaven of the Pharisees? Did they imagine that the Pharisees were going to take their meal and put leaven into it? Or was there in their mind some lurking suspicion that when He said, “Beware of the leaven of the Pharisees,” He was giving them a new ceremonial addition to the law? I do not know. Speculation is unprofitable! I cannot see the connection between what He said and what they thought. The fact remains that, when Jesus uttered that which He evidently felt was a greatly-needed spiritual warning, His disciples, His loyal-hearted ones, those who loved Him, thought about bread.

There is one other picture. Arrived at Bethsaida again, they brought to Him a man suffering personal disability, a blind man. Once again the central value of the story is that it is a revelation of the sympathy of His friends, for they brought Him to Jesus,

Now let us look again at these stories. What did Jesus do with that woman in whom there was manifested the touch of true humanity, the agony of the mother’s heart? In considering what He did for her, first look at the result. That may not be a proper line of consideration, yet I think it is. The result was what the mother found when she got back home. She found the child laid upon the bed, and the demon gone out.

To know what He did, we must see that child as the mother left her, contorted, twisted, and then lying on the bed, quiet, restful. That is what He did for her. To look at the result first is to be better qualified to see the process. Is not that the solution of many of the things of this life? I think so. I think when at last we really see the result; we shall not be so perplexed about some of the processes.

From the standpoint of the result, let us observe His method, and observe it most carefully. It did look hard. It did seem severe. First, He was silent. He did not answer her. Then He said to her, “Let the children first be filled; for it is not meet to take the children’s bread and to cast it to the dogs.” But did He really say this? Listen to Him again, and notice that He said to her, “Let the children first be filled.” That in itself was suggestion that others might be fed after the children were fed.

Then we have not a word conveying the exact equivalent in our language to a word in the Greek here. He did not say, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it to the dogs.” To put it into colloquial English, He said, “It is not good to take the children’s bread and cast to the doggies.” There is a difference here. There are dogs and dogs; and there certainly were dogs and dogs in Palestine. There were dogs fierce and wild, marauding beasts; but there were also the dogs of the household, the diminutive dogs, that had their place in the household, that had their place in the dwelling. This word the Master used was one of these diminutives; and there is so much in diminutives! No one can use them without there being tenderness in the voice.

I claim that tenderness for Jesus here. He said, “It is not meet to take the children’s bread and cast it to the doggies.” There is at least something in that tenderness.

Ah! to us it may seem harsh to refer to her even in that way; but mark what He did for the woman. Put the apparent severity of His method by the side of what He did. He set her free from the trammels of a false view of privilege. When she first called to Him she called to Him as the Jewish Messiah. “O Lord, Thou Son of David, my daughter is grievously vexed with a demon.” She was asking some pity from a Hebrew Messiah, she herself being, a Gentile, and He answered upon that ground. If she appeal to Him as Hebrew Messiah He will say Nay. So she was brought to cry to Him out of her elemental humanity. “Lord, help me . . . for even the doggies eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.” Then He said, “For this saying go thy way; the demon is gone out of thy daughter.” Thus, whereas He said the apparently severe thing, He admitted her immediately to the privilege of a child.

There is a word of Paul in his Galatian letter, having a profounder application than I am now going to make of it, but in some ways the dealing of our Lord with this woman is a wonderful commentary on this word of Paul; “For in Christ Jesus neither circumcision availeth anything, nor uncircumcision, but faith working through love.” That is what happened in the case of the woman; faith working through love. Christ had told her that it was not good to give the children’s bread to the little dogs; and faith wrought through love, and He treated her, not as a dog to whom the crumbs were to be given, but as a child admitted into all the privileges of the family.

Thus our Lord showed that in .Him all racial barriers, were broken down, all racial privilege was as nothing; that where the soul in its elemental human agony approached Him in faith, He answered. It was a foreshadowing of the Acts of the Apostles; of what Peter and others had to learn afterwards.

But look at Him again. I will take the second and last pictures, and put them together, because they are so much alike in certain ways. He was dealing with two men, a dumb man and a blind man. Now it is noticeable and all students of these stories are arrested by it that our Lord was adopting new methods in His miracles, or seemed to be doing so. He took the dumb man apart from the crowd, put His fingers into his ears, and touched him with His own spittle, sighed, and said, Ephphatha, and the man’s ears were opened. Even more remarkable was the case of the blind man, where His working of the wonder seemed to be gradual; first of all the anointing with a touch, then asking him, “Seest thou aught?” and after the answer of the man, “I see men, for I behold them as trees, walking,” the touch of the hands, and full recovery. In these two cases we see a process of healing.

Do not let us imagine for a moment that in these methods of Jesus we have any revelation either of weakening power on His part-for that has been suggested or of the adoption of new methods and the banishment of the old, for this also has been suggested.

In these two stories we have wonderful illustrations of a perpetual fact in the method of Jesus with human need; the fact that He adapts His method to the peculiar circumstances of need of the one with whom He is dealing. I am quite convinced if we could perfectly know these men we should discover the reason for the method. In each case Christ adapted Himself to the need of the man. This was also finely illustrated in the case of the woman.

In all these stories Jesus approached human need full of resources. There was no necessity, as far as He was concerned, to heal by any kind of means; no necessity to keep that woman waiting for a moment for the healing of her child; but there was profound necessity for everything He did in the case of the people who came to Him. If at your leisure you will go through the Gospel stories, and the cases in which Jesus dealt with need-I am not now referring to the spiritual needs, but to the needs met by these very miracles-you will discover, perhaps to your amazement, and certainly to your profit, that He never did anything the same way twice. There was infinite variety in all His dealings with men. He never healed more than one blind man in the same way. He never cast out the demon from more than one man in the same way. There was always a difference, and in the difference is a wonderful revelation of the variety of the experiences of human need, and consequently a wonderful revelation of our Lord’s adaptability to that variety of experience.

All of which is at once a revelation of the Lord, and an indication of the true line of Christian service. If we are really going to deal with men in the name of Christ and humanity, we cannot deal with all men in the same way. Inasmuch as the material miracles of Jesus are all parables of spiritual value in Christian service, as I watch the Lord I understand that when I talk to one man of his spiritual need, and try to help him; and then to another man of his spiritual need, and try to help him; if I approach the two men in succession, having arranged everything as to my method of dealing with them, the probability is that I shall not help them at all. The Lord never did a thing twice in the same way, He was not changeable therefore, but changeless; absolutely true to the underlying principle that every human life is lonely, separate, peculiar, and must be separately dealt with. Christ never deals with men en masse. He deals with men one by one.

It is an old proverb, and a foolish one, that God made Oliver Cromwell, and broke the mould. I join issue with what is inferred when men say that God made Oliver Cromwell and broke the mould, or God made John Wesley and broke the mould. The inference is that He does not always break the mould when He makes a man; that the vast majority of people are run through the same mould. Nothing of the kind! There is neither man nor woman but stands separate, alone, in the dignity of individuality, and who can say with Jesus, “To this end have I been born, and to this end am I come into the world.” It is sad that so few find out the greatness of individuality, and consequently fail to discover the meaning of individuality and personality.

The Lord provided for the hungry multitude because they had been three days with Him. There is another important principle here. Jesus did not feed them in order to persuade them to listen to His teaching. When a tea-meeting is necessary, to get people to listen to the Gospel there will be failure. That is not the method of Christ. To build an Institute in connection with a Church, and provide all kinds of entertainment for the young people, in order that they may come to the Bible classes, is to be foredoomed to failure.

In the case of the Pharisees and Sadducees who demanded a sign, the Lord refused what they asked; first because their motive was wrong; and secondly because no sign would have convinced them. They had already had the signs, and were willfully blind.

His treatment of the disciples those-disciples to whom the Lord always spoke with sympathy was that He definitely and sternly rebuked them in a series of indignant questions. Yet observe also that He led them on until they did understand what He meant.

I gather up the impressions made upon my soul, as I have watched the Lord in these stories. The first is that of His perfect understanding of every case as it came before Him.

The second is that of His quick sympathy, the sensitiveness of His soul, that immediately responded, whatever the need by which He stood confronted.

Yet again I am impressed by His sustained loyalty to principle. He never deviated by a hair’s-breadth from the pathway of His loyalty to the Kingdom of God.

I am impressed finally by the very sternness of His rebuke of the disciples who failed.

Ah! but there are two little phrases in the course of this passage that are very revealing, far more revealing than we know. When He was about to open the ears of; the man, “He sighed” In the presence of the demand for a sign by the Pharisees and Sadducees, “He sighed deeply in His spirit.” Thus twice I hear a sigh coming up from His soul. Behold, “a Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief!” Behold a Man exercising a ministry full of healing power and elemental light; but never forget that this service was costly. The principle of the Cross ultimately to be revealed supremely on Calvary, ran through all,’ making Him what He was to the men of His own age, making Him what He is to the men of today.