areliablefaith

Matthew 16 · Mark 8

Today’s readings cover the same ground through two lenses. Matthew is the Jewish tax collector turned follower of Jesus. Mark is the companion of Peter, who wrote down Peter’s memories.

Following an itinerant rabbi in the first century wasn’t easy. The teacher moved from town to town, depending on whoever would support him and whoever would open a synagogue to him. Much of the teaching happened along the road and around the campfire at night. Over and over the Gospels show Jesus teaching the crowds, answering the Pharisees, and then taking his disciples aside to explain more. Sometimes he took only three of them, Peter, James, and John.

What stands out to me today is how gradually the disciples come to understand. They begin to see pieces of the bigger picture, and it’s easy for them to get ahead of themselves and fill in the rest on their own.

I know that pattern because I’ve lived it. I’ve read the Scriptures all my 43 years. They came alive when I gave my life to Christ and the Holy Spirit came to live in me. But I’ve only been a real student of the Bible for the last five or six years, reading it through each year. What I’ve learned is that understanding comes in layers. There’s a surface truth you can apply right away. Then you come back to the same passage, and the Spirit shows you something new.

The leaven. Jesus warns, “Watch out; beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and the leaven of Herod” (Mark 8:15). These are two extremes: the religious morality police and the open immorality of Herod’s court. Either one, if you lean into it, will pull you away from what the Lord actually wants, which is a growing relationship in which he reveals more of himself and we let that change how we think, act, and speak. Paul calls it being “transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2).

Peter. Peter grasps an eternal truth: “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” (Matthew 16:16). Jesus answers, “You are Peter, and on this rock I will build my church” (16:18). As I understand it, the rock is that truth. Petros is a stone, and petra is bedrock. Peter is a stone, and the truth he spoke is the bedrock.

Then Peter turns right around and uses his new standing to correct Jesus: you can’t go to the cross. Jesus’ reply must have crushed him: “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (16:23).

I’ve done the same thing. A kernel of truth explodes in me, and if I’m not walking in humility, I start running ahead with it and it turns me off the right path.

Mark sets this up with something remarkable. Just before Peter’s confession, Jesus heals a blind man at Bethsaida (Mark 8:22–26). It’s the only healing in the Gospels that happens in stages. After Jesus’ first touch, the man says, “I see people, but they look like trees, walking.” Jesus lays his hands on him again, and then he sees “everything clearly.”

Jesus didn’t need two tries. Everywhere else, one word or one touch was enough. I believe he did this on purpose, and Mark put it where he did on purpose. Only a few verses later, Peter sees who Jesus is, the Christ, but he can’t yet see what that means: the cross. Peter is seeing trees walking. His sight is real but blurry.

The second touch was coming for Peter too. He denied Jesus three times. Then the risen Lord restored him three times on the shore (John 21). At Pentecost, Peter preached the cross he had once rebuked (Acts 2). On a rooftop in Joppa, he learned that the gospel was for the Gentiles too (Acts 10). Years later, the “stone” wrote to the churches that all of us who come to Christ are “like living stones … being built up as a spiritual house” (1 Peter 2:5). Peter kept learning in layers, the same way we do.

That’s how the Lord works with us. We don’t get full sight all at once. He touches, we see a little, and he touches again.

So here’s the key, I think. There will always be more to learn about God and his kingdom. The right posture of the heart is humility toward God, faithfulness to his Word, and expectancy that the Spirit still has more to show us.

Where might you be seeing “trees walking,” treating a partial understanding as the whole picture, and what would it look like to ask the Lord for the second touch?

Have a blessed day, and be a blessing.