Matthew 16:5-12 / Mark 8:14-21…
Bad bread…
We often make category errors in dealing with God. We are thinking about one thing and Jesus is trying to teach us about another. The physical stuff may seem to be more relevant at the moment, but the spiritual stuff should always be given priority so that both the physical and the spiritual are kept in proper proportion.
We always seem to fret about circumstantial things. We lay all the best plans, but the best laid plans are still in God’s hands. To try and control every situation is to be controlled by every situation. Sometimes it is as if God makes sure we forget something so that He can show up to provide something we didn’t even think of.
Jesus shows us again and again that He will meet our needs. What He wants is for our perception of His provision to be focused on the spiritual. Before we say, “Jesus give me food”, we need to be able to say “Jesus give me faith”. Here is the point: If you put your felt needs first you will be in danger of going after false teaching. What good is it to have all things under control, nice and neat and perfectly suited to our imagined situation, all the while our doctrine is leading us to distraction, deception, and destruction?
It is not right to pit the physical against the spiritual. It is not wrong to be a good steward of our natural things. However, it is not right to allow the physical to obscure our aim for the spiritual. It is not wrong to make sure our proportions and priorities are straight.
It is better to be hungry and holy than to have a full belly and a hard heart.
3 comments:
I happened to be up early today, and wow! This hits the nail on the head!
May God add his blessing to the reading of these words.
The physical is not bad, but it becomes bad when it makes us ignore the spiritual. It was the gnostics who pitted the physical vs. the spiritual, i.e., physical bad, spiritual good, and it led to all sorts of problems (cf. book of Colossians)...
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