Glimpsing the Mystery

Be careful how you read the text. There are small, yet profoundly significant, insights awaiting you on every page, stuffed neatly in every nook and cranny of the text if we have eyes to see and hears to hear. The ministry of Jesus could be described as the unveiling of the mystery. Jesus is exegeting God, His nature and His plan. For instance in 1 Cor.15:51 Paul says "Behold, I tell you a mystery; we shall not all sleep, but we shall all be changed..." Jesus was revealing this truth in his ministry as He demonstrated the power of God to raise the dead and to reverse the decay of four days in a tomb (John 11). But there is another mystery that Jesus is revealing that is at the heart of Christian ministry. Paul again goes into depth on this mystery in Ephesians 2-4. Paul as an apostle to the Gentiles speaks of "the stewardship of God's grace" toward the Gentiles. The specifics of the mystery include: "...that the Gentiles are fellow-heirs and fellow members of the body, and fellow-partakers of the promise in Christ Jesus through the gospel..."(Eph.3:6) Ultimately through the uniting of Jew and Gentile in Christ God would reveal His "manifold wisdom" to the unseen world which is in harmony with His eternal purpose carried out IN and BY Christ Jesus our Lord. (Eph.3:10)

So we look at the feeding of the 4000. Is this just an 80% model of the feeding of the 5000? Hardly. There are significant differences. The 5000 were Jews. They had been with Him hardly a day. They were there for the bread and the healing. When the preaching started they walked away. They were trying to force Jesus to become the Messianic King in reality to lead them against the Romans. But, the 4000 were Gentiles. They remained with Him for three days with dwindling provisions. They came from long distances to be with Jesus. Remember Jesus had just proclaimed a Gentile woman to have great faith. Matthew with one phrase gives us insight into the mystery. It is found in Matthew 15:31. "...and they glorified the God of Israel."  If they had been Jews it would have simply said, "they glorified God." But this was Israel's God they were glorifying, not some pagan God. Clearly the Gentiles were getting it in the same way the Samaritans got it (John 4). This turning to the Gentiles is huge. Jesus is nearing the end of His ministry and He is spending three days in the wilderness with Gentiles, perhaps as many as 15,000 of them. Could this later have figured into the accusations that led to His death. It is one thing to be encouraging Jews to throw off the Roman yoke, but very much another to be leading Romans away from Rome.

Jesus followed the prescription of "Jew first and also the Greeks" in His ministry. He sent the disciples to the lost sheep of the house of Israel (Matt.10), but in these more recent days He is introducing these same disciples to the other sheep that are not of this fold (John 10:16). "And I have other sheep which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they shall hear My voice; and they shall become one flock with one shepherd."  How difficult it must have been for someone as prejudiced as Peter to spend those three days in the hill with 15,000 Gentiles! But, he was witnessing the mystery unfolding before his very eyes. Lift up your eyes and see that the harvest is great and the unity will be a testimony to the wisdom of God.