Any Questions?: Daily Thoughts from Mark (Mark 9:30-32)

Don’t you just love it at the end of a class or some other presentation, with five minutes left to go, the presenter says, “Any questions?”  Silence is all that usually follows.  Sometimes the same silence attends our interaction with God.  Have you had questions for God that you were afraid to ask?  Or asking, did it seem you got nothing in return?

Jesus’ disciples are facing this situation and it is caused by Jesus himself.  As they continue their itinerant ministry in Galilee he seeks to inform them of coming events but they cannot take it in.

They went on from there and passed through Galilee. And he did not want anyone to know, for he was teaching his disciples, saying to them, “The Son of Man is going to be delivered into the hands of men, and they will kill him. And when he is killed, after three days he will rise.” But they did not understand the saying, and were afraid to ask him. (Mark 9:30-32, ESV)

Jesus seeks privacy so he can teach his disciples, and one of the things he deems most important for them to understand is that he is going to be “delivered” into the hands of men and be killed, and three days later he is going to rise.

Jesus was delivered by Judas to the Sanhedrin, Israel’s high court, but he was also delivered by God, whose purpose it was to use his death as an atonement.  This continues to blow the apostle’s minds, and though they have teaching in Daniel 12 about a future resurrection of the righteous and the unrighteous for judgment, Jesus coming back to life just does not register with them.

They are afraid to ask him anything now, either because it will show their ignorance and lack of faith, or because, like Peter, they want to dissuade the Lord from such talk about death.  If he is the Messiah this doesn’t fit their expectations and so, in their mind, it should not fit his either.

Once again the disciples, like us, have ample opportunity to ask the Lord whatever we are concerned about but he we, like they, hesitate to be completely honest and open with him, as if he doesn’t already know what we are thinking.

Jesus knows they are holding back and he could raise the issue for them and try to explain some more.  He could go to Isaiah 53 and exegete that passage for them, demonstrating Scripture’s witness to Messiah’s death and resurrection.  But he doesn’t.  It seems they will have to experience it for themselves in order to get it.  To try to clear things up without that won’t work.

We need never hold back our questions of God.  But how He answers may vary according to the nature of our question and our readiness to receive the answer.  If we don’t get the immediate answer we desire it may be because there is value in our wrestling with it ourselves for a time and a necessary growth or experience that must take place before we can receive the answer.