When My Understanding Doesn’t Fit the Facts: Daily Thoughts from Mark (Mark 9:9-13)

Has your doctrine changed ever?  Or is your doctrine so purely correct that no new facts can change your mind about it?  Perhaps you’ve seen fellow believers whose doctrine has changed (so and so has become “charismatic” or a “Calvinist”).  How do you know change is legitimate?

Three of Jesus’ disciples have just had a paradigm changing experience on the Mount of Transfiguration.  Something in their teaching doesn’t seem to square with what they have just experienced.  So they talk to Jesus about it.

And as they were coming down the mountain, he charged them to tell no one what they had seen, until the Son of Man had risen from the dead. So they kept the matter to themselves, questioning what this rising from the dead might mean. And they asked him, “Why do the scribes say that first Elijah must come?” And he said to them, “Elijah does come first to restore all things. And how is it written of the Son of Man that he should suffer many things and be treated with contempt? But I tell you that Elijah has come, and they did to him whatever they pleased, as it is written of him.” (Mark 9:9-13, ESV)

As they come down the mountain the three disciples’ heads are filled with thoughts of the kingdom, and they recall that the scribes taught that Elijah must come before the Messiah comes in the kingdom.  The scribes are referring to these passages in Malachi:

Malachi 3:1-5, “I will send my messenger, who will prepare the way before me. Then suddenly the Lord you are seeking will come to his temple; the messenger of the covenant, whom you desire, will come,” says the Lord Almighty.  But who can endure the day of his coming? Who can stand when he appears? For he will be like a refiner’s fire or a launderer’s soap.  He will sit as a refiner and purifier of silver; he will purify the Levites and refine them like gold and silver. Then the Lord will have men who will bring offerings in righteousness, and the offerings of Judah and Jerusalem will be acceptable to the Lord, as in days gone by, as in former years.  So I will come to put you on trial. I will be quick to testify against sorcerers, adulterers and perjurers, against those who defraud laborers of their wages, who oppress the widows and the fatherless, and deprive the foreigners among you of justice, but do not fear me,” says the Lord Almighty.

Malachi 4:5-6, “See, I will send the prophet Elijah to you before that great and dreadful day of the Lord comes.  He will turn the hearts of the parents to their children, and the hearts of the children to their parents; or else I will come and strike the land with total destruction.”

So Jesus affirms that the scribes are right.  Only, what his disciples don’t understand is that there are going to be two comings of Messiah, this one, in which he suffers and dies and rises again, and a second one in which he comes in power to rule.  John the Baptist was the Elijah-like prophet who came before Jesus at his first advent, and we may suppose that there will be another before the final coming.  This fits with the common trait of prophecy that it unfolds in multiple stages of fulfillment. [See “Was John the Baptist the Promised ‘Elijah’ Who Was to Come?”]

Unfortunately, the teaching of Israel’s leaders has dulled the disciples’ understanding of Jesus’ words about rising from the dead.  They simply can’t put it in any category in their minds, but at least now they are asking questions about it and talking to each other about it.

When we find ourselves in confusion about what the Word of God is teaching we will often realize that there is some aspect of our current understanding that is not well formed and we are on the cusp of something important that God wants us to understand.  We can be like the Pharisees and reject new understanding out of pride, or be like the disciples and submit to confusion that leads to new understanding.  And of course, the new understanding will come from correct interpretation of Scripture that can be tested and validated as such.