S67P2 – Our regular reminders: God’s miraculous works

Mt. 16:9-11

Do you still not understand or remember the five loaves for the five thousand, and how many baskets you picked up?  Or the seven loaves for the four thousand, and how many large baskets you picked up?  How is it that you fail to understand that I was not talking to you about bread?  But beware of the leaven of the Pharisees and Sadducees.

From the day he struck out on his own, he prided himself on being financially independent.  In his mind, he was just being responsible as he should be.  Once he became a Christian, God began to call him to do things that required him to release this control over money.  After all, it was God’s and not his.  Each time the Lord called him to release that control was an opportunity to trust in God’s power of provision instead of his own. Although God never let him down when he was obedient, he always debated with himself about following the Lord’s prompting.  It would take encouragement from his brothers and sisters to remind him of God’s history of provision in his life and the lives of others.

In this passage, the disciples misinterpret Jesus’s remark about the leaven of the Pharisees to be a comment about their forgetting to bring bread for the journey.  Jesus corrects them by posing a logical question.  He asks them why they think He would be concerned about a lack of bread when they have seen his miracles of provision and have partaken of that very bread.  Jesus takes this misunderstanding as an opportunity to prove an unexpected point.  It is as if the miracles they experienced were singular events separate from the daily life and ability of Christ.  One would think that those displays of power would be enough for them never to be concerned about provision while following their Lord.

When we experience doubt, it is because there is a lesson we have yet to truly learn.  The meeting of our physical needs is such a real and tangible part of life that scarcity has an easy task of getting in our heads and distracting us.  God knows this, and that is why his word speaks of provision over and over.  That is why Jesus told us to pray to his Father for our bread daily.  We must be reminded continually that his power of provision, and that his power of the miraculous in general, is more real than that which distracts us from truly trusting in what we already have seen from him.  Father, we ask that your Holy Spirit remind us continually of all You have done, that we would have faith that You can and will do more.