Whom shall he teach knowlege? and whom shall he make to understand doctrine? they who are weaned from the milk, and drawn from the breasts... For Precept must be upon Precept, Precept upon Precept; Line upon Line, Line upon Line; here a little and there a little. For with stammering lips and another tongue will He speak to his People. To whom He said: this is the rest wherewith ye may cause the weary to rest; and this is the refreshing, yet they would not hear.
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This verse has been on my heart for several days. I used to teach it to my students at Victory Baptist Church. I can't know if it ever became an important verse for them, but I hoped the concept would stick. I always wanted them to know that it is OK to be where ever you are in your walk with Christ. God wants us to grow, but just as with our own children, he doesn't expect us to grow any faster than we were created to. It would be unhealthy for a five year old child to have the responsiblities of a teen, nor is it wise for a teen to be taking on the weight of a 40 year old man. Equally, it is not a good thing for a 60 year old to try to live like a teen. The body breaks the same, but doesn't heal as well.
So with our spiritual walk, it is totally OK with God if we are still learning one precept at a time. Taking the journey as God allows us to grow. Sometimes I have to learn the admonitions of God the hard way. You feel like saying, I should have known that. Yet God doesn't look at it that way. Jesus did question sometimes why people who had what God had given them, hadn't figured out what He was telling them. For example, in St Mark 8, Jesus said they should be wary of the leaven of the Pharisees and of Herod. Since the disciples had forgotten to take food with them on the trip, they thought he was chastising them for not being prepared with actual food. He asked them to remember the times when they had been with great crowds, needing to feed them, and tell him how many baskets of left overs they had gathered. "When I brake five loaves among five thousand, how many baskets took ye up?" They answered there were 12. "and when there were 7 among 4 thousand, how many baskets of fragments took ye up?" Their answer was 7. "And he said unto them, how is it that you do not understand?"
This is a difficult set of verses to understand. It should be obvious that he was saying, "how soon you forget that I am not worried about your having physical food, I can feed you from the single loaf you brought, and make plenty to go around." Leaven made bread rise, and made it more palletable. Jesus was warning them to be aware of these men. To watch how their plotting against them would grow.
But hidden in what Jesus said are so many other things. From the time I was a small child and read that verse, the Holy Spirit had me curious why Jesus was so specific with the numbers. In my teen years I learned the biblical application of some of the numbers. Five usually denotes a time when God is dealing in Grace, and giving. And of what He gives having the inate ability to grow. Grace meaning that it is freely given, in spite of who you are or where you are in your spiritual walk, in fact whether you are saved or not. Grace is simply anything God given without merit or criteria for deserving it. Jesus knew that there were all kinds of people among the crowds who came to listen to him, even Pharasees and Political men who plotted against him, but he said pass out the bread and fish to all. It took years for me to understand even a little about some of the other numbers, and even today I remain fascinated at the depth of Jesus's revealing that God even created numbers to have spiritual laws.
When you add two plus two, you learn in school, that there is a numerical law that says, you can trust that it will always be four. Equally, two times two is also four. Unless it is an x factor and you are working the equation backwards, not knowing that if the x=2. If 2 x X = 4, and X is 0, you can get a false answer. It is complicated, but true, and Jesus was sort of saying the Pharisees were like the hidden 0 in our equation. Trusting them would give you a false answer. Now Jesus was not talking about number equations; that is my example of how the law of numbers exists and is relatable, just as Jesus's example of the breaking of the bread and leaven was relatable. But if we consider that Jesus was talking to Jewish men who did know that the numbers held significance, then there is another story. The Jewish alphabet and the numbers are intertwined. Most words to them have more than one significance and hold numerical meanings as well. I am not well enough versed in it to explain, but have read a book or two about it, and am glad I don't need to know Hebrew right now. For there is so much to learn about its nuances. But the men to whom Jesus spoke had to know that Jesus meant something by using the numbers.
Number 12, is notable reguarding the number of tribes of Israel. It is a number that comes up again and again in old testament scripture. One of the underlying meanings of these verses is that Jesus came to break bread with and minister by Grace to the Tribes of Judah first. They were getting a double dose of his Grace - five loaves, to five thousand, with 12 baskets left over. Pouring out the Grace of God first to the people whom God chose to literally bear the messenger of the Grace of Salvation. But the leaven of the Pharisees would never grow to reveal that truth to their people. They would not minister that Jesus was the Messiah, because they would risk losing their power among the people. If the Messiah came, perhaps God would no longer need them to Lord over his flock. The number 12 means the people of God, the first being Israel.
The deepest things of God, to be rightly divided can not always be easily understood. God may never touch the hearts of some Christians to be curious about the numbers in His word. Many will die never knowing there are verses that have a deeper meaning because of numbers. But for me, God saw a way to speak to my heart through my curiosity. He has used numbers to get my attention more times than I can explain. My family knows well how I will make decisions based upon the numbers that are before me. NOT by superstition. It is just that when I have a tough decision to make and God wants to speak to me in language I will understand and know it is from Him, he gets my attention with a set of numbers that have my answer, plain and simple. For that reason, I don't go about casting dice for my answers. Nor do I seek numbers in every thing I do. But I do sometimes see a set of numbers in something purchased, and say, those are good numbers. Not because they are lucky or something, but because the numbers make a little sentence that I can read. Only in recent years, did I find out what the number two meant. I think it was from an Orthodox Christian whose ancestral family was from Russia. I had always known that some Orthodox texts made reference to numbers from the earliest times. He told me that 2 meant Blessing.
In our above verses, the number 5, the number of God's gift giving, appears twice. Five loaves among five thousand. Jesus was pouring out the gift of God's redemption to the masses, especially to his own people as a blessing. And some knew it and understood, and some knew and tried to squelch it, and some never knew it. God pours out His blessing freely, to everyone. Some recieve it, some deny it and some never know it and it is as if God poured it upon the ground. But when there is some left over, God preserves it to share with those who will only open their hearts to the message, and are seeking for the food of his grace and blessing.
But to any who are seeking, he reveals it precept upon precept. In this way it always remains interesting. Like the layers of an onion, the Bible peels away to deeper and deeper more poinant truths. And it is OK to be where you are with what God is teaching you, and not in someone else's truths. If what God is doing in someone else's life makes no sense to you, that's OK. If you don't understand or believe that numbers are a good way for you and God to converse, that is OK. It is not the precept that God uses to bless YOU.
But the point here is this: Do you know the precepts upon which God has built a Christian concept in your heart? Are you learning precept upon precept? Does one thing build upon another to strengthen and bolster your faith?
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Today, I thank God that He is able to speak to us each in a different way. That the wonder of the Bible is that it holds miriads of depths of truth. That God is in the details, and that where we are in our Christian experience is OK with God so long as we have our spiritual eyes open to see what He has for us to see. Open the curiosity of someone's heart Lord. Help them follow the longing they have to understand the deeper things of your Word. I pray this especially for my children and grandchildren. God bless them where they are in their walk with you. Help them see themselves as OK in your eyes, and guide them carefully as they seek truths, to not be led astray into the leaven of the Pharisees. AMEN
PS: the number 7 means complete or fininshed, and the number 4 means the foundation for building something upon it. In the second feeding of thousands, the number sequence is 7 4 7. Care to try and understand what the Lord was saying with the numbers?
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