2. Too Ashamed to Admit their Ignorance
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Maybe the disciples were too proud to ask. But perhaps they feared that admitting their ignorance would produce yet another rebuke from Jesus for being slow of heart. Jesus certainly handed out many rebukes:
Mark 4:13 Then Jesus said to them, “Don’t you understand this parable? How then will you understand any parable? Mark 7:18 “Are you so dull?” he asked. “Don’t you see that nothing that enters a man from the outside can make him ‘unclean’? . . .”
Mark 8:17 . . . “Why are you talking about having no bread? Do you still not see or understand? Are your hearts hardened? . . .” Do you have eyes but fail to see, and ears but fail to hear? And don’t you remember?
Luke 24:25 He said to them, “How foolish you are, and how slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken! . . .”
And, of course, Jesus delivered other rebukes for lack of faith, and so on.
Some Other Rebukes by Jesus
Mark 4:40 He said to his disciples, “Why are you so afraid? Do you still have no faith?” Matthew 14:31 Immediately Jesus reached out his hand and caught him. “You of little faith,” he said, “why did you doubt?”
Mark 9:19 “O unbelieving generation,” Jesus replied, “how long shall I stay with you? How long shall I put up with you? Bring the boy to me.”
Matthew 17:20 He replied, “Because you have so little faith. I tell you the truth, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”
Mark 16:14 Later Jesus appeared to the Eleven as they were eating; he rebuked them for their lack of faith and their stubborn refusal to believe those who had seen him after he had risen.
There is a thrilling side to Jesus’ rebukes. It means Jesus believed in them – even more, in fact, than they believed in themselves. He was not expecting them to fail. He saw their blunders as an aberration – a failure to reach what was within their grasp – not an indication that they were incapable. He knew they had what it takes to succeed.
Love and wisdom drive everything God does – even times when we wrongly think he is expecting too much from us. Our constant temptation is to shrink back from God and keep him at arm’s length, fearing that he is harsh and disapproving. In contrast, God’s longing is for us to nestle into him and hear his heartbeat. Only then does Scripture come alive for us.
Bible study must never be allowed to degenerate into a do-it-yourself project.
If you think the disciples’ fear of rebuke would be unlikely to silence them, you have probably forgotten that they had all heard Jesus’ stinging “Get behind me Satan!” in response to Peter’s reaction to this very subject – Jesus saying that the Son of Man must suffer (Mark 8:33).
Heart to heart communication takes courage. It demands total openness and risking angry responses. If we keep quiet about our problems with God – our doubts about his goodness, our fears, our resentments, our anger toward him – we have kept from him nothing he doesn’t already know but we enter a cone of silence(Get Smart fans will appreciate this) in which communication begins to break down. The Cone of Silence
Mentioning a cone of silence will raise a smile for those familiar with the old television series Get Smart. In order to avoid being spied on they would use a gadget called a cone of silence. It inevitably failed because once inside the cone they could never understand each other.
God is big enough and loving enough to handle conflict but it can only be resolved by us facing it and talking it through with God. If we bury anything affecting our relationship with God, the result is a false and dangerous peace.
The Lord might at times seem as unapproachable and prejudiced against us as he did when he kept ignoring the Canaanite woman’s pleas to heal her child and implied she was a dog (Matthew 15:22-28).
If we keep persisting as she did, however, we will not just gain our request, but his praise and proof that underneath his mysterious ways beats a tender heart that longs for us. Nothing thrills him more, and nothing is more rewarding, than when we resist the urge to shrink from him.
We must risk rebuke or whatever else it takes to maintain a transparent openness with our Lord. To avoid being kept in the dark, bring everything to the light.
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