I don’t think I’ll label this blog about the wisdom I’ve learned, but rather I’ll label this one as an amateurish bible study. Feel free to comment or rip it apart as you feel to do so! So here is something new that I never took notice of until now.
In Mark 4 he told his disciples that to ‘outsiders’ he will always preach in parables. The twelve were allowed to hear the meaning of these parables, but to everyone else they pretty much are left to fend for themselves. His reasoning for secrecy is so that, as He claims, the Scriptures might be fulfilled. He then recites an exact passage that comes from Isaiah 6:9-10.
In chapter 6 Isaiah has a vision where he is taken to the throne of God. In this moment he realizes who God is and is forgiven of his sins. He is then tasked to preach a message. A message, in which he tells the people to listen, but not understand, watch but learn nothing. God tells Isaiah to harden their hearts, so that they turn away from Isaiah, and possibly other prophets, and look to God for healing and understanding. How interesting is that!
I can only grasp that God was using Isaiah to turn the peoples need for understanding to God. From my background I wholeheartedly agree, but what I’m confused by is the message he tasked Isaiah to give. All other versions of this verse don’t give me a better sense other than Isaiah basically telling the people, ‘listen to me, but do not attempt to understand what I am saying, keep on looking, but do not attempt to understand what you’re seeing.
When written that way I sort of see where he wants to go with this, and in some sort of fashion I can see how this would make people upset. During my study I ran across a commentary that explained this passage just a bit better. He says God told Isaiah to preach to a people who wouldn’t respond, so that their guilt would be certain (Guzik). He then adds a comment saying, “What preacher could be satisfied with a ministry that made the heart of his people dull, their ears heavy, and shuts their eyes?”
Certainly to me then that Isaiah’s task has been brought into a little more light. He was tasked to preach condemnation. Just like the modern term, ‘hellfire and brimstone’ pastors that the world knows so well, Isaiah, as far as I know, became the first. Now that is very interesting to me. God used a prophet to make the people feel condemned, guilty, and to turn them away from the understanding of the local preacher/prophet. It didn’t seem to satisfy Isaiah, and it certainly didn’t satisfy the people!
But like Guzik said in his commentary, God would be satisfied with it. And to tie it back into Mark, Jesus used parables to invite the people to a higher understanding of knowledge. Jesus became a good teacher “in teaching by parables, Jesus offered His hearers the opportunity to dig deep and find the truth, or to turn a blind eye to an interesting story” (Guzik).
There’s a wonderful bit of info that David Guzik puts in his commentary for Mark 4, it says, “In the Bible, a mystery isn't something you can't figure out. It is something that you would never know unless God revealed it to you. In the Biblical sense of the idea, you may know exactly what a mystery is, yet it is still a mystery, because you would not have known unless God revealed it”.
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