“ How is it that ye do not understand?
”
With the disciples as with the rich young man, it was Things that prevented the Lord from being understood. The disciples were a little further on than he, for they had left all and followed the Lord; but neither had they yet got rid of Things. The paltry solitariness of a loaf was enough to hide the Lord from them, to make them unable to understand him. Why, having forgotten, could they not trust? Surely if he had told them that for his sake they must go all day without food, they would not have minded! But they lost sight of God, and were as if either he did not see, or did not care for them.
In the former case it was the possession of wealth, in the latter the not having more than a loaf, that rendered them incapable of receiving the word of the Lord: the evil principle was precisely the same. If it be Things that slay you, what matter whether things you have, or things you have not? The youth, not trusting in God, the source of his riches, cannot brook the word of his Son, offering him better riches, more direct from the heart of the Father. The disciples, forgetting who is lord of the harvests of the earth, cannot understand his word, because filled with the fear of a day’s hunger. He did not trust in God as having given; they did not trust in God as ready to give.
We are like them when, in any trouble, we do not trust him.
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Commentary
by Dale Darling
Rather than read any blather I might now concoct, read this days devotion over and again. Things? Thanks be to God for Jesus Christ my Lord!