The Miraculously Obvious

Toying with a statement my friend Wes made Wednesday, I came up with a ridiculous mental picture from the Bible.

Picture this:

Jesus intends to feed 5,000 hungry people. He places five loaves of bread and two small fish in a piñata and suspends it above the crowd

He swings His staff.

With a mighty whack, He breaks the piñata open,

Fish and bread sandwiches fly everywhere.

With a mighty shout 5,000 men scramble in a pile, each intent on grabbing his fair share.

Interesting mental picture, but that’s not exactly how the Scripture describes the event.

The feeding of the five thousand is one of the few events described in all four Gospels. Each Gospel shows slight variations like you’d get if four photographers were shooting the same scene from different stand points.

Luke quotes Jesus as saying, “Make them sit down by fifties in a company”.

Mark elaborates saying, “He commanded the disciples to make all sit down by companies upon the green grass. And they sat down in ranks by hundreds, and by fifties”.

Even though Jesus intended to perform a miracle, He first stated the obvious — sit down in groups for orderly distribution of the miraculous bread.

That’s the point Wes made.

“God reveals the obvious,” he said.

I keep expecting God to say, “Shazam!” and reveal some deep secret hidden from ages of men before me.

He’s never done that for me.

Now there are deep secret revelations in Scripture; for instance, Paul uses the phrase, “Great is the mystery of godliness”.

So, why would Wes say, God reveals the obvious?

A few weeks ago, Wes packed his brand new pick-up truck for an out of town trip. He started the engine but remembered something he’d left in the house. He ran inside to get it and when he came out the door, he saw his beautiful new truck rolling down the drive, and across two lanes of traffic.

Wes ran after his run-away truck.

It rolled into the grass and bumped a fire hydrant on the other side of the street.

No damage to the hydrant but the collision scratched a groove in the side of the sparkling new truck.

As Wes opened the driver’s door, he said, “It was like a big light bulb flashing on in my brain, like a voice speaking to me from Heaven; it said, ‘When you park on a hill, set the brake”.

That’s when Wes realized, “God reveals the obvious”.

As I pondered this blanket statement, I started to see that it appears true across the board.

For instance, when God said, “Thou shalt not steal”, that bit of revelation appears to be obvious even to a little kid; Who wants to meet Farmer McGregor with his shotgun as you crawl under his garden gate?

But say you ignore the obvious, say you ignore God’s revelation that says, “Thou shalt not commit adultery” What’s so obvious about that?

King Solomon observed, “Men do not despise a thief if he steal to satisfy his soul when he is hungry.” When such a thief is caught, he’s to restore what he stole and the penalties are not too severe. His crime is understandable.

“But, whoso committeth adultery with a woman,” Solomon said, “Lacketh understanding: he that doeth it destroyeth his own soul”.

Solomon then rehearses the obvious: dishonor, reproach, a jealous husband (or wife) who’s borrowed Farmer McGregor’s shotgun, vengeance, exposure to disease, irreparable damage to one’s own and to someone else’s home.

A moment’s thought tells us all this. No revelation from Heaven is needed. It’s all obvious. Yet God felt it necessary to say, “Thou shalt not commit adultery”.

Yes, God does indeed reveal the obvious.

Why?

Because we ignore it.

Actions have consequences.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but when my actions produce consequences, I’ll think, I knew better than that! I’ll realize that I should not have done that, or that I should have done this. And I knew it at the time!

In fact, I wonder if a good definition of the word sin might be, to ignore the obvious.

When I think about them, even the three most significant miracles in Scripture seem obvious. I’m thinking of the resurrection of Jesus from death and His ascension back into Heaven, and His incarnation from Heaven to earth in the first place.

Christ’s death on the cross as a sacrifice for our sin is an obvious outworking of the innate love¸ character and nature of God. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life”.

If indeed Christ is God come in the flesh to rescue us, then it’s obvious that the Almighty God, the Prince of Life, the creator of life, would not stay dead after we tortured Him to death. The Scripture says that even while nailed hand and foot to the cross, even then He was, at the same time, upholding all things by the word of His power.

Obviously a puny hole in the ground could not contain Him who said, “I lay down my life, that I might take it up again. No man taketh it from me, but I lay it down of myself. I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again”.

The Scripture goes so far as to say Jesus is “Declared to be the Son of God with power, according to the spirit of holiness, by the resurrection from the dead”.

And after resurrection, What?

Luke, one of those four photographers snapping photos of the same event, wrote about “all that Jesus began to do and teach until the day in which He was taken up”.

Luke mentions the apostles, “Whom He had chosen: to whom also He shewed Himself alive after His passion by many infallible proofs, being seen of them forty days, and speaking of things pertaining to the kingdom of God. … And when He had spoken these things, while they beheld, He was taken up; and a cloud received Him out of their sight.”

It’s obvious from the familiar Christmas story — Virgin, babe, manger, shepherds, wise men, oxen lowing, Angels saying, Glory To God In The Highest — that in the least something important had happened.

And thou shalt call His name, Emmanuel — meaning God With Us.

Here we see the One called “Wonderful, Counselor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace” come into the world on a rescue mission.

“I am come to seek and to save the lost,” He said.

At the first Christmas, the Creator had imposed physical limits on Himself, he squeezed Godhead into an infant. The infinite God who holds all the universe, small as a nutshell, in the palm of His hand, reduced Himself into a finite, confined, physical time and location.

Mission accomplished, He returned Home, no longer under those self-imposed restrictions. He is at all times and in all places present; in Him we live and breath and have our very being.

Could I be over simplifying things?

Could I be wrong?

Sure.

Not having been dead yet, I don’t know any more about it than a moose.

But, I see no reason to doubt that what Jesus said is true is in fact true.

That’s not saying what He said is comfortable for me, but it rings true.

Sin. Christmas. Crucifixion. Resurrection. Ascension. Return. — It blends together. It rings true. It makes sense. It works in daily living. It holds water.

It’s obvious.

God reveals the obvious…

Just the same, I wish Jesus had done that piñata thing I visualized starting out.

That would have been so cool!