Christian Living

Peeking at the Lord’s Pop Tests

by J.W. Phillips
04/29/25
Not For Sale

  Message Writer
  Hire Writer

Tweet

Peeking at the Lord’s Pop Tests

Perhaps you recall from your days in school the sudden groan from your classmates (certainly not from you) whenever the teacher announced a pop test.

Oh, no! The panic of not being prepared was about to be exposed!

Wanting to avoid that, some students will cheat, even going so far as to get a copy of a test in advance. Those who would sneak a peek in the teacher’s drawer deserve to fail. But with pop tests this is harder to do.

Even the Master gave pop tests, and still does so today. Wanting us to be prepared for them, he is quite willing to help us see what his pop tests are like. So, let’s sneak a peek.

There is one miracle and one parable told in all four gospels that will aid us. When spliced together, the feeding of the five thousand and the parable of the four soils, offer very valuable lessons for passing a pop test.

With the feeding of the five thousand, the situation was this. After teaching all day, the crowd had still not gone home, and they were hungry.

The disciples’ response to this situation was the obvious one—send the home! However, that wasn’t Jesus’ response. So here comes the first pop test.

According to Mark’s Gospel, Jesus said, you feed them (Mark 6:37).

What! The twelve feeding thousands of people? Really?

It was at this point, given in the next verse, that we see the disciples’ second response, and it was this: Shall we go buy bread?

Letting that thought play out a bit, Jesus asked Philip, where should we buy bread? Jesus asked this to test, John 6:6 affirms.

Apparently, Philip was a math whiz who could calculate quickly.

Consulting his own brain, he quickly did the math. The equation to be resolved was this: On the one hand, about 20,000 people if we include women and children; on the other hand, 200 denarii, or about 7 months wages to divide into that.

So, a quick look upward—blink blink—and then his forthcoming answer—it isn’t enough; we need another approach.

Jesus then tries to give these disciples a hint by expanding their perspective beyond themselves. So he asks them to find out how many loaves the crowd has (Mark 6:38).

Pursuing that agenda, the ever-approachable Andrew—he who brought his brother Peter to Jesus—reports back that there’s a lad who has five loaves and two fishes.

Now this represented significant progress! Why? Because Scripture says there were 5,000 men present that day, not counting the women and children. Yet, Andrew reached out to one of those not counted—a young lad!

Do you see the principle in that? God can get his work done by people the world would have overlooked. In this instance, Andrew was thinking more like God.

More credit goes to Andrew because, though the lad had little, Andrew allowed for the possibility that Jesus might use that.

So, two big steps of faith; Andrew was doing well! We might even say three steps of faith were taken by Andrew, because there was also the big step of bringing what he had to Jesus.

To find resources is good. To be precise about what you found is also good. But to shrug it off and discount it, as many people would have done, would have meant no miracle.

By bringing what he had to Jesus, meant the Master could now take over. And he did!

You know the rest of the story. With the help of Jesus, we soon see an operation under way that turned out to be brilliant. Let’s detail some of this.

The superb management genius of getting the crowd to sit down (it’s hard to riot if you’re sitting)

organizing the crowd in groups of 50 and a 100 (so they could be better served)

enabling the bread to multiply out of the disciples’ hands (so they were a part of this miracle)

making sure there would be no run on a mountain of bread at Jesus feet with “an each-man-for-himself” surge

having so much left over—the twelve baskets, a testimony to God’s supernatural supply

No doubt about it, Jesus did great!

But had the disciples now passed the test?

One might think they had.

If asked at that moment what they just learned, these men would have proudly announced: Our little in the Lord’s hand can supernaturally meet our needs!

Sounds good. Just as a lot that we say sounds good. But the test wasn’t over yet.

On the same day, Jesus told the disciples to get in their boat and row to the other side.

Complying with the Master’s command, they commenced to rowing their boat. And in the beginning, they experienced success. But then the sea was suddenly convulsed by a storm.

Although these men were seasoned navigators, their nerves eventually reached the breaking point. In fact, the terror of drowning that night flashed in their minds with the same impact of every wave beating hard against their boat.

For hours they fought this storm! With absolutely no progress!

The only results were the sapping of strength, the loss of stamina, and the deflation of hope.

They were stuck, overwhelmed, panicked!

Of interest in this account is the fact that Jesus was watching the whole thing from the mountain.

Can you imagine that? For hours he watched—and did nothing! He kept his distance from their peril!

Have you ever felt God doing the same thing with you? You are struggling, struggling, struggling… Where’s God?

Finally, according to Mark’s account, Jesus ventured toward their peril; and, this is an amazing statement in Scripture, “would have passed them by” (Mark 6:48).

Picture that! Over there: these struggling sailors, desperate for help … and over here, the strolling Savior, calmly water-walking right past them!

What’s going on here? Why would Jesus do something like this?

Here’s why. He was still testing them!

As with the previous test, he was hoping that with his help, they could get at least some credit. But so far, they were stacking up zeroes.

Ok, pause for a quick evaluation here as we ask some questions: Had they, at any time during this storm, cried out to Jesus? No.

Had they exercised any faith? No.

They could have at least rallied their hearts by recalling Jesus’ word that they were to go to the other side. That was their assignment—not the middle of the sea!

Did they do that? We could wish otherwise, but that thought never crossed their minds.

Back to live action now.

When they then see this figure walking on water, what do they think?

It’s a ghost!

Did that make any sense? What ghost walks on water?

But this response just goes to show that Jesus was never on their mind.

Instead of perceiving, as they could have, that help had come, their wacked-out minds thought a ghastly ghost had come!

To spook them! Big time!

Oh, great! As if those monstrous waves weren’t terrifying enough!

Finally, finally, trying to help them even more during the test, Jesus—hint, hint—speaks to them.

And it is here that the tests ends. The storm stops. The trip resumes. The disciples are happy.

Of course, there’s no way the disciples passed this test. In fact, Mark notes their failure, saying they had not learned the lesson of the loaves (Mark 6:52).

The lesson of the loaves? That was the earlier test, you say.

No, that test was still in progress.

The disciples probably thought that they had learned their lesson. Why, had there been another hungry crowd with no supply to feed them, the disciples, with easy recall, could have said, “Oh, we learned that lesson: If we give the Lord the little we have, the Lord will supernaturally meet the need.”

There! Lesson learned!

Then, looking about with a bit of pride, and perhaps anticipating some commendation for their wisdom, they would have stood their ground, squared their shoulders and held their heads high.

But, oh, no! To their surprise, they now learn they just flunked their pop test!

How so? Because when a different problem arose, as did that sea that night, they never connected what they had just learned to this problem.

Though the problem was different, the answer was the same! Believe Jesus! Count on him no matter how impossible it seems to be.

Someone in their defense might say, but they had never seen Jesus walking on water before. True, but they had never seen him multiplying bread before, either. There is a parallel!

Now we have to ask ourselves as we further reflect on that day, why didn’t the disciples learn the lesson of the loaves?

As it turns out, the same verse in Mark that reported their failure also explained why it happened.

Are you ready for this? It was because their hearts were hardened.

Hardened? Really? Would you have characterized these men as hardhearted men?

When we think of someone who is hardhearted, we think of someone who is rough and gruff, someone who is stubborn and stupid, someone who doesn’t want to listen to anything God has to say!

But that doesn’t describe these men. So how were these men hardhearted?

Jesus answered that question in the parable of the four soils when he described one of these being like stoney ground (Matthew 13:20, 21).

Jesus said of that kind of heart, it receives the word with joy.

So that’s good. And no doubt there was much joy after Jesus performed the miracle earlier in the day.

But then Jesus further described the stony soil response by saying, endurance is only for a little while; it lasts until tribulation comes.

Then there’s a fall, a failure, a collapse. Why?

Because, Jesus said, the stony heart doesn’t have roots! The lesson supposedly learned doesn’t sink in. It was surface truth, truth drifting in the shallows, not rooted and grounded. It never got established.

We can have the mental “ahas” that comes from discovering a new truth. But thinking we now have it, when that truth doesn’t yet have us, results in failing God’s test.

Could it be that stony soil is spread all over the church today? People take their notes, stack their concepts, learning more and more about the Bible, and count that as spiritual growth.

Yet in candid moments these same people will tell you that they wonder why all this Bible study hasn’t done any more for them than it has.

To partially answer, you should know that what God teaches, he tests.

His tests are designed to show you if the teaching has been applied.

You will do well to suspect more often than you do that you don’t have a firm grasp of the answer, though you thought you did. 

Facts can be stacked and isolated, but truth needs to connect with your life. So ask God each time a truth is taught to reveal how this new truth relates to your life right now.

He said he would provide a light unto your feet.

He certainly doesn’t want you walking into darkness, unprepared, failing one pop test after another.

Also, take confidence in the fact that God knows how to design tests.

Educators will take courses to learn how to do this, with the strange exception of college professors. Elementary school teachers know how to design tests better than they do. Go figure! Most professors never took courses on how to teach or how to test.

Unlike the tests of educators that have, at best, a ten percent inherent errancy factor, God knows how to design the perfect test.

Oh, I know, some people protest his tests are too hard. Hard, yes; too hard, no.

Hard though they may be, his tests are never administered to humiliate you (such as those sometimes given by professors who love to see three quarters of the class fail).

God has only the desire for your good, your promotion, your breakthrough when he administers these tests.

True, these tests aren’t announced in advance, like those warnings on TV about a forthcoming 60 second test of the emergency broadcast system.

Even so, perhaps this review of Scripture will help prepare you. Start to think like God thinks.

● Pay attention to his clues.
● Sense his desire to help you, to promote you.
● Anticipate that a lesson you previously learned connects with a problem you are currently facing.
● View each test as an opportunity to succeed, not as a setback to confirm failure.
● Stop trusting your reason; start trusting God’s revelation.
● Look beyond your resources, factor in the abounding grace of God.
● Know that you are not alone, ever, but God is watching you carefully, constantly.
● Rest assured that no tests from God will ever be too hard. The solution is at hand!

There’s no reason to be moaning and groaning whenever a new pop test is given by God. What would you have God do: Let you think you’ve grasped a truth when you haven’t?

He loves you too much to do that.