GREAT THINGS ENTERPRISE
CLAUDE BLACK
Mark 6:5
A Few
In the Old Testament, the warrior Gideon opposed an enemy army with his 32,000 soldiers. However, God told him that his army was too large, so He gave Gideon a test. Gideon took his army to a stream to drink. Any soldier who lapped the water like a dog became one of the chosen. In the end, Gideon had an army of 300 soldiers—a few. If there were going to be a victory for Gideon, it was going to be accompolished by God’s power, not by 32,000 soldiers. (Judges 7)
During the dark days for England, British pilots, at great sacrifice to their own lives, fought off German air raids on London. Speaking to the House of Commons on August 20, 1940, Prime Minister Winston Churchill, in praise of the Royal Air Force pilots’ desperate battle, said, “Never in the field of human conflict has so much been owed by so many to so few.”
During his visit to his hometown of Nazareth, Jesus taught in the synagogue, likely the same synagogue he had attended with his family for years. His lesson surprised and amazed the congregation, and many rejected him—where did a hometown carpenter’s son gain such wisdom and have the audacity to speak to them as a superior? Many rejected him. “And he was not able to do any mighty work there, except by placing his hands on a few sick people, he healed them.” (Mark 6:5) There were a few, then, who stood aside from the ridicule, criticism, and rebuke to receive the healing grace of God.
The word Mark used for “heal” (θεραπεύω, therapeuó; cf. the English word “therapy”) appears throughout the New Testament—a few received healing. The picture of a “few” stands out through the Bible and history—Gideon had only a few soldiers; Obadiah hid a few prophets in a cave to protect them from Ahab and Jezebel (1 Kings 18:4); a few disciples followed Jesus; a few made up the churches of early Christianity; and a few sick people received Jesus’ healing touch in Nazareth. The message in Jesus’ Nazareth visit still speaks—the many or the few.
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