Why the Disciples Didn’t Get It

Jesus warned them – several times!

Some people just don’t catch on. In the New Testament Gospels, there are several accounts of Jesus plainly telling His disciples that He was going to be killed and after three days rise again. He repeated this prediction a few times. (See Matthew 16:21-26; Mark 8:31; Mark 9:31; Mark 10:34; John 12:31-36; and John 14:1-8).

In John 14:29, He added, “I have told you now before it happens, so that when it does happen you will believe.”

To the scribes and the Pharisees, he often spoke in parables. When they asked for a miraculous sign that He was really God’s son, He answered: “A wicked and adulterous generation asks for a miraculous sign! But none will be given it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days and three nights in the belly of a huge fish, so the Son of Man will be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.”

Jesus also used the Temple as an analogy of His death and resurrection. In John 2:19-21, Jesus told the Jews: “Destroy this temple, and I will raise it again in three days.”

Well, Jesus very likely had learned some carpentry skill from His father Joseph, but the temple was a rather large, grand structure. The Jews answered, “”It has taken forty-six years to build this temple, and you are going to raise it in three days?” But the temple he had spoken of was his body.

Jesus arrested and sentenced to death

A few days later, Jesus was arrested and sentenced to death on charges of blasphemy for daring to call Himself God. (Although the Jews had no authority to execute anyone, so they convinced Pilate to charge Jesus with treason, since He claimed to be king.)The disciples scattered in horror. They moped around for three days, wondering what they should do now.

Apparently the scribes and Pharisees had understood what Jesus meant in the analogies of the temple and Jonah in the whale. In fact, after the death of Christ, the chief priests and the Pharisees went to Pilate. “Sir,” they said, “we remember that while he was still alive that deceiver said, After three days I will rise again.’ So give the order for the tomb to be made secure until the third day. Otherwise, his disciples may come and steal the body and tell the people that he has been raised from the dead. This last deception will be worse than the first.” “Take a guard,” Pilate answered. “Go; make the tomb as secure as you know how.” So they went and made the tomb secure by putting a seal on the stone and posting the guard. (Matthew 28:62-66)

The empty tomb

I had planned to include here a treatise on how we know that Jesus rose from the dead, but my explanation is too long. I will save it for another article another day.

When the women who first discovered the empty tomb ran to tell the disciples, Luke 24:11 tells us that they did not believe the women, because their words seemed to them like nonsense. (Although you may recall that Jesus plainly foretold exactly this.) Thomas earned the eternal nickname “The Doubter” for not believing that Jesus was really alive, but the gospel accounts tell us that none of the disciples believed until they actually saw him, and even then, they thought at first that they were seeing a ghost. Jesus reassured them:

“Why are you troubled, and why do doubts rise in your minds? Look at my hands and my feet. It is I myself! Touch me and see; a ghost does not have flesh and bones, as you see I have.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and feet. And while they still did not believe it because of joy and amazement, he asked them, “Do you have anything here to eat?” They gave him a piece of broiled fish, and he took it and ate it in their presence. He said to them, “This is what I told you while I was still with you: Everything must be fulfilled that is written about me in the Law of Moses, the Prophets and the Psalms.” Then he opened their minds so they could understand the Scriptures. He told them, “This is what is written: The Christ will suffer and rise from the dead on the third day, and repentance and forgiveness of sins will be preached in his name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things.” (Luke 24)

As the old adage goes, “Hindsight is 20/20″. We can read the New Testament and wonder why even His own disciples, who had spent the last three years with Jesus couldn’t see that the Old Testament prophecies were being fulfilled before their very eyes.

Jesus was not what the Jews expected

The Jews in the time of the Roman occupation were expecting a military leader who would free them from the oppressive Roman government. I had planned here to write a list of Old Testament prophecies that could only be fulfilled by Jesus of Nazareth, but, again I am just too long winded. I will include that in another article.

For now, I will just point out that even Jesus’s own disciples were expecting Him to set up a kingdom on Earth, possibly with themselves as high ranking officers. This could explain why they seemed to be so obsessed with figuring out which of them was the greatest. I also believe that one factor in Judas’s decision to turn Jesus in to the Jewish authorities is that Jesus didn’t seem to be making any progress in taking political power. It is possible that he came to the conclusion that the man he had been following for three years was not the real Messiah after all.

Even after the resurrection, the disciples asked the risen Lord, “are you at this time going to restore the kingdom to Israel?” (Acts 1:6)

Some people just don’t get it. I hope that you do.