Mark 6:51-52

‘And they were greatly amazed in themselves, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their heart was hardened.'

Mark sums up their position. They were full of amazement (and in their amazement cry out ‘truly you are the Son of God' - Matthew 14:33), and it was because they had not learned the lesson of the multiplied loaves. They had failed to realise that One was here Who could miraculously expand nature, Who controlled material things and therefore to Whom a jaunt on the sea was as nothing. For He is the One Whose “way is in the sea, and His path in the great waters” (Psalms 77:19; see also Isaiah 43:16)

‘Their heart was hardened.' They had seen a number of amazing things but their minds would not yield to the truth of them and what they indicated. They just could not accept it. It was not that they had difficulty believing in Jesus' close relationship with God, and that He was pleasing to God, it was that they could not go that step further and recognise that God walked on earth in Him. They had yet much to learn. There is a constant stress on their inability to understand (Mark 7:18; Mark 8:17) which brings out the accuracy and factualness of the Gospel. No one who respected the Apostles would have invented such ideas. The cry in Matthew that He was the Son of God does not alter this fact. Like the cry ‘it is a ghost' it was wrung from them by the situation. It was not yet a thought out position.

What a contrast there is between Jesus on the mountain at prayer, and at peace, and the disciples toiling on the sea and lacking in sufficient faith. They would learn from this that they too, if they would face the problems of life serenely, must learn to enjoy times alone with God in the mountain.