Rhetorical Question

 

My mother had four boys and eight years later a girl.  The boys were hard on her, but she made it hard on us because she loved us and was concerned how we would turn out.  On Sunday mornings, my dad would fix breakfast while my mother would iron our clothes.  Actually, dad fixed cereal, which meant that he set out the cereal boxes and the gallon of milk.  Mom would get each of us ready, one at a time, and then set us in the living room to try to stay clean for church.  On one particular Sunday morning, my brother Phillip and I were ready with nothing to do, so we hooked up a dog leash to the rocking chair pretending that we were “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon”.  The rocker was our dogsled and we pulled each other around the living room.  Never mind that we were scraping long gouges in the floor with our “sled”.  I distinctly remember my dad walking into the room exclaiming, “What are you doing?!”  That was what you call a “rhetorical question.  And that was not the time for me to answer anything.  Hey, Jesus asked Philip a rhetorical question.  In John 6:5, “When Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?”  Did Jesus have a momentarily lapse of memory?  Did He forget He was God and knew everything?  Of course not.  Verse 6 explains, “And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do.”  Jesus knows everything all the time.  God asked Adam, “Where are you, Adam?  Had God misplaced Adam?  Of course not.  God asked Moses, “What is that in your hand?”  God knew that it was a stick, and God knew the miracles that Moses would perform with that stick.  Hey, God is asking you to partner with Him in His plan for the ages.  Does God need you?  Of course not.  God just wants to let you “help” Him.  And then God will give you a reward in heaven for what He empowered you to do.  Hey, it’s all about God.  Always has been, always will be.