Jesus feed 15000

As I read the stuff on the feeding of the 5000 so many want to try to read into it things it did not say. I think we need to see the Lords Power

The feeding of the five thousand was one of the more spectacular miracles in the ministry of Christ. It was an occasion in which the disciples overemphasized the problem and underemphasized the resources, for they underestimated the Master! Jesus had come to this desert place to be alone with the disciples. They had just returned from the mission to which Jesus had sent them, and they needed time to process their experience (Mark 6:30–32). But as they crossed near Bethsaida to a desert place on the other side of the bay, a large crowd made its way around the bay and came to Jesus. Seeing them, He was moved with compassion and extended His ministry to their need, healing and teaching. At eventide the disciples urged Jesus to send the multitude away so that they could get bread, probably at Bethsaida.

Jesus amazed the disciples by saying, “They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat.” Upon their remonstrance that they had only five loaves and two fish, Jesus said, “Bring them here to me.” We bring what we have to the Master, and He will bless it. A little with God is more than much without Him. And yet they were staggered to look into the faces of five thousand men, plus women and children, and then look at this little lunch basket! But one expectation was that the Messiah, like Moses, would feed His people. This event may be associated with the messianic banquet spoken of by Isaiah (25:6).

In verse 19 we have the order of grace: He blessed; He gave to the disciples; they gave to others. The Lord works through His disciples, through his church. Reviewing the happening we recognize: (1) the promise—they don’t have to leave; (2) the commission—you give them something; (3) the power—bring them to me; and (4) the provision—they all ate. The conclusion is the abundance which satisfies, for there were twelve baskets full of fragments left over. The word for “basket” here is kophinos, meaning a smaller wicker basket. At the second feeding of four thousand the kind of basket was the spuris, a larger basket. The point of reference here is that there was more than enough.

This marks the climax of popular enthusiasm for Jesus, and of the desire to make Him King. But Jesus was not a bread-King, and according to John 6, Jesus followed up on this miracle by talking to the people about their need for spiritual sustenance. Jesus said, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst” (John 6:35). And in answer to their unbelief, Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day… . Just as the living Father sent me and I live because of the Father, so the one who feeds on me will live because of me” (John 6:53–54, 57, niv). As food sustains the energy of the body, so living by the energy of identification with Christ is the only sustenance of spiritual life.¹

Jesus’ attempt to steal away for privacy and solitude does not work. Large crowds of people walk to him, hoping for a blessing from him. Matthew tells us that when Jesus saw the crowd ‘he had compassion on them’. This is an important indicator of the spirit that motivated Jesus to help needy men and women. B. B. Warfield points out that compassion ‘is the emotion which is most frequently attributed to him’. It conveys his reaction to the needs of people. ‘The sight of their desperate plight awakens our Lord’s pity and moves him to provide the remedy.’² Whatever people thought of him, he always thought to do people good.

The practical need to cater for such a large crowd is not lost on the disciples. As they see the evening approaching, they urge Jesus to dismiss the crowd (v. 15). They have no resources with which to feed them. All the food available to them is five loaves and two fish. That is not enough.

Or is it? Jesus takes the food and asks God to bless it. He begins distributing it to the disciples, who in turn give it to the crowd. The food keeps coming as Jesus miraculously multiplies the portion. The result is that ‘they all ate and were satisfied’ (v. 20). Twelve baskets full of broken pieces are left over. Although we often refer to this as the feeding of the five thousand, Matthew tells us that five thousand is only the number of the men present (v. 21).

Why twelve baskets? One commentator suggests that ‘each disciple had a basket of food left for himself, out of which he could share with Jesus’. It does seem as though the number of baskets relates to the number of disciples whom he would send out with the gospel.

The fact that there is so much left over is also a remarkable illustration of the point Jesus made in the Sermon on the Mount, when he encouraged the disciples to trust him for their needs. He told them to pray for daily bread (6:11) and explicitly said to them that they should not be anxious about what to eat or drink (6:31). This miracle is as much for their benefit as for the benefit of the people.

Jesus makes provision for his own?

Jesus and His disciples desperately needed rest (Mark 6:31); yet the needs of the multitudes touched His heart. The word translated “moved with compassion” literally means “to have one’s inner being (viscera) stirred.” It is stronger than sympathy. The word is used twelve times in the Gospels, and eight of these references are to Jesus Christ.

Jesus was “moved with compassion” when He saw the needy multitudes (Matt. 9:36). They were like sheep that had been lacerated from brutal fleecing—torn, exhausted, and wandering. Twice He was “moved with compassion” when He beheld the hungry multitudes without food (Matt. 14:14; 15:32). The two blind men (Matt. 20:34) and the leper (Mark 1:41) also stirred His compassion, as did the sorrow of the widow at Nain (Luke 7:13).

Jesus used this word in three of His parables. The king had compassion on his bankrupt servant and forgave him his debt; and we ought to forgive one another (Matt. 18:21–35). The Samaritan had compassion on the Jewish victim and cared for him in love (Luke 10:25–37). The father had compassion on his wayward son and ran and greeted him when he came home (Luke 15:20). If our Heavenly Father has such compassion toward us, should we not have compassion toward others?

The miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 is recorded in all four Gospels (Matt. 14:13–21; Mark 6:35–44; Luke 9:12–17; John 6:4–13). It was definitely a miracle. Those who teach that Jesus only encouraged the people to bring out their own hidden lunches have ignored the clear statements of God’s Word. John 6:14 definitely calls the event a “sign” or “miracle.” Would the crowd have wanted to crown Jesus King simply because He tricked them into sharing their lunches? (John 6:14–15) Not likely!

It takes little imagination to picture the embarrassing plight of the disciples. Here were more than 5,000 hungry people and they had nothing to feed them! Certainly the disciples knew that Jesus was powerful enough to meet the need, yet they did not turn to Him for help. Instead, they took inventory of their own food supply (a lad had five barley loaves and two fish) and their limited treasury. When they considered the time (evening) and the place (a desolate place), they came to the conclusion that nothing could be done to solve the problem. Their counsel to the Lord was: “Send them away!”

How like many of God’s people today. For some reason, it is never the right time or place for God to work. Jesus watched His frustrated disciples as they tried to solve the problem, but “He Himself knew what He was intending to do” (John 6:6,nasb). He wanted to teach them a lesson in faith and surrender. Note the steps we must take in solving life’s problems.

Start with what you have. Andrew found a lad who had a small lunch, and he brought the lad to Jesus. Was the boy willing to give up his lunch? Yes, he was! God begins where we are and uses what we have.

Give what you have to Jesus. Jesus took the simple lunch, blessed it, and shared it. The miracle of multiplication was in His hands! “Little is much if God is in it.” Jesus broke the bread and gave the pieces to the disciples, and they, in turn, fed the multitudes.

Obey what He commands. The disciples had the people sit down as Jesus ordered. They took the broken pieces and distributed them, and discovered that there was plenty for everybody. As His servants, we are “distributors,” not “manufacturers.” If we give what we have to Him, He will bless it and give it back to us for use in feeding others.

Conserve the results. There were twelve baskets filled with pieces of bread and fish after the people had eaten all they wanted. But these pieces were carefully collected so that nothing was wasted (Mark 6:43; John 6:12). I wonder how many of the pieces the lad took back home with him? Imagine his mother’s amazement when the boy told her the story!

The Apostle John recorded a sermon on “the Bread of life” that Jesus gave the next day in the synagogue in Capernaum (John 6:22ff). The people were willing to receive the physical bread, but they would not receive the living Bread—the Son of God come down from heaven. The miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 was actually a sermon in action. Jesus is the Bread of Life, and only He can satisfy the spiritual hunger in man’s heart. The tragedy is, men waste their time and money on “that which is not bread” (Isa. 55:1–7). People today are making the same mistake.

Jesus still has compassion on the hungry multitudes, and He still says to His church: “Give them something to eat.” How easy it is for us to send people away, to make excuses, to plead a lack of resources. Jesus asks that we give Him all that we have and let Him use it as He sees fit. A hungry world is feeding on empty substitutes while we deprive them of the Bread of Life. When we give Christ what we have, we never lose. We always end up with more blessing than when we started.²

This was a real event

The Question of Ability

After Jesus was baptized (Matt. 3:13–17) but before He began His public ministry (4:12), the Holy Spirit drove Him into the wilderness to be tested by Satan (4:1–11). For forty days He was without food. Then the enemy came in the midst of His hunger and began to tempt Him by saying, “If You are the Son of God, command that these stones become bread” (v. 3). How did Jesus respond? “It is written, ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God’ ” (v. 4). He refused to abandon His trust in God to provide for Him. However, the point I want to stress is that Jesus could have changed the stones to bread. He had the ability to do it. If He could multiply five loaves and two small fish enough to feed five thousand men, plus women and children, there is no question that He could have transformed some rocks into a meal for Himself.

This question of ability is at the crux of the debate between supernaturalism and naturalism. The naturalist says no human being has the ability or power to multiply loaves and fishes to feed thousands and thousands of people. Naturally speaking, they are right. But what about someone who has supernatural power, power that is above and beyond nature. In fact, without the supernatural (that is, without God), the natural would not and could not exist. Naturalists want to deny this fact above all else, and they tie themselves in philosophical knots to do so.

By contrast, Christianity declares that all of nature is the result of the One who is eternal and self-existent, who has the power of being within Himself, and who alone can bring something out of nothing. Only God has this power. If He had not exercised that power in creating all that now is, I would not be writing this book and you would not be reading it. You can take this to the bank—it is utterly impossible to get something from nothing by natural means. If there ever was a time when there was nothing, there would be nothing now. There would be no people. There would be no churches. There would be no Bibles. There would be no philosophers and scientists. Unless something exists eternally in and of itself, something that has the power to give rise to something else, there would be nothing.

Naturalism is a fool’s errand, and the New Testament is on a collision course with that kind of thinking. If you could persuade me of naturalism in its full skepticism, I would sleep in tomorrow morning, because I would have no reason whatsoever to get out of bed. If the naturalist is correct, then Jean-Paul Sartre’s assessment is accurate—humanity is a useless passion. That means that all the things we care about, all of our feelings of love, hope, aspiration, honor, and joy are futile and meaningless. If the naturalist is right, there is more meaning in an ant on the ground than in the aspirations of our hearts.

Yet, I constantly encounter naturalists who have both feet firmly planted in midair. They tell us that all we have is nature. However, we still have dignity, significance, and meaning. They have no basis for that assertion if man is nothing more than a biological accident.

I cannot live as a naturalist. I believe that Jesus fed those people that day, because I believe that Jesus is the incarnate Son of God, who made me and has absolute authority over me. That is why I call him Lord.³

1 Augsburger, M. S., & Ogilvie, L. J. (1982). Matthew (Vol. 24, p. 18). Nashville, TN: Thomas Nelson Inc.

2 Wiersbe, W. W. (1996). The Bible exposition commentary (Vol. 1, pp. 50–51). Wheaton, IL: Victor Books.

3 Sproul, R. C. (2013). Matthew (pp. 458–460). Wheaton, IL: Crossway.