It Is Hard To Imagine any worse planning than to have a preaching campaign with more than 5,000 people showing up who are willing to listen to every last word, and find that the catering committee has forgotten all about the refreshments! While this is but a caricature of the far more serious dilemma that the disciples felt had descended upon them, nevertheless their solution was a perfectly natural and simple response to the problem: Send the multitude away (Matt. 14:15).
This was not an acceptable solution; our Lord Jesus Christ had no intention of ever sending anyone away empty who was hungry and thirsty for the Word of God. For, Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness • for they shall be filled (Matt. 5:6). Hence his response to the disciples was totally appropriate: They need not depart; give ye them to eat (Matt. 14:16). Yet the disciples were apparently clueless as to the means of carrying out his intentions. We are, however, getting ahead of our story. How did this predicament of having thousands of hungry people stranded in an isolated place without food arise in the first place?
Intended rest interrupted
The text indicates Jesus did not initially set out intending to perform a miracle of feeding 5000 plus hungry followers (Matt. 14:13). Rather, he had sought a quiet, solitary place to contemplate and meditate upon the grievous loss of his beloved cousin, John the Baptist (recall Isa. 53:3). Yet in the midst of his own personal grief, he yielded instead to the needs of the multitude which had followed when they heard he had departed from the town.
We are told he had compassion on them and healed their sick. We are not given any explicit number, but the fact 5000 men, plus woman and children sought him out no doubt indicates many of them had dire need of a physician. Otherwise, they would not have gone out into a barren landscape without victuals for themselves.
We find Jesus puts aside his own anguish and, instead, arduously works to care for the needs of the crowd. What would our reaction have been under similar circumstances? Would our own cares have prevailed? Is it possible that we would have had a very professional attitude of mind that might have said, in effect, “I have my own problems to contend with first, take two aspirins and see me in the office in the morning!” Unfortunately, too often when brethren and sisters are in need of physical and/or spiritual sustenance, we are too busy to give of ourselves because we are preoccupied first and foremost with our own lives. Others get the leftovers, and sometimes that applies even to our own spouses and children when we put first the pressing demands of education, career, self-entertainment and personal hobbies.
Jesus heals and feeds
When Jesus landed and saw a large crowd, he made an abrupt change in plans and, for the moment, his need for solitude is completely forgotten. Instead, he had compassion on the multitude and there is not the slightest hint of any annoyance on his part because they had interrupted his planned seclusion (Matt. 14:14). He immediately rolls up his sleeves, as it were, and heals their sick. His healing of the sick occurs so often in the gospel record that here it only gets passing mention; the number of miracles of healing in a crowd of 5000 or more must have been enormous! The work of the great physician must have taken many hours, until eventually evening approached.
The level of excitement in the crowd was so high that virtually all had not noticed their hunger. They probably hadn’t eaten the entire day and we might note that on another occasion, which shortly follows, we find the crowd had not eaten for three days (Matt. 15:32)! Surely the faith of the multitude was tested in such dire conditions.
One can only wonder what we would have done faced with similar circumstances. Think of this next time you hear grumbling about the quantity or quality of the provisions at a Bible School, Study Day or any other catered ecclesial meeting! The disciples came to him and said, This is a remote place (he had, after all, gone there for solitude), and it is already getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy themselves some food (Matt.14 :15).
The disciples expressed a perfectly practical solution. Incredibly, they had been watching miracles of healing all day long, but somehow they did not connect this with the Lord Jesus Christ being able to provide for every circumstance through the power of the spirit. They could have said, “Lord we know you can provide.” We should not be critical of the disciples in any way, for we often find ourselves of a similar mindset. When faced with dilemmas in our own lives, do we throw ourselves on our Lord or do we think only of our own ability to solve the problem?
Jesus will also feed us
Jesus replied: They do not need to go away You give them something to eat (Matt. 14:16). The response of the Lord Jesus here was a test of the faith of his disciples. We can understand their initial perplexity, yet it is startling to realize the lesson does not seem to have been appreciated. The very next time virtually identical events happen the disciples still don’t seem to get it (Matt.15:33)!
Again it is tempting to be critical, but honest reflection will make us realize our worst faults are most often the repetitive ones. If we corrected every single character flaw the very first time we became aware of it, what wonderful brothers and sisters we would be indeed. Human nature is not like that, however; character is something honed one stroke at a time, and the correction must be repeated over and over again until one day we may succeed. Then again, we may fail, but we must never give up; this is what grace is all about. We must try our very best, but in the end we cannot earn eternal life, because it is the gift of God (Rom. 6:23).
Amazingly, among all those 5,000 plus people, the disciples could only find five loaves of bread and two fishes (Matt. 14:17). Jesus remained unruffled and immediately proceeded to the task at hand. He directed the people to sit down on the grass. Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. He gave them to the disciples, and the disciples to the people.
Curiously, he didn’t just pass out the bread, he broke it first. Was this really necessary for him to do for more than 5,000 people, or was it to demonstrate his broken body? There is no doubt of the faith that the Lord Jesus Christ had in his Father. Imagine the powerful demonstration of our Lord lifting his eyes (and probably his arms and hands, as did Moses) toward heaven and giving thanks visibly to his Father for what was about to transpire. I feel certain no one in the multitude ever forgot that moment for the rest of his life.
An abundance of food
While raw fish and bread may not be to our particular taste, one must admit it is not very far from the standards of food eaten in many parts of the world today. Indeed, sushi seems to be very much akin to that meal in the wilderness and is regarded by many as a delicacy. Consequently, we should not be surprised that they all ate and were satisfied (Matt. 14:20 NIV). The miracle in this solitary place vividly brings to mind the words of our Lord in the Gospel of John: And Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life: he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst (John.6:35).
Remarkably, they started out with such a meager amount it would have barely fed the twelve, let alone five thousand, yet there was no hint of a need for rationing. In fact the apostle Philip suggested rationing what little they had (John 6:7), but our Lord Jesus ignores the thought and never says “ration this carefully”.
When all was said and done, the disciples collected twelve basketfuls of remnants that were left over (one for each of the disciples, no doubt, as a means of emphatically imprinting on each of them what had transpired). The Lord is gracious and He supplies compassion and mercy without measure; if this were not so then we would all be lost (Psa. 111:4). On the other hand, do we sometimes have the tendency to ration our love and care for each other or do we supply so much that there are basketfuls left over?
An awesome miracle
At this point in the narrative we get a strong hint on the seriousness of the problem they had faced. The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children. (Matt. 14:21) To call this the miracle of feeding the 5,000, as most commentaries record, is to severely underestimate the magnitude of this momentous event. There were present many woman and children and the multitude could easily have been twice or three times that number, or more. The presence of hungry children no doubt made the need for food even more poignant. One can only wonder how the disciples imagined such a large crowd was going to find victuals to meet their needs that evening after having, in effect, fasted all day long. Imagine a crowd of more than ten thousand people descending all at once on your neighborhood supermarket even in this day and age.
In the end, the practical solution the apostles had first offered wasn’t realistic at all. Only the power of God, manifest in our Lord Jesus Christ, could have solved this remarkable challenge. So it will be in our own lives sooner or later. All the means of modern science and medicine will not save us in the end; the time will come in our lives when we will all need to learn to trust completely in our Lord and feed upon his word. That will be the only way we can truly be satisfied, with spiritual bread and fishes fit to feed us unto (eternal) life.
Don’t hesitate to offer food
I have sometimes heard it said in regard to providing sustenance, whether it be food, clothing, shelter or whatever to impoverished people that we must exercise great care in our giving so that they come to the truth not for “the loaves and the fishes”. In fact, one might call this a Christadelphian cliché! Nevertheless, this miracle presents no problem in this regard, for the scant loaves and raw fishes were hardly the equivalent of dining at the Ritz. Clearly the Lord Jesus was providing what was essential for the occasion and yet he clearly does furnish the multitude over and above (in the words of John) the bare minimum that was necessary, since twelve baskets full of leftovers were gathered together at the end of the evening meal.
Yes, there may indeed be the danger at times that some may come to us for the loaves and fishes, but let that be upon their heads! Better we should provide baskets of food when there is a need, rather than that any should lack; and, by ignoring their physical needs, they would thereby spurn the eternal life-giving food which we can also offer them.
The needs of others came first
Only after having taken care of the needs of the crowd does Jesus return to seeking and finding solitude. Immediately Jesus made the disciples get into the boat and go on ahead of him to the other side, while he dismissed the crowd. Afier he had dismissed them, he went up on a mountainside by himself to pray. When evening came, he was there alone (Matt. 14:22, 23). While the death of his cousin, John the Baptist, must have deeply troubled Jesus, he postponed his personal sorrow and grief. The horrible death that John suffered must have been very traumatic to Jesus as it portended his own. If any of us have personally experienced the loss of a loved one, especially under sudden, tragic circumstances, we can empathize somewhat with the sorrow that filled the heart of our Lord Jesus.
As for myself, I know that on several occasions in my own life, when faced with such sorrow, the last thing I wanted to do was face the problems of others. I had enough problems of my own (at least that was the way I felt at the time). It was not so with our Lord Jesus Christ. Ministering to the needs of others had taken absolutely complete precedence over any desires of his own. Furthermore, he gave of himself totally with deep compassion and not merely because of a sense of duty. There is not the slightest hint of grumbling or condescension on his part when presented with the bewildered multitude that needed to be healed and fed physically and spiritually. So should it be with us (Phil. 2:3-5).
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One