Feeding Thousands - a podcast by Lewis Marsh

Revealed: The Miracles of Jesus

Pt. 4: Feeding Thousands

By Louie Marsh, 9-3-2023

 

1) I need to SEIZE opportunities God gives me.

 

Matthew sets the stage for one of Jesus most amazing miracles this way:

 

“³⁰The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. ³¹And he said to them, “Come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while.”

 

So Jesus, like the good leader he was, wanted to take his handpicked men aside for a while to, as we would say today, “debrief them” on their mission trip experiences.

 

But as Mark shows us, things didn’t quite work out that way.

 

  For many were coming and going, and they had no leisure even to eat. ³²And they went away in the boat to a desolate place by themselves. ³³Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them. ³⁴When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things.” (Mark 6:30–34, ESV)

 

How on earth did all those people keep up with Jesus in a boat? Well Jesus and his disciples are on the Sea of Galilee. The Sea of Galilee is approximately 33 miles in circumference, about 13 miles long, and eight miles wide.

 

The Apostle Luke in chapter 9:10 of his Gospel mentions the locality as being near to Bethsaida, i. e., Bethsaida Julias. That’s near the northern shore of the lake, not far from the entrance of the upper Jordan, which is so shallow at that point that it can easily be crossed by wading. So as you can see keeping up with the boat wouldn’t have been that much of a challenge.

 

·       Never be afraid to be COMPASSIONATE.

 

When Jesus sees them waiting for him on the shore, he, “has compassion on them, because they were like sheep without a shepherd.” So Jesus did what he always did, he quickly improvised and used the situation they were in as a teachable moment. Far from this being a problem, Jesus saw it as an opportunity to teach a captive audience! I mean, where else were they going to go right?

 

“¹²Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, ¹³bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.” (Colossians 3:12–13, ESV)

 

“¹⁸Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, and therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of justice; blessed are all those who wait for him.” (Isaiah 30:18, ESV)

 

2) God uses problems to EXPOSE how spiritually mature I really am.

 

We aren’t told what he preached or how long he talked. But from what Mark says I’m guessing he spoke for several hours at least. Now I know that sounds like an unbearably long time to listen to someone speak to us. But in those days, with no media of any kind, attention spans were much, much longer than they are today. So it would not have been unusual for a teacher to speak for that long.

 

·       My FIRST thought should always be God.

 

“³⁵And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the hour is now late. ³⁶Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.”” (Mark 6:35–36, ESV)

 

With no shelter or food where they were, these people needed time to get to a place where they could find both. But, here again, Jesus does the unexpected.

 

Jesus takes this as an opportunity to test just how much they had learned and grown on their mission trip.

 

“³⁷“You give them something to eat.” And they said to him, “Shall we go and buy two hundred denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat?”” (Mark 6:37, ESV)

 

 The Apostles are stymied by Jesus command. How could they feed such a huge crowd? Even if they found the money it was going to be a long walk to the supermarket!

 

3) God STEPS IN when humans fail.

 

So, again as usual, Jesus stepped in and spoke with authority.

 

“³⁸And he said to them, “How many loaves do you have? Go and see.” And when they had found out, they said, “Five, and two fish.” ³⁹Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the green grass. ⁴⁰So they sat down in groups, by hundreds and by fifties.” (Mark 6:38–40, ESV)

 

Jesus takes stock of their meager resources and then has the disciples organize the people. There’s no way you can know what to do or how to do it if you aren’t aware of what’s actually happening and what you have on hand to deal with it.

 

4) Jesus seeks God’s blessings & then ACTS.

 

Then once the people are seated in an organized fashion Jesus does what no one else thought of doing. He turns directly to his Heavenly Father to solve this seemingly insurmountable problem.

 

“⁴¹And taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And he divided the two fish among them all. ⁴²And they all ate and were satisfied.” (Mark 6:41–42, ESV)

 

He looked up to heaven and then spoke a blessing over the loaves and fish. Jesus responds by seeking God’s blessing on what they are about to do. And with that the disciples began handing out the food, and they kept on handing it out and kept on handing it out and somehow they never ran out of it!

 

What they thought about this isn’t recorded. What the people sitting there were thinking isn’t spelled out for us either. But clearly when they began to catch on to what was happening, they had to have been absolutely amazed and more than a little awed to see God in action right before their eyes.

 

 

5) Don’t WASTE any of God’s blessings.

 

“¹⁷And they all ate and were satisfied. And what was left over was picked up, twelve baskets of broken pieces.” (Luke 9:17, ESV)

 

This miracle becomes even more amazing when you read what Mark says as he closes his account of it.

 

So, if there were 5000 men there then there must have been at least an equal amount of women, and probably a lot of children as well. So how many were fed? Only those there knows the answer, but you’d have to imagine that at least 15,000 people partook of the food, maybe more.

 

Now this miracle, like all of Jesus miracles, has seen many attempts to explain it away. The most well known of these failed attempts is the idea that when Jesus had the boy show his fish and bread, most of the people in the crowd were shamed and produced the food that they had been hiding. Then everyone shared together in a meal.

 

“⁶For this reason I remind you to fan into flame the gift of God, which is in you through the laying on of my hands, ⁷for God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control.” (2 Timothy 1:6–7, ESV)

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