Again we see Jesus feeding a multitude – a different crowd in a different place… this one among Gentiles unlike compared with Jews in the first … and as you compare the two stories there are many other differences. The seal on the reality that Jesus did do two such miracles is that in vv19-20 Jesus Himself says so.
There are many things we can learn from this duplex miracle. Let me share some insights from John MacArthur. It teaches us:
- the necessity of relying on divine resources. Like the disciples, we are most usable to the Lord when we acknowledge our own lack of resources and turn to Him.
- that God’s resources are never diminished, much less exhausted, because He has an infinite capacity to create. He used the loaves and fish in order to involve the disciples and to help teach them to give what they had into His care.
- the servant’s usefulness. He did not need the disciples’ help … But in His infinite wisdom and mercy God chooses to use human instruments to do His divine work of carrying the gospel to the world and of ministering to its needs.
- that God gives liberally. There was even more than enough, so that seven large baskets of food were left over.
- the limitless compassion of Jesus Christ. He has compassion for all our needs-eternal, lifetime, and daily. He has compassion on Jews and on Gentiles, on the severely afflicted and the merely hungry.
As we think of these things we need to ask whether this influences the way in which we think about life and even respond to devastation and troubles such as we see in our nation over the past week. How are we thinking?
When Jesus asks His disciples “Do you not yet perceive nor understand?” (Mark 8:17) He saw that they were governed by an earthly orientation rather than by spiritual vision based on spiritual truth. He was calling them to think in every aspect of life in terms of the spiritual truth revealed to them.
As you look at what is happening – from Qld to Perth, around you, in the church, in your life… how do you think? Are you applying the truth you gain from the Bible about Jesus and His Kingdom? Are you thinking like Jesus, or like the world as evidenced in the Pharisees and Herod?
Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the ungodly, nor stands in the path of sinners, nor sits in the seat of the scornful; but his delight is in the law of the LORD, and in His law he meditates day and night. (Psa 1:1-2)