Chapter 8
Feeding Four Thousand (1-9)
In those days may refer to the journey Jesus made from Tyre and Sidon to the Sea of Galilee and into the region known as the Decapolis (ten cities). This area was well outside the centers of Jewish population, making Jesus’ audience a mixture of both Jew and Gentile.
Here we read again, as with the feeding of the 5,000 in chapter six, that Jesus is moved with compassion for the masses of people who were following Him. Recall that the word compassion means to be so moved in the inward parts so as to cause one to react in some way. Jesus said that the people had been following Him for three days and had not taken the time to eat.
It would seem that the people were more focused on everything Jesus was saying and doing than with eating. Think about that for a moment. Most of us could not fathom being so caught up with something that our hunger for food becomes a secondary matter. We are more inclined to obey our stomachs. We so admire people like Daniel, who in His desire to hear from God, “ate no pleasant food, nor meat or wine…nor did I anoint myself at all, till three whole weeks were fulfilled” (chapter 10).
There was something—someone—that the people desired so much that they were willing to let their stomachs go without for a time to receive something far more satisfying. “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be filled” (Matthew 5:6).
Jesus’ disciples picked up on what Jesus was requesting and replied, “How can one satisfy these people with bread here in the wilderness?” It seems that the disciples had not learned the lesson of the feeding of the 5,000.
In John 6:27 Jesus tells the crowd, “Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal.” In other words, they were so enthralled with the food, they were missing out on the fact that their Messiah had come. So the Jews ask Jesus for a sign that He was sent from God (as if the miraculous feeding and the walking across the water weren’t enough). They tell Jesus that God gave them manna during the desert wandering.
Jesus responds by telling them that they need to ask for the true bread from heaven that gives life. When they ask Jesus for this bread, Jesus startles them by saying, “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (6:35).
This is a phenomenal statement! First, by equating Himself with bread, Jesus is saying he is essential for life. Second, the life Jesus is referring to is not physical life, but eternal life. Jesus is trying to get the people’s thinking off of the physical realm and into the spiritual realm. He is contrasting what He brings as their Messiah with the bread He miraculously created the day before. That was physical bread that perishes. He is spiritual bread that brings eternal life.
The story of the feeding of the four thousand here in chapter eight is not unlike the story of the feeding of the five thousand. It is as if Jesus, by repeating an event of feeding such a large group of people, is trying to drive home a much larger message. He is the One who has the ability to feed everyone to the full and still have leftovers.
What Jesus was offering the people was not simply some bread and fish that would sustain them for a brief period of time. He was offering them life. “I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly (to the full)” (John 10:10). In a sense it seems that the people were catching on to this deeper meaning, as attested to by their desire to receive the life-giving words of Jesus more than the short-sustaining bread.
What does this mean to you?
Seeking a Sign (11-12)
After the feeding of the four thousand, Jesus and the disciples get into a boat and make their way to the region called Dalmanutha, which was probably somewhere on the western side of the Sea of Galilee.
Some of the Pharisees of the area came up to Jesus and began to “dispute with Him.” The word for test that is used here is the same word translated “tempted” in 1:13, when the Spirit drove Jesus out into the wilderness to be tempted by Satan. Mark does not report any of the issues of the temptation of Jesus in the wilderness. He simply states that Jesus was tempted by Satan for forty days. But the word tempt appears at several points throughout the Book of Mark in Jesus’ interactions with other people. It is characteristic of Mark’s Gospel that the examples of Jesus’ temptation come from His human opponents.
What does this mean to you? How might we find ourselves being tempted by others?
It is interesting to note that with the four thousand, Jesus performed a sign in order to point to a larger truth. Here, the Pharisees seek a sign from Jesus in order to accuse Him.
Here, as in 7:34, Jesus sighs. Why do you think He sighs deeply in His spirit at the Pharisees’ request? Why did Jesus refuse to give them a sign?
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