V.32-44 Five Loaves and Two Fish
In verse 32 Jesus and His disciples were attempting to cast off from the shore of Galilee and find a quiet place for some much-needed rest. But in verse 33 the multitudes saw them and ran to the place where they would put to shore. It seems that their time of rest was short-lived.
V.34 When Jesus saw the great crowd of people who had come out to meet Him, He had compassion on them (literally, “moved with compassion”).
Compassion means to exercise pity or to have compassion on as one is moved or motivated by sympathy. This verb includes emotion as well as action, a deep empathy for its objects. In Biblical Greek word does carry the implication of the intent to help.
The Gospels record several situations in which Jesus was moved with compassion as He saw a need. That compassion led to action.
What might this say to us today?
Jesus was moved with compassion because the multitude “were like sheep not having a shepherd.” Shepherds had the responsibility of the overall care and safety of their sheep. This included guiding them in the right direction. So, Jesus begins to teach them. When it was late Jesus’ disciples came to Him and advised Jesus to send the crowd away so they could all go to the nearby villages and find something to eat.
It may be that the disciples were seeking to avoid any responsibility for the hungry people, saying send them away. Perhaps they thought that they were showing compassion. But then Jesus answers them and says, “You give them something to eat.” This must have startled the disciples. Was Jesus serious? How could they possibly find enough food for everyone?
Jesus gave them a seeming impossible task. Five thousand men and an untold number of women and children had followed them into a remote place, and nobody had thought to make arrangements for food.
The Latin word denarii is the plural form of denarius, which was a fairly common silver coin used during this time. It what was typically paid to a laborer for a day’s work. Thomas calculated it would take the wages of two hundred days’ worth of labor to provide for such a large group of people.
V.39 As Jesus prepares to feed the crowd with the five loaves and two fish the disciples found, Mark describes in detail a scene with green grass where the disciples arranged people in ordered groups of fifty and one hundred. It looks as though Jesus was settling the crowd down in pasture.
The image points to passages like Ezekiel 34:22-24, where the kings of Israel and Judah are called shepherds. When Jesus arranged the crowds in orderly groups on the grass and fed them, He did something of enormous consequence. He enacted the role of a shepherd in a way that no Jewish king had ever done before.
“I am the good shepherd. The good shepherd gives His life for the sheep” John 10:11.
“My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me” John 10:27
“The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me to lie down in green pastures” Psalm 23:1-2a.
What occurs next is nothing less than a miracle. This was a different miracle then the type that the disciples had witnessed; the healing of a demon possessed man or the cleansing of a leper. Here the miracle is supplying for the needs of a large group of people. It is the shepherd taking care of His sheep. He is their provider.
“You prepare a table before me in the presence of my enemies…My cups runs over” Psalm 23:5.
Read Psalm 23 and John 10:1-16. What do they say about Jesus as our shepherd?
V.45-52 Walking on Water
Jesus sends His disciples ahead to Bethsaida by boat while He remains behind to send the crowd away. Jesus does not immediately head to Bethsaida to meet up with the disciples. He goes to a mountain to pray.
The first time the disciples were separated from Jesus was when He sent them out to do the work of ministry (6:7-13). It was an exhilarating time for them, as attested to in verse 30. But this time of separation will be quite different.
Sometime during the night Jesus sees the disciples struggling against the wind.
Jesus sees them straining, feverishly working against the wind, but He remains on the mountain. I’m sure the thought of another time when Jesus was in the boat with them came to their minds. Then, a great windstorm battered their boat, causing wave upon wave to begin to fill the boat. But at least Jesus had been in the boat with them then. Now they were separated, and it’s dark, and the wind is impeding them from making any progress.
Ever feel like that? Like you’re pushing as hard as you can to overcome something and it seems that the harder you try the harder it seems to get. And it’s dark. And it feels like Jesus isn’t with you in your boat.
V.48 It’s now the fourth watch of the night. The fourth watch lasted from 3 AM until 6 AM. Now, not far from the break of dawn, Jesus moves. He took the most direct line to them by walking on the water.
The theologian Thomas Fuller is famous for saying, “The darkest hour is just before the dawn.” Can I get a witness? Sometimes it seems like the wind is so contrary, making us work harder and harder, and we’re losing our strength. But just when it seems like things couldn’t get any darker, Jesus shows up. We learn that He never had His eye off us. What we think of as needless delay is the Lord’s way of showing His glory and power in our circumstances.
The puzzling notion of Jesus’ intending to pass by them recalls the way God appeared to Moses on Mount Sinai (Ex.33:19-22). Moses asked to see God, and God allowed Moses to see His back as He passed by him. If Jesus had passed by the twelve, they might have seen who He really was. But their hearts were hardened, so the epiphany never materializes. Perhaps Jesus intended to reveal Himself to His disciples, but their overwhelming terror stopped the revelation before it was complete. Instead of awe and wonder they experienced only bewilderment and fear.
Jesus settles their fears by saying to them, “Be of good cheer! It is I; do not be afraid.” A better rendering for “Be of good cheer” would be “Be of good courage.” The Greek word refers to God bolstering the believer, empowering them with a bold inner attitude. For the believer, showing boldness is the result of the Lord infusing His strength by His in-working of faith.
The words Jesus used to identify Himself to the disciples have more than one meaning. The Greek words translated “It is I” can also be rendered in English as “I am.” In English as in Greek these are the same two words that are used to translate God’s name.
V.52 says that the disciple’s hearts were hardened “because they had not understood about the loaves.” The Greek word for harden means to cover with a thick skin, to harden by covering with a callus; to grow hard or callous, become dull, lose the power of understanding. The disciple’s hearts were spiritually insensitive to the truth concerning Jesus’ true identity that His miracles were meant to demonstrate.
To follow Jesus is to keep venturing out past our comfort level. The encouragement is that God does not forsake us even when our hearts are hardened. God continues to take the initiative. God’s faithfulness is greater than our fear, greater than our sin and greater than our unbelief.
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