My Walk Through the Book of Matthew by Annette Godtland

Feeding the Five Thousand (Matthew 14:13-21)

13When Jesus heard it, He departed from there by boat to a deserted place by Himself. But when the multitudes heard it, they followed Him on foot from the cities. 14And when Jesus went out He saw a great multitude; and He was moved with compassion for them, and healed their sick. 15When it was evening, His disciples came to Him, saying, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is already late. Send the multitudes away, that they may go into the villages and buy themselves food."

16But Jesus said to them, "They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat."

17And they said to Him, "We have here only five loaves and two fish."

18He said, "Bring them here to Me." 19Then He commanded the multitudes to sit down on the grass. And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, He blessed and broke and gave the loaves to the disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitudes. 20So they all ate and were filled, and they took up twelve baskets full of the fragments that remained. 21Now those who had eaten were about five thousand men, besides women and children.

I had always assumed that when Jesus heard it and departed to a deserted place by Himself that it was to grieve. But is that necessarily true? John successfully carried out the task God had set before him. Jesus knew where he would see John again. Had Jesus heard that Herod thought Jesus was John risen from the dead? It was not time for Jesus to confront Herod yet. Did Jesus leave for this deserted place to get further away from Herod, to delay the inevitable conflict between Him and Herod? Or did Jesus go to a deserted place to pray to God, to plan out what He must do next, to help ready himself for what is to come? John's death by Herod marks the beginning of the involvement of the Roman empire in the path laid our for Jesus.

Herod feared the multitude. The multitude that followed Jesus here was five thousand, not counting the women and children. Five thousand men would be quite an army. It is easier to see why Herod would fear them. But Jesus wasn't building an army.

Imagine, just finding out that your cousin was murdered because he was doing work for you. Imagine needing to get away to grieve, knowing your mission is going to soon be taking a turn toward your destruction, soon all the weight of the sins of the world are going to be on your shoulders, sins committed by this multitude and generations to come, this multitude that does not understand. Here Jesus faced this multitude with all this on His mind, and what does He do? He is moved with compassion for them. What crosses my mind is, "Give this guy a break! Let Him rest!" But Jesus is here for the multitude. He is here for us. All that has happened, all that will happen to Him, is for the multitude, for us. He doesn't just blindly follow a mission statement that says He needs to die for our sins. He has compassion for everything that happens in our lives. He never quits. We are always His priority.

Yes, it was a miracle that Jesus turned five loaves and two fish into enough to feed five thousand men and still have twelve baskets left over. In all the miraculous stories I've heard from the Bible, I find it easy to believe that God can do anything for us. But Jesus' compassion for us is an even harder to grasp concept for me. It is so foreign to my natural way of dealing with difficult situations. Too often I think of me first. But what we see in Jesus' compassion is a commitment that God not only can do anything for us, but God will do anything for us. Just as He didn't want to send the multitude away, we know that He will never turn us away in our need either. That is a miracle!