Matthew 15: 29 - 39
29 Jesus left there and went along the Sea of Galilee. Then he went up on a mountainside and sat down. 30 Great crowds came to him, bringing the lame, the blind, the crippled, the mute and many others, and laid them at his feet; and he healed them. 31 The people were amazed when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled made well, the lame walking and the blind seeing. And they praised the God of Israel.
32 Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion for these people; they have already been with me three days and have nothing to eat. I do not want to send them away hungry, or they may collapse on the way.”
33 His disciples answered, “Where could we get enough bread in this remote place to feed such a crowd?”
34 “How many loaves do you have?” Jesus asked.
“Seven,” they replied, “and a few small fish.”
35 He told the crowd to sit down on the ground. 36 Then he took the seven loaves and the fish, and when he had given thanks, he broke them and gave them to the disciples, and they in turn to the people. 37 They all ate and were satisfied. Afterward the disciples picked up seven basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over. 38 The number of those who ate was four thousand men, besides women and children. 39 After Jesus had sent the crowd away, he got into the boat and went to the vicinity of Magadan.
Question:
ReplyDelete- Do the disciples have that bad of memories?
http://www.malankaraworld.com/library/Sermons/Sermons_6th-sunday-after-Pentecost-PB.htm says:
ReplyDeleteone of the challenges we have as Christians, believers, is we have bad memory. We lose those understandings and some of the things the Lord is teaching us, sometimes they’re powerful, sometimes they’re tough experiences. But God shows us things and we start to lose just the memory of it, we start to forget, and so as a result, a little bit later we’re facing similar situations, and you’d never know that we had learned certain principles before because it’s like we’re having class all over again, taking the test again, and trying to remember what the answers are.
one of the reasons why we’re slow to learn is because of different variables, different place, different time.
Secondly, one of the reasons why we don’t learn or are slow to learn is that we willfully choose not to believe, with some of us that’s the case, an area where God has spoken, and I just don’t believe, I just choose not to, I don’t accept that.
and then thirdly, one of the reasons we struggle in belief, little bit different, it might sound the same, but it is a different principle, and that is that we struggle in faith. It’s not that we willfully don’t believe, but we actually have faith, but we struggle with faith, it’s a meager faith. And so, we struggle.
but you’ll see that verse 8, 9 and 10, Jesus actually himself references two different feedings. So it’s not a copyist error, where it accidentally just slid in there, because he himself actually says there’s two different feedings.
https://bible.org/seriespage/23-lesson-hermeneutics-matthew-1521-39 says:
ReplyDeleteMatthew 4:23-25 immediately precedes the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 14:13-14 immediately precedes the feeding of the 5,000. It appears to me that Matthew wishes us to see the similarity with verses 29-31 of chapter 15. It was our Lord’s ministry to the masses which set the stage for the Sermon on the Mount, the feeding of the 5,000, and now, the feeding of the 4,000. I don’t wish to suggest that our Lord’s teaching doesn’t attract the crowds, but Matthew has chosen to emphasize our Lord’s healing ministry as that which drew the crowds.
I find it quite easy to understand how it could be that such a large crowd would remain with Jesus for three days without food, or perhaps more accurately, with food supplies which quickly dwindled, until none was left. Many of these people must have had some malady which they hoped Jesus would heal. If you, or a loved one, was desperately ill, would you not wait in line for three days in order to be healed? No wonder the people were in danger of fainting on the way home (Matthew 15:32).
The inference is clear, both from the context (Matthew 15:21; Mark 7:31) and from the statement, “they praised the God of Israel” (Matthew 15:31) that these people are Gentiles, not Jews. Jesus is still in Gentile territory. Thus, the feeding of the 4,000 is not merely the repetition of a miracle Jesus has already performed (with the 5,000 in chapter 14), it is a miracle now performed for the benefit of a Gentile crowd, rather than a Jewish crowd.
how could they have failed to remember the feeding of the 5,000, and how could they not see the relationship between that situation and this one, just one chapter removed?
So what has changed? The audience is different, for one thing. Jesus is in Gentile country. Initially, Jesus had kept a low profile (Mark 7:24). Jesus “went up a mountain, where he sat down,” and where “large crowds came to Him” (Matthew 15:29-30). The crowds have refused to go home. Remember that in the case of the feeding of the 5,000 the (Jewish) crowds had not been there long before the disciples began to urge Jesus to send them home (Matthew 14:15). Here in chapter 15 the crowds have been there for three days. How come none of the disciples had spoken up, urging Jesus to send them home? I think it was because they remembered the two earlier occasions that they had urged Jesus to do the same thing (once with the 5,000, and later with the Canaanite woman) and had been shown that they were wrong to do so. They hadn’t forgotten the feeding of the 5,000 at all; it was still fresh in their minds.
There may well be another additional element involved here – this was a Gentile crowd. Jesus had forbidden them to go in the way of the Gentiles and had instructed them to preach to the Jews only (Matthew 10:5-6). Jesus had delayed in granting the request of the Canaanite woman. Perhaps Jesus did not want to feed this Gentile crowd. And so they seem to have simply waited Jesus out. Let Jesus make the first move here; they had been rebuked for suggesting Jesus send people away.
https://bible.org/seriespage/23-lesson-hermeneutics-matthew-1521-39 continued:
ReplyDeleteWhen Jesus does address this situation, it is after three days in the wilderness, when the situation was much more serious. To send these folks away without feeding them would be to do them bodily harm. He tells His disciples that He has compassion on the crowd, and that He won’t send them home without first feeding them. The disciples can’t urge Jesus to send the crowd home now; Jesus had taken that option away. Now, all the disciples can think to do is to point out the obvious lack of resources. It is here that one does marvel that the disciples didn’t connect this situation with the earlier one, where Jesus fed the 5,000.
The disciples were just not able to make the connection between one miracle and another. We should not be too quick to condemn them. The Israelites did this repeatedly during their sojourn in the wilderness. In Exodus 15:22-26, the Israelites come to Marah, where the water was bitter. God sweetened the water, providing for Israel’s needs. In chapter 16, the Israelites come to the wilderness of Sin, and they grumble against Moses (and ultimately God) because they have no food.11 They didn’t connect one situation with a very similar one just hours (or days) later. How forgetful we are of God’s abundant protection and provisions.
It occurred to me as I was studying this passage that “bread” is a kind of key to understanding this chapter. Look at what “bread” meant to the people in chapter 15. Bread meant nothing to the Pharisees and scribes, other than to serve as a pretext for accusing Jesus. Their minds were so fixed on their traditions that their eyes saw nothing but the “unwashed hands” that touched the bread.
The disciples think of “bread” as food that is, at the moment, scarce. This is obvious in the feeding of the 4,000, and it will be obvious once again in Matthew 16:1-12. The disciples could think of bread only in the most stark and literal terms. Thus, the Lord’s discourse on the “bread of life” in John 6 and His warnings concerning the “leaven or yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees” went right over the heads of the disciples.