NEW TESTAMENT CONTEXTUAL COMMENTARY

by Dr. Robert R. Seyda

GOSPEL OF MATTHEW

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Part III

Verse 13: When Jesus heard what happened to John the Baptizer, He sailed off in a boat. He went alone to a place where no one lived. But the people heard that Jesus had departed. So they left their towns and followed Him. They went by land to the same place He went.

Upon hearing of John the Baptizer’s execution, Jesus took the loss very personally. After all, they were not only relatives in the flesh, brothers in the spirit but also part of the prophesied team that God put together to announce His coming kingdom. However, our Lord’s search for solitude was not successful. Nevertheless, instead of ordering the crowd that greeted Him upon docking at His chosen destination for His getaway, He embraced them. This is certainly a model for behavior to all believers. When you are grieving over some loss, find a way to channel your grief into giving to others who are also carrying a burden.

Dr. Paul Tournier (1898 – 1986) was a Swiss physician and author who acquired world renown for his work in pastoral counseling. He was still living in Switzerland while I was working there. He wrote many fabulous books such as “Guilt and Grace;” “The Meaning of Persons;” “The Person Reborn;” and “To Understand Each Other.” His ideas had a significant impact on those of us who read them when it came to dealing with others, especially when going through troubles and trials and having the burden and ministry of helping others at the same time. Dr. Tournier noticed that in today’s healing process our modern world separates the physical, psychological, emotional, and spiritual when dealing with healing. Tournier believed this was not wise. We are dealing with an individual created in the image of God, chosen by God, and existed in the mind of God, before the creation of the world.¹

Dr. Tournier called his ministry: “The Medicine of the Whole Person.” Dr. Tournier lived what he taught. He points out, that the word “salvation” in the New Testament is actually translated from the Greek word “to make whole.” That’s why the healing that Jesus brought cured everything – physical, mental, and spiritual. The partitioning we do today was never part of God’s process. But, one point Tournier made clear was this: When we need encouragement and motivation, the best therapy is to encourage and motivate others to keep going. In his book, “To Understand Each Other,” Tournier writes, “It is quite clear that between love and understanding there is a very close link…He who loves understands, and he who understands loves. One who feels understood feels loved, and one who feels loved feels sure of being understood.” This is exactly what Jesus did on this occasion.

Early church theologian Jerome sees our Lord’s actions this way: “When Jesus heard this, He withdrew to a lonely place apart, but not, as some people think, for fear of death…He withdrew in order to give us an example of avoiding the foolhardiness of those who betrayed Him because not everyone perseveres amid torments with the same constancy they had when they offered themselves to be tortured. For this reason in another place He gave this admonition: ‘When they persecute you in this city, flee to another.’² It was also fitting that the Evangelist did not say ‘he fled to a lonely place’ but ‘he withdrew,’ so that he avoided His persecutors rather than feared them.”³

Verse 14: When Jesus got out of the boat, He saw a large crowd of people. He felt compassion for them, and He healed the ones who were sick.

We do not know when Jesus arrived at this place, but even if it was late in the morning, or by noon, Matthew tells us that His teaching continued the rest of the day into the late afternoon. It would have been understandable if when Jesus saw the crowd that converged on the place where He was going, to tell His disciples to let the crowd know that He was in mourning for a relative and good friend, and did not want to be bothered at this time. But when one of His own disciples had earlier wanted to leave and go home and take care of his ailing father, Jesus said let the dead bury the dead. So our Lord let His compassion for those who were struggling with their faith and those who were desperate in treating their disease to be ministered to first and took care of them before tending to Himself. As Dr. Tournier said, some of the best tonic for a person, when they feel down due to grief or disappointment, is to find others who are in greater need and minister to them. This will help ease their own pain.

Verse 15: Late that afternoon, the followers came to Jesus and said, “No one lives around here. And it is already late. Send the people away so they can go into the nearby towns and buy food for themselves.”

The healing and teaching formula imparted here often becomes a dilemma for many believers. First, a petition was made to Christ by the disciples concerning a need. Jesus, in turn, told them to do their best in alleviating the need. The disciples replied that the amount of food found to take care of the problem was insufficient to handle the situation. They did not seem to understand that Jesus was giving them a great opportunity to exercise their faith in Him as a provider.

Not only was it late in the day, but according to Jewish custom it very near meal time that was to be completed before sunset. The Jews had a list of mealtimes. The Rabbis taught: “The first hour [of the day]⁴ is the mealtime for gladiators;⁵ the second, for robbers;⁶ the third, for heirs;⁷ the fourth, for laborers,⁸ the fifth, for all [other] people. But that is not so, for Rabbi Papa said: The fourth [hour] is the mealtime for all people? – Rather the fourth hour is the mealtime for all [other] people, the fifth for [agricultural] laborers, and the sixth for scholars.”⁹ Since this would put the last breakfast at 12 noon, many scholars believe this schedule repeated itself in the afternoon. So that puts the time for supper in this story at 6 PM.

Another thing to notice here is that the people did not come to Jesus and say, stop teaching so we can go get something to eat, no it was our Lord’s own disciples who wanted Him to let them go. In fact, they begged Jesus to send the people away. This means that Jesus was holding them against their will, but, they were so spellbound by His teaching that the time passed quickly and meal time was upon them before they knew it. Also, take a look at the fact the disciples did not come to Jesus and ask, “What can we do.” No, they had already made up their minds that there was nothing they could do. Now, one more thing should be taken into consideration in order to better understand the disciple’s insistence that Jesus send the crowd off to buy their own food, and that is in what happened next.

Verse 16-18: Jesus replied, “The people don’t need to go away. You give them some food to eat.” The followers answered, “But we have only five flatbreads and two sardines.” Jesus said, “Bring the flatbreads and the sardines to me.”

Could it be that the disciples wanted Jesus to send the crowd away so they could eat what they brought with them and not feel obligated to share what little they had with the crowd? The answer would be, “No.” When we combine the recordings of this incident in the other Gospels we find out that Jesus had this planned all along, and that apparently the disciples didn’t think to bring anything along, so it was the small picnic lunch of a little boy that saved the day.¹⁰ Nothing took our Master by surprise. Not this feeding, not the storm on the sea, not His torture and death on the cross nor His resurrection from the grave. That should give all of us more blessed assurance by knowing that as long as He is with us, He will always be there to help us find the answer to what we are facing because nothing that happens to us is any surprise to Him.

So the Lord commanded that they bring to Him what they could find. They obeyed, and every need was met. The whole point of this miracle was to teach the disciples that what seems inadequate to man in order to meet the need, only needs the Master’s touch. So instead of going through all this nonsense of complaining that one doesn’t have enough to give, take it to Him first and then there will be enough to distribute to those who need help.

In this incident with Jesus and His disciples, we see a repeat of a similar event that occurred to Elisha, his servant, and his student prophets. In Scripture, we read: “A man from the town of Shalishah came and brought bread from the first harvest to the man of God. This man brought 20 loaves of barley bread and fresh grain in his sack. Then Elisha said, ‘Give this food to the people so that they can eat.’ Elisha’s servant said, ‘What? There are 100 men here. How can I feed all these men with this food?’ But Elisha said, ‘Give the food to the people to eat. The Lord says, “They will eat and there will still be food left over.’” Then Elisha’s servant put the food in front of the group of prophets. The group of prophets had enough to eat, and they even had food left over. This happened just as the Lord had said.”¹¹ In the case of Jesus, the number of men being fed is multiplied by 50, while the food supply is reduced by more than half. But by the touch of His hand, the same results are realized.

Jesus expressed the same attitude His heavenly Father had in replying to Moses in a similar situation, “‘LORD‘, Moses said, ‘There are 600,000 soldiers here, and you say, “I will give them enough meat to eat for a whole month!” If we were to kill all the sheep and cattle, that would still not be enough to feed this many people for a month. And if we caught all the fish in the sea, it would not be enough for them!’ But the Lord said to Moses, ‘Don’t limit my power! You will see that I can do what I say I can do.’”¹²

Here we have a repeat of what happened earlier when Moses questioned God’s lack of action down in Egypt by saying: “I went to Pharaoh and said what you told me to say. But since that time he has made the people suffer, and you have done nothing to help them!”¹³ As a result, even though God said to Moses on this occasion you’ll see what I can do, one Jewish commentator states: “As part of Moses’ punishment for having questioned God’s ability, he will not be around to see how the thirty-one kings of Canaan and their armies will be defeated when the Israelites will take over their lands.”¹⁴

Verses 19: Then He told the people to sit down on the grass. He took the five flatbreads and the two sardines. He looked up toward heaven and thanked God for the food. Then He broke the flatbreads into pieces, which He gave to His followers, and they, in turn, gave the food to the people.

There are at least six other places where Jesus is reported to have prayed with his eyes open toward heaven.¹⁵ According to scholars, “Jews generally do so today; Christians often pray with them closed. There is no command on the subject in the Bible. In an age when people are easily distracted, closing one’s eyes may help one to concentrate on God. On the other hand, those who choose to keep their eyes open have the Messiah as their model. The phrase, ‘toward heaven,’ can also carry the secondary meaning, ‘toward God’.”¹⁶

We don’t know exactly what Jesus said as He blessed the bread, but there are Jewish prayers said before eating and after eating. One blessing said before eating a meal goes: “Blessed are you, Lord, our God, King of the universe, who brings forth bread from the earth.”¹⁷ Of course, with Jesus being the Son of God, He may have had His own version of saying Grace before breaking the bread.

Two early church writers give their impression of what happened here. Jerome tells us: “Jesus looked up to heaven that He might teach them to keep their eyes focused there. He then took in hand five loaves of bread and two fish; He broke the loaves and gave the food to the disciples. By the breaking of the bread, He makes it into a seedbed of food—for if the bread had been left intact and not pulled apart and broken into pieces, they would have been unable to feed the great crowds of men, women and children. The law with the prophets is therefore pulled apart and broken into pieces. Mysteries are made manifest, so that what did not feed the multitude of people in its original whole and unbroken state now feeds them in its divided state.”¹⁸

Then Chrysostom preaches: “In this miracle Jesus was teaching them humility, temperance, charity, to be of like mind toward one another and to share all things in common. He did so in His choice of location, by providing nothing more than loaves and fishes, by setting the same food before all and having them share it in common and by affording no one more than another.”¹⁹ And so it is today. When a preacher stands up behind the pulpit, the spiritual meal he has prepared is the same for one and all. And no matter how little he had time to prepare, if he allows our Lord to bless it and break it, it will prove enough for any size crowd.

Verse 20: Everyone ate until they were full. When they finished eating, the followers filled twelve baskets with the pieces of food that were not eaten.

There are differing views among the early church writers as it relates to what purpose these twelve baskets of food served. Bishop Hilary of Poitiers says: “Thus, by the word of God coming from the teaching of the law and the prophets, the multitude was satisfied; and an abundance of divine power, reserved for the Gentiles from the ministry of the eternal food, was left over for the twelve apostles.”²⁰ Chrysostom indicates that these twelve baskets were symbolic of the twelve disciples, and that just as Jesus took the bread and fish and multiplied it to feed the multitude, they were to take what He gave them and do the same after He sent them out into the world.²¹

Then Cyril of Alexandria believes that Jesus did this, “So that we might learn that when we are in charge of the table and are preparing to break the loaves, we ought to bring them to God with hands upraised and bring down upon them the blessing from above, he became for us the beginning and pattern and way.”²² Then, historian Eusebius gives his opinion on how in this miracle the unseen appears through that which is seen. He writes: “The miracle of the bread revealed the one through whom the soil when planted with seed, multiplies. What was done invisibly, once brought to light, proclaimed who it is that always works invisibly. It was not only at that time that Jesus with five loaves does many great things. In the world, He was not idle or inactive but was always at work feeding everyone and taking nothing for Himself. Because He was unknown, therefore, He came feeding, eating and feeding, so that through those things that are seen, He who was unseen might appear.”²³

Verse 21: There were about 5,000 men there who ate. There were also women and children who ate.

This is where some have overlooked the need for multiplication. This miracle has become known as the “Feeding of the 5,000.” But the text tells us, that was just the number of men, and that women and children were also present. This suggests that the number who were actually there may have been as high as 12,000 when we add wives and children. Perhaps that sum is reflected in the number of baskets of scraps left over. The distribution of Spiritual food works on the same principle as the food Jesus gave on this occasion. Christ gives to His ministers, they, in turn, give it to the people; who then share with their neighbors. Thus, the Word is multiplied.

There is also a distinct difference between the type of basket used here to gather the leftovers than ones used when later on Christ would feed 4,000.²⁴ Here there are twelve baskets, in the feeding of the 4,000 there would be seven baskets. The type of basket used here is the type carried on the backs of travelers to hold such provisions. The baskets used later in the feeding of the 4,000 were of the same type in which Paul was let down over the wall in Damascus.

To use today’s containers as an example, the basket here for the 5,000 might be compared to a picnic basket, while the one used in the feeding of the 4,000 was the size of a clothes hamper. Apparently these baskets were not very sturdy. The Jews tell us: “When Rabbi Judah went to the school house, he use to take a pitcher on his shoulders to sit on, saying, ‘Great is labor, for it honors the worker.’ Rabbi Simeon used to carry a basket upon his shoulders, saying likewise.”²⁵ Had Rabbi Simeon’s basket been strong enough, he too would have used it as a stool while studying. This would also make them easier to carry in bulk. The food used in this instance of 5,000 consisted of 5 flatbreads and 2 fish; the amount used in the feeding of the 4,000 was 7 flatbreads along with several fish. Jesus made note of this Himself.²⁶

The underlying factor here is that Jesus wanted the disciples to see how exponentially things are multiplied in the kingdom: No matter what you bring to Him He can make out of it whatever is needed to meet the demand. This is not only true of the food in each of these cases, but true of anything we need to feed those hungry for the Word of God in our world. In my own case, I have tried everything I can do to advance my knowledge and understanding of God’s Word, and I will not stop until I have accessed every opportunity to gain even better understanding so that when I bring it to Him to bless before I go out to divide it and feed the congregation, His blessing makes it possible to feed the crowd whether it be large or small. In the disciples case, it wasn’t that there was more food to be collected before they brought it to Jesus, but I’m sure they searched until they found all there was. So the disciples may have been worried about the size of the crowd, but Jesus was only concerned that they bring Him what they had and He would make it work.

Two addition items need to be addressed here. First, did Jesus multiply the bread and fish after He blessed it or was it multiplied as it was being shared because He blessed it? Scholars are somewhat divided on this. The fact that there is no mention that the disciples had to keep coming back to Jesus for a new supply suggests that He gave each one of them a portion of the original amount, and as they passed it out, it was like the widow’s oil in the case of Elijah.²⁷ The manner in which it was distributed may be likened to the way ushers take up an offering, only, in this case, a piece of bread was given to the first person in the row who broke off a piece and passed the rest on. Luke said they sat in groups of 50.²⁸

The second thing to reckon is the size of the crowd, Matthew says there were about 5,000 men, besides the women and children. If each man there was married, and each couple had a minimum of two children, the crowd would have numbered 20,000. However, there is no reason to believe that all the men were married, nor all the women. Plus, the number of children would then also be reduced. So to count the crowd size at approximately 10,000-12,000 would be reasonable. In any case, that would still be a huge number to feed on five flatbreads and two sardines. Scholars don’t believe the people stuffed themselves, but that according to Jewish custom you finished your meal only after feeling satisfied.

Early church theologian Hilary makes this point: “The same number of those eating proved to be the number of those who believed. As noted in the book of Acts, out of the countless people of Israel five thousand men believed.²⁹ Once the people had been satisfied, when they took up the loaves that had been broken into pieces with the fish, there was enough left over to match the number of believers and apostles to be filled with heavenly grace. Thus, both the amount suited the number and the number the amount. Within its bounds, the calculation was keyed to the proper effect and depended on the guidance of divine power.”³⁰

So out of this feeding of the multitude, there are various lessons we as believers can learn. First, don’t give up just because you don’t already have what you think it will take to do the job. Check with Jesus before you make up your mind that the mission is impossible by bringing Him what you do have. And when you go to Him, surrender what you have into His hands so He can bless it. Second, take what Jesus makes out of what you’ve got and start feeding those who come, you’ll be surprised how He can make it multiply, not only to be enough for the immediate need but have plenty left over for what is yet to come.