Now we come to one the most famous miracles, the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus had sent the disciples out to preach and heal and they had now returned to Jesus to report what they had done. Jesus wanted to have time alone with them. However, this does not happen as the crowds follow Jesus.
As an aside this raises an interesting (at least if you think about things like this, perhaps more sensible people never do!) question. Jesus is God, Jesus wanted to do something, namely spend time alone with the disciples, but this didn't happen because of the crowds. So how does this square with the sovereignty of God? God wanted to do something, people caused Him to do something different. Some Calvinist thinking seems to take as absolutely fundamental the sovereignty of God and men cannot force God to do something different. There are several instances in Scripture where God's actions certainly seem to be influenced by men, so I think we should be wary of any oversimplistic concept of the sovereignty of God.
Jesus welcomed the crowds, taught them about the kingdom and healed the sick.
Late in the afternoon the disciples came to Jesus pointing out the practical matter that the crowds would need food and should be sent away. Why did they do this? Probably for a variety of reasons. One would be practical concern for the practicalities, one could be genuine concern for the people, and another could be that they were tired after their mission and wanted some time alone with Jesus.
Jesus, however, saw things differently and told them to feed the people. This seemed a totally impractical proposition to the disciples. We need to realise that God sees things differently than we do and knows far more than we do. Jesus gave them instructions and the famous miracle occurred.
No comments:
Post a Comment