Loaves and Fishes - Jesus Feeds Five Thousand People

14:13 Now when Jesus heard about John, He withdrew from there in a boat to a secluded place by Himself; and when the people heard of this, they followed Him on foot from the cities.

14 When He went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and felt compassion for them and healed their sick.

15 When it was evening, the disciples came to Him and said, "This place is desolate and the hour is already late; so send the crowds away, that they may go into the villages and buy food for themselves."

16 But Jesus said to them, "They do not need to go away; you give them something to eat!"

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

18 And He said, "Bring them here to Me."

19 Ordering the people to sit down on the grass, He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward heaven, He blessed the food, and breaking the loaves He gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds,

20 and they all ate and were satisfied. They picked up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve full baskets.

21 There were about five thousand men who ate, besides women and children.

Miracle of the Loaves and Fish

Greatest Miracles of the Bible?

Five thousand people fed from two loaves and five fish! And, twelve baskets of food left over! Wow! To me, this is one of the most impressive miracles of the Bible. The five thousand could have been many more as the people of Israel did not normally count women and children in their numbers.

I said "could have been" because of the way the Jews counted. They sometimes used a very large number (i.e. five or ten thousand) if there were too many people to count quickly. It could have been only a thousand or five hundred.

Let's speculate and say there were only 600 people in the crowd. Still, a miracle beyond belief to feed that many from the small amount of food the disciples distributed and, to have anything left is amazing.

Why Did Jesus Perform Miracles?

All this aside, Jesus did not perform these miracles of healing and feeding the crowd just to make himself known as some sort of "magician". As stated in verse 14, He did these things because He "had compassion for them". Just as he was then, Christ is still just as loving and compassionate. To show His compassion He was willing to go to the cross and die so that we might live.

What is the Greatest Miracle of Christ?

The death and the resurrection for our sins is the greatest miracle Christ ever performed. All we have to do is accept His gift by believing and accepting Christ as our personal Savior. Have you made that choice?

Love In Christ

- Bob

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