This sermon was originally preached on August 2nd, 2026 at Paynes Beach in South Royalton. You can watch a video recording of it here, if you wish.
13 Now when Jesus heard this, he withdrew from there in a boat to a desolate place by himself. But when the crowds heard it, they followed him on foot from the towns. 14 When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. 15 Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” 16 But Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” 17 They said to him, “We have only five loaves here and two fish.” 18 And he said, “Bring them here to me.” 19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20 And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. 21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children. —Matthew 14:13-21
Did you know that the feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle of Christ during his earthly ministry that is recorded in every Gospel (other than the resurrection).
That feels significant, like perhaps there is something special about this miracle.
Yet, in the history of interpretation, there have been many writers that have tried to dismiss this miracle as a fraud. RC Sproul mentions several such attempts in his book on the Gospel of Matthew (some are quite comical).
Some argued that because miracles simply don’t happen, we know that there has to be some kind of alternative explanation. Perhaps the disciples hid a cache of bread and fish in a nearby cave. When the people became hungry, Jesus stood in front of the cave and the disciples secretly passed bread and fish to Him through the back of His robe, which he then somehow dispersed out of his sleeves, making it appear as though he was creating the bread and the fish in His hands. In other words, this version of the miracle turns it into a complete fraud.
Sproul argues that others took a different approach to this miracle saying that it was an ethical miracle. What REALLY happened was that there were some who brought food and others who brought none. Those who had brought food did not want to share it with others. To resolve the situation and teach a lesson, Jesus called forward those who might be willing to share and a young boy came up and offered to share his loaves and fishes. The boy’s generosity effectively shamed the people who were hoarding their food into sharing and thus the crowd was fed.
Still yet others suggested that in this account Jesus was preparing people for the institution of the Lord’s Supper so he took a small amount of bread and broke it into tiny pieces and then distributed it around to the multitude just as we often do when we distribute the elements of the Lord’s Supper.
These attempts are nothing short of dishonest attempts to distort the straightforward teaching of the word of God that Jesus miraculously fed over 10,000 people with just a few fish and a few loaves of bread. This is the testimony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John.
When we look at the story more closely, Matthew wants us to see something more. Let’s look at it together.
Context
To fully appreciate what is happening here we need to look briefly at the context. If you have a bible, take a moment and look at what is going on just before this story. In the verses leading up to this one we have the account of the murder of John the Baptist:
At that time Herod the tetrarch heard about the fame of Jesus, 2 and he said to his servants, “This is John the Baptist. He has been raised from the dead; that is why these miraculous powers are at work in him.” 3 For Herod had seized John and bound him and put him in prison for the sake of Herodias, his brother Philip’s wife, 4 because John had been saying to him, “It is not lawful for you to have her.” 5 And though he wanted to put him to death, he feared the people, because they held him to be a prophet. 6 But when Herod’s birthday came, the daughter of Herodias danced before the company and pleased Herod, 7 so that he promised with an oath to give her whatever she might ask. 8 Prompted by her mother, she said, “Give me the head of John the Baptist here on a platter.” 9 And the king was sorry, but because of his oaths and his guests he commanded it to be given. 10 He sent and had John beheaded in the prison, 11 and his head was brought on a platter and given to the girl, and she brought it to her mother. 12 And his disciples came and took the body and buried it, and they went and told Jesus. —Matthew 14:1-12
Is it coincidence that we have two great meals put together, back to back, or is Matthew wanting us to see something? Some scholars argue that Matthew puts these two events together to contrast them.
On the one hand we have Herod “the king” hosting a party full of sin and immorality, which results in the murder of John the Baptist. On the other hand we have Jesus hosting an outdoor meal that is characterized by compassion.
What makes this even more remarkable is that it appears from the way the text is worded that these events did happen at least around the same time. Verse 13 says that when Jesus heard about John’s death he withdrew to a desolate place to be alone. Yet, nonetheless, the crowds find him.
If I’m Jesus, at this point, I am probably a little annoyed. I mean his cousin, John the Baptist, has just died. He was his forerunner, the one called to prepare the way for him. John was a great prophet and a friend of the Lord Jesus and he has just found out he has died. Presumably Jesus goes away from the cities into the desert to grieve, maybe to commune with the Father, and here comes the crowds.
So now that the stage is set we can begin to see a little deeper into this passage.
And the first thing we should see from this passage this morning is the compassion of our Savior.
The Compassion of our Savior
Unlike how I would probably act at this moment, Jesus does not get irritated here. Instead, notice in verse 14:When he went ashore he saw a great crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick.
It says that Jesus saw them and had compassion. Jesus does not roll his eyes. He doesn’t tell them to go away or to schedule an appointment and come back later. The Scripture says that Jesus was moved with compassion and even goes as far as to heal their sick. Here Jesus once again does not use his power to serve himself but to serve others.
Over and over again in this gospel, Matthew shows us the compassion of Jesus.
Matthew 9:36: “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
Matthew 15:32, in a story of another great multitude that Jesus fed, “Then Jesus called his disciples to him and said, “I have compassion on the crowd because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And I am unwilling to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.”
Matthew 20:34: “And Jesus in pity (the English has “pity” but the underlying Greek word is the same root word as the other verses which translate as “compassion” in the ESV) touched their eyes, and immediately they recovered the sight and followed him.”
And here in Matthew 14, he wants us once again to see the compassion of our Savior. Jesus saw the crowds and was filled with compassion so he healed those that were sick.
Now maybe you are thinking “Sure, Jesus is compassionate towards those with really big problems, but my problems, relatively speaking are small or medium, and so there’s no way that my problems would draw the eyes of Christ.”
Look with me now at verses 15 through 18:
15 Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.”
At this point Jesus has been healing throughout the day and it’s beginning to get late, so the disciples become concerned about hunger.
16 But Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.”
I’m sure the disciples were surprised by this statement. On the face of it, what Jesus asks them to do here is ludicrous. How could they possibly give thousands of people something to eat?
In John’s Gospel, in his account of this miracle it says that Jesus “said this to test them.”Jesus was wanting to see if they had faith. Now verse 17:
‘They said to him, “We have only five loaves here and two fish.” 18 And he said, “Bring them here to me.”’
Think about this. In reality this is not a major problem. We’re just talking about food here. In that time and place, people generally would have eaten two meals a day, one lighter meal around midday and a larger more substantial meal at the end of the day after the day’s work was complete. Maybe these folks had missed their midday meal and were a little hungry.
On an individual level this is not a big deal. How many of you have missed meals? How many of you have fasted for a day or two? Maybe for a procedure or maybe because you were seeking the Lord in a special way. But on a personal level this is a relatively small problem.
I think it speaks to the very real fact that Jesus is not indifferent to our small problems. Jesus truly cares. Maybe you are anxious about a meeting at work or maybe your child is just learning to drive and you are concerned about their safety. These are relatively small concerns but they are not too small for our Lord to care about. We serve a truly, deeply compassionate Savior.
But Matthew also wants us to see that our Savior is capable. He is compassionate but he is also capable.
The capability of our Savior
You already know the rest of the story but let’s look again at verses 19 and following:
19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20 And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. 21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
The total number of people that Jesus fed here would have been in excess of 10,000, most likely. Notice that the amount of food given to each person here was enough to satisfy. This is no morsel—each one was satisfied.
What was on an individual level a relatively small thing, when multiplied across ten thousand, became a gigantic thing.
In the hands of our Lord, a meager five loaves and two fish were sufficient to satisfy all.
Maybe there are concerns and problems that you have that feel so massive, so big, that they simply feel ludicrous. Maybe like me you are worried about the overall direction of our local community. Maybe you have a family member or loved one that is so far from God you wonder how they could ever change. Maybe you feel like your meager loaves and fishes would never be enough for our Lord to do much with.
Matthew shows us that our Savior is capable. He can take our little and do great things with it. Nothing is impossible with Him. What may seem impossible or even ridiculous to us is easy for our Lord. Notice we are told that there is even an abundance left over in verse 20: “And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over.” The term that is used for baskets means a large, heavy container. In other words the leftovers were abundant. A little is turned into more than enough.
Scripture says that our Lord is able “to do far more abundantly than all that we ask or think,” (Ephesians 3:20).
We tend to make two common mistakes in our walk with God. On the one hand we think that God is not concerned with our small problems. On the other hand we think that God is somehow not powerful enough or perhaps not willing to do something very great for us.
Several weeks ago I mentioned William Carey is remembered as the father of modern missions. He went to India and gave his life away there for 41 years without returning to England even once. He is famous for saying:
“Expect great things from God. Attempt great things for God.”
Do you believe that God is capable of great things? Do you believe he wants to do great things in your life?
Maybe it would be good to define a great work of God. Certainly our Lord can do great miracles like we see here in this incredible passage. But God doesn’t always choose to bypass our humanity when he does great things.
Often God wants to use our humanity in his plan. In other words, William Carey didn’t pray for God to teach him how to speak Bengali and Sanskrit. He did the painstaking work of studying, practicing, and learning the language over the course of years. It was not downloaded into his brain like a computer program on the Matrix.
Like the disciples here in our passage we need to bring our few loaves and fishes to the Lord, believing and expecting that he can our efforts and use them for his glory.
We see here in this miracle that whether big or small our concerns are all important to our Savior and that he is both compassionate and capable to meet us where we are.
Now this takes us to the last thing to see in this miracle today: see the completion of God’s revelation.
The completion of God’s revelation.
One of the most striking things about this story in Matthew is the lack of reaction. Jesus performs one of the most remarkable miracles in his ministry and there is no reaction given to us here in Matthew’s Gospel.
It’s anticlimactic.
As I read this story, it feels something like commercials do today. You might have a commercial about donating to Saint Jude’s Children’s Hospital with a heart wrenching testimony of a family facing childhood cancer, followed by a commercial of Cows with signs saying “Eat More Chicken.”
This amazing event just ends, there’s no reaction and then on to the next thing.
But if you read the story just before this one AND the story following this one and look at them as a unit, something else begins to emerge.
Daniel Doriani suggests that Matthew gives us three stories that put on display three potential responses to God’s action. First, in the story of Herod we have a hostile reaction: a prophet is murdered for speaking the truth. Second, in our story today, there is virtually no reaction—we might say indifference. But in the story right after this, when Jesus walks on water and then calms the storm, the disciples respond this way: “And those in the boat worshiped him, saying ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’”
As we behold our compassionate Savior, our capable Savior, and the one who is the completion to all of God’s revelation, we should respond in worship as the disciples do in the story following this one.
Jesus, the Son of God
Jesus is the Son of God as the disciples declare here in Matthew 14. He is the image of the invisible God as it says in Colossians 1. Or in the words of the writer of Hebrews he is the radiance of God’s glory and the exact imprint of his nature. He is the final word from God, clearly revealing the Father to the world.
When the Apostle John tells this story in his Gospel in John 6 he gives us a bit more of the whole story. After the miraculous feeding the following day the crowds show up again and Jesus makes reference to the exodus and how God fed the people in the wilderness with manna. In so many words Jesus says that the manna in the wilderness was pointing forward to him.
He then tells them “I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst” (John 6:35).
This miracle is not just a literal event where Jesus fed a massive group of people. It is a picture of how Christ’s body would be broken and given for the life of the world. We are seeing that all of God’s revelation, everything in Scripture, somehow is pointing towards Jesus.
Jesus is what Scripture is about. Jesus is what life is about. We are here for him.
When we turn to him in true faith and repentance, and strive to walk in the way that he walked, we find that abundant life he offers.
This is our hope today in our small problems and in our big problems.
Amen.
