Read Matthew 14:13–21
Questions
from the Scripture text: What did
Jesus hear (Mt 14:13, cf. Mt 14:11–12)? Where did He go? With
whom? But who followed Him? How? What did Jesus see (Mt 14:14)? How did His heart respond?
What did He do? For how long (Mt 14:15)? Who come to Him at this point? What do they
say to Him? What do they want Him to do? Why? What alternative does Jesus give
(Mt 14:16)? How do they respond to Him—what do they have (Mt 14:17)? What does He say to do
with the loaves and fish (Mt 14:18)? What did He tell the multitudes to do (Mt 14:19)? To where does He look when
He blesses the food? Then what does He do to the loves? To whom does He give
them? What do the disciples do with them? What do all of them do (Mt 14:20)? With what effect? What do
they take up afterward? How much? How many of whom had eaten (Mt 14:21)? Besides whom?
How does Jesus grieve? Matthew
14:13–21 prepares us
for the sermon in the morning public worship on the coming Lord’s Day. In these
nine verses of Holy Scripture, the Holy Spirit teaches us that Jesus
grieves in fellowship with His Father, but also by compassionately overcoming
the Fall for His people.
This passage gives us an opportunity to see how
Jesus Himself responds to grief. We saw the response of His and John’s
disciples: they “took away the body and buried it, and went and told Jesus” (Mt 14:12). Now we
get to observe what happened “when Jesus heard it” (Mt 14:13). “He
departed from there” (i.e. Nazareth, cf. Mt 13:58). What is He like in grief?
Jesus pious in grief. Mt
14:13 tells us that Jesus
“departed from there by boat to a deserted place by Himself.” But we know that He is not entirely by
Himself. Just as He has taught us to carry out all of our religion before our
Father, Who sees in secret (cf. Mt 6:4,
6, 18), it is to that Father that
He now withdraws.
Jesus selfless in grief. Jesus has left Nazareth, where “He did not do many
mighty works” (cf. Mt 12:58). But the multitudes, who had seen Him do many
mighty works, hear that He has left Nazareth and seek Him out. In the midst of
His grief, Jesus goes out in the morning and sees the multitude. And,
marvelously, He does not withdraw.
For Jesus, the piety of His fellowship with the
Father is not in tension with the piety of His service to others. He has come
into the world because His Father loves sinners. And now, with that same love,
when He sees a multitude of those desperate to be delivered from the effects of
the fall. And He is “moved with compassion for them, and healed their sick” (Mt 14:14). And He
does this from “when He went out” (almost certainly the early morning, Mt 14:14) until
“evening” when “the hour is already late” (Mt 14:15).
Jesus is not just relieving some symptoms of the
Fall. He’s continuing to attest to Himself as the great Solution to the Fall.
He addresses earthly/temporal need, but especially spiritually/eternal need. This
perfect human reflection of divine love is expressed in the midst of Jesus’s
own grief and agony. It is a whisper of what will soon be shouted at the cross.
Jesus almighty over grief. Death and disease are not the only effects of the
Fall featured in this short passage. Hunger and weariness are also effects.
“Cursed is the ground for your sake; in toil you shall eat of it all the days
of your life. Both thorns and thistles it shall bring forth for you, and you
shall eat the herb of the field. In the sweat of your face you shall eat bread”
(cf. Gen 3:17–19). So, here the multitude is weary and hungry, and
the disciples’ solution is to send them into the villages to buy food (Mt 14:15).
The disciples don’t lack compassion; they lack the
ability to rule creation and reverse the Fall. Our Lord Jesus does not lack
this ability! Jesus actually emphasizes this to them by saying, “You give
them…” (Mt
14:16). When they present their
resources as proof of impossibility, He emphasizes the difference about Himself
by saying, “Bring them here to Me” (Mt 14:18).
Jesus indicates both His true humanity, and His
divine personhood, from whence His power comes, by “looking up to heaven,” when
He blesses the bread in Mt
14:19. He is not merely able to
address the needs of maybe twenty thousand people (five thousand is just the
men, Mt 14:21). He provides a super abundance with more leftover
than there had been at the beginning. And He brings this abundance as the
covenant Lord of His people, as implied by the number “12” and that they are
numbered by household.
We toil under the curse of the fall. Let us come to
this Jesus, and find our rest from it!
Of death, disease, hunger, and
weariness, from which effects of the Fall are you most suffering? How are you
resting upon the Lord Jesus for that? But for what do you most need the Lord to
reverse the effects of the Fall? How are you resting upon the Lord Jesus for
that?
Suggested songs: ARP23B “The Lord’s My Shepherd” or TPH299 “Joy to the World!”
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