Saturday, January 18, 2025

2025.01.18 Hopewell @Home ▫ Matthew 14:13–21

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?

Sample prayer:  Lord, thank You for taking upon our humanity, and bearing the full effects of the curse against our own sin. And thank You for coming to us in Your compassion, healing us, feeding us, and atoning for us. Grant that we might always come to You for complete relief from all of the guilt, power, and effects of our sin—and, at last, even from its presence. For, we ask it in the Name of the God-Man, Your Son, our Lord Jesus Christ, AMEN!

Suggested songs: ARP23B “The Lord’s My Shepherd” or TPH299 “Joy to the World!” 

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