Matthew 14:15-18 “When it was evening, His disciples came to Him, saying, "This is a deserted place, and the hour is already late. Send the multitudes away, that they may go into the villages and buy themselves food." (16) But Jesus said to them, "They do not need to go away. You give them something to eat." (17) And they said to Him, "We have here only five loaves and two fish." (18) He said, "Bring them here to Me.”
In this section we are discussing the biblical truth that all the Lord’s saints have more than sufficient faith to live this life just as God intended, i.e. by faith. The above quoted passage of scripture highlights that same truth for us, for in this passage Jesus challenged His disciples to do what He eventually had to do Himself, which was to feed the multitudes. Jesus would not have instructed the disciples to do something they were not capable of doing, for that would have made Him unjust and Jesus is not unjust. In fact the scripture teaches us that Jesus was testing His disciples on this occasion to see how they would respond to His challenge (John 6:5-6). And so we see that the disciples responded in the same manner that most saints would, they looked at their own natural resources to see if they were able to carry out Jesus’ instruction, for another gospel account reveals to us that they checked to see if they had sufficient money available to buy food for everyone and found out they didn’t have nearly enough (John 6:7). They then looked at how much food they had available and obviously realised that five loaves and two fish were going to go nowhere in feeding such a large crowd of people. And so clearly the disciples failed the Lord’s test. So why is that? The reason is because they looked at their own natural resources to solve the problem, whereas Jesus wanted them to look to God’s supernatural resources to solve the problem and He wanted them to use their faith to do that. Clearly Jesus knew that the disciples had the faith to do that or He would not have instructed them to feed the multitude in the first place. And so in the end Jesus had to use His faith to perform the miracle of feeding the multitude with just five loaves of bread and two fish. But the main point I wanted to make from this account is that as far as Jesus was concerned the disciples had all the faith they needed to do exactly what Jesus did, and that same truth is applicable for every saint today, for we have all received the same gift of faith.
Michael E.B. Maher
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