We need to be like the five loaves and two fish in Matthew

Let’s look at Matthew and the event known as the feeding of the five thousand in Matthew 14:13-21

13 When Jesus heard of it, he departed thence by ship into a desert place apart: and when the people had heard thereof, they followed him on foot out of the cities.
14 And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick.
15 And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, This is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals.
16 But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart; give ye them to eat.
17 And they say unto him, We have here but five loaves, and two fishes.
18 He said, Bring them hither to me.
19 And he commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass, and took the five loaves, and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed, and brake, and gave the loaves to his disciples, and the disciples to the multitude.
20 And they did all eat, and were filled: and they took up of the fragments that remained twelve baskets full.
21 And they that had eaten were about five thousand men, beside women and children.

This was a mighty miracle which we love to read about but how many of us have experienced this in our own lives? These stories weren’t put in the Bible to show us what we could do if we were perfect like Jesus. Miracles aren’t for the super-spiritual only, they are for you and me and they are in the Bible to show us what we could have as a starting point if we believe.

The scriptures tell us this in John 14:12-14

12 Verily, verily, I say unto you, He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do; because I go unto my Father.
13 And whatsoever ye shall ask in my name, that will I do, that the Father may be glorified in the Son.
14 If ye shall ask any thing in my name, I will do it.

We really need to understand and hold on to this if we want to see answers to prayers in our lives. But what stops us from seeing the sort of miracles that the disciples seemed to see on a daily basis?

One reason can be found in the feeding of the five thousand. Jesus was preaching when He heard about the death of John, so He took Himself into the desert, presumably to pray and be alone. However, people found out where He was and followed Him. Whatever mood or state of mind Jesus was in was forgotten when He saw people in need, and, as it says in verse 14, He had compassion towards them. His primary goal was to do the will of God, and whatever he was feeling came second to what His Father had asked Him to do.

He healed the sick and no doubt talked to each and every one of them, and before long the day had gone and the disciples came to Him and asked Jesus to send the people away so they could go to the local towns to get some food. No doubt they too were feeling hungry. The disciples were weary.

Even those closest to Jesus could lose the joy in serving. It is very easy even when doing a work for God to let yourself slip into a rut, where it becomes a job and you start doing it because you think you should and not because you love the Lord and want to serve Him. It is important to always give thanks even in the darkest times. Sometimes the disciples forgot who Jesus was, they could have come to Him for help but they only saw the humanistic solution, to get rid of everyone. Jesus on the other hand saw everything but the humanistic solution.

Jesus and the disciples came to the problem in completely different ways;

The disciples saw a demand which they thought couldn’t be fulfilled without a lot of hard work and organisation.

Jesus saw an opportunity to give regardless of any natural resource, calling on God’s never-ending Grace.

The disciples came to the problem from the side of the Law which demands in order to get, Jesus came from the side of grace which gives that you might receive.

Jesus was always trying to educate the disciples into thinking from a position of grace and to leave the Law behind; after all He had come to fulfil the Law as we see back in Matthew 5:17

17 Think not that I am come to destroy the law, or the prophets: I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil.

The Law always demands and doesn’t give, it can’t, because it’s just a list of rules. God’s grace asks for nothing but gives us everything we need.

As we get to verse 16 Jesus is trying to teach the disciples a lesson in faith and grace. Instead of just doing it for them He tested them, saying, they don’t need to go, YOU feed them, giving them a chance to think or even ask for help. Unfortunately they did neither.

16 But Jesus said unto them, They need not depart; give ye them to eat.

In the original translation verse 16 and 17 states:

16. Yet Jesus said to them “They have no need to be coming away. You give them something to eat”.
17. Yet they are saying to Him. “We have nothing here except five cakes and two fishes”.

The disciples saw what they had as nothing because of their lack of faith, a lack of faith brought about by thinking in the way of the Law, by thinking that it’s all about ‘demand’ and ‘works’.

Seeing now they lacked faith, Jesus shows us how to take hold of God’s grace to answer the naturally unanswerable.

Was Jesus bothered about how much food they had? No, because in the next verse He asked for the five loaves and two fish and told the disciples to get everyone to sit down. At this point I’m sure the disciples were looking at each other and starting to think of ways out if the crowd became restless and disappointed.

Jesus took what He had, gave thanks and blessed it, then handed the bread and fish to His disciples to give out. Jesus didn’t ask for more, which naturally speaking He should have done, He believed and had faith that His father would provide and He did.

How can this be, could His disciples really have lacked the faith to do this themselves?

We need to get hold of these scriptures and understand them, then we will see miracles and answers to prayers. God is not a liar; if He says something can happen then it will. So why then don’t we see these things? One reason is we put ourselves under the Law.

The essence of the Law is demand. God demands obedience under the Law while the essence of grace is to give, but to give of God, so we aren’t giving from ourselves there is no limit to how much we can give or any natural constraints about what we can give. If it’s for God then He will supply everything we need, so we CAN do it.

If we start to think God is demanding and authoritarian then we are doing Him a disservice and putting ourselves under the Law. When we examine ourselves and WE try to fix things ourselves, again we are putting ourselves under the Law, thinking that by ‘doing’ we will please God.

But what of it, how can this hinder our faith and stop us seeing answers to prayers?

The reason is simple. To turn to the Law, whether by choice or not, we take ourselves out of grace and so our faith is weakened. 2 Corinthians 3:5-7

5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;
6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
7 But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:

Gal 5:4 is very clear that by choosing to live under the Law there are consequences, we are under the New Testament not the letter of the Law.

4 Christ is become of no effect unto you, whosoever of you are justified by the law; ye are fallen from grace.

You may not make a conscious decision to put yourself under the Law, but it’s so easy to slip into a life of demand and forget God has already given so much to you, you just need to have faith to ask for it.

We do not rely on God and His grace if we turn to the Law, the Law is not life but death and so by putting ourselves under it we turn our back on His grace and our faith is affected because we can never please God though following the Law or works. Romans 4:13-14

13 For the promise, that he should be the heir of the world, was not to Abraham, or to his seed, through the law, but through the righteousness of faith.
14 For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of none effect:

If we want to see the blessings and miracles which are promised to us then we must come to Christ as we are, like the five loaves and two fish, in their own strength they were useless but through Grace they fed five thousand plus. It was clear that no one, no person, could take the credit for God’s grace, the thanks go entirely to Him. God put the five loaves and two fish into that situation knowing that it was enough.

When you come to God with a need, come with thanksgiving for a God who is a provider, a God who knew your need before you came to Him and a God who will always answer your prayer if it is in His will. Also come with boldness and faith that God will answer your prayers.

Have faith and wait

This is where the issues start, answers come in God’s time not ours, but answers do come if we ask in a spirit of grace and not Law. Part of asking is also listening, and leaving it in the hands of God. If we don’t, once we decide to take matters into our own hands and ‘help God’, then we move out of the grace of God, we take back the prayer and replace grace with works.

We then spend days of struggling trying this and that, to second-guess what God wants from us. We resort to tradition and habits, for example reading a chapter of the bible every morning before work, praying before every meal, speaking to at least one person a day, all in the hope that we will please God in some way and He will look favourably on our prayers and what ‘we’ are ‘doing’.

We need to come to God in simple faith, not having built up any preconceived ideas of what God is wanting from us, because He isn’t. He only asks us to believe. Hebrews 11:6

6 But without faith it is impossible to please him: for he that cometh to God must believe that he is, and that he is a rewarder of them that diligently seek him.

Many times we ask God for things that we don’t believe He will give us, we also ask for things we really need but as soon as we ask we make up excuses as to why we won’t get what we want. Matt 21:21-22

21 Jesus answered and said unto them, Verily I say unto you, If ye have faith, and doubt not, ye shall not only do this which is done to the fig tree, but also if ye shall say unto this mountain, Be thou removed, and be thou cast into the sea; it shall be done.
22 And all things, whatsoever ye shall ask in prayer, believing, ye shall receive.

All we have to do is believe and come with an expectant heart, we don’t have to be anything special. The five loaves and two fish were nothing in our eyes but everything in His. You could say they were where they should be in order for God to use them; in obedience someone gave that small meal, which is all he asks us to be, obedient and faithful, believing in His power and not our own.

Eph 1:17-19 from the Amplified version is a prayer of understanding,

17 [For I always pray to] the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of glory, that He may grant you a spirit of wisdom and revelation [of insight into mysteries and secrets] in the [deep and intimate] knowledge of Him,
18 By having the eyes of your heart flooded with light, so that you can know and understand the hope to which He has called you, and how rich is His glorious inheritance in the saints (His set-apart ones),
19 And [so that you can know and understand] what is the immeasurable and unlimited and surpassing greatness of His power in and for us who believe, as demonstrated in the working of His mighty strength,

God has so much He wants to do, in and through us, but we must learn to sit back and let God take the lead, to stop ‘helping Him’ and start praying for wisdom and understanding. We need to be more like the five loaves and two fish, just be what we are and let God do the rest, just be where God wants us to be and let Him in, and through us He will bless others as well as ourselves.

And maybe, just maybe, like the five loaves and two fish, be prepared to give our all for God even if it means we must die.