SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/8/2022 9:25 AM
My Worship Time Focus: “Intro to ‘The
Miraculous Feeding’”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew 14:14-21
Message of the verses: “14 And when He
went ashore, He saw a great multitude, and felt compassion for them, and healed
their sick. 15 And when it was evening, the disciples came to Him, saying,
"The place is desolate, and the time is already past; so send the
multitudes away, that they may go into the villages and buy food for
themselves." 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 And He said, "Bring them
here to Me." 19 And ordering the multitudes to recline on the grass, He
took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward heaven, He blessed
the food, and breaking the loaves He gave them to the disciples, and the
disciples gave to the multitudes, 20 and they all ate, and were satisfied. And they
picked up what was left over of the broken pieces, twelve full baskets. 21 And
there were about five thousand men who ate, aside from women and children.”
I have mentioned that the feeding of the five
thousand is the only miracle that is recorded in all four gospels and this
testifies to its unique importance. It
is important to remember that in each gospel account that this miracle is
placed at the climax of the Lord’s ministry.
We
have been studying the book of Matthew for close to three years now and we have
seen that when Jesus began His extensive Galilean ministry, it was almost
completely public as the Lord sought out the crowds, as He went from town to
town and city to city proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom to everyone who
would listen to Him. Jesus, our King
openly manifested Himself before the people of Israel and offered them the
opportunity to receive Him as their Lord.
We
saw that during this time that the religious leaders were very skeptical, and
they soon became unfriendly and then became hostile to Him. MacArthur adds “The clearer Jesus’ message
became, the higher the flames of their opposition flared. With the death of John the Baptist and Herod’s
fear that Jesus was John returned from the dead, the political antagonism was
also becoming manifest. Herod felt
threatened by Jesus just as he had been by John the Baptist, and he would not
have hesitated doing to Jesus what he had done to John.”
As
we have been looking at the reaction of the people during this time period we
see that it was mixed and also changeable.
We saw that the citizens of Nazareth had two times rejected Jesus
because of their familiarity with Him as a boy and young man. Many of the people were fascinated by Jesus’
miracles, but that is as far as they would go.
Now with this miracle of the feeding of the five thousand Jesus’
popularity had reached its pinnacle as the people then tried to take Him by
force to be their king and their deliverer as seen in John 6:15 “So Jesus,
perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him
king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.”
Now as the religious and the political opposition
became much more intense for our Lord and the allegiance of the crowds more wavering,
we then see Jesus begin to spend less time in public and more time in private
with the Twelve. It was during the last
year of His life that Jesus devoted the
majority of His attention to His disciples as He was preparing them for what
was soon to happen to Him, that is speaking of the crucifixion. Jesus was preparing these twelve men (minus
Judas and plus Matthias) to do the most important job ever to be done by anyone
other than Himself. My thoughts go back
to a very early time in the ministry of Jesus Christ, after He had healed Peter’s
mother-in-law and then many others after sunset, that He went out in the
darkness of the night to pray, and what He was praying about to His Father was
the choice of the disciples that He would make.
As I was thinking about that time of prayer of Jesus to His Father I
began to think about just how very important that choice would be in the
upcoming history of the world. Jesus,
through the power of the Holy Spirit used these men to change the world, and
that change is still going on and will continue to go on until the culmination of
the Church age at the Rapture of the Church found in 1 Thess. 4:13-18 and also
in 1 Corinthians 15:53-58.
Lord
willing we will finish this introduction in our next SD.
Spiritual meaning for my life today: As I think of the great importance of Jesus’
prayer about choosing His disciples, I can’t help but think about how powerful
true prayer is, and it is my desire to pray like Jesus prayed, that is remember
how important prayer is and then pray, pray in the power of the Holy Spirit, as
He leads me to pray what I pray about for the cause of Christ.
My Steps of Faith for Today: Warren Wiersbe writes the following in his
book “the Strategy of Satan” concerning putting the spiritual armor on: “We put on the armor by means of prayer, and
we pray by means of the Holy Spirit.”
That is how I desire to pray.
6/8/2022 10:00 AM
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