Amy C Walters

Jesus Feeds the 5,000 | Luke 9:10-17

Just before the Feeding of the 5,000 in Luke 9, the disciples travel from village to village preaching and healing by Jesus’ power and authority. But when they are confronted with the overwhelming need of the crowd, they revert to their own resources and solutions, forgetting that they are dependent on God.

Before this story, in Luke 9:1-6, Jesus sends out the 12 disciples to go from village to village preaching and healing. Just what Jesus has been doing in his ministry of traveling and preaching, he now commissions the 12 disciples to do. Jesus gives them authority and tells them to not take anything with them. So the disciples go. And by God’s power, they are able to preach and to heal. 

In verse 10, at the start of this story, they return. They have come back from their traveling ministry, and they’re coming to tell Jesus how that went. 

It’s like when you’ve come back from a short-term mission trip. And you’re so excited about all the things that God did in you and through you, and you just want to tell everyone everything. 

I imagine that the disciples probably felt like that and wanted to spend hours telling Jesus all about it. So Jesus takes them to Bethsaida, and they’re ready for this time of just hanging out with Jesus and telling him more. 

Instead, they’re met by this huge crowd of people with so many needs. They’re trying to figure out now, how are we going to deal with all of this? 

The disciples were fresh off of this short-term trip where they’ve been able to do so much by the power of God. And yet, when confronted by this overwhelming need from the people, they try to come up with their own solutions. 

Plan A is to send the people away and let them fend for themselves. So they go to present this solution to Jesus. 

Notice that they don’t come to Jesus asking him what they should do. They come telling him what he should do. Imagine the audacity to tell Jesus what he should do! And yet, don’t we do that all the time?

Thankfully, Jesus does not take their advice. Instead, he tells them, “You give them something to eat.” 

If you were one of those disciples and Jesus said, “You give them something to eat,” what would you be thinking and feeling? “Wait, what? Me? How am I supposed to do that? I don’t have the resources. We only have five loaves and two fish. We can’t buy anymore. It’s impossible.” 

Do you think Jesus was actually suggesting that the disciples themselves have the power to do this themselves? Or was Jesus trying to show them something with it?

I think Jesus sometimes puts us in situations where we are over our heads to remind us of our utter dependence on him. The disciples had just gone and done incredible things. In fact, the start of the story refers to them as “apostles,” meaning “sent ones.” They had been sent and healed people through God’s power.

And yet here, when they are confronted with this challenge of feeding the people, they revert to their own ways of doing things, their old patterns of trying to solve problems. They revert to seeing their own limitations, instead of remembering what’s possible through God. 

And so Jesus challenges them with that. He points out that yeah, you can’t do this yourself. You have to depend on me. And Jesus does have a solution–a solution, in fact, that will blow their minds. 

But he doesn’t reveal to them every step of that plan. He tells them one step at a time. First he says, “Have the people sit down in groups of about 50 each,” and the disciples do that.

Then Jesus takes the food, thanks God for it, gives it to the disciples, and they go and distribute it. 

Jesus doesn’t tell the disciples everything this is going to involve. He gives them one step at a time, and they must wait on him for each of those steps to see what he is going to do.

Our key truth for today is that we are dependent on God. 

This is something that we need to be reminded of often. Hopefully, we are involved in ministries, we are doing things in Jesus’ name, and God is empowering us to do those things. But we can easily start to forget the source of that power. We can start to think that we are the reason these things are happening. We can fall into old habits of how we fix things. 

How often when we pray do we tell Jesus how to fix the problem? How often do we go to him and say, “This is what you need to do, God,” instead of saying, “Lord, we don’t have the power to do this ourselves. You must fix it.” 

And here’s the thing. When we come to him with our own solutions, they are based on our own limited understanding, our own limited resources. And our solutions are terrible! 

But when Jesus does his work, he does it in such amazing and creative and resourceful ways to blow our minds. We could not have imagined such a solution! So why would we want our own solutions to work when God is able to do far more?

We are dependent on God, and that dependence is a good thing. So the next time that you feel overwhelmed at not being able to accomplish something, remember first of all that Jesus is enough. And thank God for reminding you to be dependent on him, that you cannot do it on your own.