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Lesson OneThe Steady Ministry and the Fickle Response5 Activities1 Assessment
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Lesson TwoThe Sermon on the Mount: How God's Kingdom Works5 Activities1 Assessment
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Lesson ThreeCan We Trust the New Testament Books?5 Activities1 Assessment
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Course Wrap-UpCourse Completion1 Activity1 Assessment
Discussion Questions
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Why do you think the Feeding of the Five Thousand is the only miracle of Jesus that appears in all four Gospels? Explain your thoughts.
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16 Replies
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This miracle would be mentioned in all the gospels because all Jews would know the same story of how God provided the people manna with Moses and understand the example of how Jesus is feeding the 5,000. Provisions are coming from God.
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This miracle powerfully connects Jesus to Moses–the one who God uses to deliver his people from oppression into freedom, providing the sustaining manna for the 40 years of wilderness travel before entering the promised land. Jesus not only delivers God’s people from oppression into freedom, he IS the bread that gives us spiritual life, as John records him saying, but also as Jesus himself institutes as the sacrament of the new covenant in his final Passover meal with his disciples, and the church everywhere remembers with every observance of the Lord’s Supper.
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This shows Jesus humanity, deity and the necessity of having a relationship with Him and also is symbolic of Moses and the children of Israel being fed in the wilderness by God’s provision.
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In many miracles, Jesus was the only one initiating and accomplishing the miracle. I think that this particular miracle was prominent in the minds of the apostles, not least because Jesus involved them from beginning to end. Jesus challenged them to meet the enormous need: “You give them something to eat” (Mark 6:37). They went to do ground research when Jesus asked them how many loaves there were. After walking among the crowd to inquire, they found to their dismay only five loaves and two fishes! (Mark 6:38) They could feel the hopelessness and urgency of the situation. Then they were involved in seating the people, in distributing the replicating food, in collecting the surplus. Their personal involvement in surveying the people, digging out the scant resources, discussing solutions, fretting over the hopelessness, co-operating with the execution of Jesus’ provision, marvelling over the surplus – all these must have made an indelible impression on them to trust Jesus. Of course, Jesus must have meant it as an object lesson to build faith in them.
As Dr Blomberg said, many miracles of Jesus had an evidential purpose (they gave evidence that Jesus was the Son of God), an evangelistic purpose (they encouraged people who had little or no faith to believe), and an empathetic purpose (Jesus had compassion on the crowd who were hungry and so far removed from any eating place). Of course, this miracle of feeding the five thousand fulfilled these purposes like the other miracles do. The main reason for its inclusion in all gospels must be the deep impression the apostles got from being personally involved in the execution of this miracle. This explains the oft-stated axiom that many things are more caught than taught. We catch it by being a participant instead of an observer. Biblical truths work this way too.
#Miracles
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Practically, it was well known, and the account would have been familiar to people far and wide. This would allow more people to connect with it on a more personal level, drawing more significance as people share the gospels. It also shows all of the purposes of miracles that the speaker explained in the lecture: it gives evidence of Jesus’ divinity, it was evangelical in that many who were simply curious were able to hear and see Jesus’ power, it shows how Jesus cared for humanity with compassion for their needs, and it shows that the Kingdom was breaking through. Therefore, each gospel writer would have much to pull from for their different purposes – Mark-evidence, Matthew-eschatological, Luke-evangelical, and John-empathetic.
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Describe, in your own words, the miracles involving Gentiles discussed in this lesson. Why were these miracles important? What implications might there have been if Jesus had not performed any miracles among the Gentiles?
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20 Replies
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It would show Jesus’ love all people—Jew and Gentile. It is His power and His grace that’s revealed in His miracles.
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The cleansing of the Syro-Phoenecian woman’s daughter, of the Geresene demoniac, the feeding of the 4,000–these miracles involving Gentiles are important as they show that God’s power and compassion to deliver people from the power of sin, Satan, and suffering, are not limited to the Jewish people, but are for everyone.
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Jesus goes to His own people first and they rejected Him. The importance of the miracles involving the gentiles was because they had faith that Jesus could do them. This is allowed the gospel to be spread to all nations of the world.
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In Syro-Phoenicia, Jesus exorcised the daughter of a Gentile woman (Mark 7:24-30). It showed that, although Jesus was sent first to the house of Israel, this was only a priority in time and resources. When the right hour came, he also ministered to the Gentiles because God loved all men.
In the Decapolis, Jesus healed a deaf mute (Mark 7:31-37). This is reminiscent of the prophecy of Isaiah 35:5-6 that the ears of the deaf will be unstopped and the mute will shout for joy in the eschatological kingdom of God. Yet in Jesus’ miracle, we already see a foretaste of this kingdom coming to the Gentiles!
When a crowd gathered to listen to him, but they brought no food, Jesus fed these four thousand people (Mark 8:1-10). Jesus’ willingness to perform this miracle for these Gentiles implies that he feeds all who are spiritually hungry, whether Jew or Gentile. Mark continues to report that, in contrast, Jesus refused to show the Pharisees any sign from heaven, because they were merely testing him (Mark 8:11-13).
Jesus healed a blind man in Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26). When Jesus put his hands on him the first time, the man could only see vaguely. When Jesus repeated the act, he could see everything clearly. This seems to convey figuratively that the Gentiles only saw God vaguely because they did not have the law to instruct them, but even they could be made to see God clearly. In contrast, the Pharisees, who always had the law with them, could not see what was so plain to the Gentiles.
Taken together, these miracles show that the Gentiles have always been included in the salvation plan in God’s mind. The Great Commission given in Matt 28:18-20 to go into all the world was not an after-thought that emerged after Jesus rose from the dead. The salvation of the Gentiles was all along present in Jesus’ earthly ministry.
The occurrence of these miracles among the Gentiles was also a satire on the Jews. Jesus could not do many miracles in his hometown because the Jews did not believe (Mark 6:5-6). As I stated, he refused to do miracles for the Pharisees who came to test him (Mark 8:11-13). But among the spiritually hungry Gentiles who came to him, his miracles fulfilled their evidential and evangelistic purposes. People believed, and the Father was glorified.
#Miracles
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The miracles were healings of physical ailments or conditions and of provision. These show that Christ came to be the Saviour and provider to all including the Gentiles. Had there been no miracles among the Gentiles, the unity of God’s church on Earth would be fractured.