While the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000 appears in all four gospels, there is another similar miracle in Mark called the feeding of the 4,000. In Mark 8:2-3, Jesus said to His disciples, “I have compassion on the multitude, because they have continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their own houses they will faint on the way; for some of them have come from afar.” I believe all the numbers and words in this miracle are significant. So, I ask myself, what significance is the three days about?
Immediately, I think of Matthew 12:40 when Jesus said to the scribes and Pharisees who were asking for a sign, “An evil and adulterous generation seeks after a sign, and no sign will be given to it except the sign of the prophet Jonah. For as Jonah was three days in the belly of the great fish, so will the Son of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth.” While Jonah was in the belly of the whale, he prayed and said in Jonah 2:1-7, “I cried out to the LORD because of my affliction, and He answered me. Out of the belly of Sheol I cried and You heard my voice…The earth with its bars closed behind me forever; Yet You have brought up my life from the pit, O LORD, my God. When my soul fainted within me, I remembered the LORD; and my prayer went up to You into Your holy temple.”
Just as the Israelites grew faint in the wilderness and cried out and God provided manna, Jesus is providing bread to the multitude who have grown faint. Just as Jonah’s soul grew faint three days in the fish, so too did the multitude’s soul grow faint for three days for want of God’s truth and word to deliver them from their blindness and bondage to sin. Just as Jonah spent three days in the “belly of Sheol,” so too did Jesus spend three days in the heart of the earth. In just the same way were the multitude three days awaiting deliverance from their lost condition, perishing in their blindness headed for Sheol, awaiting God’s salvation through the truth of their Messiah. Jesus fed them manna in this wilderness of their blind, lost condition, the manna of the Word. Indeed, He himself was the bread of life sent from heaven, whose body would soon be broken to deliver them from hell. Thus we see, this miracle foreshadowed the cross.
Next, in Mark 8:5, Jesus asked the disciples, “How many loaves do you have?” They said, “seven.” So, He blessed the loaves along with 3 small fish and fed the multitude and when they were satisfied, the disciples picked up 7 large baskets of fragments. When Jesus called Simon Peter and his brother Andrew from their fishing boat in Matthew 4:19, He said to them, “Follow Me, and I will make you fishers of men.” Then in Matthew 13:48, Jesus compared the kingdom of heaven to the dragnet of a fishermen who gathered fish “of every kind” from the sea. And then they “sat and gathered the good into vessels, but threw away the bad.” The fish were the wicked and the just and the fishermen were angels who would separate them at the “end of the age.”
So, fish were people, and both Jew and Gentile are two of the three fish Jesus blessed and passed out. The last fish was Himself. In the gospels, Jesus refers to Himself as the Son of Man more than 80 times, more than any other term. He emphasized this term to show the magnitude of His incarnation. So, I think perhaps, He Himself is the third fish that fed the masses.
As for the seven loaves and seven baskets, after discussing this with Dennis, we came up with some significant instances of the number 7 in the Bible. First, there were seven days of Creation, signifying the number of completion, just as the seven loaves fed the multitude signify the number of completion for the gospel and Word of God reaching the earth before Jesus’ Second Coming. Next, the Israelite warriors were instructed by God to circle the city of Jericho 7 times before God brought down the city walls supernaturally and gave them the victory in battle. In the same way, the gospel brings the multitude of the earth the victory over sin and death through Jesus’ Cross. Next, Jesus speaks to the seven churches in the book of Revelation, speaking to the whole of the Body of Christ to come as we can find ourselves in one or other of these churches. Just so, are the loaves and baskets likened to the Body of Christ, fed by His Word and mercy through the cross, in its division of types of churches.
Finally, when Joseph gave the interpretation of Pharaoh’s dream to him, he told him the seven fat cows represented 7 years of plenty (just before the 7 years of famine to follow represented by the seven thin cows). These 7 years of plenty is likened to the abundance of God’s mercy through the gospel on the earth, as the multitudes of the saved eat their fill and leave their fragments to be picked up at the end of the age in their redemption when they are recognized for their good works. The abundance of this harvest brings to mind Jesus words to His disciples in Matthew 9:35, “The harvest is plentiful, but the laborers are few.”
In the miracle just before this in Mark 7:31-37, Jesus opened the ears and loosed the tongue of a deaf-mute man. Just as so, Jesus and the disciples, the laborers, fed this multitude the loaves and gave them “ears to hear” and tongues loosed to proclaim the truth of God to the world around them. Dennis told me that in Jesus’ day, only 2-3% of the world’s population believed in the God of Abraham and the other 97% were pagan idolators. That harvest is huge! All awaiting the Word of God in the three fish that make up Salvation: Jew, Gentile, and the Son of Man, and these 7 loaves! By planting the seed of His Word and opening the ears of this multitude and loosing their tongues, God was preparing laborers to “Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations…” (Matthew 28:19)
Let us then do the same. Let us serve as the much-needed laborers in God’s abundant harvest. In this world we see filled with the lost and perishing, let us work with honor to share the Word of God and feed the masses, to open the ears of the lost and loose their tongues as well to share the gospel with even more souls. Let us be about the Lord’s business faithfully revealing His Love and Mercy to those around us so that they too can experience the gift of grace that we are so blessed to know. I hope this message edifies and encourages you today. God bless you!