I was reading through the Gospel of
Matthew this morning and there was something that amazed me. I read
how Jesus provided food for five thousand men with merely five
loaves of bread and two fish. Now that is amazing and wonderful in
itself, but it was not what caught my attention this morning.
What amazed me this morning is that
merely one chapter later Jesus wanted to provide food again, this
time for four thousand men. And the reaction of the disciples was a
classic to me:
Matthew 15:33 "And where would we
get enough food out here in the wilderness for all of them to
eat?"
Even after they saw Him perform an
amazing miracle of feeding the five thousand men, here they doubted
that He would be able to do the same and feed the four thousand.
Amazing how quickly they either forgot about His previous miracle
(which is highly unlikely), or how quickly they lost faith.
Then just a little while later they
were in a boat on the Sea of Galilee and they discovered that they
didn't bring any food along. And when Jesus told them that they
should watch out for the yeast of the Pharisees and Sadducees, they
immediately decided that He was saying this because they forgot
their bread. And Jesus was amazed at their little faith.
Matthew 16:8-10 "You have so little
faith! Why are you worried about having no food? Don't you remember
the five thousand I fed with five loaves, and the baskets of food
that were left over? Don't you remember the four thousand I fed
with seven loaves, with baskets of food left over?"
When I read this I couldn't believe
their lack of faith either. It was quite obvious to me, that if
Jesus were able to feed five thousand, He would surely be able to
do it again and again?
But then I realized, we are just
the same. It is easy to point fingers at them, but we are exactly
the same. We tend to forget how the Lord looked after us in the
past, whenever a new problem peek its head through the door. We
tend to forget His promises. We tend to forget what He has planned
for us and fall in a rut whenever things don't go our way. We tend
to run to 'prophets' of our time, when we feel that we haven't
'heard' of the Lord lately. We tend to forget that God's prophecies
concerning us is binding and there to build on.
We need to work on our faith. We
need to look up to Jesus, the One who fed five thousand, and trust
Him enough to 'feed' us.
Father God, we are sorry that we
lack faith some times. When we look at our circumstances we tend to
forget to look only at You. Help us to develop our faith. In Jesus
Name. Amen