<p>9:17 <i>And they ate and were all filled- </i>&quot;All&quot; ate; and eating together at a banquet was a sign of religious fellowship. There were for sure some there who were Gentiles, unclean, or simply curious. They were &quot;filled&quot;, perhaps alluding to Dt. 8:10, &ldquo;you shall eat and be full&rdquo;. The blessings of an obedient Israel were counted to this random crowd. By grace. They were &quot;filled&quot; superabundantly. The Lord's generosity is wonderful.</p><p><i>And there was taken up of the leftovers twelve baskets</i>- Eph. 1:8 talks of how God has lavished or&nbsp;abounded&nbsp;His grace upon us. The same word is used about the Lord not only made miraculous loaves and fishes, but there was so much that&nbsp;abounded (&ldquo;leftovers&rdquo;) that it filled twelve baskets, another implication that here were assembled the new Israel. The word for &quot;baskets&quot; here is a different word to that used in the feeding of the 4000 in Mt. 15:37. This here&nbsp;is the smaller basket, used for carrying ritually clean food when in Gentile areas. The Lord imparted a sense of ritual holiness to the otherwise random and unclean.</p><p>Why did the Lord do that, and why make the disciples pick up all those crumbs? Surely to give them an object lesson in how God delights in abounding to us. He didn&rsquo;t just give the people food; He abounded to them. The record of each of the feeding miracles, in each of the Gospels, uses this word translated &ldquo;remained&rdquo; in commenting about the fragments that were left over- although the real meaning is &lsquo;to abound&rsquo;. Each of the Gospel writers was therefore deeply impressed by the fact that the Lord not only provided food- but such an abundance. All this sets the background for Paul&rsquo;s use of the very same word to describe how God&rsquo;s grace has &ldquo;abounded&rdquo; to us in Christ (Rom. 3:7; 5:15; Eph. 1:8).</p>