<p>14:16&nbsp;<em>But Jesus said to them: They need not go away-&nbsp;</em>See on :15&nbsp;<em>the time is now past</em>. They ask the Lord to send the multitude away (Mk. 6:36), whereas Jesus later taught by word and example, that whoever came to Him He would not turn away (Jn. 6:37). Mark and Matthew present themselves, the disciples, as seriously out of step with their Lord at this time. And surely the communities which they were establishing were likewise tempted to &lsquo;send away&rsquo; or deny fellowship to those whom the Lord would have them fellowship.</p>
<p><em>You give them something to eat-</em>&nbsp;According to Jn. 6:5, the Lord also asked: &ldquo;From whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?&rdquo;. Even if money was no issue, the village shops simply had nowhere near the amount of food required. So in &ldquo;You give them&hellip;&rdquo;, the stress was not only on the word &ldquo;you&rdquo;. Perhaps it was more so on the word and concept of &ldquo;give&rdquo;, standing as it does in contrast to the disciples&rsquo; unrealistic and harsh expectation that these poor people go to a village and&nbsp;<em>buy</em>&nbsp;food. Surely the Lord had in mind Is. 55:1,2: &ldquo;Come, everyone who thirsts, come to the waters; and he who has no money, come, buy and eat! Come, buy wine and milk without money and without price. Why do you spend your money for that which is not bread, and your labour for that which does not satisfy? Listen diligently to me, and eat what is good, and delight yourselves in rich food&rdquo;. He intended the disciples to see the connection and to figure that He would even provide them with free food, because they were seeking His word. We are confirmed in this idea by the way that He appealed to the crowd in the same discourse: &ldquo;Labour not for the food which perishes&rdquo; (Jn. 6:27), which is surely an allusion to Is. 55:2. Perhaps the disciples got the point- perhaps not. Often the Lord sets us up with situations in which we are intended to have our minds sent back to a Biblical verse or precedent as encouragement and guidance for us in our decisions. Whether or not we grasp it is a matter partly of our familiarity with the text of Scripture, but more significantly, our openness to this kind of spiritual prompting, and the idea of God&rsquo;s word being part of a living, two-way dialogue between Him and ourselves.</p>
<p>The Lord told the disciples to feed the crowd, when they had nothing to give them (Mk. 6:37). He was actually quoting from 2 Kings 4:42, where the man of God told his servant to do the same. He gave what bread he had to the people, and miraculously it fed them. The disciples don't seem to have seen the point; otherwise, they would have realized that if they went ahead in faith, another such miracle would likely be wrought. But it seems that God almost over-ruled them to make the response of the faithless servant of 2 Kings 4:43: &quot;Shall we... give them to eat?&quot; (Mk. 6:37). They were almost 'made' to do this to make them later see the similarity with the 2 Kings 4 incident. If they had been more spiritually aware at the time, the Lord's quotation would have been a fillip for their faith.</p>
<p>When the Lord calmly bid them feed the huge crowd with just a few loaves&nbsp;(&ldquo;How many loaves have ye? Go and see&rdquo; (Mk. 6:38)), we are left to imagine those men, almost paralysed and certainly gobsmacked by the extent of the demand, awkwardly going away to count their few loaves. He could be seen as a demanding Lord. The Lord Jesus said many &quot;hard sayings&quot; which dissuaded people from seriously following Him. He kept speaking about a condemned criminal's last walk to his cross, and telling people they had to do this. He told them, amidst wondrous stories of flowers and birds, to rip out their eyes, cut off their limbs- and if they didn't, He didn't think they were serious and would put a stone round their neck and hurl them into the sea (Mk. 9:42-48). He healed a leper, and then spoke sternly to Him (Mk. 1:43 AV mg.).</p>
<p>It makes a good exercise to re-read the Gospels looking out for cases of where the Lord urged the disciples to not look at Him as somehow separate from themselves, an automatic Saviour from sin and problems. Thus when it was apparent that the huge, hungry crowd needed feeding, the Lord asked the disciples where &ldquo;<em>we</em>&rdquo; could get food from to feed them (Jn. 6:5). In all the accounts of the miraculous feedings, we see the disciples assuming that Jesus would solve the situation- and they appear even irritated and offended when He implies that this is&nbsp;<em>our</em>&nbsp;joint problem, and&nbsp;<em>they</em>&nbsp;must tackle this seemingly impossible task with<em> their</em>&nbsp;faith. The mentality of the disciples at that time is that of so many Trinitarians- who assume that &lsquo;Jesus is the answer&rsquo; in such a form that they are exempt from seeing His humanity as a challenge for them to live likewise.</p>
<p>The disciples, in John&rsquo;s record, complain: &ldquo;From whence shall&nbsp;<em>we</em>&nbsp;find bread in the wilderness?&rdquo;. The record of the disciples' murmuring in John 6 reflects how influenced they were by the Jews around them. &quot;The Jews then murmured at him&quot;, and the Lord rebukes them: &quot;Murmur not among yourselves&quot;. But then we read of how &quot;Jesus knew in himself that his disciples were murmuring&quot; (Jn. 6:40,43,61). And again, remember that these gospel records were written by the repentant disciples, and they were using the example of their own weakness in order to appeal to others. The disciples appeared to share Judaism's idea that Moses never sinned. When the Lord challenges them to find food for the crowd in the desert, they quote Moses' hasty words: &quot;Whence shall I have flesh to give unto all this people?&quot;; and note Moses almost mocks God by saying that all the fish of the sea wouldn't be enough to feed the people (Num. 11:13,22). Faced with the same need for bread and fish, the disciples justified their lack of faith by quoting Moses, apparently unwilling to accept that Moses' words at that time were not of faith. The way everything worked out, they doubtless learnt that Moses, like them, was of imperfect faith and spirituality.</p>