The miracle of the feeding of the 5000 people was intended both as a proof of Christ’s divinity, and a lesson on conversion. Every stage of the miracle illustrates how moral and spiritual transformation comes only by trust in Christ.
‘Then he [Christ] took the five loaves and the two fishes, and looking up to heaven, he blessed them and break, and gave to the disciples to set before the multitude.’
We’re thinking now of the feeding, the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. And our title will be very simply, conversion must be an act of God. It must be. Now, these miracles, like the parables, were for teaching. Oh, yes, when Christ worked great miracles of healing, obviously they were to authenticate him. They were to make it clear to the masses, to the people, that he was precisely who he was said to be, the eternal Son of God, come from heaven to earth. They were authenticating signs. In the Gospel of John, they’re always called signs rather than miracles. So that was certainly their primary purpose.
But they have a greater purpose than that. They are also to be studied, looked at, because they reflect the very ways of God and great spiritual principles. As the Lord Jesus Christ healed, so he adopted a manner of healing and a way of going about things that equally taught how he dealt with people at a spiritual level. So the physical healings became pictures to be studied of spiritual healing, healing of the soul, the giving of spiritual life to lost and free.
You May Be Also Interested in…
Booklet: Seven Certain Signs of True Conversion
Sermon: The Case for Conversion, The Hard Part of Conversion