Mark 6:40 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Mark 6:40

Comments

He did not call upon the Father to increase the loaves. He did that by his own divine power, but, nevertheless, he was not only God, he was man and he was our representative and he must thank the Father for the provision and pray for blessing upon it. He accomplished the miracle but taking our place, he looks to heaven and thanks for the food. We thank him for everything.What happened? How was the miracle performed? Well we are not told in any of the Gospels. Augustine thought that every loaf was multiplied in Christ’s own hands. That is very difficult to imagine with so many people to feed. So Calvin went a step further and said that the loaves multiplied in the disciples’ hands as well. Another suggestion is that when huge baskets of loaves reached the companies of fifty, they just took and took and the loaves were multiplying in the baskets, as fast as anyone could take from them. To their amazement, rather like in the time of Elijah when the cruse of oil and the grain multiplied and multiplied, as they broke off the bread to the ranks of people neatly sat there, it just went on and on coming. The disciples don’t seem to know how it was done, because, although this is recorded in four Gospels, they tell us nothing precisely. So the disciples were participants in the distribution and the multiplication of all this food. Human instrumentality is seen then even in the breaking of the loaves. It was a divine miracle, and there they are participating in it, handling it.

Application

The preacher’s words, the Sunday school teacher’s words, may be instrumental by the Spirit. God uses his people and their words are part of the means that the Spirit uses to bring the elect to salvation. We don't go along with those who say, ‘Regeneration is an invisible subconscious work in the soul, completed in a split second, in a flash of lightning. The soul is put under an anaesthetic: bang! Regeneration completes the work of conversion, and the person is entirely passive. That is form of hyper-Calvinism which has become very popular in these days. It wasn't the Calvinism of Calvin, or the Reformers, or the Dutch Reformers, who perhaps explained these things better than anybody. It wasn't the Calvinism of the English Reformers or the Puritans. Yes, everything started with the work of God through his predestinating electing love; he worked in the heart; but the work of regeneration made a person able to hear, and willing to hear, and as he hears the gospel and the pleadings of the Sunday School teacher or the preacher, so those pleadings are instrumental, and he is consciously drawn and convinced. It was the regenerating work of God that opened his understanding and enabled, inclined, his heart and his will to listen and to respond. That is the Puritan position, the position of Flavel and Goodwin and others, who explain it so clearly. The words of the preacher are instrumental, so he must preach the gospel, and he must do so as persuasively and earnestly as he can.

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Mark 6:40 Commentary and Bible Study