As the disciples struggled to row across the lake through the storm, Jesus must have seen what was happening from the mountain. He did not need some supernatural insight to know this. But Jesus did exercise his divine power when he went to them walking over the waves. The disciples were terrified when they saw him. They thought they were seeing a ghost, but their fear would not only have been because of that. Most likely they took the apparition for an omen warning them that they were all doomed men. They must have supposed that they were going to drown.
In the last study I said that Matthew 14-16 is characterized by three important themes: 1) Jesus' private teaching of the twelve disciples, 2) repeated failures on the disciples' part to understand or respond to Jesus’ teaching, and 3) some small glimmerings of true faith and growth. We saw Jesus teaching the disciples in the account of the feeding of the five thousand. When he told the disciples to feed the people he was obviously intending to impress upon them that they could do nothing, and when he then fed the masses from five small loaves of bread and two fish he was imparting a lesson about his own utter sufficiency. When Jesus used the disciples to distribute the food to the people he was teaching them their role as messengers. They had nothing to offer, but hey would become bearers of the bread of life to those who were starving spiritually.
The fourth lesson of the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is that God works through people. That is, although Jesus alone is sufficient for all human need, he nevertheless chooses to work through us as channels by which he meets that need. In this case, he worked through the disciples who were given the broken loaves and fish, distributed them to the people and then gathered up the leftover pieces.
All I have said about our impotence leads directly to the next and third lesson, for the story is meant to direct us to the sufficiency of Jesus Christ. That is what John 15 :5 says, after all. The last part stresses our inability to do anything, but it does this so we will draw on Jesus' resources: “if a man remains in me and l in him, he will bear much fruit." Only after that does it say, “apart from me you can do nothing.”
The second point of the story is clear in each of the gospels though it is introduced in different ways. It is this: in spiritual matters we can do nothing apart from Jesus Christ. Jesus said it himself in John 15.5, "If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit, apart from me you can do nothing."
