8 ^1-2 One day about this time as another great crowd gathered, the people ran out of food again. Jesus called his disciples to discuss the situation.

“I pity these people,” he said, “for they have been here three days and have nothing left to eat. ³ And if I send them home without feeding them, they will faint along the road! For some of them have come a long distance.”

⁴ “Are we supposed to find food for them here in the desert?” his disciples scoffed.

⁵ “How many loaves of bread do you have?” he asked.

“Seven,” they replied. ⁶ So he told the crowd to sit down on the ground. Then he took the seven loaves, thanked God for them, broke them into pieces and passed them to his disciples; and the disciples placed them before the people. ⁷ A few small fish were found, too, so Jesus also blessed these and told the disciples to serve them.

^8-9 And the whole crowd ate until they were full, and afterwards he sent them home. There were about 4,000 people in the crowd that day and when the scraps were picked up after the meal, there were seven very large basketfuls left over!

¹⁰ Immediately after this he got into a boat with his disciples and came to the region of Dalmanutha.

¹¹ When the local Jewish leaders learned of his arrival, they came to argue with him.^[a]

“Do a miracle for us,” they said. “Make something happen in the sky. Then we will believe in you.”

¹² He sighed deeply when he heard this and he said, “Certainly not. How many more miracles do you people need?”^[b]

¹³ So he got back into the boat and left them, and crossed to the other side of the lake. ¹⁴ But the disciples had forgotten to stock up on food before they left and had only one loaf of bread in the boat.

¹⁵ As they were crossing, Jesus said to them very solemnly, “Beware of the yeast of King Herod and of the Pharisees.”

¹⁶ “What does he mean?” the disciples asked each other. They finally decided that he must be talking about their forgetting to bring bread.

¹⁷ Jesus realized what they were discussing and said, “No, that isn’t it at all! Can’t you understand? Are your hearts too hard to take it in? ¹⁸ ‘Your eyes are to see with—why don’t you look? Why don’t you open your ears and listen?’ Don’t you remember anything at all?

¹⁹ “What about the 5,000 men I fed with five loaves of bread? How many basketfuls of scraps did you pick up afterwards?”

“Twelve,” they said.

²⁰ “And when I fed the 4,000 with seven loaves, how much was left?”

“Seven basketfuls,” they said.

²¹ “And yet you think I’m worried that we have no bread?”^[c]

²² When they arrived at Bethsaida, some people brought a blind man to him and begged him to touch and heal him. ²³ Jesus took the blind man by the hand and led him out of the village, and spat upon his eyes, and laid his hands over them.

“Can you see anything now?” Jesus asked him.

²⁴ The man looked around. “Yes!” he said, “I see men! But I can’t see them very clearly; they look like tree trunks walking around!”

²⁵ Then Jesus placed his hands over the man’s eyes again and as the man stared intently, his sight was completely restored, and he saw everything clearly, drinking in the sights around him.

²⁶ Jesus sent him home to his family. “Don’t even go back to the village first,” he said.

²⁷ Jesus and his disciples now left Galilee and went out to the villages of Caesarea Philippi. As they were walking along he asked them, “Who do the people think I am? What are they saying about me?”

²⁸ “Some of them think you are John the Baptist,” the disciples replied, “and others say you are Elijah or some other ancient prophet come back to life again.”

²⁹ Then he asked, “Who do you think I am?” Peter replied, “You are the Messiah.” ³⁰ But Jesus warned them not to tell anyone!

³¹ Then he began to tell them about the terrible things he would suffer,^[d] and that he would be rejected by the elders and the chief priests and the other Jewish leaders—and be killed, and that he would rise again three days afterwards. ³² He talked about it quite frankly with them, so Peter took him aside and chided him.^[e] “You shouldn’t say things like that,” he told Jesus.

³³ Jesus turned and looked at his disciples and then said to Peter very sternly, “Satan, get behind me! You are looking at this only from a human point of view and not from God’s.”

³⁴ Then he called his disciples and the crowds to come over and listen. “If any of you wants to be my follower,” he told them, “you must put aside your own pleasures and shoulder your cross, and follow me closely. ³⁵ If you insist on saving your life, you will lose it. Only those who throw away their lives for my sake and for the sake of the Good News will ever know what it means to really live.

³⁶ “And how does a man benefit if he gains the whole world and loses his soul in the process? ³⁷ For is anything worth more than his soul? ³⁸ And anyone who is ashamed of me and my message in these days of unbelief and sin, I, the Messiah,^[f] will be ashamed of him when I return in the glory of my Father, with the holy angels.”