Feeding the Thousands
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2020 · 13 December 2020
We’re going to study one of the most familiar stories in the Bible. It is called the feeding of the five thousand. Of all the miracles that Jesus ever did, this is the most massive miracle in sheer number. When you add up five thousand men, plus women and children, you’ve got twenty-five thousand people and He creates a meal for them. And they’re participants in the miracle because they eat the meal.
It is unique because it is a created miracle. There are restorative miracles where He gives back sight to blind people, and hearing to deaf people, and restores paraplegics and heals diseases. We could call those restorative because they obviously have a creative element to them because you get new organs and new limbs and all of that. And there are some transformative miracles.
That’s what happened when He changed water into wine. But this is creating food out of nothing to feed twenty-five thousand people. It is a staggering testimony to the identity of Jesus Christ as God in human flesh, and that’s why it’s in all four gospels. And it can’t be debated because of the sheer mass of eyewitness participants who participated in this great miracle.
It never has been denied until more modern times when critics decided that it really wasn’t a miracle at all. What really happened was a little boy gave up his lunch and so everybody reached into their knapsack and pulled out whatever they had. We’re going to see that that’s an absolute impossibility that would only come up in the minds of skeptics who deny the deity of Jesus Christ.
This is a monumental miracle and this is the fourth miracle that John has recorded in his gospel. Now John begins this by establishing the identity of Jesus at the beginning. “In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God and the Word was God.” So John begins by telling us Jesus is God. That is evident because everything that was created was created by Him in John 1:3.
That is evident because Jesus is not the recipient of life as verse 4 says, but He is the source of life. Verse 14, “The Word,” that is the eternal Son of God, “became flesh and dwelt among us and we saw His glory and we recognized that it was the glory as of the only begotten, the premier one from the Father, full of grace and truth.” Verse 18 adds, “No one has seen God at any time.”
Everything in the Gospel of John is designed to fit that theme to demonstrate that Jesus is the eternal God in human form. And then you have the evidence of the miracles and this miracle in John 6 is very unique. The evidences of His deity are bound up in the miracles that He did. Never is there any testimony that rejected the miracles as real. There were just too many of them that demonstrated His divinity.
Even Nicodemus said, “Nobody can do what You do unless God is with You.” They don’t know how to process this. Remember, they’re monotheists, they believe in one God. They’re not yet fully able to grasp the Trinity that God is one and yet three persons. They can’t grasp that in their monotheism. They are not able to process how Jesus can be God and be together with God. And so they reject that.
Remember now, generational apostasy was deeply imbedded in their minds. And when somebody comes along and says, “I’m God,” that sounds to them like somebody is competing with God. So while the signs all prove that Jesus is God, they had a hard time with that. In fact, they rejected it on religious grounds. They rejected Him because they didn’t like His message.
So, in spite of the evidence, they rejected Jesus. In fact, they determined that He was the most extreme blasphemer because He claimed to be God and He did not follow their Sabbath laws, which essentially was to attack their system. So they tried to kill Him. Never denying the miracles, they denied the miracle worker. Never rejecting what He did, they rejected Him. This is the deceptiveness of false religion.
It’s been a long period of time, and Jesus is no longer in Judea in the south, He is now in Galilee on the other side of the Sea of Galilee. He has gone there for the Galilean ministry, but He has also gone there because He is very much aware that the leaders of Israel desire to execute Him. And in order to avoid an untimely death, He leaves to find the isolation of Galilee.
Jesus is aware that John the Baptist has been executed. So they know the threat and He’s up there in that rural area away from what is happening in Judea. And what’s He doing? Capernaum is His headquarters and He’s going around the villages of Galilee which He does for over a year, and He is healing and teaching the Kingdom of God. In the process of this He is drawing huge crowds.
Now east of the Sea of Galilee was pretty much a route that people would take to go to Jerusalem, and the Passover is near, so pilgrims would be coming that way as well to go down to Jerusalem. So now you have a large flow of humanity coming down the trails on the eastside of the Sea of Galilee, added to the large crowd already there. And that’s the scene as we come to the Sea of Galilee.
Jesus goes to the other side. We know that because we have accounts of this in Matthew, Mark and Luke. And His disciples and Jesus go on a boat. Why the other side? The Twelve had just returned from a preaching and teaching mission recorded in Mark 6, so they’ve been out working hard, and Jesus wants to pull them back and regroup and teach them more about what happened.
So that’s where they went for a little retreat. And as was Jesus’ custom, He wanted to go up into the mountain to sit with His disciples. However, verse 2 says, “A large crowd followed Him.” They walked along the shore, Matthew 14 says, from all towns and villages everywhere following Him. And Mark 6:33 says they’re coming along the north shore. So a large crowd is gathering.
What drew them? Verse 2, “Because they saw the signs which He was performing on those who were sick.” It was the healing. It is always done in the name of Jesus because Satan always wants to discredit Him. They didn’t know what sickness thay had. There were no true diagnoses of health issues other than those things which are clear, like a broken bone. So they just had no hope.
If somebody came along who could heal all their diseases and give them free food, this is nirvana for them. So this crowd is following Jesus, because they’re attracted by the healing because all of them had something wrong. They came for temporal miracles, not the eternal words that could result in eternal life. When Jesus started to speak eternal words by the end of John 6, they run away. Many of His disciples just left.
Jesus wanted the people to listen to His words. But they never got pass their fleshly desires. Verse 3, “Then Jesus climbed a hill and sat down with his disciples around him.” Verse 4, “It was nearly time for the Jewish Passover celebration.” This just added to the crowd. People with earthly interest, personal well-being and national well-being. They want what unregenerate people all want.
Then we meet these faithless disciples, starting in verse 5, “Jesus soon saw a huge crowd of people coming to look for him.” Jesus was there probably a long time because Matthew 14:14 says He spent the day healing the sick. Luke 9:11 says He spent the day speaking about the Kingdom of God, salvation. And Mark 6:34 said He was moved with compassion because they were like sheep without a shepherd.
As the day begins to draw to an end, the disciples, according to Matthew 14:15, come to Him and say, “This is a remote place, and it’s already getting late. Send the crowds away so they can go to the villages and buy food for themselves.” Verse 5 continues, “Turning to Philip, Jesus asked, “Where can we buy bread to feed all these people?” Why would Jesus ask Philip this question?
This is the introduction of Jesus articulating an impossible situation. There were no resources there. This is a desolate place and there’s nowhere to go to buy bread for this many people. And Jesus is really not looking for help form Philip. He is not looking for some suggestion. Verse 6 says, “This He was saying to test him, for He already knew what He was going to do.”
What was the test? The test was to find out how much faith Philip had. It would have been a different story if Philip had said, “Lord, why are You asking me? You made everything. You are the Creator. We’ve seen You create.” The weakness of the disciples shows up again. They see miracles all the time, but they can’t believe a miracle will happen in this situation.
So this is all about testing disciples and building their faith. Jesus knew exactly what He was going to do. Verse 7, “Philip replied, “Even if we worked for months, we wouldn’t have enough money to feed them!” So now we know this is an impossible situation. They’re in a deserted place. They don’t have the money. They don’t have the available bread for so many people.
Verse 8-9, “Then Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up. 9 “There’s a young boy here with five barley loaves and two fish. But what good is that with this huge crowd?” Now why does he suddenly appear out of nowhere? Well, according to Mark 6:38, Jesus told the disciples to go into the crowd and find out what they could take. Go search the crowd, see what might be available.
It’s not a lesson in sharing because they couldn’t find anything. Five loaves and two fish, but what are these among so many people? This is sarcastic. Are you kidding? This is way beyond reality, or any reasonable solution. And that was a pretty typical lunch. They grew grain and they had fish in the sea and that would be a typical meal, some barley loaves and some fish.
Jesus says in verse 10, “Tell everyone to sit down. So they all sat down on the grassy slopes. (The men alone numbered about 5,000.)” Mark 6:40 says, “Jesus said, ‘Sit them in groups of 50 and a hundred.” Sit them in blocks, fifty here, fifty here, a hundred here, a hundred here, with aisles in between. That’s what you do if you segment them out, you’ve got space in between.
Matthew 14:21 adds, “Not including women and children.” Do we need to say it? Where there are men, there are women, there are children. All over the grassy hillside, these people are sitting down. How you could have such control over such a mass of people, is explained by the fact that Jesus had so much authority through the miracles that He had done, that they did whatever He told them to do.
Verse 11, “Then Jesus took the loaves, gave thanks to God, and distributed them to the people.” With no fanfare, no voice from heaven, no lightning, no thunder, He distributed to those who were seated. “Afterward He did the same with the fish. And they all ate as much as they wanted.” Jesus was creating it. These were loaves that never came from grain, those were fish that never swam.
Those are the best loaves anybody ever ate, those were uncursed loaves. I don’t know what uncursed loaves would be like. Maybe it’s like manna that came from heaven. Consequently, Jesus distributed to all that were seated and they were able to take as much as they wanted. That is not a lesson in sharing. If some people have some and some people don’t, and you share, everybody gets less than what they want.
Verse 12, “After everyone was full, Jesus told his disciples, “Now gather the leftovers, so that nothing is wasted.” How many of them told the story to their children about the greatest meal they ever ate? And then there was more. Verse 13, “So they picked up the pieces and filled twelve baskets with scraps left by the people who had eaten from the five barley loaves.”
That would be enough for the disciples, for the twelve. This is a powerful creative miracle, but it’s also a precise creative miracle. That’s exactly what everybody wanted and exactly what the Apostles required as well. The precision of this miracle is as stunning as the power of this miracle. Jesus could do this any time He wanted. And He does it a little later for four thousand men.
How could they possibly not understand who He was? While the disciples were trying to get their faith together in the face of all of this, we come to a final point here. The false coronation in verse 14, “When the people saw him do this miraculous sign, they exclaimed, “Surely, he is the Prophet we have been expecting!” This is the prophet promised in Deuteronomy 18:15 - 19 that is greater than Moses.
So what do they do? Do they say, “Let’s listen to what He has to say?” No. They try to make Him King because He can do all the miracles, heal everybody and feed everybody. Verse 15, “When Jesus saw that they were ready to force him to be their king, he slipped away into the hills by himself.” The other writers say He sent His disciples to go across the other side of the lake on the boat.
Jesus isn’t willing to be a temporal provider. And that’s the way it is today. The Jesus of the prosperity preachers is the false Jesus because the true Jesus isn’t there. They should have said, “Teach us the truth from God.” He calls on sinners to mourn for their sin, to be broken, penitent, acknowledge Him as sovereign Lord, be obedient to Him, live for Him, serve Him as His slave and suffer for Him. Are you willing? Let us pray.