GOSPELS 11 FEEDING THE FIVE THOUSAND

GOSPELS 11 FEEDING THE FIVE THOUSAND

Matthew Mark Luke and John all have the same account of the feeding of the five thousand with the five loaves and two fishes, and this account is placed early in the ministry of Jesus. Luke and Mark place the event just after Jesus had sent the twelve apostles out to preach the Kingdom of God and they had come back with a good report. Mathew Mark and Luke also place this account around the time of John the Baptist being beheaded by Herod. I will read from the Gospel of John today.
John 6:1 After this, Jesus crossed over the Sea of Galilee, also known as the Sea of Tiberias. And a huge crowd, many of them foreign pilgrims on their way to Jerusalem for the annual Passover celebration, were following him wherever he went, to watch him heal the sick. So when Jesus went up into the hills and sat down with his disciples around him, he soon saw a great multitude of people climbing the hill, looking for him.
Turning to Philip he asked, “Philip, where can we buy bread to feed all these people?” He was testing Philip, for he already knew what he was going to do.
Philip replied, “It would take a fortune to begin to do it!”
Then Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, spoke up. “There’s a youngster here with five barley loaves and a couple of fish! But what good is that with all this mob?”
“Tell everyone to sit down,” Jesus ordered. And all of them—the approximate count was five thousand—sat down on the grassy slopes. Then Jesus took the loaves and gave thanks to God and passed them out to the people. Afterwards he did the same with the fish. And everyone ate until full! “Now gather the scraps,” Jesus told his disciples, “So that nothing is wasted.” And twelve baskets were filled with the leftovers!
When the people realized what a great miracle had happened, they exclaimed, “Surely, he is the Prophet we have been expecting!” Jesus saw that they were ready to march him off to make him their king, so he went higher into the mountains alone. All still wanting an earthly Kingdom.

What we see happening in sequence here is that Jesus has been proclaiming and embodying the Kingdom of God which was not of this world, and he had taught them about praying to his Father as Our Father. He had then gone on to tell them of how our Father answers us in his extravagant promise of providing for all of our basic needs and entreating us to not be anxious about them - what to eat or to wear or to have, or whatever the world gets anxious about and fights about and cheats about. 

It would follow on then that this extraordinary miracle of feeding five thousand people occurs. It is as if his Father was saying, ‘well you have told them what I would do as their Father in providing for them and not to get anxious about it, so now let’s do it’. wonder
It would have been enough if that was all there was to it, because that miracle held so much other promise than its extraordinary wonder that ranks with many other mighty unforgettable miracles in the Old Testament, such as crossing the Red sea after coming out of Egypt, and being fed with the manna from Heaven in the wilderness, and receiving the water from the rock. And here in the New Testament we had seen the turning of water into wine and the raising of Peter’s mother-in-law from the dead, and countless healings and still yet to come would be the raising of Lazarus from the dead, and above and beyond anything and everything is his own Resurrection from the dead and his ascension into Heaven.

But the feeding of the five thousand also invites us to see beyond the wonder and sensation of the miracle itself and to observe the compassion of Jesus for the foreign pilgrims and the poor and the outcasts in the crowd that followed him. So many of them had become resigned to being stretched beyond their means and going without basic needs. Then we also see something else, that while God the Father is the source of this miraculous food that really comes from Heaven, it appeared at first to come from a young boy who just happened to bring his own lunch. This teaches us that we can never predict what or who God will use to be a channel of God’s miraculous supply for our need.
Then there is also the fact that the abundance of food left over had to be gathered up after everyone had eaten and put into twelve baskets. This speaks of more than just being diligent about not leaving litter lying around, and it also speaks of more than just God's abundance and generosity. Jesus wanted these twelve basketsful of food to be given to those in need who were perhaps back at home or the outsiders who were unable to be there for the miracle and would have gone without. God wants to multiply his generosity.
The gathering of the leftover food in the baskets can be compared to the way God commanded the people of Israel to always leave the leftover gleanings of their crop harvests that he had generously blessed to be gathered by the foreigners and strangers among the people of Israel. God wants to bless the outsiders, the people on the fringe. The Scripture says,

Leviticus 23:22 (ESV) “And when you reap the harvest of your land, you shall not reap your field right up to its fringe, nor shall you gather the gleanings after your harvest. You shall leave them for the poor and for the sojourner: 
The theme of this gracious blessing of the gleanings is actually the theme of the story in the Book of Ruth about Ruth who was a foreigner in Israel, and outsider. She was the daughter in law of Naomi whose son had died and left Ruth as a widow in Naomi’s family household. Ruth had chosen to make Naomi’s people her people, but was still classified as an outsider, but Boaz, a near kinsman of Naomi arranged for Ruth to be allowed to gather up and to keep the gleanings of his harvest for herself. This act of his love and favour for her, in the design and purpose of God results in Ruth marrying Boaz and becoming the great grandmother of king David in the family tree of Jesus, recorded in the genealogy in Matthew 1:5-6, and the Lion of the tribe of Judah of the root of David. (Revelation 5:5)

Ruth is immortalised in Scripture as a story of redemption for a woman who had lost her hopes and dreams for a future and of then being given a place of belonging and being appreciated and remembered. God has a way of showing all of us that we are never forgotten, and we always belong to him, and we can choose to trust him in his placement of us in our times and circumstances. God’s creative design and purpose of redemption of so many things for us in our lives goes supernaturally beyond any human plan or circumstance that we could ever contrive.
The young boy that gave his lunch of five loaves and two fishes was also immortalised and never forgotten and appreciated beyond what he would ever have imagined. So remember to thank him and show your appreciation when you meet him in Heaven. He’ll be standing over on the left as you go in, next to the Good Samaritan.

We have seen how God multiplied material blessing in the Old Testament, but God wants to show us how in the New Testament he not only provides material blessing, but he gives to us all spiritual blessings (Ephesians 1:4). These include God’s love and his joy and peace and the spiritual gifts and graces of the Holy Spirit that become passed on and multiplied, making us a channel of his goodness in our caring and serving of others, especially those who might feel like outsiders and left out. That can be seen as our spiritual loaves and fishes being taken and blessed and multiplied by Jesus that brings thanksgiving to God who is the source of these blessings in our lives. Amen.