Discover the deeper meaning of Jesus' miraculous feeding of the 5,000 in John 6:1-14. Explore the testing of Jesus' disciples and the stewardship of yielding, and uncover the blessings available when we place our resources in God's hands. 

Setting Up The Feeding of the 5,000

The greatest thing we can experience is knowing the Lord, yet I’m sobered when I read Matthew 7. Jesus tells a group of people who claim to prophesy in His name to depart from Him because He never knew them. As a pastor, I feel the weight of that. 

Yet, when we think about the Apostle Paul, he shares that his purpose in life was to know Christ. He didn’t want to be acquainted with His ways but to know Jesus so well that His power worked through His life. 

When Jesus made the statement, “Depart from me. I never knew you.” The Greek word for knew is “ginosko,” which is the word for intimacy. It’s the same word used to say Joseph did not know Mary; It conveys that there was no intimate relationship. 

The Gospels share many of Jesus’ miracles, such as turning water into wine, walking on water, and healing many. However, we need to see the greater significance of feeding the 5,000 (the only miracle to appear in all four Gospels). 

What if this story is more about seeing that feeding? What if this story is more about the nature of God and a personal invitation to trust God than it is about bread and fish? The people were not desperate or destitute. Jesus could’ve easily sent them home to eat a late supper.

“We have looked upon something great, something outstanding and altogether divine, which could only be done by God; the deed has led us to admire the doer. But if, for example, we were to look at the beautiful letters on the pages of some book, we would not be satisfied with admiring the scribe’s skillful fingers in producing such a regular, neat, and even script, without also reading what he was saying to us with it. 

Well, in the same way, anyone who just looks at this deed is delighted by its beauty and filled with admiration for the craftsman; anyone who takes the trouble to understand it is after a fashion reading it. Pictures, after all, are looked at in one way, letters in another. When you see a picture, that is all there is to it, to see it and admire it; when you see letters, that is not all there is to it because you are being urged also to read them.” Augustine

Augustine said, “No detail [of the text,] therefore, is pointless; everything has a meaning, but someone has to understand what that is.” Augustine, 24.2,6; pages 424, 427

With Augustine’s words in mind, we need to camp in verse four. John informs us that it was Passover time, which, in addition to the word that Jesus had performed many miracles, explains why a large crowd was present.

Passover is mostly signified in the Old Testament when God’s people still bonded to Egypt. The Lord instructed Israel’s people to take the blood of a lamb and spread it on the doorpost of their home so the death angel would pass over them, thus preventing judgment and condemnation. 

The pattern remains the same, but now it points to Jesus. When He went to the cross and shed His blood, as Christians, that is our Passover. For us to be passed over from judgment and, as John Wesley said, the “coming wrath,” the lamb's blood must be applied to the believer’s heart and life. 

But the Passover also signifies the totality of what God did through the Exodus story. It represents how God claimed His people and released them from slavery. In Luke 4, Jesus shared that He’s been anointed to bring the good news to those who are poor in spirit. For those who say, “I need a savior,” the Gospel informs us that He is so powerful it binds the broken heart and sets the captive free. 

Additionally, Passover represents God's preservation of his people and how He supernaturally provided for His people, even as they journeyed through the wilderness. He provided food and rescued them from the threat at the Red Sea and the dangers they experienced in the desert. In other words, He met their needs.

So, the point is that it’s Passover, and as Jesus provides this meal of fish and bread, He is sending a message. 

“These obedient Jews were going to Jerusalem for a feast that was presided over by incompetent priests and ungodly temple leaders. These unbelieving priests would shortly reject Jesus and crucify Him. Jesus, knowing that the crowd would not have their spiritual needs met by false shepherds, set up a true feast in opposition to their empty feast. As John often juxtaposes light against darkness, so here is a spiritual feast in opposition to an empty religious feast.” Elmer Towns, The Gospel of John, p. 58

Jesus Tests His Disciples 

The story unfolds with Jesus seeing the large crowds approaching. He asks Phillip, “Where are we to buy bread so that these people may eat?”Jesus asked this to test Phillip (v. 6) because He already knew what He’d do. 

That likely raises some questions. Does God test people? James 1:13 tells us that God does not tempt anyone, which is reinforced in multiple places throughout Scripture. However, God will test an individual and church family. That’s part of His nature and how He develops us. Typically, we get squeezed during a test, and what’s on the inside comes out, and God puts it in the light to develop. [READ MORE: Day One: A Spiritual Journey to Redemption]

Jesus didn’t ask Phillip this question to get information because He already had that. Instead, He asked to see if Phillip really knew Jesus, and his answer proved a point. 

Rather than thinking about Jesus, Philip thinks about how much cash is on hand. He wasn’t thinking about all the power in the person beside him. In verse 7, he responds: “Two hundred denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each for them to get a little.” (That amount equated to about eight months wages.)

Don’t let your familiarity with this story blind you to what’s happening! It wasn’t about the cash on hand. The reality of his answer was hopelessness.

Andrew, another disciple, offers some problem-solving through another method. He finds a little boy with a few barley loaves and two small dried fish. But more is needed to feed a crowd of 5,000, so Andrew's answer is also hopeless. 

Standing before God in human form, the answer from Phillip and Andrew is hopeless. But despite the disciples’ hopelessness, Jesus told them to prepare the people for a meal. The little boy yields his fish and bread to the hands of Jesus. Everything changes when this little boy gives everything he has. 

Stewardship of Yielding 

Jesus was clear that He was testing Phillip and Andrew. 

In Malachi 3, the Lord said, “‘Bring the whole tithe into the storehouse, so that there may be food in My house, and test Me now in this if I will not open for you the windows of heaven and pour out for you a blessing until it overflows.’”

A tithe is the first 10 percent of your income, and God instructs us to bring it into the storehouse. I believe the New Testament corollary of the storehouse is the local church. In the verse, we see that there are windows in heaven that God declares he opens over your life as you’re in relationship with Him, which includes journeying, trusting, and enjoying Him. God also tells us that He won’t open the window until the blessings overflow. 

They had more in the stewardship of yielding the fish and loaves to Jesus than they had in holding on to it. We have more in the stewardship of 90% than in the stewardship of 100%.

Evangelical Bible scholar D.A. Carson had this to say about feeding the 5,000. 

“We traditionally refer to this as the feeding of the 5,000, but it was probably the feeding of many more than that. We are told in verse 10 that there were 5,000 men, and Matthew, in his account, specifies that that number did not include the women and children who were present. Commentators suggest that, depending on the ratio of men to women and children, there could have been anywhere from six thousand to twenty thousand people gathered before Jesus and the disciples that day.” Carson, 270

Regardless of the final tally, it only increases the intensity of the miracle’s richness that Jesus performed. Yet disciples couldn’t see beyond the crowd; they only saw a need. Their focus was their resources and the math for what they lacked. They minimize the yield by saying, “We have nothing here but…”.

A Word on God’s Sufficiency 

There’s a common phrase I’ve often heard from other Christians when they respond to someone struggling or suffering. Someone will share a challenge in their life, whether that’s grief or an insufficiency. As they talk, their Christian friends will place a hand on their shoulder and say to them reassuringly…

“God will never give us more than we can handle.”

John 6 serves as an important reminder that the claim that God will never give us more than we can handle is a lie. In 2 Corinthians 1:8, Paul writes: 

“For we do not want you to be unaware, brothers, of the affliction we experienced in Asia. For we were so utterly burdened beyond our strength that we despaired of life itself.”

I don’t know about you, but it sounds like the Apostle Paul is telling us that God gave them more than they could handle. But he doesn’t stop there. In the next verse, he goes on to say that that situation, which felt like a death sentence, that God did to them. He said, “to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead.”

Because right here, Jesus gave Philip more than he could handle. He asked him to do something he was incapable of accomplishing. 

One commentator puts it something like this:

“Philip doesn’t know what to do. Andrew doesn’t either, but [Andrew] brings the boy and his bread and fish to Jesus’ attention. The point is obvious, but we perhaps need to be reminded of it: so often, we have no idea what to do, but the starting point is always to bring what is there and yield it to Jesus. You can never tell what he’s going to do with it – though part of Christian faith is the expectation that he will do something we hadn’t thought of, something new and creative.” Anonymous

When God opens that window in heaven over your life, it’s not only material resources and meeting needs. When we study Scripture, God’s blessing means His favor resting upon you, which includes His ideas and insight in your mind and heart. 

Multitudes in God’s Hands

In a letter to the Ephesians, the Apostle Paul writes, “Awake, O sleeper, and arise from the dead, and Christ will shine on you.” It’s possible to become so familiar with the trappings of Christianity that we slowly go numb. We cannot overlook the reality that we serve a living God. The promises we see in Scripture aren’t playdates; They’re relevant and applicable to our lives for God’s glory. 

For the people of Paul’s day to slip into slumber indicates that it can happen to us today, too. Rise from the dead, and Jesus will shine on you. You have access to Jesus and the blessings described in this story. These are realities that are true for you! Christ bled and died for the Passover of your heart. That’s why this miracle is more about seeing than feeding because it’s about knowing the Lord more than resources. 

If Christians knew what they have in their hands, we wouldn’t rob God of His tithes and offerings. We have an opportunity to give so much. Fish and loaves in our hands are just substances, but in God’s hands, they are multitudes for His glory. 

TL;DR

1. Matthew 7:21-23 tells us the importance of knowing the Lord intimately. 

2. The miracle of feeding the 5,000 symbolizes God's provision and the need for trust in Him. 

3. It emphasizes the significance of yielding to God's will and challenges the notion that God never gives us more than we can handle.

4. Christians are encouraged to recognize their blessings and trust in God's sufficiency for their lives.

Related Reading

What is the Fear of the Lord? by Rev. Paul Lawler

Why Prayer Works by Bro. Chris Carter

How Can I Know God by Grant Caldwell