Feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle that is recorded in all four Gospels.
Jesus was busy teaching people and healing the sick. Apostles were with him. They were so busy and were tired. Jesus asked the Apostles to come aside to take rest in a deserted place. The crowd came to know about that. They also started their walk and overtook Jesus and the disciples. The multitude was waiting for Jesus and the Apostles when they arrived their destination in Bethsaida. Jesus began to teach them. Evening came. Jesus knew that the crowd was weary and hungry. He had compassion on them and He said to the disciples, “You give them something to eat”. (v. 37)
Bible says that there were 5000 men. Surely there were children too. May be there were equal number of women and many children too. “There is lad here...” is the clear proof of having young boys and girls in that crowd. So, the number of people could be 15000 or even more. Feeding all of them would be humanly impossible in that deserted place where the shops are so far away and the money so low.
A careful and comparative study of the four recordings of this miracle will give us at least four precious principles for world evangelization. Let us look at them one by one.
1) The Mind Jesus Had for Evangelization (v.34). “He was moved with compassion...”
Compassion is not just pity or sympathy. It means ‘suffer with the other’. The pain of the other becomes our pain. That motivates us to render help. Jesus was a man of compassion. His compassion made him cry over the city of Jerusalem knowing their ignorance and the rejection of the Lord, in spite of their zeal for religion and its rituals. Jesus wept at the grave of Lazarus because of his compassion for Martha and Mary, because of His love for Lazarus and because of his knowledge of the ‘curse of death’ that mankind inherited because of sin.
When he saw the multitude Jesus was moved with compassion. How did he see them?
i) He saw them as sheep scattered and hungry and without a shepherd (Mat. 9:36-39).
ii) He saw them as ripen harvest field with out harvesters. (Mat. 9:36-39 & John 4:35).
God is looking for people who can see the world of sinners as ‘scattered sheep with out shepherd” and ‘harvest field without harvesters”. This will make us weep (Pray). This will motivate us to go to the harvest field. This will inspire and enable us to give (support) money and send harvesters.
Some one has said, “The four key words of evangelization is ‘LOOK’, ‘WEEP’, ‘GO’ and ‘GIVE’(send). Every child of God that looks to the world with the eyes of Jesus will get a vision of the world just as Jesus sees. This will make us weep for the people and regions that have not heard the Gospel. That will persuade us to go as witnesses where ever we go. If we are not able to go to far off lands, we will surely give our money to support and send missionaries.
God is seeking for men and women who have the ‘mind of Jesus’, the mind of compassion. William Carey started weeping for India when he saw the map of India and read about India and its darkness. That compelled him to come to India as a missionary. This kind of compassion made Hudson Taylor to China, Adoniram Judson to Burma and David Livingstone to Africa.
John Knox prayed, “O God give me Scotland or I die”. God wants men and women of compassion for winning the lost souls.
Apostle Paul had this kind of compassion for his own people, the Jews. He testified of this fact in Rom. 10:1, 2 & 9:1-5. He wrote, “I say the truth, I lie not…that I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart” for his people who were religious but lost. He was even ready to be ‘accursed’ for the salvation of Israel. Jeremiah had this kind of compassion for the Hebrew nation. He was called the ‘weeping prophet’ because of his tears and lamentations for the people of Israel. He said in Jer. 9:1, “Oh that my head were waters, and mine eyes a fountain of tears, that I might weep day and night for the slain of the daughter of my people.”
Jeremiah continued his weeping and exclaimed, “Behold, and see if there be any sorrow like unto my sorrow, which is done unto me, where with the Lord has afflicted me in the day of His fierce anger...” (Lam. 1; 12, 13 cf: Jer. 8:19-22). Augustine Salins, the founder of Ambassadors of Christ in India was known as the ‘weeping prophet of India’. I have seen him many times praying with sobbing and weeping and preaching in tears. His life of compassion blessed me so much and that has challenged me to be compassionate towards sinners, backsliders, and orphans and destitute.
O, God please raise men and women of compassion, tears and broken hearts
2) The Means Jesus Used for Evangelization (v. 37)
To feed the multitude God used the disciples. He said to them, “You give them to eat”.
The Church of God is the means for evangelization of the world. He did not call or employ the angels for this great task. The instrument God uses for soul winning is the Church, you and I.
We cannot escape this responsibility. Paul said, “Necessity is laid upon me; woe unto me if I do not preach the Gospel” (1 Cor. 9:16).
Jesus gave his last commission to His disciples (the Church), “Go ye into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature” (Mark 16:15). Therefore, Apostle Paul confessed, “I am debtor both to the Greeks, and to the barbarians, both to the wise and to the unwise. So, as much as in me is, I am ready to preach the Gospel to you that are at Rome also”. (Rom. 1:14, 15)
The task of making disciples is the highest vocation God has given to His Church. This is a great privilege. Apostle Paul thanks God for this high calling, “And I thank Christ Jesus our Lord, who hath enabled me, for that he counted me faithful, putting me into the ministry”. (1 Tim. 1:12). We are to declare the Gospel of Christ by our life and by our lips. But it is sad that there are nations and regions that have not heard the Gospel yet, even after the commission came 2000 years ago.
This is the failure of the Church. But God will surely complete the task. In eternity there will be people worshipping the Lord from every tongue and tribe. (Rev: 7:9, 10). Let us get excited about this mission.
Unfortunately, we see the disciples unprepared and with wrong attitude:
(i) They were indifferent and insensitive. They said to Jesus, “Send them away”- though they knew people were hungry and the night fall is near.
(ii) They looked for ‘shops’ to buy bread instead of looking to ‘heaven’ for supply.
(iii) They struggled with mathematics instead of looking for a miracle by God. They calculated that even 200 denarius’s worth of bread will not be sufficient for all.
(iv) Yes, they depended on their ‘reasoning’ and did not have the ‘faith’.
(v) They complained that the time is bad. “It is evening”.
(vi) They complained that the place is bad. ‘Desert place’.
This is the pathetic picture of many churches and believers in these days.
But the Lord did not scold them. He did not throw them away. He gave them the opportunity to feed the multitude. He decided to continue to use them as His instruments.
This is a beautiful picture of God using even the cold hearted, backsliding, indifferent church (believers), giving them a second chance for evangelism and church planting. God could have avoided the disciples and could have chosen others for this great task of feeding the people. But He did not. Jonah disobeyed God and fled from his mission. But went after him, caught him and sent him to Tarshish to preach. Peter denied Jesus three times. But Jesus went after him in love and renewed the appointment to feed His sheep.
Beloved, God has called you to make disciples. Do not say any excuse. Do not try to escape your responsibility. If you have become insensitive or indifferent, please return to God and get His fresh commission and enablement for evangelizing people that live in sin and doomed to eternal darkness. You may have wasted few years. Please do not be discouraged. Do not quit. Repent of your coldness. Dedicate your life for declaring the glorious Gospel of Jesus Christ.
Jesus specifically calls Philip and asks him, “Where shall we buy bread that these may eat”?
(John 6:5). The place was Bethsaida and Philip was a native of Bethsaida. He was a local man. It is the responsibility of the local (native) person of the region to feed the people of His region, of his tribe and his language. This is a great challenge for ‘indigenous’ missions. We should not wait for external support and ‘foreign missionaries’ to do the job of evangelism of our country and our people. We should do it ourselves.
3) The Method Jesus Advocates for Evangelization (v. 39). “He commanded them to make all Sit down by companies on the green grass”
Evangelism must be done systematically. People had to sit ‘in companies’ and not ‘in confusion’. “Row by Row”, or “Line by Line” they had to sit. Nobody should be forgotten or bypassed or neglected when food is served. There is a temptation to serve food only on the ‘front lines’ neglecting the ‘frontiers.’ Front lines are in the lime light. Frontiers are not noticed and they are filled with dangers. Most people like to be in the limelight of publicity, facilities and physical comforts. God is asking us to ‘Launch out into the deep” leaving your ‘comfort zone’. (Luk. 5:4.)
Go where the name of Jesus never heard. Rom. 15:20. Let us leave the ‘shoreline fishing’ and ‘launch out’ for the ‘deep sea’ fishing. There are thousands of fishermen at the sea shore. But very few in the deep sea where the waves are high, winds are stormy, clouds are thick and dangers are many. Please be ready to risk your life for this kind of fishing. Remember, there are more fishes in the deep seas and they will run into your nets. But the fishes that are near the shore have become so clever and they rarely enter into any nets.
Friends, I am not discouraging you from any discipling programs that you are involved in already evangelized areas. I am only pleading with you to lift up your eyes and look into the fields that are ‘ripened, white and ready for harvest’. If God is not calling you for those fields, please pray for those places and ask the Lord to send laborers. Please raise funds from the evangelized areas and churches and start supporting pioneer missionaries and church planters in new regions.
There are 600 thousand villages in India. There is no Church witness in thousands of these remote villages. There are 1652 languages and dialects in India. There are many languages and dialects that have no Gospel literature or Gospel witness. There are hill tribes living on the mountains in fear of evil spirits and superstitions. They worship the rocks, trees and anything they do not understand. They have no running water and no electricity. They live in the forests and some of them even today practice human sacrifices. Some of them throw their baby girls to the ‘river god’ (Ganges) to get a ‘male son’ in the next conception. Some of them pierce their cheeks and others walk on sharp nails and broken glass to get salvation. Some of them torture their body, doing penance hoping to appease the ‘fearful god’ and get salvation. Some of them give alms to the poor and others go to holy places in order to get cleansing of their sins and better birth in the next life. This they call ‘re-birth’ or ‘transmigration’. They live in darkness because nobody went to them to tell the good news of salvation through Jesus Christ.
Most of these people in difficult places. They are in the ‘back pews’. Most of the missionary efforts are going on in the cities and towns were all comforts and facilities are available. The people in the front pews are ‘overfed’ while people in the back-pews have not received even a little. This is sad. Oswald J. Smith, the famous Canadian preacher said, “You have no right to hear the Gospel the second time, when there are people in the world who did not hear it even one time”. O Church, let us leave our comfort zones and go to the most hostile and hard places to pull out tribes and languages from eternal damnation.
“Make them sit down in companies”. Have we not kept them standing for the last 2000 years? They are hungry. Evening is near. Judgment is coming. Hell is at hand. O Church, let us ask the nations to sit down and let us start serving them food for their hunger- the living bread, Jesus Christ. He alone can satisfy their hunger and quench their thirst. The world waits for you.
4) The Miracle Jesus performs in Evangelization (vv. 41-42)
“They did all eat and were filled and they took up 12 baskets full… 5000 men...”
The disciples did not have any bread with them. This is the sad picture of the Church (Christians) who have no food in their hands to serve the needy and hungry people around.
But the disciples saw a boy with some food and they said to Jesus, “There is a lad here who has five barley loaves and two small fishes.” (John 6:9).
When talented, equipped, trained, experienced people fail, God in His grace will raise ‘lads’ for the expansion of His Kingdom. The barley loaves were the cheapest bread in those days. The two fishes were small and some scholars interpret that they were ‘two small pieces of fish’. This boy has come from a very poor family. Parents could not afford to send him with a food package of costly bread and big fishes.
Disciples pointed out this boy to the Lord. Christian leaders, may you be instrumental in introducing and raising young people for the task of evangelism. Look around you and encourage the youths to dedicate their lives to the cause of Jesus Christ.
Scholars say that this lad probably was 13-15 years only. He was a teen. That is the time when much food is required to fill the stomach. Those who have growing teen age boys and girls know this truth. I am sure that this boy was also very hungry. But he was ready to part with his precious food packet. He gladly gave it to Jesus. It was little. But Jesus took it in His hands; He blessed it and gave it to the disciples to distribute. Please visualize that scene of ‘little becoming much’ in the hands of Jesus. Behold the miracle of multitude eating and getting filled. Look at the scene of disciples carrying home twelve baskets full, each one carrying one basket of bread and fishes for their families. Little has become much in the hands of God. It became a scene of ‘starvation to surplus.’ This is what Jesus would do when we hand over our very little in the hands of God.
Jesus is asking you today, “What do you have? How much do you have?” He is not asking what you do not have. He in fact knows the ‘little’ you have. It is not much brother. But give it to Him. Do not bother about the things you do not have. Your education may be not much. Your personality may not be impressive. Your talents may be almost nothing. Your experience may be a near Zero. You know that you cannot do much if that remains in your hand and in your control. Just give it to God without any hesitation. God will do a miracle. ‘God does not look for your ability. He looks for your availability’.
God will multiply that. You will be full and overflowing. Your cup will run over. Through your multitudes will be blessed. Many will be saved. Many will be edified. New areas will be won for the Gospel. God will perform miracle when you give your all to Jesus.
In conclusion, shall we imagine and visualize the return of the disciples and the lad to their respective homes? How will each of them report when they would arrive their homes? I visualize like this:
The boy ran back to his home and excitedly said to his parents, “Mom, I have fed 5000 people today”. The parents could not believe that. They scolded him for that blasphemy. Then he explained, “Mom, I was very hungry. I knew that the food packet of five barley bread and 2 small fishes would not fill my stomach. You know it was not much. But I felt so bad when I saw that the people were hungry and the disciples had no food for distribution. The shops were also far away. There was no money to buy bread. Then I was moved with compassion and I believed that Jesus can do a miracle if I gave my all to Him. So, I gave the barley loaves and two small fishes to Jesus. Then Jesus looked up to heaven, prayed and blessed the food packet. A miracle took place. Many baskets, thousands of fishes and millions of breads. I believe there were nearly fifteen thousand people including children and women. I saw them eating with great joy and getting full and satisfied. Mom, Dad, I am so glad that I had a pert in feeding this multitude”. Hearing this, his parents thanked God. They hugged their son and rejoiced that their son was instrumental in feeding multitude of hungry people. O parents, dedicate your children for the cause of Christ. Do not fear or murmur when the Lord calls them into His glorious service.
The mother-in-law of Peter was amazed when Peter came home with one full basket on his head, full of barley loaves and fishes. She asked, “Peter, you went empty. You did not have any food with you. I was wondering and worried about your hunger and starvation. But how could you return home with this basket full of food?” I imagine that Peter answered excitedly, “Mother, it was shameful for me to go empty handed. I could not provide food for anybody, though Jesus expected me and the disciples to feed many people. This is our failure. But thank God, there was one young boy with some food. He gave it to Jesus. Then Jesus blessed and multiplied it. Then Jesus asked me and the other 11 disciples to carry the baskets of loaves and fishes to five thousand men, many women and children. I am glad Jesus gave me a chance to serve the food to the hungry. I also ate as much as I could. Now I have brought this full basket for our home also.”
Peter and his family began to praise God for this miracle and thanked Him for the privilege Jesus gave to Peter to be an instrument to feed the multitude.
Well, we can picture the reporting time by the disciples in their homes when they arrived with full baskets. Beloved, when you obey the call of God, when you get involved in missions, when you surrender your ‘little’ to the Lord, you can always expect ‘miracles in the mission fields.’
D.L. Moody finished class seven only. His English was bad. But gave his life to Jesus in total surrender. God used him mightily to shake two continents. He became a world-renowned evangelist, winning souls for Christ where ever he traveled. William booth did not complete his high school. He gave his life in the hands of God. God used him for the salvation of souls and for the planting of Salvation Army that is doing tremendous service for God and the people all over the world.
God can make your life a miracle. He can use you for the salvation of souls and for the edification of the Church. You will be an instrument for the expansion of God’s Kingdom. Therefore, my beloved in Christ, even though you may have wasted some years, even if you were starving spiritually, please hand over yourself in the hands of God, to make you a vessel according to His plan and will.
Pray to God for a heart that bleeds for the souls of sinners. Pray to reveal His plan for you. Be ready to obey whatever He asks and whatever it takes. Be available to Him for ‘home missions’ or ‘foreign missions.’ Go witnessing and winning souls where ever you go. If you cannot go to some places, because of ill health or old age, please pray for those lands and please support and send someone in your place. May God make your life a miracle in missions.
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