Chapter 27
The Miracle of Multiplication
The Reading: John 6:1-15
The Problem:
The people had followed Jesus out of town. As a matter of fact, crowds of people followed Jesus wherever He went. When people heard that Jesus and the disciples had gone off to be on their own, they wanted to be there, too. So they came running from all the towns in the area and actually got there before Jesus and the disciples had even arrived. They were determined to hear Jesus teach, and they wanted to see more miracles, more signs, and more wonders.
But then it began to get dark, and the people were hungry. Matthew 14:21 says there were 5,000 men present. Women and children weren’t considered important enough to be counted in those days. Drawing on the work of sociologist Megan McKenna, she suggests in her book “Not Counting Women and Children” (Orbis, 1994) that the ratio of women and children to adult men would have been 5 to 1 or 6 to 1. This means the actual number of people in the crowd could have been as many as 25,000 to 30,000. Other commentaries have put the size of the crowd at 15,000 to 20,000.
There were no grocery stores nearby. There wasn’t a restaurant on every corner as there is today. Jesus and the apostles didn’t have enough money to buy food for everyone, even if there were supplies available.
So Jesus asked Philip, “Where can we buy bread for these people to eat?” (John 6:5). Since Philip was from this area, this question could have been a simple question of where the shops were located (John 1:44). But Jesus was really asking Philip this question to test him. All throughout the Bible, we see that God asks questions to test men (Genesis 3:9, 4:9, Job 38). Jesus asked Philip “where” but Philip could only think in terms of “how.”
Jesus was showing Philip and the other disciples that there was no way they could solve the problem on their own. Jesus wanted the disciples to trust Him - to know that He alone would be able to meet their need. He alone would be able to pull off a catering job of this magnitude.
Finally Andrew, spoke up and said, “There is a boy here with five barley loaves and two small fish.”
The Turning Point:
We don’t know much about how the day started for that young boy. He set off in the morning with his five barley loaves and two fishes. His mother might have packed the food as a snack for his father out in the field working. Maybe he was headed out to go fishing, took the food along for his lunch, but then noticed the crowd following Jesus and joined them. Or perhaps he intentionally went that way, on that special day, just to hear Jesus.
Whatever his plans were, when the boy left home early that morning, I’m sure he thought he had prepared adequately for the day. It is important consider what this boy was actually carrying. In ancient times, bread was the staple food, and the word for bread was often used as a synonym for food itself. Now the boy only had five barley loaves, the ordinary black bread of the Galilean peasant. Barley was usually used as food for the horses (1 Kings 4:28). But poor people also used barley to make their bread (Judges 7:13; 2 Kings 4:42), and these loaves would have been in the shape of small rolls or little round cakes.
And the two fish? Think sardines. The Greek word used here is opsarion – which literally means “tiny fish”. Strong’s Concordance says it was presumably salted and dried as a condiment, to be eaten as a relish with the bread.
As we have seen from the counting issue above, children weren’t seen as very important in that culture. The young boy hadn’t even been counted with the 5,000. But God was planning to use someone that everyone else had overlooked to perform a miracle. God often uses those who are the weakest or least important in the eyes of other people. Over and over in the Bible, He selected ordinary people to do extra-ordinary things in His Kingdom.
The Miracle That Followed:
This young boy was willing to give what little he had to Jesus. He only had a small sack lunch, but was willing to give it up to help others. When asked to give Jesus his small meal, he handed it over. He didn’t argue with the disciples, or try to run away with his food. As was the custom for children in that culture, he obeyed immediately.
Jesus broke the bread and blessed it, and then told the disciples to pass it out. Everyone received as much food as they wanted, and they all had plenty to eat. In fact, in Matthew 14:20; Mark 6:43; Luke 9:17; and John 6:13, we learn that there were twelve baskets full of food left over.
The Greek word used for “basket” in all these accounts was “kophinos,” which meant "a wicker basket," made of twigs or branches. This was a relatively small basket that could be carried on the back to hold provisions. It is believed that they were about 3/5 bushel, about the size of a backpack.
Some today confuse this miracle with the one where Jesus fed 4,000, recorded in Matthew 15:37, 16:10; and Mark 8:8, 8:20. The Greek word for “basket” in these accounts is “spuris.” Spuris means "something round, twisted, or folded together (anything rolled onto a circle)". This was a braided reed basket, considerably larger than the kophinos, like a large laundry hamper. Sometimes these baskets were even large enough to hold a man, as this is the same word in scripture used for the basket that Paul climbed into to be let down from the wall at Damascus, according to Luke. (Acts 9:25).
No matter what sizes the baskets for left-overs were, these were both amazing miracles.
The Bottom Line:
The feeding of the 5,000 is the only miracle, apart from Jesus’ resurrection, which has been recorded in all four Gospels. Because of the repetition, we know God is sending an important message to us today. I believe that besides teaching trust in God’s provision and highlighting the value of generosity, it emphasizes the value of obedience.
If God can use a small boy’s lunch, is it possible that you have something the Lord could use to help someone? Could it be that you’re holding on to a possession of yours so tightly that you’re blocking a miracle God has planned for you?
