In our daily devotionals, we are exploring the supernatural acts of the Lord Jesus during His time on earth. Today, we focus on the feeding of over 5,000 people:
12Late in the afternoon the Twelve came to him and said, “Send the crowd away so they can go to the surrounding villages and countryside and find food and lodging, because we are in a remote place here.” 13He replied, “You give them something to eat.” They answered, “We have only five loaves of bread and two fish—unless we go and buy food for all this crowd.” 14(About five thousand men were there.) But he said to his disciples, “Have them sit down in groups of about fifty each.” 15The disciples did so, and everyone sat down. 16Taking the five loaves and the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke them. Then he gave them to the disciples to distribute to the people. 17They all ate and were satisfied, and the disciples picked up twelve basketfuls of broken pieces that were left over (Luke 9:10-17).
Matthew notes that there were more than five thousand in the crowd: “The number of those who ate was about five thousand men, besides women and children” (Matthew 14:21). Five loaves of bread and two fish are not much when considering that there were likely at least 12,000 people seated for the meal. Additionally, John 6:9 informs us that we are referring to five small barley loaves, which, according to the Mishnah, a Jewish commentary, was the bread the poorest of the poor ate.[1]
The apostle John recounts how Andrew found a boy willing to share his lunch (John 6:9). We’re talking about just enough food for one person, perhaps quickly packed by his mom as he set out. John uses the Greek word “opsarion” to describe the two fish in the boy’s lunch. This term refers to small, usually dried, or pickled fish, like sardines, that are eaten with bread, typically measuring no more than six inches long. The five barley loaves were likely smaller than today’s pita bread. The pickled fish would enhance the flavor. As the disciples observed this boy's lunch, the Lord made a surprising statement: “Have the people sit down” (John 6:10). This effectively suggested, "Let's sit down to eat," even though there was nothing available except for the boy's lunch. Luke notes that Jesus instructed the crowd to sit in groups of fifty and hundreds (v. 14).
He then broke the bread and fish into pieces and kept giving. The imperfect Greek tense of the verb indicates that He continued to distribute. The more the people were given, the more they ate. It was astonishing how such a small amount of food was nourishing each of them. I am sure they sought reassurance from the disciples that they were indeed eating just one boy’s lunch. As they consumed the meal, they exchanged looks of amazement at the sheer impossibility of it all. With God, all things are possible!
How amazing it must have been to be one of the disciples sent by the Lord with a basket to collect the leftovers. As each group of fifty or a hundred tossed their leftover pieces of fish and bread into twelve baskets, one for each disciple, they would investigate the baskets and see far more fish and bread than when they had started. It was glorifying to the Lord as each family and social group reported that they had eaten fully and had plenty of leftovers. John tells us that when the people realized the miraculous nature of the feeding of the five thousand, they began to say, “This is truly the Prophet!” (John 6:14). Many hundreds of years earlier, God spoke to Moses, telling him that the Lord would send Israel a prophet whose ministry would be like that of Moses and that they should listen very carefully to Him:
The LORD your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers. You must listen to him (Deuteronomy 18:15).
Christ is the Prophet destined to come into the world, and like the Manna provided to Moses, God miraculously fed them (Numbers 11:31-34). When those who ate began to realize that this was the One Moses spoke of, they desired to take Him and make Him king. However, it was not God’s timing for Him to be crowned king—God’s plan was for Christ to be a sacrificial substitute for us. Keith Thomas
This meditation is a condensed version of the detailed study in Luke. Click on the All Studies box on the Home Page, then the Gospel of Luke, and then Study 19. Luke 9:1-17 – Jesus Sends Out the Twelve. This story starts on page 7.
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[1] Alfred Edersheim, The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, Hendrickson Publishers, page 467