Jesus
Supplies Their Need
Jesus
knows the hearts of mankind, so He knew they were hungry. Jesus will
supernaturally multiply the lad's lunch. He will be the Source of
the physical bread and fish through multiplication, but the disciples
will distribute it. The disciples could only give what they received
from Jesus. The
multitudes received and ate the physical bread, but Jesus will use it
to show that He is the Living Bread of heaven sent of God who will
feed their spiritual, eternal life. We can't sustain our spiritual
life without the Living Bread of Life – Jesus. When the Word
becomes flesh in us through simple obedience, it becomes “living”
in us just as the whole Word of God is “living” in Christ because
He obeyed it fully and completely. Jesus wanted this crowd – and
us – to see with spiritual eyes, not physical. The spiritual Word
of God is food for our soul and spirit when it is eaten by the one
receiving it. Jesus used the temporary value of physical food to
illustrate the eternal value of spiritual food – the satisfying
Bread of Life that comes only through Jesus empowered by the Holy
Spirit. We have to desire His bread and meat.
Jesus
will use this miracle as a prelude to revealing that He is the Bread
of life sent from heaven. First
the “natural” message. Then the “spiritual message.
After
the bread and fish were brought to Jesus, He told His disciples to
seat the masses in groups of 50 or 100. There is always a message in
anything Jesus spoke or did, including numbers. No doubt this was
done to keep order and make the distribution more manageable –
avoiding confusion. They were all going to eat from the same food
that came from Jesus. When zeros are added to numbers, it means in
greater measure. The numbers 50 and 100 would spiritually mean
“greater grace” (5)
and “greater Divine order.” (10).
Simple
obedience to Jesus' Word of instruction brought the abundance. Jesus
will show all present His multiplying power.
There
must have been a grassy knoll on the mountainside where Jesus had His
disciples tell the crowd to sit and rest. Springtime (the
time of Passover and sacrifice for sin) is
the time of “new life.” The grass would be green, fresh and new.
Green is the color of everlasting life. Jesus will feed the
multitude with the bread and meat that brings everlasting life. He
is the perfect Passover Lamb that was sacrificed for the sin of the
whole world. Only Jesus can satisfy and fill! The bread and meat
will renew the strength of the multitudes so they can continue their
journey to God's Holy City. This crowd of Jews on their way to
celebrate Passover in Jerusalem accepted the physical bread given by
Jesus, but sadly the majority of them rejected the Living Bread (Jesus) who
came down from heaven like the manna in the wilderness. The bread in the wilderness was not "living" bread.
Jesus
looked up to the Provider of all things – His Father – and gave
thanks for the meager provision given to Him by the lad. Our Heavenly Father loves a
thankful heart no matter how great or how small His provision. “Let
the peace of God rule in your hearts..........and be thankful.”
Colossians 3:15 We
must learn to be thankful on a daily basis for all of God's
blessings.
In
the other gospels, it says that Jesus blessed the bread and meat,
broke (divided)
it, and gave it to His chosen disciples to give to the crowd. In all
three of the other gospels, Jesus said to His disciples, “You
give them something to eat.” Jesus
affirmed this again in the John
21:15 after
His resurrection when He told Peter three times to “Feed
My sheep.” In
John
21, Jesus
fed His disciples bread and fish again.
Here in John
6,
Jesus distributed the bread and meat Himself just as He did with His
disciples in John
21 at
the great catch of fish.
In feeding the multitudes, the disciples had to totally depend upon
Jesus who rightly-divides the Bread and Meat of His Word. Then they
could distribute the rightly-divided bread and meat to others. There was a
never-ending supply until all were fed and satisfied. Each person
could eat as much as he or she wanted. In other words, as much as
they desired. This is true also with the written Word of God
that reveals the Living Word of God – Jesus. We can eat as much as
we want until we are satisfied, and it never runs out. There is
fresh manna in the Word for us at all times.
The
feeding of the bread is foreshadowed in the story of Joseph in Egypt.
The life of Joseph is a type and shadow of Jesus. To reveal this to
you would take another whole teaching so I will give you a brief overview. Joseph had the “saving”
grain in Egypt that would feed the multitudes. If you know the story, Joseph in his wisdom saved the grain during the abundance for a day when there would be a famine. All had to come to
Joseph for food when the famine came. Joseph is the right hand man to
Pharaoh in the land of Egypt, as Jesus sits at the right hand of the
Father. God also saved the grain -- Jesus, His Seed -- for a day when there was a famine of the Word of God in the Promised Land. God had not spoken for over 400 years before Jesus came into the world. Joseph's father (Jacob
– the father of the 12 tribes of Israel),
his brothers and the whole household of the father came to Joseph in
Egypt for grain. “Joseph
provided his father, his brothers, and all his father's household
with bread, according to the number in their families.”
Genesis
47:12-14 Again,
God multiplies the bread and feeds all of God's people.
Jesus
provides bread to the whole household of Father God. As Joseph was
the favored son of father Jacob, Jesus is the Favored and Only Son
of Father God who will feed all with His spiritual bread and meat -- both Jew and Gentile.
Before
Jesus could become food for the poor in spirit, He first had to be
broken on the cross. Broken bread is illustrative of the death of
Christ. At the Last Supper, Jesus took bread, gave thanks and broke
it just as He did in the feeding of the 5,000 and said to His twelve
chosen disciples, ”This
is My body which is given for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”
Luke 22:19 And
1
Corinthians 11:24 says,
and
when He had given thanks, He broke it and said, “Take, eat! This
is My body which is broken for you; do this in remembrance of Me.”
It
was Christ's brokenness on the cross that brought His blessing of
eternal life to all who receive Him. The Righteous One took on the
penalty of the condemned so we could inherit eternal life. We are
powerless to do anything about our situation except to accept God's
love and grace through His Son Jesus Christ. This truly is “amazing
grace.”
Twelve
Baskets full
Each
of Jesus' twelve disciples had a basket of bread and meat to
distribute to the hungry. So does every believer in the Bread of
Life – Jesus. Jesus multiplied the bread and meat in His disciples'
baskets first. What was in the hands of the disciples multiplied as
they gave it away and kept multiplying until all were filled. Jesus
had taught His disciples. They were carriers of His spiritual Word. It is sharing of the Anointed Word that brings multiplication until all are satisfied and filled.
Jesus
uses the Bread and Meat of His Word to establish His Divine
Government on earth. We are His receptacle through whom He will feed
the spiritual bread and meat of His Word. Twelve is the number of
Divine Government. Twelve also represents all of God's people –
twelve tribes of Israel and twelve original disciples – who began
the establishment of God's spiritual Kingdom on earth. As Jesus
said to the Samaritan woman at the well, “Salvation
is of the Jews.” The
Savior of the world had to come through the Jews to fulfill
scripture. There were twelve full baskets after all were fed and
satisfied. There was as much leftover at the end as there was in the
beginning -- twelve full baskets. Not one piece of the bread or meat
was wasted or lost. The Word of God is never wasted. It
accomplishes that for which God sent it.
Jesus
said that He is the “the
Alpha and Omega; the Beginning and the End.” Jesus
like God operates in fullness. He is the fullness of Truth. The
Bread and Meat of God's Word never runs out. The written Word became
the Eternal Word in Christ. Jesus began building His Temple in the
hearts of mankind through His chosen twelve Jewish disciples. When
His disciples trusted and obeyed Jesus, He supplied food for the
hungry. It was in the rightly-dividing and sharing that the bread
and fish multiplied! Jesus wants His followers to do the same today.
We must receive Truth from Jesus and the Spirit of Truth and then
share it with others. This brings the multiplication. A sign of our
love for Jesus is our willingness to feed others the good news of
salvation through Jesus Christ and the Truth that He has so graciously shown us.
Jesus
is concerned about both our physical and our spiritual needs. He is
the only One who can satisfy and fill. He will use this miracle of
multiplying the bread and fish to reveal Himself as the Bread of
Life. First Jesus gave the “natural” message. Then He will give
the “spiritual” message that He is the Bread of Life. The Bread
of God is accessible to everyone!
Foreshadowing
in Older Testament--Multiplication of Bread
Elisha,
the man of God, was given 20 loaves of barley bread and some “new”
grain as a first fruit offering to God. (see
2 Kings 4:42) Elisha
told his servant to give it to the people to eat. The servant said
to Elisha, “How
can I set this before a hundred men?” v43 Here
Elisha will feed 100 men with the barley bread and grain, but Jesus
is greater than Elisha so He feeds the multitudes. The Lord had told
Elisha, “They
will eat and have some left over, according to the Word of the Lord.”
v44
Jesus
is fulfilling this in the multiplication of the bread in the New
Testament. All that Jesus did should have been recognized by the
teachers of the Law and the Prophets as the fulfillment of the Older
Testament scriptures. These religious leaders were well-schooled in
the Older Testament scriptures. As God did more than Elisha could
have hoped for or asked, Jesus did more than His disciples could have
hoped for or asked.
After
Jesus multiplies the bread and fish, He announces that He is the
Bread of Life.
Surely
this is the Prophet
After
the people saw the miraculous sign that Jesus did, they began to say,
“Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.” John
6:14 They
are speaking about the prophet Moses spoke of in Deuteronomy
18:15. “The Lord your God will raise up a prophet like me from
your midst, from your brethren. Him you shall hear.” God
through Moses had promised the Jews this. Jesus is indeed that
Prophet, but He is far more than just a prophet. He is the Supreme
Prophet of God as the very Word of God, and the Only Son of God. God
reproduced is God!
Jesus,
who is all-knowing, was aware that the crowd was going to come and
make Him king ahead of God's timing so He withdrew to a mountain by
Himself. He will go and commune with the Father alone.
(Next
week: Jesus walks on water)
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