Amen. You turn me in your Bibles please to Exodus chapter 16, beginning at the first verse. They set out from Elim, and all the congregation of the people of Israel came to the Wilderness of Sin, which is between Elim and Sinai, on the 15th day of the second month after they had departed from the land of Egypt.
And the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness. And the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full! For you have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
Then the Lord said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day that I may test them whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.”
So Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord because He has heard your grumbling against the Lord. For what are we that you grumble against us?”
And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling that you grumble against Him, what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the Lord.”
Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, ‘Come near before the Lord, for He has heard your grumblings.’” And as soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud.
And the Lord said to Moses, “I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel. Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you shall know that I am the Lord your God.’”
In the evening, quail came up and covered the camp, and in the morning dew lay around the camp. When the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. When the people of Israel saw it, they said to one another, “What is it?” for they did not know what it was.
And Moses said to them, “It is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.”
From there, we turn to John’s Gospel in chapter 6. After this, Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd was following Him because they saw the signs that He was doing on the sick.
Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat down with His disciples. Now the Passover, the Feast of the Jews, was at hand. Lifting up His eyes then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward Him, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to buy bread so that these people may eat?” He said this to test him, for He himself knew what He would do.
Philip answered him, “200 denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.” One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?”
Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place, so the men sat down, about 5,000 in number. Jesus then took the loaves, and when He had given thanks, He distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted.
When they had eaten their fill, He told His disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments that nothing may be lost.” So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.
When the people saw the sign that He had done, they said, “Indeed, this is the prophet who is to come into the world.”
Perceiving then that they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by Himself.
This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God. Let us pray.
Lord, you are our great provider. You give us all we need. Forgive us when we grumble and when we doubt, and we do not know how you will provide, but help us to trust that you always shall. Open our hearts to hear you speak through your word. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
Despite John’s reported persecution of Jesus by the Jewish religious authorities that we saw in chapter five, apparently His verbal defense and presented evidence was received and believed well enough to generate uncertainty about Jesus’s alleged offenses and build support for His claim of authority, such that after the feast, He was allowed to leave Jerusalem and Judea without any further negative incidents.
Although it is not expressly stated, we presume that Jesus immediately returned to Galilee and resumed His itinerant ministry throughout the region. Thus, after this, Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. A large crowd was following Him because they saw the signs that He was doing on the sick.
Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat down with His disciples. The Passover, the Feast of the Jews, was at hand. So once again, John slips in several seemingly minor yet important details, which help to establish the physical context for the following events, describing both their time and place.
“After this” tells us that there had been a substantial but indeterminate passage of time between this and the previous story. “Now the Passover, the Feast of the Jews, was at hand” tells us the season during which the story occurs.
That this is the second Passover mentioned by the Evangelist implies that Jesus has now been engaged in His public ministry for about a year. “Was at hand” implies that the annual Passover was approaching, which marks the story as happening in the early spring before the feast.
However, based on the narrative, the story that comes right after this makes it clear that the Passover was not yet close enough for them to be beginning the annual pilgrimage to Jerusalem. “Went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee” could be a subjective statement because we’re not given a clear starting point, but there are other details that strongly imply one area over any other possibilities.
To describe the location and direction of travel, John uses the Greek term “pana,” a preposition that most simply means “beyond.” So the Evangelist is really saying that Jesus traveled beyond the Sea of Galilee, where, since most Jewish directional references are made from a starting point of Jerusalem, implies that Jesus was somewhere along the northern coast of the sea.
Narrowing the location even further, we see that the disciples will soon get in their boats and sail to Capernaum, a town located on the northwest coast of the sea, immediately after this event. Furthermore, Jesus will ask Philip a question about where provisions might be procured, suggesting that Philip could possess knowledge about the local shops or families where they might purchase food, implying reasonably that they were likely near his hometown of Bethsaida, his familiar territory, which was over on the northeast coast of the sea.
Now, some of you may find these kinds of details fascinating because of the life that they bring to the story. Some of you may think that they’re just trivial or irrelevant to the grand scheme of the Gospel. But the details really do matter greatly.
I mean, why do I spend so much time drawing out and explaining these intricate contexts, trying to bring our understanding of the world of the past? Because these details are evidence supporting Scripture and its truth.
And because these details are things that would have been implicitly understood and known by the original hearers and readers of the Gospels, these small details are evidence that these things really did happen in real places with real people. Made-up stories do not have details like this—details that are verifiable and logical.
Although we can’t verify certain specific details today, they could have been confirmed back when the New Testament was being written. If this story did not happen as the Evangelist records, then someone could have and would have denied it as being false.
The church fathers, those who initially received the text of Scripture, they were able to examine and verify the truth of its claims. And if they had any doubt about them, they would not have used it, promoted it, or preserved it.
So all of these little, seemingly minor details that hover around the edges of the story serve to convince us of its truth. Authors of fiction do not waste their time on such details, preferring to focus on the action and the grand narrative of their story, letting our imagination fill in those gaps.
So now that we know the where and the when, we turn to the who. A large crowd was following Him because they saw the signs that He was doing on the sick. And Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat down with His disciples.
So we have Jesus, we have the disciples, and a large crowd, but we’re not immediately told the size or composition of the crowd beyond it being large. Then John tells us the why—the reason the crowd was following Jesus: because they saw the signs that He was doing on the sick. This tells us that Jesus had performed more acts of healing than just those of the royal official’s son and the paralyzed man of Bethesda, suggesting that throughout, Jesus really had developed a good and popular reputation as a healer and a miracle worker through His itinerant ministry.
So having such a reputation, what can we presume about the composition of this crowd of followers? Perhaps some of them were beginning to believe in Jesus and His message, but as we will see over time, the greater impression that John suggests is that they were actually just a bunch of looky-loos. They were following Jesus, but they were not followers of Jesus.
I mean, if they were following Jesus merely because of the signs they had seen, then many, if not most of them, were following because they just wanted to see more miracles—they were just looking for a show. They were not following Jesus because they had some depth of faith or any understanding about who Jesus is. They were not following Him like the disciples; they were not learning from Him, and they were not being discipled by Him. Instead, they were just following along like a puppy hoping for a special treat.
Then lastly, John tells us the what—the purpose of the story. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat down with His disciples. Jesus went up on the mountain, and then He sat down. His act of sitting emphasizes the most important detail that emphasizes the whole scene.
Because in the ancient world of the first century, sitting was an expression of authority. Judges sat to deliver their verdicts, and Jewish rabbis sat while teaching—all their students gathered around them standing.
This means that this story is given to us as it was for Jesus’ hearers to teach us something about who Jesus is and what Jesus does. Here, He performs a fourth sign through a miracle of feeding, thereby manifesting His divine glory as the great provider and provisioner.
So now, seated on the mountainside and surrounded by His disciples and this large crowd of seekers, Jesus said to Philip, “Where are we to find bread so that these people may eat?” He said this to test him, for He himself knew what He would do.
What was Jesus testing by asking Philip about this? He was testing his response and reaction to see whether he would react with a worldly response or a spiritual response. He was testing whether Philip would lean upon his own understanding—his own worldly understanding—or if he would simply trust the Lord and His prophets.
Philip answered Him, “200 denarii worth of bread would not be enough for each of them to get a little.” Philip answered Jesus with a very worldly answer. His mind went immediately to the monetary cost. 200 denarii is roughly the equivalent of eight months of wages. That much money would buy a lot of people a lot of lunch, but yet he still expected it to not be enough.
I mean, the disciples, they were just a bunch of poor, out-of-work fishermen and tradesmen. Where could they get enough money to provide for so many people? Obviously, they couldn’t. Then Andrew tried to rescue Philip, saying, “One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, ‘There’s a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish. What are they for so many?’”
At least Andrew proved that he was beginning to think outside of the worldly box because he was looking for an alternative solution. He was getting onto the right track, but he was not there yet. Perhaps one of his ideas was to suggest—often wrongly interpreted and promoted by liberal, miracle-denying scholars—that if everyone pitched in with whatever they had, then maybe everyone could just share, and everyone could have a little bit of something.
Perhaps Andrew thought that this would be a great social miracle, an example of sharing by a community, tangibly demonstrating their love for their neighbors. But no—regardless, both Philip and Andrew failed Jesus’ test.
Jesus is God the Son; He knew how they would answer as surely as He knew what He intended to do. So in reality, they actually failed themselves, not Him, by proving to themselves that they did not get it yet.
So Jesus said, “Have the people sit down.” Now there was much grass in the place, so the men sat down, about 5,000 in number. Jesus then took the loaves, and when He had given thanks, He distributed them to those who were seated, so also the fish, as much as they wanted.
Now, this story should be familiar to everyone, but it is unusual in John because it’s the only story from His ministry that is shared across all four Gospels. Amazingly, every specific detail is also identically recorded in each version. There were 5,000 men; they were in a remote place, and the people were unprepared to take care of themselves. There were five loaves and two fish to start, and there were 12 baskets filled with leftovers at the end.
Taken together, this great consistency helps emphasize both the story’s importance and its truth—its veracity—because everybody remembered it the same. However, John’s version presents a different but related unique purpose, point, and intended meaning of the story, different from the synoptics: that just as the Lord provided for Israel in the wilderness, so too Jesus, the Son of God, will provide for His people.
After offering thanksgiving to God for the food, Jesus distributed to everyone their meal. He brought it to them wherever they were sitting. This did not become a massive potluck because there was no opportunity for it. There was no opportunity for people to share and share alike since people did not come to Jesus to be served.
So the disciples could not be hiding behind Him, passing food forward to serve the people. There’s only one way to rightly understand this story, and that is as a miracle, because the Lord always provides what we need.
Now, did Jesus need the fish and the bread? No, because He is the God who spoke everything into being. Yet, this is also a reminder that ordinarily, God works His miracles through secondary means. God is the absolute first cause, and the created natural elements are His secondary means. God made the fish, and God made the barley, which had been dried and ground into flour, along with the olives, which were pressed into oil, along with the water and salt which, when combined and cooked together, became the bread that Jesus served.
See, it’s a miracle. Jesus was able to give this increase because He is the Lord God, and He is our provider. When they had eaten their fill, He told His disciples, “Gather up the leftover fragments that nothing may be lost.”
So they gathered them up and filled 12 baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten. Not only did Jesus give them enough, He provided them an abundance—giving them far more than necessary so that everyone could eat and be satisfied.
But beyond the mere fact of this miracle, the story is also another sign of Jesus’ divinity as the Lord God Almighty. It’s more evidence. This miraculous story of provision echoes and reflects God’s provision for Israel in the wilderness during the Exodus.
When the whole congregation of the people of Israel grumbled against Moses and Aaron in the wilderness, the people of Israel said to them, “Would that we had died by the hand of the Lord in the land of Egypt when we sat by the meat pots and ate bread to the full! For you, meaning Moses, have brought us out into this wilderness to kill this whole assembly with hunger.”
See, back then, although it was a different circumstance, they had the same problem: the Israelites were hungry and tired. The provisions that they had brought out of Egypt had already run out. So hungry, fearful, and anxious about their needs, the Israelites began to grumble against Moses and Aaron. They blamed their leaders for their circumstances and began to wish that they had died as slaves in Egypt with full stomachs rather than die in freedom with empty bellies.
But truly, if we’re all honest with ourselves, if we were in their same circumstances and only knew what they knew then, we would not blame them for their grumbling because we would be saying and doing the exact same thing. At that moment, they did not know what they could or should expect and hope for from God. Their understanding of who the Lord really is was still too small.
They did not yet understand that they could and should be relying entirely upon Him, as they had thus far since they left Egypt. A Divine solution was beyond the scope of their present ability to imagine because the Lord had not yet shown them who He is.
Following the Lord’s direction, Moses and Aaron said to all the people of Israel, “At evening you shall know that it was the Lord who brought you out of the land of Egypt, and in the morning you shall see the glory of the Lord because He has heard your grumbling against the Lord. For what are we that you grumble against us?”
See, God had heard the people’s grumbling, and He assented to satisfy their need. He assented to show forth His glory, His power, His majesty, to show that He carries the weight of responsibility for them.
And to show them that by naming and claiming them as His covenant people, He shall always provide for them. Meanwhile, Moses, he already understood. He trusted God, so he took the people’s complaint to the Lord.
Moses knew that God would provide for them. He trusted that since God put them in the situation they were in, God would be the one to get them out of it. And Moses said, “When the Lord gives you in the evening meat to eat and in the morning bread to the full, because the Lord has heard your grumbling that you grumble against Him, what are we? Your grumbling is not against us but against the Lord.”
Moses understood who their sinful grumbling was really against, although they did not. Telling them, “Your grumbling is not against us but the Lord.” Remember, grumbling and unjust complaints against God’s appointed leaders—no matter who they are, whether parent, teacher, preacher, or government official—is sinful because God is the one who’s appointed them.
By doing so, you are questioning His judgment and complaining against His rule and sovereign authority. Then Moses said to Aaron, “Say to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, ‘Come near before the Lord for He has heard your grumblings.’”
As soon as Aaron spoke to the whole congregation of the people of Israel, they looked toward the wilderness, and behold, the glory of the Lord appeared in the cloud. And the Lord said to Moses, “I have heard the grumblings of the people of Israel. Say to them, ‘At twilight you shall eat meat, and in the morning you shall be filled with bread. Then you will know that I am the Lord your God.’”
But why did God allow them, permit them, and cause Israel to be in the situation they were in? To display His glory and so that they shall know that He is the Lord their God.
The Lord was proving the truth of His divinity to a people that grew up in a world filled with so-called gods that were fanciful, fantastical, and utterly dependent upon blind faith—because no one had ever seen them, heard them, or experienced evidence of their power or even their existence.
The Egyptian gods were just simply made-up stories that were appropriated by Satan and his demonic forces. Then after chastising them for their grumbling, the Lord gave them the food that they needed.
In the evening, quail came up and covered the camp; in the morning, dew lay around the camp. When the dew had gone up, there was on the face of the wilderness a fine, flake-like thing, fine as frost on the ground. The people of Israel saw it; they said to one another, “What is it?” for they did not know what it was.
And Moses said to them, “This is the bread that the Lord has given you to eat.” Truly, that was a miraculous event. Again we see God using ordinary means to do extraordinary things—the first cause using secondary means to achieve His purposes.
At the Lord’s sovereign command, a massive flock of birds flew into their camp and settled, and the manna just appeared, along with the morning dew. Both are simply miracles of God that He performed using the natural world.
I mean, the probability of a flock of birds large enough to feed so many Israelites—probably around 2 million—arriving just in time? That probability is approaching zero. And even if a person wanted to claim this event as a natural occurrence, a Christian would recognize that the birds’ arrival was still ordained, appointed, and directed by God to happen right then, with as many as there were.
Meanwhile, there is no attempted natural explanation for the manna. This could only be a miracle, which is why Aaron was instructed to preserve some in a container kept within the Ark of the Covenant as proof and evidence to future generations.
So just as God gave them both meat and bread—quail and manna—giving them enough to be satisfied, Jesus also gave this hungry crowd out in the Galilean wilderness meat and bread, fish and barley loaves, giving them more than enough to satisfy them and leaving them with an excess of abundance.
These people were following Jesus hoping to see a sign, and He gave them one. Not only did they see it, they also recognized and understood the sign, at least in part.
When the people saw the sign that He had done, they said, “This is indeed the prophet who is to come into the world.” I mean, they understood that this miracle was evidence that Jesus was sent by God. They recognized a relationship with Moses’s provision in the wilderness, but they missed what the relationship actually was.
I mean, they thought that it proved Jesus’s similarity to Moses, demonstrating that He is the second Moses—hence why they declared that He is the prophet of Deuteronomy 18:15 and why they were about to come and take Him by force to make Him king. Because not only would He be a Davidic king, He would also be a wonder-working leader like Moses.
However, they missed the point. They missed what the sign was actually saying about Jesus. They did not rightly understand who was doing what. I mean, Moses declared to the people what God would do, and then God did it. God miraculously sent the quail, and the manna appeared. Moses just told the people what to expect before it happened. He did nothing himself.
But Jesus? Jesus commanded the people to sit, and then He served them. Jesus miraculously multiplied the loaves and fishes right before their very eyes. Just as the miracle of quail and manna demonstrated to Israel that the Lord is God and proved that He would provide for them, Moses was just a man, and he could do nothing in himself.
Moses could not provide for Israel. The miracle of loaves and fishes, though, demonstrated that Jesus is the Lord God, and it proved that He would provide for us. This miracle proved that Jesus is more than a man, demonstrating that He is greater than Moses.
Beyond this miracle being evidence that Jesus Christ is the Lord and our provider, it also teaches us that we need to increase our expectations about God. Both of these stories teach us that the Lord is bigger than our expectations and our wildest imaginings.
Our view of God is far less than His reality. The hungry Israelites grumbled in the wilderness because they could not imagine a God who could and would be able and willing to provide. Philip could not imagine a way to get enough food for the people except by spending an outrageous amount of money, and even then he could not imagine how the available supply could possibly meet the demand.
Andrew, although hopeful, could not imagine how far Jesus could make such limited resources—five loaves and two fish—how far he could make that go to feed over 5,000 people. But maybe, perhaps the boy who offered up the food might have imagined and hoped for what Jesus could do with his offer.
Maybe there’s also a lesson here about our need for childlike faith as well. Regardless, even knowing and believing that Jesus can and will provide for us—that He will give us as much as we need and more—we expect and ask for far less than He is able and wanting to give us.
When we pray, we often fail to pray big, and we often fail to pray small, too, because deep down we doubt God. We doubt who the Lord is. We doubt that He is willing and able, or maybe we fear that He is willing but unable, or that He is neither willing nor able.
We doubt that He actually cares about our little, minor, insignificant human concerns when there is so much evil, pain, conflict, and sorrow in the world around us. We doubt that God actually cares for us as a father, so we fail to pray because we assume that we would be bothering Him by even asking.
We forget that God made the world and everything in it for us. We forget that God loves us and He wants to bless us because He loves us as His chosen children of adoption. We forget that He gave His Son, Jesus, for us as the propitiation for our sins, for our forgiveness, and to be our righteousness received by faith in Him alone.
See, there is no limit to what God can and will do for His children within His sovereign will for us. Yes, sometimes we will pray, and sometimes God will tell us no, but that is never because He cannot do something. That is never because He does not love us.
Instead, He will tell us no because He does love us, because He wants what is best for us, because He knows that what is best for us is His will. The great challenge for us is that we must trust Him entirely. We must depend upon Him entirely because when we do, He is sure to give us whatever we need and even more in abundance.
Jesus, God the Son, is our great provider, and we must trust that He will always provide for us, His people, that He will give us what we need and more than we can ever imagine. Amen.