It’s the only miracle recorded by all four of the Gospel writers. Jesus miraculously fed five thousand men and their families with a boy’s lunch (Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:34-44; Luke 9:11-17; John 6:1-15).
Only John provided this detail: “Now the Passover, a Jewish festival, was near” (John 6:4).
Passover was one of the three pilgrim feasts when families journeyed to Jerusalem. Especially with Passover, Hebrew people were reminded of the Exodus and the forty-years of wilderness wanderings. They remembered Moses, the bigger-than-life character that led their ancestors from Egyptian captivity to the Promised Land. And they remembered the Messianic promise: “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among your own brothers”(Deuteronomy 18:15). Was Jesus the promised prophet?
After the crowd’s hunger pains had been satisfied, they must have chattered about the manna, bread from heaven, that had nourished their great-great-great… grandparents in the wilderness. Surely, some in the crowd must have concluded that Jesus was the new Moses, the Messiah, the provider of bread from Heaven.
Before their watching eyes, Jesus had taken five tiny barley biscuits and two sardine-sized fish. He had blessed them, broken them into pieces, and distributed them to the multitude. Five-thousand men and their families should have understood the magnitude of this miracle.
But where did Jesus get the bread and fish? Again, it is only John who provided this information. Andrew, Peter’s brother, had encountered a little lad who apparently brought his boxed lunch as an offering (John 6:9).
Who was the boy? Was he alone, or was his family on the way to Jerusalem for Passover? What compelled him to give everything to Jesus? Was the trajectory of his life forever altered by this event?
Someday we’ll know the rest of the story!
“… think on these things”(Philippians 4:8, KJV).
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