Five small barley loaves and two small fish, and 5000 plus hungry mouths to feed! This is nothing for our God who is without limits!
Our text today gives a picture of a man that performs a miracle that is impossible in human eyes, that is until you factor in the man and His Father, in whom nothing is impossible.
In this miracle performed on a grassy mountain slope overlooking The Sea Of Galilee, we see an opportunity to display His awesome power to overcome any and all situations, with no exceptions.
In our scripture today John singles out this particular time and place to present a spiritual truth about Jesus.
Jesus, in the multiplication of the 5 small barley loaves, presents Himself to the people and to the world as The Bread Of Life. So that we know that when we are hungry for life He is the all sustaining bread.
A few weeks ago we read John chapter 4 wherein Jesus also presented Himself as ‘Living water’ to whom we turn when we thirst for life.
If we believe these two simple statements, that in turn are loaded with significance, then our lives change and our expectations of life change also.
This morning I want to focus, not on the miracle of the loaves and fishes itself but on the question that Jesus asks the disciple Philip in verse 5.
‘Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?’
That’s a reasonable question, or is it? Why does Jesus assume it is His, and the disciples, responsibility to feed 5000 plus men, women and children, who have chosen to follow Him of their own accord?
Surely it is the responsibility of the people in the crowd?
The disciple Philip who has been with Jesus since the beginning, he was the third disciple to be called by Jesus, the day after Andrew and Peter were called, is asked the question and gives, what we would consider to be a perfectly reasonable answer, ‘It would take more than half a year’s wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite!’
Some bible translations actually give us a figure for an average half a years wage which is 200 denari or £260 pounds sterling.
Remember that Jesus and His followers live from hand to mouth with just whatever donations they receive and food that people give them.
Remember also that 200 denari would only be sufficient for the crowd to have one bite of food for each person, at least according to Philip’s guesstimation!
But Philips answer is the earthly answer, not the godly answer. There is no spirit in the earthly answer and without The Holy Spirit there is no power.
Philip forgets that he is in the presence of a man who has, by now, worked many miracles, and who has proven Himself to be Godly.
Perhaps Philip hasn’t worked out who Jesus is yet.
Perhaps, when Jesus told the woman at the well that He was The Messiah, Philip was away or wasn’t listening.
Maybe Philip didn’t understand the conversations Jesus had in Jerusalem with the Jewish Leaders back in John 5:18-23, or maybe he wasn’t listening then either.
John 6:6 tells us why Jesus asked Philip the question, ‘He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do.’
And there it is, Jesus already had in mind what He was going to do!
This is all planned in advance by God The Father, the right people at the right time in the right place, with the author of Johns Gospel on hand to make a written record for posterity, all as part of Gods Divine, amazing masters master plan.
But! There is always a ‘but’ in my sermons, but something doesn’t add up here. 5 Loaves and 2 fishes are not the bread of life that Jesus is referring to later in John 6:35 when He declared, ‘I am the bread of life. Whoever comes to me will never go hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty’, which is spiritual food and drink rather than physical food and drink.
So, the right people at the right time in the right place, with the author of Johns Gospel on hand to make a written record for posterity, being all as part of Gods Divine, amazing masters master plan, can be changed to the right person, at the right time, in the right place being part of God’s amazing masters master plan, and that right person in the right place at the right time is Philip. It’s Philip!
In my mind the whole point of this amazing miracle of feeding 5000 plus men women and children on a grassy mountainside, that day, above the sea of Galilee, was for Philip.
You see Philip, like us, had not yet learned that you/we cannot limit God. We should never underestimate Him.
God is God and He is limitless and largely beyond our imagination.
On that day, some 2000 years or so ago, Philip did not think that anything could be done to feed so many people. In his own limited imagination it would take more than half a years wages just to give them a bite to eat, and that wouldn’t satisfy even one of them.
But Philip forgot, and we forget too, that he was in the presence of God The Son. Philip had Jesus right there and we have Him, in spirit, right here. Right here in this church, right here in this room and right here in our hearts, and if we believe and if we accept Him as our Lord and saviour, then our lives are without limits too.
And because Philip forgot that fact, he, in his own mind, limited God, and we should never do that, because He is without limits.
He must be, to do all that He has done.
He must be in order to cause 5000 plus men women and children to be gathered in the presence of The Son on a grassy mountainside overlooking The Sea Of Galilee, because to believe otherwise is beyond our limited imaginations.
Enter Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, stage left!
Here is another man, who by his own statements, limits God, “Here is a boy” he says, “with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?”.
These days the ‘know it alls’ amongst us might say, “Oh ye of little faith” and then, of course, we will go on to limit, or underestimate, God ourselves. Of course we will.
But limiting a limitless divine God is a habit that we need to rid ourselves of. This will take practice and probably years of it too, but we must do it otherwise when we eventually come into His awesome glorious presence it’s going to be too much for us.
Let us agree right now that God is limitless, that there is nothing in the heavens or on the earth that can ever limit Him because He is without limits, and to believe anything else is to seriously, seriously underestimate Him.
One last underestimation to point out here is that of the boy with the five loaves and the two fishes.
Is it possible that this lad is the only person to be prepared for the day out on the mountainside?
Is it possible that he is the only one who bought his lunch with him, or was his mother the only one to see that far ahead, and send her son out with food sufficient for one person for one day?
Well it’s possible, of course it is. But lets look at the evidence;
Clearly God has planned for this occasion, and I like my idea that it’s primarily intended for the disciple Philip and later for Andrew, and much later for us, and on, and on into perpetuity.
Could it not be that God also sent that small boy onto the mountainside carrying the five loaves and two fishes specifically to enable Jesus to perform the miracle of The Feeding Of The Five Thousand, in order to teach Philip and Andrew, and later us, that we should never limit God?
Well it is if you believe as I do that our God is limitless!
And as Andrew brings him to Jesus and The Lord asks him to hand over his lunch, and we know that small boys are always hungry, could it be that he did so reluctantly because he believed that it was the last he was going to see of it and he was going to go hungry that day?
But like Philip and Andrew, and anyone else who was within earshot that day, the small boy underestimated this man Jesus and therefore limited God, because he, like everyone else, all 5000 plus of them, had their stomachs filled.
Everyone had enough to eat and there were 12 baskets of bread crumbs left over!
The message today my friends is never underestimate God, because He is without limits. He is limitless.
In Jesus name, amen.
