The Testing & Teaching Of The Feeding Of The Five Thousand

A mistake many high school students make is to think that one day they will graduate and never have to apply in their daily living any of the things they learned in those classrooms in the past twelve years. The reason they think that way is because we have been trained to think of a classroom setting as being the only place of learning and once we are out of the classroom setting we have graduated from this level of our lives. The fact is, that is not true at all!

In our text we have an outdoor classroom setting with Jesus and the disciples. In this particular “class” Jesus was about to give the disciples their BIG EXAM.

Jesus had His disciples on the mountain when He looked up and saw five-thousand people approaching Him in that isolated place. The multitude did not go there because they loved Him. The Bible says they were there because they had seen Him perform miracles and they wanted to “cash in.” They thought they had a chance to have Him perform some miracle for them!

The big exam came for the disciples when Jesus turned to Philip, in verse 5, and said, “Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat?” Philip scored a big zero.

Evidently he asked the treasurer how much money they had in the purse and then he told the Lord, verse 7, “...Two hundred pennyworth of bread is not sufficient for them, that every one of them may take a little.”

Philip was like so many are in our churches today. When a problem comes up they have no idea what to do. Philip told Jesus that if they took every penny they had and bought bread with it, it would not have been enough to pass around regardless how small they made the pieces.

Philip could have made an “A” on that test if he had said, “Lord, feeding that crowd is no problem for You...they could have said…

• I remember that time when we on that ship in that terrible story that almost sank our ship. We thought we were going to drown. You woke up and You calmed that sea.”

• I remember when we reached shore we came in contact with a man who was demon possessed. He lived like a wild animal in the hills and caves. He would tear his clothes off and run around naked. He would take rocks and cut himself. Then you cast the demons out of him and he became a decent man.”

• I remember that crowd we were in one day when you healed the lady who had been to every doctor in town about her blood disease and had been steadily getting worse until then.”

• I remember the man whose daughter had died and You raised her to life again.

• Lord, to feed this five thousand is no problem with You. You could do it with the snap of Your finger.”

But, Philip did not say that. He said, “Lord, we just do not have enough money to feed this crowd.”

Do you know what Philip’s problem was?

At that moment, he did not have FAITH in the LORD JESUS CHRIST! He proved that by his answer when Jesus asked him about where they would get bread to feed those people. The Lord did not ask Philip because He did not know what to do. There has never been a crisis that Jesus could not handle.

• He has never PANICKED.

• He always has a PLAN.

He asked Philip this question because He wanted Philip to see what he would do. Jesus already knew what Philip was going to do.

Illus: We have heard Christians say, “God sends certain trials to see how we will react to them.”

What these do not realize is that God knows before any trial comes just how His children are going to react. There is nothing in our PAST or in our FUTURE that God does not already know about us!

God gave Philip that test so Philip himself might see that his faith was not in the living Christ, but in money.

Christ was not seeking advice from Philip because He did not know what He was going to do.

Look at verse 6, “And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do.”

In that outdoor “classroom” Christ gave Philip a test and Philip failed it “big time!”

Notice, when the question on that test was asked, two wrong answers were given. They were wrong because the disciples had their FAITH IN THE WRONG PLACES.

(1) PHILIP THOUGHT THE ANSWER TO THAT PROBLEM WAS MONEY.

As soon as Philip was asked that question he thought about money. So often our first response to problems will reveal what our faith is anchored in.