feeding the 5000

152:2.1Je­sus con­tin­ued to teach the peo­ple by day while he in­structed the apos­tles and evan­ge­lists at night. On Fri­day he de­clared a fur­lough of one week that all his fol­low­ers might go home or to their friends for a few days be­fore prepar­ing to go up to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over. But more than one half of his dis­ci­ples re­fused to leave him, and the mul­ti­tude was daily in­creas­ing in size, so much so that David Zeb­e­dee de­sired to es­tab­lish a new en­camp­ment, but Je­sus re­fused con­sent. The Mas­ter had so lit­tle rest over the Sab­bath that on Sun­day morn­ing, March 27, he sought to get away from the peo­ple. Some of the evan­ge­lists were left to talk to the mul­ti­tude while Je­sus and the twelve planned to es­cape, un­no­ticed, to the op­po­site shore of the lake, where they pro­posed to ob­tain much needed rest in a beau­ti­ful park south of Beth­saida-Ju­lias. This re­gion was a fa­vorite re­sort­ing place for Ca­per­naum folks; they were all fa­mil­iar with these parks on the east­ern shore.

152:2.2But the peo­ple would not have it so. They saw the di­rec­tion taken by Je­sus’ boat, and hir­ing ev­ery craft avail­able, they started out in pur­suit. Those who could not ob­tain boats fared forth on foot to walk around the up­per end of the lake.

152:2.3By late af­ter­noon more than a thou­sand per­sons had lo­cated the Mas­ter in one of the parks, and he spoke to them briefly, be­ing fol­lowed by Pe­ter. Many of these peo­ple had brought food with them, and af­ter eat­ing the evening meal, they gath­ered about in small groups while Je­sus’ apos­tles and dis­ci­ples taught them.

152:2.4Mon­day af­ter­noon the mul­ti­tude had in­creased to more than three thou­sand. And still—way into the evening—the peo­ple con­tin­ued to flock in, bring­ing all man­ner of sick folks with them. Hun­dreds of in­ter­ested per­sons had made their plans to stop over at Ca­per­naum to see and hear Je­sus on their way to the Pass­over, and they sim­ply re­fused to be dis­ap­pointed. By Wednes­day noon about five thou­sand men, women, and chil­dren were as­sem­bled here in this park to the south of Beth­saida-Ju­lias. The weather was pleas­ant, it be­ing near the end of the rainy sea­son in this lo­cal­ity.

152:2.5Philip had pro­vided a three days’ sup­ply of food for Je­sus and the twelve, which was in the cus­tody of the Mark lad, their boy of all chores. By af­ter­noon of this, the third day for al­most half of this mul­ti­tude, the food the peo­ple had brought with them was nearly ex­hausted. David Zeb­e­dee had no tented city here to feed and ac­com­mo­date the crowds. Nei­ther had Philip made food pro­vi­sion for such a mul­ti­tude. But the peo­ple, even though they were hun­gry, would not go away. It was be­ing qui­etly whis­pered about that Je­sus, de­sir­ing to avoid trou­ble with both Herod and the Je­ru­sa­lem lead­ers, had cho­sen this quiet spot out­side the ju­ris­dic­tion of all his en­e­mies as the proper place to be crowned king. The en­thu­si­asm of the peo­ple was ris­ing ev­ery hour. Not a word was said to Je­sus, though, of course, he knew all that was go­ing on. Even the twelve apos­tles were still tainted with such no­tions, and es­pe­cially the younger evan­ge­lists. The apos­tles who fa­vored this at­tempt to pro­claim Je­sus king were Pe­ter, John, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, and Ju­das Is­car­iot. Those op­pos­ing the plan were An­drew, James, Na­than­iel, and Thomas. Mat­thew, Philip, and the Al­pheus twins were non­com­mit­tal. The ringleader of this plot to make him king was Joab, one of the young evan­ge­lists.

152:2.6This was the stage set­ting about five o’clock on Wednes­day af­ter­noon, when Je­sus asked James Al­pheus to sum­mon An­drew and Philip. Said Je­sus: “What shall we do with the mul­ti­tude? They have been with us now three days, and many of them are hun­gry. They have no food.” Philip and An­drew ex­changed glances, and then Philip an­swered: “Mas­ter, you should send these peo­ple away so that they may go to the vil­lages around about and buy them­selves food.” And An­drew, fear­ing the ma­te­ri­al­iza­tion of the king plot, quickly joined with Philip, say­ing: “Yes, Mas­ter, I think it best that you dis­miss the mul­ti­tude so that they may go their way and buy food while you se­cure rest for a sea­son.” By this time oth­ers of the twelve had joined the con­fer­ence. Then said Je­sus: “But I do not de­sire to send them away hun­gry; can you not feed them?” This was too much for Philip, and he spoke right up: “Mas­ter, in this coun­try place where can we buy bread for this mul­ti­tude? Two hun­dred denarii worth would not be enough for lunch.”

152:2.7Be­fore the apos­tles had an op­por­tu­nity to ex­press them­selves, Je­sus turned to An­drew and Philip, say­ing: “I do not want to send these peo­ple away. Here they are, like sheep with­out a shep­herd. I would like to feed them. What food have we with us?” While Philip was con­vers­ing with Mat­thew and Ju­das, An­drew sought out the Mark lad to as­cer­tain how much was left of their store of pro­vi­sions. He re­turned to Je­sus, say­ing: “The lad has left only five bar­ley loaves and two dried fishes”—and Pe­ter promptly added, “We have yet to eat this evening.”

152:2.8For a mo­ment Je­sus stood in si­lence. There was a far­away look in his eyes. The apos­tles said noth­ing. Je­sus turned sud­denly to An­drew and said, “Bring me the loaves and fishes.” And when An­drew had brought the bas­ket to Je­sus, the Mas­ter said: “Di­rect the peo­ple to sit down on the grass in com­pa­nies of one hun­dred and ap­point a leader over each group while you bring all of the evan­ge­lists here with us.”

152:2.9Je­sus took up the loaves in his hands, and af­ter he had given thanks, he broke the bread and gave to his apos­tles, who passed it on to their as­so­ciates, who in turn car­ried it to the mul­ti­tude. Je­sus in like man­ner broke and dis­tributed the fishes. And this mul­ti­tude did eat and were filled. And when they had fin­ished eat­ing, Je­sus said to the dis­ci­ples: “Gather up the bro­ken pieces that re­main over so that noth­ing will be lost.” And when they had fin­ished gath­er­ing up the frag­ments, they had twelve bas­ket­fuls. They who ate of this ex­traor­di­nary feast num­bered about five thou­sand men, women, and chil­dren.

152:2.10And this is the first and only na­ture mir­a­cle which Je­sus per­formed as a re­sult of his con­scious pre­plan­ning. It is true that his dis­ci­ples were dis­posed to call many things mir­a­cles which were not, but this was a gen­uine super­nat­u­ral min­is­tra­tion. In this case, so we were taught, Mi­chael mul­ti­plied food el­e­ments as he al­ways does ex­cept for the elim­i­na­tion of the time fac­tor and the vis­i­ble life chan­nel.

• feeding the 5000

152:3.1The feed­ing of the five thou­sand by super­nat­u­ral en­ergy was an­other of those cases where hu­man pity plus cre­ative power equaled that which hap­pened. Now that the mul­ti­tude had been fed to the full, and since Je­sus’ fame was then and there aug­mented by this stu­pen­dous won­der, the project to seize the Mas­ter and pro­claim him king re­quired no fur­ther per­sonal di­rec­tion. The idea seemed to spread through the crowd like a con­ta­gion. The re­ac­tion of the mul­ti­tude to this sud­den and spec­tac­u­lar sup­ply­ing of their phys­i­cal needs was pro­found and over­whelm­ing. For a long time the Jews had been taught that the Mes­siah, the son of David, when he should come, would cause the land again to flow with milk and honey, and that the bread of life would be be­stowed upon them as manna from heaven was sup­posed to have fallen upon their fore­fa­thers in the wilder­ness. And was not all of this ex­pec­ta­tion now ful­filled right be­fore their eyes? When this hun­gry, un­der­nour­ished mul­ti­tude had fin­ished gorg­ing it­self with the won­der-food, there was but one unan­i­mous re­ac­tion: “Here is our king.” The won­der-work­ing de­liv­erer of Is­rael had come. In the eyes of these sim­ple-minded peo­ple the power to feed car­ried with it the right to rule. No won­der, then, that the mul­ti­tude, when it had fin­ished feast­ing, rose as one man and shouted, “Make him king!”

152:5.6The news of the feed­ing of the five thou­sand and the at­tempt to make Je­sus king aroused wide­spread cu­rios­ity and stirred up the fears of both the re­li­gious lead­ers and the civil rulers through­out all Gal­i­lee and Judea. While this great mir­a­cle did noth­ing to fur­ther the gospel of the king­dom in the souls of ma­te­rial-minded and half­hearted be­liev­ers, it did serve the pur­pose of bring­ing to a head the mir­a­cle-seek­ing and king-crav­ing pro­cliv­i­ties of Je­sus’ im­me­di­ate fam­ily of apos­tles and close dis­ci­ples. This spec­tac­u­lar episode brought an end to the early era of teach­ing, train­ing, and heal­ing, thereby prepar­ing the way for the in­au­gu­ra­tion of this last year of pro­claim­ing the higher and more spir­i­tual phases of the new gospel of the king­dom—di­vine son­ship, spir­i­tual lib­erty, and eter­nal sal­va­tion.

152:6.5Je­sus thus en­deav­ored to pre­pare the apos­tles for the im­pend­ing shock—the cri­sis in the pub­lic at­ti­tude to­ward him which was only a few days dis­tant. He ex­plained to the twelve that the re­li­gious rulers of Je­ru­sa­lem would con­spire with Herod An­tipas to ef­fect their de­struc­tion. The twelve be­gan to re­al­ize more fully (though not fi­nally) that Je­sus was not go­ing to sit on David’s throne. They saw more fully that spir­i­tual truth was not to be ad­vanced by ma­te­rial won­ders. They be­gan to re­al­ize that the feed­ing of the five thou­sand and the pop­u­lar move­ment to make Je­sus king was the apex of the mir­a­cle-seek­ing, won­der-work­ing ex­pectance of the peo­ple and the height of Je­sus’ ac­claim by the pop­u­lace. They vaguely dis­cerned and dimly fore­saw the ap­proach­ing times of spir­i­tual sift­ing and cruel ad­ver­sity. These twelve men were slowly awak­ing to the re­al­iza­tion of the real na­ture of their task as am­bas­sadors of the king­dom, and they be­gan to gird them­selves for the try­ing and test­ing or­deals of the last year of the Mas­ter’s min­istry on earth.

153:1.2Je­sus com­pre­hended that he faced the im­me­di­ate dec­la­ra­tion of avowed and open war­fare by his in­creas­ing en­e­mies, and he elected boldly to as­sume the of­fen­sive. At the feed­ing of the five thou­sand he had chal­lenged their ideas of the ma­te­rial Mes­siah; now he chose again openly to at­tack their con­cept of the Jew­ish de­liv­erer. This cri­sis, which be­gan with the feed­ing of the five thou­sand, and which ter­mi­nated with this Sab­bath af­ter­noon ser­mon, was the out­ward turn­ing of the tide of pop­u­lar fame and ac­claim. Hence­forth, the work of the king­dom was to be in­creas­ingly con­cerned with the more im­por­tant task of win­ning last­ing spir­i­tual con­verts for the truly re­li­gious broth­er­hood of man­kind. This ser­mon marks the cri­sis in the tran­si­tion from the pe­riod of dis­cus­sion, con­tro­versy, and de­ci­sion to that of open war­fare and fi­nal ac­cep­tance or fi­nal re­jec­tion.