Jesus Feeds 5,000 families – John 6:1-14

This week’s children’s Bible lesson

Jesus feeds 5,000 families

John 6:1-14

One year when the Passover celebration was coming soon, great crowds were gathered, and Jesus was out in wide open land to teach them about God. As the large, hungry crowd was coming to Him, Jesus asked a question to Philip, one of His disciples. “Where can we buy food for you all to feed these people?” Now, Jesus already had a plan of how He would feed the crowd. But He asked the question to test Philip. He wanted to let Philip think about how to solve a problem. Would Philip say that he would trust Jesus to do it? Or would he give up and say there is no way.

Sometimes for us, needs or problems arise, and God already knows and plans to help us. But He waits to see what we will do. Will we trust and ask Him for help? Or will we try to meet the need ourselves, and fail? Or will we just give up and say, “There is no way.” Of course, the right thing to do is trust God and ask Him to help. Jesus is worthy of our trust.

Philip said, “If we had a year’s worth of money it couldn’t buy enough bread for everyone here to have a tiny piece.” In other words, Philip said, there is no way to get food for all these families. Andrew, another disciple, said, “Here is a boy who has five pieces of bread and two fish to share, but there’s no way that will feed so many people.”

So everything the disciples could plan or imagine wasn’t going to feed the hungry crowd. It was an unmeetable need and an unsolvable problem. Jesus wasn’t worried, though. He told His 12 apostles to have everyone sit down and be fed. There was lots of grass in the area, so the people were able to sit down comfortably to eat. And it turned out there were 5,000 men and their families there.

Then Jesus took the pieces of bread and the fish and prayed giving thanks, just like we do before we eat. And He began to break up the bread and the fish. Each time He did, the food grew. And it grew. And it grew some more. It got passed out to the people that they all ate as much bread and as much fish as they wanted, so that every single person was full.

After everyone had eaten, Jesus told the disciples to gather up all the leftovers, so that nothing would be wasted. Each of them took a basket, and all 12 baskets filled with food. So everyone in the crowd had eaten, and afterward, each of the 12 disciples had more food than they had started with before anyone ate.

If we, like the disciples, serve Jesus by giving to others, there will still be plenty for us after we give as He told us to. God provides for us, and we will not have to live in hunger when we trust Him and obey Him. And if we become church leaders someday, we will be able to trust the Lord to meet His people’s needs, and our own.