More Than Enough: John 6:1-15 & The Feeding of the 5,000

What happens when you take the little you have and place it in the hands of Jesus? The impossible becomes possible. Ellen and Taylor unpack the miracle of feeding the 5,000 as told in the Gospel of John, a story so significant it appears in all four Gospels. 

Scriptures referenced:

• John 6:1-15
• Matthew 14:21
• Colossians 1:16
• Mark 6:34-36

Resources mentioned:
NIV Journal the Word Bible | The EASY Bible Study Method | Coffee and Bible Time Community

What did you learn from this passage? Any observations we missed? Let us know by emailing us at info@coffeeandbibletime.com—we read every email—or tagging us on Instagram!

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Chapters

• 0:04 Welcome to Coffee and Bible Time
• 0:32 Introduction to the Miracle Feeding of 5,000
• 3:20 Reading John 6:1-15 Together
• 5:53 Entering the Story: Context and Details
• 16:16 Assessing the Main Idea: Belief in Jesus
• 19:38 Seeking God's Character: Trust and Provision
• 26:43 Application: Trusting Jesus in Our Needs
• 31:39 Final Thoughts: Jesus as King and Provider

Transcript

Ellen Krause: 0:04

At the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. Our goal is to help you delight in God's Word and thrive in Christian living. Each week we talk to subject matter experts who broaden your biblical understanding, encourage you in hard times and provide life-building tips to enhance your Christian walk. We are so glad you have joined us. Welcome back to the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. I'm Ellen, your host.

Ellen Krause: 0:33

Have you ever been in a situation where you felt completely unequipped to handle what was in front of you? Maybe you didn't have enough money or time or energy or wisdom and you just thought there's no way I can do this. Well, today's passage is for that exact moment. We are looking at John, chapter 6, verses 1 through 15, where thousands of hungry people gather around Jesus and he performs a miracle that's probably one of his most well-known feeding the 5,000. But before the bread is multiplied, there's a moment of impossibility, of lack and uncertainty, and in that moment we learn something beautiful about who Jesus is and how he meets our needs. Taylor is here with me today to explore this passage together, and we'll primarily be using the NIV translation and our easy Bible study method to dig into this passage of scripture and let it speak to our hearts. So grab your Bible and let's study together. Hi, taylor, welcome.

Taylor Mitchell: 1:53

Thank you, Ellen, for always having me Mentor Mama, my personal mommy. For those of you that are listening to this, you know that Mentor Mom and I have done podcasts here and there throughout the past couple months and typically we were doing them from the same house, just a room away, and now I am away. I'm in Madison, Wisconsin, and I just cherish the fact that we call each other and do things like this. So I'm still grateful. But, you know, nothing will beat being just a room away with each other to do things like this. So I'm still grateful. But you know, nothing will beat being just a room away with each other to do work.

Ellen Krause: 2:28

So I still love working with you, mom.

Taylor Mitchell: 2:30

I'm excited to dig through this with you.

Ellen Krause: 2:33

I am too. I am too. And of course, the house is not the same without you. It's cleaner.

Taylor Mitchell: 2:39

That's how it's different.

Ellen Krause: 2:42

Oh, that's the only good thing. All the other things are too sad for me to even start on. But we're not going down that rabbit trail now, are we?

Ellen Krause: 2:53

I'm just happy that, truly, that we can get together to talk about this passage. So the first step of the Easy Bible Study Method is entering the story, and we are going to do that by reading this passage together. I'm going to start with verses 1 through 9. And, tay, would you read verses 10 through 15 and then offer a short prayer for our time in the Word? Absolutely All right, here we go.

Ellen Krause: 3:20

John 6 says Sometime after this, jesus crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee, that is, the Sea of Tiberias, and a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the signs he had performed by healing the sick. Then Jesus went up on a mountainside and sat down with his disciples. The Jewish Passover festival was near when Jesus looked up and saw a great crowd coming toward him. He said to Philip where shall we buy bread for these people to eat? He asked this only to test him, for he already had in mind what he was going to do. Philip answered him it would take more than a half a year's wages to buy enough bread for each one to have a bite. Another of his disciples, andrew Simon, peter's brother, spoke up. Here is a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish, but how far will they go among so many?

Taylor Mitchell: 4:23

Jesus said have the people sit down. There was plenty of grass in that place and they sat down. About 5,000 men were there. Jesus then took the loaves, gave thanks and distributed to those who were seated as much as they wanted. He did the same with the fish. When they had all had enough to eat, he said to his disciples Gather the pieces that are left over, let nothing be wasted. So they gathered them and filled twelve baskets with the pieces of five barley loaves left over by those who had eaten. After the people had saw the sign Jesus performed, they began to say Surely, this is the prophet who has come into the world. This is the prophet who has come into the world. Jesus, knowing that they intended to come and make him king by force, withdrew again to a mountain by himself. Let's pray Jesus, you are the bread of life. As we study this passage, would you open our eyes to see you more clearly and soften our hearts to trust you more deeply?

Ellen Krause: 5:23

Amen, amen. Well, the feeding of the 5,000 was a miracle of such magnitude that it is actually recorded in all four of the Gospels, and it's a passage that is pretty familiar to many of us, but it also is so rich with tangible details. So let's talk about what stood out to us in this passage.

Taylor Mitchell: 5:53

Okay, I'll go first. So I wrote down two things that stood out to me initially. The first was thinking about just what were the disciples feeling? Okay, being a part of Jesus's inner circle. Jesus, let's just say this, if you're reading the passages before this, even if you read the chapter right before this he's not loved by everyone. Okay, he is hated by a lot of people. But then again, you see that because he is God, people are drawn to him. They know that he's different. And so here we have Jesus and his closest disciples, who were not picked from merit. Okay, these were regular old Joes that you know.

Taylor Mitchell: 6:41

Probably in our day and age today, we would think why did God pick them? I have no idea why they picked them and I was just picturing what would it be like to be in Jesus's inner circle, with crowds coming and following Jesus wherever he went, and and Jesus talks to you privately and he has conversations with you and he trusts you and he's, he's living life with you. He sees you intimately in such a special, unique way that I was just like what do the disciples feel, you know, when they're with him? And I just think I would feel so honored and just privileged and just like I would just want to soak in everything Jesus says. Now, of course, we see real life. Okay, the disciples were human. The reality is I'd probably be more like the disciples and struggle with every human struggle. You know I'm not a saint over here.

Taylor Mitchell: 7:34

The second thing that stood out to me or just initial insights, initial thoughts was the test that Jesus gave to Philip, and normally I would read things like this and I would get, you know, nervous, like oh, jesus tests, when is Jesus going to test me? I'm kind of nervous, like will I respond how he wants me to respond? And I just felt like God gave me new eyes to see this test that he gave to Philip and see it more as an opportunity that God gives Philip to look to him as the answer for difficult questions. When God tests Philip, it's an opportunity for him to look to Jesus for answers. And Jesus, when he tests us, it's not out of a place of wanting us to fail, it's an opportunity to come close to him.

Taylor Mitchell: 8:32

And not all times in our lives do we know when we're being tested, but sometimes we do. You know what I'm saying. Sometimes we are faced with a crossroads and we are like God, I see there is a decision or there is a question that I need to answer and I can either come to you and abide in you during this test or I can go seek the world for answers. And I just love how we see in. Scripture tells us, jesus tests us and it's not something we need to be afraid of and Jesus will guide us through that and we have an opportunity to grow closer to him. So that was a ramble be bamble. What about you, mentor, mama? What did you get out of it?

Ellen Krause: 9:15

Yes, Well, being sort of a numbers person, what really draw my attention was the number 5,000. Really draw my attention was the number 5,000. And I got to like just kind of geeking out and looking up, because we're entering the story right, we're trying to see what was this crowd like. So I looked up some venues that hold approximately 5,000 people and Radio City Music Hall in New York City came up and think about 5,000 people. But that was only the number of men.

Ellen Krause: 9:53

In Matthew 14, 21, as I said, all four gospels record this miracle. There's additional detail that says and those who ate were about 5,000 men, besides women and children. So it's estimated that there were likely to be upwards of 12 to 15,000 people, which would fill a large sports arena like the United Center here in Chicago. I mean that's a lot of people. United Center here in Chicago, I mean that's a lot of people. So like we're thinking about the magnitude of this dilemma that they're in. And the other thing that stood out to me was just how Jesus not only supplied enough food for all of these people, but that there was a surplus food for all of these people. But that there was a surplus, and it reminds me of so many times how God exceeds my expectations.

Taylor Mitchell: 10:53

Amen, that is actually to hear you say that around 15,000, okay, sports arena size. Now I'm thinking about those loaves of bread and fish and I'm thinking, okay, this was a full-blown miracle, we're not talking a small crowd, I think. When I was little, I imagined Jesus just like breaking the bread up into like microscopic pieces and I'm thinking, yeah, you could break a loaf of bread up really, really tiny so that people could all get some. But people ate and were full and there were leftovers. Okay, we're talking crazy miracle. So that makes sense to me why this is recorded in all four Gospels. This is absolutely nuts.

Ellen Krause: 11:38

Exactly, and you know, when I started looking at more of the details about that, that referenced some of the cultural differences so that we could maybe understand this even more. But what came up was that these barley loaves were a cheap bread that was a staple for the poor, and they were actually very small and flat, so one person could easily eat several in a single meal. And in addition to that they were in this region where there was no food. And so they.

Ellen Krause: 12:22

Philip is the disciple that Jesus asks him where they could go to purchase bread, and it makes sense that Philip was chosen because he came from that area. But what we have to think about is even those nearby villages would not have had enough abundant staples like that on hand to feed such a large number of people. So all of this background context gives us kind of a greater sense of this issue or dilemma that they had. One more person I want to talk about in this passage as we enter the story here is the little boy. How do you think he felt about giving up his lunch to feed so many people and what do you think his reaction was after seeing the miracle?

Taylor Mitchell: 13:22

That's such a precious question. I love kids. I think I was a little rascaroo when I was younger. I wasn't very good at sharing. So if I was in the shoes of that little boy and somebody asked me to give them all that I had, I'd probably say heck, no, find your own. Especially if I was in a place with no food. But I think we see all throughout scripture God just adoring children and even using lots of. He uses lots of opportunities to preach to adults to be like children and I think in this situation we see the heart of what God means in that is that a child will trust God to provide. And here we go. This child was like give Jesus my food to do what he needs to do, amen. And God works with that. He loves to work. When people are generous, wanting to give, when you have a heart of just childlike trust, childlike faith, what do you think? Mentor Mama.

Ellen Krause: 14:40

You know. So I'm a grandma now of a 15-month month old and when I thought about this I really saw like the innocence of a child who's wanting to give and I think about my little grandson right now like he wants to give to the point where he'll take like something slimy sucked on out of his mouth and try to put it in my mouth to share.

Ellen Krause: 15:10

That's true Because of just that wanting to give, and I think about this child wanting to give Jesus all that he had. And then the other aspect I was thinking too of, you know, perhaps after that miracle I was thinking too of you know, perhaps after that miracle just sort of the star struck surprise that he might have had come from seeing all of this, being able to feed all of these people. And I think again of my grandson and how he has these just incredible surprise faces of like oh wow, you know, it's just innocence of the child.

Taylor Mitchell: 15:57

Absolutely. I think now would be a great time to move on to our assess the main idea section of the easy Bible study method, which is the second step After we enter into the story we kind of want to dig into okay, why did John write this, what did this mean for the original audience and what does it mean for us today? And there are so many wonderful takeaways that you can get from these passages. If you yourself are asking right now, when I read the Bible I don't know a lot of times what the main idea is, I mean, this is an opportunity. I'm just going to say a plug for our book, but we write an entire in-depth chapter on how to find the main idea of passages and give you such great helpful tools to do that different exercises that you can do paraphrasing and highlighting and finding themes, and different exercises of looking to what the original audience and et cetera, et cetera. And it is just so helpful. So that's just a shameless plug. It will be in the show notes, but I'll just start by something that I think is important and this goes back to one of the biggest themes in John is John was writing so that people would believe, and if you read through the book of John, you see this over and over and over and over again.

Taylor Mitchell: 17:15

John wants people to believe that Jesus is the son of God, who came to die for our sins. Jesus is Lord, jesus is Lord, jesus is God, and I think that, zooming out to 50,000 feet in just this one little passage, this miracle is pointing to that. John is showing us. If Jesus can feed an arena of people with that small amount of food, you have to know that this is God, this is Lord. This is the one that came. That's been prophesied about. You can trust him, he is Lord. Even before thinking about what this means for us, I mean, what did this mean for them? What did this mean for everyone? This passage for everyone. Jesus is God. Right, so that's my takeaway Christ is God. He's worthy of our belief. What's something that you took away, something important from this passage?

Ellen Krause: 18:19

Yeah, I think, two other things. First is, what we're learning here is that when we do have a need, we're giving all that we have to Jesus and then letting him do the rest. And, honestly, that can be very hard to do, but I think we're seeing this. Trust me here, trust me. And then, other thing that I wanted to pull out of this passage was that it is significant that twice John mentions the fact that Jesus gave thanks, and I think that that's something that we need to be thinking about. He looked up to the heavens and by that act he's reminding of us, even Jesus, of who he is looking to and who we also need to look to. So just a few more little sort of sub themes, I think, in addition to that big overarching one that you mentioned. So that's assessing the main idea. We're going to jump now into seeking God and his character through this passage. So for you, tay, what are some things that this passage reveals to you about Jesus's heart, whether those be explicit or implicitly told in the text itself.

Taylor Mitchell: 19:54

I think this might be my favorite section of Bible study, especially with the easy Bible study method is seeking God's character. And when you're looking for implicit characteristics of God. I love what my pastor, Pastor David, said, that you are looking for God's character in the way that he shows his character, his actions. It's not stated forthright, but it's shown by the way that he speaks and moves and interacts with people. And so I have two. The first one I kind of already said Jesus is God. First and foremost, this is a huge takeaway from this passage, huge takeaway from John, the entire book of John passage. Huge takeaway from John, the entire book of John. Jesus is God. And if Jesus is God, then that means everything. That means we need to come to him if we want to go to the father. Everything was created in him, through him, Everything is sustained by him. We cannot underestimate the importance of Jesus in not only in this passage, not only in John, but in the entire narrative and arc of scripture. It all points to Jesus. Praise God.

Taylor Mitchell: 21:20

And then the second thing that I wanted to say, that's really on my heart and mind lately what does it mean to be confident of the gospel? Looking at how Jesus interacts with the disciples. In a situation like this, Jesus is confident, and that just struck me about this passage when he was talking to Philip and he was testing him like what are we going to do about food? Like Jesus was confident about what he was already going to do because he's confident about what the father can do through him in his ministry. We know that everything Jesus did in his ministry was to honor and glorify God, the father, and Jesus never had to doubt the father's love for him. Jesus completely abided in him and was confident, and I just was thinking about that today.

Taylor Mitchell: 22:04

How sweet and special it is to see scripture show us how confident our Lord is and what that means for us, that we can trust him because he's confident in every situation, even when things look bleak, even when things look like there's no way you can get out of this. He is confident about what he's going to do for the glory of God, the Father, and that's the kind of God we serve. He's confident and I need that because I'm not always confident. Over here I have lots of things swirling around my mind doubts and questions and insecurities of myself to know that the God I serve is confident and he's moving with a purpose, he has a plan. It really impacts the way that I want to live. It makes me want to be more confident, to know that my Lord is confident, powerful, almighty.

Ellen Krause: 22:58

Absolutely, I completely agree with that and I love how you translated that into sort of this real world that we live in.

Ellen Krause: 23:12

You know, one of the other sort of real world things that we face every day, just even in our daily lives, is problems, and I love in this passage that Jesus did not ignore the problem, didn't push away the problem. In fact, early it says in the Gospel of Mark that first the disciples suggested that Jesus send the people away Right, like that was their way of maybe sort of fixing this, getting rid of the problem. And I love that not only did Jesus not ignore the problem or leave the people to figure it out for themselves, but that he actually stepped up, revealed his character of God in this ultimate provision of food for all of this, like you said, arena of people, and that he cares, he loves us, he will be there if we reach out. And yeah, that was kind of just something that I felt like I saw his character in that we can see his involvement in our lives, in our own situations and problems and things we need to solve.

Taylor Mitchell: 25:37

Absolutely, which kind of honestly leads us really well into the last step of the easy method, which is the application. It's yearning for heart change. It's wanting our hearts to look different and our lives to look different, based off of what we read, what we learned about God's character. I have a question, mentor Mama Is there an area in your life where you feel like you don't have enough, and what might it look like for you to trust Jesus no matter what?

Taylor Mitchell: 26:11

And I think just really quick, before you get into that, because, like Mentor Mama said, we face problems all the time and sometimes the answer isn't always what we want. When we pray, sometimes God doesn't provide like we thought he would or that we wanted him to, and that doesn't change the character of God at all. I think we trust in his character and from that place of trusting his character, we believe that, no matter what, no matter how he provides, even if we don't understand why things are happening the way they're happening, we know he is still good. So to get back to my question is there an area of your life where you feel like you don't have enough and how are you trusting Jesus no matter what?

Ellen Krause: 27:02

You know, what comes to my mind is sort of just this current season of life that I'm in and I think my don't have enough is don't have enough kids in my life, like I'm used to being a mom which devoured a lot of my time and my days, and I have this wonderful thing on my wall here that has been so encouraging to me and it says I trust the next chapter because I know the author and if I can put that into perspective for whatever my don't have enough might be in any particular situation, that gives me a lot of comfort and peace to know like, okay, you know what, I'm sort of closing one chapter but a new chapter is opening and I need to trust that God will use me in this chapter in whatever way, being open to that and sort of use that as my impetus to to go forward and not to get too particularly down for you, tay.

Taylor Mitchell: 28:22

I actually feel like right now in my life I've been blessed with a lot. I just got married, I have an apartment that I feel safe in, I have a church to go to. I think I've been feeling an overwhelming amount of feeling blessed. Where I feel like maybe I don't have things maybe would be friendships. Where I'm at right now I obviously, having just moved to a new place, don't really know anyone. There's a few people, but still loneliness is there and I just think I don't know.

Taylor Mitchell: 28:59

I truly believe this is God covering and protecting my heart and being over me. Just that I feel very secure in the Lord, in that, in that, even though I feel lonely right now, that's okay. It doesn't have any implications on who I am as a person. I don't have to, you know, struggle through an identity crisis because I don't have friends like maybe I would have in college or high school, but I trust that God is a provider or high school, but I trust that God is a provider and I think I'm leaning into that attribute of God in this season of not having a lot of friends is I know he's a provider and I know in time he can give me friendships. But yeah, that's. That is one thing, I think.

Ellen Krause: 29:40

Yeah, that is hard moving to a new place, literally not knowing anyone there and stepping into that environment, and it's. It is a season of trust, and actually that's one thing I do love about the church. So much, though, is that you have ways that you can get connected, and just even serving brings you around other people and small groups and Bible studies and all these things, so if anyone else is struggling out there right now with loneliness, I would encourage you to step into your church and see what there might be there for you.

Taylor Mitchell: 30:24

Amen.

Ellen Krause: 30:25

As we start to wrap things up, what would be one thing from this passage that you would want our listeners to take away?

Taylor Mitchell: 30:34

Something that I was just thinking about and I wrote down in my journal as I was reading through this passage, was this was this when in life I am asking the questions who, what, when, where, why? Look to Jesus first for these answers. Look to the Messiah, look to the provider. Look to Jesus in prayer when you have big questions. In this passage, people were hungry. They didn't know. I mean they were like are we going to get some food from just these loaves of bread and fish? Like I don't know how that's going to happen. I'm feeling just a lot of doubt about how this can work.

Taylor Mitchell: 31:25

We face doubt and questions big things in our life the who's, the what's, the when, the where, the why. Go to Jesus. Run to Jesus to answer those questions first. Because, why? Because Jesus is confident in being your provider. You want to look. If you have a question about something, you want to go to somebody who's confident in the answer they're going to give you. You don't want to go to somebody who doesn't know what the heck they're doing. Go to the God of the universe in prayer. He may not answer in the way that you think he will. He may not answer how you asked him to. He may do it in his own time. In fact, he always will. We know that the will of God, the will of Jesus, is to glorify the father. We know he is going to be glorified in the end. Do we trust that his glory is for our good? Then run to him when you have those questions and he will answer in the way that he sees best to glorify himself. Amen.

Ellen Krause: 32:32

Amen. Well said, well said. Tay, I would say my takeaway, for us as well is instead of complaining this is going to be my takeaway Instead of complaining, I want to give thanks to God for what I do have and trust that he will make it go further. He will provide Amen. And I think it reminded me of something that I used to do when you kids were little. Do you remember? Like there was a period of time where you guys were in this streak of I want, I want this, I want that, I want this, and then, when you would do that, I would tell you guys okay, if you say I want something, you need to tell me two things you're thankful for.

Taylor Mitchell: 33:25

Wow, I must have blocked that out of my memory because I don't remember that. I remember whenever I would say I want this, I want that, I want this To dad. He would say, well, I want a pony. And then I would never know what to say to that, because obviously the point is, well, he's never going to get a pony, so I better put the old clampola on it and stop but what you did was a good parenting move, oh boy.

Ellen Krause: 33:55

Well, thank you so much, Tay, for sharing that. I think that that's an awesome place to end this discussion.

Taylor Mitchell: 34:04

I loved going through this with you, Mentor, Mama and everyone that's listening. Thank you for listening.

Ellen Krause: 34:11

Yes, we would love to hear you know what. Shoot us some email at info at coffeeandbibletimecom.

Taylor Mitchell: 34:19

We read every one of them.

Ellen Krause: 34:21

We read every one of them. We would love to hear from you about the podcast and just any questions on this one or things that you'd like to hear in the future passage.

Taylor Mitchell: 34:41

we go through this passage throughout every chapter of the Easy Bible Study book. So we are going through this one in depth in such a beautiful way and we invite you to do that. There's so much room in the book for you to highlight, annotate, to journal through things. It's a very practical book. You can go through little by little every day and you can get more familiar with this awesome passage. That just blesses us richly.

Ellen Krause: 35:11

Absolutely. You can even leave us a comment or tag us on Instagram too, because we would love to hear how God is speaking to you through his word, all right? Well, if you want to dive deeper into conversations with our podcast guests, attend live classes with Ashley Taylor and myself, get access to all of our academy courses and connect with other women who love the Bible just as much as you. I hope you will check out the Coffee and Bible Time community at coffeeandbibletimecom. We will have all these things linked in our show notes. So until we talk again, thank you for joining the Coffee and Bible Time podcast. Have a blessed day.

Taylor Mitchell: 36:00

Bye.