When I read the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand, the first thing I always think of is a Sunday School teacher reading the passage, then exclaiming, \u201cBut wait! There\u2019s more!\u201d like a television infomercial. \u201cDid you catch that? The men numbered five thousand. There must have been triple or quadruple that when you add the women and children!\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To my Sunday School teacher, this information served to amplify the already stunning miracle, adding to our awe of Jesus. Feeding five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish is impressive enough, but what if it were really fifteen or twenty thousand?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But for me, one of the best gifts of reading Scripture, especially familiar stories, isn\u2019t these amplifications; it\u2019s how new things rise to the top when we read and reread. In today\u2019s reading, the parallel stories of Numbers 11 and John 6 stopped me in my tracks. I\u2019ve read both of them dozens of times, heard them taught from my earliest Sunday School days, and yet, the way they mirror each other captivated me today. Scripture is such a sprawling web of connections and references and adjunct stories; beginning to untangle it never gets old.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Leading up to our Numbers 11 passage, the Israelites had fled from slavery in Egypt. But when they were alone in the desert, they had nothing. Nothing to eat, nothing to drink, no schedule or plan or anything. So they, naturally, began to complain and ask Moses if there was a plan. Moses pressed the Lord for a response.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But Moses replied, \u201cI\u2019m in the middle of a people with six hundred thousand foot soldiers, yet you say, \u2018I will give them meat, and they will eat for a month.\u2019 If flocks and herds were slaughtered for them, would they have enough? Or if all the fish in the sea were caught for them, would they have enough?\u201d Jesus and His disciples shared a similar back-and-forth. Philip said, \u201cTwo hundred denarii worth of bread wouldn’t be enough for each of them to have a little\u201d (John 6:7). Then Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish and fed everyone, with abundant leftovers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We often bring our own needs before God with the same doubt and scoffing as the Israelites and Philip. We ask for much with little faith. In these two stories, we see the Lord provide because our God is a God of abundance, not scarcity. He cares for us lavishly. He doesn\u2019t offer the bare minimum or only what we need to survive. He provides \u201ceverything required for life and godliness\u201d through the gift of Jesus (2 Peter 1:3).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" When I read the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand, the first thing I always think of is a Sunday School teacher reading the passage, then exclaiming, \u201cBut wait! There\u2019s more!\u201d like a television infomercial. \u201cDid you catch that? The men numbered five thousand. There must have been triple or quadruple that when you […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":54,"featured_media":72653,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[305],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-72799","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-john25"],"acf":{"hero_background_image":false,"related_plans":[72756],"weekly_truth":false,"grace_day":false,"share_text":"#SheReadsTruth","devotional_text":"JESUS FEEDS THE FIVE THOUSAND<\/b> When I read the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand, the first thing I always think of is a Sunday School teacher reading the passage, then exclaiming, \u201cBut wait! There\u2019s more!\u201d like a television infomercial. \u201cDid you catch that? The men numbered five thousand. There must have been triple or quadruple that when you add the women and children!\u201d<\/p> To my Sunday School teacher, this information served to amplify the already stunning miracle, adding to our awe of Jesus. Feeding five thousand people with five loaves of bread and two fish is impressive enough, but what if it were really fifteen or twenty thousand?<\/p> But for me, one of the best gifts of reading Scripture, especially familiar stories, isn\u2019t these amplifications; it\u2019s how new things rise to the top when we read and reread. In today\u2019s reading, the parallel stories of Numbers 11 and John 6 stopped me in my tracks. I\u2019ve read both of them dozens of times, heard them taught from my earliest Sunday School days, and yet, the way they mirror each other captivated me today. Scripture is such a sprawling web of connections and references and adjunct stories; beginning to untangle it never gets old.<\/p> Leading up to our Numbers 11 passage, the Israelites had fled from slavery in Egypt. But when they were alone in the desert, they had nothing. Nothing to eat, nothing to drink, no schedule or plan or anything. So they, naturally, began to complain and ask Moses if there was a plan. Moses pressed the Lord for a response.<\/p> But Moses replied, \u201cI\u2019m in the middle of a people with six hundred thousand foot soldiers, yet you say, \u2018I will give them meat, and they will eat for a month.\u2019 If flocks and herds were slaughtered for them, would they have enough? Or if all the fish in the sea were caught for them, would they have enough?\u201d Jesus and His disciples shared a similar back-and-forth. Philip said, \u201cTwo hundred denarii worth of bread wouldn't be enough for each of them to have a little\u201d (John 6:7). Then Jesus took the five loaves and the two fish and fed everyone, with abundant leftovers.<\/p> We often bring our own needs before God with the same doubt and scoffing as the Israelites and Philip. We ask for much with little faith. In these two stories, we see the Lord provide because our God is a God of abundance, not scarcity. He cares for us lavishly. He doesn\u2019t offer the bare minimum or only what we need to survive. He provides \u201ceverything required for life and godliness\u201d through the gift of Jesus (2 Peter 1:3).<\/p>","share_image_height":"640","day_number":"9","scripture":"John 5:31-47, John 6:1-21, Numbers 11:21-23, 2 Kings 4:42-44","available":true,"ad_banner_name":"","ad_banner_image":false,"ad_banner_url":"","songs":"","key_verse":"","key_verse_reference":"","background_image":false,"background_color":"#FBF7F3","scripture_references":false,"share_image":false,"author_name":"","author_bio":"","guest_social_media":false,"show_ad":true,"ad_override":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72799","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/54"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72799"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72799\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/72653"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72799"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72799"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shereadstruth.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72799"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\u2014Numbers 11:21\u201322<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n
\r\nby Melanie Rainer<\/i>
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\u2014Numbers 11:21\u201322<\/em><\/p>
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