The Picnic Basket
God
uses ordinary people extraordinarily and today I want to share about the life
of one such ordinary person from the Bible, whom God used mightily to achieve
something extraordinary. He was so ordinary that I don’t know his name, his
genealogy or his age. I don’t know whether he had any siblings or whether he
was rich or poor. In fact I know nothing
about him; I can only surmise a couple of things about him .Number 1: He probably
had a healthy appetite and Number 2: He
had loving parents who provided for him.
I am talking about the little boy with the picnic basket- 5 barley
loaves and 2 fish, in the story of Jesus feeding the 5000. While this miracle is recorded in all 4
gospels, I’m picking it up from Mark 6 verses 35 – 44.
35 By this time it
was late in the day, so his disciples came to him. “This is a remote place,”
they said, “and it’s already very late. 36 Send the people away so that
they can go to the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves
something to eat.”
It is easy to understand the mind-set of the disciples. They had
been managing a crowd of about 20000 people. They were exhausted, hungry and
ready to call it a day. And so they were desperately trying to persuade Jesus
to send the crowd away.
Jesus however was having none of that.
37 But he answered, “You give them something to eat.” Can you imagine how
shocked, the disciples would have been on hearing this statement. Feed such a
huge crowd? Was Jesus serious?
They said to him, “That would
take more than half a year’s wages[a]! Are we to go and spend that much on bread and give it to them to
eat?”
The Bible places the count of men who came to hear
Jesus at 5000. In those days, however, only the men were counted, women and
children were not considered whilst taking a count. Taking them also into
account, the actual number of people present at that time could well have been
around 15 to 20000.
I don’t know how much it would have cost to feed 15
– 20,000 people in those days. But today
If we have to feed so many people, it would be somewhere in the vicinity of Rs.
15 lakhs. Now that’s a whopping amount of money, it’s
almost more than a year’s income for many people.
38 “How many loaves do you
have?” he asked. “Go and see.”
When they found out, they
said, “Five—and two fish.”
I
love this story because it has a lot of principles tucked away in it and today
I want to share some principles that can be practically applied to our lives.
So here goes…..
Principle
1: Offer what you have to Jesus.
I
wonder how many among the 20000 present on that day had carried something to
eat. I daresay some may have had their own lunchbox, but did not want to let go
of it. In fact, if I had been in that boy’s place, I might have kept my lunch well
hidden somewhere. That’s human nature, to hold on to things and never let go.
But
this small boy, surprisingly gave his lunch to the disciples. It must have cost
him a lot of heartache, to see his lunch walk away from him when he was hungry,
yet he offered it. He might have had some misgivings on how so many people
could be fed with the little that he had to offer, yet he offered it. God
expects that from us. We are all blessed, some with little, some with much. But
whatever we have- be it our time, talents, finances, or resources, we need to offer
it willingly to Him.
Principle
2: God starts with what you offer.
We
serve a mighty God who can speak things into existence, who can create
something from nothing. That is God the Creator. However when He works in our
life, God always takes something that we
offer and then multiplies it. Here Jesus
could have created bread from
nothing, He could have created the money from nothing. He is the All Powerful
One. He could have done anything. But he started with the 5 loaves and 2 fish
that the little boy had offered. In
II Kings chapter 4, God started with the oil that the widow had put inside the
pot…. .In the case of the widow of Zarephath, he started with the flour.
Principle 3: God multiplies what you offer.
Luke
6: 38 is a powerful verse on multiplication and it says ‘Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, and
shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom. We
generally associate this verse with finances, but it is not only for finances,
it is for everything that we give. It says in the last part “For with the same measure that ye mete
withal it shall be measured to you again”. The keyword here is ‘it’; it
stands for whatever we give.
In earthly multiplication, when we multiply any 2 numbers we get
the Product of the 2 numbers. The product is a finite number i.e. something we
can count.
But
in heavenly multiplication, when something is multiplied by God, it becomes
limitless, infinite.
In
this case 5 loaves + 2 fish multiplied by God gave Food enough for 20000 people
+ 12 extra baskets of food.
Principle 4: Multiplication is in kind
Here loaves multiplied into more loaves and fish to
more fish. It didn’t multiply to cakes or meat. Not that He couldn’t have done
that, but we serve a systematic God, a God of order and he typically multiples
in kind. If we offer Him our finances, he will multiply it and give it back to
us, if we offer him our talents, he will multiply that and give it back to us.
Principle 5: Nothing multiplies unless Jesus blesses it.
41 Taking the five loaves and
the two fish and looking up to heaven, he gave thanks and broke the loaves. Then he gave them to his disciples to distribute to the people.
Notice something interesting here? As long as they were with the
boy, they were just 5 loaves and 2 fish, as long as they were with the
disciples, it was only 5 loaves and 2 fish. Then Jesus gave thanks, broke the
bread and handed the pieces to the disciples to distribute and as they were
distributing it, it multiplied in their hands. Ditto with the fish. It
continued increasing in their hands, the supply was limitless and that was incredible.
They had 12 baskets left over!!! Wow!!
Principle 6: We become a channel of God’s blessings to others.
The
little boy must not have imagined in his wildest dreams that the 5 barley
loaves and 2 fish that he offered to Jesus, would be used to feed the
multitude. He had become a channel of God’s supernatural blessings to the
multitude. His offering had impacted so many people.
To
conclude, we all have barley loaves and
fish in our lives that we can offer God. Handing over our finances, our
relationships, our talents, our time, our resources to God, gives God the opportunity to multiply
it and bless us and many others through us.
Many
are unwilling to offer it up, fearing that there would be nothing left for them,
many may think that what they have is not significant enough for God to use.
These
are thoughts of insufficiency arising out of a scarcity mentality. It is a
snare of the enemy by which we restrict God’s multiplication in our lives.
We may not
have much to give, but whatever we do have, we can offer it to Jesus. Even if
it isn’t much, let’s offer it. Little becomes
limitless when multiplied by God.
Today, if there is any area of our lives in which
we need to see a growth, a supernatural increase. Let us offer it to God. And see the power of
multiplication in our lives.
