Many people followed Jesus to see the miracles that he did when he healed their sicknesses.
One day, Jesus was near the shore of the lake of Galilee and a lot of people followed him to see what he would do. Jesus and his disciples climbed a hill, and from there looked down on all the people below them. He turned and said to Philip, who was one of his disciples, "Philip, where can we buy food from, so that all these people can have something to eat?" Jesus already knew what he was going to do, but he was just trying to see what Philip would say."Eight months wages wouldn't even buy enough food for everyone here to have a bit", Philip answered.
Then Andrew, another of the disciples, said,
"Here's a boy with five small barley loaves and two small fish. But they won't go very far between so many people."
But Jesus told the disciples to make the people all sit down on the grass. Then he took the food from the boy and said thankyou to God for it, before he gave it to the disciples and told them to give it to the people. An amazing thing happened - those five little loaves of bread and the two little fish grew to be enough to feed all those five thousand people, as much as they could eat.
Then Jesus told his disciples to collect all the food that was left over, and the leftovers filled twelve baskets.
Then the people who had seen Jesus do this miracle, said that Jesus must be the Messiah. They knew from the Old Testament, that a Messiah (the word Messiah means 'annointed one', or leader) had been promised to come into the world.
See if you can answer these questions:
1. Why did the people follow Jesus?
2. What food did the boy have?
3. What happened to the food?
You can read this story for yourself in John chapter 6 verses 1 to 14.
