The Marvellous Meal.
I. The disciples had been away from Jesus, on their first missionary tour, journeying on foot from town to town, preaching what He had taught them, and working miracles with the power which He had bestowed. When they returned, they had much to tell and to ask; and the Lord, seeing them in need of quiet and rest, said to them, "Come ye yourselves apart into a desert place, and rest awhile." Jesus must have needed rest as much as they did, for we are told "there were many coming and going, and they had no leisure so much as to eat." But it was not of Himself he thought, but of His disciples. Do you wish to be a real disciple of the Lord Jesus really like Him? Then there is nothing you must more earnestly seek than this, to be unselfish. We cannot overcome selfishness in our own strength, but we may in His of whom it is written, "Even Christ pleased not Himself."
II. The hot noon has passed; the afternoon is wearing away; and the mountain shadows point towards us across the lake. Many of the people are sitting or lying on the grass, faint with hunger and fatigue. The disciples at last come to their Master and ask if He will not send the people away, that they may go into the villages and buy food, before the sun sets and night comes on. To their amazement, Jesus answers, "They need not depart; give ye them to eat." The Lord bade them see what they could find. They brought word that there was a lad who had in his basket five cakes of barley bread and two small salted fish. "Bring them (said Jesus) hither to Me." I wonder whether the lad objected to give up his basket, and whether the disciples paid him for it, or whether he gladly gave it as soon as he knew that the Lord asked it. If so, what an honour and happiness for him to supply the provision out of which the Lord fed all that multitude. He was repaid, as money could not have paid him. Doubtless, the Lord Jesus took care he should be no loser by yielding up his little store.
III. "They did all eat and were filled." It was a very plain meal, only barley-cake and salt fish, with a draught of clear water from some cool mountain brook. Yet for the poorest and most friendless among the five thousand on the hillside healed by the touch, taught by the lips, fed by the hand of Jesus, it would have been a poor exchange to have changed places with king Herod in his palace, or with the great emperor of Rome, Tiberius Cæsar himself.
E. R. Conder, Drops and Rocks,p. 224.