Kids Teaching – Jesus Feeds the 5000

OBJECTIVE

To teach kids that miracles can happen when we trust God more with what we have.

GOD’S WORD
Mark 6:30-44 Jesus Feeds the Five thousand

MEMORY VERSE

He does wonderful things that can’t be understood. He does miracles that can’t even be counted.

Job 5:9 NIRV

Praise	TBC
Heart Prep	Miracles – Kari Jobe
Worship	The Greatness Of Our God – Hillsong Worship

TEACHING

Today we are going to learn this:
“Miracles can happen when we trust God more with what we have.”

This month will be all about miracles! The awesome, wonderful, fantastic, powerful things that God can do in our lives here on earth.

In the Bible God showed us many miracles. In His time here on earth, Jesus did a lot of them, in order to show us how great He is.

Before we continue, let’s go to the Bible and recall one such miracle that Jesus performed one day.

I love that story. It shows us the reality of God’s goodness. It shows us that His love is not just words on paper, or words that we say, but it is something that can be felt, seen, heard, or even tasted in the real world.

Let’s recall what was so miraculous about that story.

The people were listening to Jesus teach all day, and they got hungry and needed food. There were so many people, that it was almost impossible to feed them all. A young boy volunteered to share his food, which consisted of five loaves and two fishes.

Jesus could have just waved His hand, or said one word, and food would fall down from heaven, like rain. But He chose to show this particular miracle by using a small boy, and his generosity.

Those disciples really had a lot of faith in Jesus didn’t they? I want to be the type of follower to my leader who wouldn’t be afraid to suggest such a crazy idea!

But of course we know it turned out to not be so crazy after all, because as we all know, Jesus went and multiplied those five loaves and two fishes into made it enough for the crowd of 5,000 men. And not only that, there was so much, that there were 12 baskets of food leftover.

[Luke 9:10-17 | Mark 6:30-44 | Matthew 14:13-21 | John 6:1-14]

By the way, in every retelling of this story in the New Testament, it is always “five loaves and two fishes”. “Twelve baskets leftover.” “Five thousand men.” God is emphasizing to us the reality of what happened. These details tell us how challenging the situation was. It happened. It was real. And in saying the exact numbers, it becomes easier for us to understand that Jesus was able to accomplish the impossible.

You see, as humans (raise your hand if you’re human!) we are always looking for explanations. We are always looking for proof. We are always looking for ways to understand the things we see and hear and touch around us.

Now there’s nothing wrong with that. Our minds are also God-given; our curiosity is a special feature that I’m sure God programmed into us from the start. He is the God of order and light. He doesn’t deal in confusion, and works to banish the darkness.

Which brings us to our first key point today:

1 Believing miracles takes wisdom.

It’s 2019. I’m excited for next year, because it will be a nice round number, and then everything will be all about clarity (i.e. 2020 vision). But it’s the modern ages for sure, and we know so many more things than we even did fifty, twenty, or even ten years ago. Scientific breakthroughs are happening all over the world, every day, every hour.

And then there’s the Internet. Gazillion bites of information are available to us at any given time. Almost everyone in the world is connected, and you have the chance to reach people to seek knowledge if you need it, and if you know who and what to ask.

So it takes a special sort of wisdom, something more than street smarts and head knowledge, to be wise enough so that we can still believe in miracles. This is the age of the Internet, and Netflix, and Youtube, and Facebook, and Rick and Morty, and Minecraft, and Fortnite, and Wikipedia. So many distractions are battling for our attention and occupying head space.

The foolish things of God are wiser than human wisdom.

1 Corinthians 1:25a NIRV

But we know that we have been specially created by God, set apart for His divine purpose. So we have the power in us, the wisdom in us, to withstand anything and everything that the world will throw at us that will keep us from experiencing life the way that He intended, with all the goodness of His miracles.

And despite all these things battling for our attention, for our belief, we can still be wise enough to believe in miracles.

The second thing we learn from that story is this:

2 Believing in miracles takes trust.

Remember those disciples, and how they went to Jesus with the little boy? They didn’t know what was going to happen, but they were sure that Jesus would do something, anything. Also, think of that boy, of the courage it took to come forward in the first place.

That’s the kind of heart we should have — the one that looks at the situation, and just trusts that God will do something, anything! That Jesus will make a miracle out of the impossible mess that we might be in. That God will make a way where there seems to be no way.

He does wonderful things that can’t be understood. He does miracles that can’t even be counted.

Job 5:9 NIRV

Miracles still happen today. All around us, every day. Some are small and simple and heartwarming. Some are big and tremendous and jawdropping.

Regardless, we should still believe in miracles. Not to base our faith in them, or to depend on them, because that would be foolish. We look to Jesus, the miracle-maker, and not on the miracles themselves.

Let’s stand to pray for the wisdom and trust that we need so that we can all believe in miracles, as we continue to depend on God for everything.

Misc Notes:
Believing in miracles takes wisdom
– heart wisdom that has more to do with Godly things
– it is harder to believe in supernatural things rather then natural

Believing in miracles takes trust.
– trust that we won’t be tricked
– trust that with God anything is possible
– trust that it’s ok that we don’t know everything