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Knowing God by Obedient Faith: Jesus Feeds More Than 5,000 People Lesson Set
Authored by Gail Smith Silverdale United Methodist Church Silverdale, WA Lessons are taught in the following workshops: This is the sixth of a series of rotation Sunday school lessons for Silverdale United Methodist Church (SUMC) on the theme “Knowing God by Obedient Faith” written for September 2004 through May 2005 rotation Sunday school at SUMC. Some of the lesson material is from material posted on http://www.rotation.org by various other authors that is available without copyright restrictions as long as credit is given to the authors and it is not used for commercial purposes. SUMC’s rotation Sunday school is called Kids’ Faith T.R.E.K. (Totally Receiving and Embracing God’s Kingdom). Scripture References: Matthew 14:13-21; Mark 6:32-44; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-15 and others as cited in “Biblical Explanation and Background for Teaching” and elsewhere. Memory Verses: “Jesus said, ‘I am the bread of life.’” John 6:35 BONUS VERSE: “Jesus told them, ‘This is the will of God, that you believe in the one he has sent.’” John 6:29 (LB) Theme: Jesus reveals that he is God’s Son by the both the tasks and the gifts he gives to us by faith. Goals: 1. Children will learn the story of Jesus and his disciples feeding more than 5,000 people. 2. Children will learn that Jesus’ feeding of more than 5,000 people is a miracle that shows that Jesus is God’s Son. 3. Children will learn that Jesus asked for help and cooperation from his disciples and from people when he fed them miraculously. 4. Children will learn that cooperation by faith with God and obedience to His commands can bring forth miraculous results. 5. Children will learn that God reveals Himself to us as we obey Him by faith. Concepts: 1. Jesus miraculously provided enough food for more than 5,000 people from one boy’s lunch. 2. Jesus’ miracles help us know and believe that He is the Son of God. 3. Jesus sometimes seems to ask us to do “impossible” tasks that require faith and obedience to be accomplished. 4. When God asks us to obey and do something by faith, He always supplies us with enough to do the task when we trust Him for our supply. 5. God is always faithful in loving us and revealing himself to us. Biblical Explanation and Background for Teaching For this rotation, we are teaching about a “miracle”. According to The New Compact Bible Dictionary, a miracle is “an extraordinary event, inexplicable in terms of ordinary natural forces, an event which causes observers to postulate a super-human personal cause, and/or an event which constitutes evidence of implications much wider than the event itself”. The miracles Jesus did (does) were (are) to show people his deity, that he is the Son of God, and also to show people how much God loves them. They were not any kind of “magic”, which is manipulation of natural events by a person and not the work of God. The feeding of the multitude also was truly recognized as a miracle by the participants; it was not merely Jesus suggesting that everyone share their lunches with each other, as some liberal commentators have suggested. Jesus’ feeding of the multitude of people, “ 5,000 men, besides women and children” (Matthew 14:21) is recorded in all four gospels, so we know it was an important event in the lives of his disciples and the people who followed Jesus. It was a “faith event” that strengthened the faith of those whose hearts were fully committed to Jesus. The Bible Study Fellowship teaching on the feeding of the 5,000 from the book of John points out that Jesus had at least three kinds of followers. There were those who were seeking Jesus for the sensational things he could do, those who had an agenda they wanted Jesus to fulfill (especially a political agenda, like being a king victorious over Rome), and there were loyal disciples who had unshakeable trust in Jesus. As we study this miraculous event whereby Jesus reveals himself as the Son of God and also reveals God’s compassionate nature, we can make a choice to have faith in Him and to come to know Him better, or we can just go on expecting Him to meet our demands. The background of the event is that it was Passover season (spring), and Jesus was taking his disciples away for a time of rest and retreat, probably planning to teach them privately. It was one year previous to the Passover at which Jesus was crucified and raised again. John the Baptist had recently been beheaded, so it was also a time of grief. When Jesus and his disciples came to the place Jesus had chosen, on the northeast side of the Sea of Galilee, a large crowd of people was waiting for them. Jesus “had compassion on them and healed their sick” (Matthew 14:14). Mark 6:34 states that “Jesus had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So he began teaching them many things.” Luke 9:11 adds that he “welcomed them and spoke to them about the Kingdom of God, and healed those who needed healing.” John says (6:2) “a great crowd of people followed him because they saw the miraculous signs he performed on the sick.” Some of the disciples felt disappointed that Jesus didn’t send the crowd away, even as the day came to a close and people were obviously becoming restless and hungry. Instead, Jesus asked his disciples to provide food for the multitude! Philip, displaying a practical mind, told Jesus it would take “eight month’s wages to buy enough food for them each to have one bite” (John 6:7), but John points out that Jesus was testing his disciples, and that Jesus already knew his own plans. Jesus asked them, “How many loaves do you have?…Go and see.” (Mark 6:38) Andrew found a boy who offered his lunch to Jesus, “five small barley loaves and two small fish” (John 6:9), but Andrew wondered what good the small lunch would be among so many people. (The lunch was typical of people of the region, containing bread the size of little dinner rolls and probably dried and salted fish.) Jesus was about to demonstrate to his disciples that he would always supply their need if they obeyed his command, just as he will do for us today when we trust whatever we have in his hands (Philippians 4:19, “And my God shall supply all your need according to his glorious riches in Christ Jesus.”) Today Jesus still welcomes children to give him all that they are and have. After he had told the disciples to have the people sit in groups of 50 and 100, Jesus took the boy’s lunch, gave thanks for it (John 6:11), blessed it (Luke 9:16), and began to distribute the loaves and fish to the disciples to give to the seated multitude. Nobody knows how or when it “multiplied”, but it appears that Jesus did a creative miracle such that as the food came from his hands there was always enough to give to the disciples to distribute. And to show that God is neither wasteful nor stingy, they collected twelve baskets full of the leftovers when everyone had eaten their fill. (John 6:13) Sometimes it seems like God asks us to do the impossible, especially when we calculate, as Philip did, how to do it with the means at hand. Then when we obey God by faith and offer Him all that we have, He provides “enough, enough and more than enough”. God is able to multiply our talents, our time, our finances, our love, or anything else we offer to Him to be used for His Kingdom. As He does this, we gain faith in who God is, in His loving care, and in His provision of our salvation through His Son, Jesus Christ. Today God also asks children to trust Him with all they can give. Children often have little to give financially, but they can give out of what they do have. They can give time, and just like adult Christians, they should give God time in prayer and in studying His Word. They can give God their faith; God loves to multiply our faith. God will also multiply our love when we give it to Him in faith. For instance, a child may think it impossible to be kind to or to like another child. If that child will offer that “impossibility” to God, God will do something good with it, just as He did with the boy’s lunch. When Jesus fed the people, they responded by wanting to make him their king. They wanted him to fulfill their expectations of the Messiah. Instead of giving themselves to Him in faith and obedience as loyal followers, they made more demands on Jesus. As Christians today, we are sometimes tempted to make demands of God rather than yielding to Him obediently by faith. Jesus said he is “the bread of God… who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (John 6:33). He invites us, “Come, all you who are thirsty, come to the waters; and you who have no money, come, buy and eat!” (Isaiah 55:1) Jesus quoted Deuteronomy 8:3 when tempted by the devil to turn stones into bread (Matthew 4:3-4), “…man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” Before Jesus fed the people, satisfying their physical need, he taught them about the Kingdom of God. He wants people to believe his word and his promises, to trust and obey his commands, which are always good, and to welcome the Spirit of Jesus into their hearts. Our children hear God’s word in Sunday school and in church and sometimes in their homes, and some of them read it, memorize parts of it, believe it, and even pray it. We can teach them by word and by example to believe and apply God’s living word in their lives, reminding them also that Jesus is God’s Word in human flesh. General Tips for Teachers: 1. Study the background material and Scripture references ahead of time. 2. Prepare your lesson prayerfully for the specific age group you will teach each Sunday. 3. Teach purposefully, with the “goals” and “concepts” in mind, but also teach as the Holy Spirit leads you. 4. The questions/journal for each section should help you focus your lesson on a particular point. If at all possible, plan your teaching and activity time so there’s time left for journaling, questions and prayer because these are important lesson components. 5. Have a servant’s heart, desiring to bless others more than to please yourself, and to minister God’s love to others. 6. Speak clearly, with adequate preparation, and try to stay within our time limits so we don’t inconvenience family schedules. 7. Do not assume students know what you’re talking about. Many of them have little or no background of knowing the Bible or Christianity. 8. If you wish to give us feedback on better lessons, please do it. We want to make this a good experience. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jesus Feeds More Than 5,000 People Creation Cove – Art Workshop Welcome the children and their guide to the workshop, introduce yourself, and open in prayer. Please try to start on time and end on time, and focus your attention on the children. Attendance: The guides take care of this. The children will be wearing nametags, so you can call them by name. Include the guide in class discussion and prayer, and give the guide opportunities to interact with the children. The guide also helps with journal time, with the closing prayer, and may help with the workshop activity. Teach the lesson and the Bible verses. You and/or the children may read the story from John 6:1-15 if it is new to the children. If it’s the second or third Sunday of the rotation, ask the children first to tell you what they know of the story. Then teach the important points about what a miracle is, how Jesus asked his disciples to feed the people, how the boy shared his small lunch, and how Jesus provided food for all with some left over. Apply this to how Jesus always supplies “enough” so that we can obey his commands. Art Project: Fish and loaves picture, featuring fish prints and sponge-print “loaves”, mounted on a construction paper background, with a copy of the Bible verse on the glued to the bottom of the construction paper. Supplies: · large sheets of construction paper for mounting · smaller sheets of thin white paper for prints · package (2 or 3?) of trout or other small fish, on ice (If fish really gross you out or are not obtainable, you could use something like a flat sponge cut into a fish shape, but it’s not as much fun.) · tempera paint, foam paint brushes, meat trays for paint · newspaper to cover the tables, and extra paper to stuff the fish if they need it and to take up excess paint · round cut sponges for “bread” (if unavailable, you could use potatoes cut in half) · printed copies of the Bible verse, John 6:35 · glue sticks · paper towels for drying fish, hands, etc. Procedure: 1. Pat the fish dry. If the fish seems very caved-in or floppy, stuff its cleaned body cavity with newspaper. 2. Brush the fish with a thin coat of paint. 3. Take off excess paint by pressing a sheet of newspaper onto the fish and lifting it off. Then press the white paper onto the fish to make the print. (Practice this before you have the kids try it, to see what works best.) Each child will need two fish on their paper, so you might choose to have them use two different fish in different colors. Have them go in a “production line” around the circle of tables, so that while they’re waiting to print their second fish they can do their “five loaves” with the round sponges. 4. When prints are done, children should select a background sheet of construction paper, apply glue to it, and carefully center their print on the sheet. Last of all they glue the Bible verse on the bottom. Their name should have been written on the back of the construction paper before they did any gluing. Discussion questions: 1. Why do you think Jesus asked his disciples to feed people if he (Jesus) already knew what he would do? (ANS: John 6:6 says Jesus was “testing his disciples”, perhaps to see if they had true faith in him.) 2. Tell the story of Jesus feeding the multitude, in your own words. 3. In Mark 6:38, Jesus said to his disciples, “How many loaves do you have?…Go and see.” Andrew found a boy who offered his little lunch of five small barley loaves and two fish to Jesus. What do you have to offer to Jesus? (Answers will vary. Lead the children to understand that Jesus doesn’t always ask us for material things. He also asks for our faith, our love, our kindness, our forgiveness of one another, and … let the children name other things. Then when we give all we can to Jesus, he makes it sufficient to fill the need.) Journal question: Write or draw about what you can give to Jesus. Close with a circle of prayer. Invite all you want to pray to do so, and invite them to return next week with their Bible and a friend for the next workshop. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jesus Feeds More Than 5,000 People Master’s Mountain Theatre – Drama Welcome the children and their guide to the workshop, introduce yourself, and open in prayer. Please try to start on time and end on time, and focus your attention on the children. Attendance: The guides take care of this. The children will be wearing nametags, so you can call them by name. Include the guide in class discussion and prayer, and give the guide opportunities to interact with the children. The guide also helps with journal time, with the closing prayer, and may help with the workshop activity. Teach the lesson and the Bible verses. You and/or the children may read the story from John 6:1-15 or one of the other gospels if it is new to the children. If it’s the second or third Sunday of the rotation, ask the children first to tell you what they know of the story. Then teach the important points about what a miracle is, how Jesus asked his disciples to feed the people, how the boy shared his small lunch, and how Jesus provided food for all with some left over. Apply this as a miracle that shows that Jesus is the Son of God, the one who came to deliver us from sin. Point out that both then and now not everyone was or is willing to receive Jesus as God’s Son; some people wanted him to just go on doing good things for people and be their king. He wants to be “king” or ruler of us on the inside, and he will be that when we invite him to do so. He will forgive our sins and fill us with his Spirit when we ask him to. Supplies needed: · small rolls (recipe for barley rolls included here, if you need or want it) · sardines to taste · costumes for characters · script written or memorized by children · “baskets” for leftovers (can be paper containers, if you wish) The story of Jesus feeding more than 5,000 people has nine main points. The children can take these points and decide on their roles (Jesus, Philip, Andrew, the boy, other disciples, the crowd) and on their dialog. If it seems more appropriate, a narrator could read the story from the Bible while the actors perform it. Here are the nine points: 1. Jesus and his disciples cross the Sea of Galilee to go on a retreat. 2. A large crowd of people walks around the north end of the lake and is waiting when Jesus and the disciples arrive, expecting Jesus to minister to their needs. 3. Jesus, as a test of his disciples, asks them to feed the people. 4. Philip answers that they don’t have enough money to buy bread for the huge crowd; it would take eight month’s wages. 5. A boy offers his lunch of 5 loaves and 2 fish; the disciples think it can’t possibly help, but bring it to Jesus. 6. Jesus has the people sit down in groups. Then he thanks God for the food and blesses it. 7. Jesus asks the disciples to distribute the food to the people and to collect the leftovers in baskets. They get 12 baskets of uneaten food left after everyone has eaten enough. 8. The people recognize that Jesus is the Promised One; some people want to make him their new king. 9. Jesus sends his disciples to the boat to go to the other side again while he dismisses the crowd and then goes up the hillside to be alone and pray. Barley Cakes 1 ½ C. hot milk ¼ tsp. salt 3 T. honey 3 C. barley flour ¾ C. raisins Combine all the ingredients and shape into balls. Flatten into rounds. Fry in hot oil until brown on each side, or bake at 400 degrees for about 20 minutes. Discussion questions: 1. What is a miracle? (ANS: “an extraordinary event, inexplicable in terms of ordinary natural forces, an event which causes observers to postulate a super-human personal cause, and/or an event which constitutes evidence of implications much wider than the event itself”. Summarize it your way.) 2. Why was the feeding of the multitude a miracle? (ANS: Jesus took the small amount of food offered and made it enough for the crowd, with 12 baskets left over.) 3. Can Jesus do miracles today? If so, what does Jesus do, or what do you know of, that’s miraculous. (Children can share individual answers. Miracles include forgiveness of sins, changes in attitude, sufficiency of all kinds, healings, and probably other things too.) 4. Why do you think Jesus did not want to let the people make him their king? (ANS: First, it would have meant he would not go to the cross to die for our sins and be raised again on the third day, which was God’s plan from the beginning. Second, he did not come just to do good things for people or to have an earthly kingdom. He said he came to bring in the “Kingdom of God and His righteousness” which means he must be our inside-ruler.) Journal question: Write about our bonus verse, John 6:29, “The work of God is this: to believe on the one he has sent.” Whom has he sent? On whom should we believe? How do we do this work? Close with a circle of prayer. Invite all you want to pray to do so, and invite them to return next week with their Bible and a friend for the next workshop. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jesus Feeds More Than 5,000 People Scripture Tent – Storytelling Welcome the children and their guide to the workshop, introduce yourself, and open in prayer. Please try to start on time and end on time, and focus your attention on the children. Attendance: The guides take care of this. The children will be wearing nametags, so you can call them by name. Include the guide in class discussion and prayer, and give the guide opportunities to interact with the children. The guide also helps with journal time, with the closing prayer, and may help with the workshop activity Teach the lesson and the Bible verses. If it’s the second or third Sunday of the rotation, ask the children first to tell you what they know of the story. Decide whether or not you or some of them should first just read the story from one of the gospels, such as John 6:1-15. Before you tell the story in your own words, offer the children some breadsticks and raisins. Explain that you brought enough for everyone. Thank God for the food, asking His blessing on it before they eat. Then tell them that this is a story of a time when the people really didn’t have enough to eat, but when Jesus made one boy’s small lunch into enough for everybody. (If it’s helpful to you, see the nine main points of the story in the drama section.) Explain that sometimes God asks us to do something that we think is difficult, and that we sometimes think, “I can’t do that. I don’t have enough ___ (you fill in the blank: time, money, faith, love, forgiveness, etc.)” “This is a story about some things the disciples didn’t think they had enough of. Listen carefully so that at the end you can tell me some of the things they thought they didn’t have enough of.” Tell the story in your own words. Discussion questions: 1. What were some things the disciples didn’t have enough of? (ANS: They didn’t have enough money to buy food for all the people, they didn’t actually have enough time to buy food for all the people either, they didn’t have enough love for the people [they wanted the crowd to go home], and they didn’t have enough faith in Jesus as the Son of God who loved the people and would provide for them.) 2. Do you have enough time, love and faith in Jesus to spend time each day with him in prayer and to learn more about God from the Bible? Can you ask God to help you with this? (Children will have individual answers.) 3. How did Jesus’ disciples and other people, like the little boy who shared his lunch, gain faith from Jesus’ feeding of more than 5,000 people? (ANS: They saw that Jesus cared deeply for them, and that he would and could provide for their needs, even when they could not provide for themselves.) 4. Since Jesus can miraculously provide for us, does he want adults to pray instead of working to earn a living? Does he want children to pray for the answers on their tests at school and not bother studying? (ANS: No, the Bible says we should work for our living, and that we should study diligently. We should also trust God with all the faith He’s given us. There are times when God wants to do HIS work only by our faith, and he will show us those times also.) Journal question: After feeding the great crowd of people, on another day, Jesus taught his disciples and other people, saying, “I am the bread of life.” (John 6:35) What did Jesus mean by this statement? Close with a circle of prayer. Invite all you want to pray to do so, and invite them to return next week with their Bible and a friend for the next workshop. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Jesus Feeds More Than 5,000 People Video Viewpoint – Video Welcome the children and their guide to the workshop, introduce yourself, and open in prayer. Please try to start on time and end on time, and focus your attention on the children. Attendance: The guides take care of this. The children will be wearing nametags, so you can call them by name. Include the guide in class discussion and prayer, and give the guide opportunities to interact with the children. The guide also helps with journal time, with the closing prayer, and may help with the workshop activity. There is an attendance prize drawing of four tickets on this Sunday of the rotation. Each child deposits one ticket with his or her name on it during Assembly time each week. If they bring their Bible or a friend, they get to deposit two tickets. Four prizes are awarded on the fourth Sunday, one to each of four different children. Teach the lesson and the Bible verses. You and/or the children may read the story from John 6:1-15 if it is new to the children. If it’s the second or third Sunday of the rotation, ask the children first to tell you what they know of the story. Then teach the important points about what a miracle is, how Jesus asked his disciples to feed the people, how the boy shared his small lunch, and how Jesus provided food for all with some left over. Show the video about Jesus feeding more than 5,000 people, Animated Stories: Bread of Heaven by Nest Entertainment (1996); it’s about 25 minutes long. After the video, play the fishing game as a Bible verse relay contest. To play the fishing game, do the following: 1. Tear up slips of paper, red and blue, so that each child will get either a red or a blue slip and there will end up being a “red team” and a “blue team”. 2. Have prepared construction paper fish with a paper clip on each one and a word from the Bible verse on each one. Be prepared to do both verses, but do John 6:35 first. 3. Give each team a fishing pole with a magnet on the end to “catch” fish, one at a time. The longer the pole, the trickier it will be. As each child catches a fish, he or she must put the word in order to help make the verse. 4. The first team to correctly complete the verse wins. Sharing: Invite children to share some of their answers and what they’ve learned this rotation from their journal entries and answers to questions in previous workshops. Close with a circle of prayer. REFERENCES Exchange Volunteer Amy edited title for consitency. Exchange Volunteer Carol improved readability and added links to lessons cited. This message has been edited. Last edited by: CreativeCarol, |
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Rotation.org Main Site Rotation Exchange Community Page Rotation Exchange Main Categories Lessons: NT GOSPELS: JESUS' MIRACLES Feeding of the 5000 Jesus Feeds More Than 5000 People Lesson Set - Silverdale UMC, Silverdale, WA
Rotation Exchange Community Page Rotation Exchange Main Categories Lessons: NT GOSPELS: JESUS' MIRACLES Feeding of the 5000 Jesus Feeds More Than 5000 People Lesson Set - Silverdale UMC, Silverdale, WACopyright. The content of the Exchange may not be commercially reproduced and remains the property of the individual authors. Send all content inquiries to coordinator@rotation.org.
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