John 6:5-6 says, \u201cWhen Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Years ago I took my family on a camping trip that caused us to be away from home on Sunday. We found a small church and decided to visit. The pastor and his wife were elderly (about like I am now). They had one attender that day besides our family of six. The pastor was excited, and tried to get us all involved. He managed to get our daughter to play the piano, and our son-in-law to take the offering. The lady who was there said, \u201cDon\u2019t feel bad. Today is my second Sunday and he has asked me to be the treasurer.\u201d The pastor had a great sermon. It was like he was preaching to a large crowd. As a pastor myself, I was impressed how he was faithful to his calling. He could have been discouraged, thinking that he pastored the smallest church on the district. He was excited about the small little town he served, having almost everyone in town subscribing to our church magazine. He held the district record for number of subscribers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It is interesting that Jesus asked Philip where they could buy bread to feed over 5,000 people. He did not ask him how can we feed the crowd, but where shall we buy bread. Jesus was not planning to buy bread. Jesus knew what he was going to do. He knew, before Andrew told him, there was a lad there who had five barley loaves and two small fishes. He knew he was going to do a miracle that would cause people to believe that he was \u201cthat prophet that should come into the world\u201d (John 6:14).\u00a0 Philip already believed that. When Jesus called Philip to follow Him he immediately believed Jesus was the Messiah and told it to Nathanael (John 1:43-46). Our text says that Jesus asked him this question to prove him. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I don\u2019t believe Jesus was testing his faith as much as wondering how Philip would handle feeding a crowd. The miracle that Jesus was about to do was extremely important for Philip to see for a future ministry. In Acts chapter 6 we see that Philip was appointed to serve tables.\u00a0 The twelve disciples felt that they should not leave the Word of God, and prayer, to do this menial task. Though Philip was one of the twelve, they felt this was a good job for him and six others. I guess they forgot that Jesus quit preaching and praying long enough to serve food to over 5,000. \u00a0<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Jesus had proved Philip and knew that he could handle any job as a faithful servant. Acts 6:3\u00a0 says that Philip was honest, full of the Holy Ghost and wisdom. The Holy Ghost led him from tables to Samaria to preach Christ, which resulted in many saved. Immediately Peter and John raced down to get in on the action. The Spirit led Phillip to go to the Ethiopian eunuch. From there the Spirit took him to Azotus and then to Caesarea, where he became known as the evangelist (Acts 21:8). We all need to learn like Philip, that LITTLE IS MUCH!\u00a0 \u00a0
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John 6:5-6 says, \u201cWhen Jesus then lifted up his eyes, and saw a great company come unto him, he saith unto Philip, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may eat? And this he said to prove him: for he himself knew what he would do.\u201d Years ago I took my family on a camping […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2100,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"set","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2097","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/coalmanpublishing.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/paul-hermann-rLJflZ_ufpo-unsplash-scaled.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/coalmanpublishing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/coalmanpublishing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/coalmanpublishing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coalmanpublishing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coalmanpublishing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2097"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/coalmanpublishing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2101,"href":"https:\/\/coalmanpublishing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2097\/revisions\/2101"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coalmanpublishing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2100"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/coalmanpublishing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2097"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coalmanpublishing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2097"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/coalmanpublishing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2097"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}