John 6:6 – TPT – Now Jesus already knew what he was about to do, but he said this to stretch Philip’s faith.
Have you ever felt like you were being stretched by the Lord? If you are following Jesus you would have to answer with a resounding yes. Everyone who has followed the Lord has been stretched. Think about Abraham, he was asked to leave everything he knew and go without support to a land and people he was unfamiliar with. “The Lord said I will give you the land and bless every family in all generations through you”, you have to admit that is a huge stretch. Then there was Moses who was asked to lead a million people out of slavery and conquer the land promised to Abraham 400 years previously that was inhabited by established countries that had armies; that is another stretch. Then there was Paul who was called to preach to gentiles, the disciples called to preach the gospel to the whole world, and Peter who was asked to preach to the very men that turned Jesus over to the Romans to be crucified. In this story Phillip was being stretched to feed over 5000 people with a little boy’s lunch. . Here are a couple of comments from Adam Clarke and Brian Simmons.
Clarke
“This he said to prove him. To try his faith, and to see whether he and the other apostles had paid proper attention to the miracles which they had already seen him work; and to draw their attention more particularly to that which he was now about to perform. This is an observation of the evangelist himself, who often interweaves his own judgment with the facts he relates, which St. Matthew rarely ever does.”
Brian Simmons
“two hundred pieces of silver.” This equates to about eight months’ wages of the average person. Philip didn’t answer the question and was focused on how much money it would cost, but Jesus’ question was, “Where will we buy bread?” Jesus was testing Philip to see if he would look to Jesus to supply all that was needed and not consider their limited resources.”
So how do we pass the test in whatever form it comes to us? All we need to do is put the situation into the hands of Jesus. All the test involves is coming to this conclusion, I can’t do this but with the Lord all things are possible.
