Here is the lesson of the miracle. We have a great problem. We need to be forgiven by God. We need a new nature. We need spiritual life in us. No human being can give it to us. Who is going to solve the problem and supply our need? Through Christ, the solution is going to come from heaven and it's going to be mediated through Christ, through his hands. He will give it. That is the message of the miracle, as the people sit and watch. That is how provision is going to be made. This is a perfect picture of the gospel and how God blesses needy souls. How can I be forgiven? How can my sins be disregarded by God and set aside? He is holy. He is pledged to punish and destroy sin. How can I be changed and made a new person and put in a relationship with God? It must come freely from heaven. I cannot earn it. I cannot deserve it. It must come through Christ and this is how it works. God the Father, sent down from heaven, God the eternal Son, equal with the Father, and he came down to earth in order to be our representative and stand in our place. He went to Calvary's cross to suffer and to die. Not to suffer only the nails through hands and feet, though that would be bad enough. Not only the whipping and the scourging and the hanging, dying in the heat of the sun, and all the physical torment, but a far greater invisible torment. In accordance with prior arrangement, the Father put upon him the guilt of all people who would one day be forgiven and go to heaven, and then poured out an invisible punishment of great intensity upon Christ: the punishment that we deserved in hell throughout the everlasting ages, and he bore it away and suffered it in our place. How is it that it did not destroy him? Because he was not only man; he was God. He must feel the punishment as we ought to feel it as a human being. But his divine nature sustained him to bear that hideous and utterly overwhelming punishment that we deserve. So he took our punishment. The honour of Almighty God is satisfied. His holy character is satisfied. He has punished sin, even of those who will be in heaven, but he has taken the punishment himself in Jesus Christ, the eternal Son. And so all who trust in him may go free and be pardoned and forgiven. The core of the miracle of the feeding of the five thousand is that the provision must come from heaven and it must come through Christ. Christ must work the miracle of salvation for us. He alone can bear the punishment for our sin. He alone has the power to give us new hearts and spiritual life.
The church can tell you the message, but it cannot get you to heaven. Only the Saviour can, and you must apply to him.
There was no charge for the meal that the people received that day which wholly satisfied them and strengthened them for the long journey home. So too with the salvation of God that Christ gives, it is free. I cannot possibly contribute anything to it.