15 Now when it was evening, the disciples came to him and said, “This is a desolate place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” 16 But Jesus said, “They need not go away; you give them something to eat.” 17 They said to him, “We have only five loaves here and two fish.” 18 And he said, “Bring them here to me.” 19 Then he ordered the crowds to sit down on the grass, and taking the five loaves and the two fish, he looked up to heaven and said a blessing. Then he broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples, and the disciples gave them to the crowds. 20 And they all ate and were satisfied. And they took up twelve baskets full of the broken pieces left over. 21 And those who ate were about five thousand men, besides women and children.
-Matthew 14:15-21
When Jesus multiplies the fish and the loaves, in our modern eyes we just see a miracle. He demonstrates His compassion on the crowd by healing them, teaching them, and feeding them so that they do not have to make an arduous journey back home to eat. He shows His Divine power by defying the laws of physics (which He wrote anyway when creating the universe), making matter expand and increase out of nothing. He shows this for all to see, and get He also remembers that "the worker is worthy of his wages," so each Apostle gets a whole basket of food to reward their labors in distributing to the people.
This is all well and good, and modern believers do well to treasure these things in our heart. Christ is all powerful, He is all loving, and He rewards those who serve Him. In the first century this would have been the same message, but with a deeper connection to bolster their understanding. You see my friends, they were students of the Scriptures, being raised with lessons about the prophets of old. Elisha comes to mind.
42 A man came from Baal-shalishah, bringing the man of God bread of the firstfruits, twenty loaves of barley and fresh ears of grain in his sack. And Elisha said, “Give to the men, that they may eat.” 43 But his servant said, “How can I set this before a hundred men?” So he repeated, “Give them to the men, that they may eat, for thus says the Lord, ‘They shall eat and have some left.’” 44 So he set it before them. And they ate and had some left, according to the word of the Lord.
-2 Kings 4:42-44
Elisha takes twenty loaves of bread, enough food for twenty men, and by the power of God he multiplies it fivefold and then some. Sure every man could have had a fifth of a loaf, but that would be nothing more than a snack: they needed a *meal.* And so they are satisfied.
When Christ feeds the five thousand, He does so with less materials than Elisha had. The crowd of people, all of whom assuredly knew of Elisha, would rightly be astounded. Add in the women and children and you get ten thousand people fed, making for an estimated ten thousand meals; Jesus fed one hundred times as many people as Elisha did, using less materials and having far more left over.
After the Nativity, the holy family fled to and from Egypt, fulfilling and redeeming the Exodus. When He fasts for forty days in the desert, Jesus fulfills and redeems the Israelite wilderness years. When Christ gave the Sermon on the Mount, He was fulfilling and redeeming the giving of the Law at Sinai. Here, He fulfills and redeems the ministries of the Old Testament prophets. This recapitulation of all the Scriptures is a key feature of Christ's life, one which signals to the reader that all of the histories point to Him. It is not just the prophecies which told people who Jesus is, but the events themselves show that the whole Old Testament is about Him through typological fulfillment.
