“Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, ‘HE GAVE THEM BREAD OUT OF HEAVEN TO EAT.’ ” 32 Jesus then said to them, “Truly, truly, I say to you, it is not Moses who has given you the bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. 33 “For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world.” 34 Then they said to Him, “Lord, always give us this bread.” 35 Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life; he who comes to Me will not hunger, and he who believes in Me will never thirst. 36 “But I said to you that you have seen Me, and yet do not believe.”
John the Apostle goes from the discourse of Jesus to the Jerusalem Jews in chapter 5 directly to the account of His feeding of the 5000 in Galilee with the words ‘After these things’ (or ‘After this’, depending upon the translation you’re reading).
But in saying ‘After these things’, and this is applicable in each case in which he uses the term, the writer is not stating specifically that what he is about to say comes right away after what he has just said. It is just a transition statement that generally refers to a passing of time. This happened, then later this happened. Or, here’s a story, and now that I’m done telling you that here the accounting of another event.
A harmonizing of the Gospels at this point indicates that quite some time has passed between Jesus’ confrontation in the Temple over the man He healed by the pool of Bethesda, and this event near the Sea of Galilee in the north. One commentator supposed it was about 6 months, but it may have been even longer than that.
It is at the end of chapter 6 where Jesus loses His large following and His popularity with the people. Well, He didn’t lose them; He never really had them, and He knew that all along. In fact that is what we’ll be talking about today.
JESUS TESTS BELIEF
Before we talk about the sad disaster of false religion and selfish expectations however, let’s pause and consider the early verses of the chapter and this challenge Jesus puts to Philip.
Ok, just a couple of items to take note of in passing: John says a great multitude was following Jesus. We’ll talk a little bit about the numbers in a few minutes, but we won’t pause long there. I just want you to get this mental picture of multitudes flocking out to see Jesus, as you read the words, ‘because they were seeing the signs which He was performing on those who were sick’.
So Jesus had a large following, but it was because of His miracles. People known for their healing ministries have always been successful at drawing very large crowds. In the late 1960s into the early 70’s a woman named Kathryn Kuhlman, who pastored a Presbyterian church in Pennsylvania, was reported to have had healings taking place during her worship services. So she was asked to go out to the west coast so that people there could also benefit from this healing ministry.
Now, in Kathryn’s particular case, she claimed openly that she didn’t know why healings took place in her services.
She said she died a thousand deaths before going out onto the stage to begin preaching, because she knew that people weren’t there to hear her, or even to hear the Gospel, but to see healings and maybe be the recipient of one. And since she knew that if any healings would take place it would have to be God doing it, she was afraid of the reaction of the people if nothing happened.
Now I leave it to you to either believe or disbelieve that healings took place in her worship services. My point today is that she knew and openly stated that the thousands who flocked to her services held in the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles were there for miracles, not for spiritual life or growth, which, boiled down to the bone, means they weren’t there for Jesus either.
Any church that wants to have a large congregation can have one for the asking. All the leadership has to do is offer creature comforts, a show, and a door prize or two, and they’ll fill any building beyond the municipal code limitations. It’s not hard to get paying customers when you feed the flesh and bolster the ego. We’ll see later what it is that drives them away again, just in case anyone wants to know how to empty a church.
Next, I want you to notice that John says, “…the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Jesus therefore, lifting up His eyes, and seeing that a great multitude was coming to Him…” Ok stop right there.
What’s going on?
Where is the Passover celebration held? It’s in Jerusalem; right? Yes. In fact, it is one of the three high holy days in which true worshipers were required to go up to Jerusalem. The Passover is one and the Feast of Weeks, also called Pentecost (in Greek), and the Feast of Booths in the Fall of the year is the third.
So we can discern a couple of things from what we’re told here. One is that Jesus is already very much in disfavor with the Judean Jews. Otherwise, He would be at the Feast or on His way to the Feast Himself, instead of sitting down on a hillside in Galilee to teach people.
Next, the people themselves should have been enroute to Jerusalem. So what were they doing here? This was sort of like all of the good Christians of our city flocking to the fairgrounds on Sunday to watch a magic show instead of going to church.
Because that’s why these multitudes were all flocking here instead of flocking to Jerusalem with their spotless lambs or their money to purchase one at Temple. It wasn’t because they had found the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world. It was because they had found a miracle worker who healed their sicknesses; something the pious, God-fearing, clean-cut pillars of Judaism in Jerusalem could never do for them.
Nevertheless, Jesus had compassion, didn’t He? He saw them as sheep without a shepherd. They were needy of so much more than they even realized they needed. And His compassion led Him to perform the second miracle of creation recorded for us in John’s Gospel.
The first miracle Jesus did, which required His ability to create, was the turning of water to wine in Cana. It was just water.
It had never been grapes, it had never seen or come from a vine, it had never gone through the fermenting or bottling process. He just had the servants fill the pots and those who dipped found fine wine. Created wine.
So now, He is about to do His second miracle of creation by handing out bread that had never seen a wheat stalk, never been flour and water and eggs, never touched yeast or been in an oven. He created it.
So the two miracles of creation recorded for us by John were representative of His blood, poured out for many for the remission of sins, and His body, broken for you. Wine and bread. Amazing grace.
Ok, now we come to the test. “…lifting up His eyes, and seeing that a great multitude was coming to Him, said to Philip, ‘Where are we to buy bread, that these may eat?”
Do you notice He asked, ‘where are we to buy bread’? There wasn’t exactly a supermarket over the hill, was there? Where are we to buy it?
But Philip doesn’t even seem to consider the where. He mentions an amount. Now I don’t know if he says this because he happens to know that this is the amount of money they have presently available, or if it’s just a lot of money so he is saying, “Doesn’t matter where if we don’t have the wherewithal!”
But there is a more interesting point to be made from this I think, if you look at verse 6.
“And this He was saying to test him, for He Himself knew what He was intending to do.”
Why do you suppose Jesus specifically tested Philip at this point? Do you think He just arbitrarily picked one of them and it happened to be Philip? I don’t think so. I don’t think Jesus ever did anything arbitrary or without specific purpose. He was the Purpose Driven Christ.
Turn with me if you will, back to the first chapter of John’s Gospel and look with me at verse 43. Jesus has just spent a day with His first two followers, Andrew and an unnamed disciple who was probably John, the author of the Gospel. Now it’s the next day and Jesus is going to go forth to Galilee (in other words, northward from where they had been, near the Jordan where John was baptizing), and He found Philip and said ‘Follow Me’.
Now pay careful attention to the wording of verse 45. “Philip found Nathaniel and said to him, ‘We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote, Jesus of Nazareth, the son of Joseph.”
What can we glean from this? We can glean that Philip knew his Scriptures. He could have enticed Nathaniel with a lot of different phrases to get him to come and see this Jesus fellow, but we generally speak from our learning and our personal experience, don’t we? And Philip said, “We have found Him of whom Moses in the Law and also the Prophets wrote.”
Now Nathaniel’s objection is “Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?” And there are two ways to take that. Nazareth had a reputation for being a town of lowlife malcontents of bad behavior. So his question may have been a sarcastic reference to the mean nature of the village.
On the other hand, he may have simply been saying, ‘None of the prophets say anything about the Messiah coming from out of Nazareth; in fact, Nazareth isn’t even mentioned in the Scriptures’. Hence, how could this Jesus be the one of whom the prophets wrote?
Now here’s a catch, and it calls for some speculation, but stay with me. At the end of Matthew chapter 2, verse 23 says of Joseph and Mary and the Child that they ‘…came and resided in a city called Nazareth, that what was spoken through the prophets might be fulfilled, ‘He shall be called a Nazarene’.”
Now we don’t know what prophet wrote that, because it’s not in the Old Testament. But did Philip have access to a prophetic writing to which Matthew also referred, which didn’t make it in the Bible but was known by some nevertheless back then? If so, that would answer why Philip wasn’t tripped up by the thought of Jesus coming out of Nazareth. We don’t know and can’t say with any conviction.
But now, on this hillside in Galilee, looking around at all these throngs of people, Jesus asks specifically of His witness/scholar Philip, ‘where are we going to get bread to feed these people?’
John says He asked this to test him. Why was He testing Philip? I’ll tell you. Because Jesus tests belief! Jesus tests faith! To whom much is given much will be required, and my fellow Christ-followers, when you have learned something about Jesus that is a faith lesson, He doesn’t just let it drop there forever, He puts it to good use. He tests it.
Listen. If I work out with weights and I get to where I can bench press say, 150 lbs, the next logical step is to add ten pounds to each end of the barbell and get stronger. Doesn’t it just make sense to move on and not stay put?
Philip knew His Scriptures and what they said. Philip was a student of the Bible, but it was time to add ten pounds to each end of the barbell and strengthen Philip for the days ahead.
What’re we gonna do, Philip…you and Me? You know who I am. You know you don’t have the power or the money or the wherewithal or anything… so what’re WE gonna do?
Don’t you think that maybe in just a little while Philip was shaking his head and saying, “Oh, yeah. That would’ve been the right answer if I was smarter than a fifth grader.”
Oh, Lord, yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory forever. You feed them.
Why did Jesus choose Philip for this test? I think Jesus wanted to move Philip’s faith from head to heart. I think Jesus wanted Philip’s knowledge of the written word to be transferred to a personal knowledge of the Word of God Himself. He wanted to make it personal for Philip.
Jesus tests faith, and Jesus deals with each of us on an individual level according to our specific need. He tested Philip’s faith for Philip’s own growth, and He tests yours and mine for the same reason.
Now just a very brief word about the actual number of people in the multitude and then we move on.
The Bible says Jesus fed five thousand. Every preacher I’ve ever heard wants to stretch that to between 10 and 15 thousand if you count women and children.
Here is my take. Who cares? Jesus asked a little boy for his lunch, which consisted of some very small mashed up fish to use as a spread to get his five dry little barley lunch loaves down, and if Jesus fed five people enough to fill them up with that, that is pretty impressive. If He fed fifty with that, it is a miracle. I’m happy with the 5000 number and I can give Him credit for being the Creator who had the power to do that and I can glorify Him for that and praise Him and I can be thankful that this is the Lord I serve who can ever and always provide all I need. That’s it. Let’s move on.
A QUICK TRIP TO CAPERNAUM
Now there is a very interesting insertion into this entire account that, if you stop and step back and look, may seem slightly out of place. But John was purposeful when he wrote and the Holy Spirit inspired every word of Scripture, so we shouldn’t just jump over this. I’m talking about verses 15 – 21 of this chapter. Let’s read them:
“So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone. 16 Now when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea, 17 and after getting into a boat, they started to cross the sea to Capernaum. It had already become dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. 18 The sea began to be stirred up because a strong wind was blowing. 19 Then, when they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and drawing near to the boat; and they were frightened. 20 But He said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” 21 So they were willing to receive Him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.”
Ok, here’s another place where we could get bogged down with numbers. It says they had rowed about 3 or 4 miles – and by the way, that’s a long way to row – when they saw Jesus coming to them on the water.
The Sea of Galilee is about 13 miles north to south, and about 8 miles east to west. Capernaum is located at the north/west edge of the Sea of Galilee, and the wording of verses 22-24 seems to indicate that the place where Jesus fed the multitude was on the other side of the Sea, rather than just down the coast a way. So you can sit later in the comfort of your home and look at the maps in the back of your Bible and figure it all out if this is the sort of detail that intrigues you; for now I’ll just say that if they had rowed 4 miles from any point, they were in the middle of things. The disciples were not near shore in any direction. The wind was stirring up the waters. They were getting a little nervous. It was the dead of night. Then they saw someone walking toward them on the water and they were frightened.
Listen folks; don’t be amazed at this. This is the One who spoke all things into being and holds all things together by the word of His power. He wasn’t walking on the water’s edge, He wasn’t walking on a series of slightly submerged stones none of them knew about, He was God doing what God does. He rules. I love the part of the hymn “Be Still My Soul” that encourages with “The wind and waves still know the voice of Him who ruled them while He dwelt below”.
Anyway, Jesus encourages them with a word, they realize who He is, they are relieved and they move aside to let Him in the boat – now watch this – “and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going”.
Y’know what amazes me? John didn’t even end that sentence with an exclamation mark!
Why did Jesus do that? He was just showing His trusted disciples His glory, that’s all. He was there to glorify the Father and to teach them that He was the Son of God, so He did ‘God’ things in their presence. They were going to need to know and be very certain in their hearts of all these things later, weren’t they?
Ok, an entire sermon, many sermons could rise up out of verses 15-21 but we have to move on.
THE EMPTINESS OF FEEDING THE FLESH
So we have the account of Jesus miraculously feeding the 5000 until they were full and 12 baskets of leftovers being collected up, then this nighttime ‘beam me up’ trip across the Sea of Galilee, then we’re back to the second half of the miraculous feeding story.
Here is where the trip across the Sea comes in. The multitudes want more. They don’t want more of Jesus, they want more food. Can you picture this pathetic sight? Folks are presumably sleeping all over the hillside because they sure didn’t go home, and they still aren’t getting ready for the trip to Jerusalem for Passover.
Morning comes and they start looking around and realizing Jesus isn’t there any longer.
They had seen His disciples get in a boat the previous evening and head for Capernaum, so this sort of frenzy breaks out. Other small boats come from Tiberias; I suppose just people conducting their business as usual, and these people all start commandeering boats and sailing off toward Capernaum. Hey, their meal ticket was getting away and they weren’t about to let that happen.
Do you get it? If Jesus could do every day what He had done the previous day, then He could be their king, He could miraculously overthrow the Romans, and He could just feed the nation with a wave of His hand every day and none of them would ever have to work again. It was going to be a perfect world after all!
Does this picture come across as a little ridiculous? I’m just asking, because this is the only Jesus the world wants. It’s the only Jesus the worldly church wants. Listen to the prayer requests in most large gatherings of church-goers and the list will cover everything imaginable from ‘pray for my Aunt Lois’ breast cancer’ to ‘pray for good weather this Saturday because I’m taking my son fishing’. This is what people want from Jesus! Creature comforts and avoidance from any kind of suffering or deprivation. Am I saying it’s wrong to pray for these things? No. Well, it is foolish to pray for some of the things people pray for; not the important things.
When was the last time you were in a meeting and a leader opened the floor for prayer requests, and Joe Regular in the fourth row shot up a hand and said, “Let’s pray that the Lord will enlighten us to Spiritual truth, and expose our sin so that we might repent, and let’s ask Him to change our hearts and make us more like Jesus no matter the cost to us in this world…oh, and let’s pray for next Wednesday evening’s class on the fundamental doctrines of the Christian faith so we’ll all know our Bibles better and be able to articulate to others why we believe what we do, and let’s pray that our lives will glorify God.”
By now the whole room is sitting back down, checking their watches, shaking out another peppermint candy…
Well, I’ll tell you one of the reasons you usually won’t hear that kind of request. It is because there’s usually no such thing as a Wednesday evening doctrine class. Another reason is that in so many churches there’s never a call to repentance and never a hint made that perhaps our hearts need to be changed by Jesus at all.
Jesus saw right through them, didn’t He? “Rabbi, when did You get here?”
“Amen, amen, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled” You spent the morning rowing across this big sea, just to get your belly filled…and if I feed you, in about 4 hours you’re going to be starving again and you still won’t be thinking about worshiping God in Jerusalem or any place else. You’ll be checking the gossip lines to find out where I’ve gone next, to get filled again.
Now I want you to get an idea of the dismissive attitude they have toward what Jesus has to say to them. He tells them in verse 29 that the only work God calls for is the work of belief. It is a form of obedience. Believe in Him whom God has sent. And how do they respond to this gracious offer?
They ask for a sign to prove Himself. What? What work do You perform?
Well, let’s see… He just fed them all miraculously out of a small lunch basket. That’s not enough? Now they say, ‘Before we believe in You we must see a sign’? What kind of a sign to you think they wanted?
Lunch!
“Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness”. What are they saying? They are saying, ‘Moses gave the good stuff; can You match that?’
Again, Jesus makes His gracious offer. It wasn’t Moses who gave you manna, it was My Father who gave you manna, and it is My Father who gives the true bread from heaven that gives life to the world.
We see the manna as a type, don’t we? We understand it to be symbolic of the One who would come down from heaven and give life to the world. God gave them this miraculous bread in the wilderness to sustain them, and He gave Jesus, the Bread of Life, in the wilderness of this world of sin, that all who believe in Him will endure to eternal life, which the Son of Man gives.
But do you know what they did? They did the same thing their fathers in the wilderness did. I’ll show you. Look at verse 34.
“They said therefore to Him, ‘Lord, evermore give us this bread’.” They still weren’t getting it; they still thought He was talking about feeding their bellies.
How do I know? Because when He very clearly tells them, “I am the bread of life”, verse 41 says ‘The Jews therefore were grumbling about Him, because He said, “I am the bread that came down out of heaven”.
Why are they grumbling? Because they are finally realizing that He isn’t talking about bread they can physically eat, but that He is talking about Himself and the spiritual life He imparts if they would partake of Him, and they don’t want Jesus!
Now why did I say they were doing what their fathers did? Listen to Numbers 21:5
“The people spoke against God and Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food.” What food were they talking about? The manna. The literal translation is “Our souls loathe this miserable food”.
What God in His love and grace gave to them every morning, so all they had to do was gather up enough for the day and be sustained thereby, they loathed in their very soul. They called it miserable. This is how they treated the free gift of God, who brought them up out of slavery and saved their lives many times over. This is how they virtually slapped God in the face. They loathed the manna.
And here, some 15 hundred years later, their descendants were loathing in their very souls, the Bread that came down from heaven to give them life that would endure for eternity if they would only believe.
Well, this marked the end of Jesus’ popularity with the people of Galilee. Until now He had moved about them freely, headquartering in Capernaum and as it says in Acts, going about doing good and healing those who oppressed by the devil for God was with Him. But so offended are they at His discourse about eating His body and drinking His blood that instead of praying for clarification or believing in Him for who He was, they went away and followed Jesus no longer.
They complained that His teaching was difficult, and they went to fill their bellies somewhere else. I think that very many of Jesus’ preachers over the years have had this same experience. But it should be very encouraging to realize that they treated the One who called them to preach the same way.
Did Jesus know rejection? You bet your life He did. Can’t you almost hear it in His voice, when He turns to His chosen 12 and asks, “You do not want to go away also, do you?”
THE BREAD THAT FILLS FOREVER
Listen to verses 44-48.
“No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him up on the last day. 45 “It is written in the prophets, ‘AND THEY SHALL ALL BE TAUGHT OF GOD.’ Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me. 46 “Not that anyone has seen the Father, except the One who is from God; He has seen the Father. 47 “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. 48 “I am the bread of life.”
Multitudes turned from Jesus and ceased to follow Him on the day they found out He was more than a meal ticket; that He called for belief and true spiritual worship – multitudes.
That’s the way it has always been. In Matthew 22:14 Jesus said “Many are invited but few are chosen”. He wasn’t taken by surprise. He had just sent out the invitation to a multitude who then turned away from Him; but it was His true followers to whom He would later say, “You did not choose Me, but I chose you”, and even here in our text chapter, verse 70 He said, “Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?”
He knew who were His and who were not. Jesus knows those who are His, and His promise is:
“All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will certainly not cast out. 38 “For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. 39 “This is the will of Him who sent Me, that of all that He has given Me I lose nothing, but raise it up on the last day. 40 “For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.” (6:37-40)
The multitudes left, the few stayed. Many were invited, few were chosen. Many are invited. The Gospel of Jesus Christ covers the earth like a blanket. It goes out to all the world like a great dinner invitation, open to all who will come.
But only those who are chosen and drawn will come and those will never be cast away, but will be raised up on the last day.
Of which group are you? Are you of the larger number who loathe the Bread of Life from your very soul? Or are you of the few who partake of the broken body and shed blood of the One who comes down from heaven to give life to the world?
The only way to know for sure which group you belong to is to reject and turn or believe and obey. And by the way…there’s only the two groups. There are no shades of gray and there is no other choice to make. You is or you ain’t. You are saved or you are lost. You have life from above or you are dead in trespasses and sins.
Are you one who is chosen of God and drawn to Christ? Are you one of the ones of whom He says He will raise them up on the last day?
Don’t loathe the Bread. Come to Him for life that endures. That’s the invitation. Don’t work for food that perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give to you, for on Him the Father, even God, has set His seal.
