As we have been going through the Gospel of John, we keep seeing how John is intentionally trying to show how Jesus is fulfilling is role of God in the flesh. As we begin to look at John 6, John focuses on a story that most people are familiar with – Jesus feeding the 5000.
Food for Thought
As we have been doing, let’s consider the setting. John tells us to front that the Passover is near, which I indicates that Jesus is relatively close to Jerusalem given the number of people who were able to come and hear him teaching. In a nutshell: there’s a large crowd (5000 men) and they were not prepared with food. They dropped what they were doing and came – there wasn’t really any forethought. As a result, the disciples found a boy with five loaves and two fish. Jesus blesses the meal and the 5000 men plus women and children are all fed with leftovers.
As a result the people want to make him their king, and Jesus as he known to do, disappears/withdraws.
We have a scene with a boat and storm, but we’ll come back to that later.
Bread is Life
We all heard how “Man does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God” (Matthew 4:4 NIV). However, man still needs to eat. And as we are looking at Scripture we see over and over that bread serves as the picture of God providing sustenance for his people.
Food is life. The human body can only go so long without food, and an even shorter amount of time without water. Yet, God continuously does this for his people. If we look to the Old Testament a few examples would be in Exodus where God provides manna whilethe Hebrew people are in the desert . Food is provided for Elijah using ravens and by a widow. While in the New Testament, we see Jesus providing for the people in Jihn 6.
But why? Why is it important to see how God always provides? Because God is the giver of life, and it is only by God that we are able to live from day to day. But is also because God providing for such a basic thing gives us hope and assurance that he will also provide for the big things. Our needs will be met in some way.
And the response of the people – is they want him to be king. Now Jesus is the Lord if Life; he is the Savior and Lord; King of Kings but that this moment in John 6 that was not his purpose. And the people didn’t want him to be king because he was descended from David and had a right to be king, they wanted to be king because he fulfilled a basic need for them.
Now it was a necessary and an important need: food. But it was a need that came from being unprepared and it was also selfish. Desiring to not be hungry in and of itself isn’t a selfish desire, but using it as the basis for someone to go against the Roman Empire is.
Besides the fact that becoming king of Israel was not his purpose, it was also not Jesus’ mission to become king or challenge Rome at this time. His mission was to get to the cross, not to challenge the Roman authority. Jewish authority: yes – theybwere challenged all day everyday.
The Storm
So, I’m not going to go into huge detail about the storm. Not because I don’t think it’s important, but at this point as I was going through chapter 6, the bread and fish stood out more than the storm.
But addressing the storm…
John talks about Jesus calming the storm almost like an aside. That is that John addresses the reader with information that doesn’t always have to do with the story as it is happening, but is important for the audience to know. In this case, Jesus calming the storm is an absolute display if his power and authority over the created order.
No one can calm a storm. They are an act of nature that is the result of several factors coming together, and that combination can be devastating. If you have seen pictures of an area after a hurricane, tsunami, or flood you know exactly how bad it cam be. Now imagine not being on land, but being in a boat, on the water during the storm, and then suddenly it becomes calm.
That was what Jesus did. John not only reminds the reader that Jesus is the provider for all our basic needs but he commands the uncommandable. He holds dominion over nature and over having basic needs met. And all of it is meant to direct people to the Hiver of Life, our only hope, and the one who is there in the darkest times when the situation seems like we.wont make it through.
Road Trippin With Rachael 
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