John 06(01–33)

Introduction

Last week we spent our time on verses 25 to 47 of John 5, where the Lord Jesus was speaking about God’s life and about new life in Christ and about resurrection life.

In verse 26 the Lord said that the Father has life in himself and he’s granted the Son to have life in himself. So, our God does not rely on anyone or anything outside of himself for life, because the Father and the Son — and we can add the Holy Spirit too — have life in themselves as one God. Indeed they are themselves life. They are the fountain of life and life flows from them to every living creature. They give us our life in this world and they sustain our lives every day by providing us with all that we need for life.

But then in verse 25, the Lord spoke about new life. A time is coming, and has now come, he said, when the dead will hear his voice and those who hear will live. He was talking about the new life we receive through the new birth, when God the Father and God the Son send God the Spirit to implant new life in us so that we’re able to pay attention to the Saviour and trust in him for salvation. And so, we begin a new life in Christ.

And then in verse 28 the Lord spoke about a time that is coming in the future when all who are in their graves will hear his voice and come out. This time he’s talking about the resurrection of the dead, which will take place when he comes again. And at that time, all will be raised: those who have done evil in this life will be raised to be condemned and punished for ever; but those have done good will be raised to live for ever. And they will be raised to live for ever, not because they have done good and have earned it. But they will be raised to live for ever because of Christ the Saviour and because of his promise that whoever believes in him as the only Saviour of the world. will have eternal life.

And so, in last week’s passage, the Lord spoke about God’s life; and he spoke about new life in Christ; and he spoke about the resurrection to life of all of God’s people who trust in the Saviour. And so, we should trust in him and in him alone for the hope of glory.

Today we come to John 6. I was tempted to take the whole chapter in one go, because most of the chapter is about the same thing. It’s mostly about how the Lord Jesus is the Bread of Life who has come down from heaven to give everlasting life to the world. That’s what most of the chapter is about. And so, I was tempted to deal with this whole chapter in one go. But even though it’s mostly about the same thing, there’s too much in it to do it all in one evening. So, this evening we’ll focus on verses 1 to 33 and we’ll come back to the rest of it next week.

And we can divide today’s passage into three parts. There’s the miracle of the feeding of the 5,000. That’s in verses 1 to 15. Then we have another miracle: the Lord walks on water. That’s in verses 16 to 21. And finally there’s verses 22 to 33 where the Lord talks to the people about food that endures to eternal life.

Verses 1 to 15

John tells us in verse 1 that the Lord crossed to the far shore of the Sea of Galilee and a great crowd of people followed him.

When we were studying the beginning of chapter 5 I said that it marked the beginning of a new section of John’s gospel, where the Lord’s ministry becomes much more public. And we can see that clearly in today’s passage, where this large crowd is following him. Later on, in verse 10, John will tell us that the crowd comprised about 5,000 men. Matthew, in his gospel, refers to women and children who were also there. So, there might have been about 10,000 people in total. And they’re all following the Lord.

And John explains that they’re following him because they saw the miraculous signs he had performed on the sick. John hasn’t recorded what these miraculous signs are. John has only recorded three signs for us so far: changing water into wine in chapter 2; healing the royal official’s son in chapter 4; and healing the paralytic in chapter 5. However, back in chapter 2, John alluded to other miraculous signs which the Lord performed in Jerusalem at another time. And near the end of his gospel, John says that the Lord did many other miraculous signs which are not recorded in this book. So, the Lord did many things, which we don’t know about. However, because of the many wonderful things he was doing, a large crowd was now following him.

In verse 3 John tells us that the Lord went up on a mountainside, where he sat down with his disciples. And then John adds the little detail that the Jewish Passover Feast was near. Why does he tell us about the Jewish Passover Feast? It’s perhaps because the whole scene reminds us of the time of the exodus, when the first Passover Feast was held. At that time, when God’s people were slaves in Egypt in the days of Moses, God instructed them to kill a lamb and to put the blood of the lamb on the doorpost of their homes. And when the Lord went through Egypt, striking down their firstborn sons as judgment on them, he passed over those homes where there was blood on the doorposts. The firstborn sons were spared because the Passover lamb was killed in their place. And so, that was the first time the Passover meal was eaten. And the Jews kept the festival every year to remember what had happened in Egypt. And after the first Passover, the people left Egypt. They crossed through the Red Sea and made their way to Mt Sinai, where God met them. And for the next forty years, God fed them in the wilderness with manna.

That’s the background to this passage, where we have the Lord Jesus, who is not only the Lord God Almighty, but he’s also the true Passover Lamb, who will give up his life for the sake of his people. And a great crowd of people have followed him as he crossed over the Sea of Galilee. And he’s brought the people to a mountain. And he’s going to feed them. And then he’s going to talk to them about the true Bread from Heaven, which is not manna, but which is himself, because he’s the true Bread of Life from heaven.

And so, the whole scene recalls the exodus, which is perhaps why John refers to the Passover in verse 4.

And we read in verse 5 that the Lord looked up and he saw this great crowd coming towards him. And John goes straight on to tell us how the Lord fed them. Mark and Luke, in their gospels, take their time and they tell us that, before the Lord fed them, he taught them. Mark says he taught them many things and Luke says he taught them about the kingdom of God. Furthermore, Matthew and Luke tell us that he also healed the sick. But John doesn’t mention any of that. He goes straight to the miracle.

So, when he saw the crowd, the Lord turned to Philip and asked him, ‘Where shall we buy bread for these people to eat?’ And John adds the little explanatory note that the Lord only asked him this to test him. It seems he already knew what he was going to do. He already knew that there was a boy with some loaves and fish. And he already knew what he was going to do with those loaves and fish. He already knew that he was going to feed this crowd in a miraculous way. He already knew all this, because this is one of the works God the Father had sent him to do on the earth. God the Father had sent him from heaven to earth to perform this miracle.

Philip did not know what the Lord was going to do. And so, he answered the Lord’s question by saying that it would cost a fortune to feed all of these people. There are just too many of them. We can’t possibly feed them.

And that’s when Andrew spoke up. He’s found a boy who has five small barley loaves and two small fish. But how far will that go? Andrew is saying that this is all the food we have and it’s not nearly enough to feed so many people. And if you read the other gospels, you’ll see that the disciples suggested that they should send the people away. We can’t possibly feed them. And so, send them away to get food for themselves.

But the Lord knows what he’s going to do. He instructed the disciples to make the people sit down. The verb John uses is a verb which normally means ‘to recline’. And that’s how people in those days ate their meals. They didn’t sit down on a chair as we do. No, they reclined on a kind of couch. And so, the Lord is telling his disciples to have the people lie down and get ready for a meal. He’s going to feed them.

And the Lord took the loaves and gave thanks for them. That is to say, he gave thanks to his Heavenly Father as we should always do before eating a meal. And he began to distribute the bread to the people ‘as much as they wanted’. Do you see that in verse 11? And he did the same with the fish. And so, wonderfully, miraculously, he took those five small barley loaves and those two small fish and he multiplied them, so that everyone received as much as he or she wanted.

And according to verse 12 they all had enough to eat. So, it wasn’t like when we have the Lord’s Supper in church and we all receive a tiny bit of bread to eat and a tiny cup to drink. They didn’t receive a little bit. They received as much as they wanted and they all had enough at the end of it. They were full.

And afterwards, the Lord commanded the disciples to gather the leftovers. And we’re to imagine the Twelve Disciples taking a basket each and going around and picking up what’s left. And when they’ve finished, they each have a full basket of leftovers. And so, the Lord multiplied the five small barley loaves and the two small fish in such a way that they all have enough to eat and there was plenty left over. What a miracle!

And after the people saw this miraculous sign, they began to say, ‘Surely this is the Prophet who is to come into the world.’ They’re referring to something we read in Deuteronomy 18, where Moses told the Israelites that the Lord their God will raise up for them a prophet like Moses. And because of that promise, the people were expecting the Lord to send them another prophet, who would be just like Moses. And since Moses fed the people in the wilderness for forty years and since the Lord Jesus had just fed a crowd of them in another wilderness, then perhaps the Lord Jesus is the new Moses? That’s what they’re thinking.

And they’re right to think like that, because the Lord Jesus is the Promised Prophet. He is the one who was to come. In fact, he’s greater than Moses. Moses was the Lord’s servant, whereas the Lord Jesus is God’s Son and he is himself God. He is God the Son in the flesh, who has some to reveal to us the Father’s abundant love for sinners.

And so, the people were right to think that the Lord Jesus is the Promised Prophet. But, look what they tried to do next. According to verse 15, they wanted to make him king by force. Making him king by force means they wanted to make him king against his will. They wanted him to be a king like David, who raised an army and who led his people into battle against their enemies. And so, the people wanted the Lord to raise an army and to lead them into battle against the Romans, who were occupying the land in those days. They wanted a military king. And while the Lord Jesus is indeed the king of God’s people, he didn’t come to kill, but to be killed. He came to be our Passover Lamb, who would give up his life on the cross and shed his blood so that we will not perish for our sins, but will live for ever.

And since they wanted to make him king against his will, the Lord withdrew from them.

Verses 16 to 21

And so, we come to the next part. The Lord has gone off somewhere on his own. Presumably the disciples waited around for him to return. But when evening came, and he hadn’t returned, they went down to the lake. That is, they went down to the Sea of Galilee and got into a boat and headed for Capernaum.

By the time they were crossing the lake, it had become dark. And a strong wind was blowing. We know that storms could begin suddenly on the Sea of Galilee. And so, a strong wind was blowing and the waves became rough. And they were now about three or so miles away from the shore.

And that’s when the Lord appeared. He was approaching their boat by walking on the water. Some sceptics suggest that they were mistaken and he was walking on the shore. But the boat is far out in the lake: the shore is three or so miles away. And that means that if he was on the shore, they couldn’t see him because it was too far away and it was dark. So, the Lord wasn’t on the shore. He was on the water. He was walking on the water towards them.

And they were terrified. Matthew and Mark explain in their gospels that they at first thought that they were seeing a ghost. And so, that’s what terrified them. But he spoke to calm their fears and to reassure them. And they took him into the boat. And immediately, John says, they reached the shore. It’s possible he means that they reached the shore in a miraculous way. So, one moment they’re in the middle of the lake and in the next moment they’ve been transported to the shore. But it’s also possible that John simply means they reached the shore without further incident.

And the words of the Lord are significant, because he says to them in verse 20: ‘It is I’. But the Greek words can also be translated, ‘I am’. And the words ‘I am’ recall what the Lord said to Moses when he appeared to Moses in the burning bush. Do you remember? God wanted Moses to lead his people out of Egypt. And Moses asked: ‘Suppose I go to the Israelites and say that God has sent me to rescue them; and they ask me for your name, what shall I say?’ What shall I say is your name? And the Lord told him to say that ‘I am’ has sent me to you. The words ‘I am’ are related to the Hebrew word Yahweh which is normally translated as ‘the LORD’ in capital letters in English translations of the Old Testament. And by saying ‘I am’ to his disciples, the Lord was revealing to them that he is Yahweh. He is the Lord God Almighty, who stretches out the heavens and who treads the waves of the sea. And just as he once appeared to Moses and rescued his people from Egypt, so he has appeared to his disciples in order to rescue them from the wind and waves.

And so, don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid, because ‘I am’ is with you. The great ‘I am’, the Lord God Almighty, has come down from heaven to save his disciples from this storm. And that’s wonderful. But it’s even better than that, because the great ‘I am’, Lord God Almighty, has come down from heaven to save us from our sin and misery in this world. He came to save you from the path of destruction which you’ve chosen for yourself by rejecting God and his purposes. And because the Lord God Almighty loves you so much, he will not abandon you to destruction. Instead he has come down from heaven in the flesh to save you by rescuing you from the path of destruction and to give you eternal life in the presence of God. And that takes us to the third and final part of today’s passage.

Verses 22 to 33

John tells us in verse 22 that it’s the next day. And the crowd of people, who had remained on the other side of the lake, realised that the Lord’s disciples only had one boat and they had taken it the night before. But the Lord had not gone with them. So, where was the Lord Jesus now? They didn’t know. But they got into some other boats and they headed for Capernaum in search of the Lord.

And when they found the Lord, they asked him, ‘Rabbi, when did you get here?’ They’re puzzled, because they have no idea how he got there. They knew the disciples left in the boat and they also knew the Lord was not with them when they set off. So, how did he get there?

But instead of answering them, he rebuked them. He said to them in verse 26 that they are looking for him, not because they saw a miraculous sign, but because they’d eaten the loaves. In other words, they were only interested in him because he was able to satisfy their hunger. Or we might say that they were only interested in earthly things: earthly food and earthly desires and needs and earthly happiness. That’s all they were interested in, whereas he had shown them in the feeding of the 5,000 a miraculous sign. And a sign points to something. A sign points beyond itself to something else. The feeding of the 5,000 with loaves and fish pointed beyond itself to something spiritual and to something heavenly. And just as we’re meant to look from a sign to the reality, so they were meant to look from the bread and fish to the spiritual, heavenly reality. That’s what they should have done. But instead, all they wanted from him was more loaves and fish. They wanted more food.

And after rebuking them like this, the Lord instructed them not to work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life. When he refers to food that spoils, he’s talking about ordinary food. He’s talking about ordinary bread that goes stale and ordinary fish that goes off. He’s talking about ordinary, everyday food. And, of course, we we need ordinary, everyday food for this life. We can’t live without it. We need it. And so, when he says don’t work for it, we’re not to think he’s forbidding us from going out to work each day. He’s not saying it’s wrong to have a job and to earn a living. He doesn’t mean that, because we all need ordinary food to sustain us.

But what good is it if we have everything we need for this life and we don’t have what we need for the life to come? So, we need to earn a living. That’s necessary. But what is also necessary — in fact what is even more necessary — is for us to work for food that endures to eternal life.

And what does the Lord mean by telling us to work for this kind of food? He doesn’t mean we’re to earn it by our good works. We don’t earn the right to eternal life by the good things we do in this life. Instead, we receive eternal life as a gift from God. It’s his free gift to us and we receive it from the Son of Man. Do you see that in the middle of verse 27? When he refers to the Son of Man, he’s talking about himself. He’s the Son of Man. And God the Father has placed his seal of approval on him. He means God the Father is pleased with him and has appointed him for this work. He’s been set apart by God the Father for this work. And the work he’s been set apart for is to give us eternal life.

So, instead of only seeking food that spoils, we should also seek food that endures to eternal life. Instead of seeking only what we need for this life, we should also seek what we need for eternal life. And we should seek this food from the Lord Jesus, who gives it to us.

Since the Lord mentions working, the people ask him what they must do to do the works of God? What does God require from them? And the Lord’s answer couldn’t be more plain. It couldn’t be more clear. The work of God is this: it’s to believe. The work that God requires is for us to believe in the one he has sent. And, of course, he’s referring once again to himself. He’s the one God has sent. God the Father sent him into the world to give us what we need for eternal life.

That’s what God requires from us. That’s what we need to do in order to have eternal life. We must believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. We must trust in him as the only Saviour of the world.

And since he’s referring to himself as the one God has sent, then they want to know what miraculous sign will he give them that they may see it and believe him. What will you do to prove to us that God has sent you? And then they refer to what happened to God’s people in the wilderness in the days of Moses, whenever Moses provided them with manna from heaven. Providing them with manna like that was a sign that proved to the people that Moses had been sent by God to lead them through the wilderness. They were willing to follow him, because God had clearly sent him. So, what will the Lord Jesus do to convince them that God had sent him? What miraculous sign will he provide to show them he has been sent by God and that they should believe in him? What will you do?

Of course, the Lord has already provided them with a sign, because didn’t he feed 5,000 men plus women and children with only a few loaves of bread and two small fish? Wasn’t that a sign? And it was a sign, but since he’s talking now about food that endures to eternal life, then presumably they want an even greater sign than the one he has already given them.

And the Lord answers them by contradicting them. They thought it was Moses who gave them manna from heaven. But it wasn’t Moses. The manna came from God. In any case, and setting that aside, ‘it is my Father who gives you the true bread from heaven.’ And when he refers in verse 32 to true bread, he means true as opposed to symbolic. The manna in the wilderness symbolised the true bread. The manna in the wilderness signified the true bread. The manna in the wilderness pointed the people to the true bread from heaven. And what is the true bread from heaven? Look at verse 33. The true bread is a person. The true bread is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world. The true bread is Jesus Christ, the only begotten Son of God the Father, who was sent by the Father into the world and who became flesh and who lived among us before dying on the cross to pay for our sins and then rising again to give us life.

Conclusion

He’s the true bread of God who has come down from heaven to give us life. And so, just as we need ordinary bread for ordinary life, so we need the Bread of Life for eternal life.

And he’s the great ‘I am’, the Lord God Almighty, who has come down from heaven in the flesh to save us from the path of destruction we have chosen for ourselves and to give us eternal life in the presence of God.

And the great ‘I am’, the Lord God Almighty, has come down from heaven in the flesh because of his infinite, eternal and unchangeable love for us. Because he loves us, he created us to be the object of his love. And when we rejected him and his purposes for us, he did not abandon us or give us up. He continued to love us. And he loved us so much that God the Father and God the Son and God the Spirit willed to send the Son into the world as one of us to deliver us from destruction and to reconcile us to himself and to do all things necessary to give us eternal life in his presence, where we’ll be the object of his love for ever and for ever. And since we know this, what a difference it will make to our lives, because, as I was saying this morning, no matter what we have to face in this life, no matter what troubles and trials we endure, no matter what disappointments and frustrations we experience, we can still rejoice, because at the bottom of our lives, as the foundation on which we take our stand, is the knowledge that God loves us with an abounding and everlasting love.