John 6: 1-15
...
One of the reasons God created bread—or created the grain and the water and yeast and fire and human intelligence to make it, and I mean the really good kind, that’s not mainly air—is so that when Jesus Christ came into the world, he would be able to use the enjoyment of bread and the nourishment of bread as an illustration of what it means to believe on him and be satisfied with him. I believe that with all my heart. Bread exists to help us know what it is like to be satisfied in Jesus.
This is true for water (John 4:14) and light (John 14:6) and every other good thing that God has made. Nothing exists for itself. “All things were created through him and for him” (Colossians 1:16). Every honorable pleasure that we have in the created world is designed by God to give us a faint taste of heaven and make us hunger for Christ. Every partial satisfaction in this life points to the perfect satisfaction in Jesus who made the world.
...
Now jump to the end of the story of the feeding of the five thousand in John 6:14-15, and we will see what’s wrong. “When the people saw the sign that he had done, they said, ‘This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!’ Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself.”
Why did Jesus withdraw? Because the enthusiasm these people have is not for who he really is. This is so important for our day and for your life. People can have a great enthusiasm for Jesus, but the Jesus they’re excited about is not the real biblical Jesus. It may be a morally exemplary Jesus, or a socialist Jesus, or a capitalist Jesus, or an anti-Semitic Jesus, or a white-racist Jesus, or a revolutionary-liberationist Jesus, or a counter-cultural cool Jesus. But not the whole Jesus who, in the end, gives his life a ransom for sinners (Mark 10:45). And if your enthusiasm for Jesus is for a Jesus that doesn’t exist, your enthusiasm is no honor to the real Jesus, and he will leave you and go into the mountain.
...
So what is Jesus doing in this miracle of taking five loaves and a few fish and feeding over 5,000 people? He is opening a window on who he is. He is manifesting his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father (John 1:14). And he is opening this window on his glory not that we might get excited about how useful he might be in getting what we already wanted, but that we might see that he himself is better than anything we ever wanted.
The point of making bread, as it were, out of nothing—like God making manna—is that the Son of God has come into the world not to give you bread, but to be your bread. And, since we are all sinners and do not deserve this bread, how will he give it to us? “The bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:51). When he gives his flesh on the cross, he becomes bread—all-nourishing, all-satisfying bread—for sinners who believe.
Verse 6 says that Jesus was testing Philip when he said in verse 5, “Where are we going to get bread for these people?” And I would say, Jesus is testing us now. Right now. Will we be like the Jewish leaders? “It took 46 years to build this temple, and you’ll build it in three days?” Will we be like Nicodemus? “How can a man be born again, enter into his mother’s womb?” Or like the woman at the well? “How will you give me living water when you don’t even have a bucket.” Or like Philip here in verse 7? “Jesus, 200 days’ wages couldn’t feed these people.”
Or will we see the glory of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth? Will we see Jesus crucified for sinners and risen from the dead to become not mainly a Giver, but a Gift, not mainly your benefactor but your bread? Taste and see that that the Lord is good.
No comments:
Post a Comment