After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias. And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick. Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples. Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?" He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do. Philip answered him, "Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little." One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to him, "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?" Jesus said, "Have the people sit down." Now there was much grass in the place. So the men sat down, about five thousand in number. Jesus then took the loaves, and when he had given thanks, he distributed them to those who were seated. So also the fish, as much as they wanted. And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, "Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost." So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten. 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.
[...] On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus.When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?" Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal." Then they said to him, "What must we do, to be doing the works of God?" Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent." So they said to him, "Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform? Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'" Jesus then said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world." They said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always."
Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives me will come to me, and whoever comes to me I will never cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will but the will of him who sent me. And this is the will of him who sent me, that I should lose nothing of all that he has given me, but raise it up on the last day. For this is the will of my Father, that everyone who looks on the Son and believes in him should have eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."
So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven." They said, "Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know? How does he now say, 'I have come down from heaven'?" Jesus answered them, "Do not grumble among yourselves. No one can come to me unless the Father who sent me draws him. And I will raise him up on the last day. It is written in the Prophets, 'And they will all be taught by God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father comes to me— not that anyone has seen the Father except he who is from God; he has seen the Father. Truly, truly, I say to you, whoever believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."
The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day. For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink. Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me. This is the bread that came down from heaven, not like the bread the fathers ate and died. Whoever feeds on this bread will live forever." Jesus said these things in the synagogue, as he taught at Capernaum.--John 6:1-15, 22-59
No matter the century, the circumstances or the technology, one of the biggest struggles over our view of Christ is that we are limited to this earthly scope, and for so many it becomes a question of what Jesus is providing for us. Last night I was thinking back over my testimony and this has been a huge part of what held me down for a long time. Unsurprising, of course, as comfort is a huge idol for me (and most Americans). I had to stop and think, where have and where do I look to Christ for what He will give me, rather than for Himself?
This passage displays one of the big points where people split away from Christianity into a place where they turn it into some kind of religion--if I do this, and think thus and so, then Jesus will be happy with me and I'll get to have x. But Jesus isn't after people performing a few cursory acts of goodness to curry favor. He's after the whole heart, after a true relationship. The Jews here had seen Jesus do amazing things, and as at other points in the gospels they were ready to declare Him their king, under the belief of their day that the Messiah was to come in order to throw off the shackles of Roman oppression and restore Israel to its position of prominence that it had held for a period of about twenty minutes under Solomon, before their own idolatry and rebellion resulted in a split kingdom and then, decades of slavery in a foreign land under the Babylonians. Now, it seemed, the predicted prophet, king and savior was here--now they can have what they desire!
But that's not what God was trying to effect all throughout the Old Testament and it wasn't what Christ came to establish in the New. Jesus didn't come to fulfill earthly, temporal desires, but rather to transform them into eternal ones, to point them towards what they were really after.
I struggle with the same thing, and have throughout my life. I viewed Jesus as a lot of different things before the Gospel really fell in me: as the provider of what I needed (true enough, but what I need isn't always what I understand it to be), as the one who would come to set things right (also true enough, but for a long time I viewed it through a moralistic/political lens that let me set myself up in self-righteousness), and as the one whom I could stand next to as I pointed to others and said "See? I told you so!"
Many times we set other things, good things like having enough money or being healthy or having a family and make that thing ultimate, and then we look to Jesus as the one who gives us those things. The thing is...He does give those things. But He gives us what He does that we might see Him in them, be pointed to Christ and through it all be sanctified.
Here's the big thing that I see in this: either we are in the process of being conformed to the image of Christ by the grace of God, where our hearts are transformed over time as God refines us through the circumstances of life, hewing the rough edges, burning out the impurities...or, we're in the process of becoming more and more opposed to God, each life circumstance pushing us farther away until finally the day of judgment comes and there is no reconciliation possible anymore, because you are so far off. Our hearts are in so much danger and yet we subject them to so much that distracts and destroys joy in God, and we look to God, to Jesus, as what will get us what we want. That manifests in some ways that are more extreme than others--for example, the guy who sees Jesus as the way to a nice car and a big house--but here, the Jews see Jesus not as their savior from sin but as their savior from hunger and oppression.
And we struggle with that. Hunger is bad, right? Oppression is evil. Why wouldn't we look to God for freedom from those things? Because the end goal is not to be full of bread. It's not to be free from current government tyranny. The end goal is to know God, to love Him and be with Him; to be full of the Bread of Life, to be free from the tyranny of sin. If God fulfills my desires, grants me freedom from earthly oppression and lack, but doesn't give me Himself, lets me grow deeper into opposition even if I acknowledge in some begrudging way that He gave me these things, how on Earth is that good or loving? He's damned me and rightfully so, for I worshipped His gifts and not Him. And no matter the culture, or the time, or the circumstances, this is what we struggle with as humans--loving God, versus loving what He has made.
Lately I have been struggling with the desire for a wife. That sounds like a strange thing to pair with the word "struggle," but I do it because I recognize two important things: 1) I have let that desire drive how I worship, and 2) I have let that desire push me into sinful areas, such as lust and manipulation of others. A desire for something good, for a wife to love and serve and lead humbly in the way that Christ loved the church, is perverted so easily into a lust for comfort, self-fulfillment in something other than God and a desire to be served, by the enemy. I have to confess that continually, make war against it and offer my own weakness up to God, because whatever it is He gives me in the course of my life, I want the ultimate thing, the one thing greater than anything else I experience, to be Him. And so I pray, and walk, and trust that He knows better than I ever could each day so long as He gives me the grace to have such a realization.
Father, I thank you for letting me hear such truth in Your Word, through the gifts you've given men like those that teach in my and other churches and write great and sweeping books that point to You. I pray that I will be able to point to you as well in so enthusiastic and holy a way, not to glorify myself because to that end lies death, but to glorify You and love You more. The weight of your glory presses me and in such pressure and weight is a joy and freedom as I have never known. I thank You for it, and desire more, desiring You above all things. All this I pray in the name of Your Son..Amen.
