John 6:1-34 - Lesson Seven Ouline

I. Setting the Scene. Jesus and His disciples have returned to Galilee from Jerusalem in the springtime, near the time of Passover.

A. Galilee was a peasant agrarian society and very poor, where farmers were taxed heavily and frequently lost their land to the wealthy elite. Jesus' interest in these people and His sympathy for their needs resulted in widespread support for His teachings.

B. The sea was surrounded by numerous fishing villages. This explains Jesus' ministry in these villages, His use of fishing as an illustration and his calling of fishermen as followers.

C. The Sea of Galilee is located in a vast inland basin some 650 feet below sea level. Valleys running east-west bring cool Mediterranean air from the west in the afternoon.

D. Jesus is in the area teaching His disciples. His healing ministry brings great crowds to Him. His compassion for the people leads Him to miraculously provide food for all 5,000 of them. After the feeding Jesus puts His disciples on a boat, He joins them later at sea and in Capernaum He gives a sermon to the crowds and His disciples in which He explains the theological meaning of the feeding miracle.

II. Feeding of the Five Thousand (VV. 1-15).

A. The Actors. We can learn some lessons from the actors in the story of the feeding of the five thousand.

1. Philip was the natural man to turn to for help because he came from Bethsaida and would have had local knowledge. Jesus asked him where food could be obtained. "By asking for a human solution (knowing that there was none), Jesus highlighted the powerful and miraculous act that he was about to perform." (Life Application Bible Commentary)

2. Andrew then pipes up. He had noticed a boy having five barley loaves and two little fish. By bringing the boy to Jesus he made the feeding miracle possible.

3. The young boy did not have much to offer. He had fives loaves of barley and two fish. These details are important because II Kings 4:42-44 tells of an Old Testament miracle in which Elisha feeds a hundred men with twenty loaves of barley and is assisted by a young boy. Elisha also had baskets of food left over.

B. Thanks. Did you notice that twice John mentioned the fact that Jesus gave thanks (VV. 11 and 23) before the food was distributed?

C. Leftovers. After everyone had eaten, the disciples filled twelve baskets with the leftovers of the five barley loaves and two fish. This is consistent with the recurring theme in John of abundance in Christ.

D. Response of the Crowd. In V. 14 the crowd interprets Jesus' miracle as a fulfillment of the prophecy in Deuteronomy 18:15. In John 6:15 we read that Jesus knew the crowd intended to come and make Him king by force and so Jesus withdrew to a mountain by himself and sent His disciples out to sea.

III. Jesus Walks on Water (VV. 16-24).

A. The disciples are alone in the boat when a storm comes up. Suddenly a figure is seen walking on the waves toward them. The disciples seem to be even more afraid of the figure than of the storm. When Jesus arrives at the boat, He calms their fears and identifies Himself by saying, "It is I."

B. John records a second miracle involved in the incident. Immediately upon Jesus' entering the boat, the disciples are at their destination.

IV. Old Testament Motifs.

A. Remember that Jesus is in the synagogue in Capernaum and it is Passover. The Jewish community at this time would have been studying the Scriptures that pertain to the departure from Egypt (through the Red Sea) and the flight into the desert.

B. Among the many miracles of Moses, two are particularly remarkable: (i) his departure through the Red Sea (Ex. 14) and (ii) his feeding of the people with manna for forty years in the desert (Ex. 16:35).

C. Numbers 11 provides several parallels to the story in John 6:

Verses in Content of Parallel in Content of

Numbers 11 Numbers 11 John 6___ John 6___

11:1 people grumbling 6:41, 43 Jews grumbling

11:7-9 description of manna 6:32 true bread from heaven

11:13 "where can I get meat?" 6:5 "where shall we buy bread?"

11:13 "give us meat to eat" 6:51 "bread from heaven"

11:22 "would they have enough 6:9 two small fish

if all the fish in the sea

were caught for them?"

According to Gary M. Burge (The NIV Application Commentary: John) the Passover sermon of Jesus makes direct connections with prominent Old Testament motifs.

D. Following the feeding when the disciples are on the sea, Jesus comes to them walking on water. Again, we have another motif from the Old Testament - a miracle involving water - that reminds us of the time when Moses led Israel through water to freedom as a nation.

E. You will recall that when Jesus enters the boat, He identifies Himself with a term that would evoke further images of the Exodus story. He said, "It is I." Even Jesus' reassuring call to His disciples not to fear echoes Moses' response on Mt. Sinai when he learned God's name and saw the burning bush.

F. The images and motifs from the Old Testament suggest that Jesus is fulfilling (remember that fulfillment is another theme in John's gospel) and recreating images from Israel's sacred past.

V. Bread from Heaven VV. 25-34).

A. As background for Jesus' discourse, Judaism understood that there was a storehouse or "treasury" of manna in heaven that had been opened to feed the people during the time of Moses This treasury of manna would be reopened with the coming of the Messiah.

B. As Jesus teaches in the synagogue, He wants to get his listeners beyond a material understanding of the feeding miracle. He says that the people should focus not on the loaves and fish but on the greater food that lasts forever

C. At Jesus' invitation to believe in Him, the people ask for a further sign. They mention Moses' sign, the manna from heaven, but Jesus says that the true source of the manna was not Moses but God. Also the manna is a spiritual metaphor for how God feeds us with His word. Deuteronomy 8:3 says that God "humbled you, causing you to hunger and then feeding you with manna, which neither you nor your fathers had known, to teach you that man does not live on bread alone but on every word that comes from the mouth of the Lord."

D. In V. 33 Jesus says that the bread of God is a person ("he who comes down from heaven"), a person who gives life to the world. Here Jesus has again taken some feature of Jewish belief and ritual and then reinterprets it to refer to Himself. "He is the manna from God's treasury for which Israel has been waiting. He has been sent by God as manna descended in the desert." (Gary Burge)

E. The response of the synagogue audience in V. 34 forms a climax similar to the response of the woman looking for water in 4:15. "Bread and water - two potent symbols of God's wisdom and blessing in Judaism - are now distributed by Jesus, the true gift from God." (Gary Burge)

VI. How do these stories speak to us today?

A. Encouragement and warning. Today we are encouraged to come and feed from the food Jesus provides. But we should be wary that through misunderstanding and confusion we do not unwittingly grasp after religious things like bread, a religious king and so forth.

B. Fed by God. "In the end, being fed by God is beyond our natural comprehension…. It is God alone who can supply divine insight. Our task is simply to stand and receive, to engage, to be open to the work of the Spirit as he permits us glimpses into realities too deep for us." Gary Burge