约翰福音 第六章（英文）

John Chapter 6 records of the feeding of the multitude with 5 loaves and 2 fish. This is also recorded in Matthew 14 and Mark 6. However, the emphasis is different in John Chapter 6, where Jesus declares Himself to be the Bread of Life. Consequently, this is the only recording which ends in rejection of Jesus by the multitude.

Firstly, the great multitude followed Jesus because he healed those with diseases (v2). Subsequently, Jesus performed the miracle of feeding the multitude with just 5 loaves and 2 fish. There were even 12 baskets of bread fragments left over! It was because of this miracle that the people reckoned that He was the Christ, and that was why they sought to make Him King by force (v15). The work of God is to believe in Jesus (v29). However, did they really believe in Jesus?

As Jesus later mentioned, they sought after Him not because of the signs, but because they ate the loaves and were filled (v26). They sought after Jesus to fulfill their physical needs. We can see in v30-31, they asked Him for yet another sign that they may believe in Him, and they wanted a sign related to food, as they quoted scripture “He gave them bread from heaven to eat”.

Subsequently, Jesus declared that He was the Bread of Life which came down from heaven and that to obtain eternal life, they had to eat His flesh and drink His blood (v53-55). This was rejected by the multitude (v52), and even some of His disciples (v66).

Truly, God is more than capable of bestowing blessings upon our lives. Just as how He could produce 12 baskets of bread fragments of leftovers, He can also cause us to overflow with material abundance. Some may come to believe in Jesus because of the potential of being blessed materially. Some may be like the multitude and ask God for signs or material blessings to strengthen their belief in Christ. For example, “God, if you are real, please give me…”

Are we like this? Do we seek God with a focus placed on this life? In our prayers, do we place a focus on receiving physical blessings? Like the multitude, will we be put off if we are not given what we want materially? Today, though we understand that Jesus was referring to Holy Communion by saying that we need to eat His flesh and drink His blood, there are other difficult sayings in the Bible to accept. For instance, the Lord Jesus says that we will be persecuted (Luke 21: 12). If we want to follow Him, we have to deny ourselves and take up our cross. We may even have to lose our lives for the sake of the Lord Jesus (Matt 16:24-25). Are we repulsed by these hard truths?  

Let us shift our focus away from physical and worldly pursuits. As Jesus says, we ought not to labor for the food that perishes but place our focus on eternal life (v27). The Christian journey will be full of hardships. Yet we follow Jesus because of His love for us, that He gave His life to die for us on the cross so as to save us from sin and eternal damnation. In hardship, let us trust in God’s deliverance and have faith that there will be abundance of spiritual blessings for us to enjoy in eternity.