Did Jesus Work the Works of God?

Tom:

We are going through the gospel of John with particular emphasis on the gospel itself and the salvation we have in Christ and as we have been saying, our life in Christ begins with our understanding of the gospel and our acceptance of it by faith.  We are now in John 6 and we are going to pick up with verse 22.  “The day following,” that is, following the time in which Jesus not only fed the multitude but walked on the water according to the earlier verses. 
The day following, when the people which stood on the other side of the sea saw that there was none other boat there, save that one whereunto his disciples were entered, and that Jesus went not with his disciples into the boat, but that his disciples were gone away alone.”  Dave when I read that verse it seems to me they are wondering, how did he get there?  Is this another miracle?  They didn’t see him walk on the water but somehow, some way he ended up with the disciples.

Dave:

Well, but Tom, we haven’t got there yet.  These people are still here where the disciples embarked across the sea over towards Capernaum.  Jesus wasn’t with them and they assume, somehow he went although he wasn’t in that boat he must have gone.  So they are going to pursue him.

Tom:

Okay.  Picking up—well, I’ll just read 23.  “Howbeit there came other boats from Tiberius nigh unto the place where they did eat bread, after that the Lord had given thanks.  When the people therefore saw that Jesus was not there, neither his disciples, they also took shipping, and came to Capernaum, seeking for Jesus.  And when they had found him on the other side of the sea, they said unto him, Rabbi, when camest thou hither?”

Dave:

Well, that’s a leading question.  I suppose they expected he did another miracle, they don’t know but Jesus responds to them.  He says, in the next verse, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled.”  That’s about as low motivation as you can get.  In other words, even those that followed Jesus because of the miracles he did, their hearts weren’t right, they wanted him to do a miracle, but these people, they just kind of on their stomachs.  You’re not seeking me because of miracles and you are not like even Nicodemus who said, “We know you are a teacher come from God, for no man do the miracles that you do except God is with you.”  It is a miracle that he fed them but the fact that it was a miracle doesn’t even move them, it’s just that they are hungry again, Tom.  Their stomachs are growling, it’s lunch time, or whatever.

Tom:

Dave, isn’t this Maslow’s hierarchy of needs? Isn’t this the way we are being taught in the church to go about it.  First of all, we’ve got to feed them and then they work their way up to their spiritual needs?

Dave:

Tom, it’s a good point and I remember a book, I’m sure that’s what you are thinking of, written by, well, I won’t name him but a head of a Bible college in the Northwest and he was saying that we should follow Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.  It starts with the need for food, then for shelter and then for comfort, you know, and clothing and finally—

Tom:

And they like to use this example of Jesus feeding the multitude.

Dave:

Yeah, and finally you get up to spiritual needs.  But the fact is, Jesus did not feed them first, he taught them first.  In fact, it doesn’t say so in this particular instance, I mean in this gospel, but another gospel tells us they had been with him three days, you remember?  And, the disciples said, Jesus said, you know, I think these people need some food; let’s think about some practical—.  He had been teaching them—wow, what that must have been, Tom, to be there and to hear Jesus.  Like the two on the road to Emmaus said, “Did not our hearts burn within us when he talked with us on the way and he opened to us the scriptures?”  How Jesus, the author of the Bible, the Word himself, could have made the Bible come alive.  He said, “The scriptures are those which testify of me…” and he must have been talking about the Messiah.  So, he taught them three days, they are hungry and he says, “They need some food.”  The disciples said, “Well, we don’t have any way of feeding them,” send them home.  Jesus said, “They will faint on the walk home, we’ve got to feed them.”  So, absolutely contrary to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, Jesus operated.

Tom:

Dave, let me enter something else in there.  I remember, as a young believer sitting in a Bible study, and we had numerous people there who had Bible college training so they weren’t new to this by any means.  And we are all kind of sitting around musing about Jesus and his teaching of the disciples and so on.  And, just as you said, one person said well, wouldn’t it have been great if we could have sat at the feet of Jesus and listen to his words and so on?And I was just a young believer but the thing hit me right away.  I know where my head was, but I’m thinking, Wait a minute! Those who did, who sat at his feet, they didn’t do what he said.  Today we have God’s Word, we have his Holy Spirit.  It just seemed to me, now correct me here; it seemed to me we are better off than anybody who sat at the feet of Jesus, anybody who was among them because we have the Holy Spirit.

Dave:

That’s right.  The believers are indwelt by the Holy Spirit and Jesus said, “He that is least in the kingdom of heaven,” referred to those of us who have been born again by the Spirit of God, “…is greater than John the Baptist and he was the greatest of all the apostles.”  So, in that sense, we are better off, certainly, than they were because what Jesus was teaching was spiritually discerned.  In fact, it says he only spoke in parables so that they wouldn’t understand.  So, you are right, Tom, but still, I wish I could have been there and heard him.

Tom:

But you would have had to have been there with the Holy Spirit within, or you would have just been attracted to—it would have been unbelievable even for the flesh to be in the presence of Jesus.

Dave:

But the disciples didn’t believe him, they didn’t understand, as we will see here.  But anyway, Jesus said, “It’s not even because of miraculous power, the evidence of God at work, you’re just hungry,” that’s why.  “You ate of the loaves, you were filled and now you want another meal.”  In verse 27 he said, “Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life, which the Son of man shall give unto you:  for him hath God the Father sealed.”  Now, of course, he is referring to spiritual food.  And Tom, this passage, as you know as an ex-Catholic, this is a major passage for the Catholic church as they get into where Jesus says, “Except ye eat my flesh and drink my blood,” and they want to interpret this literally, physically, therefore, this must become his body but we won’t get into that because we will come to that.  But he is starting them off here.  He is saying; “Labor not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat or food that endures unto everlasting life.”  He is saying; don’t be taken up with physical food.  You remember Deuteronomy 8 and Jesus quoted that in the wilderness:  Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.  We have a hymn, “Break thou the bread of life, dear Lord to me, as thou didst break the loaves beside the sea.”  So, the breaking of the loaves and the feeding of the multitude miraculously was a picture, or a type, or an allegory, a metaphor, I don’t know the right word, but it was an example of the spiritual food.  This was a physical example of the spiritual food that Jesus wanted to feed them with.  They were not interested in that and now he is trying to bring them back to that.  Like the woman at the well, “You drink of this water,” he said, “you will thirst again; the water that I will give you will be in you a well of water springing up unto everlasting life.  You drink of the water that I give you, you will never thirst again,” Jesus said.  And, he is going to say the same thing—well verse 35, let me just for a moment jump ahead, Tom.  “Jesus said unto them, I am the bread of life:  he that cometh to me shall never hunger; and he that believeth on me shall never thirst.”  So, he is trying to turn them from the physical bread that satisfies their fleshly carnal, sensual appetite, which any animal has.  He is trying to raise them up to a spiritual level to be human beings made in the image of God, who would have some spiritual thirst and hunger and discernment for the things of God, the food of God, the Word of God.  They don’t get it!

Tom:

But we need him.  That’s the thing that hits me in all of this.  It’s Christ himself, he’s offering himself to them but they can’t see that, they can only see what their flesh wants, but it’s him.  He’s the one who we will be with for all eternity.

Dave:

And Tom, the last program, or maybe it was a couple of them ago, we noted they’re going to make him—oh, they want him—by force to be their king.  That’s not the way you make him a king. 

Tom:

Dave, I know myself, we think about heaven, we think about our eternal life with Christ and sometimes in my own heart and mind things get in the way.  Even eternal things, heavenly things, rather than him.  But it’s Christ, he said he came that we might have life and have it more abundantly but not in the ways the flesh thinks, not the way of our senses, but in our spiritual relationship with him for eternity.  That’s where our focus has to be.

Dave:

Amen.