|
|
|
|
The Gospel of John, The Period of Controversy, The Claims of Jesus Christ, The Witnesses for Christ, Part VIII, John 6:14-21 - Lesson 38
John has faithfully related to us in verses 1-13, how the Lord Jesus Christ ministered to thousands of hungry people.
They did not know his person, they were attracted by the sensational as John tells us in verse 2, "because they saw his miracles which he did on them that were diseased."
Before their very eyes Christ manifested his divine power.
The crowd was impressed as we see in verse 14.
They witnessed the miracle of the feeding of the multitude and concluded that this must be someone special, a man that God had promised to the Jews.
We read in: Verse 6:14,15, Then those men, when they had seen the miracle that Jesus did, said, This is of a truth that prophet that should come into the world. When Jesus therefore perceived that they would come and take him by force, to make him a king, he departed again into a mountain himself alone.
Psalm 132:15, speaks of the Messiah when it says, I will abundantly bless her provision: I will satisfy her poor with bread.
Those men saw this feeding of the multitudes from 5 barley loaves and two small fishes.
This led them to believe that Jesus was the prophet of whom Moses spoke.
They said, this must be he.
They knew their psalms and they remembered 132:15.
They also remembered Deut. 18:15, where Moses declares, "The Lord thy God will raise up a prophet from the midst of thee, of thy brethen, like unto me; unto him ye shall hearken."
But Jesus knows their heart. It is the same heart that John tells of in chapter two where Jesus did not commit himself unto them, because he knew all men..... and he knew what was in man.
This heart is revealed to us in verse 15 where John gives us entrance into the perceptions of Jesus.
John tells us that Jesus knew that the crowd desired to come and take him by force to make him king
Because Jesus is God he perceives correctly the heart of man.
This desire for a king also reveals their motives.
They were not thinking of bowing before him and in repentance and faith, yielding themselves to him as their Lord and Savior.
They were looking for deliverance from the hated heel of Rome.
They wanted a leader to deliver them from the burdens of this life.
If this was the second Moses would he not deliver them from the oppression of Rome?
They were interested in the temporal, the now and now.
No different from the modern Jew.
They recognized him as prophet and they wanted him as king but did not recognized their need for him as their priest, offering himself as a sacrifice for their sin!
As Jesus said they will receive another because this is the mindset of the unredeemed and unrepentant sinner.
Because they would not bow to him as Savior he departs alone because he needed not for man to make him a king, he was born as such.
Matthew and Mark tell us that he went to the mountain to pray.
He goes alone before God to conduct his priestly work and to intercede for man.
Let's read this passage in Chapter Six, verses 16-21, 16. And when even was now come, his disciples went down unto the sea. 17. And entered into a ship, and went over the sea toward Capernaum. And it was now dark, and Jesus was not come to them. 18. And the sea arose by reason of a great wind that blew. 19. So when they had rowed about five and twenty or thirty furlongs, they see Jesus walking on the sea, and drawing nigh unto the ship: and they were afraid. 20. But he saith unto them, It is I; be not afraid. 21. Then they willingly received him into the ship: and immediately the ship was at the land whither they went.
His disciples go down to the sea.
This reminds me of the Psalm that says that they that go down to the sea in ships shall see the works of the Lord.
Jesus intended for his disciples to see the works of the Lord.
It is like that with the Lord.
Those who, by faith, take on the rough waters of service to the Lord will be placed in difficult straights.
The Lord intends for his own to live by faith and he always places them in situations where their only deliverance is through Christ.
Matthew tells us that Jesus constrained or compelled his disciples to get into a ship and go before him to the other side while Jesus sent the multitudes away.
He removed the disciples from the crowd, perhaps for their own safety, because the crowd was intent on taking Jesus and making him King.
Remember the ambition of Judas Iscariot, the impetuousness of Peter, the tempers of James and John.
His disciples were men of the flesh and could easily be swayed by such fleshly notions as the crowd intended. So he sends them away.
But the Lord sends the vast crowd home and goes to the mountain to have a time of prayer with his Father.
He will use the disciple's voyage to teach them another lesson on faith.
Does he not daily give us tests of faith as we grow in his grace?
There are no accidents as we follow the will of God.
But the disciples thought so as they suffered through the great storm that Jesus used for his purposes.
Here is the picture that John describes.
It is now dark and Jesus has not come to them.
The Light of the world is not with them and they are being tossed on the troubled sea and it is dark.
Sometimes Christ withholds the light of his countenance from his own.
Job cried in Job 30:26, "when I waited for light then came darkness."
In Psalm 112:4, it is recorded, "Unto the upright there ariseth light in the darkness."
Remember it is God that creates the darkness, as Isaiah reminds us of in 45:7, "I form the light, and create the darkness: I make peace, and create evil." (only in the sense of the fruit of sin)
Sometimes he withholds the light from his people that they may discover the "treasures of darkness" as Isaiah records in 45:3.
There is a reason that God puts us through darkness and there was a reason that Jesus left his disciples in darkness.
And the sea arose by reason of the great wind that blew.
The winds and the waves obey his will.
Do the disciples know this?
His will was to test the faith and patience of his disciples.
The longer they waited the worse things became.
From their vantage point, as they suffered the wild sea, it looked like Christ was neglecting them.
It seemed to them that he had forgotten them and left them to the whims of the raging and angry sea.
Certainly if he were here they cried, this would not be happening. |