6:1-15 The fourth sign

March 1, 2021

Read John 6:1-15

The feeding of the five thousand is the only miracle of Jesus recorded in all four gospels (Matt.14:13-21; Mark 6:30-44; Luke 9:10-17). It is a mighty act of creation and so by it we see that Jesus must be God, for only God has the power to create (1:3,14). John sees it not only as a sign of who Jesus is but also of the life which he came to bring – he is “the bread of God who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world” (6:33).

Almost a year had gone by since Jesus went to the Passover in Jerusalem (4; 2:23). Since then, his many miracles meant that he had become very popular in Galilee (2) and his popularity reached its climax after this miraculous feeding (14-15). John makes clear that the miracle was not just a response to the concern of the disciples late in the day (Mark 6:35) but that it had been Jesus’s intention from the moment that he saw the crowd (5-6). The people could scarcely fail to recognise that this was a great sign (14), yet nevertheless they misunderstood it.

They accepted that Jesus must be a very special person, a second Moses (14; Deut.18:15), and consequently they wanted him to be their leader (15) to deliver them from Rome just as Moses had delivered their ancestors from Egypt. Jesus, however, decisively rejected a Messiahship on the political level. Through this sign, the crowd saw in Jesus a suitable candidate for human kingship, but they missed the point that Jesus was already a king whose kingdom is not of this world (18:36) and who therefore can give life at the deepest spiritual level. It’s this theme that Jesus goes on to expand and which will result once again in popularity giving way to rejection (6:60,66).