Coming On Our Knees
Prayer: Lord, we come before you recognizing our complete and utter dependence upon you. Without your
love and grace, we will continually turn back to the things that enslave us. Help us to see the destructive
patterns of our lives and to seek the spiritual freedom that only you can provide. May we trust in you to
provide for us in the times of wilderness that we experience rather than seeking our own devices. You are all
that we need. Amen.
Connecting with One Another
Have you ever written a test where after reading through the questions you thought, “when did we cover this?”
Have you ever felt a time when you thought God was testing you and you felt unprepared or overwhelmed? What
happened? How did you respond? What might you have done differently?
Listening to the Word
In this week’s passage, John starts out by describing a scene at the Sea of Galilee in which a large crowd of
people was following Jesus because “they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick” (Jn. 6:2). Remember,
John tells us that all of the signs he records in his gospel “are written so that [we] may believe that Jesus is the
Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name” (Jn. 20:31). Therefore, when we
see the word signs here and recognize that Jesus is about to perform a miracle we should be thinking, “How is
Jesus about to reveal to us that he is the Christ and the Son of God?”
Read John 6:1-15. Picture yourself as Philip along with Jesus and the rest of the disciples up on the hillside.
There’s a crowd of people gathered waiting to see Jesus do something miraculous and Jesus turns to you and
asks, “Philip, you’re from around here, where can we find some food to feed these thousands of people?” What
sort of questions would be running through your mind? How would you respond to Jesus’ request?
John mentions that this was happening during the Passover, the feast of the Jews. Do you see the irony here?
It is time for a feast and nobody has any food. The people seem to be more concerned with witnessing a
miracle than participating in the feast. Maybe the people were anxious to get back to their Passover activities
and had started to grumble as they awaited to see Jesus perform. What was taking him so long? Why not just
do something so amazing while he had everyone’s attention that they would be convinced he was the Christ?
John tells us that this wasn’t just about food. Jesus said this “to test him, for he himself knew what he would
do”. Jesus knew that he was going to provide food for the crowd but it came with a test. This is not the first
time that God had miraculously provided food accompanied with a test.
Read Exodus 15:22-16:12. Compare this passage with John 6:1-5. What similarities or differences do you
recognize between these stories and the feeding of the 5000 that we see here in John 6?
What is the Lord testing the Israelites on in Exodus 15-16? How does that correspond to the test that Jesus
is applying in John 6?
What do the Israelites come to know based on the miraculous provision of food in the wilderness (Exodus
16:6-7; 12)? What does Jesus reveal about himself by miraculous providing food for the crowd?
Whenever the Passover feast is mentioned, John’s original audience would have immediately thought of
Egypt. This festival was instituted specifically to remember the way in which God miraculous led His people
out of the slavery that they experienced there. And yet time and time again we see the Israelites in the OT
reject God and want to return to Egypt when the going got tough. God miraculously provided food for them
in the desert to remind them of who He was, the Lord their God, and what came along with being His people.
Exodus 16:7 tells us that with the provision of food for the Israelites in the wilderness that they saw the glory
of God. By miraculously providing food for the people in the Sea of Galilee, Jesus is announcing that he is also
Lord and that the people are witnessing the glory of God. And the people respond by correctly identifying
Jesus as “the Prophet who is to come into the world.”
So why then does Jesus, after seemingly getting his point across, withdraw again to the mountain by
himself? Because the people didn’t fully grasp what they were saying. Jesus was not going to be another
Moses who would lead them out of physical slavery and establish Israel as a national monarchy but Jesus was
going to offer his body as a sacrifice to free people from spiritual slavery and to establish his heavenly
kingdom, the kingdom of God, here on earth over which he would be King.
In what areas of your life have you been looking for freedom from the physical habits of your life when
what you really need is the spiritual freedom from sin that only comes in Christ?
How can you trust God to provide for you rather than turning back to the familiar ways of slavery?
Prayer: God, we thank you for sending your Son that we may have spiritual freedom from our slavery to sin.
Help us to see the aspects of our lives where we seek to provide for ourselves rather than trust your provision.
Give us a clearer picture of what it means for Jesus to be the Christ, the Son of God, and what it means to
have life in his name rather than the king who is there to serve our own purposes. We thank you and we love
you. Amen.