Life Project Blog

John 6:42-71

If you haven’t read part 1 of this discussion, I would strongly recommend that you do so before you continue…

And now, the thrill-packed conclusion:

43-52:  Jesus tells them to stop grumbling amongst themselves, always a command we need to keep in mind, for while we grumble we neglect what He is teaching.  He goes on to give a memorable passage in which He tells them that those who believe in Him will have eternal life, and that we must eat of Him to have life.  We must eat of His flesh which He will give for the life of the world; physical bread will not give eternal life. The people, who are always stuck on the mere physicality of life are horrified!  Yuk!

53-59:  Since the people are determined to be stuck on the physical, Jesus gives them physical.  He talks about eating His flesh and drinking His blood as though He were going to offer Himself to a bunch of cannibals.  Of course the traditional Sunday school lesson will teach here that Jesus was only speaking of Communion: Not likely.  Again, we only see physical things.  Jesus was talking about what Communion represents; the reality of Communion.  Communion has little to do with its physical aspects; it is all about redemption and what sustains a new life.  When we eat of the bread and drink from the cup are we nourishing our bodies?  Hardly…

We do this in remembrance of what He did for us; this is important.  We go through an act that symbolizes taking Jesus into ourselves to sustain our lives spiritually. When you eat a meal food enters you body, and in due course provides energy and nourishment to your body; the elements that make up the food become one with your body on a molecular level. Thus in a sense the food becomes a part of you.  When we take the Spirit within us (the indwelling of the Holy Spirit) the Spirit becomes a part of who and what we are spiritually, and grows within us when we allow it  this gives us eternal life.  This gives us fellowship with God, which was God’s purpose for creating Man in the first place; and completes the cycle of redeeming and reclaiming Mankind for God.

Section 4: John 6:60-71

Upon hearing all of this, the people following Jesus largely abandoned Him. Of course we now know that this is typical of people who cannot allow themselves to discern spiritual truth.  People will often follow Jesus for a time, but when they realize that this involves more than a “get out of jail free” card, and that it will result in growing far beyond the merely physical they bail.  Jesus spoke one more great line here, one that we should commit to memory: “The words I have spoken to you are spirit and they are life.”  This is truly something we must always keep in mind, for they are the key to unlocking the things of God.

Conclusion

It is important to note that Jesus in this discourse used typology in His treatment of manna and bread.  The manna is the type, Jesus is the antitype or the reality that the type represents.  God gave provision to the Israelites in the Wilderness with the manna; it sustained them.  However this was not God’s ultimate purpose.  His ultimate purpose was to redeem Mankind to Himself through Christ, thus the manna as sustenance was the type of Jesus the Redeemer and sustenance unto eternal life.  A related type would be the Communion elements: they are not what redeemed us, they are the representation of the body and blood of Christ: Christ is the redeemer. Of course, the Old Testament in particular is full of typology. Moses as the leader and redeemer of the people was a type of Christ, the Promised Land is a type of Heaven, and so on…

John 6:1-42

This chapter is divided into four sections which, when considered together paint us a twofold picture of the human condition and God’s response to it.  We see the human tendency to put spiritual concepts into physical categories, and we see God’s response to human need as spiritual reality.  We also can see the result of the clash between the two: most people will fall away from God.

Section One: John 6:1-15

This is the story of Jesus feeding the five thousand.  This great miracle of Jesus really gets the attention of the people because not only was it amazing to behold, but it also included a free meal.  To some in the crowd, Jesus leapt out as a man they should listen to, for He had performed a miracle; He must be in good with God!  To others, Jesus brought them hope that they could support their families for free; surely God was at work!

Section 2: John 6:16-24

This section includes another sign that the crowd did not get to see: Jesus walking on the water.  He left the place where He fed the crowd and the disciples followed Him by boat.  A storm blew up on the Sea and suddenly they saw Jesus walking on the water toward them.  When He got into the boat, they reached shore.  Not bad for a night’s work; two miracles in one. The next day, the crowd realized that Jesus was gone, and they went out to look for Him.  Eventually, they got into boats and sailed for Capernaum where He had gone, and we move into the central part of the chapter…

Section  3: John 6:25-59

In the third section, Jesus disappoints the crowd by telling them that He isn’t giving them another free lunch, but that the true bread of life is Jesus Himself.  Before getting into the particulars, we must understand that to these people, “bread” symbolizes life.  If a person has bread, he will not starve this day.  If he has the supplies and the ability to make bread tomorrow he will not starve then either: where there is bread there is continuation of life. Bread remains the staple aspect of Western cuisine to this day, much in the same way that rice is in the Far East.

25-27:  Jesus confronts the notion of free meals right away, pointing the people instead toward the spiritual truth behind the feeding of the five thousand.  The people could only see the physical, practical aspect of receiving food from Jesus.  Jesus on the other hand was more concerned with the truth behind the miracle: life depends on a life-source that transcends mere biology for the true nature of life is spiritual not physical.

28-29:  OK, they seem to say, what must we do?  They are looking for a new rule or an activity by which they could obtain a loaf of bread that will be able to automatically replenish itself: they were making a serious category error.

29-31:  The answer Jesus gave was classic: The work for you to do is to believe in Jesus. Great, say the people: give us a sign. It’s hard not to laugh at this… Wasn’t feeding the five thousand enough of a sign? What will Jesus need to do to convince the people, rise from the dead or something?  I’d bet people wouldn’t even believe Him if He did that! I know, why don’t  you start the manna flowing again…

32-33:  Here Jesus tells them that if they want manna from God, it isn’t the kind that Moses had, but rather it will be true bread (as opposed to literal bread) This true bread is Jesus Himself.  Jesus gives life; it doesn’t come from the grocery store, for life is a much more profound force than the continuation of a biological process in the body.

35-42:  Ok fine, give us some of this bread… Jesus tells them that He is the bread of life; all life forces come from Him.  If you take within the bread that is Jesus, you will have eternal life, not just your little lifetime here on earth.  This starts not with just eating some whole wheat or rye, but rather when you decide to believe.  If you don’t decide to believe then you can go no further down the road of eternal life, but when you make this huge choice, eternal life is within your grasp, through Christ Himself.  Quite naturally, the people didn’t want that, for they were only looking for physical things, and they grumbled and complained as people like to do.

To be continued…

John 5:16-47

Picking up from our last  text about Jesus healing the man on the Sabbath, the Jewish leaders are not pleased.  They aren’t interested in the miracle, they could care less what has happened for the man who was crippled for over thirty years, they only care that he carried his mat on the Sabbath.  In this text, we will see that Jesus makes a defense that contains within it not only His message about the gift of God, but the message of who Jesus is.  It will be followed by a proof of His claims, and is clearly the sort of thing that the leaders of the day would not put up with.

Jesus explains that God works on the Sabbath and so does He, for He does what the Father does.  The Jewish leaders are quick to understand what He is telling them: He is on an equal footing with God.  Quite naturally, their reaction is not one of rejoicing as it should have been; instead they are anxious to kill Him!

Jesus ups the ante so to speak by going a step further. Not only is He on an equal footing with the Father, but He will also raise from the dead those whom it pleases Him to raise.  This is the “gift of God” that we came across when He was talking with the woman at the well in the previous chapter.

In 22-30, Jesus goes further still telling the leaders that He will be the One to judge all men and that those who dishonor the Son also dishonor God.  In short, He was telling them that He and the Father were One. We must pause here to consider the fact that by making these statements, Jesus was in violation of the Law… that is of course unless He was God Himself.  He goes on to further discuss God’s gift of eternal life for those who believe His Word, and with every sentence He digs His hole a little deeper in the eyes of those Jewish leaders who do not wish to hear such things.  His boldness in speaking of the resurrection, a controversial topic among those very leaders, and its connection with Him personally must have driven them wild with fury and the lust for blood.

Continuing in 31-35, He begins to prove the things that He has just said, beginning with the testimony of John the Baptist.  Reminding His hearers that they have heard John’s testimony about who He is, He also reminds them that they were, if not supporters of John, giving credence to him for a time. In fact, they had even asked John for his views on Jesus.  Jesus tells them that He is pointing this out to them so that they might be saved, that is to say so that they might believe Him.

Jesus moves on to cite further testimony to His veracity: the Scriptures themselves.  Notice that He points out to them that God’s Word does not reside within them, for they refuse to believe the One that God has sent.  It is His contention that the Scriptures themselves testify about Him, and that they of all people should know that fact.

As He continues along this line of reasoning, Jesus  adds that they would accept almost anybody who came speaking for themselves, and yet when He came speaking in God’s name as the One who had been foretold in the Scriptures, and whom they were expecting to come, they reject Him.  His implication is that their rejection of Him comes from their own desire to receive praise from others, and yet they do so at the cost of receiving the only praise that is worth receiving; that praise being from God Himself.

Jesus wraps up His defense with an accusation of His own: They do not believe the Scriptures.  He told them that Moses condemns them, not Jesus because it is the very Law of Moses that they make a mockery of when they go to such ridiculous lengths to appear to love, while at the same time, they carry with them only accusations and disdain for their people.  They do not believe what Moses wrote, so they reject the One He wrote about:  Ouch!

John 5:1-15

This passage lies at the beginning of a unit within the Gospel that continues through 12:50 that covers the major Jewish festivals.  The specific festival in question here in chapter 5 is not identified by the text, so for our purposes we will not worry about trying to speculate on this point, although there are various theories put forth by commentators; the application here is not affected by which festival is involved.

The pool at Bethesda was stirred periodically, we don’t know how often, and the first lame person into the pool when it was stirred would be healed.  The man who is the subject of our text was so disabled that he was not able to move quickly enough to be first, and had suffered his disability for 38 years. In our text, Jesus will heal him, command him to pick up his mat and walk, and then slip back into the crowd.  The aspect of this event that we will concentrate on today is the reaction of the Jews, while next time we will concentrate on Jesus’ response to them in vv. 16-47.

The first three verses are discussed in the introduction, however you might notice that the NIV does not have a verse four.  It is contained in the footnote and omitted from the text.  The King James renders verse four thusly: “For an angel went down at a certain season into the pool, and troubled the water: whosoever then first after the troubling of the water stepped in was made whole of whatsoever disease he had.” This verse does not appear in the early manuscripts, yet in the latest ones it suddenly appears.  This is considered to be the result of an early margin note giving the local explanation (myth?) that had later been incorporated into the text.

Jesus walks up to the man and asks him a simple question: “Do you want to get well?”  The man’s reply demonstrates that he had little hope.  Not only had he been in this condition for 38 years, but the pool rules required that he be first into the pool, and only people better off than he had any chance of making it; he appears to have been demoralized.  Jesus did not argue, lecture or pity, He simply gave a command without further comment: The man complied without hesitation.  I wonder if we would be so bold in this man’s condition!  The man believed Jesus; he took Jesus at His word.  There were no questions, arguments or hesitations: He followed Jesus’ command.  All appears to be well until verse 9… it was the Sabbath.

In verses 10-13, we cannot help but be amazed at the ridiculous reaction to this miracle: It was the Sabbath and you aren’t allowed to carry your mat.  Nobody said, “Wow, aren’t you the guy who was crippled for 38 years… and now you are healed:  Praise God!”  No, there will be no rejoicing for what God has done, only condemnation because the guy picked up his stupid mat. The man told them that he had the mat because the guy who healed him had told him to pick it up, and of course they demand to know who had done that. (Conspiracy to break the Sabbath!) The man had no idea…

A curious thing happened: Jesus ran into the man later and warned him to stop sinning lest something worse happen to him and the man ran to the Jews to report who his co-conspirator was.  There are several possible reasons for Jesus’ words to the man although it seems to me that the most likely meaning is to warn the man not to sin lest he receive condemnation at the final judgment.  It seems unlikely that Jesus was talking about carrying the mat on the Sabbath.  Notice also the lack of the man thanking Jesus for his healing, could that be the answer?  In any case, the man ratted on Jesus to the Jews.  Curious, don’t you think? This act, of course sets up the next part in this story which we will consider tomorrow.

For today, it is interesting to consider where all of these Sabbath rules came from.  Rest assured that it was not from the Law, but rather they came from the Jews’ interpretation of the Law, a very strict interpretation that converted a day of rest and relaxation into more of a heavy yoke of obligation that Jesus dealt with over and over again.

Do we Christians make up rules of conduct that Jesus didn’t give us and turn our faith into a heavy burden instead of its being a joy?  This should make for an interesting discussion…

John 4:27-42

Last time, we saw Jesus and His conversation with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well.  As their conversation was just about to wrap up, His disciples who had gone into town to buy food come upon the pair; this is what followed…

Upon their return the disciples were a bit shocked to see Jesus speaking with this woman for the reasons recounted last time, but they did not insert themselves into the situation.  It seems unlikely that they would question Jesus’ morality, and by now they would certainly have noticed that He didn’t observe all of the usual customs of the day; they waited for her to leave.  She leaves her water jugs behind and rushes into town to tell the people to come and see this man who has told her everything about her life.  These townsfolk would most likely be aware that there was much to tell, and her testimony has power in their eyes. Her conclusion that He was a prophet she freely gave, but notice that His statement that He is the Christ she is cautious about; “Could this be the Christ?”  The people came to find out…

The disciples want Jesus to eat something and Jesus tells them that He has food they know nothing about.  As always seems to be the case, they take Him literally, wondering if somebody else has given Him food; maybe that woman?

Jesus explains His meaning: His food (nourishment) is to do His Father’s work. Then He proceeds to change the subject to the harvest of souls.  His main device in explaining this to them is to point out that it isn’t always the same person who sows the seed and also reaps the harvest.  In their case, they have gone into town to buy the food that someone else planted, worked and harvested.  They did no work, they just paid for it; someone else did the actual work.  The harvest of souls is near; Jesus wants His disciples to see that the time has come to reap this harvest.  Of course all of this sowing and reaping is analogous to the Gospel;  First the Word of God will be planted in the people, in fact it has already been done;  the people expect the Messiah to appear.  It is for Jesus and especially for His disciples to bring in the harvest of those who will believe that they might turn to God and receive eternal life.

Because of the woman’s testimony about Jesus, many of the townsfolk believed in Him.  As a result they asked Him to stay in their midst and He did so for two days.  During this time, even more believed because of His teachings.  Now, not only did they believe because of the woman’s testimony, they also had the opportunity to see and hear Jesus for themselves:  The harvest in that small town had been reaped. The people there understood that Jesus Christ is the Savior of the world.

Isn’t it interesting that when we share our testimony about Jesus, some people respond right away in faith while others resist and refuse to accept it?  Could it be that those who respond easily have had the seed of faith planted by someone else, maybe years before?  Could it be that those who refuse our plea may respond easily to someone else weeks or years later?

Certainly Jesus wanted His disciples to understand that they were to bring in the harvest of the crop that was ready for harvest, and to plant the seed for the harvest that would follow later: I think we can learn from this.

John 4:1-26

The first four verses of this passage set the background for the story; John the Baptist has been arrested (3:24; Matt. 4:12; Mark 1:14; Luke 3:20). Opposition was brewing amongst the Pharisees in Jerusalem because Jesus’ reputation was growing and He was gaining followers and Jesus decided that this was the time to move back to Galilee. It seems that the arrest of John had the affect of freeing Jesus from John’s ministry; John was decreasing, Jesus was increasing.  Jesus takes the mountain road that goes through Samaria that He would later send His disciples on (Acts 1:8).  When Jesus arrives in Samaria our story begins.

The plot of ground referred to here is referred to in Gen. 48:22 and is roughly a half mile from Jacob’s well (see also Josh. 24:32).  Jacob’s well was certainly a well-known location, famous for the spring of bubbling water that it created access to.  Jesus arrived there that day at about noon, tired and thirsty.

Approaching a woman at the well He asked for a drink, and the woman’s response is interesting in that she seems to have assumed a superior tone; you are a Jew and yet you ask me for a drink?  Jews did not associate with Samaritans; in fact the Jewish teaching of the time said that associating with Samaritans would cause a Jew to be defiled.  If that were not enough, Jewish men did not speak to women in public; not even their own wives and here is Jesus boldly walking up to a Samaritan woman and asking for water.

As was His custom, Jesus went directly to the lesson He was going to teach, ignoring the customs and traditions of men.  The ‘gift of God’ and His identity are the real topics they would discuss: Jesus could provide ‘living water’ and if she understood this she would be asking Him for a drink.  Taking Him literally, she notes that Jesus has no means by which to draw water and asks him if He is greater than Jacob whose water isn’t so effective.  Of course when Jesus mentions water that would quench a thirst for a lifetime, the woman is interested so that she wouldn’t have to draw water anymore which was very hard work.  Notice that in v. 14 Jesus refers to a “spring of water welling up” which is a direct reference to the reputation of Jacob’s well. The water that Jesus was talking about here is a metaphor for eternal life that was the ultimate gift of God; accomplished by the death, burial and resurrection of Jesus Himself.

In verses 16-19, an interesting thing happens: In response to Jesus directive to go and get her husband, the woman tells a falsehood with a half-truth.  Jesus knows the whole story, to her amazement and this insight on His part is the probable reason for why she is drawing water at high noon instead of in the cool of the morning with all of the other women.  Apparently shocked, she perceives that Jesus is a prophet.

Changing the subject, the woman goes on to religious matters… after all Jesus must be a prophet.  Jesus tells her that God isn’t really interested in where a person worships; God cares how a person worships.  In God’s sight what is important is that a person worships in ‘spirit and in truth’:  The time has come for this epochal change.  From the coming of Christ forward the old regulations and traditions are set aside and replaced with reality.  In modern vernacular you can almost hear the woman say “whatever”.  She says that when the Messiah comes he will tell us all about this (not you, a mere prophet).  Jesus’ reply reveals to her who He really is, for He is the Messiah. (v. 26)

Isn’t it interesting how much like this woman we are!