areliablefaith

Reading: John 6

The feeding of the 5,000, plus women and children, is one of the few events recorded in all four Gospels. Yesterday we read about it in the Synoptics. Today John tells the same story and adds a few details of his own. He mentions the boy who brought what he had: “There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?” (John 6:9). He also tells us the crowd was so stirred that Jesus had to slip away because “they were about to come and take him by force to make him king” (John 6:15).

Where John really slows down, though, is the day after.

The Crowd Comes Back Hungry

The people Jesus fed look around for Him the next morning. When they realize He has crossed the lake, they follow, and many more from the surrounding area probably join them. They don’t come to worship. They come asking for more: another sign, another miracle, another meal. “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you?” (John 6:30).

Jesus sees right through it:

“Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves. Do not work for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you.” (John 6:26–27)

This was the point that stayed with me today. The crowd was focused on the temporary, on what lasts only a moment. It might be bread. It might be deliverance from Roman occupation. Either way, it was temporary. Jesus wanted them to look past it to what is eternal, to what truly matters most.

“I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.” (John 6:35)

When He says, “the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh” (John 6:51), He is pointing ahead to the cross. We’ll see that come into focus in His final week, when He takes the Passover meal and turns it into what we know as the Lord’s Supper. For today, though, the issue is the clash between two prayers: feed me now and feed me for eternity.

God’s Timing

I read John 6 first thing this morning. Since it’s Sunday, I didn’t have time to write before church. Looking back, I think that was God’s timing.

After the service a good friend came up to me. Over the last few years I’ve watched his faith grow tremendously. He has asked hard questions and worked through them, and he has held on through difficult seasons.

Today I could see something heavy on him. When it was just the two of us, he told me his wife has just received a very serious diagnosis.

That news has shaken him to his core. I hurt with him. When I think about losing my wife, or one of our children, or someone close to us, I feel the grief starting already.

And yet on this side there is always hope. In His day Jesus did provide the temporary: the bread, the fish, the healing. Even more, He provides the eternal. My friend and his wife know Jesus. Will this be a trial? Yes. Will God heal her on this side? I hope and pray that she gets more time. But even if the Lord chooses not to heal her here, there is an eternity, and it is glorious, waiting beyond the door we call death, in the larger life.

Into the Water

Something else came to me as I prayed for my friend in the hour and a half after I got home.

Not long ago I watched his wife step into the waters of baptism. It wasn’t planned. The Holy Spirit simply moved her, and she came forward just as she was and said yes to Jesus all over again.

“We were buried therefore with him by baptism into death, in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead by the glory of the Father, we too might walk in newness of life.” (Romans 6:4)

She went down into the water, into death to self and burial with Christ, and came up joined to His resurrection, shouting hallelujah. It was a glorious thing to see how excited she was.

“But If Not”

When that picture came back to me this afternoon, I immediately thought of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Nebuchadnezzar ordered them to bow to his golden statue. They refused and were sentenced to the fiery furnace. Their answer has stayed with me for years:

“Our God whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of your hand, O king. But if not, be it known to you, O king, that we will not serve your gods or worship the golden image that you have set up.” (Daniel 3:17–18)

That is where my friend and his wife stand. She went under the water and came up again, and her life is now “hidden with Christ in God” (Colossians 3:3). Whatever comes her way, whether temptation, hardship, or, as now, a very serious illness, she will love and serve Jesus with everything in her for as long as she has.

My friend will hold on to Jesus too. He will put his trust in Him, and he’ll probably cry in Jesus’ arms more than once. In the end, though, the eternal far outshines the temporary, and that includes this earthly life itself.

“For the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal.” (2 Corinthians 4:18)

Invited Into the Eternal

The invitation is open to all of us. We can put our faith and trust in Jesus Christ and His finished work on the cross. We can be born again, as Jesus describes in John 3. “Because I live, you also will live” (John 14:19). The eternal is what we were made for.

For reflection: What “bread that perishes” have you been asking God for lately? What would it look like this week to seek Him for the bread that endures?

Please also join me in praying for my friend and his wife.

Be blessed, my friends, and have a blessed day.

Scripture quotations are from the ESV® Bible (The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®), © 2001 by Crossway. Used by permission. All rights reserved.