Reflective Bible Study

Following Jesus feeding the crowd of over five thousand people, and then walking on the water to His disciples as they were struggling in their boat to cross the lake, we come to our passage for this episode. Leading up to this passage, Jesus had sent the people away following the miraculous feeding of food, and the following day they return looking for Him.

The crowd saw Jesus’ disciples leave without Jesus in their boat, but when they came back looking for Jesus, they could not find Him where that miracle had taken place. The crowd then travels to the other side of the lake looking for Jesus.

This background leads us into our passage for this episode, and a set of powerful truths we can learn from it. Actually, the teaching we are looking at in this passage is too long for one episode, and because of this, we will split this teaching into two parts.

Let’s read the first part of what Jesus shared, and discover some amazing things about how Jesus pushed His crowd of followers.

Our passage is found in John’s gospel, chapter 6, and we will read it from the New Century Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 25, John tells us:

²⁵ When the people found Jesus on the other side of the lake, they asked him, “Teacher, when did you come here?”

²⁶ Jesus answered, “I tell you the truth, you aren’t looking for me because you saw me do miracles. You are looking for me because you ate the bread and were satisfied. ²⁷ Don’t work for the food that spoils. Work for the food that stays good always and gives eternal life. The Son of Man will give you this food, because on him God the Father has put his power.”

²⁸ The people asked Jesus, “What are the things God wants us to do?”

²⁹ Jesus answered, “The work God wants you to do is this: Believe the One he sent.”

I must pause here to draw out this huge truth. In Jesus’ response, we have the clearest answer for the mission of Jesus’ followers on earth. Above anything and everything else, we are called to believe the One God sent. In other words, we are to believe Jesus and place our faith, our hope, and our trust in Him. When we believe someone, we trust their words and adjust our actions accordingly. When we believe Jesus, we trust His words and we align our lives into His will.

However, the crowd has another question. After Jesus tells them to believe the One God sent, we continue in verse 30, and read:

³⁰ So the people asked, “What miracle will you do? If we see a miracle, we will believe you. What will you do? ³¹ Our ancestors ate the manna in the desert. This is written in the Scriptures: ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’”

³² Jesus said, “I tell you the truth, it was not Moses who gave you bread from heaven; it is my Father who is giving you the true bread from heaven. ³³ God’s bread is the One who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”

³⁴ The people said, “Sir, give us this bread always.”

³⁵ Then Jesus said, “I am the bread that gives life. Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty. ³⁶ But as I told you before, you have seen me and still don’t believe. ³⁷ The Father gives me the people who are mine. Every one of them will come to me, and I will always accept them. ³⁸ I came down from heaven to do what God wants me to do, not what I want to do. ³⁹ Here is what the One who sent me wants me to do: I must not lose even one whom God gave me, but I must raise them all on the last day. ⁴⁰ Those who see the Son and believe in him have eternal life, and I will raise them on the last day. This is what my Father wants.”

⁴¹ Some people began to complain about Jesus because he said, “I am the bread that comes down from heaven.” ⁴² They said, “This is Jesus, the son of Joseph. We know his father and mother. How can he say, ‘I came down from heaven’?”

⁴³ But Jesus answered, “Stop complaining to each other. ⁴⁴ The Father is the One who sent me. No one can come to me unless the Father draws him to me, and I will raise that person up on the last day. ⁴⁵ It is written in the prophets, ‘They will all be taught by God.’ Everyone who listens to the Father and learns from him comes to me. ⁴⁶ No one has seen the Father except the One who is from God; only he has seen the Father. ⁴⁷ I tell you the truth, whoever believes has eternal life. ⁴⁸ I am the bread that gives life. ⁴⁹ Your ancestors ate the manna in the desert, but still they died. ⁵⁰ Here is the bread that comes down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will never die. ⁵¹ I am the living bread that came down from heaven. Anyone who eats this bread will live forever. This bread is my flesh, which I will give up so that the world may have life.”

Let’s stop reading here and finish this passage in our next episode.

In this first portion of Jesus’ challenge to this crowd, I am amazed that they are this stubborn and unbelieving. It is as though this crowd is looking for reasons to not believe in Jesus than for reasons to believe.

This is the clearest to me when they directly ask Jesus what sign He would give them from heaven. I suspect you caught the irony like I did when the crowd uses the example of God giving the people manna in the desert. They quote scripture saying that God gave them bread from heaven to eat.

The irony in my mind is that these people just finished eating a clearly miraculous food miracle, where the only place for this bread to have come from is God. A boy supplied his meal big enough for one person, and Jesus multiplied it into food for over 5,000 with plenty of leftovers. After witnessing this miracle, likely less than 48 hours later, this crowd completely discounts the miracle of food multiplication, and they want a clearer sign instead of remembering back to what had just taken place.

Jesus redefines the source of the Bread from heaven, and in a symbolic way, Jesus takes the manna that the Old Testament Israelites ate, and He turns it into a symbolic prophecy about God sending Him into the world.

Jesus clearly tells this crowd in no uncertain terms that He is the symbolic bread that gives life. Jesus says in verse 35 that “Whoever comes to me will never be hungry, and whoever believes in me will never be thirsty.” Jesus is speaking on a spiritual level that many in this crowd do not understand, and those that do understand this are not willing to accept it.

Those in the crowd are unwilling to accept Jesus because many of them knew the family Jesus was raised in. Whether Mary and Joseph kept Jesus’ miraculous birth a secret, or whether they stopped trying to tell people because no one believed them, this crowd saw Jesus as simply being Joseph’s son and nothing more significant. The amazing miracles that God did through Jesus were not enough to break through to them that Jesus was more than simply a carpenter’s son.

However, we have an advantage, because three of the four gospels shed light on Jesus’ origins, and on how Jesus did in fact come from heaven. While this passage may be enough to cause some people to trip up in their faith like those in this first century crowd, the biggest truth I see included in this passage is Jesus’ repeated promise about His own task and responsibility.

In this first part of Jesus’ challenge to this crowd, He repeatedly tells them that He is the Source of eternal life, and that His responsibility is raising up all of God’s people on the last day. When we place our trust in Jesus, not only to we trust in His sacrifice to cover our sins, we trust that He is more than capable of raising us up personally when He returns on the last day.

Jesus’ promise is a promise pointing forward to resurrection, and it is a promise I firmly hold on to. Jesus conquered death, and I know He is preparing a place for all of us who have placed our faith in Him as we all together look forward to the day He returns to bring us home!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As always, continue seeking God first in your life and intentionally place your faith, your hope, your trust, and your belief in Jesus and what He did for you on the cross. Also place your faith, hope, trust, and belief in Jesus and His power to do exactly what He has promised for all of God’s people, which is raising each and every one of them up when He returns. It is Jesus’ responsibility to raise up God’s people and it is His responsibility to not lose even one of those who have given their lives to God. We can trust that even when we don’t know why or how, Jesus knows, He is trustworthy, and God is working in ways we likely cannot see yet.

Also, continue praying and studying the Bible for yourself to personally grow closer to Jesus each and every day. The Bible is the best way to discover Jesus for yourself, and prayer and study are the best ways to open your heart to Jesus and fall in love with Him like He has fallen in love with you!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or abandon where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!

In our last episode, I hinted at the next several episodes being focused in on a series of parables found in Matthew’s gospel. However, before we continue looking at the series of parables, Mark’s gospel includes similar but unique parable that sounds related to the parable we focused on in our last episode. In planning our year of podcasts, this seemed like a great point to briefly detour away from Matthew to look at it.

While Mark includes this similar sounding parable to Matthew’s Wheat and Weeds parable, the key idea in Mark’s parable focuses not on the harvest, even though a harvest is included, but the time between the planting and the harvest, and Mark doesn’t include any details about weeds.

Let’s read Jesus’ parable from Mark’s gospel and discover what it can teach us about our lives today and the current world we are living in. Our passage is found in Mark’s gospel, chapter 4, and we will read it from the New International Reader’s Version of the Bible. Starting in verse 26, Mark tells us that:

²⁶ Jesus also said, “Here is what God’s kingdom is like. A farmer scatters seed on the ground. ²⁷ Night and day the seed comes up and grows. It happens whether the farmer sleeps or gets up. He doesn’t know how it happens. ²⁸ All by itself the soil produces grain. First the stalk comes up. Then the head appears. Finally, the full grain appears in the head. ²⁹ Before long the grain ripens. So the farmer cuts it down, because the harvest is ready.”

When reading this parable, one of the first things that I thought of might make me sound a little skeptical, but it is simply that nowadays, we know how a seed germinates and becomes a plant. With our scientific advances, we know how this happens. We also know that soil left to its own won’t produce anything. If there is water and other soil with plants nearby, without some intervention, the soil in question might gain some of the plants from the nearby soil or it might get the pesky unwanted plants we call weeds.

However, soil with no water or moisture won’t produce anything lasting. We know more about how plants grow today than perhaps at any other point in history.

However, this was the logical, and perhaps a little skeptical, side of me. But what if Jesus isn’t really talking about farming?

Remember, this is a parable, and Jesus begins His parable by stating that His illustration will describe what God’s kingdom is like. With this introduction, we discover that this illustration about farming is not about farming at all. Instead, farming becomes a metaphor for spiritual growth.

With that as a frame of reference, do we know how spiritual growth works? I’ll be the first to say that we know a little bit about it, but similar to how Jesus describes the farmer not knowing how it happens, there are a lot of unknown details in the process.

When we talk about spiritual growth, we know some things that help and other things that do not. We know that prayer and Bible study help with spiritual growth, while many of the latest blockbuster movies, games, or other forms of entertainment don’t help us grow spiritually.

To sum up what we know and compare it to what we don’t know, what we do know is that there are some environments that help with spiritual growth, and other environments that don’t help with growth. This is similar to the parable from a couple episodes ago where seed falls on different types of soil with different results. Seed landing on soil is going to grow a lot better than seed landing on a solid slab of pavement. The environment matters when we talk about spiritual growth.

However, with the right environment, do we know what causes spiritual growth?

Again, we know something that can stop spiritual growth in the right environment, and that is a selfish, self-centered attitude. Also, a closed, hard heart towards God will stop spiritual growth. Judas Iscariot is the prime example of this. Everything spoke to Judas Iscariot having the same opportunity as the majority of the other disciples, but Judas chose to reject and betray Jesus because of His self-focused attitude, when the other disciples ultimately became ambassadors for God’s kingdom after they received the Holy Spirit.

So with the right environment, the right attitude, and the right focus, will we grow spiritually? I believe we will, but I also believe that we don’t truly understand how it happens. We can describe growing spiritually as receiving the Holy Spirit, learning new spiritual truths, having a new perspective and outlook on life, and being transformed by God, but how this happens is still a mystery.

Like the parable, we can see the outward stages of growth happening, all the way to being mature and ripe, but how spiritual growth happens within a person’s life is still a mystery. As the common metaphor goes, we can see the effects of the wind, but we cannot see the wind itself. We can feel the wind, but we cannot see it. We can feel and see spiritual changes in our lives and our perspectives, but that doesn’t mean we understand how we grow spiritually.

However, just because it is a mystery to us does not mean that this is a mystery to God. God knows and He understands. In this parable, Jesus subtly leaves one responsibility to us, and then we are to leave the rest to Him. This parable subtly challenges us to plant spiritual seeds. When we share God with others, when we live a life that gives God glory, and when we don’t back down when we are challenged spiritually, our lives are planting seeds in the lives of those we meet. This is what God has called us to do.

While we don’t understand how spiritual growth works, we can trust that God knows. God sends the spiritual sunshine, the spiritual water, and God prompts the spiritual germination that starts the spiritual growth in someone’s heart and life. Spiritual growth is something that is entirely based on the Holy Spirit. Once a seed has been planted, it is up to the environment to help facilitate the growth. We cannot control someone else’s spiritual environment, so we let God handle the growth.

With God focusing on the growth and the environment, every one of the seeds planted in His people will grow into spiritual maturity and become ripe for His harvest. God has left us with the responsibility of planting seeds, so let’s plant spiritual seeds and let Him worry about how to help them grow!

As we come to the end of another podcast episode, here are the challenges I will leave you with:

As always, seek God first and intentionally open your heart to Him. Ask Him to send the Holy Spirit into your life to help you grow, to help you live for Him, and to help you plant seeds through how you live your life. Trust that God is more than willing to answer this heartfelt prayer in your own life!

Also, don’t neglect the environments you place yourself in. Continue to set time aside to pray and study the Bible for yourself to grow personally towards God. While the environment you are placed in is different from the one I am in, God knows how to grow someone spiritually when we stay connected to Him!

And as I end every set of challenges by saying in one way or another, never stop short of, back away from, chicken out of, or wither away from where God wants to lead you to in your life with Him!