SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 3/23/2016 8:26 AM
My Worship Time Focus:
Introduction to John 6:1-15
Bible Reading &
Meditation Reference: John 6:1-15
Message of the verses: “1 After these things Jesus went away to the
other side of the Sea of Galilee (or Tiberias). 2 A large crowd followed Him,
because they saw the signs which He was performing on those who were sick. 3
Then Jesus went up on the mountain, and there He sat down with His disciples. 4
Now the Passover, the
feast of the Jews, was near. 5 Therefore Jesus, lifting up His eyes and seeing
that a large crowd was coming to Him, said to Philip, "Where are we to buy
bread, so that these may eat?" 6 This He was saying to test him, for He Himself
knew what He was intending to do. 7 Philip answered Him, "Two hundred
denarii worth of bread is not sufficient for them, for everyone to receive a
little." 8 One of His disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter’s brother, said to Him,
9 "There is a lad here who has five
barley loaves and two fish, but what are these for so many people?" 10
Jesus said, "Have the people sit down." Now there was much grass in
the place. So the men sat down, in number about five thousand. 11 Jesus then
took the loaves, and having given thanks, He distributed to those who were
seated; likewise also of the fish as much as they wanted. 12 When they were
filled, He said to His disciples, "Gather up the leftover fragments so
that nothing will be lost." 13 So they gathered them up, and filled twelve
baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves which were left over by
those who had eaten. 14 Therefore
when the people saw the sign which He had performed, they said, "This is
truly the Prophet who is to come into the world." 15 So Jesus, perceiving
that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king,
withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.”
In our last
SD we looked at an introduction to the entire 6th chapter as far as
looking at an introduction, but today I just want to focus on an introduction
to the first 15 verses as we will be going over them over the next four days if
we stay on schedule. As mentioned this
portion of John chapter six is a very familiar one, the feeding of the 5,000 as
it is mostly called.
What we
have here is a miracle from our Lord in a grand proportion and as we learned in
chapter 2:11 His miracles bring glory to Him:
“This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and
manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him.” Jesus would use His miracles to support His
remarkable claims “the works which the Father has given Me to accomplish-the
very works that I do-testify about Me, that the Father has sent Me (5:36b).” It was very important to Jesus that people
see His glory through His miracles, but by doing these miracles the Pharisees
continued to oppose Him and in chapter six we have a similar thing happening as
found in chapter five where we saw Jesus do a miracle and then there was some
confrontation with the Jewish leaders and then a discourse, which is the same
pattern that we will see in chapter six with the first fifteen verses being the
portion with the miracle.
John
MacArthur writes “When John the Baptist sent his disciples to ask Jesus, ‘Are
You the Expected One, or do we look for someone else’ (Luke 7:20), Jesus
replied by pointing them to His miraculous works: ‘22
And He answered and said to them, "Go and report to John what you
have seen and heard: the BLIND RECEIVE SIGHT, the lame walk, the lepers are
cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, the POOR HAVE THE GOSPEL
PREACHED TO THEM (Luke 7:21-22).’ And
when Jesus’ own disciples failed to grasp the truth of His union with the
Father He told them, ‘Believe Me that I am in the Father and the Father is in
Me; otherwise believe because of the works themselves’ (John 14:11).”
There are
things that Jesus could have done that would have caused the crowds around Him
to look in awe, things that would not have been as great as Jesus having
compassion on the people and healing them of their diseases or in this case
actually creating food for them. Now as
we look at this miracle we see Jesus actually creating something out of nothing. When my grand children are at the age when
they can begin the AWANA program and they begin to learn about God’s creation I
teach them the word Ex nihilo which is a Latin word that means “something out of nothing” and in the
case of this miracle, although He began with some fish and crackers or small
pieces of bread, this is what Jesus did, showing that He truly is God the
Creator. In John chapter 2 we learned
that He made wine out of water, not so in this case. In doing this miracle Jesus met the needs of
very many hungry people who were on their way to the Passover feast in
Jerusalem and would have found it difficult to find food as such a late hour.
The
religious leaders hatred of Jesus grew with all of the miracles that He did and
when He raised Lazarus from the dead their hatred grew so much that they got together
to plot to kill Him, which they would finally do, as they spoke of it on many different
occasions as we saw in chapter five and will continue to see throughout the
miracles He does recorded in John’s gospel.
We read the following in chapter eleven after that great miracle was
done “45 Therefore many of the Jews who came to Mary, and saw what He had done,
believed in Him. 46 But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them the
things which Jesus had done. 47 Therefore the chief priests and the Pharisees
convened a council, and were saying, "What are we doing? For this man is
performing many signs. 48 “If we let Him
go on like this, all men will believe in Him, and the Romans will come and take
away both our place and our nation." 49 But one of them, Caiaphas, who was
high priest that year, said to them, "You know nothing at all, 50 nor do
you take into account that it
is expedient for you that one man die for the people, and that the whole nation not
perish." 51 Now he did not
say this on his own initiative, but being high priest that year, he prophesied
that Jesus was going to die for the nation (John 11:45-51).”
This
miracle is the fourth miracle that is recorded in the book of John and once
again we must remember why John chose to recorded the seven miracles found in
his gospel “30 Therefore many other signs Jesus also performed in the presence
of the disciples, which are not written in this book; 31 but these have been
written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and
that believing you may have life in His name (John 20:30-31).”
John
MacArthur gives the outline we will follow while looking at these fifteen
verses: “The narrative unfolds in four
scenes: the fickle crowd, the faithless
disciples, the fulfilling dinner and the false coronation.”
Answer to yesterday’s Bible question: “Nehemiah.”
Today’s Bible question:
“What god did Ahab and Jezebel worship?”
Answer in our next SD.
3/23/2016 9:07 AM
No comments:
Post a Comment