The Word This Week
John 6:1…
We remind ourselves John’s Gospel, written near the end of the first century, is mostly supplementary to the three synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
John was intent on revealing Jesus to be the Son of God through seven miracles not found in the other Gospels – aside from what we read here in John 6.
The feeding of the 5000, (the fourth of the seven miracles John records for us,) is contained in all four of the Gospels. This is perhaps evidence The Father’s intent in His Word is to emphasize this miracle above all others.
It is certainly evidence of Jesus’ creation power.
Sometimes we become so familiar with a Bible story it ceases to have the impact it once did, and the impact God desires it to have in our lives. While we acknowledge this can be the case, the emphasis God places upon this miracle in particular reveals to us God would not desire it to be this way.
Be amazed. That is the point.
It may seem as if raising the dead would be the miracle(s) God would place the primary focus upon, but again, of all the miracles Jesus performed – feeding the 5000 is the ONLY miracle memorialized by all four Gospel authors.
We know this story so well. But evidently God desires us to be confronted by THIS miraculous creation power of Jesus on full display over and over and over and over again. Once more we are challenged to watch Jesus feed this massive crowd of thousands from a little boy’s lunch of five loaves of bread and two fish. (Only the men were counted, and they numbered 5000. We can know women and children were also present, so the total crowd had to have been more than 5000. Perhaps thousands more.)
Following this amazing miracle - and we can only imagine how in awe of Jesus His disciples were after they saw the massive crowd fed – and been given the honor of actually distributing the bread and fish to the people - the disciples were also charged with something also uniquely noted for us to pay special attention to: that they would collect the fragments left over from the people who were completely filled.
This becomes a mysterious result of this miracle God also wants to draw to our attention to. Why do you think that is?
Pastor Bill
We remind ourselves John’s Gospel, written near the end of the first century, is mostly supplementary to the three synoptic Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke.
John was intent on revealing Jesus to be the Son of God through seven miracles not found in the other Gospels – aside from what we read here in John 6.
The feeding of the 5000, (the fourth of the seven miracles John records for us,) is contained in all four of the Gospels. This is perhaps evidence The Father’s intent in His Word is to emphasize this miracle above all others.
It is certainly evidence of Jesus’ creation power.
Sometimes we become so familiar with a Bible story it ceases to have the impact it once did, and the impact God desires it to have in our lives. While we acknowledge this can be the case, the emphasis God places upon this miracle in particular reveals to us God would not desire it to be this way.
Be amazed. That is the point.
It may seem as if raising the dead would be the miracle(s) God would place the primary focus upon, but again, of all the miracles Jesus performed – feeding the 5000 is the ONLY miracle memorialized by all four Gospel authors.
We know this story so well. But evidently God desires us to be confronted by THIS miraculous creation power of Jesus on full display over and over and over and over again. Once more we are challenged to watch Jesus feed this massive crowd of thousands from a little boy’s lunch of five loaves of bread and two fish. (Only the men were counted, and they numbered 5000. We can know women and children were also present, so the total crowd had to have been more than 5000. Perhaps thousands more.)
Following this amazing miracle - and we can only imagine how in awe of Jesus His disciples were after they saw the massive crowd fed – and been given the honor of actually distributing the bread and fish to the people - the disciples were also charged with something also uniquely noted for us to pay special attention to: that they would collect the fragments left over from the people who were completely filled.
This becomes a mysterious result of this miracle God also wants to draw to our attention to. Why do you think that is?
Pastor Bill