Wednesday Bible Study: The Walk of John part 5

 

This week, I'm going to be like John, and start out backwards in time- to the time of Solomon.  I have said many times here, that Proverbs seems to me to be structured along a certain line- God the Father is Knowledge, the Spirit as Wisdom, and Jesus as Understanding.  Here I am going to show you the most striking evidence of this.

Pro 9:1  Wisdom has built her house; she has hewn her seven pillars.
Pro 9:2  She has slaughtered her beasts; she has mixed her wine; she has also set her table.
Pro 9:3  She has sent out her young women to call from the highest places in the town,
Pro 9:4  "Whoever is simple, let him turn in here!" To him who lacks understanding she says,
Pro 9:5  "Come, eat of my bread and drink of the wine I have mixed.
Pro 9:6  Leave your simple ways, and live, and walk in the way of insight." 

Now, compare to our passage this week:

 

Joh 6:53  So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
Joh 6:54  Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.
Joh 6:55  For my flesh is true food, and my blood is true drink.
Joh 6:56  Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him.
Joh 6:57  As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so whoever feeds on me, he also will live because of me.
 

If the Jews had taken this passage from Proverbs the way I did, they might have had a different reaction than this:

Joh 6:41  So the Jews grumbled about him, because he said, "I am the bread that came down from heaven."

But He knew they would miss the connection- a connection John didn't miss.  So he had to piece-by-piece this to the masses.  And that's where we start in chapter 6:

Joh 6:1  After this Jesus went away to the other side of the Sea of Galilee, which is the Sea of Tiberias.
Joh 6:2  And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick.
Joh 6:3  Jesus went up on the mountain, and there he sat down with his disciples.
Joh 6:4  Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand.
Joh 6:5  Lifting up his eyes, then, and seeing that a large crowd was coming toward him, Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we to buy bread, so that these people may eat?"
Joh 6:6  He said this to test him, for he himself knew what he would do.
Joh 6:7  Philip answered him, "Two hundred denarii would not buy enough bread for each of them to get a little."
Joh 6:8  One of his disciples, Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said to him,
Joh 6:9  "There is a boy here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are they for so many?"

Note the two responses from the Disciples.  Phillip despaired at the money it would take to even purchase enough food for this army; anyone who, like me, reads enough military history knows the grand scale it takes to feed a large group of people.  Andrew searches their actual resources, and finds them a drop in the ocean of need.  And that was Jesus's point, "For He knew what He would do." He had to first establish that they NEEDED Him for their provision.  Then, He had to establish that He was sufficient for that provision...

Joh 6:12  And when they had eaten their fill, he told his disciples, "Gather up the leftover fragments, that nothing may be lost."
Joh 6:13  So they gathered them up and filled twelve baskets with fragments from the five barley loaves left by those who had eaten.

Following this, John mentions that "the people wanted to make Him king" (v15), and Jesus didn't want them leaping ahead.  So He changed the venue, and the crowd followed Him.  They had known the necessity of bread; they'd learned He was a source of provision.  Now, he had to teach them what they REALLY needed.

Joh 6:25  When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, "Rabbi, when did you come here?"
Joh 6:26  Jesus answered them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, you are seeking me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate your fill of the loaves.
Joh 6:27  Do not labor for the food that perishes, but for the food that endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man will give to you. For on him God the Father has set his seal."

Like the woman at the well, they were still hung on a food that was physical, but now they saw the possibility of a food with spiritual properties. And they only had one reference point for this:

Joh 6:30  So they said to him, "Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you? What work do you perform?
Joh 6:31  Our fathers ate the manna in the wilderness; as it is written, 'He gave them bread from heaven to eat.'"

They were like toddlers, with limited understanding, unable to put two and two together properly.  I mean, they had just ate five barley loaves that expanded into  2/3s of a years wages worth of food; what more of a sign did they need? Well, when you consider this verse I left out...

Joh 6:28  Then they said to him, "What must we do, to be doing the works of God?"
Joh 6:29  Jesus answered them, "This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent."

They 'needed' a sign that took this from physical to spiritual.  They thought they needed a new rain of the Manna that their ancestors ate so long ago.  But Jesus pointed out the flaw in their logic:

Joh 6:49  Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. 

The Manna had been miraculous- but in the end, it was just as physical as the barley loaves.  Jesus wasn't here to 'renew' the physical- He was here to introduce the spiritual.  They had to leave their perceptions of life itself, and look higher.

Joh 6:32  Jesus then said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, it was not Moses who gave you the bread from heaven, but my Father gives you the true bread from heaven.
Joh 6:33  For the bread of God is he who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world."
Joh 6:34  They said to him, "Sir, give us this bread always."
Joh 6:35  Jesus said to them, "I am the bread of life; whoever comes to me shall not hunger, and whoever believes in me shall never thirst.

Again, echoes of the woman at the well.  And again, Jesus points them to Proverbs, to get them to understand it wasn't physical eating and drinking that He meant.  And again, Jesus knew that most of them weren't getting it:

Joh 6:36  But I said to you that you have seen me and yet do not believe. 

Here we shift scenes again, as John after the fact explains that the next part happens at the synagogue in His home base of Capernaum (v 59).  Here, he addresses the cause of the Jewish leaders grumbling against Him- how can He be God, when we know His family from earth?  They simply could not get past the physical world.  So Jesus gave them an example so outrageous, so beyond the pale, that only the touch of the Spirit could get them through the transition:

Joh 6:48  I am the bread of life.
Joh 6:49  Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died.
Joh 6:50  This is the bread that comes down from heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die.
Joh 6:51  I am the living bread that came down from heaven. If anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever. And the bread that I will give for the life of the world is my flesh."
Joh 6:52  The Jews then disputed among themselves, saying, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?"

What I'm getting at is:  Jesus was trying to get through to them that they had to COMPLETELY give up their earth-bound-ness, to make the climb with Him.  It was like He was taking them up a high peak to the top of their understanding, and push them over to the other side, where they would understand Heavenly things- but they couldn't make themselves believe there was an 'other side'!  But without going over, He couldn't help them...

Joh 6:53  So Jesus said to them, "Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of Man and drink his blood, you have no life in you.
Joh 6:54  Whoever feeds on my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day.

This 'peak' has separated believer from unbeliever ever since- from atheists who demand evidence of the 'other side' to scoffers that called Christians cannibals, to Catholics who insist that the Host is 'no longer bread, but His flesh'.  This is where John's walk is so different from the more "ground based" Gospels of his fellows.  He's not afraid to see the esoteric, and try to teach it as Jesus did.

You might ask, "Then why didn't Jesus just make it simpler for them?"  My first answer is, "If they'd read Proverbs 8-9, it WOULD have been simple.  My second answer, it wasn't SUPPOSED to be simple.

Joh 6:60  When many of his disciples heard it, they said, "This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?"
Joh 6:61  But Jesus, knowing in himself that his disciples were grumbling about this, said to them, "Do you take offense at this?
Joh 6:62  Then what if you were to see the Son of Man ascending to where he was before?
Joh 6:63  It is the Spirit who gives life; the flesh is no help at all. The words that I have spoken to you are spirit and life.
Joh 6:64  But there are some of you who do not believe." (For Jesus knew from the beginning who those were who did not believe, and who it was who would betray him.)
Joh 6:65  And he said, "This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father."
Joh 6:66  After this many of his disciples turned back and no longer walked with him.

He needed to separate the ones who truly believed from the ones who just wanted the next miracle. And that was just what He accomplished...

Joh 6:67  So Jesus said to the Twelve, "Do you want to go away as well?"
Joh 6:68  Simon Peter answered him, "Lord, to whom shall we go? You have the words of eternal life,
Joh 6:69  and we have believed, and have come to know, that you are the Holy One of God."

Now, He was free, for a time, from the misguided attempts of the world to Crown Him a worldly king.  But a bigger problem now loomed in Jesus's mind...

Joh 6:70  Jesus answered them, "Did I not choose you, the Twelve? And yet one of you is a devil."
Joh 6:71  He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the Twelve, was going to betray him.