Part 12 – John 6
Where is the food?
Why do we follow Jesus? At the beginning of this chapter we find there are many people following Jesus, by the end of it the number has dwindled. In John 6:2 the passage tells us that a large number followed because Jesus healed the sick. These people got a personal and physical benefit. Now don’t misunderstand me, I believe God can heal and that is the point because Jesus says in this chapter that actually it is God who brings people to him John 6:44. Each one of us needs to believe in the ONE that God sent (John 6:29), not for physical healing alone but for eternal life.
Are we following Jesus just because he fed us with a morsel of bread and a piece of fish? Or are we following for some physical or material gain? Or are we following so that our lives can be transformed into something that God can use for His glory?
Let’s look back to the point where Jesus asks Philip “where can they buy bread for food to feed all these people?” John 6:5. Andrew pipes up, the resourceful Andrew, who just believed that all things were possible, his experience of God was big. Remember he had brought his brother Peter to Jesus with the words “we have found the anointed one, the Christ“. Something had happened in his heart, in his innermost ‘spiritual’ part when he had spent time with this man, Jesus (John 1:39). He had witnessed changed lives and knew that God was with this man Jesus, in fact he recognised that Jesus was God in man not man in God. Andrew says “We have five loaves and two small fish, but what are they among so many?” At least he spoke up and didn’t limit God before he had given Jesus a chance. How many of us do this, limit God? We look at the insignificance of what we have and say it is not enough, it is impossible. Remember Mary in John 2:5 who just said “do whatever he says“, she was not phased by the scale of the problem. Andrew was the same, he was not phased by the scale of this insurmountable task. It’s at that point that Jesus takes over and uses what little we have or what is available and produces something magnificent. Remember it is not what we have that makes us useful to God it is what we don’t have that makes us a resource that God can use for His glory and whereby many can benefit from food that sustains them. But beware, people will follow for what they can get not for what they can give. The true cost of discipleship is recognising that all we have is from God alone and what we bring and what we share is for the benefit of the wider community.
