Shrinking the Crowds, Jesus Style: John 6:1-21

I have taught Evangelism and Church Growth for decades. Let’s do whatever it takes to growth the church…God doesn’t want anyone, ANYone to suffer eternally.

So, in light of my teaching career, it is interesting that in chapter 6 everything is wonderful and hilarious and crowded and, at the beginning of chapter 6 but at the end of it the crowds have left and it is just Jesus and His twelve. And it almost seems as if this is by Jesus’ design.

What happened?

Jesus performed miracles, to be sure. But that was not His movement’s foundation. He was.

  • First miracle seen in this chapter – large crowds are following Him because of miracles performed on the sick.
  • Second miracle – the feeding of the 5,000
  • Third miracle – Jesus is out walking on the water.

Significance of each?

Healing of the sick

2 And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick.

When Jesus healed it significant that a Kingdom of a different sort was breaking in. This would be fully realized in the end times, of course, where there would be no more brokenness, pain, or death. Along the way in Jesus’ ministry He leaves some deposits to remind us of the absolute fullness to come. Deposits of the coming utter reversal of the Fall.

The healings also showcase what Jesus is doing to fulfill the expectations of the Messiah. In Isiah 35, for instance, it talks of the blind getting their sight, the deaf getting attuned ears and the crippled with a spring in their step when Messiah shows up. And…here He is.

This shows Jesus, further, as Lord over all creation and the things that have broken His creation since the Fall. Jesus is bigger than the damage caused by our sin. Christianity and healing, while not synonymous, are closely related.

Recent research has shown a reduced health risk for regular church attenders versus never-attenders:

29% reduced risk of depression

33% reduced risk of death

33% reduced risk of adolescent illegal drug use

50% reduced risk of divorce

84% reduced risk of suicide

The data is clear: Going to church remains central to true human flourishing. (And…church is a body of ongoing healing…the company of regular healing). Source: Tyler Vonderweele And Brendan Case, The Public Health Crisis No One Is Talking About,* CT Magazine (November, 2021), p. 36-42. Some might say that Jesus doesn’t really heal that much anymore. Au contraire! Just being around the Body of Christ is healing, apparently. God is healing, right now!

As the church moved across the Roman Empire this became clear to those looking for hope. At the end of the second century, Tertullian wrote that while pagan temples spent their donations “on feasts and drinking bouts,” Christians spent theirs “to support and bury poor people, to supply the wants of boys and girls destitute of means and parents, and of old persons confined to the house.” Healing societies use their resources to love the poor.

Similarly, in a letter to the bishop of Antioch in 251, the bishop of Rome mentioned that “more than 1,500 widows and distressed persons” were in the care of his congregation. This charity was confirmed by pagan observers, too. “The impious Galileans support not only their poor,” noted the emperor Julian, “but ours as well.” Healing societies have a special place in their collective heart for the distressed.

When two great plagues swept the empire in 165 and 251, mortality rates climbed higher than 30 percent. Pagans tried to avoid all contact with the afflicted, often casting the still living into the gutters. Christians nursed the sick, even though some believers died doing so. We now know that elementary nursing-simply giving victims food and water without any drugs— reduces mortality in epidemics by as much as two-thirds. Consequently, Christians were more likely than pagans to recover. Healing societies run to the sound of the pain.

Women greatly outnumbered men among early converts. However, in the empire men vastly outnumbered women because of female infanticide. There were an estimated 131 men for every 100 women in Rome. The disparity was greater still among the elite. “If you are delivered of a child,” wrote a man named Hilarion to his pregnant wife, “if it is a boy, keep it, if it is a girl, discard it.” Frequent abortions “entailing great risk” (in the words of Celsus) killed many women and left even more barren. Healing societies love the unborn.

Feeding the 5,000

4 Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. 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?”

In Exodus 16 manna miraculously falls out of the sky and feeds Israel. Here, some scholars suggest that John shows Jesus as the new Moses providing miraculously for His people.

Further, the passage notes the Passover…bread and the Passover are intimately intertwined.

Jesus provides a miracle to show who provides Bread for us to eat. Later in the chapter, Jesus says He is the “bread of life” and eating Him regularly is not just a fun miracle on the side of the hill but a spiritual necessity.

The other thing that may be important for us to realize…there is so much need here (thousands of people) and so little to feed them with. From meager resources Jesus provides.

He is still doing that kind of thing today and a thousand different ways.

Walking on Water

19 When they had rowed about three or four miles, they saw Jesus walking on the sea and coming near the boat, and they were frightened. 20 But he said to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.” 21 Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.

A couple of really fascinating things here:

  • The Jews were a bit superstitious about water thinking it dangerous and a bit chaotic going all the way back to Genesis 1:2. Jesus is not outdone by our superstitions or our chaos.
  • In vs. 20 Jesus says “It is I” – the famous Greek words in the NT for this is “ego eimi.” Literally translated “I am.” Remember Moses at the burning bush? Jesus is saying – “Yep – I am Him. I am God…the God of the burning bush is the God of my sovereignty over these waters.

Anybody here in “deep water” today? Anybody here need a God that can speak into that chaos?