Compassion for the Crowd
Compassion for the Crowd
People commit a serious blunder when they decide that the Bible is an outdated book about an ancient people who lived in a backward culture, and therefore the Bible has nothing to say to us today. But the reason most people ignore or totally dismiss the Bible isn’t because the cast of characters and the script seem radically different from life today, but because Bible people and modern people are so very much alike! On September 2, 1851, Henry David Thoreau wrote in his journal, “The more we know about the ancients, the more we find that they were like the moderns.” When we read the Bible with a sincere desire to learn, we soon meet ourselves in its pages and see ourselves as we really are, and the experience isn’t always enjoyable.
One Sunday, I was a guest preacher at a church, and after the morning service a gentleman approached me and said, “Who told you about me?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” I replied, “but I don’t even know you. Nobody told me anything about you or anybody else in this church. I’m a stranger here.”
“Well, somebody must have told you something,” he said, then turned and walked off very angrily. He had met himself in the Bible, seen his dirty face in the mirror, and had gone away to try to forget what he looked like (James 1:22–24).
The more you consider the crowd that followed Jesus, the more you discover how much they resemble people today. Crowds are crowds and people are people whether they are fans at a soccer game, teens at a rock concert, or customers at a shopping mall. The people in the crowd Jesus fed on the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee were just like you and me and the people in our “crowd” today.
They were hungry. Hunger is something God has built into the human body to remind us to eat, because without food and water, we will die. But there is a deeper spiritual hunger in the human heart that can never be satisfied with anything other than God Himself and the gifts of grace He shares with us. “Thou hast made us for Thyself,” wrote Augustine, “and our hearts are restless until they rest in Thee.”
How tragic that most people ignore God, the only One who can satisfy their deepest hungers, and spend money on substitutes that don’t last and can never give them joy. “Why spend money on what is not bread and your labor on what does not satisfy?” asked the prophet Isaiah. You can buy sleep but not peace, entertainment but not joy, reputation but not character. “All the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact,” wrote the French philosopher Pascal, “that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber” (Pensees, sect. 2, #139). We can’t get along with others because we can’t get along with ourselves, and we can never get along with ourselves until we are in fellowship with the heavenly Father through faith in Jesus Christ. In this world of noise and crowds, silence and solitude are enemies to human enjoyment and must be avoided. Restless people must get lost in the crowd and keep busy in a multitude of activities in order to escape the demands of life.
They were seekers. During the first year of His ministry, before the official opposition began, Jesus was immensely popular and great crowds followed Him. However, the crowds did not impress Jesus, nor did He cater to them, because He knows what is in the human heart (John 2:25). Anybody can join a crowd and go with the flow, but it takes courage to stand alone for the truth and obey it.
It looked as though that crowd was seeking spiritual enrichment from Jesus, but the Lord knew better. Most of them wanted to see something sensational, like a miracle, while others were concerned about something to eat (John 6:26). A generation later, the Roman satirist Juvenal wrote that the Romans “longed eagerly for just two things—bread and circuses,” but this Jewish crowd was just as bad, and so are many crowds today. The apostle John would have called them “worldly” because they focused on “the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the boastful pride of life” (1 John 2:16 NASB).
Like the crowds today, they asked questions but rejected the Lord’s answers. If you are honestly seeking the truth, asking questions of wise people is a good thing to do; but be sure to ask the right questions and be willing to act upon the answers. Truth is a tool to build with, not a toy to play with. Jesus said, “Anyone who chooses to do the will of God will find out whether my teaching comes from God” (John 7:17).
Their first question was, “Rabbi, when did you get here?” (6:25). After feeding the crowd, Jesus had sent the disciples to Capernaum in the ship while He remained behind to pray. He saw the disciples struggling in the storm, so He walked out on the sea to rescue them. Together they landed at Capernaum, where some of the crowd had already arrived. The crowd knew that Jesus had not gotten into the ship with the disciples when the boat cast off, nor had He walked around the lake to Capernaum with any of the crowd, so no wonder they were perplexed!
Their additional questions further revealed their spiritual ignorance and selfish appetites. “What must we do to do the works God requires?” (6:28). Jesus told them to believe in Him, but instead of believing, they asked for a sign (vv. 30–31). Yes, He had just fed thousands of people, but they wanted a sign from heaven. After all, didn’t Moses bring bread from heaven? Jesus told them that He was the true bread that had come down from heaven, and they immediately disputed His claims (vv. 32–59). People still ask questions and hope the answers will be what they think they already know. They need to pray this prayer by an anonymous believer:
From the cowardice that shrinks from new truths,
From the laziness that is content with half-truths,
From the arrogance that thinks it knows all truth,
O God of truth, deliver us!
They were spiritually blind. They could not grasp what Jesus was talking about. He was simply saying, just as they ate food and it became part of them to sustain physical life, so they must by faith receive Him into their hearts and experience spiritual life, the eternal life that comes only from God. Then they will be satisfied. It’s obvious that Jesus was speaking metaphorically in picture language because He knew it was against the Mosaic law for Jews to eat human flesh or to drink blood (Gen. 9:4; Lev. 3:17; 7:26–27; 17:10–16). But the crowd took His words literally and missed the whole point of His message. As we continue our study, we will discover that this blindness to spiritual truth is one of the important themes of John’s gospel. Like many people today, the crowd thought that salvation was the result of their own good works (John 6:28). They could not understand that it was a gift from God in response to faith (Eph. 2:8–9).
They wanted immediate relief from their troubles at no cost to themselves. Life was difficult, and they were excited to find somebody who could so easily meet their needs. They thought perhaps Jesus was the prophet that Moses promised in Deuteronomy 18:17–18, but then they decided they should make Him king (John 6:14–15). If Jesus were king, He could defeat the Romans and establish the kingdom of Israel again. Like many people today, they had a “commercial attitude” toward Jesus and wanted Him to meet their personal needs, but they didn’t want Him to deal with their sins and change their hearts! Jesus says “I AM” and not “I will be whatever you want Me to be.” One person wants Jesus only as a religious teacher but not as Lord and Savior, while others want Him to give them business success so they can become wealthy. But we must accept Him just as He is, and not receive Him in bits and pieces. If we don’t accept Him as He is, we don’t receive Him at all.
They wanted to “do” something to be saved rather than to believe in the Savior (John 6:27–29). This was an evidence of pride and spiritual ignorance, for every adult Jew should have known from the Scriptures, read faithfully in the synagogues, that nobody is saved by good works. The Mosaic sacrificial system at the temple spoke vividly of the innocent dying for the guilty, and Old Testament chapters like Psalms 32 and 51, as well as Isaiah 53, clearly taught the wonder of God’s grace and the need for sinners to trust Him for salvation. The very fact that God bypassed the other nations and chose the Jews is evidence that salvation is by grace and not by merit.
They didn’t deserve anything, yet in His compassion Jesus fed the crowd, knowing full well they would soon desert Him. “He causes his sun to rise on the evil and the good, and sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous” (Matt. 5:45). Life itself is a gift from God, and so are the means to sustain that life, but most people take all of this for granted. Paul reminded the Greek philosophers in Athens that God “gives everyone life and breath and everything else” (Acts 17:25). The Father sent His Son “to be the Savior of the world” (1 John 4:14), and Jesus alone gives us the bread of life; but if we don’t receive Him within, just as we receive our food, He cannot save us.
Crowds are good at asking questions, but they don’t always take seriously the answers the Lord gives them, nor do they ponder the truths He teaches them. Jesus had already warned the Twelve that, in spite of seeing His miracles and hearing His teaching, the crowds could not be trusted. “Though seeing, they do not see; though hearing, they do not hear or understand” (Matt. 13:13). The crowds wanted an earthly kingdom, but Jesus offered them a heavenly new birth.
Some years ago, as I was meditating on John 6, a little poem resulted:
No problem is too large, when Jesus is in charge.
No gift is too small, if you give Him your all.