SECTION I. THE MIRACLE
John 6:1-15; Matt. 14:13-21; Mark 6:33-34; Luke 9:11-17.
The sixth chapter of John's Gospel is full of
marvels. It tells of a great miracle, a great enthusiasm, a great storm, a
great sermon, a great apostasy, and a great trial of faith and fidelity endured
by the twelve. It contains, indeed, the compendious history of an important
crisis in the ministry of Jesus and the religious experience of His
disciples,--a crisis in many respects foreshadowing the great final one, which
happened little more than a year afterwards,[9.1] when a more famous miracle
still was followed by a greater popularity, to be succeeded in turn by a more
complete desertion, and to end in the crucifixion, by which the riddle of the
Capernaum discourse was solved, and its prophecy fulfilled.[9.2]
The facts recorded by John in this chapter of his
Gospel may all be comprehended under these four heads: the miracle in the
wilderness, the storm on the lake, the sermon in the synagogue, and the
subsequent sifting of Christ's disciples. These, in their order, we propose to
consider in four distinct sections.
The scene of the miracle was on the eastern shore
of the Galilean Sea. Luke fixes the precise locality in the neighborhood of a
city called Bethsaida.[9.3] This, of course, could not be the Bethsaida on the
western shore, the city of Andrew and Peter. But there was, it appears, another
city of the same name at the north-eastern extremity of the lake, called by way
of distinction, Bethsaida Julias.[9.4] The site of this city, we are informed
by an eye-witness, "is discernible on the lower slope of the hill which
overhangs the rich plain at the mouth of the Jordan" (that is, at the place
where the waters of the Upper Jordan join the Sea of Galilee). "The 'desert
place,' " the same author goes on to say, by way of proving the suitableness of
the locality to be the scene of this miracle, "was either the green tableland
which lies halfway up the hill immediately above Bethsaida, or else in the
parts of the plain not cultivated by the hand of man would be found the 'much
green grass,' still fresh in the spring of the year when this event occurred,
before it had faded away in the summer sun: the tall grass which, broken down
by the feet of the thousands then gathered together, would make 'as it were,
'couches' for them to recline upon."[9.5]
To this place Jesus and the twelve had retired
after the return of the latter from their mission, seeking rest and privacy.
But what they sought they did not find. Their movements were observed, and the
people flocked along the shore toward the place whither they had sailed,
running all the way, as if fearful that they might escape, and so arriving at
the landing place before them.[9.6] The multitude which thus gathered around
Jesus was very great. All the evangelists agree in stating it at five thousand;
and as the arrangement of the people at the miraculous repast in groups of
hundreds and fifties[9.7] made it easy to ascertain their number, we may accept
this statement not as a rough estimate, but as a tolerably exact
calculation.
Such an immense assemblage testifies to the
presence of a great excitement among the populations living by the shore of the
Sea of Galilee. A fervid enthusiasm, a hero-worship, whereof Jesus was the
object, was at work in their minds. Jesus was the idol of the hour: they could
not endure his absence; they could not see enough of His work, nor hear enough
of His teaching. This enthusiasm of the Galileans we may regard as the
cumulative result of Christ's own past labors, and in part also of the
evangelistic mission which we considered in the last chapter.[9.8] The
infection seems to have spread as far south as Tiberias, for John relates that
boats came from that city "to the place where they did eat bread."[9.9] Those
who were in these boats came too late to witness the miracle and share in the
feast, but this does not prove that their errand was not the same as that of
the rest; for, owing to their greater distance from the scene, the news would
be longer in reaching them, and it would take them longer to go thither.
The great miracle wrought in the neighborhood of
Bethsaida Julias consisted in the feeding of this vast assemblage of human
beings with the utterly inadequate means of "five barley loaves and two small
fishes."[9.10] It was truly a stupendous transaction, of which we can form no
conception; but no event in the Gospel history is more satisfactorily attested.
All the evangelists relate the miracle with much minuteness, with little even
apparent discrepancy, and with such graphic detail as none but eye-witnesses
could have supplied. Even John, who records so few of Christ's miracles,
describes this one with as careful a hand as any of his brother evangelists,
albeit introducing it into his narrative merely as a preface to the sermon on
the Bread of Life found in his Gospel only.
This wonderful work, so unexceptionably attested,
seems open to exception on another ground. It appears to be a miracle without a
sufficient reason. It cannot be said to have been urgently called for by the
necessities of the multitude. Doubtless they were hungry, and had brought no
victuals with them to supply their bodily wants. But the miracle was wrought on
the afternoon of the day on which they left their homes, and most of them might
have returned within a few hours. It would, indeed, have been somewhat hard to
have undertaken such a journey at the end of the day without food; but the
hardship, even if necessary, was far within the limits of human endurance. But
it was not necessary; for food could have been got on the way without going
far, in the neighboring towns and villages, so that to disperse them as they
were would have involved no considerable inconvenience. This is evident from
the terms in which the disciples made the suggestion that the multitude should
be sent away. We read: "When the day began to wear away, then came the twelve,
and said unto Him, Send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages
and country round about, and lodge and get victuals."[9.11] In these respects
there is an obvious difference between the first miraculous feeding and the
second, which occurred at a somewhat later period at the south-eastern
extremity of the Lake. On that occasion the people who had assembled around
Jesus had been three days in the wilderness without aught to eat, and there
were no facilities for procuring food, so that the miracle was demanded by
considerations of humanity.[9.12] Accordingly we find that compassion is
assigned as the motive for that miracle: "Jesus called His disciples unto Him,
and saith unto them, I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now
been with me three days, and have nothing to eat; and if I send them away
fasting to their own houses, they will faint by the way; for some of them are
come from far."[9.1]
If our object were merely to get rid of the
difficulty of assigning a sufficient motive for the first great miracle of
feeding, we might content ourselves with saying that Jesus did not need any
very urgent occasion to induce Him to use His power for the benefit of others.
For His own benefit He would not use it in case even of extreme need, not even
after a fast of forty days. But when the well-being (not to say the being) of
others was concerned, He dispensed miraculous blessings with a liberal hand. He
did not ask Himself: Is this a grave enough occasion for the use of divine
power? Is this man ill enough to justify a miraculous interference with the
laws of nature by healing him? Are these people here assembled hungry enough to
be fed, like their fathers in the wilderness, with bread from heaven? But we do
not insist on this, because we believe that something else and higher was aimed
at in this miracle than to satisfy physical appetite. It was a symbolic,
didactic, critical miracle. It was meant to teach, and also to test; to supply
a text for the subsequent sermon, and a touchstone to try the character of
those who had followed Jesus with such enthusiasm. The miraculous feast in the
wilderness was meant to say to the multitude just what our sacramental feast
says to us: "I, Jesus the Son of God Incarnate, am the bread of life. What this
bread is to your bodies, I myself am to your souls." And the communicants in
that feast were to be tested by the way in which they regarded the transaction.
The spiritual would see in it a sign of Christ's divine dignity, and a seal of
His saving grace; the carnal would rest simply in the outward fact that they
had eaten of the loaves and were filled, and would take occasion from what had
happened to indulge in high hopes of temporal felicity under the benign reign
of the Prophet and King who had made His appearance among them.
The miracle in the desert was in this view not
merely an act of mercy, but an act of judgment. Jesus mercifully fed the hungry
multitude in order that He might sift it, and separate the true from the
spurious disciples. There was a much more urgent demand for such a sifting than
for food to satisfy merely physical cravings. If those thousands were all
genuine disciples, it was well; but if not--if the greater number were
following Christ under misapprehension--the sooner that became apparent the
better. To allow so large a mixed multitude to follow Himself any longer
without sifting would have been on Christ's part to encourage false hopes, and
to give rise to serious misapprehensions as to the nature of His kingdom and
His earthly mission. And no better method of separating the chaff from the
wheat in that large company of professed disciples could have been devised,
than first to work a miracle which would bring to the surface the latent
carnality of the greater number, and then to preach a sermon which could not
fail to be offensive to the carnal mind.
That Jesus freely chose, for a reason of His own,
the miraculous method of meeting the difficulty that had arisen, appears to be
not obscurely hinted at in the Gospel narratives. Consider, for example, in
this connection, John's note of time, "The passover, a feast of the Jews, was
nigh." Is this a merely chronological statement? We think not. What further
purpose, then, is it intended to serve? To explain how so great a crowd came to
be gathered around Jesus?--Such an explanation was not required, for the true
cause of the great gathering was the enthusiasm which had been awakened among
the people by the preaching and healing work of Jesus and the twelve. The
evangelist refers to the approaching passover, it would seem, not to explain
the movement of the people, but rather to explain the acts and words of His
Lord about to be related. "The passover was nigh, and"--so may we bring out
John's meaning--"Jesus was thinking of it, though He went not up to the feast
that season. He thought of the paschal lamb, and how He, the true Paschal Lamb,
would ere long be slain for the life of the world; and He gave expression to
the deep thoughts of His heart in the symbolic miracle I am about to relate,
and in the mystic discourse which followed."[9.14]
The view we advocate respecting the motive of the
miracle in the wilderness seems borne out also by the tone adopted by Jesus in
the conversation which took place between Himself and the twelve as to how the
wants of the multitude might be supplied. In the course of that conversation,
of which fragments have been preserved by the different evangelists, two
suggestions were made by the disciples. One was to dismiss the multitude that
they might procure supplies for themselves; the other, that they (the
disciples) should go to the nearest town (say Bethsaida Julias, probably not
far off) and purchase as much bread as they could get for two hundred denarii,
which would suffice to alleviate hunger at least, if not to satisfy
appetite.[9.15] Both these proposals were feasible, otherwise they would not
have been made; for the twelve had not spoken thoughtlessly, but after
consideration, as appears from the fact that one of their number, Andrew, had
already ascertained how much provision could be got on the spot. The question
how the multitude could be provided for had evidently been exercising the minds
of the disciples, and the two proposals were the result of their deliberations.
Now, what we wish to point out is, that Jesus does not appear to have given any
serious heed to these proposals. He listened to them, not displeased to see the
generous concern of His disciples for the hungry people, yet with the air of
one who meant from the first to pursue a different line of action from any they
might suggest. He behaved like a general in a council of war whose own mind is
made up, but who is not unwilling to hear what his subordinates will say. This
is no mere inference of ours, for John actually explains that such was the
manner in which our Lord acted on the occasion. After relating that Jesus
addressed to Philip the question, Whence shall we buy bread, that these may
eat? he adds the parenthetical remark, "This He said to prove him, for He
Himself knew what He would do."[9.16]
Such, then, was the design of the miracle; what
now was its result? It raised the swelling tide of enthusiasm to its full
height, and induced the multitude to form a foolish and dangerous purpose--even
to crown the wonder--working Jesus, and make Him their king instead of the
licentious despot Herod. They said, "This is of a truth that Prophet that
should come into the world;" and they were on the point of coming and taking
Jesus by force to make Him a king, insomuch that it was necessary that He
should make His escape from them, and depart into a mountain Himself
alone.[9.17] Such are the express statements of the fourth Gospel, and what is
there stated is obscurely implied in the narratives of Matthew and Mark. They
tell how, after the miracle in the desert, Jesus straightway constrained His
disciples to get into a ship and to go to the other side.[9.18] Why such haste,
and why such urgency? Doubtless it was late, and there was no time to lose if
they wished to get home to Capernaum that night. But why go home at all, when
the people, or at least a part of them, were to pass the night in the
wilderness? Should the disciples not rather have remained with them, to keep
them in heart and take a charge of them? Nay, was it dutiful in disciples to
leave their Master alone in such a situation? Doubtless the reluctance of the
twelve to depart sprang from their asking themselves these very questions; and,
as a feeling having such an origin was most becoming, the constraint put on
them presupposes the existence of unusual circumstances, such as those recorded
by John. In other words, the most natural explanation of the fact recorded by
the synoptical evangelists is, that Jesus wished to extricate both Himself and
His disciples from the foolish enthusiasm of the multitude, an enthusiasm with
which, beyond question, the disciples were only too much in sympathy, and for
that purpose arranged that they should sail away in the dusk across the lake,
while He retired into the solitude of the mountains.[9.19]
What a melancholy result of a hopeful movement
have we here! The kingdom has been proclaimed, and the good news has been
extensively welcomed. Jesus, the Messianic King, is become the object of most
ardent devotion to an enthusiastic population. But, alas! their ideas of the
kingdom are radically mistaken. Acted out, they would mean rebellion and
ultimate ruin. Therefore it is necessary that Jesus should save Himself from
His own friends, and hide Himself from His own followers. How certainly do
Satan's tares get sown among God's wheat! How easily does enthusiasm run into
folly and mischief!
The result of the miracle did not take Jesus by
surprise. It was what He expected; nay, in a sense, it was what He aimed at. It
was time that the thoughts of many hearts should be revealed; and the certainty
that the miracle would help to reveal them was one reason at least for its
being worked. Jesus furnished for the people a table in the wilderness, and
gave them of the corn of heaven, and sent them meat to the full,[9.20] that He
might prove them, and know what was in their heart,[9.21--whether they loved
Him for His own sake, or only for the sake of expected worldly advantage. That
many followed Him from by-ends He knew beforehand, but He desired to bring the
fact home to their own consciences. The miracle put that in His power, and
enabled Him to say, without fear of contradiction, "Ye seek me, not because ye
saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves and were filled."[9.22]
It was a searching word, which might well put all His professed followers, not
only then, but now, on self-examining thoughts, and lead each man to ask
himself, Why do I profess Christianity? is it from sincere faith in Jesus
Christ as the Son of God and Saviour of the world, or from thoughtless
compliance with custom, from a regard to reputation, or from considerations of
worldly advantage?
This document (last modifiedSeptember 17, 1997) from Believerscafe.com
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