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by Sandy Shaw
We come to John Chapter 6 and verse 25. We have been reading in detail, and I hope studying, that passage about Jesus Christ feeding the 5,000, and then of how Jesus slipped away when He realised that the crowd wanted to make Him king, for the wrong reasons. And, that night, when His disciples were in real trouble in the middle of the Lake of Galilee, Jesus Christ goes to them walking on the water, to rescue them and to see them safely on the shore.
It is now morning, and back where Jesus had fed the 5,000 there are people looking for Jesus, and He is nowhere to be seen. They are baffled. They are ferried over to Capernaum, and when they find Jesus they ask, “Rabbi, when did you get here? How did you get across?”
Jesus does not say “I walked it”. They would not have believed it even if He would have been speaking the truth. But Jesus does say, “You are looking for me, not because you saw the miraculous signs, but because you were filled.”
Are you only interested in a free breakfast? Have you only come to me because of what you can get? These verses are full of question and answer – the questions of the people and the answers of Jesus. The questions we ask reveal a lot about us. A man reveals much by the questions he asks and the comments he may make.
Jesus goes on to say, “Do not work for food that spoils, but for food that endures to eternal life, which the son of Man will give you.”
This fisherman, John, is writing deep truth here. Ordinary food perishes, but God’s food does not perish. Get food that lasts for ever.
It is not what goes into my mouth that gives life. It is what comes out of God’s mouth that gives life. Jesus is saying, I can give you this free, but they are not all that very interested.
Do you want a free breakfast? YES. A free holiday? YES. A free outing? A free trip? A free treat? YES. But free forgiveness and pardon and salvation? NO!
It is all there throughout the four Gospels.
They wanted to do things. They wanted to do the works of God, and Jesus has to explain – verse 29 – this is the work God wants you to do, “Believe in Me!”
This is God’s number one priority. What is it? It is to get people to believe in Jesus. How many know that? Do the people around you, wherever you are, really know this?
Alexander 'Sandy' Shaw is pastor of Nairn Christian Fellowship in Nairn, Scotland. Nairn is 17 miles east of Inverness - on the Moray Firth Coast - not far from the Loch Ness Monster!
Gifted as a Biblical teacher, Sandy is firmly committed to making sure that his teachings are firmly grounded in the Word.
Sandy has a weekly radio talk which can be heard via the Internet on Saturday at 11:40am, New Orleans time, at wsho.com.
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