John 6:15–25

“Perceiving then that they were about to come and take him by force to make him king, Jesus withdrew again to the mountain by himself. When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing. 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. But he said to them, ‘It is I; do not be afraid.’ Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going. On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’”

1. Worldly Chaos Leads to Destruction

John 4:22–26,

“‘You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.’ The woman said to him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.’ Jesus said to her, ‘I who speak to you am he.’”

Isaiah 11 speaks of things that will come to pass with the coming Savior of Israel, and the prosperity He will bring for the people of God. It’s important to remember that while God pours out blessings on His children, He does so on His own terms, by His wisdom, love and mercy and not impulsively in response to our desires. Our victory, and the victory of all His people throughout time is not in enemies conquered, lands taken, or battles won – it’s in Him. He is our rock and our salvation. He is our teacher, healer and strong tower. It is by His hand that we are fed and under His wings that we are protected. Worldly blessings are blessings all the same, but it’s crucial that we never miss the significance that all blessings flow from God. This is a significant quality shown by the Samaritan woman at the well in John 4. The majority of the known world, and certainly the region in which Jesus lived during His ministry, was under Roman authority. For many believers, this meant that the coming Messiah would overthrow the Roman empire, extend the dominance of God’s people and create a permanent earthly kingdom of Israel. But what the woman expresses to Jesus, the hope she has for the coming Christ, is exactly what Jesus delivered – the Truth. In the aftermath of Jesus feeding the 5,000, and of the excess food being collected the crowd proclaims, “This is indeed the Prophet who is to come into the world!” They may not grasp that He’s the literal Son of God, but there’s an acknowledgement of His singularly powerful position. If we look back to Deuteronomy 18:18-19, we see what God says through Moses concerning the coming Prophet,

“I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him.”

Throughout the Old Testament, prophets of God speak with authority that is not their own, relaying what God has said through them. There’s particular emphasis here on adherence to the words of the Prophet who will come like Moses. The words and teaching of Jesus don’t say anything about conquest or political domination. Instead, they direct focus toward God and seeking His kingdom in the Spirit, not becoming bogged down in pursuing worldly things. But the crowd shows themselves largely deaf to the truth of who Jesus is and what He stands for. In the miraculous multiplication they see a greater measure of His physical power than they’ve witnessed so far, and their first inclination is to take Him by force and make Him king. This would mean at the very least displacing Herod, a tetrarch set in place by Rome, a move which would constitute open insurrection. We see that Jesus’s response to this move by those who would call themselves His supporters, is the same as when the religious leaders move to kill Him – He simply slips away and withdraws Himself from the situation. Jesus has no confusion or misgivings about His mission from the Father. His ministry, His death, and His resurrection are all perfectly planned and there is no one; enemy or presumed ally, who will alter this course. The world, both then and now, wants to take Christ and twist Him into a figure that suits their aims. But this doesn’t affect the Truth that Jesus embodies, the supremacy of God’s plans, or the fact that the world that Christ has overcome has no sway on the reality of who and what He is as the only Son of the Living God.

“When evening came, his disciples went down to the sea, got into a boat, and started across the sea to Capernaum. It was now dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them. The sea became rough because a strong wind was blowing.”

A question that may come up in reading this passage is, why did the disciples leave without Jesus? It can seem a little odd – they all rode there together, but now it’s getting late, and Jesus hasn’t turned up, so His ride leaves without Him? Where Matthew and Mark record the aftermath of the feeding of the 5,000, they both say, “Immediately he made his disciples get into the boat and go before him to the other side…” But in this the same question can be asked, why was it necessary for them to leave and why did Jesus send them on rather than having them wait for Him? In researching this, the answer is actually provided by the preceding verse – they would have been encouraged to leave because of the state of the crowd. It can be lost on us, what “take him by force to make him king” really means and what implications this would have. I mentioned before that the aim of the crowd would constitute an open rebellion against the government of the Roman Empire. The penalty for rebellion against the empire was death, typically by crucifixion. It was rebellion of this sort that led to the siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD, which ended with the destruction of the city, including the temple, which Jesus predicted to His disciples. Jesus did not come to lead and earthly revolution, but a spiritual one. While His disciples may have anticipated an earthly kingdom, it certainly wasn’t something they were seeking without Jesus leading the way. So rather than hang around with a crowd that is seeking to put their Lord and Teacher at the head of a rebellion and risk being swept up and painted as insurrectionists, it makes sense that they got in their boat and headed out to sea.

“On the next day the crowd that remained on the other side of the sea saw that there had been only one boat there, and that Jesus had not entered the boat with his disciples, but that his disciples had gone away alone. Other boats from Tiberias came near the place where they had eaten the bread after the Lord had given thanks. So when the crowd saw that Jesus was not there, nor his disciples, they themselves got into the boats and went to Capernaum, seeking Jesus. When they found him on the other side of the sea, they said to him, ‘Rabbi, when did you come here?’”

I know, I’m taking things a little out of order here, but the way the text ties together I think this makes sense. While the middle of the section addresses the miracle of Jesus walking on water, the beginning, where we see a crowd clamoring for rebellion and the end where members of the same group are still pursuing Jesus fit with one another. Matthew and Mark’s gospels show that Jesus dismissed the crowd. However given their riotous nature, it makes sense that His method of dispersing them was simply to withdraw Himself to a place of solitude to pray, rather than stand before them and tell them all to go home. Given that He was their revolutionary rallying point, it makes sense that Him stepping away would take the wind out of their sails. But what we see is that not all of them lost interest once Jesus withdrew and ultimately crossed the Sea. Some of the crowd remain searching for Him, and failing to find Him, head for Capernaum which had become a sort of base for His Galilean ministry. Their question, “Rabbi, when did you come here?” reminds me of John 1:38. John the Baptist sees Jesus and cries out, “Behold, the Lamb of God!” Two of his disciples (Andrew and presumably John the Apostle), hear him and follow Jesus.

“Jesus turned and saw them following and said to them, ‘What are you seeking?’ And they said to him, ‘Rabbi’ (which means Teacher), ‘where are you staying?’”

Just as the two men followed Jesus for more than to ask Him where He was staying, so this remnant of the 5,000 who were fed from the multiplied bread and fish seek more from Jesus than just to know when and how He arrived in Capernaum. Next week’s section dives into exactly what they’re after, but in this case, just as with John the Baptist’s disciples, Jesus knows what is being sought, and delivers the proper response. Andrew and John followed Him with wonder and hope after hearing the Baptizer’s declaration, but the men who followed Jesus to Capernaum are seeking the same thing they were the day prior: insurrection and rebellion, dominion and power. They seek the destruction that comes from the chaos of the world, without truly knowing what they’re after.

• Divine Order Conquers Chaos

“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. But he said to them, ‘It is I; do not be afraid.’”

The voyage from Bethsaida to Capernaum was supposed to be a relatively short one, no more than a few miles. But with the wind against them, hours after they set out, the disciples are still fighting their way across the northern rim of the Sea of Galilee. Matthew and Mark’s accounts tell us that it was during the fourth watch, between 3:00 and 6:00 in the morning when Jesus drew alongside them. Jesus literally walking on water is an earthshattering miracle, but what this represents is even greater. Dr. Michael Heiser has some incredibly interesting commentary on the Old Testament. Some of it can seem outlandish, some makes a tremendous amount of sense, but all of his teachings that I’ve run across give full validity to the position and authority of God. In one of his lectures, he references Psalm 74:12-17,

“Yet God my King is from of old, working salvation in the midst of the earth. You divided the sea by your might; you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness. You split open springs and brooks; you dried up ever-flowing streams. Yours is the day, yours also the night; you have established the heavenly lights and the sun. You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth; you have made summer and winter.”

According to Dr. Heiser, something Old Testament writers would sometimes do is take the myths and stories that pagans told about their idols, remove the idol and insert God. This seems like a risky practice, that if done with the wrong subject or in the wrong spirit could easily become blasphemous. However the goal was to deliver a slap in the face to the idolators, calling out the object of their worship as false and taking any glory that was intended for them and giving it to God. This seems to fit with this section of Psalm 74, as “Yours is the day, yours also the night; you have established the heavenly lights and the sun. You have fixed all the boundaries of the earth; you have made summer and winter” calls back to Genesis 1:3-5,

“And God said, ‘Let there be light,’ and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. And God separated the light from the darkness. God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And there was evening and there was morning, the first day.”

As well as Genesis 1:9-10,

“And God said, ‘Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear.’ And it was so. God called the dry land Earth, and the waters that were gathered together he called Seas. And God saw that it was good.”

And Genesis 1:14–15,

“And God said, ‘Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night. And let them be for signs and for seasons, and for days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light upon the earth.’ And it was so.”

Psalm 74 takes us back to the beginning, the power of God shown in the creation story, seeing God make the day and night, the land that makes up the earth itself and the seasons and their markers. “You divided the sea by your might,” also calls back to Genesis. But what we don’t see in the creation account is anything pertaining to, “you broke the heads of the sea monsters on the waters. You crushed the heads of Leviathan; you gave him as food for the creatures of the wilderness.” According to Dr. Heiser, this is a story that was first attributed to the Mesopotamian god, Marduk and then later, works that Baal’s followers attributed to him. According to their worshipers, these pagan gods fought and slew these chaotic monsters at the beginning of time, and then made the world from the remnants of the monsters. What we see asserted in the Psalm is that any victory belongs to God, and that in some matchup between the Ancient of Days and an imagined sea dragon that’s more destructive and more terrifying than we can wrap our minds around, God wins – and it’s not even a fight. He breaks and crushes their heads. He doesn’t use their bodies to build the world, He speaks existence into being, and leaves the dead monsters out as food for wild animals. There is no contest, there is no question, there is no victory of past, present, or future that belongs to any other deity than the one Living God, because there are no other deities than the one Living God. He is Alpha and Omega, Beginning and End, First and Last, and there is no glory, no praise to be spared or spent on false idols or demonic practices, because God is worthy of it all. All of Job 41 holds a parallel here as well, as God, speaking out from a whirlwind, asserts His authority and answers the questions of His servant Job. In Job 41:1–4 God says,

“Can you draw out Leviathan with a fishhook or press down his tongue with a cord? Can you put a rope in his nose or pierce his jaw with a hook? Will he make many pleas to you? Will he speak to you soft words? Will he make a covenant with you to take him for your servant forever?”

This could be metaphorical, but I don’t take that for granted. Genesis 1 tells us nothing of sea monsters, so treating their presence in the creation reference in Psalm 74 as symbolic seems appropriate. But while what God says here to Job could be metaphorical, everything He has said in Job 38 and 39 is extremely literal, so I don’t assume that this is. Regardless, what we see is, God in His own words, asserting His position of supreme control over something that is so vast and so chaotic that nothing in the scope of mankind could stand against it – and God does so effortlessly. Psalm 74, pagan gods, the creation account, sea monsters – what does all this have to do with John 6, and Jesus walking across the Sea of Galilee to join His struggling disciples? Because this screams to the divine authority of Jesus, as John has done from the start of his gospel. What hope does a man have against the windswept waves of a vast body of water? What hope does a man have against a chaotic and terrible sea monster? What hope do any of us have in facing the sin and destruction and chaos that we live under in a fallen world? Jesus is fully man, but He is also fully God. He walks across the heaving Sea and Like His Father, He crushes the heads of Leviathans. The sin of the world cannot overcome Him, because He has overcome the world. He stands above the chaos that baffles and confounds mankind and He conquers it entirely.

• Divine Order Delivers Victory

“Then they were glad to take him into the boat, and immediately the boat was at the land to which they were going.”

The culture of the world doesn’t have much to offer in the way of victory. In fact, the only things the world is capable of offering in and of itself are foolishness and slavery. The foolishness to think we know better, to think ourselves wise and the slavery we fall under in sin when we turn our devotion and worship to things other than God. Jesus lived perfectly, enduring temptation, but never succumbing. Fully God and fully man, He displays intimate knowledge of the struggles and stumblings of mankind, while having the divine wisdom and fortitude to rise above any and all worldly pitfalls. In John 16:33 Jesus tells His disciples,

“I have said these things to you, that in me you may have peace. In the world you will have tribulation. But take heart; I have overcome the world.”

What we see happen on the tossing Sea of Galilee helps us to see this. The disciples are struggling fruitlessly, fighting against the wind and waves. At first the figure walking across the water terrifies them, with Matthew and Mark’s accounts telling us that they thought they were seeing a ghost. After Jesus identifies Himself, they are relieved and filled with joy, and we see that once He enters the boat they are immediately delivered, arriving at their destination. But if we look to Matthew’s gospel, we see an even more extreme depiction of the hope of deliverance we have in Christ and the despair we face without Him.

Matthew 14:28–33,

“And Peter answered him, ‘Lord, if it is you, command me to come to you on the water.’ He said, ‘Come.’ So Peter got out of the boat and walked on the water and came to Jesus. But when he saw the wind, he was afraid, and beginning to sink he cried out, ‘Lord, save me.’ Jesus immediately reached out his hand and took hold of him, saying to him, ‘O you of little faith, why did you doubt?’ And when they got into the boat, the wind ceased. And those in the boat worshiped him, saying, ‘Truly you are the Son of God.’”

The more I’ve studied my Bible, the more I’ve liked Peter. It would be easy to come down hard on him – he can come off a little headstrong sometimes, he’s rebuked by Jesus for being worldly minded and trying to chastise His Lord for speaking of His coming death and resurrection. He cuts off ear of the high priest’s servant, he famously denies Jesus three times, and he was outrun by John as they raced to the empty tomb. He also was one of the three disciples who made up Jesus’s innermost circle. He was allowed to bear witness to Jesus raising a little girl from the dead and the transfiguration. He was used by God as one of the chief apostles in the building of the early church, and according to tradition, upon his death, he requested to be crucified upside down, stating that he was not worthy to be executed in the same manner as his Lord. He was human, flawed and imperfect. I’ve come to find him relatable in many of his shortcomings and admirable in his love and devotion to God, both sides of which are displayed in Matthew 14. Questioning, discerning, possibly doubting what he was seeing in Jesus standing on the waves, Peter asks for confirmation. Depending on the translation, the word may be “command,” or “order” that Peter asks of Jesus, acknowledging that it is only by the hand of the divine that he could be called out onto the waves. Jesus could have just walked over and gotten in the boat, but instead He gives His disciple the proof he’s requested. By the hand of God Peter is blessed to exit the boat and walk to His Master on the rolling waves. In Christ, he is raised above, lifted to being victorious over the chaos that beset him moments before. But then something happens – Peter enters into the war that each of us wages on a daily basis, and the conflict takes it’s toll. He is sustained through Jesus, but as his attention turns to the chaos that surrounds them, he seems to remember the vulnerability of his flesh, and is afraid. With his aim compromised, he begins to sink. To Peter’s credit, he doesn’t turn and try to make it back to the boat. He does the only thing that makes sense, knowing that the waves and death are going to swallow him, “he cried out, ‘Lord, save me.’” Psalm 34:15–18 says,

“The eyes of the LORD are toward the righteous and his ears toward their cry. The face of the LORD is against those who do evil, to cut off the memory of them from the earth. When the righteous cry for help, the LORD hears and delivers them out of all their troubles. The LORD is near to the brokenhearted and saves the crushed in spirit.”

In the face of the chaos of the world, Peter has had his faith shaken. But Jesus doesn’t let him perish for this weakness, He doesn’t allow him to sink for a minute to teach him a lesson or get a point across, but immediately reaches out and secures his struggling disciple. A rebuke is given, but it’s not sharp, with Jesus gently and seemingly rhetorically chiding Peter over his lack of faith and asking why he doubted. Once back in the boat, the wind stops, and the rest of the disciples are delivered from the chaos as well. We see that their response was to worship Jesus and acknowledge Him as the Son of God, but if we look at Mark 6:51-52, we also see that,

“… they were utterly astounded, for they did not understand about the loaves, but their hearts were hardened.”

In Christ is peace, wisdom, eternal life and victory over the world. He’s right in front of us, and He’s the obvious choice. His divine order is the only thing that will prevail over the chaos of the world – but will we reach for Him? Will we acknowledge and accept Him for who and what He is, or will be blinded by our hardness of heart? Will we try to bring Christ down to a worldly level, remain blind to His truth, and sink?

Pastor Christ’s sermon: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cDzS5jmGwN4