1st Passover Story - Jesus Feeds The 5000

This Easter season I want to share with you two articles I wrote several years ago about Passover.  Here is the first.

"Now the Passover, the feast of the Jews, was at hand. Jesus therefore lifting up His eyes, and seeing that a great multitude was coming to Him, said to Philip; 'Where are we to buy bread, that these may eat?'" (John 6:4-5)

The context of Jesus feeding the 5000 in this story is that it was the beginning of the feast of Passover. A great number of people were following Jesus because He was healing the sick. They were away from home, hungry, and not able to have the traditional Passover celebration with their families. Andrew finds a boy with five barley loaves and two fish, and Jesus blesses this food and distributes it to the multitude. Everyone eats as much as they want and twelve baskets full of leftover fragments were gathered. 

In a sense Jesus, who we will see in the next article as the Passover Lamb, is having a Passover meal here with the Jewish nation.  In Jewish tradition at the feast of Passover a chair is left at the table empty for Elijah, a great prophet of the past who was prophesied one day to come again. He would either proceed, or be, the Prophet Messiah who would deliver the Jewish people from their oppressors.

The multitude does not understand Jesus as the Passover Lamb, but the sign of the multiplication of loaves and fishes does lead them to believe that He is this promised Prophet, and they want to seize Jesus and make Him king. Jesus escapes to the mountains alone and later that night walks on the water to the boat of His disciples and arrives at the other side of the Sea of Galilee. The multitude find Him there the next day and Jesus tells them; "you seek Me, not because you saw signs, but because you ate of the loaves, and were filled. Do not work for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to eternal life, which the Son of Man shall give to you."  

The people ask Jesus to tell them what the works of God are, and He replies; "This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He has sent."  Understand here that the people have seen Jesus heal the sick and feed the multitude. Their theology permits them to comprehend Jesus as a Prophet in the vein of Moses or Elijah, but not as God come in the flesh. So they inform Jesus that Moses gave the nation bread out of heaven (the manna) to eat and that this was a sign that Moses was from God.  Jesus should confirm to them that because of the sign of the multiplication of loaves He too was a Prophet that would deliver them.

Jesus answers them; "it is not Moses who has given you bread out of heaven, but it is My Father who gives you the true bread out of heaven. For the bread of God is that which comes down out of heaven, and gives life to the world . . . I am the bread of life; he who come to Me shall not hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst." 

Jesus was telling the people that there was something much greater than Moses or Elijah here. Moses prayed to God in the wilderness after the people grumbled about being hungry, and God provided manna as food everyday until they entered the promised land. But now the Son of the Father God that Moses prayed to was in their midst. And He was more than a healer, provider, and political deliverer. In Him was eternal life. 

"No man has seen the Father, except the One who is from God . . . he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down out of heaven, so that one may eat of it and not die . . the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is My flesh . . He who eats My flesh and drinks My blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up on the last day."

God provided food for the people in the wilderness and yet death still came to their physical bodies. God now has provided in Jesus food that would spiritually lead them to eternal life, and physically lead to a bodily resurrection on the last day. Jesus gave up His flesh on the cross for the sins of man. By believing in Jesus we are partaking of the bread that comes down from heaven. "It is the Spirit who gives life, the flesh profits nothing; the words that I have spoken to you are spirit and are life." (John 6:63)