Memory Verse:
But He said
to them, “It is I; do not be afraid.”
(John 6:20)
This chapter is the longest of the book of John, 71
verses. It begins with the only miracle (other than the resurrection) found in
every gospel, but its significance is often overlooked (hint: it is not that we will be satisfied with
physical food). We will see how prayer was important to Christ and also should
be to us. We will see how through Christ we can conquer fear. We will see the
significance of Jesus walking on water, and how to make our lives count for
God.
By now in your walk with Christ, you have undoubtedly
encountered some hard sayings that Jesus has said. Despite how hard His words
seem, no matter our fears, our storms and that the “manna of this world” may
leave us hungering for more, this truth will always remain: Jesus has the words
of life.
Day 12: Morning
Satisfied: Jesus Feeds 5,000
(Read John 6:1–14)
The feeding of the 5,000 is certainly
remarkable. Every one of the four gospels records it. But it certainly was not the
greatest miracle. All four gospels also report that twelve baskets of bread
were left over. What is the greatest reason all four gospel writers chose to
include this miracle?
1) It shows
that Jesus can do really cool miracles.
2) It proves that the Bible can’t be trusted
because five loaves and two fish could never be enough to feed 5,000 people.
3) It
teaches that Jesus doesn’t want people to go hungry.
4) None of
the above. Why do you think it was so important?
Many people remember that
Jesus fed 5,000 with five loaves and two fish, but they have never stopped to
think about why this story is so important. Read another reporting of the
miracle in Matthew 6:5–12.
What would have happened if
the young boy had not been willing to share his meal? Why was he the only one
who shared? What can God do with what you have (physical abilities, singing,
finances, friendships, learning, etc.) if you would give it to Him?
Read John 6:14 and compare
it to Deut.18:15–18. The Jewish people knew Moses brought manna to the people.
The gospel writers undoubtedly made the connection between Jesus and Moses. Read
2 Kings 4:42–44. Jesus fed more people with less food than Elisha did, showing Jesus
was greater than the prophets. In Luke 11:31 and Matt. 12:42, the writers
recorded Jesus as being even greater than King Solomon. Yet Jesus had a greater
plan than becoming an earthly king.
Even deeper, Jesus later
explained that He gives spiritual food that satisfies for eternity. While the
people ate and were satisfied temporarily, the spiritual food Jesus offered satisfies
forever.
Pray this prayer to God: “Jesus,
take what I have and use it for Your glory. Work a miracle through me. Let me be
like Andrew and bring people to You. Thank You for meeting and supplying all my
needs. In the name of Jesus I pray. Amen.”
Day 12: Evening
Prayer Power Overcomes Peer Pressure
(Read John 6:15)
As you prepare for today’s
devotional on prayer, look up the following verses to go along with John 6:15.
Matthew 14:23; 26:36–44; Mark 1:35; 6:46; 9: 28–29; Luke 5:16; 6:12; 9:28. Jesus
believed in prayer!
God created us to have fellowship
with Him, so prayerlessness is certainly no small omission. Even if you do
great works but do not cover them in prayer, that may reveal selfish motives or
too much reliance on yourself. You may be seeking your own glory.
When the multitudes tried to
“take [Jesus] by force,” they were trying to make Him do something that was not
in God’s plan. His response? He left them all and went to pray.
Even though Jesus was and still
is God, when He was here in the flesh, He needed to pray in all of His temptations,
especially in response to what the crowd was wanting Him to do. Today, we call
that temptation “peer pressure,” and it does not only affect children and the
youth.
Stop right now and pray. If
you feel the pressure of the crowds to do something you know is against God’s
will, consider taking more time than usual in your prayer life. (These prayers
given at the bottom of the pages are to get you going and are not meant to be
the entirety of your prayers.)
If you don’t know how to
pray, you are not the only one—The disciples asked Jesus to teach them to pray.
That was when He gave them the model prayer or sometimes called the “Lord’s
Prayer” (see Luke 11:1-4). Tell God you love Him. Confess any sins His Spirit
may bring mind. Ask for strength to do His will. Ask for your needs as well as
your desires or requests. Thank Him for all that He is and all He has done.
And then pray for the
strength to turn peer pressure into prayer power.
Pray this prayer to God: “Dear God
who hears my prayers, teach me to pray. Help me to seek Your face moment by
moment. As I face trials today, give me the power and strength to fight my
battles first in prayer. Thank You for answering each and every prayer. In the
name of my Lord and Savior Christ Jesus I pray. Amen.”
Day 13: Morning
Step Out In Faith To Conquer Fear
(Read John 6:15–21)
How do you cope with fear?
It is interesting that one of the most common greetings that angels and Jesus made
was “Do not be afraid.”
Today’s passage (Jesus
walking on the water) is the fifth of seven miraculous signs recorded by John. After
reading John 6:15–21, read Matthew 14:24–33 for another perspective. Now that
you have read it from two eyewitnesses, imagine yourself as being Simon Peter.
The fact that John did not
record Peter walking on water is not surprising. John was selective in what he did
and did not include in His gospel. His purpose was to draw attention to Christ,
not anyone else.
For the life of me, I can’t imagine
what prompted Peter to say he wanted to walk on those rocky waves in a pitch
black night during the middle of a storm. Maybe this was something the
life-long fisherman had always wanted to do. This was certainly a first!
When I crossed Galilee the
first time in 2004, the west side of the lake was so calm, it looked like a
mirror. In the short amount of the time it took to get to the east side, the
waves were coming across the bow. The storms of life can come just as quickly,
but Jesus walks above them and beckons us to join Him by faith.
Jesus allayed their fears by
saying “I am! Don’t fear.” This is the second time that John uses this intransitive
“I AM statement which in the Greek is “Ego
eimi.” (See Chapter 4 Introduction)
The coupling of the feeding
of the 5,000 with Jesus walking on the water should have proven to the people
that Jesus was the Anointed One, the Messiah also translated as the Christ. It
proved to the disciples that He had power over all of creation. When the dark
storms approach and overtake you, remember Jesus is “I am.”
Pray this prayer to God: “Thank You
Father for being bigger than all my problems and stronger than all my fears. I
praise You God that You don’t give up on me, even when I sink. Help me to be
willing to get out of the boat and take steps to conquer my fears through faith
in You. In Jesus’s Name I pray. Amen.”
Day 13: Evening
What Is To Be
Learned Here?
(Read John 6:15–21
with Matthew 14:24–33)
When you were in school
studying poetry, did you ever have to interpret what the poet was trying to
say?
While the miracle of walking
on water is great, let us not miss the message behind the miracle. In Mark 6:52,
the writer says, “they did not understand,
because their heart was hardened.” Don’t have a hard heart.
When Christ comes into your
life, He is strong enough to conquer any fear. Once the fear subsided, we see
in Matthew that Peter became emboldened to walk toward Christ.
While we can criticize Peter
because he began to sink (Matthew 14:30), remember eleven other disciples were
too afraid to even get out of the boat. When Peter looked at Jesus, he walked
on water. But when he looked away, he became afraid and started to sink.
If you are in a “storm” of
your life, if the waves are crashing down on you, LOOK! Jesus is stronger than
any storm. He is walking on top of the waves that would overwhelm any human. He
is coming to help! If you have taken your eyes off Jesus, if you are looking at
things that make you fear, cry out to Jesus, “LORD SAVE ME!” He will lift you
up.
Jesus later said in John
14:27, “Peace I leave with you, my peace
I give unto you: not as the world gives do I give to you. Let not your heart be
troubled, neither let it be afraid.”
Once Jesus got into the
boat, the ship was immediately at the land. Without
Christ, they rowed with great difficulty against the storms with great
fear. With Christ, they went the
distance by His power.
Pop Quiz: What is the writer
trying to say? Be like the disciples and receive Christ (and his power) “willingly” (KJV), “gladly” (RSV), “eagerly”
(NLT). Jesus, like a poet, used circumstances of life as symbolic teaching
tools. See what the Master Poet is trying to tell you.
Pray this prayer to God: “To the Christ who walks on the storms of life: Beckon
me to walk with You, as I fix my gaze upon You and not on the waves, the wind
and the worries of this world. In the name of Jesus I pray. Amen.”
Day 14: Morning
Make Your Life Count!
(Read John 6:22–27)
My
mother died when she was 35 and my dad died a day before he turned 34. I was in
college when I realized that if I only lived to be their age, two-thirds of my
life was over. I decided then to make my life count.
Jesus
sent His disciples across the sea without going on the boat with them. He went
up to the mountain to pray, and then walked on the water to reach them in the
middle of the night. No wonder the people were amazed!
Read
verse 26 again. The people followed Jesus for selfish reasons and sometimes
others (not us!) go to church for the wrong reasons. There is some “food that
perishes” and some “food” that endures to eternal life.
A man asked
a plumber, “What line of work are you in?” The plumber replied, “I serve Jesus
Christ as my occupation. I just work as a plumber to pay my bills so I can
continue my main job.” Whether you are a writer, a custodian, a roofer, a pizza
deliverer, an administrator, sales person, a fast food employee, a teacher or a
minister (all of these are jobs I have held!), work for the “food,” that will
last for eternity.
Before
you end today’s devotional, pay attention to the last phrase in verse 27.
Today, organizations set their seals on products to assure their quality to the
consumers. Whether it is the USDA, Good Housekeeping, or the Better Business
Bureau, people seek out those seals for product approval.
In the Bible
days, bread bakers would set their “seal” of approval on their products. When
Jesus performed the miraculous sign of the multiplied bread, the people saw
this as God’s “seal of approval” that He was a true prophet (John 6:14).
God
wants your life to count for Him. Just like God put a seal on Jesus, He also
puts a seal, the Holy Spirit, on you to make your life count. See 2 Cor. 1:22; Eph.
1:13; and Eph. 4:30. Don’t waste your life.
Pray this prayer to God: “Dear God,
show me today what is important and what is not. Don’t allow me to waste time
on the temporary things. Show me what will last. Help me to seek You, not for
what I can get, but for what I can give to You. Amen.”
Day 14: Evening
Work The Work Of Faith
(Read John 6:28–40)
What
really pleases you? A sports team? Food? Your family? The Bible says that there
is one thing that pleases God and in fact without this one thing, it is
impossible to please God.
What is
this one thing? It is faith, also called belief or trust, in Him. The people
asked how they also could do the works of God (6:28), wanting miraculous power.
His response was not what they wanted to hear.
What “work”
did you have to do in order to become a child of God? Did you have to give all
your possessions to the poor or did you have to get baptized? Did you have to
join a church or memorize a section of the Bible? Only one “work of God” is the
greatest of all miracles: Believing in Jesus (verse 29). The greatest
disobedience to God is the sin of unbelief (see Hebrews 3:17–18 and Hebrews
11:6).
Jesus
said to work for the things that last eternally. Some followed Him, not because He had the words of life, not because He was the Son of God, and not even because of the miracles. They
followed Him because He met their temporal needs. These immature followers
would soon turn away.
If God
never did anything miraculous in your life except give you salvation, would
that be enough? Read John 6:35. Jesus performed two signs here (multiplying of
the bread and walking on water), yet they did not believe in Him. Remember the
woman at the well? He performed no sign with her, yet she believed.
God not
reject anyone who comes to Him in faith. The only people God will reject are
those who refuse to believe that Jesus alone will save them. The work which
saves is the “work of faith.”
Ask
yourself again, what pleases you? Hopefully, God pleases you and meets your
desires, not for what He does for you, but simply because of your faith in Him.
And that faith is exactly what also pleases God.
Pray this prayer to God: “Dear Lord God, I come to You
today in faith. Give me the confident assurance that You will live through me
today. By faith in You alone, I will seek to do the work that will endure
forever. Amen.”
Day 15: Morning
Who Can Hear These Words?
(Read John 6:41–58)
Strong words can be hard to
listen to. They invariably only have two possible responses: strongly liked or strongly
disliked.
This passage is difficult,
so set aside some time to “digest” it well. Many took Jesus’s words in this
passage to be literal (verse 52), yet Jesus Himself says in verse 63 that the
words are “spirit and they are life,”
meaning that they are to be interpreted as spiritual truths about eternal life.
The Jews
were strong on religious rituals to gain God’s favor. Yet here was Jesus,
claiming anyone could have eternal
life through faith. If you do not know for sure whether you have eternal life,
it is either because you have not been taught adequately or because you are
putting your faith in something other than or in addition to the work of Christ
on the cross.
According to 6:47, if you
believe in Christ, you have eternal life.
Jesus’s first miraculous
sign recorded in John’s gospel was turning the water into wine and the fourth
sign was the miracle of the bread being able to feed 5,000. Below are the elements
of Communion (or “the Lord’s Supper”) and how they relate to elements in the
Christian life. Draw a line from each element to its symbolic meaning:
1. The Cup a. Jesus’s “Blood”
2. The Bread b. Dying to Self
3. Sacrifice c. Jesus’s “Flesh”
4. Service d. Living for God
Today’s passage does NOT
teach that Communion gives eternal life. Instead it shows the spiritual application of what Christ did for us
and how we can receive the benefits of His life and death through faith.
Pray this prayer to God: “Heavenly
Father. I have placed my trust in You and I know that I have eternal life. Just
as my body gains nourishment from eating physical food, I will nourish my spiritual
life through You. Amen.”
1.a.; 2.b.; 3.b.; 4.d.
Day 15: Evening
You Have The Words Of Life
(Read John 6:59–71)
Do you have a spiritual
journal, or a book to write down your thoughts about your spiritual life? Get
it or a piece of paper for this devotional.
Are there things in the Word
of God that are hard to hear or hard to understand? Are there things which even
offend you? If so, write down some hard
things that you don’t understand or things which seem offensive.______________________________________
Jesus asked those who were offended
by His teaching what they will say on the day when He ascends back to heaven, which
would prove that what He said was true. In other words, if anyone was offended
that day by Jesus and then came and saw Him ascend to Heaven 40 days after His
resurrection, imagine what they would say. Have you ever known Christians who
were faithful to God at one time, but now no longer walk with Him, like those
in verse 66? Write down some reasons why people stop living for God.
When people stopped
following Christ, He did not chase them down and apologize. He did not rephrase
what He was teaching so that no one would be offended. And He did not get His
feelings hurt. He asked the rest of
the disciples who else was going to leave.
Verse 66 can be translated
as “Do you wish to leave also?” The
Lord was not asking out of depression or despair. He was saying that if anyone
else wished to leave, they should go. A rough paraphrase of Peter’s response
is, “You’re the boss, Lord. We’re with you all the way to eternity.”
No matter what the cost, don’t
let anything turn you away from Jesus. He alone has the words of eternal life
(verse 68). Make a fresh commitment to God to continue to study His words, no
matter the cost. Commit yourself to hear the words of life from Jesus as
recorded in the gospel of John.
Pray this prayer to God: “Dear Lord,
I commit myself to stay with You, even when the going gets tough. I pray that
my faith in You will never fail and thank You that even if and when I am
faithless and falter, Your remain faithful to pick me up again. Thank You for
not giving up on me. Amen.”
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