John 6:25-40 - And when they found Him on the other side of the sea, they said to Him, “Rabbi, when did You come here?”
Jesus answered them and said, “Most assuredly, I say to you, you seek Me, not because you saw the signs, but because you ate of the loaves and were filled. Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you, because God the Father has set His seal on Him.”
Then they said to Him, “What shall we do, that we may work the works of God?”
Jesus answered and said to them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in Him whom He sent.”
Therefore they said to Him, “What sign will You perform then, that we may see it and believe You? What work will You do? Our fathers ate the manna in the desert; as it is written, ‘He gave them bread from heaven to eat.’ ”
Then Jesus said to them, “Most assuredly, I say to you, Moses did not give you the bread from heaven, but My Father gives you the true bread from heaven. For the bread of God is He who comes down from heaven and gives life to the world.”
Then they said to Him, “Lord, give us this bread always.”
And Jesus said to them, “I am the bread of life. He who comes to Me shall never hunger, and he who believes in Me shall never thirst. But I said to you that you have seen Me and yet do not believe. All that the Father gives Me will come to Me, and the one who comes to Me I will by no means cast out. For I have come down from heaven, not to do My own will, but the will of Him who sent Me. This is the will of the Father who sent Me, that of all He has given Me I should lose nothing, but should raise it up at the last day. And this is the will of Him who sent Me, that everyone who sees the Son and believes in Him may have everlasting life; and I will raise him up at the last day.”
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This conversation in John 6 occurred right after Jesus had miraculously fed the people with bread and fish. And this makes it even more confounding. At least one lesson to be had here is that unbelief and sin make a person undiscerning. The people who had just seen Jesus miraculously feeding them then asked for a miraculous sign, as if one had not just occurred before their eyes. They even went so far as to make the connection between God feeding Israel with Manna in the wilderness and Jesus feeding them with bread and fish. And they did this without Jesus leading them to it. Yet in spite of all this, they still could not perceive that He was God, or that He was the Savior of the world. Just as God had sought to lead Israel out of her bondage in Egypt, so Jesus had come to lead Israel out of her bondage to sin and the world.
But that generation of Israel in the Exodus not only prolonged their time in the wilderness, but in fact died there, not having reached the promised land. And the reason for this was twofold. First, she fell in her sin because the people did not exercise faith in God; they did not believe; they did not trust God. Just as faith in God and godly works are always found together, unbelief and sin always exist together; where one is, you always have the other. A person always acts in accordance with what he believes.
But beyond this, Scripture tells us that Israel failed because her role was a temporary one, intended to prepare the way for Jesus to come into the world. And until He came, the work of salvation had not yet been accomplished, and faith would not be possible. Israel’s laws, her lineage, her priesthood, her land - they were intended by God to illustrate salvation and its need, things which she could never provide.
This leads us back to John 6, in which we see Israel simply repeating the same unbelief that she had always had. She may have physically no longer been in Egypt, but spiritually she had never left. Jesus in giving them bread was merely repeating the pattern with her that she had been through with Yahweh over and over again throughout her history, always without her exercising faith. The point of this passage and of Jesus’ miracle was not merely symbolic. It was to establish a historical fact - Israel had been unfaithful in her covenant with God, and could not be saved apart from Christ and without the Gentiles. Jesus was again giving her a chance to repent and believe, but she would not. She would do to Jesus what she had always wanted to do to God, in giving Him over to the Gentiles to be crucified.
The Church of God, the New Israel, would soon after be established, with many of Israel as her foundation. As the Gentiles would begin to join with them, Old Israel, Israel according to the flesh, would continue in the unbelief she had always known. And yet God continues bringing the salvation that His Son accomplished through His Church today, a Church of Jews and Gentiles, even as He feeds us with bread and wine.
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