Jesus and the Crowd of 5,000

In John 6:26-31, after Jesus fed the 5,000, the crowd told Jesus “We want to perform God’s works, too. What should we do?” Jesus told them, “This is the only work God wants from you: Believe in the one he has sent.” 

From a ministerial perspective, this is a very interesting verse for me and I think it requires 2 qualifying statements:

1.    These are statements from an unbelieving crowd.

2.    "Belief" in John is the exact same word for "faith" used in the other gospels. The only difference is it’s the verb “to faith” so the translation is different because "faith" isn’t a verb in English.

I used to think this was really strange… Here are people who want to do the works of God but Jesus is saying don’t worry about it. However, I have since encountered many, many people who are interested in what you do, interested in your success but don’t want to pay the price. “I want to be a missionary” or “I want to make an app” or “I want to start a ministry” but after talking to them for a while you see it’s a passing interest and it’s not something they are willing to pay the same price you paid. Jesus is dealing with the same kind of people here. “That’s a cool miracle Jesus, how do I do that?”

Jesus’s response expertly does three things:

1.    He gives them the first step. Anyone who takes him seriously would start with the first step. Only then can you progress. I am surprised by how many people I talk to about things and I give them a first step but they don’t take it. I think only 5% of people who come to me for advice actually do even the first, most basic thing I tell them - it’s discouraging but if people saw Christ in the flesh and treated him the same way I should expect nothing less! 

2.    He takes the focus off of works and miracles and onto God. The phrasing moves from “we want” to “what God wants” - this is an important distinction; whose will are we actually doing? Do these people want to join the ministry because they have a call from God or because they think it would be cool to be respected and perform miracles?

3.    He doesn’t tell them it’s impossible but instead brings them back to reality without crushing their dreams: believe in Jesus. He could have just as easily responded with “you won’t; you are children of Satan (John 8:44)” but He gives them an opportunity. We need to do the same thing for anyone that comes asking for advice - show them the way and hide our disbelief because who knows who God will call.

 

Many of the first missionaries we talked to, upon meeting them 5 or 10 years later told us that they thought we wouldn’t last here. We were too idealistic, could have a better life somewhere else, and weren’t the rugged bush type. I am glad they chose to keep their opinions to themselves and give us advice as though we had a chance!