John’s Gospel Gems
Of the four gospels, (Matthew, Mark, Luke and John), Mark was not only the first written but is the only gospel of the four penned with the events in the order they probably occurred. This is the most common way of writing in our day but was uncommon in the first century. Writers then placed events around the subject they were writing about. The order of the events didn’t matter, only the subject matter.
John, for instance, uses three devices to place his events. The first was seven miracles that he thought represented all of Jesus’ miracles. The second was Jesus’ “I am” statements. The third was the feast periods that were part of Jewish Law. John constantly emphasises how Jesus fulfilled all that the Old Testament events pointed to.
A typical example is in John 6 where John carefully notes ‘The Jewish Passover feast was near.’ That’s our clue that what follows needs to be read in the light of the Jewish Passover. Because the Passover was the feast before Israel left Egypt to cross the Red Sea and then head into the wilderness where they were supernaturally fed by the manna, what follows will relate to these events.
The chapter has two stories and a long dialogue. The two stories are: Jesus overruling time to bring the disciples through a storm and instantly bring them to dry land (6:16-24). This is meant to make the reader remember God bringing Israel through the Red Sea to bring them to the other side. The second story is Jesus feeding the 5,000 (6:1-14). This is meant to make the reader remember God supernaturally feeding Israel in the wilderness once they had crossed the Red Sea. The dialogue that follows (6:26-42) centres in Jesus’ claim to be the bread of life (6:35). The wilderness manna only met physical needs but the bread Jesus gives (His life) meets humanity’s deepest, spiritual needs (6:35-40). John weaves all these together for his thinking reader.
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