“If the only thing you have to offer is a broken heart, you offer a broken heart. So in a time of grief, the recognition that this is material for sacrifice has been a very great strength for me. Realizing that nothing I have, nothing I am will be refused on the part of Christ, I simply give it to him as the little boy gave Jesus his five loaves and two fishes—with the same feeling of the disciples when they said, “What is the good of that for such a crowd?” Naturally in almost anything I offer to Christ, my reaction would be, “What is the good of that?” The point is, the use he makes of it is none of my business; it is his business, it is his blessing. So this grief, this loss, this suffering, this pain—whatever it is, which at the moment is God’s means of testing my faith and bringing me to the recognition of who he is—that is the thing I can offer.”

“In the nineteenth century, there developed an academic school, the religious-historical school, that sought to reinterpret and revise the biblical record to strip it of all supernatural elements and reduce it to accounts of natural events centred around a Man who distinguished Himself as a great ethical teacher, namely, Jesus of Nazareth.”

“prior to the event, Jesus and His disciples had found a nearby cave in which they had stored a huge cache of bread and fish. When it came time to feed the people, Jesus had His disciples line up, forming a bucket brigade of sorts from the cave. As Jesus stood at the mouth of the cave, the disciples clandestinely passed bread and fish to Him and He then pulled the food out of his sleeve until He had fed all of the people. If that’s what actually happened, that was the most prodigious magical act in the history of the world.”

We encounter miraculous stories all the time in the bible. Jesus heals people, the walls of Jericho fall down, Jesus is raised from the dead, so this is really nothing new. And either we have have worldview that allows for God to intervene in nature or we don’t.”

“The crowd had followed Jesus because they saw him as a healer, as one who could satisfy their needs. The feeding confirms their opinion. Ones, who had led Israel out of slavery and had called down manna from heaven, had also promised that the Lord would send another prophet like himself who would speak God’s word, and it seems to have been a common belief that he also would bring down manna from heaven. Jesus must be this promised prophet. The long-awaited day of a new deliverance is at hand. The enthusiasm of the crowd rises; they will seize him forthwith and make him their leader.

This is not faith but unbelief. They have not understood who Jesus is. Jesus will not be the instrument of any human enthusiasm or the symbol for any human program. To say “Jesus is King” is true if the word “king” is wholly defined by the person of Jesus; it is false and blasphemous if Jesus is made instrumental to a definition of kingship derived from elsewhere. Jesus has come “to proclaim liberty to the captives,” but he will not become the mascot for a people’s movement of liberation. At the very moment when the cry, “Make Jesus king” is rending the air Jesus abruptly disappears, leaving both the crowds and the disciples with no visible goal for their enthusiasm.”