Cheryl Schatz

Now to cover a few more verses.

John 6:14–17 (NASB)
14 Therefore when the people saw the sign which He had performed, they said, “This is truly the Prophet who is to come into the world.”
15 So Jesus, perceiving that they were intending to come and take Him by force to make Him king, withdrew again to the mountain by Himself alone.
16 Now when evening came, His disciples went down to the sea,
17 and after getting into a boat, they started to cross the sea to Capernaum. It had already become dark, and Jesus had not yet come to them.

In verse 14 when the people said that this is the “prophet”, they were not looking for a Savior who would save them from their sins. They were looking for a leader who would save them from the Romans just as you said.

In verse 15, Jesus withdrew to the mountain by Himself. The mountain is the place where Jesus would often meet with God and talk with Him. It was symbolic too because it was on a mountain where Moses was destined to meet with God and where God communicated with man. Jesus needed to spend time with His father as He was coming up to a very important time in His life and it was time to make sure that He knew and followed His Father’s will. It was another “mountain” time for Jesus.

Jesus also went by Himself to the mountain for another reason. By being alone His disciples would experience a revelation of who He is that would help them to understand the soon coming revelation that He is the God of creation. It would also prepare them for the words that He would say later about Himself being God.

It is not exactly apparent why the disciples left without Jesus, but perhaps they expected that Jesus would come later as this may have happened before where Jesus sent them off ahead of Him. Yet with whatever reason they had to go ahead, we can be sure that God was arranging for the events that were shortly to come to pass. The storm that would come upon them was not unknown to God, nor was God’s own actions to send Jesus walking on the water unknown to God. For just as Jesus knew what He was intending to do with the feeding of the 5,000, so God also knew what He was going to do with the upcoming crisis.

John 6:6 (NASB) This He was saying to test him, for He Himself knew what He was intending to do.

What was to come was also a test for the disciples and through the test came a special revelation of the Deity of Jesus.

Over to you Mark.