6:28,29
In our rebellion against God we effectively said we can manage without you God, and we can decide for ourselves what is right and wrong. Just look at the world around us and see how true this is. This rebellion is deep rooted. So faced with this challenge from Jesus the reaction of the people is that whatever the challenge, they can meet that challenge by their own efforts. We are all prone to this, we are also prone to putting this burden on others. So the people ask “What must we do?” Jesus replies that they must believe in the One whom God has sent. I.e. they must believe in Jesus Himself. Now believing in Jesus is not a passive thing, but it does entail not relying on our own strength or righteousness, but on His strength and righteousness.
6:30,31
The Jewish leaders and it seems the people were forever asking for a sign. Many times it seems to us “you’ve just had one, what more do you want?”. In one sense they were perfectly right to be asking for a sign, they should not just believe anyone who claims to be from God. In their thinking are the words of Moses in Deut 18:15-19, is Jesus the One that Moses was speaking about? Moses did many signs, in particular the manna from heaven is the one in their minds here. Moses gave them “bread from heaven”. So what was Jesus going to do to match or exceed this? For the bread they had had at the feeding of the five thousand was just normal bread. The manna was something special, though we should remember that the Israelites did not take to long before they started grumbling about it!
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