MASH Unit

John 6:2 And a large crowd was following him, because they saw the signs that he was doing on the sick.



2 ἠκολούθει δὲ αὐτῷ ὄχλος πολύς, ὅτι ἐθεώρουν τὰ σημεῖα ἃ ἐποίει ἐπὶ τῶν ἀσθενούντων.

Jesus did a great job of attracting crowds through His ministry because He dealt with their needs. He helped them in practical ways such as healing them. Later in John 6 we will see how Jesus fed 5000 with a kid's sack lunch. This got to their base desires. After all, who doesn't want to be fed and made well?

The thing is that they were following Him for the wrong reasons. There is a school of thought in the evangelical world that we should attract people based on their physical needs. Or at the very least we should do it based no their felt needs. If they feel like they need help with their marriages then we should preach a series on marriage and challenge them to have sex for a certain number of consecutive days. If they are having financial problems then we should preach a message on stewardship, along with some Scripture-twisting to convince them that 10% is the minimum that a New Testament saint should give. And so on.

Jesus met people's needs, but that was not why His true disciples followed Him. They followed Him because He met their deepest needs. He filled their hearts as in John 4. This is what people need rather than a MASH Unit.

Why are you following Jesus, if you are? Certainly we should enjoy the fact that He does meet our needs, but hopefully we follow Him because He is God.