John 6:15

Jesus therefore perceiving that they were about to come and take him by force, to make him king, withdrew again into the mountain himself alone.

No rationalistic explanation of this sign could account for such a reaction on the part of the multitude. They were fully convinced that Jesus was the Messiah, and they proposed to make him king and move against the Romans! With the Messiah feeding them, as God had done so long ago, the problem of the quartermaster was solved! It was time to throw off the yoke of Rome; and they would have violated the sacred wishes of Christ himself to further their own schemes. Israel never learned in the long pre-Christian ages, nor in the times of Christ, that an earthly kingdom was never in God's plans from the very beginning, nor then, nor ever. Yes, they had been granted an earthly state with a king; but at the moment of its inception God had warned them:

And the Lord said unto Samuel, Hearken unto the voice of the people in all they say unto thee: for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign (be king) over them (1 Samuel 8:7).

Throughout the ages, the earthly monarchy of the Hebrews was their project, not God's; and, although God accommodated himself to it, it was never his will. Ironically, that same obsession for their earthly kingdom was what blinded their eyes to the Messiah when he came. The great sign just done before the people, instead of setting their hearts upon the Messiah's teachings, only set on fire their earthly ambitions for the restoration of Solomon's throne, a project that was never for one moment contained in the purpose of Christ.

Christ had been fully aware all that day of what was going on; and there is more than a possibility that the apostles themselves had been infected with the virus that had seized the crowd. The Lord counteracted it by compelling the disciples to get into the boat, despite threatening weather, and go back to the other side of the lake (Matthew 14:22). Jesus rejected the efforts to make him king, by sending the apostles away and then withdrawing up into the mountain, leaving the vain frenzy of the mob to frustrate itself in the gathering darkness.