Interestingly enough, right after feeding about 15k people, these same people tried to make Jesus their king. I mean, free food right?
And the absolute Chad just went out and retreated, refusing to involve himself in politics as he was to be already king of another kingdom
Even more interesting than that, the next day, the same people were expecting to be fed again…he clearly understood people were associating with him for material gain. He does exhort them to work for their sustenance.
But it’s important to understand that at the time, Jesus was putting more focus on exhorting people to work on the pursuit of his father’s kingdom and excellent deeds, declaring himself the son of god, and himself (as the word of god) living bread to be fed on
At which point most of these people lost all interest, being shocked as, as always, they suffered of literal thinking, asking themselves in disgust, “how can we eat this man’s flesh?”. This was the people who literally wanted him as King the day before.
This was basically all it took for everyone except the 12 apostles to leave