Compassion for Outsiders

RIVERSIDE INDONESIAN FELLOWSHIP
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Compassion for Outsiders

Riverside Indonesian Fellowship
Published by Stanley Pouw in 2013 · 13 October 2013

There is one line in verse 32, where it says, "Jesus called His disciples to Himself and said, 'I have compassion on the multitude.'" Here the theme of this text is the compassion of Jesus Christ. Basically it means to suffer with; but the English dictionary describes compassion as this: A feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the pain and remove its cause.

The Greek term is basically a verb form added to a word that means bowels or stomach; and it means that Jesus actually felt stomach pain over the needs of people for whom He desired deliverance. That's exactly why He moves in the world. That's exactly why He redeems man. That's exactly why He heals and comforts and extends grace and mercy and loving kindness, to reach men and deliver them from their sins

Again and again in God's dealings with Israel in the Old Testament, it says about God in Exodus 33:19 and in Romans 9:15, "I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion; and I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy."

Jesus Christ is God incarnate, in human flesh; and so when we come to Matthew 15:32, we are not surprised to hear Jesus say, "I have compassion." We've heard Him say it before. Matthew 14:14 states, "Jesus went forth, saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion." In Matthew 9:36, it says, "He was moved with compassion, because they were scattered as a sheep without a shepherd.”

So let us now look at our text tonight in Matthew 15:29-39, “Jesus departed from there, skirted the Sea of Galilee, and went up on the mountain and sat down there. 30 Then great multitudes came to Him, having with them the lame, blind, mute, maimed, and many others; and they laid them down at Jesus’ feet, and He healed them. 31 So the multitude marveled when they saw the mute speaking, the maimed made whole, the lame walking, and the blind seeing; and they glorified the God of Israel 32 Now Jesus called His disciples to Himself and said, “I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now continued with Me three days and have nothing to eat. And I do not want to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.”33 Then His disciples said to Him, “Where could we get enough bread in the wilderness to fill such a great multitude?” 34 Jesus said to them, “How many loaves do you have?” And they said, “Seven, and a few little fish.” 35 So He commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground. 36 And He took the seven loaves and the fish and gave thanks, broke them and gave them to His disciples; and the disciples gave to the multitude. 37 So they all ate and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets full of the fragments that were left. 38 Now those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children. 39 And He sent away the multitude, got into the boat, and came to the region of Magdala.”

Now, back in verse 29, for a year and a half, Jesus had been ministering in Galilee. He had been serving in that northern area of Palestine among the Jewish people doing miracles, signs, wonders and teaching of the Kingdom of God. But after all that time there was a mounting resistance and much hatred.

And so in verse 21, as we noted last time, He left and went across the border into the region of Tyre and Sidon. But no sooner had He arrived in that Gentile land than He ran into a Gentile woman, verses 22 to 28, who came to Him desiring a healing for her child and who, it says in verse 28, exercised great faith.

Jesus is reaching beyond the covenant people, beyond the lost sheep of the house of Israel. He's reaching out to Gentiles, and He is giving us a prophetic picture of the extension of the Kingdom in the purpose of God to encompass the lost. The intention of Christ coming to Israel was not just for the Jews, but that it was the means to reach the whole world.

Jesus in the three years of His ministry did many things that are a preview of the Kingdom. The transfiguration on the mount when He demonstrated His full glory was a small glimpse of the glory He has when He returned to set up His Kingdom. That He healed everyone is indicative that in the Kingdom He will heal all the nations, as it were.

Now, He came from the area of Tyre and Sidon; the south part of Lebanon and He went east in order to come along the eastern shore of the Sea of Galilee to a place called Decapolis. Now, it is interesting to note that there was a time gap between the two feedings. Before in Matthew 14:19 when He fed the 5000 it says, "He commanded the multitude to sit down on the grass.”

Now, in Matthew 15:35 it says, "He commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground." So what happened to the grass? During the feeding of the 5,000 men, it was spring. It is late summer now, because many weeks have transpired to walk through Tyre and Sidon, then to go east across the Jordan, then walk south again on the eastern bank, and now down to Decapolis.

Some people have criticized the two feedings. They think that Matthew mixed up the facts at this point, and he just repeated the same story with different numbers. But the details are very different in these two cases, and the reality is that Christ gave provisions for Israel first but that He also gave provision later for those people who are outside Israel. This is a profound lesson, similar to what happened in the Day of Pentecost with the Spirit of God descending.

The Holy Spirit descended among the Jews and this phenomenon of speaking with tongues occurred. But when the Gospel in Acts 10 was taken to the Gentiles, the very same phenomenon occurred again. And Peter went back to the Jews and said, "You're not going to believe this, but the same pouring out of the Holy Spirit that happened to us happened also to the Gentiles."

That is the whole point, so that we can see that God treats all men the same way. And so if our Lord was to feed the Jews, He also demonstrated that He would also feed the Gentiles. The Lord ended each phase of His ministry with a feeding. He ended the ministry in Galilee with the feeding of the 5,000 and He ended the ministry in the Gentile area with the feeding of the 4,000.

Now Decapolis is on the southeast edge of the Sea of Galilee. It's not far from the area called Gadara where Jesus, delivered two demoniacs and sent the demons into the herd of swine. It's the southern end of the Golan Heights now. Decapolis means ten small Greek cities. They were not under the rule of Israel or any of its monarchs. They were Gentiles, wedged in the middle of Jewish lands.

So they were totally into Greek paganism with statutes for Zeus, Athena, Artemis, and Hercules and many other Greek gods and Jesus came there. Now they were actually somewhat familiar with Jesus. In Matthew 4:25 it says multitudes came, "From Galilee, from Decapolis, from Jerusalem, from Judea and then from those countries beyond the Jordan," which would be Syria and so forth.

So when Jesus arrived again in that region, verse 30 says, "Great multitudes came unto Him," and we know why they came. Eventhough it was a wilderness area. It may have taken some time for all of them to gather, but they did come, and because they knew Jesus could heal anyone, they brought with them, "those that were lame and blind and dumb and mutilated and put them down at His feet and He healed them all.”

Now, look at the word mutilated or maimed. That same word is used later on in Matthew 18:8 where our Lord says, “It is better for you to enter into life lame or maimed, rather than having two hands or two feet, to be cast into the everlasting fire.” It has a unique meaning, it is about someone who has lost a limb or other body part; but Jesus healed those people. If they didn't have an arm, He gave them one. If they didn't have a leg; He gave them a new one. If they were missing an ear, He gave them a new one.

It says at the end of verse 30, "He healed them," and that statement is profound; yet it almost passes by unnoticed. It says also in this text that, "They put them down at His feet." You can imagine 4,000 men plus women and who knows how many thousands of children, probably 20,000 total being around Jesus. Can you imagine the chaos of this? They surely were not waiting in line.

People with no arm are going away with a new arm. People who had lost their eyes were going away with new eyes. People who had never spoken were speaking, and people who had never been able to walk were walking. And this was going on for all of them, you see. The result we see was verse 31, "The multitude marveled.” This is beyond imagination, this is incredible.

Their wonder was greater than the wonder of the Jews, because they was always limited by their skepticism. It was always limited by their spiritual pride and the bondage of their ceremony and tradition; and the blindness that exists on Israel today was there then already. But these Gentiles didn't have that; and so Mark 7:37 says, "They were beyond measure astonished."

Everybody was totally whole. Nobody with a problem was missed, and nobody was less than complete. And the greatness of the result comes at the end of verse 31, "They gave glory to the God of Israel." You see, it wasn't their God. Again, this reinforces the fact that these people were Gentiles. But they knew God was in their presence.

Now, what does it mean to glorify God? Look at Luke 5:25, Jesus heals a paralyzed person, "And immediately the man rose up, took up his bed on which he was laying, departed to his own house, glorifying God." Now, we learn more about that as we look at verse 26, "The people were amazed and they glorified God and were filled with fear, saying, 'We have seen strange things today.'"

So glorifying God in this context is a combination of praise and fear. The positive element says, "This inexplicable, this is miraculous," and it is the other one says, "This is fearful," because a God who has that power is also a God who knows the sin of my heart; and there was a sense of fear in His presence, and rightly so.

Now this continuous for three days; the crowd never leaves. All day long, the Lord heals and surely teaches them the things pertaining to the Kingdom, invites them to embrace Him. At night, they don't go anywhere. They lay down on the ground, and they sleep; and when the Lord awakens in the morning with His disciples, they're all still there; and it goes on the second day and night; and then the third day.

Now verse 32, "Then Jesus called His disciples unto Him and said, 'I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with Me now three days and have nothing to eat." Now, this is amazing. Three days not eating and drinking is going to weaken anybody. Here the Lord shows his compassion, because they are not like Him who fasted for forty days and forty nights. Here we begin to understand the infinite and all-encompassing compassion of God.

This compassion of God extends even to the need of daily food. That's why David said, "I've never seen the Lord's people begging for bread." That's why Jesus said in Matthew 6, "Look, if My Father takes care of the grass and the lilies, don't you think He'll take care of you?" And that's why the Lord said also said there, "When you pray, say this, Give us this day our daily bread," because God cares about that.

And at the end of verse 32, He says, "I will not send them away fasting, lest they faint in the way." And that is what God calls us to do also and in order for the church to be Christ in the world, we too have to demonstrate this compassion at that level, because God is as infinite in His compassion as He is in the other attributes.

Verse 33, "And the disciples say to Him, 'From where should we have so much bread in the wilderness as to fill so great a multitude?'" They mean, in this wilderness area they are far away from towns, there was no resource. The emphasis is not here on their unbelief, but on their recognition of their lack of resources. They knew Jesus could do it, they hadn't forgotten that.

Verse 34, “And so Jesus says to them, 'How many loaves do you have?' And they said, 'Seven.'" And He didn't ask them how many fish they had, but they remembered the last time, and they knew that His favorite lunch to provide was bread and fish, so they threw in the deal about the fish. They hadn't forgotten. It says here, "We've got seven loaves and a few little fish.”

So in verse 35-36 it says, “So He commanded the multitude to sit down on the ground. 36 And He took the seven loaves and the fish and gave thanks, broke them and gave them to His disciples (and He kept doing that for a long time); and the disciples gave to the multitude.”

And then verse 37 says, “So they all ate and were filled, and they took up seven large baskets full of the fragments that were left.” Again, the Lord never leaves them half full. And there were 4,000 men, besides women and children. Everybody was satisfied and they got seven baskets full of what was left.

Remember the first feeding had twelve baskets, but here you have only seven. Why the difference? The basket in Matthew 14:20 is kofanass, a little basket typically used by the Jews. But the word for basket used here is spurdiss and that is a big Gentile basket. How big was it? Acts 9 tells us that the same basket, spurdiss, was used to lower the Apostle Paul down the wall in Damascus. It ends in verse 39, "He sent away the multitude, got into a boat and came to the borders of Magdala.”

What is the lesson for us? We often don't have the resources; but are we willing to give the little that we do have, huh? The Lord says, "Give Me what you got. It isn't enough, but I will multiply it and make it enough." And then He fills everybody.

In reality we often don't believe that. We think, "Well, if I give this, I'll only have this much left for myself." That's because we don't believe that God is in the business of filling up. When you learn that you can give everything you have prompted by the Spirit of God and this will never diminish the infinity of God's provision for you, you have learned a lot.

The Lord doesn't need helpers, but He uses the disciples. I'm grateful that God’s plan involves us in that we can serve. He chose to use human instruments; and that teaches us that it is God who creates and we must deliver. The disciples never get anything until they have given everything away; and then they get to collect what is left over; this is the principle of spiritual investment by trusting God

In order to get something, they had to give it away to others. We are called to give it all away, to pour our energy and our money and our resources into those who have the need, and in giving it all, God gives it back. 2 Corinthians 9:6 says, "If you sow sparingly, you reap sparingly. If you sow bountifully, you will reap bountifully." And so our compassion is measured by our giving. Are you giving it all away for Jesus? Let us pray.



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