Divine Compassion in Common Grace
Luke 9:12-17
In our ongoing study of the Luke gospel, the record of the life and ministry of our Lord Jesus Christ, we come this morning to the ninth chapter and return to verses 10 through 17, a passage and event commonly known as the feeding of the five thousand and though it was certainly much more than that. We began to look at this passage last Sunday morning and sort of establish this surrounding elements to the actual miracle, and we'll look at that miracle this morning.
Throughout the ministry of Jesus, the sympathy, the compassion, the kindness and the sufficiency of God for every human need was on display. If you studied the Old Testament, of course, you, as we read this morning, find out that God is merciful and God is compassionate and God is kind and the Old Testament is filled with indications of that, both by statement and by illustration. The compassion of God, however, clearly illustrated in the Old Testament was never illustrated as clearly as in the life of Jesus Christ. Never do we see God as clearly as we see Him in Jesus Christ. He brings God to us in ways that we would never otherwise understand. And so when we see Jesus, we see everything that is true about God being manifest...great power, great wisdom, great consistency, and great sympathy and compassion.
This is one of those passages where the compassion and the sympathy of Jesus is manifest on a grand scale, on the biggest possible stage. In fact, this is quantitatively the biggest miracle Jesus did. And it is a miracle of sympathy, a miracle of compassion, feeding the crowd. It is obvious, and only needs to be referred to very briefly, that the gods of the making of men and demons, the false gods of human history both past and present, know nothing of this kind of sympathy, this kind of compassion, this kind of mercy and kindness, tenderness and love. They are either indifferent or violently hostile or something in between those two poles. But the God, the true and living God, the only God is a God of great love and compassion and that becomes manifest in the life and ministry of Jesus.
As you remember, this miracle, the feeding of the five thousand, as it's called, marks the highpoint of the Galilean ministry. Jesus has been ministering in Galilee for a long time. He is now pass the half-way point of His three-year ministry. He's over 18 months into that ministry. The bulk of that time has been spent in the area of Galilee, or nearly a year of it. And Jesus has had a great opportunity to proclaim the gospel of the Kingdom from one end of Galilee to the other. It's not a large area, at its widest point 25 miles, at its longest point 50 miles, 204 towns and villages, very densely populated and Jesus for months has been crisscrossing the Galilee area and proclaiming the truth of salvation. Also doing miracles to attest to the fact that He is the messenger of God, none other than the Messiah, showing that He has the power Messiah must have to conquer disease, to conquer death, to conquer demons, and therefore to establish the promised glorious Kingdom that the prophets spoke about. He is the Messiah, He is the Savior, He is God in human flesh and He brings a message of salvation, forgiveness of sins.
Galilee has listened to this message for months and months. But Galilee has not repented and Galilee has not believed. It is a small group that have repented and believed. It is a small group of disciples that will stick with Jesus all the way through. This marks then, sort of, the pinnacle of Jesus' exposure in Galilee. This is His biggest miracle. He has just sent out the Twelve for the first time in His entire ministry to preach the message of the Kingdom, the gospel of the Kingdom, the message of forgiveness and given them power to cast out demons, to conquer disease and even to conquer death. In other words, He delegated His own power to them, multiplied Himself by twelve in order to have a final blitz across Galilee. A little later He'll send another 70 to do a final sweep across Galilee to preach the gospel of the Kingdom, giving them an opportunity to believe and to respond and to acknowledge Him as Lord and Savior, to repent and ask God to forgive their sins. This is at that high point. This is the biggest miracle with the most far-reaching impact in terms of quantity.
The opportunity for the Galileans is ending. After this, Jesus starts to leave Galilee, goes to Tyre and Sidon for awhile, comes back across to Decapolis, a Gentile area for a while, and then He heads south to Jerusalem for His last trip down there where He will die giving His life for sinners. So this is Galilee's highpoint. It's the highpoint in terms of the exposure of the miracles of Jesus, the highpoint in terms of the display of His power, the highpoint in terms of the proclamation of the gospel. At the same time, it's the low point because it's at this point that the manifest resistance and rebellion and unbelief of Galilee becomes clear. Off of this miracle comes the defining rejection of Jesus in Galilee, and I'll show you how that works in a moment.
Immediately after this miracle, the effect looked like it was good. John tells us in his account, by the way, all four gospels give an account of this miracle. They only give an account of two...only two of the miracles are in all four gospels, this and the resurrection. But they give an account of this. In John's account he says after Jesus did this miracle of feeding all these people, the people were so convinced that He was the Messiah, that He was the prophet that God had promised who would come, that He was the one to set up the Kingdom, that they tried to take Him by force and do a coup, literally overthrown Herod Antipas who was the ruler of Galilee and put Jesus on the throne. Jesus never let that happen. It wasn't time for His earthly Kingdom. He would be King only in the hearts of those who believed in Him, only in the hearts of those that repented and acknowledged Him as Savior and Lord. And He would not become a political King, He would not set up His Kingdom at this time, but He would be King in the hearts of those who truly believed in Him. And there will be some out of this whose faith will be crystalized and firmed but most out of this marvelous miracle will solidify their unbelief and we'll see that toward the end.
Now as we look at the text, starting in verses 10 to 17, we see the sympathy of Jesus, the compassion of God through Him and it shows up in all the elements of the story. First of all, you see the compassion of God toward the need for rest. Verse 10 says, "When the apostles returned," they had just come back from their first mission where they had gone out and preached the message of the Kingdom and they healed and cast out demons and they came back after this tiring, wearying ministry opportunity after weeks of doing that, they came back, they ran into a huge crowd at Capernaum. The crowd was so big they couldn't even get a meal. They couldn't eat. They give an account to Jesus of all that they had done. Jesus recognizing their need for rest, according to Mark 6:31 says, "Come away and rest a while. You need to be able to rest. You need to be able to eat." And taking them with Him, Luke writes, "He withdrew by Himself to a city called Bethsaida."
They were to get to Bethsaida, about eight miles by land, on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee, four miles by boat. You can cut the corner a little bit, although the boat trip would take longer. It would give them a little distance from the people and so they got into some little boat and took off across the north shore there and Jesus spent that time, probably had stocked food so that they could eat and have some hours of rest. They crossed to a place called Bethsaida. We talked about it last time, outside Galilee. Jesus wanted this miracle outside Galilee because Herod Antipas was the ruler of Galilee. Herod had killed John the Baptist because he was a threat to his throne. He indicted him for his wicked, wretched life. He was now after Jesus. Jesus even being a greater threat to his throne. So Jesus avoids him, goes into the area or the territory of another ruler by the name of Philip the Tetrarch and there does this massive miracle. Not in the village of Bethsaida, but nearby, a place where they had intended to go for some rest. The Scripture tells us that, of course, when they arrived, the crowd was already there. It says in verse 11, "The multitudes were aware of this and followed Him." So we read in the other writers that when they got off the little boat and stepped on the shore, the crowd was already there. We know that because Mark 6:30 to 34 says they ran and were there waiting. John 6:2 says the reason they came was because of the healings. They not only wanted to be healed, they loved the fascination of seeing the healings. I mean, it was...it was like the ultimate magic show, you know, good magic can draw a crowd. You can imagine what real healing would do. And that's, of course, why they came. They came because of healing.
Now, after Jesus feeds them, the next day they come back. They don't come for the healings anymore, they come for the food. Not everybody needed a healing, but everybody had to eat. So that became a bigger draw for the crowd. So we see what happens in verse 11, the need for rest on the part of the disciples was recognized by Jesus, and we talked about the tenderness of God in understanding the weariness of just doing what we do as human beings and how God understands our need for rest. But there's a greater need than the need for physical rest, and that is the need for spiritual rest. And so the need for rest gives way, secondly, to the need for divine truth. Verse 11, "When Jesus saw the crowd there, He welcomed them." We remember that the other writers tell us he saw them like sheep without a shepherd...lost and unprotected. And so He welcomes them and He began speaking to them about the Kingdom of God. He began giving them the wonderful message of forgiveness of sin and entrance into the Kingdom of God where there is eternal life through faith in Him. He gave the same wonderful gospel that He's given all through His ministry. First noted back in chapter 4 verse 43 and consistently throughout His ministry. He speaks about the Kingdom of God which is the spiritual and eternal Kingdom, in contrast to the kingdom of men; which is the Kingdom of glory and joy and peace and deliverance in contrast to the kingdom of Satan which is the kingdom of wickedness and judgment and punishment in hell. So He preached His Kingdom and He talked about how to enter that Kingdom through faith in Him, turning from sin to embrace Him as Savior and Lord. And He preached that wonderful Kingdom message all the way until He was ascended into heaven for the final time because that was what concerned Him, not the kingdoms of this world, but the Kingdom of God.
And then we saw, also, at the end of verse 11, there was sympathy extended toward another human need. Not just the need for divine truth, the need for rest, but the need for healing...the need for healing. It says at the end of verse 11, "He was curing those who had need of healing." Human suffering caused pain to the Lord. God is disturbed over the need for rest that some of us have, and He wants us to be provided with that rest. He's given us sleep, that's a common grace. He understands the need for that. God is even more concerned about our need for the rest of the soul, divine truth, the message of the Kingdom, but then we're right back again to the fact that God feels compassion on those that are sick. Matthew 14:14 in Matthew's account of this miracle says Jesus felt compassion and healed their sick. Human suffering causes God to suffer.
There also here is a testimony of the fact that God can not only be concerned about physical rest and physical healing, but God is even more concerned about spiritual rest and spiritual healing. This is the one who has the power to bring Kingdom conditions, to bring about a Kingdom of temporal rest, to bring about a Kingdom of temporal healing and wholeness which will be characteristic of the Millennial Kingdom. This is the one who has the power to bring truth, the great pervasive truth of the Kingdom of God. A Messiah has to do all of that. Jesus shows that He has the power to do all that. He can bring the Kingdom and He can bring what the soul desperately needs.
Now we talked about all those things, but let's come, fourthly, to the main element of this story and that is the need for daily food. The actual miracle begins to take place in verse 12. There's not a lot of things that are hidden below the surface here. This is pretty straightforward narrative and explains rather simply and clearly this amazing miracle. You have to sort of allow your mind to expand to engulf the greatness of this event and not be sort of caught off guard by the simplicity of the language.
Here we begin the narrative in verse 12 with the disciples recognizing that it's past noon and this crowd is going to get hungry by dinner time and they're going to need to have some time to get their food. Verse 12 says, "The day began to decline." The day begins to decline at noon. At noon the sun is at the apex. It reaches its highpoint in the sky. Any time after that is the day beginning to decline. And we don't know when it would be, maybe in the middle of the afternoon, maybe early in the afternoon. And the miracles are going on, the preaching of the Kingdom is going on. The disciples then, the Twelve, came and said to Him, they are caught up with the earthly things, "Send the multitude away." It always interests me that the disciples are prone to command Jesus. I don't know where they get this brashness, whether or not they had a sort of exalted sense of authority, because they had been out on a mission where they had exhibited divine power, or not, but they're a little bit brash at this particular point, maybe overstepping their bounds. And they say to Jesus, "Send the multitude away that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside and find lodging and get something to eat, for here we are in a desolate place."
Now this is a miracle about feeding people. It's a miracle about feeding people. And it exhibits again this amazing concern of God for the simple things. Why should God care if you miss a meal? Really, why is it a big deal here? But it strikes me that this is an exceptional testimony to the essence of common grace, to the essence of common grace. God has designed the world in such a way to provide ample food to sustain people. Of course that doesn't happen all over the world all the time because the wretchedness of corruption plays havoc with the provision that God has made. But when God created the earth, He designed a common grace into this world just in the realm of eating. He not only made eating a necessity, He made eating a pleasure. He made eating an amazing delight. I mean, it could have been that God so designed the human anatomy that we would eat dirt and nothing more. Or the close equivalent, bran cereal and that basically life would be filled with nothing but that, some tasteless, tedious brown stuff. And we could have survived on that. But God didn't do that. God literally loaded this world with the potential, almost limitless potential for food. This is an amazing common grace. Just remember that the next time you drive along and you see restaurant after restaurant after restaurant of a variety of foods being presented to which there seems to be no end. It's astonishing.
Having just come back from Italy, I have just lived through weeks of that. Italians eat, I'm confident, better than anybody and there is no Italian that I've ever seen that makes a bad meal. I don't know what it is, but they've perfected it. Maybe started it in Roman times, but they have perfected the art of meal preparation. It's amazing. You can go meal after meal and they're either five or six course meals. They understand how to balance all that so that you don't become a blimp after a matter of a few weeks. I don't know what it is, maybe it's the olive oil, but it's pretty amazing. And they can make everything taste good. It's the bounty of it is just staggering to me. One day we climbed Mount Etna, got to as far as we could get to the edge of the volcano, they wouldn't let us get all the way up because it was doing things. So anyway, we got there. We got down from there and, of course, wherever Mount Etna spews out its lava in Sicily, it runs all the way to the water, miles and miles and miles away. But by virtue of its ash creates some of the most fertile soil in the world to grow food. And so we came down the mountain to this...some mans house who was a baron who used to belong to the...he was the Italian delegate of the United Nations, or something, and we were to have lunch on his terrace and so forth and so on. And we sat there and we just kept saying, "Oh my...oh, this..." I don't know how many courses there were but it was like three hours worth of delicacies, incredible things. And this went on day after day everywhere we went. I ate things the name of which I don't even know. You know, I just kept thinking to myself, "What a good God we have, all of this amazing variety, all of this wondrous plethora of delights." And that is a common grace. That is a common grace that is common to every man by the goodness of God. God does care that you have three meals and that you enjoy them, that you recognize Him as the source.
This is a miracle of common grace. But it was common grace that He healed everybody. It was common grace that He fed everybody. He didn't put out surveys to have people check off whether they believed in Him or not to determine who got fed. He didn't evaluate anybody's motives. He just pitied everybody. He understands human life. He understands human hunger. He understands the delight that food can bring. I think of that, you know, when I sit in a restaurant and watch all these pagans who have no thought for God enjoying the richness of His common grace. His pity, His kindness, His benevolence extends to everybody. And that whole crowd, many of whom would be screaming for His blood in a few months down in Jerusalem, He fed. When they wanted to make Him King, because they could have a perfect welfare state, it would all be well because He could heal them and they'd all come back from the dead and all the demons would be vanquished and they would have free food every day, when they wanted to make...they wanted to take Him and make Him a King by force, He refused and He said, "This is not the time." He would not respond to that shallow kind of homage. And He became the King only in the hearts of those who believed in Him.
But Jesus was also saying to them, and not only do I have the power to feed you now, because I care about you, I have...I am demonstrating the power to bring the millennial glory to the earth and also...this is an illustration of your real need which is to be fed in your souls. According to Isaiah 25, one of the things the Messiah is going to do, Isaiah 25:6 to 9, is put on a lavish banquet in the Kingdom. Well Jesus could do that. And He does it right here with the simplest of things.
Back to verse 12, the day is beginning to decline, some time after noon. Twelve come, they said, "You've got to send these people away. We've got them over here near the town of Bethsaida, there is still time in the day for them to scatter to the surrounding villages, countryside." Remember, I told you it was densely populated area. "They can find some lodging, get something to eat because we're here in a desolate place." Many of them, of course, were local. Some of them could walk or run back to Capernaum. Others could scatter to the various towns and villages in the vicinity. They had time to do this. This isn't a place where they can get food. That's what that last statement means, we're here in a desolate place, eremon topon , some have translated it desert, it's not a desert place at all. In fact, Mark 6:39 says they were sitting down on green grass. And it's a beautiful, beautiful slope on the north shore of the Sea of Galilee overlooking a crystal beautiful blue waters of that Sea of Galilee. It was beautiful in the spring time cause everything was blooming. The fields would be blooming and vineyards would be blooming. And this was...this was eremon topon a lonely place, not a desert place, a lonely place. There just wasn't anything there. There wasn't any place to get any food. And so they said, "You know, You've got to get rid of this crowd, they've got to go eat."
This is an act that lacks faith. It would have been a...it would have been better for them to come to Jesus and say, "You know, Lord, it's obvious this crowd is glued on You, they're transfixed and they're not going to go anywhere unless You send them somewhere. But You're going to have a problem on Your hands, they're going to get hungry and then they're going to become cantankerous then we're going to have a problem The kids are going to cry and we've got some issues to deal with. So, Lord, what do You want to do about the obvious need for food?" They knew that Jesus could control natural animals and they knew that He could control anything, wind, waves, fish. He demonstrated all of that. It would have been encouraging if they had not demonstrated this utter lack of faith. But they do. His response is amazing and surprising. Verse13, "But He said to them, 'You give them something to eat.'"
Had they already forgotten the power that they had? They had just come back from their mission of several weeks, casting out demons, raising dead people, healing sick people, preaching the gospel. Had they forgotten the power that they had? Power that had been demonstrated over nature because it was the same power Jesus had? Had they forgotten that? Had they forgotten 2 Kings 4:42 to 44, where in an Old Testament situation God granted similar kind of power? "A man came from Baal-shalishah, brought the man of God bread of the firstfruits, 20 loaves of barley, and fresh ears of corn in his sack, and he said, 'Give them to the people that they may eat.' And his attendants said, 'What shall I set this before a hundred men?' But he said, 'Give them to the people that they may eat for thus says the Lord, they shall eat and have some left over.' So he set it before them and they ate and had some left over, according to the Word of the Lord." Didn't they know about that incident in 2 Kings where God multiplied food? Or maybe they didn't remember the story about the widow in Elijah's day, where the oil never was gone even though it was poured out and the barrel of grain was never diminished even though it was used.
So He says, "Why don't you heal them? Why don't you...I mean...why don't you feed them? You provide food?" Well if they had the faith they could. But they really struggled with that. Over in verse 37 of chapter 9, they were coming down from the mountain and there was a big crowd at the bottom of the mountain and a man came up who had a son who was in serious problems. Verse 29, there was a demon that grabbed him seized him. He would scream and the demon would throw him into a convulsion with foaming at the mouth, mauling him and horrible things. The man said, "I begged Your disciples to cast it out and they couldn't." Jesus said, "Oh unbelieving and perverted generation."
The disciples had access to the power. It had been delegated to them by Jesus but they, they just had a hard time believing it. They were that little faith association. So what happened? They said, "We have no more than five loaves and two fish, unless perhaps we go and buy food for all these people." Somebody had already anticipated the problem and gone through the crowd to find out if people brought their lunch, or their dinner. They didn't. We've gone through the crowd. We made at least a cursory look at this crowd and all we could find is five loaves and two fish, unless...and this is sarcastic...perhaps we go and buy food for all these people. And, of course, at that point, you know, we can interject what is in John's gospel, John chapter 6. It says that Jesus said to Philip, "Where are we going to buy bread that these may eat?" Well if we were going to buy bread, where would we go and buy it? And He was testing him. And Philip said, "Well, I checked the bag, we've got two hundred denarii, and that isn't enough. So we don't know where we're going to buy it, and if we could find a place to buy it, we haven't got the money to buy it." They're just being tested and failing the test. And Jesus even said that to Philip to test Philip. And Philip was caught up, Philip was a bean counter, have a whole chapter on him in my new book Twelve Ordinary Men called Philip the bean counter. "I've checked the bag and that's all we've got. We went through the crowd and we checked, they don't have any food, all we found was five loaves and two fish. We've got a problem."
By the way, it was Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, who found the little boy with the fish, remember that? Because in John 6:8 and 9 it says, "Andrew, Simon Peter's brother, said, 'There's a lad here who has five barley loaves and two fish, but what are these among so many people?'" So first Jesus said to them, "Why don't you give them some food? Why don't you step out on faith and see what mighty work I will do through you." Oh, they didn't...what is He talking about? Is He kidding? We don't...we don't know where they could buy anything because this is a lonely place. We don't have enough money for them to buy anything. We've checked out the crowd, all there is is this one boy and he's got five barley loaves and two fish."
I remember as a little kid, I thought what mother in her right mind would ever give a kid that kind of a lunch? That's crazy. What would he do with five loaves of bread and two fish?
And then I understood that loaves means biscuits, just five little biscuits, like a cracker. And the fish would either be dried fish, or a pickled fish...probably both...pickled and then dried, even dried in salt. So what it was was five crackers and some dried fish. That made more sense at that time. And that's all they found was that little bit. And, of course, they evidenced their lack of faith because they said, "You know, we don't have enough money and we don't have enough food," verse 14, "for there were about 5,000 men, andrizo, not anthropos, men generic, males. And Matthew 14:21 says, "Besides women and children." So add certainly as many women and you've got ten thousand, add..figure at least two children per family and probably the average was more, you've got 20 to 25 thousand people. Matthew does say besides women and children, and by the way, the lunch they found was in the hands of a child proving their children...the children were there. So there's a huge crowd here, massive crowd.
And they don't have enough money. Two hundred denarii is two hundred days wages, it wouldn't begin to buy enough food for that crowd. And the food that they found is utterly inadequate. And then in another surprising statement, verse 14, Jesus said to His disciples, "Have them recline to eat." The literal text says, "Have them recline in groups of about 50 each." Take these 50 men and their wives and associated children and sort them into groups of 50.
What was that all about? Well, it's easier to serve them that way. Serve them what? Would be the immediate question. Serve them what? But there isn't any skepticism demonstrated, at least not in the text, there's no record that anyone was skeptical. Jesus says, "Just put them in groups of 50 and have them recline." Mark 6:39 says, "They were on green grass." Beautiful afternoon, spring afternoon, couldn't think of a more delightful place to be than on the north coast of Galilee in a spring afternoon, breezes nicely blowing that time of the year, beautiful lake below your feet, nice green grass, going to have a picnic. And they reclined, they just kind of flopped on the grass. Father's there, wife, kids are there and they put them in groups of 50.
Interesting note. Mark 6:40 says, "The men sat in groups of 50 and 100." Now if you...if you read here, he put them in groups of 50, but it adds the figure one hundred and maybe the best explanation would be that if you had a hundred groups of 50 men, you'd have five thousand men. So that's probably what happened. There were a hundred groups of 50 men and their families and it made aisles of orderly serving of dinner to everyone. And I'm sure the curiosity and excitement began to rise as the people were getting organized wondering how this was all going to happen. And while the disciples are supposed to be doing it and they are doing it, verse 15 says, they did it and everybody was reclining, ready to eat. And then verse 16 is the miracle. "And He took the five loaves and the two fish," five little biscuits or crackers, a couple of dried fish, and He did what every Jewish father did at every meal, and still today the orthodox would do this, put His hands on the food, in this case held it in His hands and looked up, simply as acknowledgment of where this came from, acknowledging where all food comes from, that God is the source of all of it. That's what a Jewish father did routinely with his family day in and day out. "And then He blessed them." What does that mean? Well it doesn't mean that He infused, that Jesus infused them with some kind of magic. It doesn't mean He zapped them like with a magic wand so that they could multiply somehow. Bless is eulogeo, it means to give thanks. To eulogize someone is to express gratitude for...for them. And John refers to the same thing and uses the verb eucharisteo from which we get eucharist which means to give thanks. So the intent of the passage is to give thanks. So He looks to heaven, acknowledging by that posture that this has come down from God, and then He offers thanks. That's what you do when you bless this food, you are thanking God for it.
And then...that's what every father would do. "And then He broke them." That's what the father would do, he'd take the bread and he would look to heaven to acknowledge the source of it, then he would pray asking God to receive their thanks for it, and then he would break it and pass it to the family, distribute the food. Just very, very typical, it's amazing how commentators want to see in this some hidden eucharist and this is not anything mystical here, this is just an every day occurrence. Jesus did it the way it was done every meal in His own house when He was growing up. The only difference was, verse 16 says, "He kept giving it to the disciples to set before the multitude."
And how long would it take you to get rid of five crackers and two fish if you were giving it to twelve people? Well if you tore the fish into a few pieces, you might send them on one trip with the fish, and you broke up the biscuits, i