SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 6/10/2022 10:15 AM
My Worship Time Focus: “The Deeds of Piety”
Bible Reading & Meditation Reference: Matthew
14:14
Message of the verse: “14 And when He
went ashore, He saw a great multitude, and felt compassion for them, and healed
their sick.”
I want to begin with talking about the number of
people who were there as the text says “a great multitude,” and in verse 21 we
see that the number of men was five thousand.
In our Lord’s ministry as He traveled around from place to place that
there were usually more women in attendance, and so whenever you count the
guess of the total number of people including women and children there could
have been as many as 25,000 people there to hear and some to be healed as our
verse says.
We
have talked about why Jesus and His disciples were traveling to a remote place
in recent SD’s and stated that the disciples had just returned from what I call
a missionary trip, and also that Jesus had just heard the news of the killing
of John the Baptist, and so they needed some alone time to be refreshed, but
once our Lord saw the great multitude of people who were in need of healing He
had compassion and healed them all. It
surely would have been easier to go so far into the hills that most of the
people could not have followed or to go back into the boat and head for a
location where they would not be discovered.
But not our Lord, He came to preach, to heal and to eventually die for
the lost sheep.
We
read that He “felt compassion for them.”
The Greek word for compassion is splanchnizomai
and it literally means to be moved in one’s bowels, or viscera where the ancients considered the emotions and feelings to
reside. I have to say that I understand that
completely. John MacArthur writes “The
Son of God was not remote or coldly calculating and analytical concerning men’s
needs but was deeply moved by the suffering, confusion, despair, and spiritual
lostness of those around Him. Jesus felt
pain, experiencing genuine anguish for the suffering of others, whether they
were believer or unbeliever, Jew or Gentile, man or woman, young or old,
wealthy or poor. He must have felt much as He did when He approached Lazarus’s
grave and wept (John 11:35) and when He looked out over Jerusalem through tears
and said, ‘If you had known in this day, even you, the things which make for
peace! But now they have been hidden
from your eyes’ (Luke 19:42). He
represented the compassionate heart of God even more fully than had Jeremiah,
who declared to rebellious Judah, ‘But if you will not listen to [God’s warning],
my soul will sob in secret for such pride; and my eyes will bitterly weep and
flow down with tears’ (Jer. 13:17).”
I,
many times think more of our Lord’s justice than His compassion on undeserved
people, and this is something that I am sure that the Lord, through His Spirit
and His Word will work on my heart about.
Jesus’ extended His compassion even to the shallow, self-centered thrill
seekers, and I am sure that there were many of those 25,000 people who fit into
this category. We know that Jesus’
feelings of compassion were real and perhaps this was one of the great reasons
that He was made a man so He could feel what man feels and see with His heart
what men see, including all the suffering men go through as we walk on planet
earth. Jesus really knows all of our
troubles and Jesus has compassion for us as we got through them. It was because of His compassion that we saw
in Matthew 10:1 that He sent out His disciples to heal, to cast out demons with
no restriction or qualifications. God’s
power could have been seen in other means, like moving buildings, or causing
men to walk on water, or any other way, but our Lord chose to be compassionate
to people, and this was a much better way to do things for the people than to
demonstrate things for thrill seekers.
Another
reason that Jesus felt compassion was because of His perfect perception of hell
and the torment those would face who did not receive Him. Remember that hell was made for the demons,
but when man sinned those who don’t receive the gift of salvation through our
Lord’s death on the cross will go there and Jesus knew this and therefore was
compassionate to those He ministered too while on planet earth.
John
MacArthur writes “Arrhostos (sick)
means to be weak, without strength.
These afflicted ones whom Jesus healed obviously made a special effort
to follow Him around the northern end of the Sea of Galilee. Most of them probably had to be carried or
helped along by relatives or friends, and they arrived many hours after the
rest of the crowd. Above all else they
wanted to be healed by this Man who had such compassionate power.
“Jesus
postponed His rest, His privacy, His time alone with the disciples, and even
His time with His Father in order to meet the needs of those helpless people
who suffered.”
Spiritual meaning for my life today: I think that for the Holy Spirit to make me
more like Jesus He will have to work on my compassion skills for the enemies that
we all face in living in the USA today.
My Steps of Faith for Today: In putting on the armor of God, my prayer is
that I will stand like we are told to do, trusting the Lord to defeat those
enemies that are not human who fight against us.
6/10/2022 10:57 AM
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