Matthew 14:1-23, Jesus shows selfless compassion

Reading Assignment: Matthew 14:1-23

Truth: Jesus shows selfless compassion.

Key Verse: Matthew 14:14

Three parts to this story of compassion:

1.        Grief over the death of John the Baptist (vv 1-13)

2.        Compassion for the crowd (vv 14-22)

3.        Prayer (v 23)

Prayer Suggestions:

1.        Compassion of Jesus: to receive it and to reflect it

2.        Prayer of Jesus: to learn to pray like Him and to have our source of strength in God

Transcript

Let’s begin our time together with prayer.

Our Lord, thank You for another morning, another day to have life and breath. May we trust in You another day and live for Your glory and honor. Thank You for the redemption that we have in Christ, that all who trust in Jesus have our sins washed away and that we have now a new purpose for living our lives in humble service to You. Thank You for evermore teaching us from Your word. Do indeed teach us this morning. Show us more and more the wonders and the glories of Jesus as we look into Your word again. It’s in His name we pray. Amen.

The next reading assignment is Matthew Chapter 14:1-23. The central truth I want to highlight from this passage is this: Jesus shows selfless compassion. The key verse is found in verse 14, where we read this: “When He [that is, Jesus] went ashore, He saw a large crowd, and felt compassion for them and healed their sick.” At first pass, this verse may sound rather insignificant. It may not really jump out of the page in any significant way, but when you understand the context in which Jesus shows this compassion, it's actually quite remarkable. And this is what I want to highlight for us as we work through this next section. There are three parts to this story of Jesus' compassion for the crowd. First, there is grief (vv 1-13). This is grief over the death of John the Baptist. Second, there is a demonstration of compassion (vv 14-22). And finally, there is prayer. This is where, I believe, Jesus finds His solace (v 23). So we have grief, compassion and prayer.

First, the grief. This section begins with a very interesting remark about Herod. By way of introduction, let me explain that this is not the same Herod as the man who killed all the babies in Bethlehem and its vicinity when Jesus was born. That Herod by this point had been long gone. But there is another Herod whose full name is Herod Antipas. This man was the Governor of Galilee and this fellow was frightened by the miracles which Jesus was doing. He was spooked by Jesus’ power because of a very guilty conscience he had about the execution of John the Baptist. He actually thought that Jesus was John the Baptist come back from the dead with these miraculous powers. Now, what was this complex really about? Why was Herod so scared of Jesus? Well, Matthew gives us the explanation for this in the verses afterwards. In short, Herod had John the Baptist beheaded. He had John the Baptist, the prophet of God, killed. The full story is given to us and it goes like this. Herod did something very immoral. He married his brother's wife. His brother was married to a woman named Herodias. And Herod Antipas really liked this woman and so he decided to marry her in spite of the fact that she was already married to his brother Philip. This is just pure adultery. When this happened, John the Baptist knew about it, and he spoke up and he confronted Herod, telling him, “It is unlawful for you to have this woman as your wife.” Herod was irritated by this, as was his new wife Herodias, and they both wanted him dead. But Herod couldn't just execute John, because he was well respected by the Jewish people (the populace, though not the religious leaders) as a prophet of God. Long story short, there was an incident in which Herod had the opportunity to kill John, and he availed himself of that opportunity. He had John the Baptist beheaded. Once John the Baptist died— and you will read the full story when you read the passage —once John the Baptist died, then his disciples came and took his body and buried him. Then they reported to Jesus what happened to John. At this juncture then, Jesus decided that He should go on a retreat with His disciples. Some of the details you'll find from the Gospel of Mark Chapter 6. Mark fills in a little bit more of the details than what Matthew gives us. Anyhow, Jesus wanted to withdraw to the other side of the Sea of Galilee for this reason, and He does. Matthew tells us He did it by Himself, but the word “Himself” should not be taken too literally, since Mark tells us that Jesus’ disciples also accompanied Him. And of course, they were there with Him when He arrived on the other side of the lake. Well, when they arrived at the other side, here’s what happened. The crowd that they had left behind traveled on foot and beat them to their destination. There they were on the shores of the remote location on the other side of the Sea, waiting for Jesus. And here's what's so stunning. You would imagine Jesus to have been disappointed. He needed a retreat, and so did the disciples. He needed time to grieve the loss of John the Baptist. But when this crowd came, Matthew reports for us that Jesus had compassion on the crowd.

This brings us to the second part on compassion. Matthew tells us that Jesus had compassion on the crowd. And with that compassion, Jesus healed their sick. Mark also tells us that He taught them. But He did more than this. After having healed their sick and taught them the word of God, then Jesus fed them. This is where we find the famous story of the feeding of the five thousand. This happened in this situation. The disciples had no idea how the people are going to get food, and Jesus tells the disciples to have all the people recline on the grass. All they had were five loaves and two fish. What will that do for five thousand plus number of people? By the way, the five thousand figure was only counting the men, so if you include the women and children, you would easily have fifteen to twenty thousand or even more than this. Well, Jesus takes the little bit of food and blesses the food, and He begins to break off pieces and give them to the disciples. The broken pieces continued to come off from the original loaves and fish until the entire crowd was fed. This was an amazing miracle! But what I want to highlight for us is that Jesus did this because He loved the people. He felt compassion for them. He healed them, He taught them, and He even fed them. Now, this whole thing takes the entire day because by the end of the meal, it was evening time. He did all this in spite of His desire to rest and recoup. Instead of the reprieve which He wanted for Himself, the needy people showed up and what does Jesus do? He shows them selfless compassion. His compassion was selfless. He set others first. This is what’s so remarkable about our Lord. Mark also tells us in Mark 6 that when Jesus saw the people, He saw them like sheep without a shepherd. And He had a great deal of pity for them. This is why He cared for them as He did. That's what Jesus is like. And I hope that as you continue to read through this gospel that you would see this wonderful character of Jesus. I would be remiss if I didn’t mention the greatest demonstration of Jesus’ compassion which was at the cross. Even though He had done nothing wrong, even though He didn't deserve the wrath of God, He willingly went to the cross to bear the sins of His people for their eternal salvation. This was Jesus' awesome compassion. The Gospel of John also highlights this aspect of Jesus’ compassion when he tells the story of the aftermath of this incident. John tells us that on the next day, the crowds came to where Jesus and the disciples went, to Capernaum, and they came seeking for more of Jesus’ miracles, especially His multiplication of food. But at that point, Jesus directs them not to more temporal satisfaction but to eternal satisfaction of eternal life. He tells them that they can only find spiritual life that remains forever through faith in Him. This was Jesus’ care for them, for their eternal souls. All of this is recorded for us in John Chapter 6. This is the compassion of Jesus that meets the true and deepest needs of humanity. And He did so while setting aside His own needs and setting the needs of others first. He took care of them first and aimed to meet their greatest need. Well, that's Jesus’ compassion.

Rewind back to the prior day. After Jesus dismissed the crowd and sent His disciples back to the other side of the Sea, Jesus spent the night in prayer. This also shows us something astonishing about Jesus. He just had a full day. He had to have been tired, and yet after all the busyness of the day, He heads to the mountain and He spends the night in prayer to God. If you ever wondered how Jesus has this kind of selfless compassion, the answer is found in His prayer life. Jesus’ sources of love and compassion was His deep and continual connection with His heavenly Father. This is the way it's always been for the people of God. We draw our strength, our encouragement, our love, all from God. And Jesus sets the example for us as the greatest man of God to ever live. He prayed and it was through His prayer that He found strength and compassion for others. This also shows us a bit about how we are to go about living life. We are to find our strength to care for others and to be a fountain of love for those around us through our connection with God through prayer.

Well, what can we pray about in light of this passage? The first thing is the compassion of Jesus. And you know, even before praying about becoming like Jesus in this regard, I think the greater prayer to pray is to be on the receiving end of the compassion of Jesus. You see, Jesus rose from the dead and He is in heaven. And from there He looks down upon us and He sees us the same way as He saw the crowd. He calls everyone to come under His shepherding care, to no longer be sheep without a shepherd, to no longer be a lost sheep. He's calling everyone to come home to Him. This is Jesus. He looks upon us with compassion, and He calls us to Himself. And we ought to first and foremost receive that care of Jesus for us and respond with faith and follow Him as our shepherd and guide. We should tell Him that we want Him as our shepherd, our guide, our Savior, our master, and our God. If this is what's in your heart, you should absolutely express that to the Lord. Then beyond this, then we can also pray about Jesus’ example of selfless compassion toward people. This is a time of confession. We should be dead honest with the Lord and confess that I am, in and of myself, not like Jesus. I am selfish and I am self-seeking. I live more often than not with a me-first mentality. I need God’s intervention to become a man or a woman more like Jesus. These are the things to pray about with regard to Jesus’ compassion.

Secondly, we can ask Jesus to teach us to pray like He did. Even in His time of grief and weariness, Jesus spent the whole night clinging onto the Father in prayer. This is a real stunning example of prayer. We can ask the Lord to teach us to pray like He prayed and that we would see ourselves desperately in need of God more than anything else, that He would teach us to cling onto God, even as He did. We can ask Him to open our eyes to see that our strength to carry on with life can only come from heaven. Jesus lived this way, and He can teach us this. So those are some prayer suggestions for us from today’s Scripture.

Let me close us in prayer and we'll wrap it up for today. Let's pray.

Our Lord Jesus, You are truly amazing. We know You're the Son of God from heaven, but we also know that You are truly human. When You were born into the world, You were born as a baby and You grew up like every other child grows up, yet without complaints or tantrums, never sinning as a child. And as an adult, You were beset with all the weaknesses of the human body and human emotion. In spite of this, You had the inner strength to set aside Your own needs to show a profound level of compassion toward others. We marvel at Your compassion for others. And we readily confess that we are not like this. We're a lot more selfish than this. We far too often operate with a me-first others-second mentality. We know it's sin and we understand that this is sin which you bore on the cross for us, to cleanse us from it. We thank You for this. We also see in You a depth of compassion for those without a shepherd. You loved them and You sought to lead them to the blessing of God. And we want to come and remain under Your shepherding care for us. We don't ever want to be lost sheep off on our own. I pray for everyone here that they would each willingly come under Your shepherding care, because there is no better place to be in life than under Your guidance and guardianship. Thank You also for teaching us to pray, that the source of our strength for life comes from God. Thank You for setting down the pattern for us, so that we would learn how to go through life amid the difficulties and challenges of life. Thank You, our Lord, for Your precious word given to us. As we consider Your great compassion, our hearts are filled with Your compassion. Thank You for teaching us. In Your name we pray. Amen.

Well, may the Lord bless you this Monday morning, and we will conclude our time here. Good bye.