August 20, 2023

The following transcript has been electronically transcribed. Any errors in spelling, syntax, or grammar should be attributed to the electronic method of transcription and its inherent limitations.

 Mark has so skillfully taken us from one banquet to another. I don’t know if you noticed that, but we have traversed from one banquet to another, from one feast to another. And it's not by coincidence that these two feasts are put together as they are. So we just finished two weeks of looking at this most heinous, most sinful feast.

The feast of Herod that he threw for himself on his birthday, the decadent, most immoral happenings that we have seen so far in the gospel of Mark. We looked at Herod’s, we looked at Herod, we looked at this poor young girl who has herself a fallen sinner, been further corrupted by her mother, and has now just acted so shamefully and so calloused in heart.

And we have mourned the sinfulness that this story has shown to us. But we have rejoiced that this story was not a tragedy. It was a tragedy for the young girl. It was a tragedy for Herod’s, but it was no, no story of a tragedy, was it? It was a story of a triumph. Because the moment John's head was separated from his body, his reward began.

So we looked at that feast, but now we go from that feast to another feast, from that banquet to another banquet, and the two banquets could not be more different from one another. We go from the most sinful, immoral banquet to a banquet that's put on by the Lord himself. We go from a banquet that's taking place in the palace halls, the most luxurious palace of the land, to a banquet that's taking place in a deserted countryside.

We go from a banquet that no doubt had the finest foods that Israel had to offer being served to now a banquet of supernatural food, but supernatural food that is bread and fish, and we grow from a bank banquet. That is blasphemous and insulting to the name of the Lord, to a banquet that is by the Bread of Life himself, one that is honoring and glorifying.

We go from, of course, the banquet inherits palace to now the banquet in the countryside, but we're not there yet. We've got to get there today. So in our story that we'll begin today, we'll look at the first four verses and that'll be all we can handle today. But as we begin the story today, I'm going to begin introducing to you or pointing out to you, I should say, a number of motifs.

Motifs is going to be the word for the week and the word for next week too. just because I like that word, motifs just speaks of a theme or just a common occurrence, a mantra, so to speak. And there are probably more motifs in this story than any other single story In the gospel of Mark, there are more.

Themes, more threads connecting together this particular story with Old Testament threads than probably any other single story in the Gospel of Mark. We'll point some of those out as we go this morning, next week, those themes or those motifs will get much more important and much more visible. We're going to see themes like the Exodus theme, the, the theme of God taking his people out from slavery of into of Egypt, into where the desert where they need to be fed.

We're going to see themes of the, the shepherd of God or God as the shepherd, God as shepherd. We're going to see the themes of God's provision in the desert and about half a dozen more Old Testament themes that are carried over into this story because this is one of the most powerful stories of the Gospel of Mark.

So we'll begin this morning. We'll begin just by reading the story together. We're very familiar with the story, all of us, and we'll just read it first of all, from verse 30 down through verse 44. And then we'll just jump right in from verse 30. So from verse 30, the apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught.

And he said to them, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while for many were coming and going and they had no leisure even to eat. And they went away in the boat to, to a desolate place by themselves. Now many saw them going and recognized them, and they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of them.

And when he went and ashore, he saw a great crowd and he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. And he began to teach them many things. And when it grew late, his disciples came to him and said, this is a desolate place and the hour is now late. Send them away to go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat.

But he answered them. You give them something to eat. And they said to him, Shall we go and buy 200 denarii worth of bread and give it to them to eat? And he said to them, how many, how many loaves do you have? Go and see. And when they had found out, they said five and two fish. Then he commanded them all to sit down in groups on the grass.

So they sat down in groups by hundreds and by fifties and taking the five loaves and the two fish. He looked up to heaven and said a blessing and broke the loaves and gave them to the disciples to set before the people. And he divided the two fish among them all, and they all ate and were satisfied.

And they took up 12 baskets full of broken pieces and of the fish. And those who ate the loaves were 5,000 men. So each passage of scripture that we come to, we have learned to ask ourself this question among other questions we've learned to ask ourself the question, why did the Holy Spirit put this here?

For, we know that all of the miracles, all the teachings and all the parables of Jesus, all the instances of Jesus' life are not in the scriptures. We know that if all the instances of Jesus's, even his adult ministry were in the scriptures, that we would need Bibles that were far thicker than what we have.

Even John himself, as he finishes his gospel at the end of chapter 21, he says, if I wrote down everything that Jesus said and and taught and did, then I suppose it would fill the whole world with all these things, which of course makes sense to us because Jesus being God, the son had no beginning, and so the things that Jesus knows and has done there is literally no end to the things that he has done, so it would literally fill the world because he created the world and then much more so the world wouldn't even contain it.

But even just the things of Jesus' life. The majority of them are not written in our scriptures, and so we should always ask ourself the question, why is this particular episode here? So this is an episode of course of one of Jesus's most famous miracles, the multiplying of the bread and of the fish. And we've talked many times, particularly recently, about the purpose of the mighty works and signs that Jesus did the purpose of the miracles.

We've talked many times recently about the purpose of the miracles and the purpose of the miracles. We have understood plainly to be an affirmation of validation of the message and the messenger. That's what the miracles were performed for. Jesus never performed any miracles to draw attention to himself, to bring favor upon himself.

Jesus performed his mighty signs and works by the power of the Spirit in order to validate both the message and the messenger. And the same thing applies to all the miraculous activity of the apostles. It was always done to validate the message and the messenger. Now this validation of the, the validation of the message and the messenger, these, this validation meant something different or something more substantially more to the original readers of the gospels and to the, the eyewitnesses of the gospels than it means to us.

It means more to them because we don't require the same validation. We have a validation of our own. Does anybody want to guess what the validation of the scriptures is for us? It's a very significant validation. Anybody want to take a stab at it? Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit is the validator of the scriptures for us, because when Holy Spirit dwells in us, holy Spirit who wrote the scriptures testifies to our heart.

This is true. And so the miracle stories can also serve, serve as a type of secondary validation for us, but in a different way because we weren't eyewitnesses. But nevertheless, we have the believable testimony of the Gospels that testifies to the miraculous activity of Jesus and the apostles. We know that it's accurate.

We know that it's reliable because, for example, as we're studying through Mark's gospel, Mark's Gospel was written very early. And so Mark writes these accounts of this miraculous activity of Jesus at a time when most of the people who were alive, when those activities took place are still alive. And these gospels are circulated around in such a way that anybody could say, no, no, no.

I was there and it didn't happen like that. I, I saw that and, and no, that's not exactly what happened. But of course that didn't take place. So even for us reading these accounts today, removed by some two millennia, they can still be a validation of sorts for us. Nevertheless, our biggest validation, our most reliable validation is of course, holy Spirit who communicates to our souls.

This is truth. This is right. So for us, the miracle stories serve a little bit of a different function For us, the function that the miracle stories serve is to show us something of the character, something of the nature of God. It shows us something about this man, Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God incarnate.

And so the question that we should ask, why did Holy Spirit choose to put this miracle in the scriptures and not some of the others? And so the most obvious reason is going to be what does this miracle show us about the character of Jesus or the nature of Jesus? And it's going to show us. Some things, some very plain and very upfront and easy to see things.

It's going to show us some things like, for example, we'll talk about this today, the compassion of Jesus, the supernatural fathomless, compassion of Jesus. Jesus. In the story I'll show us in the text how Jesus feels the weariness of the people. He feels the poverty, he feels the hunger. This is not something arbitrary.

This is not something theoretical for Jesus. This is not just something in which Jesus, the human draws on the supernatural power. That's the son of God, and somehow he's made aware of the weariness, but instead he feels their difficulty. Also, we're going to see in the text how Jesus feels their lostness. So we're going to, we're going to see something very powerful about the compassion of Jesus.

This is also going to teach us something very important about the priority that Jesus places on the teaching and the preaching of the word. We have made note of that since chapter one, that Jesus's main reason for coming, of course, is to die and to make atonement. But up until the point of his death, his main purpose was to teach, was to preach.

It wasn't to cast out demons or cleanse lepers or, or perform miracles. His main priority was to preach. And so we're going to see very plainly the priority that he places on the preaching of the word. We're also going to see something about Jesus' methods of ministry and how he's going to draw the disciples in to ministry with him.

We're also going to see very plainly Jesus's power to do anything, Jesus's power, to create anything from nothing. And we're going to see that Jesus will use that power to show us his absolute unwavering commitment. To be our provider. Jesus is most interested in being our provider, and so he's going to use this supernatural power that he is endowed with by the spirit that indwells him perfectly.

He's going to draw upon that and use that in order to be seen as our great provider. But then perhaps the main takeaway of the story, the part of the story that is impossible to miss, and the part of the story that is probably most beneficial for us to see is just simply this. This story says to the believer, to the child of Christ, there is absolutely no reason to ever be anxious about anything because our heavenly Father knows what we need and he is able to provide everything that we need.

And not only is he able to provide, he takes great joy in providing everything that we need. And so there is never cause for the child of God to ever worry or to be anxious about anything. Those things are going to come through plain and clear. This week and next week. So now let's just get started from verse 30 and we'll begin drawing some of these truths out from verse 30.

The apostles returned to Jesus and told him all that they had done and taught. And so we noticed the context that this takes place in is takes place in the context of the right, immediately after yet another one of Mark's bracketing techniques, his sandwiching techniques where he loves to take a story, begin telling a story.

Interrupt it with another story and then come back and finish the first story. And we've seen each time that he's done this, that he does this for a purpose. And his purpose is that the meaning of both stories emphasizes or illuminates the meaning of the other story, so that the meaning of both stories are found in one another.

And so he's taken this story of the sending out of the 12 and put it together with the story of the beheading of John the Baptizer, which took place earlier in time. And he sandwiched these two together because he wants us to see something about the cost of discipleship. These 12 who are sent out. They will ultimately share in the cost of discipleship, which John the Baptist receives.

Now, as his head is separated from his body later, the disciples will also experience the similar type of the cost of discipleship. And all of that is of course, Pointing to the great prophet, the, the 12 apostles are prophets of a sort of themselves. They are the voice, pe, they're the voice of God, the, the spokesman of God.

They're sent out with the message of Jesus. So they are in a sense, prophets of God. But then John the Baptizer is said to be the greatest prophet of the Old Testament. But all of that points to the prophet Christ who is the prophet of prophets. And then his destiny will be the same or similar as the Baptizer.

They will both be executed in demeaning hu humiliating physical ways, but then also this points to the cost of discipleship for the apostles as well. Now, that story concluded here in verse 30 with the words that they returned to Jesus and told Jesus all the things that they had said and all the things that they had taught.

So they'd return with this excitement and they share with Jesus their experiences of being sent out now, verse 31. And he said to them, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while. So Jesus reveals here. A motive or Mark actually reveals the motive for them going away for this period of rest.

And the motive he's going to tell us is that they've been just so swamped, busy. They've not even had time to eat. Not even the leisure, leisure to eat. We'll talk about that in just a few minutes, but that's the, the apparent motive, the apparent occasion for wanting to get away. But Matthew reveals for us another motive for Jesus' desire to get away for a period of rest.

Matthew tells us in Matthew chapter 14 that it's at this time that Jesus learned of the death of John the Baptizer, his cousin, John the Baptizer. So the death of John, the Baptizer, as we've said before, took place chronologically much earlier in the story. Perhaps this is the point at which Jesus learns it, that coincides with the return of the apostles.

Now, why might Jesus have learned it with the return of the apostles? I. That's not too hard to sort of put two and two together, is perhaps the apostles have heard of it while they were sent out to these other villages and other towns, and they've brought the news back to Jesus. So hearing this most sad news, Jesus wants to withdraw himself to a place of desolation, to be alone with his thoughts, to be alone with his father in prayer.

And he couples that together with the occasion of wanting to provide some rest for the disciples. But the disciples come back with these fantastic stories of the demons that they've cast out of the people that they've healed, of the message that they have preached, and the people that have listened to that message while others have rejected it.

And in their excitement, Jesus serves for us as the perfect picture of the one who rejoices with the one who rejoices and weeps with the one who weeps. So Jesus' heart is weeping over the loss of John the Baptizer. Nevertheless, in his joy and in his enthusiasm for the return of the disciples, he says to them, you know you.

You've got to be worn out. Let's leave this place. Let's go to a des desolate place and rest a while. Verse 31. He said to them, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest for a while. So that's a command that he gives to them. It's in the imperative. Come away. He's giving them a command, a directive for them to do, but notice in the authority of his command.

Coupled together, wedded together with his authoritative command is an equal concern and an equal care for the disciples. He commands them and his command is for their good, which should come as absolutely no surprise to us because every command of the Lord is precisely the same. Every command of the Lord is the authoritative command of God that's coupled together perfectly with his desire for our best, specifically our eternal best.

So he gives them this authoritative command, come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest for a while. So here we begin to see what I'll point out is the first motif, and that's the motif of God's provision, of God's desire to provide both food and rest in a desert place. I. And if you think for just a few moments, we won't trace this through the Old Testament because we don't need to.

You can for yourselves, you can recollect so many, many stories and instances in which there is an occasion in the desert, in the wilderness and God's people are seeking either rest or food or both. And then God either provides that, or for some reason, refrains from providing that or doesn't provide that.

So many instances that that occurs throughout the stories of our scriptures, we can think of course, the main, one of the Hebrew children in their time in the wilderness as God commands, Pharaoh, let let my people go. And then we go to the plagues and we cross the red sea and everything. And then we get to the desert.

And coming to the desert, Moses says, how am I going to feed these people? And then of course there comes the manna, there comes the quail, there comes the water from the rock. And so that's probably the biggest, the grandest story of God's desire. To provide rest and food for his people in the wilderness. But we see so many minor stories that carry the same theme.

The story of Elijah, if you remember the story of Elijah after the incident on Mount Carmel when he flees and he's in the same desert. And there God provides for him food and rest. Only he does it directly from the hand of the second person of the Trinity, the second person of the Godhead. We see the same theme in the lives of Abraham, as Abraham is commanded to leave the land of earth and go to this land of promise.

But all he ever really dwells in is this desert place and this desert place in which God desires to be his provider. But then there comes the famine. And in a, in Abraham's sin, he fails to trust God and he flees to Egypt. We see it in the story of Ruth as as Naomi flees the land of bread Bethlehem, and goes to the land of the Moabites to flee from the, the famine and so many others.

There's a, there's at least half a dozen other storylines in our Old Testament in which the theme of the story is the theme of God's people in the wilderness. God. Sends them into the wilderness or calls them into the wilderness. And in that wilderness experience, there is this desire for God to provide food for them and for God to provide rest for them.

Sometimes the food and rest are provided sometimes due to the sinfulness or the hardheartedness of the people. It is not provided, but we see this many instances. For example, Psalm 95, he is our God and we are the people of his pastor. I'm sorry, this is the motif of the the, I'm sorry, the, the providing a food in the desert today.

If you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as in Meribah when your father's put me to the test and, and put me to the proof. Though they had not seen my, they had seen my work. They are a people who go astray in the heart, and they have known my ways. Therefore, I swore in my wrath, they shall not enter my rest.

Now the writer to the Hebrews picks up on that. And he takes over a chapter from chapter three through halfway through chapter four, to draw out that theme of God's people failed to trust him in the wilderness and so therefore they did not enter the rest. And so you are to not be like that. You are to trust where they fail to trust Isaiah 63, like livestock that go down into the valley.

The spirit of the Lord gave them rest. So you lead led your people to make yourself for yourself a glorious name. Or Jeremiah 31 in verse two, therefore says the Lord, the people who survived the sword and found grace in the wilderness when Israel sought for rest and we could go on and on. The Lord wants to be seen as the provider of food and rest, particularly in the desert.

So we're going to begin making some connections there. The wilderness, the desolate place, and God's desire to be the rest provider and the food provider in that. It. But we know of course, that Jesus if is our ultimate rest Jesus is the rest which all of this is pointing to. He says to the disciples, come with me to take your rest.

And so they go with Jesus. And ironically they're going not with Jesus, but they're going with their ultimate rest. So we know how the scriptures point us to Jesus as our ultimate rest, our ultimate spiritual rest because in Jesus we rest from our efforts to find God's favor on our own to please God through our own law keeping or our own good deed doing.

And so we put down those tools, that labor to rest in Jesus's work of pleasing God on our behalf by means of his sacrifice. And we rest in him. That's how he is our Sabbath rest. But he commands them here to go away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest for a while. So in this is built in tremendous theological meaning, but also is built into this tremendous.

I believe practical help as well. And the practical help comes to us from the one who told us earlier in chapter three that he himself is the Lord of the Sabbath. And the practical help is this, is that God understands that we as weak jars of clay require wet rest and he commands us to rest. And so for some of us, the command to rest, the command, and I'm speaking of, of not spiritual rest, but I'm speaking of physical rest as Jesus invites the disciples to come and take this physical rest.

Likewise, God also, I. Created our time in such a way as to be a sequence of periods, a period of, of six days and one day, six days, and one day a period of work and rest and work and rest. And so his command is to us, you are humans, you are frail, you are under the consequence of sin, and so therefore you need to rest.

So some, for some of us, this is an easy thing for other, for others of us, it's not so easy of a thing, is it because God has wired us differently? And some of us, for some of us, God has wired us in such a way that God says, take a rest. You don’t have to tell me twice. I'll take two rests while I'm at it.

I'll go ahead and rest for next week too. But then others of us, God has wired us differently, or I might put it this way, God's creation of us, his unique creation of us interacts differently with our fallen nature in such a way that for, for some of us, this command to rest is a difficult one. And for some of us in our arrogance, we can say, you know, I'm, I'm better.

We wouldn't say it in these words, but we can say, I'm better than those who need to rest. I, I'm better than that. I'm more durable than that. I'm harder than that. And so I don't need that. And that's, that's an expression of arrogance and that's an expression of pride. And all of us can take that for what it's worth as an admonition from the scriptures.

But really the point of this passage of the scriptures is really pointedly directed at only one person in the room. And no, don't worry about who I'm looking at right now because it's not you. The point of the passage is most directly towards me because the context of the passage is Jesus's words and Jesus' command towards those who are ministering in his name and have just completed a time of ministry in which they have ministered the word to people.

And Jesus's command to them is to specifically, he says, Not just go and rest, he says, come away, meaning to leave the context of that ministry and go to a place that's away from that context of ministry with me and rest. Now, I know that the word with me is not there in the text, but Jesus' command is come.

It's not go if, if you're telling somebody to go, then you're telling them to go without you. If you're telling them to come, then the, the necessary implication is come along with me. And so the most direct application of the passage is for those who minister the word on a regular basis, and God's command to us is on a regular basis, come away with me for a time of rest.

I probably need to hear that more than anyone else in the room. But I was gracious enough to let you listen, Lynn, as God was preaching to me right there. So come away by yourselves to a desolate place and rest a while. For many were coming and going. And they had no leisure even to eat. So the situational context here is the, the, the, that, the situational context that began all the way back in chapter one.

From that, Day of healing. Remember that day of healing that went all day on the Sabbath and into the night, and then through most of the night, that massive day of healing. From that moment, we have noticed over and over how Jesus' life has just been this constant being flocked by people. And so this constant people around and constant pressing upon them.

And so these disciples have been experiencing that since the day of healing back in chapter one. But they've now experienced this on a different level because they've now experienced it without Jesus there receiving and absorbing the brunt of the busyness of the, of the demand upon them, of the, the requirement for them to teach and to explain, and the requirements that are placed upon them.

They have experienced this on their own. So the context of this is Jesus, as Mark says, that they have had not eaten the leisure to eat. Now, if you notice, that's the second time that we've been told that the disciples specifically did not have time to eat. Remember back in chapter three? In chapter three, it was in another one of those sandwich stories, the sandwich story with the Pharisees coming because they came up from Jerusalem because they were so irritated at Jesus.

Well, in that was the story of Jesus' family who had heard about the crowds and the size of the crowds and the things Jesus was saying and doing, and they became so embarrassed that they go to take Jesus back with them, even against his will by force. And we're told there that the reason, the impetus, the sort of the final straw, that thing which the family heard about this and they're like, yep, we've been hearing about this for six months now and we've been putting this off, but now we just can't ignore this anymore.

We got to go do something about this. The straw that broke the camel's back was we're told the disciples couldn't even eat. There was no time to eat. There was so many people flocking around them that there's no time to eat, just to refresh our memory from chapter three. Then he went home and the crowd gathered again so that they could not even eat.

And when his family heard it, It. They went out to seize him for, they were saying he's out of his mind. So this is the second time that we're now told that the disciples and Jesus literally did not have time to eat. The first time we're told that was the impetus for the family coming to try to take him back.

And Jesus rebukes the family and he says to them, my true family are the, the pe, the children of God, the people of God who hear the word of God and obey it. And then they leave and go back. The second time is this occasion where the disciples now have returned and they're once again so busy that nobody has time to fix any food or eat anything.

And on this, this occasion, Jesus will now take the disciples and he'll give them sort of a gentle rebuff. He rebuffed his family earlier. Here he is going to rebuff the, the, the d, the disciples. And the point of that is, as we'll see later on next Sunday, the point of that is, is that you're failing to look to Christ, to look to God for the help that you need.

So two Rebuffs come and both of them come in the context of the disciples not having enough time to eat. So I wanted you to take that, this idea that the disciples now is, it's rather unusual, isn't it, that Mark says two times that they didn't have time to eat. Take that and sort of put it in the back of your mind.

We're going to bring that back out next Sunday and that's going to have importance for us next Sunday. So he says, come away and rest. Come away. You haven't even had time to eat. Verse 32. And they went away in the boat. So that's probably the still the same boat that they went across the Sea of Galilee to the land where the, the man known as Legion was and came back in the boat and he says, come to a desolate place.

He says, let us go to this desolate place by them, by themselves. So the, the word translated desolate place is the word amass. And you know that word because we've talked about that word a lot because that word shows up a great deal in Mark's gospel, amass, wilderness desert. Deserted place. Desolate place.

So we've seen that word. We began seeing it at the very beginning when we're told that John is a voice crying out in the amass in the wilderness. Make straight the way of the Lord. I. Bring low the mountains, bring up the valleys, and then we're told that John the Baptizer is baptizing in the amass in the wilderness.

And then we're told that Jesus goes out and he's also baptized in the amass, in the wilderness. And then we're told that the spirit drove Jesus into the amass, into the wilderness, into the desert place for him to be tempted, and that he was in the wilderness for 40 days. And then later on in chapter one, we're told that Jesus rises early so that he can go to the amass, to the wilderness, to the deserted, deserted places to pray.

And then we have that story of the leper when Jesus cleanses the leper and he tells the leper, don't tell anybody what I've done. But instead, he tells everybody, so that now Jesus himself has to go to the amass, to the wilderness, to the de, the deserted place, and while the leper goes back into the town and into the village.

So this de desert, this wilderness place, is a theme that Mark has landed on. And now he brings this theme back out. It's the theme of the wilderness from which John comes. From which he calls into which the people go to be baptized, into which Jesus goes to be immersed into the sinfulness of the people and then into which Jesus is driven for his time of temptation and trials.

And then into which Jesus voluntarily goes to pray. And then into which Jesus now must go in exchange for this cleansed leper to now be re reunited with his friends and family. This theme of a desert place, the deserted place, keep that in mind as we'll. Draw that out further as we go now, verse 33, now many saw them going and recognized them.

So that says to us that these disciples and Jesus, they're getting in the boat, they're leaving and some people perhaps see them and they say, Hey, I know those guys. Isn't that Jesus? And isn't that, isn't that the crowd that always hangs around Jesus? I know them. So they see them and recognize them, however that word them, if you look at that word, them.

That's supplied. If you're, if you have a king James and Italicized Kings James, then it'll show you that that them is in italics, meaning that them is not part of what Mark wrote. Instead, mark wrote that they saw them and they recognized. Now we, they had to, our translators had to supply something because in the English recognize as what's called a transitive verb, meaning that it needs a direct object.

You can't just say, oh I recognize, and you say, recognize what? Our English doesn't work that way. When you recognize, you got to recognize something, you got to recognize a person or something like that. So that's why the editors of our Bible have supplied them for it to make sense to us in English.

However, mark didn't say them. He just said they recognized. So perhaps what he's saying is that they recognized the disciples in Jesus, or perhaps he's saying that they recognized what's happening, and I think that's probably more likely that they recognized what's going on. They recognized the fact.

That Jesus is leaving because I find that just fits the flow. It fits the context more than, oh, aren't those the disciples? Everybody knew the disciples and, and they had been seeing Jesus and flocking to Jesus now for months. So it makes more sense to me that they recognized, wait a minute, they look like they're leaving.

They're getting in a boat. Are, are these guys leaving? So they get in the boat and they recognize what's happening and they ran there on foot. That word that Mark uses, speaks of, oh, I don't know. You, you've seen the videos of the, the crazy people in Spain that run with the bulls. You know what I'm talking about?

Where there's this crowd of people and this and this mob of people. And it's not just a mob of people, but it's a mob of people. Running, that's the word that Mark uses. It, it describes a, a sort of a desperate run together where people are running and even falling over each other. That's the word that he uses.

So they ran there on foot from all the towns and got there ahead of him. So probably what is happening here is that Jesus and the disciples get in the boat and in the boat they never leave the sight of the shore. And so the people see the boat from the shore and they're sort of following, running along with the boat as the boat is traversing across the sea.

Now Luke is going to tell us that they go to the region of Bethsaida, where Peter is from. That would've, that's, if that's where they indeed go, which is what Luke says, then that would be a journey over water of about four miles. And a journey over land of about eight miles. So they traverse this eight mile or so while they're kind of watching the boat where the boat's going.

Maybe they're sort of figuring out, looks like he's going to Beth ci, so they're following along the land and that sort of thing. Keep inside of the boat as they go. Now, later on in the story, we're going to get some idea, as we've been talking all along about the sizes of the crowd and the number of people, the sheer volume of people that are flocking around Jesus, but yet to, to this date, we've not been given a number to kind of go with.

But in the story, we're going to be given a number and we know that number is of course, 5,000 men. Now, we don't take that to mean that there are 5,000 men plus women and children following along the air edge of the shore. The 5,000 number doesn't come until later after Jesus has been teaching. So while Jesus is teaching later, the crowd's going to get bigger.

They're going to hear Jesus, oh, Jesus is teaching again. Let's go. And, and their friends are going to hear, they're going to password and the crowd's going to grow while Jesus is teaching. So there's not 10,000 people walking along the shoreline. There's, there's a lot of people. There's a crowd and they're following him, and they got there ahead of him, which says something about their speed.

I mean, they cover eight miles faster than Jesus can cover four miles on boats. So verse 34. And when he went ashore, he saw a great crowd. Just imagine for a moment what you and I would've reacted with if we were a disciple so exhausted and so tired. We haven't even had time to fix a meal. And you know, there's no seven elevens in the ancient world.

You can't stop by and grab something on the run. There's nobody to cook. We hadn't had time to cook any food. We hadn't had time to go buy any food market or nothing. We're hungry, we're tired, we're exhausted. Jesus said, let's go rest a while. You make this journey and you're about to have this much needed rest, and there's a crowd when you get out of the boat.

All of us would've been so disappointed as to probably have voiced our disappointment, and maybe the disciples did. But notice Jesus never will notice that Jesus will never give one hint of disappointment in the story that will come back to us next week as well. So he gets ashore. He went ashore. He sees this great crowd.

The crowd is here to welcome him. There's another motif right there. The, the theme of welcoming Jesus, of welcoming him, him here, that's a theme that began at his birth. He. When he was welcomed by the shepherds, welcomed by the angels, welcomed by the magi. And it continues, of course, and it will be repeated on his triumphal entry when Jesus is welcomed into the city.

And then of course, that is foreshadowing for us and pointing for us the great welcoming of Jesus when Jesus returns for his people. So he's comes ashore. He's welcomed as shore by this what Mark says. Great crowd, a mega crowd, literally. And he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

Now, sheep without a shepherd would have been to the Jew, one of the most lamentable and tragic situations that they could imagine because the Jew―they lived in a culture different from our culture in the sense that there was an attachment to not just their flocks, but specifically to their sheep.

We don't have an attachment to sheep in our culture. We might have a little bit of attachment to cows, you know, I mean, we like the meat of cows a whole lot more hamburger. We all like, everybody like hamburgers, steaks and everything. So our culture kind of has this thing with cows and we see them, you know, the Chick-fil-A cow.

We see little cute little pictures of cows everywhere and sort of thing. We sort of have an affinity if you take that and maybe multiply it by 15 or 20, that would describe the Jewish culture and their affinity for the sheep. It was a central part of their culture. It was a staple of their economy. It was an absolute staple in their diet.

And so the sheep to the Jew was something, well, I mean, just think of just how often God draws from that metaphor of the sheep. And how important that was for God and his word, and how important it was for the readers of God's word and how they connected as God describes sheep. And he describes us as sheep.

And you are the sheep of my pasture, and he is the shepherd. So there's this, this affinity to the sheep. Now the sheep, as we all know, is the greatest example of why Darwinian evolution cannot possibly be true because the sheep is the absolute dumbest, stupidest animal in creation. And if you don't even have to have been around sheep, you've read about them, I'm sure, or you've heard, heard some preacher talk about them.

Just how they absolutely cannot survive without the shepherd. They are an animal that is incapable of surviving on their own. They can't find water on their own. They can't find food on their own. They will literally, if they're grazing on some area of grass, they'll, they'll graze it till it's nothing and then die.

Or they'll graze right off the edge of a cliff, or they'll fall and roll down the cliff and can't get up. I mean, it's just, it's almost humorous how dumb an animal the sheep is because they literally cannot live without the shepherd. And so I think God has created this and, and made this animal in such a way as the perfect illustration for who we are, because we are the sheep.

Right? But to the Jew, the idea of a sheep without a shepherd would've been like this heartbreaking thing because it meant absolute disaster for the sheep. They cannot survive. They, they will be eaten by a predator in quick fashion. And until the time that they are not e or until the time that they are eaten by a predator, they won't be able to find water.

They won't be able to protect themself. They won't be able to even find shelter from the weather. They can do nothing. And so the idea of a shepherd less sheep to the Jew would've been just a heartbreaking scenario. And this is how the people are described. They're like sheep without a shepherd. Now, if we were living in Jesus' time and his culture, then that would've rang a bell for us because that would've taken us back to the words of the prophet to to Moses in numbers chapter 27.

In numbers chapter 27, if we were Jews in Jesus' day, we would, we would've recalled the story of when Moses was asking God for a successor, for the people, for a successor to take his place. And he prays to the Lord saying, let the Lord the God of the spirits of all flesh, appoint a man over the congregation who shall go out before them and come in before them who shall lead them out and bring them in.

That the congregation of the Lord may not be as sheep, that have no shepherd. And so that's the imagery, the analogy that Jesus is drawing on the connection that he makes now with Moses. And we're going to be begin to see this theme, this motif again of Jesus as the greater Moses. Moses prayed to God. God send the successor that the people may not be like sheep without a shepherd.

Jesus. The greater Moses sees the people and says they're like sheep without a shepherd. And this is going to do something to Jesus' heart that we'll get to in just a few moments. So we see this motif. Jesus is the greater Moses. He, he like Moses. His heart is broken when he sees the people and considers them to be like sheep without a shepherd.

But then we also, of course see the theme of God as the great shepherd, the scriptures. We don't even have time to point all of this out because the Old Testament is filled with analogies of God as the shepherd. The Lord is my shepherd. I shall not want Isaiah 40. He will tend this flock like a shepherd.

He will gather the lambs in his arms. He will carry them in his bosom and gently lead those who are with young or Psalm 95 for He is our God and we are the people of his pasture and the sheep of his hand, and so many more instances we could see. But he sees them like sheep without a shepherd. He is the great shepherd.

He's going to say, he's going to say this specifically in John 10. I am the good shepherd. And so here, the Good Shepherd sees the people and his heart is broken because they are in his words, like sheep without a shepherd. And he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd. So this word, compassion.

We'll slow down just a moment, and we're going to talk about this word compassion, because this is one of the most powerful words that we find in our New Testament. This is the word translated compassion―splanchnizomai― a hard word to say and even a little bit harder to get your mind around because what the word literally means is it literally means the bowels a, a movement.

Something that so impacts you, that it causes the bowels, the innards to move. Now I, I realize that I just painted for everybody in the room. Just a wonderful picture, right? I mean, that's just a tremendous word, picture, but that's what the word means. Something that impacts you emotionally so hard that it's like it has gut punched you, and you can relate to that.

Have you ever received news that was so upsetting that it literally made you sick? Something that was so distressing, something that was so distraught that you literally began to feel sick at your stomach? And that's, I think, where the idea comes from. Now, this is the word that's translated compassion.

This word carries for us tremendous meaning because it's as though the New Testament writers want to purposely reserve this word. For Jesus and Jesus alone, it shows up in the New Testament 11 times. Most of those 11 times, well, I guess maybe half of those 11 times or a little bit less are in this story in the parallels, but it also shows up in other occasions.

And the thing to see is that when this word is used in the New Testament, it's always used with one exception to describe Jesus. It describes Jesus like this. Matthew 20 in verse 34, and Jesus in pity, same word in pity, touched their eyes, the two blind men, and immediately they recovered their sight and followed him.

Luke seven, verse 13. And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and other instances that we see. Then we also see it show up in some parables. We see it show up in a couple of parables that are about Jesus. For example, Matthew 18, this is the parable of the unforgiving servant. You know, the unforgiving servant who has owed a small debt, but then he owed a much larger debt to his master.

And we're told in that parable that out of pity for him, the master of that servant released him and forgave the debt. So the master in that parable is who? Jesus. We also read it in Luke chapter 10. We know the parable, of course, of what's known of as the Good Samaritan and the good Samaritan in the parable is Jesus.

But a Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was and when he saw him, he had compassion. Same word. The one time that the New Testament uses, this word that's not specifically addressed to or specifically about Jesus comes in another well-known parable. Luke 15, the parable of what we know of as the prodigal son.

And so there it's used to describe the father. He arose and came to his father. But while he was still a long way off, his father saw him and felt, there's the word again, compassion. Now the Father in the story of the prodigal son represents God the Father. So that's the one instance that it's not specifically about Jesus, but can't you see here a theme?

Can't you see here a pattern how the New Testament writers, it's as though Paul never says, as people of God have compassion and use this word, Peter never says, have compassion on one another and use this word instead. It's a word that the New Testament writers almost feel as though it's so holy and so profound.

They only feel the liberty to use this word to describe Jesus and his heart. Because this word speaks so powerfully of this idea of compassion. Compassion meaning that the distress of the object of your compassion, Your distress over their distress is so palpable that you feel it. It makes you sick to your stomach.

It's like somebody punched you. Now I want to connect this together with an Old Testament passage found in Jeremiah 31, and I think you'll see the reason I want to connect this together in just a few minutes. But Jeremiah 31, Jeremiah is not an easy book to read. Anybody agree it? It's a tedious, difficult book.

And I'm sure everybody here has read the prophet Jeremiah, and I'm sure that you've struggled through all 52 chapters of the prophet Jeremiah, and you probably struggled because what does Jeremiah do? Above and beyond anything else. He hammers the sinfulness of the people. I mean, he's just like, he's just like a ramrod, just hammering the sinfulness of the people for 29 chapters.

He's dwelling upon the sinfulness of, of Israel. Now, if you've read through the story of, of eyes of Jeremiah, and you have put that together, maybe you've put this together with something we've talked about on several occasions, which is to say that we as Western readers, we tend to look for the resolution or the climax where near the end of the story, that we're just, all of our stories, all of our movies, all of our books have trained us to look for the resolution or the climax at the end or near the end.

And we've talked about the fact that most Hebrew writers weren't that way. Most Hebrew literature finds its resolution or its climax where in the middle. Right? Not all the time. For example, the story of Ruth. The climax, the, the resolution of that is at the end, the story of Esther. Same thing, but for many Hebrew stories and poetry, the resolution comes in the middle.

And you can see that in the Psalms. So clearly, if you just read through the Psalms, you'll see it. What happens is they, they start describing how bad things are. Oh, my enemies are all out to get me. The, my enemies are all around me. They're going to kill me. Everybody hates me. Oh, but the Lord is good. The Lord is faithful.

He will preserve me. And then it goes right back to, but my enemies are so strong, they're all around me. And you're going, wait a minute. Didn't we resolve that halfway through? Why are we back into that now? That's because that's how the Hebrew mind thought, the Hebrew mind wanted to see, or the Hebrew reader wanted to see the resolution in the center.

Now, when we come to the story of Jeremiah, guess what? We find the resolution in the center. So 52 chapters, the center, almost the center chapters of chapter 30, 31, 32. That's where the resolution is. And you know those chapters. Jeremiah 31, don't tell me you don't know. Jeremiah 31. That's the great Old Testament statement of the new covenant.

I will put my law in their hearts. I will write it on their heart, and no longer will they need to ask one another. Do you know me for they will each know me. I will forgive their sins. I will remember their iniquity no more. Right? That's the great resolution of Jeremiah. So 29 chapters of Israel, you are such hideous sinners.

I cannot believe that you are such adulterers, idolaters. You're such sinful people. Then comes the resolution and then starting from chapter 24 through chapter 50 52 is is Jeremiah railing against the sins of the nations? Okay, so the intersection of Jeremiah, that's where God's resolution is. That's where the statement of the new covenant is.

And in that almost really the, the climax of that intersection comes Jeremiah chapter 31 and verse 20. Here it is, is Ephrem my dear son? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still. Therefore, my heart yearns for him. I will surely have mercy on him, declares the Lord.

That verse is one of the most powerful verses in your Old Testament. You'll want to mark it, you'll want to underline it. It is one of the most profound verses in your Old Testament, and we'll see as we walk through it. So he says, is Ephraim. Now, don't let Ephraim throw you off. Ephraim is just another Old Testament word for Israel.

Oftentimes, Ephraim is substituted for Israel. Now, when the Old Testament mentions Israel, We got to be careful because sometimes when the Old Testament says Israel, it means all of Israel, all of those who are called Israelites, all of the Hebrews. But sometimes it doesn't mean all who are Israelites.

It means true Israel. Or God's called out people the ecclesia. So sometimes, and the context tells you, but the, you got to pay attention to the context. Sometimes Israel in the Old Testament is God's true people. Sometimes it's just all of the Hebrews. The context here is for sure God's true called out people because it says, is Ephraim or Israel?

Is Israel, my dear son. So clearly we're talking about the true Israel, the true people of God is Israel, or is ere my dear son, is he my darling child? How does that language strike you? When God says, when darling child, not just my child, but my darling child, Does that remind you of places like, for example, Psalm 17 and verse eight, where the psalmist says, keep me as the apple of your eye, or Zechariah two in verse eight, when God says, when you touch them, you're touching the apple of my eye.

Do you think of God thinking of you as my darling son, my darling daughter? Is he my darling child? For as often as I speak against him, and God just spoke against him for 29 chapters and he spoke against him harshly. As often as I speak against him, because he is indeed sinful as often as I speak against him, I do remember him still.

Now, when God says, I remember him, we shouldn't think here that God's speaking of recollecting. In his mind, God is the possessor of all true facts eternally. So God doesn't remember facts. God doesn't have to think and say, oh yeah, I, I remember Israel. God is the eternal possessor of all true facts. So God, when he says, I remember him still, he's not saying, I remember him as though the opposite was forget.

Instead he's saying, I remember him as though the opposite is forsake. So remember is set over against forsake. Instead of forget. I remember him. I don't forsake him. I don't forsake him. Even though I speak against him, I do not forsake him. I remember him still. Therefore, my heart yearns for him. Now, in the Hebrew, there is a standard word for heart, and that heart, that word is lav.

And that's the word that we find throughout the Old Testament to describe heart. Always, it's never the organ, it's always a metaphorical heart. But instead, Jeremiah uses a different word for heart instead of your word uses the word meah and my Hebrew pronunciation is terrible, but meah is the word, and that word means, guess what?

Vowels. In fact, anybody using a King James, if using the King James, it should say bowels, my bowels or in my heart, because that's the literal meaning of that word. The literal meaning of that word is intestines or, or guts. Second Samuel twenties is used to describe when, when Joab stabs Amasa and his in trails or his intestines come out, sometimes it's used metaphorically to speak of that, which is most deeply us, that which is most deeply and profoundly you.

For example, Genesis 15 in verse four, when Abraham has been waiting on the child to promise and the child to promise seems to be delayed or not coming, and Abraham tries to do things on his own with Ishmael, and God says, no, no, that's not my plan. He says, instead, the word of the Lord came to him, this man shall not be your heir.

Instead, your very own son shall be your heir. And that's the word, very own. It speaks of something that is so intimately you like bowels, something that's so internal and so synonymous with you, with your being, with your character. So God says, therefore, my heart yearns. Now, what's that word? Yearn. Yearn doesn't mean to love.

Doesn't even mean to bliss. Instead, the word here literally means agitated, turbulent. It's most often translated something like turmoil, like Psalm 43 in verse five, or Psalm 46 in verse three, the roar in the foam of the waters. Or one kings chapter one, when it's when Joab says, he hears the trumpet and says, what does this uproar in the city mean?

Uproar, turbulence, turmoil, roar. So God says, as far often as I speak against him, I do remember him still. Therefore, my inner, my bowels yearn. There's this turbulence in me. Is anybody seeing a connection? There's this deep turbulence in me, and that's the depth of my yearning for my son. Folks, this is speaking of a radical affection.

God is describing a radically liberal affection for his people. An affection that to be put into words, comes through the scriptures and words, speaking of your intestines, your deep inner bowels, and a roar in a turmoil in your bowels, like the storm on a sea. And God says, that is the yearning that I feel for my true son.

So God is saying that in the depths of who he is, in the very depths of his beingness, there is a turbulence for his people, a yearning for his people that is so strong and so pure. And so driving that God describes it in words such as this.

So brothers and sisters, how, how do you think of, when you think of how God feels about you, what comes to your mind? You know that God loves you. You know that God sent his son to die for you. You know that God cares for you. But when you think of God and specifically how God feels for you, do you have thoughts that come to mind that are that strong?

That the strength of God's affection for you is so turbulent, such a roaring strength that God will use metaphors and phrases such as this to describe his deep, strong, and radical affection for his people.

So as God describes his inner innermost bowels, Turbulent longing for his people. Let's ask ourself if, if God who's invisible, if he were to make that visible for us, if he were to show us what that looks like, what do you think it would look like?

You don't have to guess, because what it looks like is a carpenter from Nazareth looking about upon the people, and saying they're like sheep without a shepherd.

And down to my inner core, I'm so distraught over their misery. I'm so deeply moved that. It's like my bowels. I've been experiencing a hurricane.

That's what Jeremiah 31 in verse 20 would look like if it showed up on Earth, which of course it did. Which Thomas Goodwin, who was a Puritan several centuries ago, wrote about this in a book that I would highly commend to you. It's called The Heart of Christ. And in that book as is, what is the way of the Puritans, is they would take one verse of scripture or one sentence of scripture and write a whole book about it and just, just not give up on it until they had squeezed out of it every bit of truth.

And so he takes Jeremiah 30 31 in verse 20. And he looks deeply into this, and he comes to the same conclusion himself. He says, if we were to see Jeremiah 31 20, it would be Jesus standing on the shore, looking at people, looking at a crowd of people whom most of them don't believe in him. Most of them are just curious.

John chapter six, when John tells of this miracle and that same passage, the next day we're going to be told that many of them came back. And Jesus says to them, I know why you're coming. You, you want some more food? I fed you yesterday. What? Well, you want some more food now yet, Jeremiah 31 in verse 20, the God of such compassion looks out upon the people, seeing them as sheep without a shepherd, and is so moved in his spirit now, Jeremiah 31 in verse 20, is speaking about God's affection for his people.

Jesus is looking out upon a group of people that are both his people and not his people. So we do understand that. But nevertheless, God's compassion for all people, both his called-out people and not his called out people. His compassion is so deep and so profound that this is how it's presented to us.

So the compassion of Jesus is one of the most profound realities of the scriptures. Now, Goodwin goes on in his book to begin fleshing out what compassion is. What is compassion. He, he uses the word pity, which centuries ago, you know, how words and languages sort of change over time. For us, the word pity carries with it sort of a condescension, sort of a condescending kind of a, a tone to it.

For us, compassion works better, but, but what Goodwin does is he is, he asks, what is this thing? Pity. What? What is compassion? What? What is compassion? And he rightly says that compassion is this. Compassion is when two powerful things intersect. And those two things are love and misery. When love and misery come together, he says, that's compassion.

When the object of your love is experiencing misery, what Goodwin says is, that's compassion. And he goes on to say, the more you love the object, the the greater compassion you'll feel. Likewise. He also says, the more misery that the object of your love is experiencing, also the more compassion you'll feel.

I drew for you a real nice diagram. You can thank me for that later, but you can see how as love increases. The capacity for compassion increases. And while misery increases the com, the capacity for compassion also increases. So that if you were to say one who loves most and the object of that love is experiencing the most misery, well that's the most compassion right there.

Does that make sense? I think that makes perfect sense to me. So now Goodwin takes this and he applies this to the compassion of Christ. And he says, we already know one thing. We already know that Jesus loves us with maximum infinite love. He tells us this John 13, greater love has nobody ever had than to lay down their life for another.

Now, maybe somebody might lay down their life for a good man, but nobody lays there down their life. For bad men, I lay down my life for my enemies. I lay down my life for those who hate me. Greater love has never existed. Or Ephesians chapter one and verse three, where we're told that God's people are the object of his love.

Since the foundation of the world, greater love doesn't exist. So Jesus loves us with perfect infinite love. He cannot love us more. God cannot love his people more. It's impossible. When you are loved with perfect love. You can't say, can you just love me a little bit more? So, Jesus's love for the people, for his people is already infinitely maximum.

Now, let's think about the misery of his people. You know, when we think about God's compassion on his people, isn't it really easy or intuitive to think of God looking down upon us in our miserable conditions and having compassion upon us when our misery has to do with suffering? Maybe we're sinned against maybe people in our life sin against us, and they bring misery upon us.

Or maybe just life in a fallen world with broken bodies and broken world around us, and the misery that comes from that. Isn't it really intuitive to think of God being compassionate upon the objects of his love when the objects of his love are suffering from the sin of others, or maybe their own bad decisions, or just living in this world isn't that really easy and intuitive?

Here's the counterintuitive part, Goodwin goes on to say, well, well, what is the condition of humankind that is the most miserable of all? And Goodwin rightly says, the most miserable condition of mankind is their sinfulness. You agree that our sin. Is the thing which brings upon us the greatest misery. So here's the counterintuitive part.

What that teaches us is that the compassion of the son of God upon his people whom he loves maximally, his compassion is greatest when you are at your most simple.

Now, doesn't that startle you?

Because intuitively we would think of how God thinks of us in our times of fallen sinfulness in those times in which we fail him. So obviously, and so blatantly, we would think of those times as God looking down upon us in frustration and irritation and, oh, just come on, get with it. Would you? Why do we think that way?

Because that's how we are. That's how we love others. But the counterintuitive part is that for the objects of God's love, that which causes you greatest misery is that which evokes from him greatest compassion.

And folks, that is not something that any human would ever think of. No human would ever think of an idea of God that goes like that because all of our ideas of God or ideas that are fashioned after us, but God is not like us. God is able in his perfection to separate. The sin that he hates because God has a hatred for our sin.

Let us not let the compassion of God deceive us into thinking He does not hate our sin. He does, but the perfection of God's character allows him to perfectly separate the sin that he hates from the object of his love, which he loves infinitely and has placed his love upon eternally in such a way that we all need to reverse how we think of how God thinks of us.

That in those times of greatest failure, in those times in which we are ashamed to pray, because we haven't prayed in six weeks, in which those times at which we don't even want to open our Bibles because frankly, we don't remember where we stopped two months ago. And those times in which we've missed the gathering of God's people three Sundays in a row, and now we're starting to get embarrassed about it going back.

Those are the very times in which our fallen hearts will try to say to us, God is frustrated. God is irritated. God is tired of this. But the compassion of Jesus says to us now, those are the times that his heart is most reaching out to you. Those are the times in which his compassion for you is most vivid.

Those are the times in which his affection for you is most tangible and strongest, and that is something, folks. The only way we know that is that the scriptures tell us that that's why we need a Bible, because only by the truth of our Bibles. And the work of the spirit within us. Can we understand such things about God, which go directly against the grain of fallen human thinking?

First Corinthians two and verse 12. I wish I had time to read all of chapter two, first Corinthians chapter two, because all of it is about this concept, but just the, the crux of it right here in verse 12. Now, we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might understand the things freely given us by God.

Paul says to the Corinthians, God has given you things and he's given them to you freely, and you aren't even able to understand what he has given you unless he himself comes and dwells in you and opens your mind to even know what he's done for you. So we cannot even begin to understand the nature. It the counterintuitive nature of Jesus's compassion for his people without the spirit coming to us and opening the eyes of our heart and showing us the scriptures and saying, this is the nature of God's compassion for his people.

Ephesians one, verses 18 and 19, having the eyes of your heart enlightened that you may know, and Paul uses more words here, but he is describing the same thing. What the hope is, what he, he has called you. What are the riches of his inglorious glorious inheritance, and to the saints, and what is the immeasurable greatness of his power toward us who believe according to the working of his great might.

He uses a lot more words there, but he is describing the same thing that which God has freely given you. You can't even grasp it without the work of the Holy Spirit and without your Bible. So right now in your seat, what you should do is you should repent of thinking such low thoughts of God.

You should repent and ask God to forgive you for thinking of his affection towards you as something like your affection towards other people, because it's not, and you should ask God that the Spirit would powerfully come to your heart and show you how his compassion and his favor towards his people is of a totally different nature than we even understand in our fallen natures.

Forgive us for thinking low thoughts of such a high and mighty God.

This is why we need our Bibles, because natural man cannot understand such things.