43  Compassion for the  Outsider (15:29-39)

And departing from there, Jesus went along by the Sea of Galilee, and having gone up to the mountain, He was sitting there. And great multitudes came to Him, bringing with them those who were lame, crippled, blind, dumb, and many others, and they laid them down at His feet; and He healed them, so that the multitude marveled as they saw the dumb speaking, the crippled restored, and the lame walking, and the blind seeing; and they glorified the God of Israel.

And Jesus called His disciples to Him, and said, “I feel compassion for the multitude, because they have remained with Me now three days and have nothing to eat; and I do not wish to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way.” And the disciples said to Him, “Where would we get so many loaves in a desolate place to satisfy such a great multitude?” And Jesus said to them, “How many loaves do you have?” And they said, “Seven, and a few small fish.” And He directed the multitude to sit down on the ground; and He took the seven loaves and the fish; and giving thanks, He broke them and started giving them to the disciples, and the disciples in turn, to the multitudes. And they all ate, and were satisfied, and they picked up what was left over of the broken pieces, seven large baskets full. And those who ate were four thousand men, besides women and children. And sending away the multitudes, He got into the boat, and came to the region of Magadan. (15:29-39)

The God of Scripture is a God of compassion. He suffers with people; He feels their pain and their sorrow and seeks to alleviate it, because He deeply cares for their welfare and happiness. John 3:16 could be translated, “God had such compassion on the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” It is God’s compassion for man that, from the time of the Fall, has offered the way back to Him. Jeremiah declared, “The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, for His compassions never fail” (Lam. 3:22). The Authorized Version of that verse reads, “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.” The Lord’s compassion restricts his judgment and extends His mercy, giving fallen mankind opportunity to repent and be saved.

Over and over again God showed compassion on His people when they were in need, despite their sin and rebelliousness against Him. During their time of oppression under Aram, “the Lord was gracious to them and had compassion on them and turned to them because of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and would not destroy them or cast them from His presence until now” (2 Kings 13:23). During the time that Babylon ruled Judah, Zedekiah, the appointed Jewish king at Jerusalem, not only rebelled against Nebuchadnezzar but also against God, Jeremiah, and the other prophets. The priests and the people were also unfaithful and wicked. Yet “the Lord, the God of their fathers, sent word to them again and again by His messengers, because He had compassion on His people” (2 Chron. 36:13-15).

From the earliest part of His ministry, Jesus felt compassion for the multitudes, “because they were distressed and downcast like sheep without a shepherd” (Matt. 9:36). He had special compassion for the sick and suffering, whom He healed of every sort of affliction (14:14; cf. 4:23; 8:16; 9:35). His compassion was not limited to His own Jewish people; and as He ministered to all men, He found unusual faith among many of the Gentiles, such as the Roman centurion whose servant He healed (Matt. 8:5-13) and the Syrophoenician woman whose daughter He had just delivered from demon possession (15:22-28).

After departing from there, the region of Tyre and Sidon where that woman lived (v. 21), Jesus went along by the Sea of Galilee, and having gone up to the mountain, He was sitting there. We learn from Mark that Jesus went around the Sea of Galilee, apparently on the east side, stopping in “the region of Decapolis” (Mark 7:31), another Gentile area. Although His primary ministry was still to the Jews, the Lord continually reached out beyond the covenant people, giving a preview of the extension of the kingdom into the whole world (cf. Matt. 28:19; Acts 1:8).

During His three-year ministry, Jesus gave many such previews of the coming kingdom. In the transfiguration He previewed His return in great glory at the second coming to establish the millennial kingdom on earth. His choosing twelve men to be His apostles prefigured the reestablishment of the twelve tribes of Israel, over which those apostles would one day reign (Matt. 19:28). His healing of all who came to Him prefigured His ultimate external “healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:2). His teaching about the kingdom prefigured the fulfilled kingdom when “the earth will be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea” (Isa. 11:9).

As already mentioned, this ministry of several months in Gentile land prefigured the coming kingdom that would embrace Gentile and Jew alike. On these and other occasions, Peter had therefore been repeatedly and dramatically exposed to the truth that the gospel was for all men—long before his vision of the unclean animals and his encounter with Cornelius, through which He was finally convinced “that God is not one to show partiality” (Acts 10:1-34; cf. vv. 45-47).

The region of Decapolis, where Jesus had just arrived, was on the southeast side of the Sea of Galilee, directly south of the modern Golan Heights. Decapolis means “ten cities” (from the Greek deka,“ten,” and polis,“city”) and derives its name from the ten city-states located within its boundaries. This somewhat independent territory was wedged between the region to the north ruled by Philip the tetrarch and the regions to the south and west ruled by Herod Antipas. In and around these ten cities archaeologists have discovered the ruins of elegant amphitheaters, forums, and countless pagan statues and monuments honoring the various gods of the Greek pantheon—including Zeus, Aphrodite, Athene, Artemis, Hercules, Dionysus, and Demeter.

From the time that Jesus fed the five thousand until this feeding, some time had elapsed. In the earlier miracle He had commanded that multitude “to recline on the grass” (14:19), whereas He instructed the multitude in Decapolis “to sit down on the ground” (15:35). In that part of Palestine the grass lasts only from early spring until early summer, when most of it withers from the heat. The multitude of Jews near the northeast shore of Galilee had been able to sit on grass, whereas the crowd of Gentiles in the Decapolis had to sit on bare ground, indicating that as much as several months may have elapsed between the two feedings.

Although Jesus had not gone to the district of Tyre and Sidon for the purpose of ministering, He was immediately recognized there and was eager to help those who came to Him—no doubt including many others besides the Canaanite woman. When He arrived in the region of Decapolis He was also recognized, because from the earliest days of His ministry people from that area had come to hear Him speak and to be healed (Matt. 4:24-25). Therefore, when word spread that Jesus was actually visiting their own territory, great multitudes came to Him.

Jesus had gone up to the mountain and was some distance from populated areas. It therefore took several days for word of His presence to spread and for the multitudes to get to Him from various parts of the region. Travel was of course especially slow for the ones who were bringing with them those who were lame, crippled, blind, dumb, and many others.

Crippled (from kullos) refers to any part of the human body that is deformed or unable to be used, and includes mutilation or total loss. Jesus used the term to described a person who has had a hand or foot cut off (Matt. 18:8). The people seeking help therefore included the most seriously deformed.

When the friends and relatives found Jesus, they laid their afflicted loved ones down at His feet; and He healed them. Laid is from rhipt, which means to cast or throw down in haste but not carelessly. They could not reach Jesus too quickly or get too close. The crowd eventually numbered “four thousand men, besides women and children” (15:38), and therefore could have totaled as many as twenty thousand. We do not know how many of that number had come for healing, but it must have been many hundreds and perhaps several thousand. The people did not all arrive at the same time, and those who were healed moved away to make room for others. But at any given time Jesus would have had hundreds of people crowding around Him.

None of the gospel writers gives details of the healings; we are simply told that He healed them. But it is not hard to imagine the cries for help that mingled with shouts of joy, as some came to Jesus diseased and deformed while others were leaving healthy and whole. People who were sick went away cured; people who came with only one functioning arm or leg went away with two; and people who came blind and deaf went away seeing and hearing. People who had never spoken a word were now shouting praises to Jesus. People who had never walked a step were now jumping and running for joy. It is hardly surprising that the multitude marveled as they saw the dumb speaking, the crippled restored, and the lame walking, and the blind seeing.

No doubt many of the multitude had seen Jesus heal before, but that made the sight no less amazing. Marveled is from thaumaz, which means to be struck with awe. The people were seeing something that defied human explanation, and they were dumbfounded at the uninterrupted flow of instantaneous and complete healings. Mark says “they were utterly astonished, saying, ‘He has done all things well’” (7:37). The wonder of these Gentiles was greater than the wonder of the Jews, whose awe was often tempered by spiritual pride and skepticism. When the crowd at Decapolis saw the perfection of the healings, they knew the power behind them was divine—in great contrast to the Pharisees who charged Jesus with casting out demons by Satan’s power (Matt. 12:24).

Knowing that their pagan gods could not perform such marvels, and would not have been inclined to perform them if they could, the people from Decapolis glorified the God of Israel. They were not fully aware of who Jesus was, but they knew He was a Jew and that He served the God of Israel, and they glorified His God in praise and reverent fear. Their excitement and gratitude over being healed or seeing their loved ones and friends healed made them spontaneously praise the Lord.

The multitudes were so large and the needs so great that the healings continued for several days. After that miraculous but exhausting time, Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, “I feel compassion for the multitude, because they have remained with Me now three days and have nothing to eat.

I feel compassion is from the verb splanchnizomai, which literally means to be moved in one’s inward parts, in the bowels or viscera, which the ancients considered the seat of emotions. The English word compassion is taken from the Latin, which means to suffer with, but it has come to mean much more than that. According to one definition, it is “a feeling of deep sympathy and sorrow, accompanied by a strong desire to alleviate the pain and remove its cause.”

Jesus had compassion for people’s spiritual needs, which were eternal in their consequences. He had compassion for their physical afflictions, which were often lifelong in their effect. But He also had compassion in regard to their food, which sustained them from day to day. In His model prayer the Lord tells us to ask our heavenly Father to “give us this day our daily bread” (Matt. 6:11), because He cares about the practical needs of our daily lives.

Despite the great excitement of the people and the fact that for many of them this was the first time in their lives they had been physically well and whole, three days without food was a long time. Jesus therefore did not wish to send them away hungry, lest they faint on the way. The idea behind faint is that of collapsing, as a bowstring goes limp when unstrung. The Lord was determined that the needy multitude would not go home on empty stomachs and become faint on the way.

At first glance the disciples’ response seems to be essentially the same as it was when He asked them to feed the five thousand near Bethsaida Julias (14:16-17). Because in Decapolis the disciples appeared to act as if this were the first time Jesus had requested such a thing of them, many liberal commentators have maintained that Matthew gives two accounts of the same feeding, with differing and even conflicting details. But as a former tax collector, who was used to keeping accurate records, Matthew was much too astute to have missed the contradictions; and it would make no sense to fabricate them. He was with Jesus throughout His ministry and it is inconceivable that he would be so confused about such a dramatic event that he thought it happened twice instead of only once. Nor would the Holy Spirit, who inspired the gospels, have allowed such misrepresentation. The necessity of food is so basic that it may be assumed there were other such feedings not recorded in the gospels (cf. John 21:5).

Why, then, did the disciples again ask Jesus, Where would we get so many loaves in a desolate place to satisfy such a great multitude? Why did they not simply expect Jesus to perform a miracle like the one He had performed only a month or so earlier? They probably did. They could not possibly have forgotten the earlier occasion, especially since they were directly involved in distributing the food to some twenty-five thousand people as Jesus multiplied it. The reason for their question about where to find food seems to be that they were simply acknowledging again their own lack of resources. They were saying, in effect, “Lord we are no more able to feed this crowd by ourselves than we were able to feed the other one. This group is smaller, but four thousand men and their families are just as impossible for us to feed as five thousand.”

The region of the Decapolis was probably a more desolate place than the area near Bethsaida Julias, and if they could not have found food there, they could certainly not find it here. The disciples did not doubt that Jesus could also miraculously feed this group; nor had they forgotten the previous feeding. The first idea is totally improbable and the second is impossible. Rather, their reply to Jesus emphasized that they knew the Lord could satisfy such a multitude but that they could not. He had no less power than before, and they had no more.

Jesus then asked them, “How many loaves do you have?” And they said, “Seven, and a few small fish”; and again (cf. 14:18) they brought what little they had to Him. Also as before, Jesus directed the multitude to sit down on the ground. Because this crowd was almost as large as the previous one that was fed, it seems likely that Jesus also had this group sit in groups of hundreds and fifties (see Mark 6:40) in order to simplify the distribution.

Then He took the seven loaves and the fish; and giving thanks, He broke them and started giving them to the disciples, and the disciples in turn, to the multitudes. The verb translated started giving could also be rendered “kept giving.” In either case the idea is that of repeated giving out of the food as it was multiplied. When his basket of food was emptied, a disciple would bring it back to the Lord for refilling, until all the multitudes were fed.

The Lord could have miraculously distributed the food as easily as He had miraculously multiplied it. He had provided manna for the children of Israel in the wilderness fresh every morning, distributed across the entire wilderness area in which they were encamped, so that the people needed go only outside their tents and gather what was needed (Ex. 16:14). But Jesus was teaching the disciples as well as feeding the multitudes. He wanted them to learn the practical as well as the theological reality of His compassion. He wanted them to participate first hand in God’s concern for the daily needs of people as well as for their eternal redemption and physical wholeness, because divine compassion embraces every dimension of human need.

No one went away hungry, because they all ate; and no one went away half full but completely satisfied. After everyone had eaten all he wanted, the disciples picked up what was left over of the broken pieces, seven large baskets full.

The seven large baskets mentioned here are of a different type than the twelve baskets used in the feeding of the five thousand. The type of basket used at the previous feeding was a small Jewish container called a kophinos, used by an individual when traveling to carry food for one or two meals. The baskets used in the Decapolis feeding, however, were spuridas, which were distinctly Gentile and quite large. They could even hold a grown man, and it was in such a basket that Paul was lowered over the wall in Damascus (Acts 9:25). Therefore these seven large baskets held considerably more food than the twelve small baskets used in the other feeding (Matt. 14:20). Because this crowd had not eaten for three days, they would have consumed more than the other, which was without food for only one day (14:15).

Alfred Edersheim observed that “the Lord ended each phase of His ministry with a feeding. He ended the ministry in Galilee with the feeding of the five thousand. He ended the ministry in the Gentile area with the feeding of the four thousand. And He ended the Judean ministry before His death on the cross with the feeding of His own in the upper room.”

After the four thousand men, besides women and children, had been fed, sending away the multitudes, Jesus got into the boat, and came to the region of Magadan. The identity of Magadan is not certain, because there is no other biblical, historical, or archaeological information about it. Mark reports that they went “to the district of Dalmanutha” (8:10), but that location is also uncertain. Because no land travel is mentioned, the region apparently bordered the Sea of Galilee.

From Jesus’ ministry to the Gentile crowd in the Decapolis a number of important lessons can be learned.

First, we see again Jesus’ unrivaled divine power. Because only God can create, only God could have multiplied those seven loaves of bread and a few fish even onefold, not to mention many thousand-fold. He is the God of Abraham, who believed in Him “who gives life to the dead and calls into being that which does not exist” (Rom. 4:17). Just as He had created healthy tissues to replace diseased ones, whole limbs to replace deformed and missing ones, and seeing eyes to replace blinded ones, He also created a superabundance of food to replace a little.

When the apostles were establishing the early church, many miracles were performed through them. But their miracles were performed in the name and by the power of Jesus Christ, for whom they served merely as instruments. Jesus, however, performed miracles in His own name and power, because He was the source of the power. He did not heal, deliver, raise the dead, and multiply food as God’s agent but as God.

Second, the fact that He not only cured diseases and restored hearing and sight but restored those who were kullos (maimed and sometimes completely without arms, legs, eyes, or other parts of the body), He set Himself totally apart from self-proclaimed divine healers of past years and modern times. You look in vain among those healers for verified accounts of anyone who was given an arm, leg, or eye to replace one that was missing. Their “cures” are at best psychosomatic and are extremely minor compared to those the Lord performed during the three years of His earthly ministry.

God is still capable of sovereignly healing the most hopeless disease and of creating new limbs where there are none. But the only age of healing in the church was the time of authenticating the Messiah Himself and of His Word through the apostles. Once those ends were accomplished, the gift of miracles ceased. (For a more complete discussion of this subject, see the author’s book The Charismatics, published by Zondervan.)

Third, we learn that the goal of ministry is worship. Although most, if not all, of the multitudes in Decapolis were pagan Gentiles, when they saw the magnitude and perfection of Jesus’ healing power, they not only were astonished beyond measure but also “glorified the God of Israel” (v. 31). Witnessing such a divine display demanded much more than awe; it demanded reverential worship, which those Gentiles offered as best they knew how.

Their worship was Jesus’ supreme goal. He had unqualified compassion to heal their broken bodies and to fill their empty stomachs. But He was infinitely more concerned that, through their trust in Him as Lord and Savior, He could also save their souls from eternal damnation and make them citizens of His heavenly kingdom.

Christ’s followers are likewise called to minister not only to people’s physical and temporal needs but to lead them to glorify God, “that the grace which is spreading to more and more people may cause the giving of thanks to abound to the glory of God” (2 Cor. 4:15). The goal of evangelism and of Christian living is to “worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers” (John 4:23). Only when devotion to the Lord is sincere and unqualified, service to others truly selfless, and daily living consistently Christlike, will God be glorified.

That is an especially important lesson for our day, in which self-love and self-satisfaction have become accepted and touted even in much of the church. We are tempted to offer the gospel simply for what it can do for a person, with no suggestion of the need to turn from self to God and from our own priorities to His. We like to make the way of salvation seem wide, although the Lord says it is narrow (Matt. 7:14). We want to make the Christian life appear easy, although Jesus declared that “he who does not take his cross and follow after Me is not worthy of Me” and that only “he who has lost his life for My sake shall find it” (10:38-39).

Fourth, this story teaches the necessity of relying on divine resources. Like the disciples, we are most usable to the Lord when we acknowledge our own lack of resources and turn to Him. Whatever we may have in ourselves is never enough to meet the needs of others or to accomplish anything for God. Jesus did not command the apostles to be His “witnesses both in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and even to the remotest part of the earth” until He had first promised, “You shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you” (Acts 1:8). “Every good thing bestowed and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights,” James says (James 1:17).

I was once asked to visit a elderly lady who was dying and did not know Christ. She was frail and sick, and I did not want to upset her; yet I knew that above everything else she needed Christ. All the way over there I prayed that God would help me know what to say and how to say it; but as I neared her apartment door I became more and more uneasy. When one of her friends let me in and I walked over to her bed, the first thing she said was, “Before you say anything, I just want to tell you that yesterday my sister led me to Christ.” After a time of reading some psalms and prayer, I said, “You don’t need to fear death any more”; to which she replied, “Fear death? I don’t fear death. I don’t fear death at all.” By the time our visit was over, I felt she had ministered to me more than I had to her. I had been totally inadequate to meet her needs; but as I went in dependence on our gracious Lord, I found He had already preceded me and made full provision.

Fifth, we learn from this story that God’s resources are never diminished, much less exhausted, because He has an infinite capacity to create. He did not need the seven loaves and few fish in order to feed the multitude. He could just as easily have made the food from nothing, just as He created the world from nothing. He used the loaves and fish in order to involve the disciples and to help teach them to give what they had into His care. “Give, and it will be given to you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, they will pour into your lap. For by your standard of measure it will be measured to you in return” (Luke 6:38). God’s people would never lack resources to do what He calls them to do if they trusted that promise.

Sixth, we learn about the servant’s usefulness. Although the Lord is able do His work without us, He chooses to do it through us. He did not need the disciples’ help to distribute the food any more than he needed the seven loaves and the fish to make the food. He could have done in an instant what took them several hours to do. But in His infinite wisdom and mercy God chooses to use human instruments to do His divine work of carrying the gospel to the world and of ministering to its needs. In submissively serving others in our Lord’s name and power, we learn to serve Him—in preparation for serving Him for all eternity in dimensions we cannot now conceive.

Seventh, we learn that God gives liberally, in “good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over” (Luke 6:38), as we have already seen. Everyone on the mountainside ate until he was completely satisfied. There was even more than enough, so that seven large baskets of food were left over.

Eighth is the lesson of spiritual investment. When the disciples gave all they had to Jesus and then helped Him give it away to others, they had seven full baskets remaining for themselves. “He who sows sparingly shall also reap sparingly; and he who sows bountifully shall also reap bountifully” (2 Cor. 9:6).

The ninth and overarching lesson is the limitless compassion of Jesus Christ. He has compassion for all our needs—eternal, lifetime, and daily. He has compassion on Jews and on Gentiles, on the severely afflicted and the merely hungry. Following the example of our Lord, we are to “do good to all men, and especially to those who are of the household of the faith” (Gal. 6:10). Our compassion is not measured by our feelings but by our giving.

John Wanamaker, founder of the famous Philadelphia department store that bears his name, was a devoted Christian. On a trip to China to observe Christian mission work there, he came across a small village where a group of Christians had begun building a church but lacked money to complete it. In a nearby field he noticed the strange sight of a boy yoked together with an ox as they together pulled a plow held by his father. Mr. Wanamaker’s guide explained that the boy had promised his father, “If you will sell one of the oxen and give the money for the building of the church, I will take the oxen’s place pulling the plow” Mr. Wanamaker is said to have fallen to his knees and said, “Lord, let me be hitched to a plow that I may know the joy of sacrificial giving.”