Feeding the 4000 (Mark 8:1-9)

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/3/2012 10:00:30 AM

My Worship Time                                                                  Focus:  Feeding the 4000



Bible Reading & Meditation                                     Reference:  Mark 8:1-9



            Message of the verses:  In Today’s SD we will look at a miracle that Jesus performed that is recorded in the first nine verses of Mark chapter 8. 



            Feeding the 4,000(vv. 1-9):  “1 In those days, when there was again a large crowd and they had nothing to eat, Jesus called His disciples and said to them, 2  "I feel compassion for the people because they have remained with Me now three days and have nothing to eat. 3 “If I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way; and some of them have come from a great distance." 4 And His disciples answered Him, "Where will anyone be able to find enough bread here in this desolate place to satisfy these people?" 5 And He was asking them, "How many loaves do you have?" And they said, "Seven." 6 And He directed the people to sit down on the ground; and taking the seven loaves, He gave thanks and broke them, and started giving them to His disciples to serve to them, and they served them to the people. 7 They also had a few small fish; and after He had blessed them, He ordered these to be served as well. 8 And they ate and were satisfied; and they picked up seven large baskets full of what was left over of the broken pieces. 9 About four thousand were there; and He sent them away.”



            As we begin this section on Mark chapter eight I want to compare the feeding of the 5,000 with this feeding of the 4,000 so that we do not get the two mixed up.  The feeding of the 4,000 is only mentioned in Matthew and Mark, while the feeding of the 5,000 is mentioned in all four gospel writings.  The feeding of the 5,000 took place in Galilee, while the feeding of the 4,000 took place near Decapolis, and in this feeding Jesus feed mostly Gentiles while the feeding of the 5,000 was all Jews who were feed.  There is also a difference in what Jesus started with as far as the loaves of bread and the fish.  We read in John’s gospel that there was a boy in the crowd who had five small loaves and two fish with him for lunch and Jesus multiplied that in order to feed all who were there.  There could have been as many as 10,000 or more because in the 5,000 figure it only counts the men.  There were twelve basket of fragments left over in the feeding of the 5,000 while in the feeding of the 4,000 Jesus started with seven loaves and a few fish and there were seven large hampers left over, while in the feeding of the 5,000 the baskets were smaller.  In the feeding of the 5,000 the people were only there for one day, while in the feeding of the 4,000 the people were there for three days.  I want to go back to the size of the baskets that were used after the feeding of the 4,000 and look at it from Acts 9:24:  “but his disciples took him by night and let him down through an opening in the wall, lowering him in a large basket.”  The basket was big enough to have the apostle Paul inside of it.



            I want to focus in on the word “compassion” that is found in verse two where for the only time in all of the Gospels Jesus states that He has compassion.  Compassion is one of the attributes of God and as we read through the NT we will see many cases in which Jesus shows compassion to those around Him.  He even shows compassion to those who will never come to Him in repentance for we read in John 3:16 that “God so loved the world,” and we know that not all of the people in the world will accept the forgiveness that God has provided through Jesus Christ.  How does God love the world?  Well we know that by sending His Son to die on the cross for the sins of those who would accept Him is one way.  How about how the Lord runs this planet, giving rain on crops in order for us to have food, and giving the sun to shine on both the righteous and unrighteous, and what these are called is “common grace,” grace that is common to all on the earth, and it is by the compassion of Almighty God that He gives them.

            Shortly after I became a believer I purchased a “Thompson’s Chain Reference Bible,” and from time to time I use it in my study of God’s Word.  Studying a chain of things in the Bible is a good way to study, and so I went to Mark 8:2 and sure enough on the side there was a reference to the chain of “Christ’s Compassion,’ and so I want to use that in order to help us better understand the compassion of Jesus Christ:  “For the Multitude, Mark 9:36; 14:14; 15:32;  For the Unfortunate, Matthew 20:34;  For Jerusalem, Matthew 23:37; For the Leper, Mark 1:41; For the Bereaved, Luke 7:13; John 11:35.”  Now let us look at what the word compassion means in the original Greek language:  “1) to be moved as to one’s bowels, hence to be moved with compassion, have compassion (for the bowels were thought to be the seat of love and pity).”  I know that this may sound strange to most of us but the word splagchnizomai splangkh-nid’-zom-ahee as it is in the Greek means bowels.  We sometimes use the word heart in order to describe the seat of emotions, but the word is used as “bowels” or “guts” most of the time.  I believe that this is a more accurate way of understanding where a person’s emotions come from.



            John MacArthur writes this about the word compassion:  “In all those other places, it’s a human observation, that He felt compassion, only because it’s manifested that He did compassionate things. You can determine that He felt compassion because He acted compassionately. So it’s an assumption that He had compassion by behavior. This is a first-person declaration, “I feel compassion.” Three words in English, one word in Greek, splanchnizomai, it’s a long word, splanchnizomai. Splanchna is the root and the word means “bowels, inner organs, heart, some would say gut,” where you feel things emotionally. Sometimes you get caught in something that’s either producing fear or producing terror or producing anxiety and your stomach begins to churn and your heart begins to beat and you feel those emotions in your...in your midsection. That’s exactly what this word came to mean. The word splanchna means inner organs. But it is used to express feelings of emotion, affection, sympathy, pity, kindness and compassion.”



            As I study the book of Mark in a more intensive way I notice that Jesus has spent more time with Gentiles than I realized before in reading through the Gospels.  I suppose that this pictures the fact that the Church is mostly made up of Gentiles and since Jesus left the ministry to the Apostles who would then eventually take it to the Gentiles they would have remembered Jesus actions with Gentiles.



            Let us make one more observation from this section and that is the reaction of Jesus’ disciples, and how they acted in unbelief.  We have mentioned how Jesus feed the 5,000 in this SD, and I guess that I can’t figure out why the disciples did not remember how Jesus did this and suggest that He do it here too.  Dr. Wiersbe writes “Let’s not be too hard on them.  How many times have we forgotten the mercies of the Lord? We need to remind ourselves that Jesus Christ is still the same and has the solution to every problem.  All we need do is trust Him, give Him our all, and obey.”



            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  Would it be a good opposite for the word “compassion” to use the word “selfish?”  My thesaurus uses the word “coldness” for the opposite of compassion.  The reason that I think that selfish is a good opposite is that when a person is selfish he will not look at the needs of others.  We see in the NT word for love “agape” the meaning is that we do something for someone in order to help them looking for nothing in return.  I think that compassion is like that.  My prayer is that I would have less selfishness and more compassion.



My Steps of Faith for Today:  Be a more compassionate person to others.



Memory verses for the week:  2Peter 1:1-4



            1.Simon Peter, a bond-servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,

            To those who have received a faith of the same kind as ours by the righteousness of our God and Savior, Jesus Christ:  2. Grace and peace be multiplied to you in the knowledge of God and Jesus our Lord. 3. seeing that His divine power has granted to us everything pertaining to life and godliness, through the true knowledge of Him who called us by own His glory and excellence. 4. For by these he has granted to us His precious and magnificent promises, so that by them you may become partakers of the divine nature, having escaped the corruption that is in the world by lust.”



7/3/2012 11:30:29 AM