Message Information
- Key Scriptures: Luke 9:11-17, NASB
- Series: Luke (2025-2027), no. 26
- Date: Sunday, August 10, 2025 (Morning)
- Venue: Central Baptist Church — Lawton, Oklahoma
- Speaker: Jared Byrns
- Audio File: Open/Download
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The Compassion We Long to See
A recent study found that over 60% of people who were surveyed believe that our society as a whole is becoming less compassionate. I do not know that the other forty percent think, “No, we are on the right track.” But in any survey, some people will answer, “I do not know what I think.”
“Is the sky orange? I do not know.” But over 60% said our country, our society as a whole is getting less compassionate.
Whether that decline is real or merely perceived, it is cause for concern. We constantly see stories in the news about cruelty and people lacking compassion. Depending on which news sources you follow, you may see stories about someone being attacked on a New York subway while others stand by and do nothing.
Some time ago, a story reached even us here in Lawton, Oklahoma, about a woman being killed on a subway. And other people just stood by and did nothing. And we’re concerned about those stories, but for each of those stories that we run across, there are other stories of people showing compassion.
We have also heard many stories of people who dropped everything and went to Texas to help with recovery after the floods. I know that every single time my hometown was hit by a tornado growing up, people would show up from across the country to help. And so it’s hard to know if we’re becoming less compassionate or not as a society.
But I think all of us agree that we want to be more compassionate as a society. We agree that we want to see more compassion. Part of the reason we recognize the need for compassion is that God has placed that awareness within us.
Because it reflects the nature of who God is. We know that God is compassionate, though we may not always feel that He is. We may not always describe him that way.
Compassion We Do Not Deserve
Sometimes the circumstances of life can feel like he’s not compassionate, but our feelings lie to us. Sometimes people will even look at stories in the Bible and say, that’s not compassionate at all. But even in judgment, God is compassionate.
There’s a video, it’s from 2014, but I’ve seen it several times this week. Old videos often make the rounds online and become prominent again. Back in 2014, R. C. Sproul, who’s now gone on to be with the Lord, was leading a question-and-answer service, much like we do on Sunday evenings. Someone asked, “Since God is compassionate, why was His response so harsh when Adam and Eve sinned in the garden?”
And you may have seen this clip and maybe weren’t aware of where it came from, but Sproul turns to the people and says, what is wrong with you people? That is an answer you will never hear from me during one of our Sunday evening question-and-answer sessions. He explained that God created us from the dust, gave us everything we needed, and made us for perfect fellowship with Him.
And nevertheless, we decided to rebel against Him. He had told us, God had told us, that the day we ate of that fruit, we would die. And while spiritual death did take place in that moment, our lives did not cease.
Adam and Eve were not struck dead. There were consequences, but God was far more gracious to them than they deserved. Sproul’s point was that, given who God is and who we are, it is remarkable that His response was not harsher.
We say the same thing with Noah’s ark. How could a compassionate God wipe out life on earth in the flood? That’s the wrong question.
Genesis describes humanity at that time as even more corrupt than what we see today. Every intention of the human heart was only evil continually.
The question is not, why did God only spare eight? The question is, why did God spare anybody at all? Or people ask, “If God is so compassionate, why did He make only one way to heaven?”
The question is, with our sin, why did God make any way at all? God is compassionate. And this morning, as we continue our study through the book of Luke, we’re going to see the compassion of God on display.
This is not the ultimate display of His compassion, but it is one of those passages that makes us consider how differently Jesus might have acted if He were like us. All the ways that this story would have been different if Jesus was like us, but he’s not. He’s far more compassionate than we are because God is compassionate.
Luke 9:11–17 records: but the crowds were aware of this and followed him, and welcoming them, he began speaking to them about the kingdom of God and curing those who had need of healing. That alone is already a mark of compassion. Jesus has gone to where he has gone to get away from the crowds because Jesus is tired.
One of the Gospels says that Jesus and the disciples had not even had time to stop and eat. He gets there and the people flock to him again. If you or I were in that situation, we might say, “I am sorry, but I am on a break.”
I need you to leave me alone for a few minutes. He doesn’t do that. It says he welcomes them and began healing them and curing those who needed healing.
Verse 12 says, now the day was ending, and the twelve came and said to him, send the crowd away that they may go into the surrounding villages and countryside and find lodging and get something to eat. For here we are in a desolate place. But he said to them, you give them something to eat.
Think about that. They’re saying we don’t have any food, and he says, give them something to eat. That must have confused the disciples.
And they said, we have no more than five loaves and two fish. These were small, biscuit-like loaves and probably two preserved fish. Unless perhaps we go and buy food for all these people.
For there were about 5,000 men. And he said to his disciples, have them sit down to eat in groups of about 50 each. They did so and had them all sit down, and he took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up to heaven, he blessed them and broke them and kept giving them to the disciples to set before the people, and they all ate and were satisfied, and the broken pieces which they had left over were picked up, twelve baskets full.
A Need Too Large for the Disciples
A few details will help us understand the passage. It says there in a desolate place.
Some translations say desert. It’s not desert in the sense that it’s just rocks and sand. This was not a desert like Arizona, New Mexico, or northern Mexico.
It was simply a remote place without ready supplies. It’s a remote area. It’s like if my kids and I go hunting in southeast Oklahoma.
It may be lush with trees and fields, but food is not readily available. Okay, that’s the kind of place that they’re in. They’re out there, they’ve got all these people, and it says 5,000 men.
Others of the Gospels talk about their wives and children being with them. This is a crowd that could be as large as 25,000 people. That would be a challenge today, even when we can run to Sam’s.
We would probably empty Sam’s trying to provide for twenty-five thousand people. We might have to go to another store as well.
We’d have to send somebody to the city for Costco. We’d have to empty out everything to feed 25,000 people. And they’re getting to the point that this is a major concern for them.
Now, it says in some of our translations, the day was ending. This does not mean the sun was already setting when they first noticed the problem. It could refer to any time after noon, when they realized that Jesus had not stopped teaching.
And if we’re going to send these people away in time for them to find provisions, we got to do something now. We’ve got to make a decision now because there’s going to come a time when these people need to eat dinner. They did not want a large, hungry crowd growing restless.
Have you ever become hangry? There may be people in my house who do. You don’t want that crowd to be there and there’s no food and then no place for them to lodge.
For the disciples, this is a huge logistical problem that they’re starting to get worried about. And so they come to Jesus. And they come to Jesus with this problem.
Patient with Our Weaknesses
This short passage displays the compassion of Jesus in four ways. First, when the disciples came to Jesus, their words and attitudes revealed that they should have known better. And Jesus addressed them very patiently.
The Lord addresses our weaknesses patiently. That may not fit the picture that some of us have in our minds of who God is, but in reality, he addresses our weaknesses patiently. Think back over Luke and the miracles these men had witnessed with their own eyes.
Imagine seeing him raise people from the dead. Imagine seeing him calm storms. Imagine seeing him heal lepers. Imagine all the things that they have just seen, and to realize there’s nothing that’s outside of his control.
And that includes healings that have just taken place that day. That’s why verse 11 is so important. He gets over there.
He begins healing people again. It was not as though months had passed since His last miracle. That day, he’s been healing people.
And despite everything that they have seen, their faith was not as strong as it should have been. They are actually worried about how Jesus is going to take care of this many people. Actually, they’re worried about how they’re going to take care of this many people.
That revealed a lack of trust that Jesus would do anything about the problem. I have one child in particular who always reminds us to feed her, as though we have ever forgotten. A couple of nights that week, Charla was away working on a project for the school, and I was responsible for dinner.
I would be standing in the kitchen making dinner. She would come in worried that I was not going to feed her. I’ve clearly got it under control.
But that child has very little confidence in my ability to feed her. She does the same thing to her mama, too. It’s just her.
That’s kind of how the disciples are acting. They had seen what Jesus could do, yet they seemed unable to imagine that He would actually handle this situation. And they’re worried, what are we going to do?
They’ve come up with a plan. And so they came to Jesus, they thought these people are going to have to leave to find what they needed. And what’s interesting about the way they do this is they are so consumed by their worry that they actually interrupt Jesus while he’s teaching and start telling him what he needs to do.
Knowing who Jesus is, if you interrupt Him and begin telling Him what to do, you are not thinking clearly. At any point, trying to boss Jesus around reveals that we are not thinking clearly. So they come in and do that, and Jesus answers this by instructing them back.
They’re all worried about, we’ve got to send these people away to find food, and he just says, give them something to eat. To Him, this was not a difficult problem. Just give them something to eat, in verse 13.
And here again, we see Jesus letting them know what’s going to happen. Just give the people some food. There would be enough.
They’ve seen this before. When they panicked in the storm, He had already told them, “We are going to the other side.” They missed what Jesus had said because they were consumed by worry.
Now, we don’t want to sit here 2,000 years later and feel like we’re so superior. I would be doing the same thing. I may not have tried to tell Jesus what to do myself, but I might have encouraged Peter to do it.
So we would be in the same boat. But even though Jesus told them what was going to happen, they’re unconvinced that he’s going to do anything about it because they didn’t have the means to supply the crowd. It’s great that Jesus said, just give them something to eat.
Their answer is, we don’t have enough. They were talking to Jesus. But what we see here is this group of disciples, they’ve been trained to serve the kingdom, and they had just been out serving the kingdom, and they’ve seen God do incredible things through them, let alone the incredible things that Jesus has done, and yet they come back and they’ve allowed themselves to get sidetracked from their service to the kingdom by these earthly concerns.
They can’t see what he intends to do because they’re so focused on earthly things, and we do the same thing. But Jesus did not answer them as harshly as He could have. Notice how He dealt with the disciples when they come in with this lack of faith, and really it’s not so much a belief that Jesus can’t do this, it’s just they get so consumed by their worry.
And you might think, oh, I know there’s nothing Jesus can’t do. We may say our faith is strong, yet worry can choke out our ability to see clearly. Jesus could have answered them harshly.
Jesus could have said, how dare you? “Who are you to tell Me how these things should be done?” He doesn’t do any of that.
Jesus answers them gently. And he addresses them patiently, and he does so in ways that are going to teach them so that their faith is stronger the next time. That’s one way we see his compassion on display, just the way he patiently addresses our weaknesses.
You and I have those weaknesses. You and I have moments when our faith, knowledge, and perseverance are not as strong as they ought to be. I’m not saying that he’s just fine with sin, but I’m saying in our weaknesses, he’s patient.
Providing What We Lack
In verse 14, we see that the Lord also shows compassion by providing what we lack. The most notable part of this story is the miracle in the middle of it. It’s the display of compassion that we just can’t miss.
It’s so obvious, in fact, that Luke doesn’t go into a lot of detail about it. We can glean some more details from some of the other gospels, but Luke just presents it here without a lot of explanation, it simply records what happened, because it’s so obvious, this part of the story, that there was they didn’t have. They lacked something they truly needed.
It wasn’t something they wanted. He was not providing the trip to France that Reuben mentioned—a trip I might enjoy but do not need. He’s not providing that, but something they needed like their daily bread, he’s going to take care of it.
The reality here is that, like I said, there were probably 20 to 25,000 people who are in this remote place. They didn’t have ready access to food. They didn’t have ready access to lodging.
Even the disciples’ plan of sending them out, if they went out into all these little villages, there’s a good chance there’s not enough of those things to go around for everybody there. Even if everyone dispersed, it would have been difficult to supply everybody on this short notice. They were in a difficult situation.
But Jesus was able to meet the need. And so he has everybody, when we get to verse 14, sit down in these manageable groups, these groups of about 50, and he began to distribute the little bit of food that was available. They had five loaves and two fish.
The fish were probably small and dried. According to another Gospel, this was a boy’s lunch. And we’re not talking five loaves of sandwich bread like we’d buy at the store, probably something closer to a biscuit or tortilla, something smaller.
Had five of those. And Jesus just begins to take those apart, hand it out to the disciples. I would love to have seen how the multiplication took place.
As he’s just pulling it away, it just never seems to end. And I know for the more skeptical among us, that may be a kind of a challenge to understand. How could He keep breaking pieces away while more remained?
It defied the laws of physics. It is a challenge to understand until you remind yourself that if He spoke the universe into existence, if He spoke to nothing and commanded it to be something, this is not a hard thing for Him. And so He begins to take it and tear it and distribute it, and as He does, it just keeps multiplying.
And He multiplied this food. By the way, He gave thanks for it and blessed it and began to multiply it. He multiplied the food until everyone was full.
The word translated satisfied indicates that they ate their fill. Some commentators say here that the Greek word is tied to the idea of an animal gorging itself on what you put out before it. One of those nights, when she was worried I would not feed her, I made JoJo hot dogs with sauerkraut, and she said, this is so good, I’m going to keep eating until I get sick.
I told her, “Please do not do that.” But finally, she just could not take one more bite, and she was full. I had rarely seen her admit that she was full, but that night she finally was.
That was them. They ate until they couldn’t eat anymore. And they were satisfied.
And when John MacArthur was preaching on this passage, he pointed out that Jesus was creating the food right in front of them, that that was probably the best loaves and fishes any of them ever tasted. Probably the reason why they sat there and kept eating. You ever had something that’s so good that you know you should stop eating, you’re going to be sick, but you keep eating because it’s so good?
That was probably what they experienced. But these people had a real need. To us, hunger may seem like a mundane need.
They were hungry, but it was a real need. They didn’t know where they were going to get the food from. Jesus didn’t have to feed them.
Jesus could have sent them away to fend for themselves. But he had compassion on them. And he met their need.
Planning for What Lies Ahead
He provides what we lack. I love what we see in verse 17. I became so excited while studying it that I had to find someone in the office and tell them.
Kristie received the entire explanation because she was the only one there. But the Lord plans for our future. If we look at the end of verse 17 here, we can’t overlook the 12 baskets.
These were not scraps. When it says fragments, it’s talking about the pieces that he pulled off and distributed. There were 12 baskets of those left.
And I think when I was a kid, I thought it was just the scraps that people left on the ground. No, this was food that Jesus distributed, that they just had more than they needed, and there were 12 baskets full. Exactly enough remained to fill twelve baskets—one for each disciple.
Over the years, I have heard many interpretations of those twelve baskets. Some sound appealing, but they need stronger biblical support. I’ve heard one preacher say that by handing each of them a basket, the 12 of them, it’s symbolic of the 12 tribes of Israel, and he’s founding a new Israel that was the church. That interpretation sounds impressive, but I do not see clear support for it in Scripture.
So I asked, “What were the twelve baskets for?” They’re recorded because it happened, but Jesus didn’t do things by accident. And what I found is that these are baskets that are called kofinoi in the text, and these are small baskets that you could put something in.
These were not large laundry-hamper-sized baskets, as I pictured them in childhood. These are little carrying baskets. As I researched the historical background, those kofinoi were used specifically for Jewish travelers to carry food in, clean food, for provisions as they were traveling through Gentile lands like Samaria.
This feeding of the 5,000 is one of the final big events of Jesus’ ministry in Galilee before He starts working His way south. And as they work their way south, they were about to head into Gentile lands, and they were about to head into Samaria. And I thought, that cannot be a coincidence.
That does not appear to be a coincidence. Jesus was preparing them for what they were about to do. There was enough for each individual disciple, and I think part of the purpose of that was so each of them, oh, here, you didn’t think there was enough food?
Here’s a basket for you. “You did not think there would be enough? Here is a basket for you.” They’ve each got their own individual basket, so they can be reminded of His power and His provision.
but also Jesus showing compassion by planning for their future. He had a plan for each of them. He’s going to send them on his behalf, and he’s going to go with them part of the time, but he’s going to send them on his behalf through these Gentile lands, and they’ve just been provided for.
Folks, it’s not just true of the disciples. Each and every believer has a calling that God has planned and placed on our lives. God has a plan for you.
That doesn’t mean it’s always a fun plan to our flesh, but it means God has a design for how He intends to use you for His glory and how your life can be lived for the fullest or to the fullest for His kingdom. And whatever that plan is, he already has the provision in mind. And I believe that’s what the 12 baskets were about, preparing them for what they were about to do.
One More Opportunity to Repent
And sometimes the compassion of Jesus just shows up for us in the way that he’s already prepared the road ahead for what he’s called us to do. The fourth way His compassion appears takes us back to verse 11. and there’s the very fact that jesus engaged with these people when he was trying to rest By engaging with the crowds while trying to rest, Jesus gave the people of Galilee one more opportunity before He left the region. He could have just said, I’m not doing this today, but there’s a crowd here wanting to hear about the kingdom, and he’s going to make sure they’re taught.
We’re getting close to the end of the day, and the disciples say we’ve got to send them away. Jesus did what was necessary to keep the crowd there so he can continue to teach them, because for some of these people, this may be their last opportunity. While He had the opportunity, Jesus taught them about the kingdom and called them to repentance. It is like spending time with a loved one who is about to leave on a long trip; you try to make the time last. Charla’s brother had just left to return to Hawaii and my wife had taken every opportunity to drive to the city to see him. I cannot imagine how much we spent on turnpike tolls.
And I understand that. Completely understand that. She simply wanted one more opportunity to see her family.
Jesus was giving them one more opportunity. I have a chance here to teach them. I’m going to take it.
Part of the way his compassion shows up is that he persists in calling us to repent. He will give us one more opportunity. He gives one more opportunity.
When our patience with someone would have run out, he’s going to give them one more opportunity. Peter talks about this. The Lord is not slack concerning his promise.
Why has God not yet brought all of this to an end? Why has God not punished the guilty? Why has God not done any of this yet?
It’s not because God is unjust. It’s not because God doesn’t care about justice. It’s because he’s given one more opportunity to repent. Frank Turek asks, “If God destroyed all evil at midnight, would I still be here at 12:01?”
He gives us room to repent. And I believe the very fact that he engaged with these people and that he kept them around as long as he could, he’s giving them one more opportunity to hear the word before he leaves Galilee. If you are hearing these words and have never trusted Him as Savior, God is giving you an opportunity to repent. None of us is promised a certain number of opportunities, but God is merciful and compassionate, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance.
Compassion at the Cross
His ultimate display of compassion came later at the cross. Nobody took Jesus’ life from him. He made it clear he had the power to lay it down and he had the power to take it up again.
He died voluntarily as a sacrifice to pay for my sin and for yours. That was the ultimate demonstration of his compassion. That’s why Paul said, God demonstrated his love toward us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.
If we ever question whether God cares, whether God loves us, whether God has compassion, we have to look no further than the cross. Jesus paid for your sin, and he paid for it in full so that you could be right with God, so you could have a relationship with the God who loved you and created you and created you to walk with him. He continues to show compassion by giving one more opportunity and one more day to repent.
If you’ve never trusted him as your savior, it’s very simple. We have to understand that our sin has separated us from God. Our sin is offensive to God, and because God is just, our sin has to be punished.
But because God is compassionate, He made a way where that punishment didn’t have to destroy us. And so Jesus came and willingly took responsibility for my sin and for yours. And He was punished in our place.
He died in our place so that we could be forgiven. And He rose again three days later to prove it. And if we understand that, that our sin separated us from God, but we believe Jesus paid for it in full and rose again, The only thing we must do is turn to Him, ask for forgiveness, and believe that He provided everything necessary. We will have it.
