FBC Daily Devotional – Feb. 17, 2021

Faith Baptist Church

Subscribe

Download

Share

00

00:07

Well, a good Wednesday to you, middle of the week. I hope your week is going well and you're looking forward to getting through the hump day and working toward the weekend.

00:19

In our reading today, Matthew chapter 15 and then on into chapter 16, we see three different ways the

00:27

Lord expresses compassion for people. I find them interesting.

00:34

The first two ways are what you might expect. They're very obvious needs that are presented to him that he addresses and he takes care of.

00:46

So in verses 29 through 31, for example, the people bring a whole bunch of sick and lame and hurting and crippled and deaf and mute and blind people to Jesus.

01:02

And they want him to act. And Jesus has compassion on them, and it says, he healed them so that the crowd wondered when they saw the mute speaking, the crippled healthy, the lame walking, and the blind seeing.

01:19

And they glorified God, the God of Israel. Now, Jesus didn't do these miracles to wow the people.

01:28

He didn't do them to cause them to go, oh, whoa, you know, what a... The reason he did it is twofold.

01:36

One, he wanted to express his compassionate heart. And secondly, he wanted to bring glory to the

01:42

God of Israel. He wanted to bring glory to God. So that's the first way. He shows compassion by healing these who are infirm in some way or another.

01:51

They can't walk. They're crippled in some form or another. They're deaf. They're mute. They're blind.

01:58

And he takes care of them. But then the second way he shows compassion, as the account continues in verses 32 through 38, is by repeating a miracle that he had performed earlier.

02:13

Earlier he had performed the miracle of the feeding of the 5 ,000. You remember that, with the few little loaves and fishes, and he broke the fish and broke up the bread and distributed.

02:25

And as he's breaking it up, the bread and the fish just keep multiplying until there's plenty to fill baskets full.

02:34

And the disciples go and share the food with everybody sitting around. There's over 5 ,000 people, 5 ,000 men, who were fed by that miracle.

02:43

Well, there's a repetition of this, but the numbers are a little less. It's only 4 ,000 this time that he feeds with just a few loaves and fishes.

02:52

But again, he does this. He feeds the multitude, not because he wants to impress them and wow them, because he wants them to say, oh man, this is a wonderful guy.

03:07

Look at what he can do. I mean, wow. And we need to stick close to him so we always have something to eat.

03:12

This wasn't his motivation at all. He was motivated because he doesn't want anybody to go hungry and faint along the way.

03:22

Did you catch that when you were reading? He says in verse 32, he says, I have compassion on the crowd because they've been with me now three days and they don't have anything to eat.

03:32

He says, I'm not willing to send them away hungry lest they faint on the way.

03:40

What thoughtfulness. What care. What consideration. I mean, how many times have you experienced that when you're somewhere and you're there for a long time and the leader of the group, the leader of the organization says, oh, you people have been here a long time.

04:00

I'm going to provide a meal for you. It just doesn't happen. But Jesus sees this need and he has compassion on these hungry people and he acts to meet that need.

04:15

He cares for this very mundane thing of everyday, ordinary, common people.

04:24

He gives them food to eat, gives them bread. And that leads to the next way that Jesus shows compassion and this is the one that might be a little different in our thinking.

04:39

Jesus sends the crowd away. The multitude is well fed. They go on their way and as the account continues in chapter 16, the disciples,

04:50

Jesus and the disciples have gone to the other side of the sea and they didn't take any bread with them and take anything to eat.

05:02

And just, it's like out of the blue, Jesus says to them, watch and beware of the leaven of the

05:09

Pharisees and the Sadducees. That may seem like it's just a point of instruction, a point of warning, but I mean, honestly, the disciples don't get it.

05:21

They think, oh, we forgot to bring bread and so that's why he said this.

05:26

We need to take care and be careful that we don't eat any bread that the Pharisees or Sadducees give us or something of that nature.

05:33

They're kind of confused about this. But as Jesus explains to them, he says, you're a little faith.

05:39

I mean, didn't I just feed 5 ,000 people? What would that really have to do with it? I have compassion on you for your material needs.

05:46

I will provide for those, in essence, is what he's saying. You don't have to worry about that. But that's not what I'm talking about.

05:53

My instruction here is motivated by compassion in a different direction. And as he goes on to explain, the disciples come to realize that, as we read in verse 12, they understood that he did not tell them to beware of the leaven of bread, but of the teaching of the

06:12

Pharisees and the Sadducees. And we might apply the teaching of the

06:19

Pharisees and the Sadducees in this way in our day. The Lord was telling them to beware of the

06:27

Pharisees, as we saw the other day. These were the legalists who had elevated traditions of men to the place of commands of God.

06:39

So he's warning us against the leaven of legalism.

06:45

And regarding the Sadducees, they were the rationalists of their day.

06:50

They didn't believe in anything supernatural. Their spirituality, their religion, was all what they could see, what they could experience physically, materially.

07:05

It might be the rationalism of our day, or even the scientism of our day, that we won't believe anything in the spiritual realm.

07:15

If I can't touch it and feel it and experiment on it, then I can't really believe that it's true.

07:22

Interestingly, there's a parallel passage that recounts this same thing, and Jesus actually also included the leaven of the

07:30

Herodians. So he said, beware of the leaven of the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the

07:36

Herodians. And the Herodians would be our modern secularists, those who just live for the day, live for this life, and that's all they live for, the secularists.

07:46

Now, what Jesus is doing is expressing compassion for his disciples as well, because he knows that if we're not on guard against legalism, rationalism, secularism, these things can easily suck us in and eat us up.

08:04

Beware, he says, I have compassion on you that you not be led astray by the leaven of the wrong kind of bread.

08:13

Be careful, be careful what you eat. So thank the Lord for his compassion. Our Father and our

08:20

God, we do thank you that our Lord Jesus is a compassionate Savior. He demonstrates that in his care and concern and consideration for just the common, ordinary needs of common, ordinary, everyday people.

08:37

We thank you for that compassion. But also, Father, we thank you for his compassion in warning us against ideas, ideologies that would lead us to a path of destruction.

08:51

Help us to take heed to that warning. And this we pray in Jesus' name, amen.

08:57

All right, well, have a good rest of your Wednesday, and again tonight in our Wednesday night we'll have a

09:04

Bible study time at the church and a prayer time together, kids clubs meet and so forth. If you can make it, we'd be glad to have you join us.

09:14

And otherwise, we'll see you tomorrow, Lord willing, for the devotional. Have a good day. God bless.