When was the last time you felt real pity for someone or a situation? In our GRT special school, there was a mentally affected girl whose brother was a drug addict. For years, he had been regularly assaulting her, even bringing his friends into the house. The only relief for her was when we brought her to our school. When we would go to pick her up, she would be naked in the house. They showed me videos, and tests were done and came back positive. Her mother was of the least concern for her brother. That really made us feel so much pity. Something happened inside us that didn’t allow us to keep quiet; we had to do something. We wondered what the best course of action would be: police, media, or legal action. It made us pray, and we prayed, and finally, God wonderfully showed us a very good hostel that helped us rescue that girl. With her mother’s permission, we left her there. She is happy and safe now. The pity we felt was so great that we didn’t rest until we had done something.
Yesterday, I was talking to Brother Rajesh. He had an old aunt in Kerala who died, and he went to the funeral. The family was stuck there for ten days. They saw things with their own eyes that they can never fully explain. There was no water, no electricity, no phones, and no food. There were no buses or trains. The whole place was smelling, people were dying, and there was no ground to bury the dead because everywhere was filled with water. Bodies were bloating, and animals, dogs, cows, and cats were floating in the water. At the local government office, there were helpless people, women, and small children crying, separated from their parents. Nobody knew where their parents were. Many pregnant women were giving birth with no oxygen and in an unsterile situation. The whole place smelled of infection and germs. The family returned and still does not feel well. When we see such things, something happens inside our stomachs; it’s so sad.
In today’s passage, we get a glimpse into our Lord’s heart and his pity. We might ask how, as a pure and holy God, he could reach so many people, touch them, and meet their needs. How could he care for different people with different problems? What made him do those great, self-sacrificial things he did? What motivated him? This passage allows us to get a deep glimpse inside his heart and see what moved him to do all the things he did for us. He sees the multitude, and there is a feeling he has inside that no language can express. It says he was moved with compassion. This is what moved him to do all the things he did.
You see, we live in a selfish, compassionless world. The sad reality is that most people are selfish and simply do not care what happens to others! They don’t have compassion. In fact, I would venture to say that most people don’t even know what it means to have compassion! I don’t know about you, but I see how much compassion I lack. After repeatedly reading this, the Holy Spirit clearly revealed where the problem is in my life for not doing gospel work and why I am not doing the gospel work as I should. I surely need all the help in this area that I can get. I want to be more like Jesus and have at least a drop of his compassion so I can do ministry like him. I need to keep changing to be more like Jesus, not conformed to the world, but transformed by the renewing of my mind. This passage, if we deeply meditate on it, will help us do that because it is a glimpse of his inner heart.
In this passage, there are four points:
- Summary of his ministry
- His motive for that ministry
- His assessment of the situation
- His command to pray for laborers
Honestly, I wanted to finish this in one sermon. I tried until late last night, but I couldn’t, so we will have to split it into two sermons.
Summary of His Ministry (Verse 35)
Jesus went through all the towns and villages. According to Josephus, there were 204 cities and villages in that region, and he moved about all these places. Whether they were tucked away in little obscure hamlets on a hill, down in the valley, or in the large cities full of people, he went everywhere, even in between, in the vineyards and fields. He met the people and met their needs.
He had three aspects to his ministry. First, he was teaching in the synagogues, explaining the word of God. Secondly, he was preaching the Gospel of the Kingdom, which means to herald, proclaim, or announce a public proclamation. He announced the kingdom inside and outside the synagogue, on the streets, highways, hillsides, by the sea, in a house, anywhere and everywhere he went. It was the good news of the kingdom: you don’t have to continue in the kingdom of the devil, darkness, and perish. The Kingdom of God has come, and you can enter it by repenting and believing to receive tremendous and eternal blessings. You receive blessings only by entering the kingdom.
Thirdly, verse 35 says, “He was healing every sickness and every disease among the people.” Jesus utterly banished disease from Palestine. Chapters 8 and 9 are just a sample of his miracles, as no book can write about all of them. So, the ministry of Jesus was teaching, preaching, and healing.
He did this day by day, from morning until night. We sometimes just pass by these words without any feeling. We think, “Oh, the Son of God did all this,” but we need to realize that he did this as a man. As the Son of Man, he had all the weaknesses of a man: body pain, tiredness—as we have. He was a perfect man. Do we understand how difficult this was for him?
Sometimes, we preach at a conference, maybe four to five times a day, but we travel in a car, have good facilities, a room, and no distractions. There are no animals running around, no chicken sounds, no sheep sounds, no demon-possessed people coming, no sick people coming, and no shouting in an open space. We are in a closed room with the help of a microphone that projects our soft voice to the back row and the corner. We don’t have to scream.
Just to read that he was going from village to village and town to town, day after day, from morning to night, describes a tremendously difficult, tiring exercise. He preached in a time when there were no microphones, in open air with all the distractions of rural life and the hassles and confusion of city life. He wasn’t traveling in an AC car, bus, or train; it says he went walking. He walked to 204 places. Just going to one place in a bus or train makes us so tired and sick. Our preaching can never be like his. Our Lord was pouring out his soul in the labor of preaching. Only a preacher can understand this. We think it’s a nice thing to speak for one hour, but I have told you that after preaching three times on a Sunday, it’s so draining. I sometimes feel so dull on Monday; my mind doesn’t work; I’m so tired, body and soul. I can’t read, and if I do, I can’t concentrate. It is so tiring.
I think we take it lightly when it says he went from village to village and town to town. He preached. There is a great difference between preaching and teaching. Preaching is done with earnestness and energy; it is a draining exercise, pleading and speaking to people’s emotions and will to change. Preaching is for men’s emotions and wills.
Teaching is for their minds. The teaching ministry of those days was like a dialogue. One would have to have all the concentrated mental energy of a lawyer who is defending his client. With only general preparation, he doesn’t know what direction the cross-examination may come from. He must marshal all his faculties to make his point and show how wrong the opposing argument is and present forceful evidence for his point. In a synagogue, with leaders, Pharisees, and scribes, there would be tremendous opposition and arguments from these people. He had to tackle all that, which caused an emotional drain. It is very difficult to teach and preach in a hostile environment, unlike preaching in a church where everyone nods their heads.
Oh, the mental exhaustion and tiredness this would bring to him, not only from preaching but also from teaching. He was also healing all kinds of diseases. We learn that he didn’t heal dispassionately. He entered into the sympathy of the malady of those he would heal. He would see their pain and feel their pain. When the woman touched his garment, he felt virtue go out of him. He sighed while opening the ears of the deaf man, was deeply moved, and had tears before Lazarus’s grave. He groaned and he wept.
We misunderstand and think that Jesus just tripped around and kept touching people and healing everyone. Oh no, there was a great physical, mental, and spiritual tremendous drain on him. Scripture doesn’t say much about his tiredness, but in a few places, it mentions that he was tired at midday and sat at the well. In the middle of a journey, he was so tired that he went and slept, and even a storm could not wake him up. This was the deepest sleep, like a drugged man. The sea storm could not disturb his rest. This is the Jesus of the Bible. He is not a plastic Jesus, moving with limitless energy. The compassion he felt made him do this.
So, he preached, taught, and healed—three aspects of his ministry. Why did he do these miracles? Last week, I said it was a way to verify his message and his person, to show that he is the validated, authenticated Messiah. A second purpose for Jesus’s miracles was to demonstrate the loving tenderness of the heart of God. He could have demonstrated his power in any other way, such as by separating the Sea of Galilee or splitting the Jordan, but he chose to heal diseases to reveal God’s compassionate heart. God was sympathetic, tender, loving, filled with kindness, and merciful.
The way he did it also reveals his compassion. Have you ever wondered why Jesus so frequently touched the people he healed, many of whom must have been unattractive, ugly, obviously diseased, unsanitary, and smelly? With his power, he easily could have waved his hand for them to receive healing, as some modern healers do. In fact, he could have reached more people than with a touch. He could have divided the crowd into affinity groups and organized his miracles. Paralyzed people over there, feverish people here, and people with leprosy there, raising his hands to heal each group efficiently en masse. But he chose not to.
Jesus’s mission was not a crowd ministry but a ministry to individual people. He wanted those people, one by one, to feel his love, compassion, embrace, warmth, and his full identification with them, so he touched them. In Hebrews, it says that Jesus is touched with the feelings of our infirmities. The Word of God says that he learned suffering through his humanness. It is a mind-boggling concept that God’s Son learned through his experiences on earth. Before taking on a body, God had no personal experience of physical pain, poverty, or shame. But God dwelt among us, experienced all we experience, touched us, was touched by us, and fully identified with our pain.
Do you know why he chose to suffer and be born into utter poverty? So that he could sympathize and have compassion on us. One reason Jesus was able to express such sympathy for others was his own experiences in life. Jesus did not come into this world to live a happy, idyllic life! He chose a life that was very difficult at best! He grew up, lived, and died in abject poverty. When he died, his worldly property consisted of just the clothes on his back. He knew thirst, hunger, and loneliness. He was rejected, hated, and shamed. He even endured a time of severe temptation. Jesus knew the feeling of pain. He knew what it felt like to hurt deeply, and as a result, he is able to enter into sympathy with our pains and have compassion on our hurts with us.
Compassion is the distinctive mark of Gospel love. With the exception of Christianity, all other religions are filled with discrimination, caste, higher and lower classes, and hate. They have no idea of compassion. Jesus touched people. I think he was talking to us. We can’t do the miracles. We can do the sympathizing love, and I believe we’re called to do that. We cannot heal and we shouldn’t deceive people that we can, but it is part of Gospel love that we show we care. The more we have this compassion and show love, the more effective our gospel ministry will be. Historically, that has had a powerful impact on the spread of the gospel, especially in our days where there is so much cruelty. Religious divisions and big groups teach people to hate one another, even in the midst of suffering and dying. For example, some would say, “They are cow eaters,” during the Kerala flood, so “we will not help.” There is no mercy shown to people that is shown to cows. They say, “They allowed women in the Ayyappan temple; that is why the flood came.” How hateful that speech is. This compassionate, Gospel-like pity is distinctive to Christianity. No other religion has this.
So, we see the summary of his ministry: preaching, teaching, and healing to validate himself and his preaching. What motivated him to do this ministry was his compassion from the sight of the people’s condition.
His Compassion
Let us look at his compassion in verse 36: “But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion on them, because they were faint and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd.” Now, in those few phrases, we have the motives of Jesus. What moved Jesus to do these things? A marvelous uncovering of the heart of our Lord is right there, and we get a glimpse into his heart.
You can picture Jesus on an elevated place, perhaps on a hillside, and as he looks down the little bank, the slope, he sees this mass of people before him. They were always there, and he sees them, but he sees beyond the physical to their real needs and their true spiritual condition. Seeing that, he was moved with compassion.
What does that mean? It is an untranslatable word in any language. His heart melted. The word is not found in classic Greek or the Septuagint. The fact is, it was a word coined by the apostles themselves. They did not find one in the whole Greek language that suited their purpose and, therefore, had to make one. It is graphic and expressive of the deepest emotion—a yearning of the innermost nature with great pity. I suppose that when our Savior looked upon certain sights, those who watched him closely perceived that his internal agitation was very great and his emotions were very deep. His face would betray it, his whole beautiful face shrinking with pain. Inside, it was like a volcano inside his soul bursting. His eyes would gush like fountains with tears, and you would see that his big heart was ready to burst with pity for the sorrow upon which his eyes were gazing. He was moved with compassion.
This is repeatedly mentioned in the Gospels. In Matthew 14:14, “Jesus went forth and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion and taught them and healed them.” In chapter 15:32, “When He saw that they had not eaten, Jesus called His disciples to Him and said, ‘I have compassion on the multitude.'” And he fed them. When the blind men cried out to Jesus to be healed by Him, we’re told that Jesus “had compassion and touched their eyes” (Matthew 20:34) and then gave them their sight. A leper fell before Him and said, “If you are willing, You can make me clean.” Then Jesus, “moved with compassion,” stretched out His hand and touched him and healed him (Mark 1:41). And when Jesus saw a widow woman who was following her son’s coffin during his funeral, we’re told that “He had compassion on her” (Luke 7:13); then He touched the coffin and raised her son! He had compassion because it was his nature to love.
It is also there in the parables he told. He told of the good Samaritan who saw a man who was lying on the road beaten and robbed; and Jesus tells us that, “…When he saw him, he had compassion” on him (Luke 10:33) and helped him. And He told the beloved story of the father of the prodigal son, who, while his returning son was still a great way off, “had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him” (Luke 15:20).
Now, the Greek term here is very interesting. It literally means to feel something in the bowels. The word splanknais is the noun form, and it means bowels. If you want to know how it’s used in the Bible, listen to this. It talks about Judas in Acts 1:18, saying, “Judas purchased a field…and falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst and all his bowels gushed out.” The word literally means the midsection, the internal organs, spleen, liver, the intestines, the entrails, the inward parts. It literally says, “Jesus was moved in the bowels upon them.” It was just basically a Hebrew expression. See, that is no different than going to someone and saying, “I love you with all my heart.” It was just an expression, and the Hebrews talked about the bowels instead of the heart. The bowels, in Hebrew thinking, are the responder, the reactor. And so, when they wanted to express something they felt very deeply and were very pained about, they said, “I hurt in my midsection.” You care so much that your whole internal organs inside your stomach feel a big pain, and you feel like everything is going to come out.
Now, we understand that. When we see a horrible accident or a disaster, we get sick in our stomachs. We have ulcers, colitis, and upset stomachs because this is where emotion grips us. Jesus literally said that he was wrenched in pain in his midsection when he saw these people.
This is the expression of an attribute of God. He cared because God is love, and love cares. It is the nature of God. Listen, does God care? Does God care supremely? Does God care and love beyond anything that a human being could ever experience? Yes. Then, put God in a body and let him love like that and care like that, and it will wrack that human body, giving it great pain to the point of bursting. And that is what it did. In Matthew 8:17, it says that “He was dealing with all these sick people, that it might be fulfilled, which was spoken by Isaiah the prophet, saying, ‘He Himself took our infirmities and bore our sicknesses.'” It isn’t the idea that he got the leprosy when he healed the leper. It is the idea that he wrenched in agony in sympathy and compassion, for he felt the pain of seeing what sickness did to those he loved. I’ve seen parents sick to death over an ill child, and no parent has ever felt the compassion or the love that Christ felt because it was God loving in that human body.
See, our Lord was, by nature, sympathetic because he was God, and God loves his people. God is not willing that any should perish. God doesn’t enjoy the sorrow that he sees in the world. I really believe if you want to know the heart of God, then look at the emotion of Jesus and see the heart of God. Our Lord, every time he saw sickness and pain, was just internally wrenched with compassion. Note that this pity made him do all the selfless things he did.
See him in the Garden in John 18. The soldiers come to take him and they catch the disciples. He says, “Whom do you seek?” And they said, “Jesus of Nazareth,” and then he said, “Let these men go.” He was so compassionate toward his disciples that he didn’t even give a thought to what he was going into. In the 19th chapter, you see him on the cross, the worst torture and shame being done to him, and he’s hanging there with those four great wounds in his body. If ever there was a moment when he could have thought of himself, it would have been then. But on every side, he sees with compassion. He looks down at the foot of the cross, has compassion on his killers, and says, “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they do.” He sees the thief on his right side and says, “Today you will be with me in paradise.” And he sees this little lady, his mother Mary, and he knows that he isn’t going to be around anymore to care for her. He knows that Joseph is dead, we assume, so who’s going to take care of Mary? That’s what’s on his heart, and he commits her to John, and John to her, and once that’s done, he can go ahead and die.
Jesus’s compassion stemmed from a unique divine perspective that enabled Him to see humanity’s true, desperate condition. This was not a superficial, worldly view, but an accurate spiritual diagnosis of their problem.
The Condition of the People
When Jesus saw the crowds, He wasn’t just observing a diverse group of people; He was seeing them in their real, spiritual condition. He looked past their religious facades and social status and saw that they were “harassed and helpless, like sheep having no shepherd.” This powerful simile reveals the core of His compassion.
- Harassed (Askulmanoy): This term goes beyond simple distress. It means to be worn out, exhausted, and severely mangled, as if “skinned alive.” It paints a picture of spiritual devastation, where people are battered and bruised by the world, sin, and the devil.
- Helpless (Arimanoy): This word describes a state of total devastation, where a person is scattered, lying prostrate, and utterly defenseless. It signifies a complete lack of protection and guidance.
This image of “sheep without a shepherd” was a powerful one for Jesus’s audience. It was a well-known metaphor from the Old Testament (Numbers 27:17, 1 Kings 22:17, Zechariah 10:2, and Ezekiel 34:1-6) that described a people who were neglected and led astray by their false spiritual leaders, the scribes and the Pharisees. They were torn, dead, and vulnerable, lacking anyone to guide them to safe pastures or protect them from harm.
Jesus saw that even with all their technological and social advancements, humanity had not changed. People were still spiritually foolish, unable to discern right from wrong, and preyed upon by their spiritual enemies. He looked beyond their apparent self-sufficiency and saw their inner turmoil, loneliness, and despair. He saw their desperate need for answers to life’s biggest questions and for a hope that the world could not provide.
A Call to Compassion
This passage is not only a description of Jesus’s heart but also a challenge to believers. To have a heart like His, we must be willing to see people as He saw them.
- See with His Eyes: We must pray for God to open our eyes and help us look past the superficial. We often don’t want to see people’s deep needs because we know it will obligate us to act. But to be compassionate, we must take the time to truly look at their pain, depravity, and their ultimate destination without a Savior. We need to recognize that they are lost, and unless they are saved, their destiny is hell.
- Feel as He Felt: We must not only see their condition but also feel a deep, compassionate pain for them. Jesus, the King of glory, willingly felt this inward pain. We cannot enter fully into His service if we insulate ourselves from the pain of others. Our hearts should be broken for a world that does not know Him.
- Go and Serve: Jesus did not wait for the hurting and lost to come to Him; He went to them. We must follow His example and be proactive in our ministry. Waiting for people to come to us is an uncompassionate act. We are called to go out and serve them, both with the gospel message and through practical acts of love and kindness.
Ultimately, we cannot show compassion in our own strength. Jesus promised that His followers would do greater works than He did because He would send the Holy Spirit to empower us (John 14:12-14). Therefore, our lack of compassion and evangelism is not a lack of ability but a failure to see, feel, and go with the heart of Christ. The greatest danger for the church is to neglect the urgent work of reaching the lost with the Word of God.
Grace Reformed Baptist Church, Bangalore 