| Devotional Hours with the Bible |
Chapter 27 |
Page 6 |
The feeding of the four thousand is not the same miracle as the feeding of the five thousand told in all four Gospels. The place of this miracle was in Decapolis. The many cures Jesus had performed had drawn throngs to Him. There was again a great multitude. The country was wilderness and desolate, and “they had nothing to eat.” Jesus could not look upon human distress with indifference. “I have compassion on the multitude,” He says, “because they have now been with Me three days, and have nothing to eat.” He might send them away; but if they started homeward unfed, they would faint by the way. We know that the heart of Jesus has not changed, and that He still has the same compassion on those who are suffering. “Does God care?” people sometimes ask. Does He care when people are hungry? Here the question is answered.
It seems strange that His disciples had forgotten the other occasion, when their Master had provided for five thousand hungry men. “From whence can a man satisfy these men with bread here in the wilderness?” Why they did not remember what Jesus had done only a little while since in similar circumstances seems strange to us. But that is just what most of us do. We do not learn from experience. We forget yesterday’s goodness in today’s recurrence of need.
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