[Note: This sermon expounds Matthew 14:13–21. Delivered 10 June 1979, Montreal.]
We return now to Matthew's Gospel after completing the section of parables we have been studying in Luke. Matthew 14:13–21 gives us the account of the feeding of the five thousand. There is a message about this passage that is commonly preached in churches: offer your five loaves and two fishes to God, and he will multiply them. But there is a key question this popular message never answers: why does God bless the boy's five loaves and not yours? After all, you have also offered everything to God — why are you not a channel of blessing in the same way?
Before we can answer that question, we must look carefully at what the Lord Jesus was doing in this passage. Verse 16 says: "But Jesus said to them, 'They need not go away; you give them something to eat.'" The disciples were shocked — they had only five loaves and two fish. But notice that the Lord Jesus had the power to feed the five thousand all by himself; he did not need the disciples at all. He involved them deliberately, because he had a teaching purpose. He was training his disciples in something — but in what?
The key word is in verse 14: "he had compassion on them." The Greek word translated "compassion" literally means the bowels, the intestines — the deepest inner feelings, what we might call the gut. It is used in the New Testament only of the Lord Jesus himself, and it appears five times: Matthew 9:36 when he saw the crowds like sheep without a shepherd; Matthew 14:14 and 15:32 for the feedings of the five and four thousand; Mark 1:41 when he healed the leper; and Matthew 20:34 when he restored the two blind men. It also appears in the account of the widow of Nain in Luke 7. The word speaks of the most profound inner movement — something that does not merely touch the mind or even the heart but reaches the deepest core of the person.
Why does this matter? Because God wants his disciples to share his compassion. The Lord Jesus was not simply performing a miracle for the crowd; he was showing his disciples what was in his heart, and he was asking: do you feel what I feel? When he said "you give them something to eat," he was in effect saying: I want you to feed them — not just physically but with everything you have, because I want you to feel for them the way I feel for them. He was not testing their logistics; he was exposing the condition of their hearts.
I must confess honestly that compassion does not come naturally to me. My training was military and academic — hardness, discipline, efficiency. When I was young in Shanghai, beggars lined the streets, and at first the sight was terrible. But you see them every day, and the heart hardens. That is what prolonged exposure to suffering does: it switches off the feelings. We become closed taps. God's living water is available in full supply, but it stops at us because we are turned off. The Lord was saying to his disciples: I will not always be here to feed them — you will be here, and you have to do it.
The disciples' natural response was exactly our response: "This is a lonely place, and the day is now over; send the crowds away to go into the villages and buy food for themselves." Translation: let them look after themselves, it is not our problem. This is precisely our attitude toward the spiritual and physical needs around us: let them fend for themselves. But the five loaves and two fish that you keep carefully for yourself will still be with you at the end of your life if compassion is absent. They will never become a blessing to anyone.
John 7:38 gives us the Lord's promise: "Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" The word translated "heart" in some versions is literally "belly" — the same root as the word for compassion. This is no coincidence. The Lord is saying that the place from which living water flows is the same place where compassion lives. For every Christian — not just for special Christians — God intends rivers of living water to flow out. The question is whether that place in us has been opened.
# Compassion: A Requirement to Be a Channel of Blessing — Matthew 14:13–21 (Part B) — The Tap That Is Closed; Becoming a Fountain of Living Water
[Note: This is Part B of the sermon on Matthew 14:13–21, continuing directly from Part A. Delivered 10 June 1979, Montreal.]
Consider the account of the widow of Nain in Luke 7. The Lord Jesus met a funeral procession — a widow whose only son had just died, her sole support and hope now gone. We read that when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said, "Do not weep." But why are we so often awkward in the face of others' grief, rather than compassionate? It is because we are thinking about ourselves. We think: what do I say? What if I say the wrong thing? What will they think of me? The moment you begin thinking about yourself, you have stepped away from the other person and compassion cannot flow.
There is a crucial difference between compassion and sentimentality. Sentimentality is when you see someone suffering and think: what if that happened to me? You feel sorry for yourself by imagining yourself in their place. True compassion forgets yourself entirely and feels for the other person. This is why we can cry at films while knowing nothing real is happening — we are weeping for ourselves in the situation, not for any real person. When we are genuinely moved for another person with no thought of ourselves, that is compassion, and it is a rare and precious thing.
The picture of the tap is exact. God's reservoir is absolutely full — there is no shortage on his side. The problem is that the tap is closed. When the tap is opened, the water does not need to be manufactured; it flows because the source is there and the connection is made. The Lord Jesus wanted to feed the five thousand through his disciples — not despite them, not around them, but through them. He still works in exactly the same way today. He wants to bless the world through you, but that requires the tap to be open, and the tap is opened by compassion.
The application goes far beyond the pulpit. In marriage, the breakdown of the relationship is almost always a failure of compassion — each person so focused on their own needs that they cannot truly feel the need of the other. In the raising of children, both under-discipline and over-discipline spring from the same root: not truly feeling what the child needs, but reacting out of our own convenience or frustration. Compassion is not weakness; it is the deepest kind of strength, because it means you have gone out of yourself to where the other person actually is.
Ezekiel 47 describes a stream flowing out from the temple — first ankle deep, then knee deep, then waist deep, then deep enough to swim in. The river of living water starts small. Compassion, like that river, begins with small acts — noticing someone who is struggling, pausing when we would rather hurry past, asking the question we know will take time to answer. And as we are faithful in the small, the flow increases. The source does not run dry; God's supply is inexhaustible. But the channel must remain open.
John 7:37–38 is addressed to every Christian without exception: "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, 'Out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.'" Christianity that reaches only the intellect and not the depths of the being is not the Christianity of the New Testament. The Lord Jesus is calling us today: feel what I feel; feed them; open the tap. Will you be a closed vessel that receives blessing and holds it for yourself, or will you be a channel through which the blessing flows to others? That is the question of this passage, and it requires an honest answer before God.