† In Jesus Name †
2 Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Ephesians 1:2 (ESV)
The run!
It must have been a sight to see, as they ran along the side of the sea. It started in a busy town, perhaps with a few men and teens, but as they ran together, more and more people joined the run. It grew to fifty people, and as they passed through other small villages, these people too joined the rush, and soon there were hundreds. It continued on, growing larger and larger, and by the time the crowd at a full run stopped, there was close to 15,000 people.
Running in their robes, some wearing sandals, others barefoot. These weren’t professional athletes, but the people of towns and villages. Carpenters and housewives, fisherman and teenagers, little children and grandparents – all running to a place where only a hermit would live. Running in the rugged terrain that encircles the Sea of Galilee. Imagine every person in Anza, and Aguanga, from the youngest child, to the oldest retiree, running to a point on the map.
For what? To see a preacher? To see him and his 12 road weary assistants? We look back, and we know that they sought was Jesus the Messiah, the one Peter describes as ‘having the words of life”. But back then, what drove them to rush along the shore?
To hear a man explain God’s word?
Maybe to see a miracle or two?
15,000 people? Running with everything in them?
What they saw, more importantly for them, who saw them, and how did He react? Those are the things we shall explore in today’s’ sermon…
He saw, and having seen, had compassion
Have you ever been so emotionally drawn into a situation, that it affected you physically? It might simply be that you started to cry, because the situation was so overwhelming, that you didn’t even have the energy to wipe away the tears. It is far more than just pity, there becomes a connection between you, and them. A feeling like you have to do something, but there is noting possible to do.
As the boat nears the shore, and Jesus sees 15,000 people, that feeling overcomes our Lord. The word in English is that he had “compassion” on them. In Greek, the word is far more forceful – it literally means that it overwhelms, starting in the spleen. One translation I think uses our closes term, Jesus saw them, and his heart broke. It produced a gut level reaction in Him, that these people had no hope, that they had no shepherds to care for them, to guide them towards God.
Why else would they so desperately seek Him out?
Shepherd-less
Scattered,
Destroyed
Jesus’ heart breaks, He has a vicious gut level reaction to seeing the people of Israel wandering around in their lives. These people aren’t supposed to have to run to the middle of the wilderness to hear the words of God. Each village had a synagogue, with the Torah on scrolls. Each had men appointed as leaders of the synagogue, and as scribes, who were tasked with much the same job as I have now, to point the people to God, to His love for them, to call them back to the relationship God has always wanted for them to have… with Him.
The truth in Jeremiah’s time, is still true when Christ takes a boat ride on the Sea of Galilee centuries later. The people of God are still allowed to go their own way – to scatter in as many directions as possible. Ephesians 4 pictures this same problem; saying people are tossed about by the waves, and blown about by the wind of every new doctrine crafted by humans.
Need a reason to justify this sin or that? Someone out there has developed a doctrine to do exactly that. Want to seem pious and knowledgeable about scripture? Not a problem, there are places that will provide that, with arcane and special teachings about end times and the secrets of the Bible, and never once deal with Jesus dieing on the cross, to pay for your sins. You can even get so far into the mechanics of the worship of our faith, that the mechanics become more important than He who is worshipped. Meanwhile the people that God so desires to have a relationship with, are killed off, or their faith is killed off, as they are lead to believe there is no need for faith, or repentance, or walking with God.
It is enough to make a pastor cry, and it was more than enough to make Jesus’ heart break, as He taught by the seashore.
The people, caught up in their own sin, were so desperate for some hope, that they would run miles and miles, through villages and towns, 15,000 strong, to hear someone who people said were different, because he taught as one from God should teach.
The Gathering
God gathers in OT
Is that not what happened here?
I really don’t believe in co-incidences when it comes to people of God, hearing His word, hearing the gospel. I have seen it happen to many times, that God has planned for a person to bump into another person, who would tell them of Jesus. Or that God would put on the heart of one person to call another, and that call leads to them talking about Jesus.
God tells the people in Jeremiah’s time, that He will gather out His remnant from all the places God stashed them. Look at verse 3 in the Old Testament reading again. He will gather them and bring them back to His flock, to be part of His family. He gathers them together. He brings them to hear His voice, His words, and to give them life.
On that day in Galilee, He gathered them like a good ol’ fashioned cattle drive. Picture again 15,000 people running through the hills of Galilee, as those hills roll around the Sea there. Some saw them, and began the run to get to the destination before Jesus. Somehow, they recognized where they would be going, and they took off, telling people as they went, calling them alongside to join the gathering.
God once again, meets His people in the wilderness. He calls them to Him, even as He promised. His first group of newly trained leaders, the apostles, are there with Him. They are not quite ready, as the next verses will show, but they will become a new kind of shepherd.
Seeing His people, the very people of God, gathered there by the Holy Spirit’s guidance, but without their shepherds, Jesus shows that He is the good Shepherd. He sits, and begins to teach – scripture says, teach them much.
Teach them much
THe Lord our Righteousness
Aka Is 53
I always wonder, when it mentions Jesus teaching someone something, what it was that He taught. We have examples of His teaching, from the Sermon on the Mount, to many of His parables. We have the great conversation on the road to Emmaus, when the risen Christ opens the Old Testament scriptures to the disciples, and from Genesis through the histories, from the psalms and proverbs and prophetical books, Jesus shows two disciples that He had to die. For His people, for us.
To achieve what we see prophesied in Jeremiah, that God would gather one people and raise up His servant, who would reign, and save His people. We see exactly how, in the Epistle lesson,
13 But now in Christ Jesus you who once were far off have been brought near by the blood of Christ. 14 For he himself is our peace, who has made us both one and has broken down in his flesh the dividing wall of hostility 15 by abolishing the law of commandments and ordinances, that he might create in himself one new man in place of the two, so making peace, 16 and might reconcile us both to God in one body through the cross, thereby killing the hostility. 17 And he came and preached peace to you who were far off and peace to those who were near. 18 For through him we both have access in one Spirit to the Father.
That is the depths of Christ’s compassion, for us. That even though we were far off, He gathered us to Himself, by the cross, and His blood.
Another great Old Testament prophecy says it this way,
6 All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord has laid on him the iniquity of us all…. 11 Out of the anguish of his soul he shall see and be satisfied; by his knowledge shall the righteous one, my servant, make many to be accounted righteous, and he shall bear their iniquities. .
Isaiah 53:6 (ESV)
For as Jeremiah prophesied, this prophet, this messiah, who would save His people, is called, THE LORD IS OUR RIGHTEOUSNESS.
In that righteousness, we find peace, the Peace of God, which passes all understanding, guarding our hearts, and minds, in Christ Jesus!
