The Lord Loves the Whole

Matthew 14:15 KJV

And when it was evening, his disciples came to him, saying, This is a desert place, and the time is now past; send the multitude away, that they may go into the villages, and buy themselves victuals.

Matthew 14:22-23 KJV

And straightway Jesus constrained his disciples to get into a ship, and to go before him unto the other side, while he sent the multitudes away.

And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone.

In another demonstration of how the ways of man and God are different, here we find what is a request of the disciples contrasted with what is the action of the Lord. 

The context is the death and burial of John the Baptist. It would be difficult to miss the importance of the connection between the two:

• They are cousins
• John baptized Jesus
• John prepared the way fir Jesus ministry
• John pointed out Jesus as "the Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the world"
• John began the very ministry of preaching and baptizing that Jesus took up

Yet when John was killed and buried, they told Jesus about it. He did not even attend the funeral.[1]

After hearing of John's death and burial, Jesus took the disciples apart but they were followed by this multitude. Jesus ministered to them but when evening began to wear on the disciples, supposing they had an opportunity here to be alone with the Lord, asked Him to send them away for food, lest they be hungry. It backfired. Jesus told the disciples to give to the multitude what they needed to eat. 

And then Jesus did the polar opposite of their request; He sent His disciples away first and was then left alone with the multitude. What He said and did we will never know this side of heaven. It seems that it was personal enough that He dismissed all of those who would be commissioned to record the life story of Christ before this last bit of ministry to the multitude.

Especially when we have been hurt in some way, we can start to think that God's concern should be all about we who are His closest followers. Here we learn that, even when we are in our most painful experiences, the Lord loves the whole:

• Those who are only shallow followers
• Those who only follow for what they can get
• Those who will never leave a mark on the world, even
• Those who will in the end reject Jesus Christ and send Him to the Cross

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[1] They did have funerals and people did attend them.