Trinity 7 Sermon: The Lord Has Compassion

Preached on Mark 8:1-9
The Seventh Sunday after Trinity
19 July AD 2015

Title: The Lord Has Compassion (MP3 Audio)

Summary: Even as He had compassion on the crowds following Him in Galilee, so Jesus knows our pains and weaknesses and has the same compassion for us. He knows that without Him, we also are sheep without a shepherd. We would move from being spiritually dead in our trespasses to being temporally and eternally dead.

Christ exercises His compassion in Word and water, in bread and wine, that we would have strength and healing for the days ahead. And when our own strength fails, He continues to exercise His in our weakness.

He feeds us also our “First Article” gifts of food, clothing, shelter, and the like, caring for our bodily needs. We joyfully feast on the gifts physical and spiritual, anticipating that great Day when we finally join in the never-ending High Feast of the Lamb.

Text: In those days, when again a great crowd had gathered, and they had nothing to eat, he called his disciples to him and said to them, “I have compassion on the crowd, because they have been with me now three days and have nothing to eat. And if I send them away hungry to their homes, they will faint on the way. And some of them have come from far away.”

And his disciples answered him, “How can one feed these people with bread here in this desolate place?”

And he asked them, “How many loaves do you have?”

They said, “Seven.”

And he directed the crowd to sit down on the ground. And he took the seven loaves, and having given thanks, he broke them and gave them to his disciples to set before the people; and they set them before the crowd. And they had a few small fish. And having blessed them, he said that these also should be set before them. And they ate and were satisfied.

And they took up the broken pieces left over, seven baskets full. And there were about four thousand people. And he sent them away. Mark 8:1-9

Scripture quoted from The Holy Bible, English Standard Version®, © 2001 by Crossway Bibles, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Audio: Click to hear the MP3 of the Trinity 7 sermon The Lord Has Compassion

NB: For some reason, a few people have had problems trying to play the inline audio if Windows Media is their default MP3 player. If this occurs, you can either change to QuickTime or another default browser player, copy and paste the link directly into a selected player, or download it to your computer, where it seems to work regardless of which player. Several folks have suggested VLC Player from VideoLAN.

Other Readings: Psalm 33:1-11; Genesis 2:7-17; Romans 6:19-23