Notice the compassion of Christ. He cares. He knows their condition, that they have run out of food because they have sought His presence and His power. See the kindness which makes Him unwilling to dismiss the crowd, because He knows they will collapse from hunger before they can find any food to replenish their strength. He knows their limits. Since Jesus is “the express image of [the Father’s] person (Hebrews 1:3), to see Him is to see the Father (John 14:9). In the compassion of Jesus, therefore, we discern the heart of the God who sent Him. The God who made us with bodies “knows our frame; He remembers that we are dust,” and He “Pities those who fear Him” “as a father pities his children” (Psalm 103:13-14). He knows what we need before we ask (Matthew 6:8), and He cares. Thus, we are not to imagine that He has no regard for our material needs. Though He may lead us into a wilderness to test us, as He did the ancient Israelites, that does not mean that His heart is hard towards our physical limits. When Yahweh spoke to Moses from the burning bush, He revealed both His full awareness of the misery of His people’s bondage in Egypt, but His determine to deliver them (Exodus 3:7-8). He had “seen their oppression… and heard their cry,” and was going to rescue them. Why? Because “God is love” (1 John 4:8). And that love was demonstrated most vividly in the life, and especially the death, of His Son, the compassionate Christ.