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Jesus has already shown that He possesses all power and can intervene in any circumstance of life. He had demonstrated healings and miraculous signs which pointed to the fact that He was the Messiah, the One who was sent to save mankind from their sin. In these verses, Jesus evidences an amazing string of healings and concludes by giving a command to His disciples (9:36-38). I want to begin by sharing the command that Jesus gave and conclude with what caused Him to give this direction to His followers. In verse 37 Jesus said that the harvest (of souls) is plentiful, but there was not enough people to tell them about the hope. Jesus commanded the disciples to pray for the Lord to send people to harvest these souls (9:38). Jesus knew there were many people who needed hope and He wanted to do something about it. Over the last few days He had encountered a woman who was desperate for God to intervene in her health issues (9:20-22), a scared parent whose child was about to die (9:23-26), two blind men who needed Jesus to restore their sight (9:27-31), and a man afflicted by a demon needed a change of life (9:32-34). Verse 35 tells us that Jesus continued preaching, teaching, and healing in the surrounding cities and His exposure to the people caused Him to have great compassion for them (9:36). Furthermore, He said that they appeared as sheep having no shepherd, in other words they were wondering aimlessly without direction. What caused Jesus to react like this? Jesus was with the people and understood their needs - He knew they needed hope! I think this is profound. Oh that we would be so involved with people that we reach out to meet their needs.