<p>8:18&nbsp;<i>Now when Jesus saw-</i>&nbsp;An example of how the Lord was so human that He still acquired knowledge by the exercise of His senses. Knowledge was not just beamed into Him.</p>
<p><i>Great crowds</i>- Why did the Lord dislike the crowds? It may be that He simply found it nervously and spiritually too exhausting for Him to be surrounded by so many wrongly motivated people. If so, what does that mean about our decision making in view of our human limitations? Or it could be that His focus was upon the training of the twelve and He didn&rsquo;t want to be distracted from that. Or perhaps He foresaw that if the crowds remained too long with Him, then they would begin a public revolt to enthrone Him as a King or at least some figurehead in protest against the Roman occupation. Hence His continual emphasis that His kingdom was about internal renewal, not external revolt. There may well have been a simple logistical issue- He could not normally address thousands of people and be heard by them all without speech reinforcement. The feeding miracles seem to have involved the use of a natural amphitheatre which enabled this. But thousands of people just tagging along, pressing closer to see or feel a miracle&hellip; often there would have been no chance to actually teach them anything, and most of the crowd would&rsquo;ve only heard exaggerated and distorted versions of what was being said and done by Jesus. And there was also the very real practical danger of a stampede and people being trampled to death; Lk. 12:1 speaks of how one such &ldquo;innumerable multitude&hellip; trod one upon another&rdquo;.</p>
<p><i>About him, he gave commandment to depart to the other side</i>- The Greek&nbsp;<i>peran&nbsp;</i>doesn&rsquo;t have to mean this; it can also simply mean to go further or beyond.</p>