"Yea, He loved the people ; all His saints are in Thy hand:and they sat down at Thy feet; every one shall receive of Thy words."

That third verse came before me, dear brethren, I and I thought what a precious word it is for our souls. The first thing is, "He loved the people;" and the second, He cared for them. That is God's side-the loving and the caring. " He loved the people; all His saints are in His hand." It is like that 10th of John; " I give unto My sheep eternal life; and they shall never perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of My hand," so that being in that hand, there is perfect safety-perfect security. There is all the love of His heart going out with all the strength of His hand, because He loves those whom He cares for. "All His saints are in His hand" shows His love and care; and He is their security and everything else.

Then there is our side:"they sat down at His feet." There is quietness in that, and there is rest and confidence. They sat down at His feet; that is the place where Mary sat; she sat at His feet and heard His word:that is the attitude. Then there is that passage in Matthew where the Lord said," Make the people sit down." Then when He got them seated He filled the baskets and the disciples carried them round. He got them at rest and in quiet before Him first, and then He met all their needs. It is a great thing when we can just sit down in quietness and in confidence with the opened ear to hear what He has to say to us. "Make the people sit down on the green grass," the Lord said, and they made them sit down; and then He multiplied the loaves and the fishes, and the disciples carried them round. They were gathered together, and He got them sitting down at rest as gathered together, and then His loving hand ministered to them. We have a little example of that here today; the Lord has gathered us together, and we are at rest before Him, and now He gives us the bread of life. He just gives it, as it were, to His servants that they may hand it round to us all and we each get our portion, "every man according to his eating." But if Christ had not been there at that time the disciples would not have had anything to carry round, so that His presence is the essential thing. Christ must be there or there is nothing to take round. So that if we sit at His feet, having the opened ear to receive of His words, we shall hear what He has to say, and if He has a word for any of us and we receive it, it carries blessing to our souls. It could not be otherwise. We receive His words, and is it not a blessed thing to receive of His words and get them into our hearts? I do not want to enlarge upon the thing, because I know there are others who would like to say a word to us; I just wanted to draw attention to the passage. There are the two things on God's side and there are the two things on ours. He loved the people; that is an immense thing to begin with; we are the objects of the Lord's love. "Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end." There it is, and we know it and enjoy it. "All His saints are in His hand." There they are safe and secure and everything they want is wrapped up in Him. He loves them and He cares for them.

Then there are the other two things; they sat down at His feet, at rest-perfectly happy-and they just want to hear what He has to say. If we want to hear what the Lord has to say we will get blessing, it will come home to our hearts with power, but we must sit at His feet in quiet to hear it.
Wm. Easton, New Zealand