Be Compassionate
We learned this past Sunday in our new series on “Go,” how compassionate our great God is. He sees and understands our weakness and need better than anyone else and He sympathizes with us. He truly cares.
God’s compassion is a given since He perfectly feels for those who are sinners and do not understand the severity of their lostness (remember the Ninevites—Jonah 4:2) as well as for His saints who still sin and experience the deep sorrows of this life (Psalm 51:1; 103:13). The gospel accounts reveal how our Lord’s compassion moved Him to open the eyes of the blind (Matt. 20:34), to cleanse the lepers (Mark 1:41), to deliver the demonized (Mark 9:22), and even to raise from the dead the only son of a widow (Luke 7:13).
Our compassion is very imperfect and can be mixed with judgment, skepticism, and frustration in regards to how and why people experience the pains and sorrows of life. We can easily view people as selfish, uncivil, angry, irresponsible, entitled, foolish, fragile, lazy, aloof, enemies, victims, clueless, or angry at the world, yet forget they are all uniquely created in the image of God, suffer helplessly from the curse of sin (like we did) and unknowingly be headed toward a Christless eternity.
As recipients of God’s great compassion, we are empowered to see people like Jesus saw people. We know how the Lord characterized each life outside a relationship with Christ. Compassion demands that we move out of our comfort zones and care about those God has placed in our sphere of influence. Unbelievers are not the enemy, but victims of the enemies of sin and Satan just like we were.
Ask the Lord to break your heart over the lost, the blind, the spiritually dead in your mission field. Rarely do we know what’s behind the strained smile or the lame excuse or the many other manifestations of their human experience (e.g., their sadness, sorrow, sickness, anger, anxiety, distrust, fear, discouragement, skepticism, stress, coldness, conflicts, broken promises, hurt, nervousness, etc.).
We do know we have the cure for the incurable, the solution for the insolvable, the payment for the unpayable debt of sin. It is the GOSPEL. It is not an ethical code nor is it good advice. It is a life-altering announcement of good news about Jesus Christ whose death and resurrection brought forgiveness of every sin and eternal life to anyone who is willing to turn from their sin and trust in Him as Savior and King.
Consider doing two things this week:
Remember the compassion God has and continues to have toward you and others. “This I recall to my mind, therefore I have hope. The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease, For His compassions never fail. They are new every morning; Great is Your faithfulness.” (Lamentations 3:21–23).
Remember the compassion you need to have on others. If we are called to “walk as Jesus walked” (1 John 2:6), then we should follow His example: “seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd” (Matthew 9:36).
Remember that even Jesus’ most scathing denunciation—a blistering diatribe against the religious leaders of Jerusalem in Matthew 23—ends with Christ weeping over Jerusalem.
Compassion colored everything He did.
-John MacArthur
Pastor Jeff
“Every saved person this side of heaven owes the gospel to every lost person this side of hell.”