We are Compassionate
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35 Jesus traveled among all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, announcing the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness.
36 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were troubled and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
37 Then he said to his disciples, “The size of the harvest is bigger than you can imagine, but there are few workers.
38 Therefore, plead with the Lord of the harvest to send out workers for his harvest.”
We are Compassionate
We are Compassionate
I read an interesting question this week. The question was “What does it mean to grow up?”
Every week with a patient or two, I’ll ask the question of what there goals are for life. The answers are very varied. My youngest patient just turned 13 a few months ago. My oldest is about 6 years older than me. That is a very wide range of ages. It is interesting that some of my oldest patients have no idea what their goals are in life.
Some of my oldest have some really good goals laid out for themselves. With the youngest patients it is easy to ask them what they want to be with they grow up.
With some of my older patients they have never grown up and they don’t seem to know what it means to grow up.
As Christians we are meant to grow in our relationship with God.
What does it mean to grow up?
What does it mean to grow up?
Margery Williams in the book The Velveteen Rabbit answers the question. If you’ve never read it, it’s a childs book that tells the story of a nursery full of toys. A toy rabbit was added to the collection and he wanted to know the answer to the question on how to become real. In the story, the oldest toy, the skin horse gives the answer to the question.
“The Skin Horse had lived longer in the nursery than any of the others. He was so old that his brown coat was bald in patches and showed the seams underneath, and most of the hairs in his tail had been pulled out to string bead necklaces. He was wise, for he had seen a long succession of mechanical toys arrive to boast and swagger, and by-and-by break their mainsprings and pass away, and he knew that they were only toys, and would never turn into anything else. For nursery magic is very strange and wonderful, and only those playthings that are old and wise and experienced like the Skin Horse understand all about it.
"What is REAL?" asked the Rabbit one day, when they were lying side by side near the nursery fender, before Nana came to tidy the room. "Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?"
"Real isn't how you are made," said the Skin Horse. "It's a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real."
"Does it hurt?" asked the Rabbit.
"Sometimes," said the Skin Horse, for he was always truthful. "When you are Real you don't mind being hurt."
"Does it happen all at once, like being wound up," he asked, "or bit by bit?"” [1]
Sometimes it hurts to be real. It hurts because the ones we are trying to be real with hurt us. It hurts because having compassion on people can be exhausting.
These few verses form the life of Jesus address something that has be a unique part of the Church of the Nazarene since it began. These few verses talk about compassion. We see that idea vividly in these few verses but also this chapter and the one before it.
In chapter 8 we read about the man who was healed of a skin disease. Next we read about the healing of the centurion’s servant. He healed Peter’s mother in law and cast out demons and healed the sick. He calms the storm. He frees the man who was demon-possessed and was living in a cemetery.
In chapter 9 he heals the man who was paralyzed. He raises the little girl from the dead. The woman who touched the edge of his robe was healed. He healed two blind men and healed a man who was unable to speak.
I think for most of my life I’ve looked at this few verses primarily as a missionary call. You know what I mean, we have a special missionary service and hope and pray that God will call someone to go and be a missionary “over there.”
Studying this passage, and reading some commentaries on it I think I’ve developed a broader understanding of it. I feel that these verses are about how all of use are to live.
In the Conduct of Christian Conduct that I’ve been referencing the past few weeks we find these words
The Church of the Nazarene believes this new and holy way of life involves practices to be avoided and redemptive acts of love to be accomplished for the souls, minds, and bodies of our neighbors. [2]
I like that statement about holiness because it speaks about holiness impacts us and others.
We are really good at those “practices to be avoided.” Well, I’m not sure we are good at it, we are good at telling others what they shouldn’t do, but when we do it we make an excuse.
The second part from that quote is those redemptive acts of love. What is the greatest commandment? Loving God with every part of our being. The redemptive acts of love include our neighbors souls, minds, and bodies.
In verse 35 we read these words
35 Jesus traveled among all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, announcing the good news of the kingdom, and healing every disease and every sickness.
Here is the threefold ministry of Jesus. Jesus taught in the synagogues, preached the good news of the kingdom and healed.
As we know, his ministered stirred up anger by the religious leaders. Listen to the responses of the religious people to the ministry of Jesus.
3 Some legal experts said among themselves, “This man is insulting God.”
11 But when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?”
34 But the Pharisees said, “He throws out demons with the authority of the ruler of demons.”
Amazing miracles were happening and the ones who should be leading the rejoicing in what He was doing insulted him and even claimed he was doing the work of Satan.
It is easy to insult and create doubt when God is a work in the lives of people.
Jesus was traveling everywhere, in the cities and in the little villages and was using this threefold ministry. He drew a crowd, everywhere he went he seems to draw crowds.
Look with me at verse 36
36 Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion for them because they were troubled and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
We have to take time to explore what Matthew wrote in this verse.
Everywhere Jesus went there were crowds of people. They’d heard about his healing. They had heard about his teaching. People that were sick who had no hope came to him. Think of that woman who had been bleeding for 12 years. She was sick, she had spent a small fortune trying to find a doctor who could solve her problem. She was at the end of her rope and she heard about Jesus. She was in that crowd and was able to get up behind with the thought “If I can just touch the edge of his garment then I can be healed.” And she was!
Jesus warned people who had healed not to tell anyone. But they didn’t listen to Him, they went out and spread the word about Him. And the crowds kept coming.
John Wesley, the founder of Methodism regularly preached 3 times a day to crowds in the tens of thousands. John was a small man, 5 foot 3 and weighed about 120 pounds. He didn’t have all this technology that we have, but he preached to thousands and thousands came to faith in Christ.
When Jesus saw the crowds
Matthew 9:36 (CEB)
he had compassion for them because they were troubled and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
The Greek word that is translated Compassion means “he was moved in his guts.” Deep within his inner being he was moved with compassion.
We need to be cautious with this. He wasn’t moved with compassion because of the crowds. Anyone can draw a crowd. The people were looking for something that they were not finding in the synagogue or Temple worship.
Matthew said that Jesus had compassion on they because they were troubled and helpless. One author wrote:
Word Pictures in the New Testament Matthew 9:36
Used here of the common people, it describes their religious condition. They were harassed, importuned, bewildered by those who should have taught them; hindered from entering into the kingdom of heaven (23:13), laden with the burdens which the Pharisees laid upon them (23:3).
Later in Matthew’s Gospel Jesus will say
Matt 23:13 “13 “How terrible it will be for you legal experts and Pharisees! Hypocrites! You shut people out of the kingdom of heaven. You don’t enter yourselves, and you won’t allow those who want to enter to do so.”
That is where the trouble and helplessness was coming from. The very people who should have been pointing the people to the Kingdom of God where shutting them out.
Peter Bolt in his commentary on this passage wrote:
Matthew: A Great Light Dawns Israel: Sheep without a Shepherd (9:35–38)
Israel’s shepherds had been the ruin of the nation and had led the Israelites to their current condition: sick, subject to demons, under the shadow of death. It is almost as if they shared in the darkness of the Gentiles!
Matthew says also that they were like sheep without a shepherd. Listen to what God had Ezekiel prophesy:
1 The Lord’s word came to me:
2 Human one, prophesy against Israel’s shepherds. Prophesy and say to them, The Lord God proclaims to the shepherds: Doom to Israel’s shepherds who tended themselves! Shouldn’t shepherds tend the flock?
3 You drink the milk, you wear the wool, and you slaughter the fat animals, but you don’t tend the flock.
4 You don’t strengthen the weak, heal the sick, bind up the injured, bring back the strays, or seek out the lost; but instead you use force to rule them with injustice.
5 Without a shepherd, my flock was scattered; and when it was scattered, it became food for all the wild animals.
The shepherds of Israel were taking care of themselves, but they were neglecting the flock. We know that in John’s gospel that Jesus identifies Himself as the Good Shepherd.
This compassion that Jesus had was because the people were being neglected by the ones who were responsible for their spiritual wellbeing.
Matthew has provided a description of what Jesus was feeling at that time. Jesus though speaks to His disciples and moves from the analogy of sheep to that of harvest time.
Jesus said
37 Then he said to his disciples, “The size of the harvest is bigger than you can imagine, but there are few workers.
Jesus did not mention anything about sowing or planting, he only talks about the size of the harvest.
The Message of Matthew (Pray (9:37–38))
We are not lords of the harvest. We are called on to pray. Why do we not go? Why do we not care? Because we do not pray.
The harvest is great. Opportunity knocks. The labourers are few, pitifully few. But there is a Lord of the harvest; and what an encouragement that is.
We are not responsible for the growth of the kingdom. He is. And he seeks our co-operation, in prayer and in going. We must be willing to answer our own prayers and, like Isaiah, to say, ‘Here am I. Send me!’6
What has God been doing since sin first entered the world? He has been calling people to be reconciled to Him. He has planted that “God shaped void” into each of us.
Jesus says that the “harvest is bigger than you can imagine” and also has these haunting words. There are few workers.
One of the great things about Jesus is that he doesn’t leave us to figure it out. He tells the disciples what they need to do there in verse 38
38 Therefore, plead with the Lord of the harvest to send out workers for his harvest.”
As Nazarenes we believe that
One redemptive arena of love involves the special relationship Jesus had, and commanded His disciples to have, with the poor of this world; that His Church ought, first, to keep itself simple and free from an emphasis on wealth and extravagance and, second, to give itself to the care, feeding, clothing, and shelter of the poor and marginalized.
Throughout the Bible and in the life and example of Jesus, God identifies with and assists the poor, the oppressed, and those in society who cannot speak for themselves. In the same way, we, too, are called to identify with and to enter into solidarity with the poor.
We believe Christian holiness to be inseparable from ministry to the poor in that it drives the Christian beyond their own individual perfection and toward the creation of a more just and equitable society and world. Holiness, far from distancing believers from the desperate economic needs of people in this world, motivates us to place our means in the service of alleviating such need and to adjust our wants in accordance with the needs of others. [2]
Rev. Duncan wrote:
There are people outside the walls of this church who are confused, angry, hurting, dying. There are families that are disintegrating, young minds being destroyed by drugs, old folks feeling forgotten. The need is almost overwhelming. Truly the harvest is plentiful.
The question, then, is: where are the workers? Where are those committed to being the body of Christ in ministry to the world? Where are those who will point their family, their friends and their business associates to the One who can satisfy their needs in all circumstances for now and eternity?
I’m not talking about button-holing people on the street. I’m not talking about an offensive holier-than-thou kind of sanctimonious salesmanship. I’m talking about caring enough about people that you try to help them out of their confusion, loneliness and fear. [3]
Where are the fields ready for harvest?
They’re right outside the door of this building.
What should our prayer be? Lord send out workers, here I am, Lord send me!
[1] Margery Williams Bianco, 1881-. (n.d.). The Velveteen Rabbit, or, How Toys Become Real. Upenn.Edu. Retrieved January 28, 2023, from https://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/williams/rabbit/rabbit.html
[2] The Covenant of Christian Conduct – MANUAL 2017–2021. (n.d.). Nazarene.Org. Retrieved January 28, 2023, from https://2017.manual.nazarene.org/section/covenant-of-christian-conduct/
[3] Matthew 9:35-10:8 | Are We Offering the Right Cup? | Sermon and Worship Resources (sermons.com)