God's Character: Compassion

Call to Worship

Psalm 103:8-13 “The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love. He will not always accuse, nor will he harbor his anger forever; he does not treat us as our sins deserve or repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his love for those who fear him; as far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him.”

Sermon

If you remember last week, we looked for the first time at a passage that we’ll be working through for the next little bit.

The passage is Exodus 34:6-7 ““And the Lord passed before Moses and said: Yahweh, Yahweh, a God compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, overflowing with loyal-love and faithfulness. He maintains loyal-love for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression, and sin; yet He won’t declare innocent the guilty, He will bring the iniquities of the fathers upon the children and grandchildren, to the third and the fourth.”

And this passage as I said last week is the most quoted passage in the Hebrew bible, which means that we should pay careful attention to it, both because the writers of the bible found it important, and because it’s one of the clearest and more direct times that God defines His name and His character. Last week we talked about God’s name: YHWH. And why Him having giving Himself this name means that He will consistently always and forever be forgiving and gracious to, and want a relationship with His people; who He has called us to be.

We also looked at the context surrounding this verse, and how it comes at a time where with the golden calf incident the people of Israel were trying to make God fit their idea of Him, to put Him into a box and manipulate Him as they liked. And how God then decides to show Moses His character, that He will always be compassionate, gracious, slow to anger, overflowing with loyal love and faithfulness, even when His people continue to sin over and over and over. And so this week we’re going to be starting to look at these five characteristics that YHWH uses to describe Himself. And the first is compassion, so this morning we’re going to be diving into this word compassion and finding the beauty and the applications that we can from it.

Just to give you a road map for the next several weeks. Each of the next five weeks, we’ll take a look at one of the characteristics in the Exodus passage. And each time we do, I’m going to begin by defining the word, both as we use it in English, and doing my best to show us what the original meaning of the word likely was in Hebrew. Then I’m going to look at a story or two in the Old Testament of how God exhibited that characteristic, then at the New Testament and how Jesus did, and then each week we’ll finish the sermon by looking at what it means for us to embody the same characteristic. So let’s jump in.

What is Compassion?

In Hebrew the word for compassion is Rakhum, which is actually related to a very similar Hebrew word Rechem which means womb. And so one way to think about compassion is to associate it with the love that a mother has for the child of her womb.

I don’t normally do this, but I have some major points this morning, if you want to keep notes either physically or even just mentally here’s my first point.

God’s Compassion is like a Mother’s Love

One of the ways for us to think about compassion, specifically God’s compassion is to compare it to a mother’s love. And there’s a story in the Old Testament that really helps to make that make more sense.

In 1 Kings 3, there’s a story about king Solomon, David’s son. Who God had granted the gift of incredible wisdom. And in this story these two women come to Solomon and they say this:

1 Kings 3:17–27 ESV

The one woman said, “Oh, my lord, this woman and I live in the same house, and I gave birth to a child while she was in the house. Then on the third day after I gave birth, this woman also gave birth. And we were alone. There was no one else with us in the house; only we two were in the house. And this woman’s son died in the night, because she lay on him. And she arose at midnight and took my son from beside me, while your servant slept, and laid him at her breast, and laid her dead son at my breast. When I rose in the morning to nurse my child, behold, he was dead. But when I looked at him closely in the morning, behold, he was not the child that I had borne.” But the other woman said, “No, the living child is mine, and the dead child is yours.” The first said, “No, the dead child is yours, and the living child is mine.” Thus they spoke before the king. Then the king said, “The one says, ‘This is my son that is alive, and your son is dead’; and the other says, ‘No; but your son is dead, and my son is the living one.’ ” And the king said, “Bring me a sword.” So a sword was brought before the king. And the king said, “Divide the living child in two, and give half to the one and half to the other.” Then the woman whose son was alive said to the king, because her heart yearned for her son, “Oh, my lord, give her the living child, and by no means put him to death.” But the other said, “He shall be neither mine nor yours; divide him.” Then the king answered and said, “Give the living child to the first woman, and by no means put him to death; she is his mother.”

I find this story really shows the depth of a mother’s love. I really hope Solomon wouldn’t have gone through with it, but I think it was a good test, to see which one was the actual mother, because deep rooted compassion would be found in the true mother. I like the way that the passage phrases the line: “her heart yearned for her son”. I think that based off of the Hebrew meaning, this makes a lot of sense, compassion is a deep deep feeling of love, a yearning in the heart, almost as if it were in the physical body. The mother loved the child so much that she was willing even to go through the pain of losing them forever if it was in their best interest. And this comparison of compassion with the love of a mother also fits for God. In Isaiah, God says:

Isaiah 49:14–16 ESV

But Zion said, “The Lord has forsaken me; my Lord has forgotten me.” “Can a woman forget her nursing child, that she should have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, yet I will not forget you. Behold, I have engraved you on the palms of my hands; your walls are continually before me.

God’s asking a rhetorical question, obviously a nursing mother isn’t going to forget their child. I haven’t had the privilege of being a parent yet, but from what I’ve seen and heard, the deepest amount of love and compassion that many people feel in their lifetime is for their children. And yet God says that His love and compassion is even beyond that of a parent. He will constantly rememeber His children with compassion, remember them even as if it were written on His hands.

Here’s our second point this morning:

God’s Compassionate Even When It Hurts Him

God never forgets His people, He never stops giving them compassion, even when it’s painful for Him. And it’s in this aspect, the part where sometimes, often even, showing compassion is painful that the english definition is very helpful. In english the word compassion comes from two latin words ‘com’ and ‘pati’, together and suffering, to have compassion means to suffer with someone. And I think that this is still very closely connected to the Hebrew definition. If you think about the story with the 2 women and the baby, the mother was willing to suffer herself in order to do what was best for her child. If the other woman had taken away their child, it would have been absolutely devestating, a pain truly like very few others. For some people the pain of the child dying would perhaps be easier than not raising the child, and yet this woman chose to have compassion to seek the child’s good first and foremost even if it was going to cause her pain.

God’s compassion for Israel is very similar, it often caused and still causes God pain when He shows compassion to people, because they turn away from Him over and over and over again.

In the book of Nehemiah, Ezra and Nehemiah who are leading the people of Israel after they have returned to Israel are recounting the many times that God has been faithful to Israel, reminding the people of their history. They talk about how God faithfully led their forefather Abraham, how He heard His people’s cry in Egypt and rescued them and brought them out of slavery and led them through the wilderness to Mount Sinai where He met with them and entered into a covenant relationship with them. How He led them into the land of Canaan and fought their battles for them, and this is what they say following that.

Nehemiah 9:26-28 (NIV) ““But they were disobedient and rebelled against you; they turned their backs on your law. They killed your prophets, who had warned them in order to turn them back to you; they committed awful blasphemies. So you delivered them into the hands of their enemies, who oppressed them. But when they were oppressed they cried out to you. From heaven you heard them, and in your great compassion you gave them deliverers, who rescued them from the hand of their enemies. But as soon as they were at rest, they again did what was evil in your sight. Then you abandoned them to the hand of their enemies so that they ruled over them. And when they cried out to you again, you heard from heaven, and in your compassion you delivered them time after time.”

And in this they’re talking about the cycle of apostasy in Judges. How throught Israelites history up to that point, both with the Judges first and then also with the Kingdom of Judah. The people would turn from God, chase after idols, disobey all of the commandments, and if we carry on the marriage metaphor from last week, essentially cheat on God. And then God would allow them to turn away and because they had left Him they didn’t have His protection and they would be conquered by another nation and would be enslaved, but then the people would cry out and ask Him for help and every single time God would let them come back and He would come to their rescue, and He would send a Judge to win the battle for them and they would be free again. But then again they would leave Him and the cycle would repeat, and God continued to have compassion even though it broke His heart.

Which brings us to point three:

God’s Compassionate Even When People Don’t Deserve It

God is constantly compassionate even when, especially when people don’t deserve it. And I think sometimes that can be hard for us to wrestle with, because we want compassion from God when we sin and turn from Him, and make a mess out of our lives. And we want the same for the people that we like, but often times we don’t want the same thing for the people that we don’t like and sometimes that leads to us begrudging God for showing compassion to people that we really don’t like. It was the same way for Jonah, you remember the story God tells Jonah to go and warn Ninevah about their sin. And Jonah really doesn’t want to, so he tries to go as far away from Ninevah as possible in order to not have to preach to them. And so God sends the big fish to swallow him up and then he repents and God gets the fish to spit him out by Ninevah, its after this that Jonah goes and he preaches to Ninevah that they need to repent or God’s going to destroy them, and so Ninevah does and God is compassionate to them and forgives them even though they had done attrocious things. And I think a lot of the time we kind of end the story of Jonah there, but that’s not where it ends. This is right after that:

Jonah 4:1–4 NLT

This change of plans greatly upset Jonah, and he became very angry. So he complained to the Lord about it: “Didn’t I say before I left home that you would do this, Lord? That is why I ran away to Tarshish! I knew that you are a merciful and compassionate God, slow to get angry and filled with unfailing love. You are eager to turn back from destroying people. Just kill me now, Lord! I’d rather be dead than alive if what I predicted will not happen.” The Lord replied, “Is it right for you to be angry about this?”

So Jonah was deeply angry with God that He would be compassionate that He would show forgiveness. Jonah said he would rather die than have Ninevah be shown compassion, and yet Jonah wanted compassion for himself. He wanted God to have a double standard to love who Jonah loved and hate who Jonah hated. He, like the Israelites with the golden calf, wanted a God he could control not a good that is consistently the same in every situation. And it reminds me of the same problem that people had with Jesus.

Jonah’s problem with God’s compassion reminds me of one of the parables of Jesus. Luke 15:11-32

Luke 15:11–32 NLT

To illustrate the point further, Jesus told them this story: “A man had two sons. The younger son told his father, ‘I want my share of your estate now before you die.’ So his father agreed to divide his wealth between his sons. “A few days later this younger son packed all his belongings and moved to a distant land, and there he wasted all his money in wild living. About the time his money ran out, a great famine swept over the land, and he began to starve. He persuaded a local farmer to hire him, and the man sent him into his fields to feed the pigs. The young man became so hungry that even the pods he was feeding the pigs looked good to him. But no one gave him anything. “When he finally came to his senses, he said to himself, ‘At home even the hired servants have food enough to spare, and here I am dying of hunger! I will go home to my father and say, “Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son. Please take me on as a hired servant.” ’ “So he returned home to his father. And while he was still a long way off, his father saw him coming. Filled with love and compassion, he ran to his son, embraced him, and kissed him. His son said to him, ‘Father, I have sinned against both heaven and you, and I am no longer worthy of being called your son.’ “But his father said to the servants, ‘Quick! Bring the finest robe in the house and put it on him. Get a ring for his finger and sandals for his feet. And kill the calf we have been fattening. We must celebrate with a feast, for this son of mine was dead and has now returned to life. He was lost, but now he is found.’ So the party began. “Meanwhile, the older son was in the fields working. When he returned home, he heard music and dancing in the house, and he asked one of the servants what was going on. ‘Your brother is back,’ he was told, ‘and your father has killed the fattened calf. We are celebrating because of his safe return.’ “The older brother was angry and wouldn’t go in. His father came out and begged him, but he replied, ‘All these years I’ve slaved for you and never once refused to do a single thing you told me to. And in all that time you never gave me even one young goat for a feast with my friends. Yet when this son of yours comes back after squandering your money on prostitutes, you celebrate by killing the fattened calf!’ “His father said to him, ‘Look, dear son, you have always stayed by me, and everything I have is yours. We had to celebrate this happy day. For your brother was dead and has come back to life! He was lost, but now he is found!’ ”

Like Jonah, the older son was angry that the Father had shown compassion on the younger son. And in Jesus’s parable, the older son I think is often some of us, we feel like we’ve been in the church for a long time, we try our best to do all of the right things, we don’t stray too far from good Christian morals, and yet often I think our hearts are hard, there’s people we know or see that don’t live the same way and we think, “What? God, why would you forgive them for that, they haven’t earned it.”

And yet that’s the point. That’s the whole point of compassion. And here’s our last point in the sermon.

God’s Compassion Knows No Bounds, And Our’s Shouldn’t Either

Jesus lived out the same compassion that the father showed in the parable of the two sons. Mark 2 talks about the calling of Levi, also known as Matthew, and he was a tax collector. Someone who was seen as a traitor by most Jews of the first century, someone who often likely stole money from people that he had almost certainly grown up with, and someone that worked for the Romans, the enemies that had taken away Jewish independence and freedom… and one day Jesus is walking and He sees Levi and He calls to him, and Jesus turned to him and said, “follow me” and instantly Levi left his whole life behind to follow Jesus. It didn’t matter what he had done in the past, Jesus just wanted him to follow. And so Jesus and the disciples go to Levi’s house for dinner, and while they’re there, some Pharisees, Jewish synagogue leaders, people who had their lives together as it seemed, who truly did try their hardest to follow the covenant as God had laid out for them, and who wanted others to do the same. And they were confused why Jesus who had claimed to be a Rabbi and a Holy man was eating with tax collectors and sinners, and so they ask Jesus’s disciples why Jesus is doing it. And Jesus responds and this is what He said:

Mark 2:17 “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

It’s the same thing as the Father with the two sons, and with Jonah and Ninevah, and with the Judges, and with the two women and the baby and with God and the Israelites during the golden calf incident. As you trace the theme of compassion through the bible it all leads up to that. God doesn’t wait until people are doing the right thing to show compassion to them, He does it way before that. Even when it costs Him everything, because like the best parent we could possibly imagine God continues to consistantly and faithfully show compassion even when it’s not deserved. Even when it’s painful. Even when it costs Him everything.

Because that’s the very thing that His compassion shows. It was compassion for us that brought Jesus down to earth. Philippians 2 says:

Philippians 2:6–8 NLT

Though he was God, he did not think of equality with God as something to cling to. Instead, he gave up his divine privileges; he took the humble position of a slave and was born as a human being. When he appeared in human form, he humbled himself in obedience to God and died a criminal’s death on a cross.

Jesus laid down everything, and came to painfully die. To suffer with us, to suffer for us, and to suffer because of us and our sin. And on the cross that’s where we really see compassion, because he wasn’t just on the cross for the sins of one person, he was on the cross for everyone. For you, for me, for every person that’s ever lived and ever will live, each and every last one of us deserved to die a criminal’s death on a cross, but Jesus didn’t he was perfect. And yet because of His overwhelming never-ending compassion He did. He entered into our suffering, to take it on for us, and to take it away from us, because even though just like the Israelites and Jonah and so many others in the bible we try to make Him into something He’s not, and we try to play god ourselves, His response to us is compassion, it always has been, it always will be. That doesn’t mean that we should continue to sin, but it does mean we don’t need to fear death because He already paid that for us.

And when we stop and we think about His compassion, it’s just so wild to me, that He would be that forgiving, that willing to suffer just to be with us. It’s overwhelming. And it makes me think about the times that I’m like Jonah or the older brother in the story of the two sons, where I watch as people I know make choices that I don’t like and so I judge them and instead of having compassion I wish ill in my heart towards them. Even this week there was a person who I know that did some things that really hurt me, and my gut reaction was not compassion, it was ill will, and yet as I’ve spent the week thinking about YHWH’s compassion, it’s convicted me and I’ve realized that I far too often judge people or wish ill will on them, before I’m compassionate to them. And it’s not that there’s never a time for us to call people out on it. But a friend reminded me of a wise saying this week: “people who live in glass houses shouldn't throw stones”. If God has suffered the pain of thousands of years of each generation of His people, us included turning from Him nearly daily, and He suffered the cross to pay for my sin, then I think I can relent a little, and extend compassion even when it’s hard. Because to have compassion is to suffer for or with someone, and if forgiving someone requires us to suffer, while we’re not alone because forgiving us cost Jesus His life. And if we’ve been extended that much compassion, then I think that it is our job to go out of our way to show that compassion to others, even the ones that we have the hardest time forgiving. Because compassion is who God is, it’s who Jesus was, and it’s who we are called to be.

Let’s pray.

Benediction

Colossians 3:12–17 ESV

Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive. And above all these put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were called in one body. And be thankful. Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do, in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him.