The Lord of Compassion

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Matthew 9:35–38 (NASB95)
Introduction
We're gonna take a break from our study in first Corinthians and look at a passage today in Matthew chapter 9. I was reminded this week as I drove around the city of Memphis about those around us who are in great need. We often times see these people and we struggle to know how to respond to them. They may be people begging for money on the street, or it just may be the poverty and the need that we drive by and our cars. If you're like me, sometimes it's a little overwhelming to consider since I grew up in a home where we weren't exceedingly wealthy, but we had what we needed and I watched my parents work hard for that.
But early in my ministry, as I got involved in some urban ministry through Fellowship of Christian athletes are began to see for the first time in my life, the poverty and the helplessness that so many people live. It was then that I understood clearly how the church should always seek to step in and be a help to those in need. But the struggle is real as we consider that need because we often times want to understand the need instead of just responding to help.
For example, if you are often like me at times, when you see a beggar, you wonder how he or she got to that place. Then you begin to rationalize whether, helping them with some financial gift is what they really need. You might feel like your money will be wasted on some frivolous addiction and because we don't know their stories, we often don't help them.
God’s word helps us consider if we should help and how we should help those in need. It is called compassion and it is an attribute of God. Consider with me this morning the theme of compassion from this passage in Matthew 9 and how the Lord is leading us to show compassion on those in need.

1. Jesus models true compassion

Matthew 9:35 NASB95
35 Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness.
Defining compassion from the biblical sense is most often done in describing God’s character as a compassionate God who dispenses his compassion on others.
Exodus 34:6–7
6 Then the Lord passed by in front of him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness and truth;
The very first thing said about God in this passage is that he is compassionate God. But what is compassion and how can we understand it in the divine and human sense?
Compassion is not just an emotion but a drive to bring about change. Compassion should not be ignored or suppressed. Compassion leads to acts of mercy. This is how the Bible describes compassion to us. Compassion is linked with mercy in many cases in the Bible and therefore with a heart of compassion or pity for someone’s else’s helpless or needy condition, God responds with mercy. That heart is centered in love, so as God is love, He acts with compassion, mercy and grace towards all people. These are very interchangeable words in the OT and NT contexts.
Psalm 78:38 (NASB95)
38 But He, being compassionate, forgave their iniquity and did not destroy them; And often He restrained His anger And did not arouse all His wrath.
In ps 78, some translations say, “but he being merciful,” while others say, “But he being compassionate” because they are very interchangeable words. Now consider compassion and mercy in God’s story.
God reveals himself to humanity and provides a way of escape and redemption from the bondage of sin to which all humanity is enslaved. He does not have to save us. We are helpless and destitute in our sin. He comes to us, and he provides a way of redemption and freedom from that bondage.
When he does offer that way of escape through his son, Jesus Christ, he doesn't ask questions, or need some explanation from us. He doesn't need to know our reasons why we rebel against him because he already knows such things in his omniscience. Instead, without explanation, and without condition, God saves sinners because he is a God of love acting with compassion and mercy. This has been the story throughout the history of this world that God is a compassionate God, who seeks out those who are in need and helps them.
Compassion is what the incarnate Son of God, the Lord Jesus displays throughout his life on this earth. Without fail, Jesus was 100% compassionate to those he encountered. Countless stories of Jesus’ ministry show him display this heart of compassion that lead to acts of mercy towards those in need. He had compassion on those crowds who followed them and were hungry. He sent his disciples to gather food supplies and there Jesus performed one of his great miracles of feeding the 5,000.
Jesus had compassion on beggars who could not walk and who could not see. He healed their ailments.
He had compassion on social outcasts, like immoral women, often inciting great criticism from his opponents. Jesus ignored their protests and responded in love and care towards them. He sat down and ate meals with them which reflected intimacy and fellowship with the outcast.
Our passage in Matthew 9 is a summary passage but it gives us a great glimpse into the compassion of our Lord Jesus. In it, we will look more intently on the compassion of the Lord Jesus and how he calls us to minister compassion with him.
Matthew 9:35–36 NASB95
35 Jesus was going through all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every kind of disease and every kind of sickness. 36 Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.
Let’s think about some ways that Jesus defines and models compassion for the church.
a. Compassion has no boundaries:
Matthew 9 tells us that Jesus and his ministry consisted of traveling throughout all the cities and villages. In relationship to his ministry, we understand, and that his compassion had no boundaries culturally. Jesus shows us that compassion reaches beyond those who are in different cultures from us. We may not completely understand differing cultures, but that should not keep the church from displaying compassion, love and mercy to those if they are in need. This is the heart of the gospel message that as we take the gospel across the world we are not hindered by people different than us. Jesus's ministry shows us his commitment to strategically and without hesitation take the love of God to those who are culturally different than him.
What are the great examples of this is demonstrated in the parable of the good Samaritan, where the term compassion is even used in the passage to display the love of one Samaritan person who acts out and compassion to serve the needs of another person culturally different than them. These were cultural enemies, and yet the compassion that is being taught is one that overcomes cultural differences.
I would also include that compassion holds no record of wrongs. So just as compassion is not bound culturally, it should also not be withheld conditionally. If compassion is rooted in the love of God, and Paul tells us that divine love “holds no records of wrongs” then our acts of compassion should not hold a record of wrongs either. Jesus goes from town to town teaching in the synagogues, and in those places, he rarely received healthy responses. You can say his greatest earthy enemies, the religious leaders, who would plot and carry out the assassination of Jesus, were in those synagogues. But he continued to visit them, even when rejected at the last one, always showing compassion towards his enemies. He didn’t hold grudges nor was he vindictive towards them.
So we could summarize then compassion into main categories. The first would be Compassion Targets Physical Needs. We read Matthew 9 that Jesus went about healing, sicknesses, and diseases. We know that these miracles or ways that Jesus was authenticating his message of the gospel. Therefore the miracles themselves served to authenticate the power of the son of God to the hearers of the message that he was sharing with him. But the miracles themselves also aided the people who received the healing.
Listen to how God commanded Israel to show compassion to those in need:
Deuteronomy 15:7–11 NASB95
7 “If there is a poor man with you, one of your brothers, in any of your towns in your land which the Lord your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand from your poor brother; 8 but you shall freely open your hand to him, and shall generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks. 9 “Beware that there is no base thought in your heart, saying, ‘The seventh year, the year of remission, is near,’ and your eye is hostile toward your poor brother, and you give him nothing; then he may cry to the Lord against you, and it will be a sin in you. 10 “You shall generously give to him, and your heart shall not be grieved when you give to him, because for this thing the Lord your God will bless you in all your work and in all your undertakings. 11 “For the poor will never cease to be in the land; therefore I command you, saying, ‘You shall freely open your hand to your brother, to your needy and poor in your land.’
Compassion Targets spiritual needs. The church is called not to social reform, but spiritual reform. We are called to bring about spiritual change by the power of the Holy Spirit and the sovereignty of God at work in this world. We partially accomplish that goal by meeting physical needs of people through acts of compassion, but we don't stop there. Giving them a hot meal, or a warm blanket, will not give them any escape from the wrath is to come. Our compassion towards physical needs is not the key to unlocking gospel fruit in the spiritual sense.
Humanity's greatest need is to be reconciled to God, and therefore our compassion moves beyond their physical needs to their spiritual needs. People need a reconciled relationship to God more than they need food or clothing, or a place to live. They need a relationship restored to their Creator. They need to be at peace with their greatest enemy, and all of this is accomplished do the work of Christ on the cross. Therefore the mission of the church starts with meeting physical needs with the ultimate goal of meeting, their spiritual needs, which are found only in Christ
This summarizes the ministry of Jesus. If you'll notice in Matthew 9, we see that Jesus traveled around doing three things, meeting physical needs of those who are sick and helpless, teaching in the synagogues, and proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom. His ministry in the synagogues was helping the Jews understand the true gospel of the kingdom was found in the coming of the messiah. These were Jesus engaging in apologetics with other faiths, helping them see the truth of what God is doing to bring about salvation to sinners.
He also engaged in proclaiming and preaching the gospel in the public. He took time engaging both Jews and Greeks, so that they may come to understand the message of salvation that is found in the God of the Bible, and he alone. Therefore, we can see from this summary of Jesus's ministry that he engaged first in meeting the physical needs, but also the priority of engaging the spirit with the truth of God, in his word.
One of the most important metaphors that is employed in the Bible in regards to our spiritual nature is the image of the sheep in the shepherd. In Psalm 23, we are told that the Lord is our shepherd. In Old Testament Israel, the leaders of god’s people were referred to metaphorically as shepherds of the sheep. Jesus also uses this metaphor throughout his ministry and particularly in this verse. We read it, Matthew 9
Matthew 9:36 (NASB95)
36 Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them, because they were distressed and dispirited like sheep without a shepherd.
These terms describing the people as sheep in v 36 have a varying difference among the translations.
ESV harassed and helpless
NASB distressed and dispirited
KJV weary and scattered
NLT confused and helpless
What this communicates chiefly is that the compassion of the Lord comes from a love for helpless and needy people. The words here seem to imply a spiritual helplessness carrying the metaphor of sheep as a spiritual image. It is well known that sheep as an whole are defenseless creatures. Their survival depends on someone else to take care of them.
I read of a documentary about sheep and their herd instincts which give explanation to their defenseless state.
“It was filmed in a packinghouse where sheep were being slaughtered for the meat market. Huddled in pens outside were hundreds of nervous animals that seemed to sense danger. A gate opened that led up a ramp and though a door to the right.
To get the sheep to walk up that ramp, the handlers used a “Judas goat.” The goat did his job very efficiently. He walked to the bottom of the ramp and looked back. Then he took a few more steps and stopped again. The sheep looked at each other skittishly and then began moving toward the ramp. Eventually, they followed the goat to the top, where he went through a little gate to the left, while they were forced to turn to the right and to their deaths.”
Craig Brian Larson and Phyllis Ten Elshof, 1001 Illustrations That Connect (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Publishing House, 2008), 393.
Isaiah 53:6 NASB95
6 All of us like sheep have gone astray, Each of us has turned to his own way; But the Lord has caused the iniquity of us all To fall on Him.
We are the lost sheep in regards to our standing before a holy God. We are weary or distressed and helpless. We are in need of a shepherd who acts with compassion to save us. Jesus the great shepherd steps in to rescue helpless sheep and in him he provides escape from enemy attacks, green pastures to feast in and help in our distress.
The Chief Shepherd came into this world, lived a perfect life, died on the cross and resurrected from the dead. Through this sacrificial act, he calls us to himself to be his sheep. When we enter into his fold by faith, we are now under the care of the Chief Shepherd and by the miracle of regeneration, we actually become like him. The metaphor breaks down here because how can sheep be like their shepherd? But the miracle of salvation brings us to emulate our leader and display characteristics of love, compassion, and sacrifice.
Now as we observe the characteristic of compassion in the Lord Jesus, we are now challenged to model compassion to a lost world.

2. Jesus calls the church to be co-laborers in compassion

Matthew 9:37–38 NASB95
37 Then He said to His disciples, “The harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few. 38 “Therefore beseech the Lord of the harvest to send out workers into His harvest.”
Since compassion can be defined as unrestricted compassion that meets spiritual and physical needs, we can understand that Jesus calls us to engage in that compassion of our Shepherd to the world.
The imagery now changes from fold to field as Jesus now instructs his disciples on a pivotal statement in the Scriptures about the mission of his people. In an agricultural image, Jesus refers to the world as having a harvest. We understand this in the context to be a spiritual harvest that is ready to be gathered by workers of Jesus. This harvest is a result of the spiritual work that the Lord is already doing in the world.
That harvest is a challenging metaphor because it implies that there is already a waiting spiritual crop waiting to be gathered. I don’t think that Jesus means that the church is out there already collecting saved people and gathering together into the church. Harvest is more broad and still implies that God has already accomplished spiritual work within people in this world, that his workers or laborers must go forth and engage. Tied to compassion ministry of Jesus, it is best to assume that the church must go forth and intentionally show compassion to the world so that those whom the Lord has prepared will receive physical compassion and respond to the spiritual compassion when the gospel is proclaimed. That is the spiritual harvest of the kingdom of God.
Lydia is a good example of the Lord doing spiritual cultivating and his workers bringing a spiritual harvest.
Acts 16:14 NASB95
14 A woman named Lydia, from the city of Thyatira, a seller of purple fabrics, a worshiper of God, was listening; and the Lord opened her heart to respond to the things spoken by Paul.
If you remember, Paul was not planning on traveling to this area of the world with his mission. But the Holy Spirit guided him along this way with a vision from a man from Macedonia who was begging Paul to come. He went and upon arriving and preaching the gospel, he met a woman named Lydia, who was already committed to worshipping God and now hears the gospel and believes. God prepared her steps and Paul’s steps and then the Lord opened her heart to believe. Paul, the worker of the Lord, simply gathered the harvest of the Lord.
Spurgeon writes,
365 Days with Spurgeon (Volume 1) (11 July)
(Christ) finds (his sheep) often in the worst of tempers, in the most hardened conditions; and he softens their hearts, awakens their consciences, subdues their pride, and takes them to himself; but they would never come to him unless he came to them. Sheep go astray, but they do not come back again by themselves. Ask the shepherd whether his sheep come back, and he will tell you, “No, sir; they will wander, but they never return.” When you find a sheep that ever came back by himself, then you may hope to find a sinner that will come to Christ by himself. No; it must be sovereign grace that must seek the sinner and bring him home.
Application
We as the church are called to emulate Christ in his ministry of compassion. We must dispense mercy to those who are helpless, both physically and spiritually. We do this by finding a way to meet their physical needs and to do so without question.
If we relate this to the Lord’s compassion on us, what prerequisites did we need. Did we have to get clean first? Did we need a plan to getting sober? He acted with love upon us while we were still his enemies.
That love towards the needy displays Christ’s love that was given to us. It is not even a bargaining chip in my opinion. Its not “I will give you this sandwich if you listen to my gospel presentation.” That is conditional. Instead, it is I will show you an act of love because Christ commands me to reflect his very nature.
But in show love we must present truth. We must focus on the mission of spiritual change but compassion for the lost soul is the greatest compassion there is. The social and political divides in our country has weakened this compassion from the church. This needs to change. Love from God’s people can overcome the hate and the division if we just serve one another.
As we serve them, we can teach them about Christ and the gospel. We do this because we trust that God has already began a work in the hearts of the Lydia’s out there. The soil has been prepped and we don’t even know that it has. We must be faithful workers to bring in the Lord’s spiritual harvest.
JI Packer writes that the church...
...keep(s) the second great commandment and also give credibility to their proclamation of a Savior who makes sinners into lovers of God and of their fellow human beings. If the exponents of this message do not display its power in their own lives, credibility is destroyed. If they do, credibility is enhanced. This was Jesus’ point when he envisaged the sight of the good works of his witnesses leading people to glorify the Father (Matt. 5:16; cf. 1 Pet. 2:11–12). Good works should be visible to back up good words.
Finally, he asks his disciples to pray for more workers because they are few. This was a problem in Jesus’ day and in our day today. This is a plea to the Lord to bring spiritual change in people’s hearts. Only spiritual change brings a passion for people forsake their personal agendas and schedules, to serve others. It takes conviction of the Holy Spirit to bring about that spiritual change. So as the church, we pray that the Lord would convict His people to be faithful to God’s mission of compassion. The work of the church is how the gospel goes forth in this world. Pray that the Lord would raise up more to spread the gospel and make disciples his his glory.
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