D - God's Character Pt. 2

Exodus 34:6 (NIV)

6 … “compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in loyal love and faithfulness”

Last we began to have a conversation on God’s character. After our conversation we had a short time of discussion with each other and we called those groups small groups. Because well, they are small. We learned some hard stuff about God, but we also learned that although God is not happy with out sin, His other character attributes are way bigger than his anger.

And our memory verse is what has helped know what are the attributes of God’s character:

Compassionate

Gracious

Slow to anger

Loyal love

Faithfulness.

So, if you had to guess, which one of these we are going to talk about today, which one do you think we are going to talk about today?

Well, we haven’t had a deep dive to any of these words yet, so today we are going to talk about this one:

Compassionate

Have you ever heard that word before? If you could describe that word to me, how would you do it? Have you ever been compassionate before?

How many of you here know that the Bible wasn’t written in English? Do you know what language the bible was written in? It was written in Hebrew and Greek. And the New Testament was written in Greek but the old testament was written in Hebrew. And the word for compassionate is:

Compassionate - rakhum

Can you say that word? It’s actually closely related to this other word”:

rehkem

Does anyone know what this word means? If you can tell what this word means I’ll give you 100 bucks. Well now that all of you have tried to guess, this is what it means:

womb

It’s interesting to think about that the word compassionate is so closely related to the word womb. well, who has a womb? Mothers do, so this word teaches us that compassion is a powerful way to describe the strong emotional bond between parent and child. And it is the first word God uses to describe himself to us.

With this God is saying: I am your father, and I love you. My relationship with you is so close, and I have compassion with you in the same way a mother has compassion for their child.

I want you to pay close attention to this because next week if you can do one of these 3 things I will have something for you. If you can:

Tell me memory verse.

Tell me the Hebrew/English word.

But let’s read some scripture together:

Matthew 9:35–36 NIV

35 Jesus went through all the towns and villages, teaching in their synagogues, proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and healing every disease and sickness. 36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

We notice how Jesus felt as he was walking amongst his people. Jesus saw His people, He saw His people suffering, He saw His people needed Him, so Jesus had compassion on people so He showed compassion by:

1. Sharing the Gospel.

2. Healing the sick.

Later down the line Paul tells the church in Ephesians this:

Ephesians 4:32 NIV

32 Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving each other, just as in Christ God forgave you.

Paul tells us to be compassionate to one another. But He tells us to do it the same way Jesus did. What did Jesus do?

1. Sharing the Gospel.

2. Healing the sick.

I don’t know about you, I can’t heal the sick. I haven’t meet anyone who can heal people the way Jesus did. But we can share the gospel. And while we can’t heal people there is another we can be compassionate:

1. Share the Gospel.

Share the Gospel.

Meet people’s needs.

Discussion Questions

1. How does the following passage portray God’s compassion?

2. How are we called to respond to God’s compassionate character?

3. How can we meet people’s needs?

Exodus 34:6 (NIV)

6 … “compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in loyal love and faithfulness”