Jesus: The God of Compassion

We are in the third week of our sermon series leading up to Easter. We have spent these first two weeks building a foundation into an understanding of what Jesus offered to the Jewish people and to us during his time on earth and through his death on the cross.

We have been using the book “Letters to Marc” by Henri Nouwen to help us on that journey. Nouwen wrote these letters to offer insight to his nephew regarding his journey with Jesus and the ways that Jesus had impacted his life.

The first week we looked at how Jesus is the heart of our existence. We saw that he was with God from the beginning of creation, that he gave hope to the Jewish people during his life, and offered hope to all people through his death.

Last week we saw how Jesus has set us free from abandonment, disillusionment and sin and he did it all because of the love he has for all of humanity. This week we focus on Jesus as the compassionate God. Our scripture comes from Hebrews 4:13-16.

13 Nothing in all creation is hidden from God’s sight. Everything is uncovered and laid bare before the eyes of him to whom we must give account.

14 Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, p Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. 15 For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. 16 Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Let us pray…

Compassion is empathy in action. It is us seeing a situation and desiring understanding to help/ It is us being willing to ask a person if they want help and then following through with the action of compassion.

The best way for a person to have compassion for someone else is to walk in their shoes. We can think that we can understand what someone is going through, but often it is not until we experience truly what they are experiencing that we can understand the difficulties in life that a person may be facing.

Jesus personally experienced the good, the bad, and the ugly of humanity. He understands what we are going through. It is for this reason that we have a compassionate God. A God that can be our example on how to be compassionate to others.

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A God who is compassionate was not something that the people from Jesus’ time were used to having. Gods during that time were looked at as the commanders who set the marching orders and those orders were to be followed. If they were not, then there would be consequences.

These to be worshipped and obeyed. They were not supposed to be like the people that worshipped them. They were to be great and mighty instead of like the lowly, normal, regular humans.

Jesus changed this for the Jewish people and eventually for all people. He walked with them, he talked with them, he interacted with them. Yes, he would offer them advice but usually not as a dictating God but as a loving, compassionate God.

Verse 15 of today’s text reminds us that God felt and dealt with the same temptations that we have each dealt with ourselves. He was not sheltered from the situations that often lead us down a path away from God. He faced them. He overcame the temptations of life and managed to reside on earth while never sinning.

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We are given examples of this within scripture. Our first reading offers us the best example of this. It takes place right after his baptism. Luke 4 tells us that Jesus is full of the Holy Spirit, and it is the Holy Spirit that is Jesus’ guide throughout the scriptures.

It is the Holy Spirit that leads Jesus into a time of personal prayer, reflection, and fasting. Jesus ends up fasting for forty days and according to verse two he was tempted by the devil during this time. We have three ways Jesus faced temptation in our text. They were nourishment, authority, and trust.

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The first way the devil tried to tempt him was by telling Jesus to create nourishment for himself. Jesus had been fasting, therefore he would have been hungry. This led the devil to tell Jesus turn stone into bread so that he can eat.

Jesus quotes scripture and tells the devil that “man does not live by bread alone.” But, just like in our lives when the devil fails at moving us away from God he tries again and he takes Jesus to “a high place” where he promises him authority over all the places that he can see if Jesus will worship him.

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This is one area where many of us fail. We are promised great things if only we will be willing to change our allegiance. We can have wealth and power within an organization if only we will be willing to take this one small step away from what God would want us to do.

We instead need to pray about these possibilities and through listening to God decide if this decision is God ordained or a human desire. We need to often be like Jesus and say no. We need to be like Jesus and choose to worship and follow God instead of following our human desires.

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Jesus uses scripture to tell the devil no two times in a row. So, the next time the devil chooses to use scripture to try to persuade Jesus into following his desires. The devil leads Jesus up to the highest point of the temple in Jerusalem where the devil tells him to trust God.

He takes Jesus to the top of the most holy place in Judaism. The place where God resides. He tells him to throw himself off of that highest point because scripture says that the angels will catch him.

Jesus recognizes what the devil is trying to do and reminds him that scripture also says that we are not supposed to test God. How many times do we throughout our lives choose to test God.

How many times do we tell God that we will follow him if he will help us do what we want instead of what he wants? Jesus shows us the better way. Jesus chooses to not test God and to follow the ways of the Lord instead of the ways of humankind.

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The scripture goes on to say that after all of this the devil gave up but only temporarily. It says that he was waiting for another opportune time. The devil follows the same path with each one of us. He says to himself well that didn’t work, I will have to wait until the next opportunity presents itself.

One point that we should receive from this scripture is that the devil never quits. Therefore, we need to always be ready to face the temptations that he desires for us to fall into. We find an example of Jesus’ speaking of this at the end of his ministry.

Jesus when he is in the garden after celebrating the Passover with his disciples, he goes to pray and he asks Peter, James, and John to stay awake and support him. He is saying show compassion for me. Support me during this time of struggle. They are unable to stay awake.

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When Jesus comes back to them, he says to Peter, “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation.” This doesn’t work and Peter falls back asleep. We can see over the next 24 hours the temptations that Peter fell into.

First, he cuts off the ear of one of the soldiers when they try to arrest Jesus. Jesus’ response shows us that this was against the will of God. He next will choose to deny that he is associated with Jesus three times. He fallsinto the temptation of human survival instead of acknowledging his Lord and Savior.

Jesus knows that it will always be a struggle for us to not sin. He knows this because he lived it. Therefore, God chose to offer us compassion. A way to not be overcome by the sins in our lives. The way was for Jesus, who was without sin, to die in order for our sins to be forgiven. Jesus made the ultimate sacrifice because of the compassion that he had for each one of us.

He saw our weakness. He saw the desire of those around him to not sin. But he also saw the impossibility. Jesus didn’t want to have to have his life end the way that he did, but he also acknowledged his willingness to do what needed to be done for each one of us.

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Jesus also showed us that it was possible to not sin. He gave us an example of how to live a life with God as the center. He showed us that through prayer and the understanding of scriptures we can make choices that will at least limit the amount of sin in our lives.

He has compassion for us, but he also knows that he has shown us the better way. He can understand why we fail but he also knows that our failure is due to our human weakness and our unwillingness at times to follow the will of God. We should choose to spend more time relying on the Holy Spirit than our human intuition.

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Jesus has compassion for us because he has faced many of the same difficulties we have. He faced persecution. He was mistreated by many people during his life. A majority of these people being the religious authority at that time.

Jesus was often blunt with them while also attempting to not discourage them from changing their ways and following the ways that God was conveying to the Jewish people through Jesus. We also may have faced persecution in our lives.

It does not always have to be religious persecution. It may be that others mistreated or chose to ignore us because of our sex, our income, or because of where we live. Jesus has compassion for us if we face persecution because he has also faced persecution.

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Jesus also understands betrayal. Most likely at some point in our lives we have felt betrayed by someone. It may have not been a huge deal to us depending on how big of a betrayal it was but we most likely have all felt the feeling of being wronged by someone that we had once trusted.

Scripture shows us that Jesus was also betrayed. In fact, he was betrayed by one of his disciples. One of the students that he had personally picked to spend time with, share his spiritual insights with and someone that he would have gotten to know well during their time together traveling throughout Palestine betrayed him

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When we are betrayed Jesus has compassion for us. Jesus understands our anger. Jesus why we want to get even with them even though we know that it is wrong. Jesus can understand our reaction because he had the same thing done to him.

Jesus know show we feel when we expect someone to be there for us in our time of need and they are not. They instead find something else to do. They choose an easy answer instead of being there for us.

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We also God that has compassion for us when we are in physical pain. Jesus after he was arrested suffered more physical pain than hopefully any of us will ever have to experience. He can understand how the physical pain will at times lead us towards sin.

He has compassion because he knows that our bodies are weak. But he also shows us that we can overcome the temptation to do something we will regret even when we feel physical pain. God will attempt to lead us away from the wrongs we may commit because of the compassion he has for us.

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All of these ways that Jesus has compassion for us leads us to the big question. If God is able to do all things, why do we have a need for compassion? Why don’t we have this perfect place to live.

Why do we have to face temptations, physical pain, betrayal, and mistreatment. The answer is easy but that doesn’t mean that we have to like it. We don’t live in the world that God desired for us to live in. We live in a world where sin entered in and still resides.

We face temptations. We face pain. We face betrayal and mistreatment because humanity has made a choice over and over again to not always follow the will of God. Therefore, our lives will not be a perfect example of how God desires for life to be.

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Henri Nouwen, whose book we are using for this sermon series points out something that many of us should realize through our own lives. It is through the troubles of life that we have either been led to following God through Jesus or became closer to God.

Nouwen statesit this way, he says

“I discovered that the victims of poverty and oppression are often more deeply convinced of God’s love” than those that aren’t facing life’s greatest struggles. “The question of the “why” of suffering was raised less by the people who had tasted suffering themselves than by you who had only heard and read about it.”

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Nouwen noticed in his struggle with the question of why we have the poor, the oppressed and the hurting; that it is often those that have compassion for those going through it that question it more than the ones that are often facing suffering.

Our what we are seeing around us should lead us into serving others which should than lead us to become closer to God. We should want to become connected to God through prayer and listening in order to allow us to become the help that those around us need.

I want to make one final point; we do this with Jesus alongside us. Our scripture points out that Jesus is our high priest. He is the greatest religious leader ever to walk the earth. Verse 15 points out something that we should always remember when we ourselves are going through life’s struggles.

Jesus is not “a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses.” He is a God that can have compassion for us because he is a God that has faced the struggles that we also face on earth. We are not alone on our journey because we have a compassionate God.