The Compassion Of God

If you're a student, you're dismissed.

And if you want some good$50 chairs, they're right up here in front.

Can you imagine what people paid for those chairs at that um what's that gal that sang the other night?

What's her name?

Taylor Swift.

Yeah, Taylor Swift concert.

Can you imagine what people paid for those chairs right there?

So uh they're there we're gonna give them to you a deal, fire sale.

Um Happy Mother's Day.

Welcome to Christ Community Church.

I'm glad you're here today.

Bless you in the name of the Lord.

Um hello, Tiffany.

Morning.

Bless you.

Um, yeah, I think we've said everything we're supposed to say.

Tommy, don't worry.

We're gonna do the announcement at the end where more people can hear it.

Okay.

Um we're in the middle of a study uh dealing with two verses in Exodus chapter 34, verses 6 and 7.

Exodus 34:6

And we've spent a couple of weeks sort of giving you the background of what's going on, and then we're gonna spend the the next few weeks looking at five ideas that are contained in this these two verses.

So let me read it to you.

Shirley, are you here?

She'll be here.

She's she's coming, she's just speaking at another church uh this morning, but she she'll be here in just a minute.

Um, Exodus 34, 6 and 7.

The background is that Moses is in a cave crying out to Yahweh, asking him to please forgive his people and to relate to them in grace and love and mercy.

And um Yahweh comes to Moses in this cave up on the top of Mount Sinai in a storm.

And this is what he says.

He speaks to Moses and he says, it says this, Yahweh passed before Moses, proclaiming, Yahweh, Yahweh, a God of compassion and grace, slow to anger, and abounding in love and faithfulness.

I maintain love to thousands, and I forgive wickedness, rebellion, and sin.

We've discussed the idea of what's going on here.

God has brought the Israelites from Egypt to Mount Sinai, and in chapters nineteen through thirty-one of Exodus, basically God through Moses invites his people into a marriage covenant with him.

And the Israelites accept unanimously, yes.

Very quickly they accept this offer, this proposal, and almost as quickly they get unhappy, afraid, confused, disgruntled, and they betray the marriage covenant by turning to other gods, creating other gods, and they break their marriage covenant with Yahweh.

And last week we looked at the fact that Yahweh is hurt.

He's a person, his emotions.

That's part of what these two verses declare is that Yahweh is a God of emotion.

Not the only thing that he possesses, but he is a God of emotion.

And he is hurt, he's angry, as anyone would be realizing that the one that you have given your heart to has betrayed that, that covenant.

Moses is praying, and as I read, God reveals to Moses five qualities that are aspects of who God is.

It reflects his character, his nature.

This is the very first time in the Bible where the attributes of God, the character qualities of God, are revealed to us.

And it's not just that they're revealed to us, they're revealed to us by God Himself.

He is the one that shares these five qualities with Moses and with his people.

And these five qualities are so important to the rest of the Bible writers, the rest of the Bible authors, that these five qualities, these two verses, are quoted and requoted by the rest of the Bible authors more times than any other passage of Scripture.

Very significant.

They saw it as significant.

They knew this is special, this is unique, this matters in an important way.

What I want us to see today, and I believe it's very clearly by intent, God reveals these five qualities that I just read to you.

God reveals these qualities in a context.

And the context is He reveals them at His people's worst, not their best.

He reveals these qualities to them through Moses in the context that they have just betrayed him.

They've just rejected him.

They have just rebelled against him.

We need to see that.

We need to see that God is showing us who He is on our worst day, not our best.

When we have blown it royally, not when we've been walking on water and praying heaven down and healing the sick and giving all of our money and serving, and then God reveals who he is to us.

Ooh, that's great.

But that's not the context here.

God reveals these five qualities at the darkest, worst time in the life of his people.

And these five qualities, if I can get you to see this, they're God's core qualities.

And I'm going to show you over the next few weeks, every other quality of God flows out of these five qualities.

Just like if you took, what is it, how many uh commandments are there in the law of Moses?

Uh 317, thank you.

I'll take it.

I'm not sure that's right, but I'll take it.

Let's just say 317.

Every one of those 317 Mosaic laws, they all flow out of the Ten Commandments.

The Ten Commandments are the core of the laws, they're the heart of what God wants his people to understand is important, and what God wants his people to understand.

This is what I want you to do.

And then they're explained, they're expanded, they're built upon in the those 300 and what uh in seven, three hundred and seven commandments, expand on that.

All the other qualities of God throughout the Bible, they are really nothing more than an explanation or an expansion or a clarification of these five core qualities.

It is not by accident that in the context of rejection, rebellion, and betrayal, what is the first quality that God reveals?

Compassion.

The very first attribute that God wants his people, that's me and you, to know about him, especially when we have blown it.

He wants us to know that at his core he is a God of compassion.

This is who he is, this is how he sees us, this is how he feels about us, especially when we fail.

I believe in the sovereignty of God because that's what the Bible teaches me.

But I also believe in the sovereignty of God because I did not plan for this to be the lesson that I was going to teach on Mother's Day.

I promise.

No way that I could have.

Well, I could have planned it, but I didn't.

I'm not that smart.

I don't look that far ahead.

But it is significant that on Mother's Day we are dealing with this attribute of God, which is compassion.

The Hebrew word, there's a number of words that God could have chosen to convey that I am a God of compassion.

But he chose a very special Hebrew word, and it's the Hebrew word for a mother's womb.

Now there's other Hebrew words that communicate compassion, but this is the word that he used.

It is the word that conveys a mother's womb, a mother's core.

And the image that God wants you and I to see here is it is the what God feels about us.

He sees us, he relates to us like a mother would see and feel and relate to a newborn baby.

One of the best examples of compassion in the Bible would be in 1 Kings chapter 3.

1 Kings 3 · chapter mention

Most people know this story, even if you're not a Bible student.

In 1 Kings chapter 3, there's two ladies, and they both live together in a house, and they both have babies almost at the exact same time.

1 Kings 3 · chapter mention

And not too many nights after these babies were born, uh, one of the babies dies tragically.

And the next morning, the Bible says, when these two ladies got up and realized that one baby is dead and one baby is alive, both mamas declare, that's my baby.

The alive baby is my baby.

And they're arguing back and forth, that's my that's my baby, the alive one's mine.

Nope, the alive one's mine.

They're arguing back and forth.

I don't know how this works, but danged if they don't work it out where they get into the presence of the king of Israel to sort this out.

Now, I don't know how they did that, but they that's what they did.

And so they are literally, these two ladies are standing in front of King Solomon, the wisest man that ever lived.

And the one lady says, the alive baby's mine and the dead baby's hers, and the other lady says, Nope, the alive baby's mine, and the dead baby's hers.

And as only Solomon could do and would do, he says, Well, there's no way for me to know whose baby belongs to who.

Bring me a sword.

They bring him a sword, and he says, Hold that baby up.

I'm gonna cut this baby half in two, and I'm gonna give half the baby to you, and half the baby to you.

And the lady who it wasn't, the lady of the baby that passed away, she agreed.

That's fair, that's fine with me, that works.

But this is what the Bible says that the real mama says.

The mom of, in 1 Kings 3, the mother of the living baby was deeply stirred.

In your translation, you know what that says?

The lady of the live baby was filled with compassion.

She was deeply stirred and said, Oh king, give her the living baby.

Please don't kill him.

Of course.

His point is that it was compassion that revealed who the true mother was.

I don't want you to forget that.

We're going to come back to that in just a minute.

Compassion was the evidence that that child belonged to that mother.

This word compassion, it conveys deep emotion that always, every time it's used in the Bible, it always conveys deep emotion that leads to action.

Let me give you some examples.

It says in Psalm 51, because of my great compassion, my woominess, my my relating to you like a mother would see a child, her child, not just children.

We all ladies, I assume, would look at the world of children and go, oh.

But it's not how a woman would feel about all children.

It's how a newborn, how a mother would feel about her child.

Very important.

It's a huge difference.

But it's a deep emotional connection that results in action.

In uh Psalm 51, it says, Because of my great compassion, I will show you forgiveness.

In Jeremiah 30, God says, Because of my great compassion, I will rescue you from your enemies.

And in Isaiah 30, it says, Because of my great compassion, I will give you help.

I will help you.

Isaiah 30 goes on to say that Yahweh longs.

I love that word.

He longs.

He longs to be gracious to you.

Therefore, he will rise up and show you compassion.

What an incredible image.

God longs.

It's not just, and I gotta be honest with you.

There are times when my grandson, who lives next door to me, I'll hear that screen door open, and then I'll hear it slam and he'll come walking in my house.

Lad! There's two different tones.

There's a lad that means I just came to see you because I love you.

And then there's a lad that means we've got a mission.

We've got something we gotta do.

And I need you to come.

Often my heart is filled with joy when that happens.

There are times when I'm exhausted.

I get up and I go with him because I love the little dude with all of my heart.

But that's not what I want to do.

That's not how God is.

He longs to be gracious to you.

Therefore, he will rise up to show you compassion.

If you did a study on this word, you would find that it's used in the Old Testament approximately a hundred times.

Eighty of those times that the word compassion, this word for compassion is used, it's used for how God relates to us.

The other 20 times it's used in how you relate to each other.

Two people relate, show compassion to each other.

But 80% of the time, four out of five times, when the word compassion is used, it's how God relates to us.

The point that it's being conveyed there is this is who God is.

It is at his core.

As I said, it's translated deeply stirred sometimes, deeply moved.

Sometimes it's translated to show pity.

Sometimes it's translated to show empathy.

Sometimes it's translated, uh, it's used as compassion, when I choose to no longer be mad at you, but to forgive you.

And the Bible will translate it as compassion, but what it is, it's actually the choice to no longer be mad, but to show you forgiveness.

Um, something else that's significant about God's compassion.

Every time, anytime somebody tells you if it's true, when they tell you in the Bible, every time that's a big deal.

That says something, it should say something to us.

Every time the Bible uses this word for compassion, it's used as the response of God to people's cries for help.

God, in this word, in Exodus 34, 6, it's the only that's the only word I'm talking about right now, okay?

In this word, it's never used for God's just sort of walking along showing compassion.

Never used that way.

Never once.

It's always God's response to the cries of his people.

It's a responsive action.

When he hears the cries for help and mercy, just like a newborn mom, uh the mom of a newborn.

She's in the other room trying to straighten up after the day of taking care of the baby, and she hears that cry.

What does she do?

She runs in there.

She would have probably kept doing the dishes or vacuuming and her folding clothes if she didn't hear the cry.

But when she hears the cry, that mama runs into that room.

That's what this word reveals.

Let me give you an example in Nehemiah chapter 9.

Nehemiah 9 · chapter mention

Uh Nehemiah's praying one of his prayer, Nehemiah's a huge prayer.

And he's got all these great prayers throughout the book of Nehemiah.

And one of his prayers is this Yahweh, again and again, you gave your people over to their enemies who oppressed them.

But when they cried out to you in distress, you heard them, and according to your great compassion, you rescued them from their enemies.

The rescue came because the people cried, cried out, help! That's when God showed them compassion.

And it's the story of the Bible.

Start with Genesis, run all the way through to Revelation.

What is the repeated story of the Bible?

God is in covenant relationship with his people.

His people reject him because he's not cooperating like Santa Claus.

They get their fanny in a crack.

They cry out to God for help, and God shows them compassion.

You go, what's the Bible all about?

That's what the Bible's all about.

God's people say, thanks, but no thanks.

We got this.

They wind up with their fannies in a crack.

Help, God, we're in trouble, we're in pain, we're in need.

And God comes and he shows them compassion.

Like a mom.

Oh, this is another great thing about this word.

God's willingness to come and show compassion every time they cry.

It's never based on that's too strong.

I'm sorry.

I withdraw that.

It is Often not in response to the condition of the people's hearts.

Like you had a child, and you told that child, don't do that.

Don't do that.

Don't do that.

You go turn your back for five seconds and they deadgum it, they will do that.

They cry out, Mom, what do you do?

Well, I told you.

I need to know if you're really sincere.

Are you, do you promise you'll never do that again?

No, that's not what you do.

That's not what a mom of a little baby does.

She roars in there and gives that baby compassion.

My point is that when this word is used, it is not that God shows compassion when you're really sorry.

When you promise to never do it again, that is not when God shows compassion.

Read the book of Judges.

They did wrong, they cried out to God, God came and gave them compassion.

Were they sincerely sorry?

No.

Did they promise to stop and then stop and never didn't?

No.

Or the best example is Jonah.

Jonah's in a w a fish.

He cries out to God, help me.

The Bible says, God heard Jonah's cry and filled with compassion, he came and rescued Jonah.

Fish spits him out on the bank.

Was Jonah this new man?

New and b improved, filled with love and forgiveness and murder.

No, he was the same jerk on the beach that he was on the boat.

He hadn't changed a bit.

But God showed him compassion.

That is so.

Golly Sucker Bill.

How many times do I cry out to God?

And maybe if I'm really fooling myself, I'm sincere, I mean it, I intend to do better, but it's not too many mornings before I am crying out to God for compassion over the exact same stuff that I did before and before and before.

When this word is used, the compassion God shows has nothing to do with the condition of the people's hearts.

I'm not saying that the condition of their hearts is not important, and there are other verses and other ideas that deal with that.

But this word for compassion, well, is God not, he's only going to show compassion if I really, really turn over a new leaf.

No.

No.

Yahweh is a God of compassion.

And he can't, root, to be honest, the idea is, Yahweh can't help it.

He can't help it.

When his people cry out in pain, he comes and he shows compassion.

Isaiah 49.

Can a mom forget her child or not show compassion to her baby?

Even if that were possible, I will not.

Do you would I mean it's it's absurd.

It's absurd.

Would the mother of a little baby reject that baby?

Neglect that baby, not show.

It's absurd.

It's impossible.

But even if the mother of a newborn baby could treat their baby that way, Yahweh declares, I will never.

I can't, I can't do it.

My DNA is compassion.

And when you cry, I come and I help.

Now I know it's Mother's Day and I read about the mom, but let's throw the dads in there for good measure.

Psalm 103, as a father has compassion on his kids, so the Lord has compassion on all who fear him.

Jeremiah 31.

Israel is my dear son and my delightful child.

Yes, I've spoken against him often, yet I still remember him, for my heart yearns for him, and I will surely have compassion on him, declares the Lord.

What an amazing God.

What kind of a God is like?

What other God could be like this?

How can he be this way?

That his bent, you poke him, and what shoots out is compassion.

What an amazing God.

A God that cannot help but show compassion.

A God that cannot help but forgive and rescue and show help.

No matter what.

I got three things that I wish you'd go home and think about related to Yahweh being a God of compassion.

First one.

I hadn't processed this.

I'm going to, well, I'm going to work on it.

I don't I don't know all that it means.

I don't know all that I'm supposed to do with this.

Hello.

Um.

But I find it significant that the creator of the universe, when he decides to introduce himself to us for the first time, the very first quality that he chooses is a female word that creates a female image of a nursing mom.

And how that mom feels about that little baby, the womb, your core.

It's the very center of your being.

And that's the word that Yahweh chose to describe himself: a deep inner commitment, devotion to one that had come out of the womb.

You can see, I don't know what we to do with that.

I don't know what we're supposed to do with it.

I know we're not supposed to ignore it, but I don't know.

What I know is in Genesis 1 and 2, God says, or Moses says, that God created them male.

No, says he created them in his image, male and female.

At least that means that if I want to understand who God is, there are attributes that you as a man possess that will help me understand God more clearly.

And there are attributes of God that only a woman can help me understand.

And it is to my detriment to ignore either or to over-emphasize one over the other.

I don't know.

I don't know what this means.

And I'm not trying to stir the pot or create me.

I'm just trying to make us think.

Surely this means something that when God says, I want them to know who I am, the very first word he picks is a female image.

Isn't that lovely?

I just find that to be lovely.

Second thing.

If you read the Old Testament, there are hundreds, not an exaggeration, hundreds of verses that give us clues as to what the Messiah, the Lord Jesus, would look like, would act like, would do when he came.

And that was on by design.

God wanted the Israelites to study the Old Testament and to study it so well that when the Messiah came, they would go, oh! Could that be the Messiah?

He's acting like all these verses.

Maybe that's the Messiah.

I'm going to watch him a little more closely.

It probably is the Messiah because nobody else could fulfill all those qualities if it weren't the Messiah.

And then I'll watch him some more.

And then at some point, you are the Messiah.

Just like Peter, you are the Son of God.

Nobody could live the life that you've lived.

And there's hundreds of verses in the Old Testament that reveal this.

All kinds of different qualities.

If you want to take an example, just read Isaiah 51, 52, and 53.

That gives you a whole slew of qualities that reveal who the Messiah will be.

Do you know the number one quality, as far as just sheer repetition?

Number one quality that the Old Testament declares.

If you see this quality a lot, it's the Messiah.

Compassion.

Not miracles.

Did Jesus do real life bona fide water splitting, dead raising, bread producing, wine producing miracles?

Yes, and I believe every one of them, literally.

But the Old Testament doesn't declare that if you see somebody do a miracle, that's the Messiah.

The Old Testament doesn't declare that if you see somebody whose life is defined by miracles, signs and wonders, that's the Messiah.

That is not what the Old Testament declares.

It suggests that the Messiah would do miracles, and Jesus did that.

But what the Old Testament declares is that the Messiah, when he comes, you'll be able to recognize him.

Because his life will be defined by compassion.

And what is the new what did the gospel say?

When Jesus saw the sinful, his heart was filled with compassion.

When Jesus saw the hungry, his heart was moved with compassion.

When Jesus saw the hurting, his heart was moved with compassion.

When Jesus saw the fearful or the lost, his compassion drove him to act.

Jesus' compassion proved that he was the Son of God.

Just like that woman's compassion, that mom's compassion, proved she was the mom.

Jesus came to reveal the Father.

He came to reveal Yahweh.

How could he not reveal the very first quality that Yahweh mentions?

Jesus' life was defined by compassion.

Number three.

Wonder what quality is going to prove to the world, to my wife, to my daughter and son-in-law, and my grandson and to you that I'm a son of God.

Maybe my Bible knowledge, because man, I am brilliant.

Maybe my good looks, because I am very good looking.

Maybe my wealth, because I am I've got so much money, it's pathetic.

Maybe my perfect family, my health, would those things reveal to you that I am a son of God?

I hope not.

Maybe if I could do a miracle, I want to suggest to you that the thing that will prove to you and my bride and my daughter and my son-in-law and my grandson is exactly the same thing that gave evidence that that lady was the real mama and that Jesus was the real Messiah.

Am I gonna let this revelation that the God of the Bible is a God of compassion?

Am I gonna let that get so a hold of me that I will begin to believe it, to actually believe that when at my worst, on my worst, I hadn't read my Bible or gone to church, I've doggussed my wife, which I've never done, but I've doggussed my wife, and instead of helping the poor, I've kicked them, and instead of uh uh taking care of the homeless, I've burned down their tent.

On my worst day, how does God see me?

And how does God want to relate to me?

The image is that God is poised.

He longs, it says, He long, he's poised to come when I cry and show me compassion.

Do I believe that?

Do you believe that?

How do we see God?

Angry, strict, stern rule follower or rule giver, or do we see a God that sees us and feels about us and relates to us like Bethany or Tiffany are going to feel about and see and relate to their little babies when they come pretty soon, I think.

How do we see Yahweh?

It's so important that we see Him as a God of compassion.

Because if we don't, on our worst days when we need Him most, we won't go.

We won't cry.

We won't call.

Who wants to call on somebody that's mad at us?

You want to call on somebody to help you?

At your worst when he's mad at you?

No.

It's when we believe that he feels about us like these mamas are going to feel about these little babies when they come.

And if I don't really believe that Yahweh at his core is a God of compassion, not only will I not call when I fail, I won't give it to you when you fail.

Why would I give you compassion?

Nobody's giving me any.

But if I've been given a boatload of compassion by Yahweh, maybe it'll motivate me to give some compassion to some other folks too when they fail.

Okay.

We gotta quit.

Um Nick and Allison, would you come up here and help me, please?

And John and Rachel, would y'all come up and help me?

We're gonna take the Lord's Supper.

I invite you.

It's not not my supper.

It's not C3's supper, it's the Lord's supper.

So you ain't got to be a member or in good standing or give any money or anything.

This is his supper.

And he says, when you gather together, I want you to provide some bread and some wine, or in this case, juice, and I want you to eat and drink, and I want you to remember who I am, and what that has driven him, compelled him, motivated him to do.

Because I'm a God of compassion, I don't want to give you band-aids for terminal cancer.

I want to give you real solutions to real problems.

And I've got the best solution in the world for your biggest problem, and that's death.

So I'm gonna die for you so that you can experience life.

And that's exactly what he did.

If that is your hope, if that's what you're clinging to, when you face death, that Jesus Christ is the Son of God and He died for me.

I needed a Savior and He offered me a Savior Himself.

Then I invite you to come and to take, you can take some bread from me and some open cups of juice, uh, or you can uh take the covered ones and um and use those if you'd prefer.

But I I just invite you to come and to eat and drink and just take a moment and reflect on what an amazing God Yahweh really is.

He is a God of compassion, and he loves us more than any mama has ever loved a baby.

You come.

You come.