When Compassion Moves Us | Becoming a Jesus Church: Week 3

Well, good morning, Grace Church, and good morning to everybody who's joining us online this morning.

If you have a Bible or a Bible app on your phone, you can open up to Matthew chapter 9, starting in verse 36, going through Matthew chapter 10, ending in verse 8.

Matthew 9 · chapter mention Matthew 10 · chapter mention

That will be my primary text this morning, Matthew 9, 36 through 10.8.

I'm going to be jumping around to other Bible passages as well, but if you want to mark your Bible, that's really the one this morning.

Now, last week it was brought to my attention that if you are sitting through the sermons and you have the Becoming of Jesus Church book open, there's a spot called Sermon Notes.

And if you try to follow the sermon using the sermon notes section, you're going to be very lost.

Because when I wrote the book, I wrote the book as a study guide, as a resource.

Those are my personal study notes, okay?

That's not the sermon I'm preaching.

There's no point in reading the book and then going to class to hear the professor say the same thing that was in the book.

And so we read the book, it's support material.

It'll give you great context for the messages, but it's not a follow-along sermon notes kind of thing.

So there's a blank page.

If you want to take notes on the back, feel free to take notes there.

We're continuing our series this morning called Becoming a Jesus Church.

And as we continue into this series, we've been looking and we will be looking at six attributes of God the Father and Jesus Christ that we want to see formed in our hearts to make us more like the person of Jesus.

And we're looking at how the church plays a role in that.

That the church is really God's design, this gathering of believers is God's design for people to gather together to be with Jesus, to be in his presence, but also to become like Jesus.

And that is the plan that Christ has for all of us who have said yes to him as our Lord and Savior, been indwelled by the Spirit of God, is the Spirit of God is working on us internally to change our hearts more into likeness of Christ, and we do that together in community.

And this morning we're going to be looking at growing in the area of compassion.

Now, when I was 16, I had a job working for a large national retailer known as Walmart.

We've all probably been in a Walmart at one point in time, and I had the lovely job of being the cashier who is over all of the self-checkout machines.

You know, the person that comes over and hits the button for you when you get it wrong.

That was my role.

And one evening, late in the evening, while I was uh getting ready to wrap up my shift, an elderly gentleman comes in.

He's clearly very ill, and he's at the register trying to check out and buy his medicine when his body failed him and he soiled himself and made a mess there publicly in the self-checkout lane.

And so it was me, it was this gentleman, there were several other customers, there was some management floating around in the back, and not a single person moved toward this man to help him.

What happened was everybody saw the mess, they encountered the brokenness of this situation, and they instinctively stepped back.

They stepped back away from this man's illness.

Now, I think many of us have an understanding of what that's like.

Humanity in general, when we encounter sickness or brokenness or people that are messy or difficult, our first inclination is not to move toward them to help them.

Our first inclination is to step back away from the brokenness.

Now, something happened as I got older when I had children.

We have five children, many of you know that.

But when you have children, eventually they're going to get sick, aren't they?

And they're going to come into your room late at night and they're going to come in and say, Mom or dad, I've made a mess.

My room is a mess, or the bathroom's a mess, and they're going to say, I need help.

Now, as a loving father, love doesn't send your child away.

Love doesn't step back.

Love says, I'm going to send your mom to help you.

That's what love says.

Okay.

And Amy, who is really loving and her love for me and for the children, will say, get out of bed and go help them.

And so what happens is, well, no, no, when you have children and they're sick, when they have a mess, love propels you to move toward their mess, to move toward them in their helplessness.

And this is really the essence of compassion.

The compassion of God, the compassion of humans filled by the Spirit of God, when we encounter sickness, brokenness, need, or burden, it moves us toward the person with a deep, sincere desire to step into their burden and help.

That's what love does.

Love moves forward, and that's the essence of compassion.

It's very different than sympathy.

Many of us know what it means to feel sympathetic, where we can identify with their pain or their hurt, but we have zero desire to step into their mess.

Oh, that's too bad for you.

That's sympathy.

Compassion won't allow you to stand still.

It pushes you, it drives you from the deep internal parts of who you are.

It sees the brokenness and it moves you towards the brokenness.

Now, as you read the Gospels, there's oftentimes the gospel writers use this word compassion.

You'll see it quite often in reference to the person of Jesus.

Jesus sees people and he has compassion.

Now, the Greek word there behind the word compassion is this word that's going to be on the screen.

And I'm just curious if you can pronounce that as you read the word.

What do you think it sounds like?

I'll tell you, already it's splack, not splack, but splack nisomai.

Okay, there's a ha at the end.

So it's the splacknisomai.

And here's what that translates to literally.

It's a visceral movement of the gut.

Okay, in other words, you encountered an experience and you're immediately moved internally.

Have you ever had a moment like that?

Where you saw something for the first time, and or maybe it's a third or fifth time, but you saw it and it just moved you, right?

So you're you're moved from the inside of the gut.

And here's what it says about Jesus in Matthew 9.36, because we see it repeatedly again and again.

Matthew 9.36.

When Jesus saw the crowds, he had compassion on them.

In other words, he was viscerally moved in the gut, because when he saw the crowds, they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

Harassed and helpless.

Those are the attributes that Jesus gives the mass of humanity standing before him.

And that group of humans is representative of all humanity.

When God in Jesus Himself looks at all of humanity, he's moved in the gut with compassion because he sees us for how we really are.

Harassed and helpless, that we are spiritually lost, that we don't have somebody leading us to the truth, that there's no one there to protect our souls, that we're harassed by the sin of this world, the sin of our flesh, by the enemy of God, Satan, and we're helpless and powerless to defend ourselves against it.

So when Jesus looks at the impact of sin on humanity and the enemy of our souls, it moves him to act because he sees us for how we really are harassed and helpless.

And Jesus then moves into his ministry of both teaching and healing the sick and feeding the hungry.

And here's what we see about compassion in the life of Jesus.

Compassion is seeing the spiritual and physical needs of the people in front of you and moving toward them to meet their need.

It never keeps anybody at arm's length, but it propels you to step into their situation.

Now, in the last 10 years, as I've lived in the United States of America, I have felt the love of this country and the love of individuals toward one another growing cold.

And Jesus tells us that one of the signs of the end of times is that love will grow cold.

I'm not saying that we're in the end of times.

It's just a sign that love will grow cold.

In other words, compassion will disappear.

The internal motivation to step into someone's hurt and brokenness will dim and waver.

Now I think that people are very willing to love and help those who are among them.

When I look at Grace Church, I have no doubt that if you're in Grace Church and of Grace Church, if you have a need, we would come around you in compassion to meet your need.

But the world in which we're living is allowing for churches to become a lot more insular, focusing on one another's needs because when we look outside of our walls at the other, the other is a lot scarier.

It's a lot more change, it's more hurtful, it's more fearful.

I don't want to step out and help them.

And so as the world begins to change, as our country begins to change, and we're experiencing more and more people with different religious worldviews, different values, different identities, people from other nations, there's far less compassion in the church for the world around us than there is for one another.

Far less.

Until we understand the reality of all humans, not just the church and the unchurched, but the reality of all humanity, that all of us are harassed and helpless, and we're filled by the love of God that moves us towards them, we won't move towards this world.

We won't move towards this world.

It's far easier to keep the lost, the harassed, the helpless, the sick, the broken at arm's length and to classify them as other.

But compassion in the heart of the individual, the compassion of God in us, will not allow us to do that without bringing down the love of God in our own hearts.

And so if we're going to be filled by the love of God, a natural outpouring of this filling of love is moving towards those that are broken.

And I'm not just talking about the spiritually lost or the politically different.

I'm talking about those who are also in poverty, those who are immigrants from other nations, whether they're here legally or illegally, our role is to look at these individuals and say, How can I step into your burden and alleviate it?

Because without compassion motivating us to step into other people's burdens, without compassion, God Himself would never have stepped into our mess.

That's where compassion comes down to.

Compassion is who God is.

Compassion is the motivator that took God out of the spiritual realms and moved him into a face-to-face relationship with you through the person of Jesus Christ.

If there was no compassion in God's identity and heart, we would not be sitting in this room.

And the world would probably not exist as we know it.

Compassion is not a human invention.

It's not just a word.

And the motivating factor that will allow you to help it is whether or not you actually love the person you're going to help.

I want you to look at Exodus 34, verse 5 through 7.

Exodus 34:5–7

Moses is about to have a meeting with God the Father.

He's going to meet on top of the mountain where Moses is going to receive the Ten Commandments for the second time.

Now, this is an official meeting.

This is not a casual meeting with God.

This is an official meeting with God the Father.

And when you go to have an official meeting with people, they usually introduce themselves with their proper titles.

So if you were going to go to the doctor's office, your doctor doesn't walk in and introduce themselves by their first name.

They say, Oh, I am Dr.

So-and-so.

They give you their official capacity followed by their name.

If you were to walk in here on a Sunday and I did not know you and I introduced myself to you, the introduction would be, Hello, my name is Pastor Dan.

My title's going to precede my name because there's something important about the attribute or the title that helps you understand who I am and what I'm here to help you with.

So here's how God introduces himself to Moses in this very official capacity.

Then the Lord came down in the cloud and stood there with him, Moses, and the Lord proclaimed his name.

The Lord, the Lord, the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin.

The official introduction of God, the official title.

I am the Lord, the compassionate God.

Let me translate that for you.

The word Lord, when it's capitalized like that, I think it's capitalized back there too.

When it's capitalized in your Bible is really the Hebrew word Yahweh, and that means I am.

So let me translate this for you in just plain word-for-word English.

You ready?

I am, I am the one moved in the gut to be gracious to you, and to show you abounding love and to forgive you for your wickedness, your rebellion, and sin.

That's who God is.

I am the one moved to forgive you.

Man, I'm so grateful for that.

Humans aren't moved to forgive one another easily, are we?

In fact, when somebody sins against us, we're pretty good at getting our pound of flesh or treating people the way they deserve to be treated for the way they've treated us.

But God's very own compassion moves him to treat us differently, to forgive our wickedness and our sin.

And the early followers of the Lord knew this.

Let's go to King David in Psalm 103, verse 8, 10 through 14.

Psalms 103:8

King David, writing about who God is, the very attributes of God, begins quoting Exodus 34, right?

The Lord is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love, just like Moses agrees.

He does not treat us as our sin deserves or repay us or according to our iniquities.

But then David gives us an illustration of that.

As the Father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him, for he knows how we are formed.

He remembers that we are dust.

God knows who we are as individuals.

God remembers.

I'm so glad that God remembers.

God knows that when he made you, he formed you out of the dust of the ground.

Now, some people hear this and think that God thinks we're insignificant.

That's not actually what God is saying.

What God is saying here is that God understands that you are finite, that you are limited, that you don't have the same authority or the power or the capacity as He does.

He remembers your fragile creation.

And because he knows you're fragile, he doesn't hold your weakness against you as a reason to ignore you.

He understands your weakness, and as a result, he moves toward you.

Let me explain to you how this works in my house.

It happened this week.

I was sitting at our countertop in our kitchen, and as I was sitting there eating a small snack, my youngest child, Cece, goes into the fridge and she pulls out a brand new jar of applesauce.

And she puts it on the table, she puts her hand on the lid, and she, with all of her might begins to twist and turn, but she can't get the jar of applesauce open.

So she looks at me and she goes, Dad, will you open this jar of applesauce?

Now, in that moment, do I look at my daughter and say, You weak and pathetic child?

I thought I raised you to be better than this.

Whereas you've been doing push-ups for a month and you still can't open the jar?

Does a father disdain their child for their child's weakness?

Or does a loving father say, Yeah, hand me the jar?

And so she gave me the jar, and I summoning all of the dad muscles within me, I put my hand on the jar and very quickly and easily popped open the lid.

And when I gave it back to her, she goes, What the how in the?

Because she's so frustrated that she couldn't do it.

And then she goes, Thanks, Dad.

And she smiled this million watt smile, and for like a half a second, I felt like a superhero.

That's what a loving father does.

Doesn't hold weakness against their child, but steps into their weakness to help.

You recognize they are what they are, they're not able.

So this morning, I want you to know that that's what following a compassionate God is like.

When you're following after a compassionate God, it's a loving father who sees you trying to open up your many jars, and he's just waiting for you to ask for help.

He's like, hey, I'm here.

Would you like some help with that?

So this morning, as you're sitting here and listening and you're walking through the struggles and the trials of life, I just have one question for you.

What jar are you trying to open that you need to hand over to God the Father?

You're struggling with it, you're trying with it, and you know that in your own capacity, you're far too limited to actually open this jar.

You can't solve your own problem.

That's the thing that God wants you to bring to him.

Lean into his compassion as your father.

Let him open the jar for you and prove to you and show to you his kind of compassionate love.

I want to introduce you another passage about God's compassion, Isaiah 49, 15.

It's talking about a mother's love.

Can a mother forget the baby at her breast and have no compassion on the child that she has born?

Though she may forget, I will not forget you.

You know, I understand there's a lot of people in this room or watching online who have a bad relationship with their father and mother.

They've never experienced or rarely experienced compassion.

Maybe it was highly contentious, maybe it was abusive.

And so when you think about God as a father, there's a negative image there.

Or when you hear that God loves you like a mother, you're like, I've never felt that kind of love.

Here's why I believe God allows Isaiah 49, 15 to be in the Bible, because it even acknowledges, God acknowledges that human compassion fails.

He says, though she may forget, though the mother who bore you may forget to really love you and show you compassion, though your father may ignore you, though your family may not be compassionate the way they're supposed to be, God himself says, I will not forget you.

You serve a God who's so full of compassion, who loves you so much that in your worst moments, in your greatest needs, he has not forgotten you.

He is the perfect image of strength, tenderness, protection, and nearness.

And even though human compassion fails, God's compassion always moves him towards his people.

Look, God knows you're weak, okay?

God is fully aware that you are fallible, that you are that you are sinful, that you cannot make this thing called the Christian life happen on your own.

And here is a lie that many people believe.

They have to be good enough, they have to pray enough, they have to live right enough to deserve to have access to the love of God, to be able to ask him for things where he's going to respond, and that is simply a lie.

You can't be good enough, you can't keep all the right moral, right things to do.

The reason that you have access to God is because God loves you and gives you access.

That in his compassion, he moves towards you in your brokenness.

Where the rest of the world, maybe your family, maybe your spouse, where they might move away from you in your brokenness because they just have had enough and they can't deal with it, God continues to move towards you.

That's why Psalm 103 says he does not treat us as our sins deserve.

God's compassion reaches far deeper than just helping us through even difficult circumstances, but just wants to be persistent and present in your life.

And that's where we get the story of Jesus.

The story of Jesus is the full embodiment of God's compassion.

It's the picture and the story of the God who sees our weakness and embodies himself in our flesh to be an experience of compassionate love on your behalf.

And when Jesus enters the world and at 30 years old he begins his ministry, some of the first things he does, he goes to the tax collectors who are culturally unwanted.

He goes to the Samaritans, he goes to the sick, he goes to the leopards.

When God entered the world and he began to minister to people, he moved towards all of the sick and the broken people first.

That's his heart.

He's been doing that since the beginning of time.

Since man failed and man sinned, he's been moving towards our brokenness.

And that's what compassion does.

Compassion moves toward God's compassion moves toward our helplessness.

I want to take you back to Matthew 36.

When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.

What moved God, what moved Jesus, is the helplessness of his creation.

He understands fully how helpless we actually are.

Now, I don't know if you know much about sheep.

I don't really know a lot about sheep.

I've been around sheep a little bit, but they are probably the dumbest and most helpless creatures on the face of the earth.

And I believe that the only reason sheep exist is so that God could use them in the Bible to describe people.

That might be the only reason.

That there is a herd mentality among these simple creatures.

They act on instinct without any wisdom.

They have nobody to lead them, to show them where to eat, to get to the right nutrients, to protect them from the world around them.

They are simply like sheep without a shepherd, harassed and helpless.

He goes on to say the same thing in Mark 6, 34.

Mark uh writes down the same exact comment.

When Jesus landed and he saw this large crowd, he had compassion on them because they were like sheep without a shepherd.

And what does compassion lead him to do?

So he begins teaching them many things, teaching them the truth of God's word, teaching them about God's love, teaching them how to be in a relationship with a holy and infinite God.

Many times, Jesus, when he's moved by compassion, is moved to help people in their physical needs, to help them with their sickness, to heal them of their frailties, but then he also moves to help them with their spiritual needs.

He never neglects one for the other.

He prioritizes both.

So his compassion is not limited.

I think many times churches as a collective will land on one side or the other of the compassion scale.

On one side, they're very concerned about helping people meet their spiritual needs.

So they want to preach from the Bible, the whole Bible, and nothing but the Bible.

They want good theology, they want sound doctrine.

They're going to make sure that you as a person know God's word to meet every spiritual need in your life.

And yet that church, because it's so focused on the spiritual need, can sometimes forget about people's real needs.

So it becomes a church filled with truth, but feels cold emotionally and physically.

Then there's the error on the other side.

Churches get so wrapped up in social justice and meeting the needs of everybody that they become a very warm group of people and they look like Jesus and they do the things that Jesus did, but they have almost zero truth inside of what they teach.

They're just motivated to help.

Jesus never picked one or the other.

Jesus did both in perfect connection.

When Jesus sees the crowds that they're harassed and helpless, he feeds the hungry people and he tells them the truth.

He heals their bodies of frailties and then he teaches them about forgiveness of sins that are found through him.

He cares about the suffering of this life, but he also cares about people's eternal suffering.

Jesus wants to meet the full need of the individual.

That's what compassion does.

It doesn't just say they're a lost world, let's give them the gospel.

It also says they're hungry, let's give them food.

He said, Listen, Dan, hungry stomachs have no ears.

They can't hear the truth that you want to give them until they felt the need in their life be met.

In other words, people don't care how much you know until they know how much you love them.

Have you ever heard that before?

They don't care.

There is the truth.

And Jesus always gave the truth, but he never gave the truth without showing them a real tangible expression of love.

Because those two things go hand in hand.

Because sin has affected every single part of the human experience.

Now listen in this world, people can meet people's physical needs without God.

We know that.

There's all kinds of programs.

People can be nice, people can be kind.

Like you can get a lot of your physical needs met.

Even if you are sick, you don't need God to find a lot of healing anymore.

You can go to the doctor, they got medicines for all kinds of stuff.

You can get all kinds of treatments and all kinds of surgeries.

And medical progress continues to advance.

And believe it or not, we're getting really good at helping sick bodies live longer and be well.

And as much as the world can meet those physical needs, and so sometimes Christians are like, well, maybe I don't have responsibility there.

Like if they're hungry, we can let the government deal with that.

If they need surgery, let the hospital deal with that.

If they need if they need long-term elder care, like there's programs for that.

So the church sometimes takes a step back from meeting people's physical needs because the world's good at it.

But you know what the world can't do?

It can't meet anybody's spiritual needs.

It can't.

It is powerless to address the deepest need of the human soul, which is a relationship re-established with God the Father through the forgiveness and removal of our sins under the person of Jesus Christ.

Can't do it.

The world can't give anybody that.

And so God in his compassion, while Jesus expresses all of these physical acts of love towards people, he always gives them the truth that meets their deepest need.

Listen to Romans 5, verse 6 through 8.

Romans 5:6–8

You see, at just the right time, when we were still powerless or helpless, Christ died for the ungodly.

And God demonstrates his own love for us in this way.

While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

You know, you have a need.

You have a real need.

You know what your need is?

Your need is to live.

Every human on the planet wants to live.

And they want to live well and they want to live a long time.

It's only mental illness and real deep depression that takes people to a place where they don't want to live.

But on average, if you talk to the normal person, they want to live.

And they want to live forever.

They want to do anything they can to avoid death and have a healthy, long life.

To the point where I've heard some people tell me that if they get too old and their body's too frail, just put me out of my misery because I don't want to live.

If I can't live well, people want to live.

That's a physical need.

It's a physical need to live.

You know what the gospel accomplishes?

The gospel not only meets your spiritual need by removing sin from your life and making you right with God, the gospel also meets your deepest physical need by promising you the gift of resurrection from the dead, where you will live for eternity in a perfect body as long as you want.

So, as much as we need these things, the physical and the spiritual, God meets both in the person of Jesus Christ.

That is the compassionate love of God the Father.

And when you receive Jesus, when you take on the mantle of Christ as your Lord, then you enter into the promise that meets the deepest needs of your soul.

Now many of you know the Bible verse, if you've been in church at any point in time in your life, and maybe even if you haven't, it's John 3.16.

For God so loved the world, he gave his one and only Son, that whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but have eternal life.

God loves you, He sees everything about you, He knows how messed up it is, but He moved towards you anyway to give you the gift of forgiveness and the greatest physical need of your soul, which is to live forever.

That's the power of God's compassion.

Jesus describes himself this way in John 10, 11.

I am the good shepherd.

And the good shepherd lays down his life for his sheep.

The fullest expression of the compassion of God found in the person and life of Jesus Christ.

Jesus didn't just come to teach a couple of wise sayings, didn't Jesus didn't come to like give you some guardrails for how to live a pretty good life.

Jesus came to fight off the wolf that wants to eat you.

His name is Satan, and he comes along with the other wolf named Death.

They want to destroy your life, take you to hell, and keep you from God forever.

And yet Jesus enters into that situation, fights them off, and he gives his very own life to do it.

And by his death, you have life.

That's what Jesus has come to do.

He did it in his physical life when he was here on earth.

He moved towards those who are lepers, he moved towards those who are hungry, he moved towards those who are prostitutes and outcasts.

He wanted to be with people to bring them forgiveness for their sin, healing for the consequences of sin, and then also the truth of how eternal life is possible.

Love always moves towards people, not away.

It sees the brokenness and steps in.

And that's why compassion, when you have experienced the compassion of God in your own life, when you know that God should keep you at a distance, but yet you've experienced him bring you in close to the person of Jesus Christ.

When that love fills your soul, compassion becomes the reflex of the church.

I don't know how many of you have gone to see your doctor lately, but if you go see your doctor and you have a physical, they're gonna ask you to sit on the little chair, they're gonna take out this little triangle thing, and they're gonna hit your knee and your leg's gonna pop right out.

That's a physical reflex.

A reflex is an involuntary movement of the body.

A person filled with the compassionate love of Jesus has an involuntary movement that moves you towards brokenness, lostness, pain, and suffering because you have the tool that can meet the needs of the individual, which is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

When the love of God fills you that much and you understand the compassion of the Lord that deeply, you move.

Now, when Jesus saw the crowds, he saw that they were harassed and helpless, he began to feed them, he began to teach them, and then he gives this instruction just a verse later.

It's an odd instruction, so let me explain it to you.

Then he said to his disciples, Matthew 9, 37, that the harvest is plentiful, but the workers are few.

So ask the Lord of the harvest, therefore, to send out workers into his harvest field.

Do you know what Jesus is asking for you to pray for?

It's not more missionaries, it's not more pastors.

What motivates you to move out and into somebody's brokenness?

Compassion.

When the Lord looked at them, he saw them and had compassion on them, he moved toward them.

Hey, disciples, pray that there would be people that God would raise up and send out.

In other words, you're praying that God's people would have such a heart of compassion, they would move out into the lost world.

That's what you're praying for.

That there would be a deep heart of compassion settling on the people of God that they would send out.

And then Jesus does something else.

I'm not just gonna pray for it.

I'm actually just gonna go ahead and send you.

That's where we get to Mark 10.

It's the same day, it's within the same teaching.

Mark 10, chap verse 1, also verse 7 and 8.

Then Jesus calls his 12 disciples after he told them to pray for these compassionate people to go out, and then he gives them authority to do something.

I'm giving you authority to drive out impure spirits and to heal every disease and sickness.

And as you go, proclaim the message.

The kingdom of heaven has come near.

Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse those who have leprosy, drive out demons.

Freely you have received, freely you give.

This is a commandment of Jesus to the twelve to go out and be compassionate on a lost world, meet their physical needs, heal the sick, heal the leper, cast out the demons, and then meet their spiritual needs and proclaim the message that the kingdom of heaven has come, and you can enter the kingdom through the person of Jesus, where all of your needs will be met to be right with God.

That is what compassionate people do.

We're sent ones, filled with the compassionate love of Christ that moved him from the spiritual world to the physical world.

It moves us in the spiritual world, out of this church building, into our communities with the gospel message of Jesus Christ, seeking to meet their physical and their spiritual needs.

And so you can't be compassionate without it costing you something.

It's going to cost you something.

It's going to cost you time, it's going to cost you energy, it's going to cost you money, it's going to cost you relationships, it's going to cost you something.

That's what compassion does.

It's never convenient.

But it's so good.

And it's so right.

And it brings hope and warmth to a lost and hurting world.

Why don't you read 1 John chapter 3, verse 16 through 18?

1 John 3:16–18

As we're finishing up this morning, if you heard me tell you you need to be more compassionate, that's probably the wrong thing for you to take away.

If you walk out of this room and you think, I'm going to try harder to be nicer, I'm going to try harder to love someone better.

I'm going to try harder to make a sacrificial gift for somebody.

Whatever that looks like.

I'm going to knuckle down and I'm going to get this thing done.

You're going to fail.

This is why John begins with the real definition of love in 1 John 3.16.

This is how we know what love is.

Jesus Christ laid down his life for us.

When you start with Jesus and not with yourself, when you remember what God has done for you and not what other people have done for you, that's when you're filled with enough love to then go out and lay down your life for your brother or sister.

It begins with Jesus.

So as we go through this all-church journey, we have these six things up here on the wall: prayerful, compassionate.

When you go to Jesus in prayer and you say, Lord, I can't even with the people in my life right now or with the people around me, that's just too hard for my flesh.

But Lord, remind me of your love for me.

Show me the power of the gospel.

When you start with Jesus and then the love of God fills your heart, you can walk out of your house and say, All right, not by my love, but by the love of God, I can lay down my life for somebody else.

And then John gives it some legs.

If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity, and by the way, pity is the word compassion, it's the splacknezo, my word.

How can the love of God be in that person?

Do you see that there's a both and here?

There's the love of God that fills you, it moves you out towards people to lay down your life, and then also lay down your wallet, lay down your refrigerator, lay down whatever it takes to meet the need of the person in front of you.

This is an identifier of the church.

Before the government stepped in, before things got institutionalized, who started the most hospitals in the world?

The church.

Who created the most schools in the world?

The church.

The church has always brought value to the world in which it lives.

And right now, the church has been very insider, letting the world take care of the world and taking care of one another, but that is the anti-gospel.

If we just insulate, the world will go on and we will die.

Our mission is to move with compassion out of this building into the lives of people, telling them the truth and meeting their physical needs.

That's the gospel of Jesus Christ.

And as we understand what God has done for us, our love grows so much we move out and do it for others.

Friends, a Jesus Church, church, church, say that word ten times.

A Jesus church moves towards lost people with the gospel.

A Jesus church moves towards the sick with care and prayer.

We move toward poverty and practical needs.

A Jesus church moves towards those who are grieving just to sit with them in their presence.

A grieving church moves towards those that we find to be totally other and says, I love you, I want to know you, let's be friends, I have something I can give you that'll change your life.

That is what a Jesus church does.

A Jesus church sees what Jesus sees, is moved by what moved Jesus, and we move toward the person in front of you with love and with hope.

Over the next couple of years, that's the heart posture that we want to see developed inside the people of Grace Church.

That our natural reflex, our visceral gut movement is to move toward this world, to move toward the hurting, to move toward the sick, move towards the broken, because we actually have the thing that can meet all their needs, which is the person and the gospel of Jesus Christ.

Let's pray together.

Father, we come before you this morning believing that what you tell us is true, that in the person of Jesus Christ there is forgiveness and the removal of sin.

That it does not matter what we do, what we say, what we think, or how we live, your compassion has created a way for us to have a relationship with you, and that is by submitting our life over to you, Jesus.

And so this morning, Lord, I would ask this that you remind us deeply of the gospel that we have received, that we have an honest evaluation of our own personal condition, which is deplorable.

But Lord, recognize that in your compassion you move towards this sinner and you offer me grace and mercy and forgiveness because it is your good and pleasing will to do so.

So, Father, encourage the people of Grace Church this morning.

Let them know your love, let them sit with your compassion, let them wrestle with the reality of who you are and help them experience the fullness of your mercy and your grace.

And from that mercy and grace, Jesus, make us a compassionate church.

Amen.