Compassion

Definitions (05/27/08)

If I am to concern myself with this issue of compassion, it behooves me to understand the meaning of the word, both as it is understood in our own language, and in those terms which it translates from the Hebrew and the Greek. I begin with the Hebrew, because it covers a much wider range of meaning in its single term. The Greeks, as might be expected, have several words to express the nuance of one particular aspect of compassion or another.

So, at root, the sense of the Hebrew terms chemlah [OT:2251]: and machmal [OT:4623] is one of commiseration, and such commiseration as moves one to spare another some particular burden or grief. It is an emotional response, but one that necessarily leads to such action as is possible to remove the cause of sorrow. It may be letting go of something, or it may be refusing to do so. Quite often, though, this refusal to let go or to spare is shown in a negative light, a subjugation of emotion, a hardening of heart, lest emotion interfere with cold justice. Compassion moves one to spare another his trial, insomuch as it lies in our power to do so. Compassion is the close companion of mercy, and both are motivated by a deep love for the object of that emotion.

Let me focus on that last point for just a moment. Compassion and mercy are motivated by love. Love is a necessary precursor. As I shall consider further in this study, compassion and mercy are so much a part of God’s character, that character which we are to manifest to the world by making it our own, that they define Him at least as much as His righteousness. Yet, if we are to emulate our Lord and make His character evident to a lost world, we are to understand that we must first come to love those around us as He does. We must learn to love without precondition, to care even for the least lovely. While we must necessarily learn this, for it is not our natural bent, we cannot fake it. Play acting at such love for others will do nothing for us. It’s not something we can work up in ourselves when we’re about Church business. It’s not some mystical ingredient that gains us access to the power to serve. It is a necessity. If that love does not exist as a living reality in our being, then neither does compassion, however much we may try to display acts of kindness.

If I would seek to understand the strength of personal, emotional commitment that compassion places upon the soul, the Greek term makes this abundantly clear. There are actually several terms, as I have noted, but the particular one that applies to this passage regarding the feeding of the thousands is a term which describes a concern so deep, so wrenching, that it has one’s intestines tied in a knot. Literally, it is describes being moved in one’s bowels. The term was chosen because the bowels were considered the seat of love, of one’s inmost feelings.

Again, there are other terms that the Greeks provided themselves to distinguish the degree of compassion’s involvement. Perhaps, there is something to be gained by considering these, so that I can better distinguish the particular impact of this gut-wrenching compassion.

There is a term to describe pity, that feeling we may feel towards those suffering a particular ill. Yet, pity is not necessarily moved to action. It’s satisfied to stop with a word of commiseration: oh, that’s so sad. But, nothing is done about it.

There is a term for sympathy. Indeed, it is clearly the source of our own English word. Sympathy feels the pain. More than simply recognizing the trial of another, as pity might do, sympathy feels it like it was happening to oneself. In truth, it is not, yet we may even develop physical symptoms reflecting that which has our sympathy, so deeply do we feel it.

Another term is mercy. Mercy is something that we find closely joined with compassion wherever God’s character is declared. They are twins. Mercy is also active. It shows kindness to another, and offers assistance. Yet, it does not bear the same emotional freight as compassion. One might show mercy out of a simple sense of duty, with no love to motivate. Not so compassion.

Finally, Vine’s offers a term which speaks of controlling one’s passion so as to be gentle with another. This is compassion in relief. Where wrath might be justly displayed, one has reined in that raging passion and chosen to be gentle. This, too, is clearly displayed in God’s character, yet in such a way that His righteousness and His justice are unmolested by the result.

I note, however, the specific nature of true compassion, for in its way it wraps all of these disparate details into a single package. Compassion indeed is distressed by the suffering of others like pity, and we are called to have such great compassion as to feel in ourselves what those others are going through. We are called to mourn with the mourning, to feel the trial of the prisoner as though we were going through it ourselves. But, we are not to stop there. Compassion cannot stop at feeling. It’s love is too great, it’s hurt too deep. It must move to mercy’s active assistance, if it be at all possible to do so. If it does not, how does it manifest the love we claim to share with God? That is John’s point, and it’s one I need to truly take to heart. Finally, that compassion which God manifests towards us so often involves His own reining in of a just wrath and a righteous indignation, that we surely must learn to do the same. We shall come across the parable of the servant who was forgiven his debt, and his failure to manifest that same forgiveness. The point is clear, and we dare not fail of making the lesson a part of our inmost being. If God reined in His passionate hatred of sin to preserve us, surely we can choose to have compassion on those who hurtfully use us.

Now, let me turn quickly to the English term which is used to capture all this wide range of meaning. Webster’s sums it up as a “sympathetic consciousness of others’ distress together with a desire to alleviate it.” I dare say, that waters down the Christian imperative to compassion just a little, though. Desire to act is not sufficient where action is possible. If I consider the parable of the Samaritan, I might suppose that many of those who came across that poor man lying injured in the road may have had a sympathetic consciousness of his distress. They were probably even desirous of doing something to help. But, each had his reasons, his excuse, really, for not taking action. They may have wrapped it up in what they thought amounted to reasons of righteousness and purity, but these were merely foils for the conscience. They knew, in some dark, interior corner, that they should do something. They chose not to. They chose to stop short of the compassion God showed them daily.

Here, I must turn to myself, for I, too, am full of excuses. I, too, can quickly forget the compassion my God has shown for me in being my God. The magnitude of His restraint in allowing me to continue breathing in spite of all I have done to offend Him, belittle Him and fight outright against Him is beyond all measure. Yet, how quickly do I take offense? How quick am I to demand my right to vengeance? How dare I, knowing this, call upon my Lord for a merciful compassion I so rarely display towards others?

Lord, I pray that You would keep me conscious of this terrible sin. Far worse than any offense I have committed is this one, for it is a fundamental breach of Your most basic Law. You call me to love You with all that I am, and to love others as I love myself, as You love them. Yet, in this I clearly fail. For You have shown me the depth of Your love, and it is far beyond the emotions of shared joys. It is far beyond even the powerful bonds of married life, as deep as I am discovering these to be. Yet, where is that love in me? Oh, I can claim it on the part of friends and to some degree upon less near acquaintances in the church, but outside? How often do I prefer to be offended rather than forgiving? How often do I choose angry rage over compassionate restraint? How often do I turn my attention on my own wounded feelings and pride rather than consider the other?

My God, You have turned my attention to this matter of compassion for a reason. You call upon me to weigh myself in the scales, and in doing so, I find myself wanting. In that place of want, I call to You, my Lord, first to forgive me and second to change me, to mold and make me after Your image. Seat that love which is Yours deep within me and make it, my King, the fount of all my thoughts, my moods and my acts.

God’s Name and Character (05/28/08-06/01/08)

As I was looking into this matter of compassion, one event in particular really struck me. I came to that celebrated passage after Moses had asked God to show him His face. Oh, how we sing about that, and claim to long for the same thing, however little we may actually mean it! It sounds so good! Never mind that to see His face is death, a thing few of those clamoring for a look are particularly anxious to achieve. But, this is beside the point. God was kind to Moses. “My face, Moses, you cannot afford to see just yet, but here’s what I’ll do. I will pass before you in all My goodness, and to this I will add another thing: I will proclaim My name before you” (Ex 33:19). To this He adds that He will be gracious to whom He wills, and compassionate towards whom He wills, an odd seeming ending, until we remember the nature of what had preceded. Moses was seeking to forestall God from removing His immediate presence from the camp of Israel due to the people’s obstinacy. It is, then, as though God has said, “I have heard you, Moses, but I shall do as I see fit.”

My! This leads me to yet another aside. How we need to understand the significance of that answer! If God had simply told Moses, “OK, pal, you win,” or if He had even declared that because Moses had asked with such great propriety, it would be done as he had asked, two problems arise. The first is that Moses would quite likely have gone away with a head so swollen with the pride of his accomplishment as to lead him far astray. This reflects an attitude pervasive in the modern church because it so directly reflects the modern culture. Man is the center, and God, if we are going to ‘serve’ Him, had better be an obedient servant to our demands. We don’t come to plead with an Almighty, All Powerful Creator, we come to rub the djinni’s bottle, and present our three wishes.

The second, terrifying issue is that we would have precedent for God setting aside His perfect wisdom and knowledge in favor of man’s horribly limited capacities. Well, Moses. I had this great future worked out, every least detail hammered out to perfection. But, since you’d rather do things like this, OK. Let’s see what happens with your plan. Horror of horrors, should God ever treat us so kindly! Horror of horrors should man be given the final say in the course of redemptive history! Even His own Son knew better. Father, I would that You could devise a different plan, but as You will, so be it done in Me.

So, what we have in that last clause is a clear precedent, and a clear declaration from God Himself as to how prayer is heard in heaven. Yes, He hears. Yes, He cares. Yes, He looks deep into the hearts of those who are praying, and even listens to the details of their requests, as well as their praises of Him, their confessions of their sins, and so on. It is particularly with that request part that I am concerned right now. But, He says, having heard all you have to say and ask, in the end, it is His will that shall be done. I will do as I will do, for I AM that I AM. The point is this: He is not going to change His plans and His course just because you asked so properly and so passionately. He shall continue to rule over His Creation by the counsel of His own perfect Wisdom, and what better answer could we ask? For, it is He Who knows the end from the beginning. We would perhaps grasp that thought better if we said, He has known the end since the beginning, but as He exists outside of time, the structure is properly as we find it in Scripture. He actively, presently knows the end as He actively, presently exists now at the beginning every bit as much as He is actively, presently in our present, and also in equal measure with His active presence in the future now, as we would say, ‘in this moment.’

The matter that really struck me, though, was the presentation of God fulfilling this promise to Moses. Surely, I have read these chapters in Exodus before, but it just never occurred to me that what God was proclaiming in that fulfilling moment was His Name as He defines it. But, there it is in Exodus 34:6-7. He passed before Moses as He had said He would do, and then, He proclaimed. Mind you, the text does not explicitly state that He proclaimed His name, only that He proclaimed. Moses apparently expected his readers to have a longer attention span, able to recall the whole of God’s promise back in Exodus 33:19. So, here is the Name that God proclaims as His own: The LORD, the LORD God, Compassionate and Gracious, Slow to anger, Abounding in Lovingkindness and Truth; Who keeps lovingkindness for thousands, Who forgives iniquity, transgression and sin, yet does not leave the guilty unpunished, for He visits the iniquity of the father on the children and onward down to the third and fourth generation.

Why, that’s quite a Name, quite an Office. Isn’t it curious that when God declares His own Name, He never brings up Love? Wouldn’t you think He’d rather make a point of this most endearing and favored of characteristics of His Greatness? Instead, He chooses to lead with the actions that flow from that Love. In other words, rather than just telling us He is Love, He tells us what the Love that He Is is like. The Love which God is must act. It is not mere emotion. The Love that God Is finds expression in Compassion which leads Him to not only mourn with the mourning but to take action to remove the cause of that mourning so that He may instead rejoice with the rejoicing. The Love that God Is finds expression in Grace which leads Him to look upon us not solely with the cold eye of Justice and Vindication, but with the possibility of Redemption, of Salvation; in short, He does not measure out to us in accord with our deserved pay, but far in excess of anything we could ever hope to earn from His hand.

The Love that God Is finds expression in restraint. He is slow to anger. He does not wink at sins, as some like to suppose. Rather, He gives us time to consider our behavior and reconsider our course, to turn and return to Him that He may rather express the Compassion and Grace He prefers. Note well that He is not incapable of anger, indeed, great Wrath is His in the face of unrepentant sin, but He will offer every opportunity for repentance before Wrath finally demands its due.

The Love that God Is expresses itself in abounding Lovingkindness, the checed [OT:2617]: of God, in which He is so utterly gracious and kind as to bow to us as if we were His equals, so great a kindness! Though we are but creatures to His Creator, though we are finite to His infinitude, though we are stained and scarred by sin to His Purity and Righteousness; still He behaves towards us not as one Lording it over us, but as an equal, pleased to show us courtesy and kindness. Thus, He favors His children as friends and coworkers.

The Love that God Is expresses itself in abounding Truth. Pity may lead us to cover an ugly truth from before the eyes of a friend. We may think it kinder to refrain from telling a sinner about his condition. Were we not raised on the maxim that we should hold our silence if we can’t find something good to say about another? But, God abounds in Truth. He does not leave us to wander blindly in our fantasy world. He breaks through our defenses, opens our eyes and our ears to understanding, and makes plain to us just how lost we truly are. This expression of Love allows Him to proceed to those which He has stated first. Only as we come to notice our deadly peril are we inclined to receive the offer of His Grace and Lovingkindness. Until then, we will spurn His goodwill to the increase of our offense.

Now, we might consider His Name as having ended with these earlier declarations, supposing that the remaining portion in verse 7 is but commentary on what preceded, but I think not. He continues to expound the nature of His Name, His Office, His Love. Yes, I think we can declare His Love on equal terms with His Name and His Office, for John has truly said that God Is Love. I think I have presented a reasonable argument for the case that these aspects of His Name and Office which are listed here are expressions of the Love that He Is.

He keeps, maintains, guards His lovingkindness towards thousands. That number may not seem all that large on the scale of world population. On the other hand, consider that number as compared to our own capacity for lovingkindness. How many do we maintain an abiding love for? Of how many can we really say that our love would continue no matter what they did, no matter how poorly they treated us? I sincerely doubt that we will reach even the low hundreds. In all probability, we shall not find the number approaching fifty. His Love is greater. Significantly greater than our capacity.

He forgives. He forgives iniquity, transgression and sin. Why does He specify three categories to be forgiven? Is He simply emphasizing the point of forgiveness, or is He showing us the manifold ways by which we fail to honor Him? Let me look briefly at the terms. Iniquity – a perversity, a moral evil, depravity. Transgression – rebellion, consciously choosing sin, whether against man, nation or God. Sin – an offense, a missing the mark, going wrong. It seems He lists these in descending order, at least as we would measure it. Even when sin is so ingrained that it has become our defining character, even when we are so filled with sin’s corrupting influence that we are by fundamental moral bent, evil; still He holds out forgiveness. Even when that sin has shown itself in such personal and direct affront to His Own Person, as we openly rebel against His righteous reign, making the conscious choice to break with His commandments and ignore His desires; still He holds out forgiveness. Even when we blow it, trying as best we know how and yet still falling short or shooting wide, manifesting a certain, almost innate incapacity for righteous living; still He holds out forgiveness. The nature of the sin, the degree of the sin, the pervasiveness of the sin – none of these are cause for losing hope in Him, that He might yet turn His eyes upon us in Compassion and Grace.

Yet, He is no pushover. He will not leave the guilty unpunished. What Love is that which removes all incentive for improvement? If we knew not the certainty of His punishing of the guilty, why would we ever seek to change? We would remain happily unrepentant in our filth, finding no cause to seek any other lifestyle. Further, we would find God most capricious and unjust were this not His way. If He does not punish the guilty, why is it that we who are striving to please Him suffer discipline? Where’s the justice? If He does not punish the guilty, how are we to bear up under the injustices we suffer at the hands of our fellow man? If He is not going to right the wrongs, then surely we must take vengeance into our own hands, a woeful state of affairs which has never proven to work out well.

Now I come to the most troubling clause in this list: I visit the iniquity – the perversity of moral evil – of the father on his succeeding generations. Not His rebellions, not his failed efforts, I would note. Only that most complete submission to sin’s ways. It is to be then, an appointed visitation of punishment, perhaps even in such a form as it becomes overseer of those succeeding generations. But, it is a visitation, not an abiding. Were it any other way, there would remain no hope, and there would be no justice. Yet, God is clear that even in these succeeding generations, there is the opportunity of change, the son’s teeth need not be set on edge by his father’s sour grapes.

I know so many who look at this particular clause as a cause for great personal fear. How they exercise themselves breaking generational curse after generational curse, ever seeking to free themselves from any visitation of just punishment such as God ascribes to Himself here. But, surely, if God were to visit ancient sins upon the chosen, we must understand that this still serves some good purpose, for that is His nature. If He works all things to the good of those who love Him and serve Him, and if we are counted in that number as we feel certain we are, then even were He to come with the punishment of our forebears in hand by which to afflict us, we must know that these afflictions come as loving discipline that we might be purified by them, made that much more ready for the kingdom. We must trust to His purposes in such times, knowing that that Love which moves Him to all of these other offices that comprise His Name also moves Him in this one.

I also recognize in myself a desire to find some other way to read that clause, for it seems so horribly at odds with my sense of Who God Is. Yet, I must ask myself, is it the plain sense that is off, or my sense? After all, I must accept that this God Whom I serve and Whom I love has visited the sins of Adam upon every generation of man, as well as the just punishments of those sins. We are all of us born in sin, born with an inclination to sin, and it is only the chosen few who ever break free in any degree. I dare say it is only the Chosen One, the Son of God Himself who ever broke free in full, for He was born in such a fashion as to be free of the fall of Adam.

So, I have to ask myself if I am not playing to much the lawyer in contemplating how God has worded this. It is the guilty alone that He will not leave unpunished. Well! Where there has been forgiveness, guilt does not remain. He visits the iniquity of the fathers upon their progeny. Here, there is not that triple play of iniquity, transgression and sin, only that worst, most fully settled state of the morally evil. Are we supposed to recognize by this the degree to which hope remains for ourselves? Finally, and I know I have said this before, there is the fact that He visits these things upon us, He does not necessarily cause them to abide.

As I also said earlier, God’s own comments on the matter tend to suggest that we must somehow constrain our understanding of what He means here. I look at the corrective that comes through Ezekiel, where God addresses the false notions of His people. “What do you mean by saying that the fathers eat sour grapes, but it is the children’s teeth that are set on edge? No more! This proverb shall not be heard again in Israel! Listen. All of your souls are Mine, those of the fathers as well as the sons, and the soul who sins is the soul who will die. But, if the man be righteous in his ways, he will surely live” (Eze 18:2-9). He also presents the corollary, lest we think righteous parents suffice to secure our own position.

Yet, I think we can sense the truth of that visiting of our parents ways upon ourselves. Has anybody made it through the parenting process without discovering that they have ‘become their own parents’? And yet, we know that in many ways we set aside the ways of our parents for our own determined course. Isn’t this at least a shade or a shadow of that visiting God promises? It’s not all a matter of curses, you know. He has been so good as to allow their better influences to pass down to us as well. Yet, the counsel from Ezekiel remains and must be taken into account to complete the picture. Yes, He visits the iniquity of our forebears upon us, but He also leads us out of that influence. He does not leave us to rot in the same iniquity, but redeems us. It is for this that He came! That is Compassion. That is Grace. That punishment He brought forward was absolutely just. It was a crime whose fines had not been paid, and thus by inheritance, they became our own debt. Yet, Grace showed us the unpayable debt and then marked it paid in full, turning our attention to our Defense, our Advocate, our Redeemer, Who paid the price on our behalf. We didn’t deserve it, but there it was.

You see, those Ezekiel was correcting had become so caught up in the God of Just Retribution, that they had utterly forgotten His full Character. If we allow ourselves to become so caught up in the God of Love that we lose sight of the Justice and Wrath that are also a fundamental part of His Being, we are just as much in need of correction, and we can be certain that He will bring it.

The whole picture that God’s naming of Himself provided echoed down through generations, defining Israel’s understanding of this God they served. I am amazed at how often the descriptions and declarations of Who God Is echo the name He proclaimed before Moses on that mountain. It is not so surprising, perhaps, to hear Moses himself using these things to describe God to the people. It is also not surprising that we so need to have the comfort of being reminded, especially in the hard times of our disciplining, that God truly is compassionate without fail. We really can remain assured that whatever we may be going through today, H will not destroy us, He will not break covenant. How greatly, too, we need to have that certain hope that the LORD will vindicate. These are the things that Moses reminded his charges of (Dt 4:31, Dt 32:36), lest they faint in the wilderness.

Now, hear how that image of God changes as the history of Israel proceeds from bad to worse. After all, we cannot read the history presented in the books of the Kings or the Chroniclers without seeing that the moments of righteous direction in Israel’s history were few and brief in comparison to the periods of idolatry and abandonment of God’s ways. So it was that times of oppression came upon the people (and I would note that it was not for their fathers’ failures, but for the present sins of the nation). Yet, this remains in the record: “Although the people had been oppressed by the king of Aram throughout the reign of Jehoahaz, still the Lord was gracious; still He had compassion upon them” (2Ki 13:22-23). Now, note the cause to which they attribute this: Because of His covenant with Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He would not destroy them or cast them utterly from His presence, and this fundamental remains even until now.

Now, I grant you that God is assuredly true to His covenant, faithful even in the face of our incessant infidelities. Yet, as He proclaims His own name, is it not a more accurate view of Him to declare that He is compassionate and gracious towards His people for the much simpler fact that that is Who He Is? Because He abounds in lovingkindness, because He forgives, because He loves; these are the foundations upon which we can look for His compassion towards us. It is not our parents, not our ancestry that leads Him to consider us as He does, it is His character. In this description of God’s tolerance of Israel, I hear the lawyer’s voice more than the worshiper’s. No longer is the trust of Israel in the character of God, but rather in these contractual supports of covenant.

Covenant is critical, to be sure, and we do have the assurance of covenanted relationship with our God and Father. But, again, that covenant sits upon the foundation of God’s character. It is because these covenants He makes with man are sworn and maintained upon His own Name, His own Character, that they have any substance or value for us. We know the ways of man too well to place faith in the covenants of man. They are only as good as man’s word, and experience insists that we recognize man’s word as basically worthless. No, it is God’s backing alone that gives His covenants value. It is God’s faithfulness that gives us reason to believe and trust the covenants He swears. It is not that we have some legal claim upon Him, for we have long since broken our side of the deal and we will doubtless do so again. No, there is no legal claim we can look to argue before Him on the basis of these covenants. There is only His essential character, the backing insurance of that covenant, that we can trust in to abide by its terms in spite of our failures. And, that character, most critically for us, is one which forgives, one which loves, one which is graciously inclined to manifest compassion towards us, remembering that we are but dust.

Nehemiah, however, recognized the Truth of God and the Truth of Israel’s situation. In this, he but returned to what David knew and declared. But, let me note Nehemiah’s renewal first. “They forgot what You had done, God. They were even so foolish as to appoint leaders to bring them back into their Egyptian enslavement. But You are forgiven, gracious and compassionate. You are slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness. Therefore, You did not forsake them, even with the magnitude of their blasphemies in Your very presence! In spite of all they did, in Your great compassion You staid in their midst, a pillar of cloud by day and of fire by night, continually showing them the way to go” (Neh 9:17-19).

Notice how clearly Nehemiah echoes the Name God proclaimed of Himself in this prayer. It is almost a direct reading of that declaration God made before Moses. Where God had said, “I AM”, Nehemiah acknowledges, “You ARE”. Yet, going a bit further in that same chapter, it becomes clear that Nehemiah wasn’t just reading the script of Torah, he understood the significance. He continues. “When they cried out to You in distress You heard, because of Your great compassion.” Notice this: He didn’t hear because of their carefully phrased offerings of prayer, and He didn’t hear because of covenant obligation. He heard because of His natural compassion. And, it certainly wasn’t something about Israel’s faithfulness was it? “As soon as they had respite, they returned to their evil ways, and so enemies came to harass them once more. And they cried out again, and again You heard. Many times the cycle repeated, and many times You rescued them because of Your compassion.” No other cause, just that His compassion moved Him to rescue these who arrayed themselves as enemies to His ways, and not only that, but He advised them as to a better way. “You admonished them to return to Your Law by which a man may live, should he observe them.” How terrible, the history Nehemiah lays out. “But, they chose to be stubborn, stiff-necked, hard-hearted. They would not listen. And still You put up with it. Still You manifested Your grace towards them, sending word through Your prophets to remind them of the course to life. Truly, You are slow to anger, yet anger comes. So, finally You gave them into the hands of the surrounding nations. Yet, even in this, Your Compassion ruled, for You did not destroy them outright and You did not forsake them. Truly, You are a Gracious and Compassionate God” (Neh 9:27-31).

Yes, Lord, truly You are Gracious and Compassionate, Slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness and forgiveness. Truly, Your heart aches to visit Your love and forgiveness upon Your children. Truly, the just punishment of sin is reserved in You, held back from its necessarily destructive full force upon us. God, I can in no way even pretend to deserve such love from You. I can in no way even pretend to have so fully appreciated Your love as I should. What fit expression of knowing Your love could there be other than to walk in full accord with Your Law, and to manifest in myself the full measure of Your love for me? How could I dare to say this is what I have done? No. I should have to strike myself down if You did not. And, yet, You remain with me, You remain for me and not against me. When You bring punishment upon me, it is not capricious but well deserved. It is not brought to destroy me, but to chastise, to restore me to my senses that I might come and partake of Your forgiveness, which ever lies waiting the least earnest sign of repentance.

If ever there was cause to be amazed by You, Lord, this is it! And in this amazement of knowing Your great love, Your infinite love, I have ever more cause to love You as well. Oh, my loving Father, thank You that You are so freely forgiving, so compassionately prepared to run to my rescue as many times as I have spurned Your love. How I pray and hope and trust that I am bearing a greater resemblance to You today than I did yesterday, and this shall always be the course of my life until I have come before You and seen You as You are. Glory be to Your Name, my God, and may my own ways be such as will magnify and manifest the Glory that is Yours alone! Amen and amen.

David also held to a view of God that reflected God’s own naming of Himself. “The LORD is compassionate and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in lovingkindness”, he wrote (Ps 103:8). But, he went on to expound upon that compassion in a fashion designed to make it more real to his listeners. “His compassion towards those who fear Him, honor Him, revere Him, is like that of a father for his own children” (Ps 103:13). Whether David fully understood just how accurate this analogy of his was or not I cannot say, but it certainly is accurate. God’s compassion for us is like that of a father, indeed. And now we understand that it is not only like that of a father, it is that of our Father, for He, in that gracious lovingkindness that is His Love, has adopted us as His own children! If He was as a Father to His people before this adoption was fully covenanted and sealed, how much more will His compassion and His fatherly love be towards those whom He has legally adopted as His own household, and at such great cost?

Another consideration arises. How great was His compassion towards His own Son in His Son’s moment of trial and punishment? If His Love is so generously poured out on the adopted child, what must it have done to Him when He did pay that price? We tend to think of Jesus as the One who paid the price for our sins, and that is certainly true. But, God in the person of the Father also paid a price beyond our comprehension as He meted out the punishment that His Justice demanded on His true Son, Himself in the person of the Son. Can we imagine the power of this upon such a loving heart, upon such a Father as God? Can we imagine how it should feel were the father of even the most evil of men called to hand down the judgment and order the punishment his son deserved? It must surely break the heart of any father worthy of that position. How much more the very perfection of Father! I doubt not that we barely begin to recognize the full scope of His compassion towards us. We have the barest appreciation of the depth of His gracious kindness in sparing us at such great cost.

Yet, hear this: God made His wonders to be remembered, and to be remembered in the Truth of His character and essence (Ps 111:4-5). He has done as He has done on behalf of His children throughout the ages so that we, His children, might always recall that He truly IS Gracious and Compassionate. We could as well say He IS Grace and Compassion. He IS also Provision and Faithful and True, the psalmist reminds us, for He provides food for those who are His and He remembers His covenant forever. Notice that there is no if clause in that remembrance. This is not to say He is faithful to His covenant so long as we are faithful to its terms. No, He is Faithful, period. He will remember even when we prove forgetful children. Why does He treat us so wonderfully? Why does He even consider us, worms that we are? Because it truly is a wonder that He should do so, and that wonder leads us to remember Him as He IS.

When we remember Him thus, we have no need for the idolatrous mutations that present themselves to our imagination. We have no need for the false gods offered us as the Real One, for in His real character and being we remember that we have found everything we could want or need and more. He is Grace, Compassion, Provision, Faithfulness and Truth. This is our Sword and our Shield. This is our Father, Who looks upon us as His own children, the apple of His eye, His dearest, most treasured and cherished companions. If we are generous to our own children, in our fallen estate, how much more He towards us? If we labor to ensure that our family is fed, clothed and housed, how much more He towards us? If we seek to be true to our word, how much greater is His Perfect record of being True to His Word?

He has been so wonderful toward us that we would be in constant remembrance of the God Who IS, as He IS, and would find no need for any other. He does so still, if we have but eyes to see and a heart to appreciate all He does for us. If we will but set aside our inflated self-esteem and recognize His hand upon us, we shall find it is always there, He is always there. If we will become sufficiently wise as to say that the good that has come upon us is beyond our own capacity to have accomplished, we must surely remember the One Who has accomplished mightily on our behalf. Woe be to us if we should forget!

It is the very fact that He is Gracious, Compassionate and Righteousness that sets Him as such a burning light to guide the believer (Ps 112:4). Hear the promise and assurance in that verse! However dark the night, however terrible the trial and impossible the situation, Light will arise for us, and it is well for the man whose own ways reflect this Light of God (verse 5).

Now, let me say this: if God, by the expressed reality of His Grace, Compassion and Righteousness is set as a Light to us that pierces the deepest darkness of our affliction, and His blessing is upon us for our admittedly meager reflection of His own expressed reality, is there not a certain obligation on our part? I do not suggest that this obligation is set upon us as a precondition. Not at all! But, we understand that His grace towards us, His redemption of us, is given that He might have sons, sons not only in name and certainly not by the nature of the flesh, but sons in likeness of character. We are sons not because we can lay claim to kinship, certainly not to some common ancestor, for He is without ancestors. We are sons because, thanks to His Grace and His work within us, we truly do reflect His essence in our own character, else we have no claim to kinship at all. We do, as His work proceeds, come to reflect His Grace and Compassion in our own treatment of others. We do come to reflect His Righteousness, His Patient forbearance, His Love of Truth. Do we not, then, come to share in His Purpose?

If the purpose of His own self-expression has been that He might stand as a Light to guide us, are we not, as His reflection, set here to be lights to guide those still in that darkness? Israel, we come to understand, was settled in such a strategic geographic location as to sit, as it were, on the crossroads of the world. They were uniquely positioned astride all the major trade routes, such that they must encounter and be encountered by every tribe and nation. Why did God cause this to be the case? For He surely is the sole Cause! Israel was thus set that they, who had known the Light of God could shed His Light upon all those tribes and nations that passed through this marvelous crossroads, that all the world might come to know this God Who IS.

So, too, with every great surge of nation and faith that has transpired down through the ages. Israel refused its duty, sought to keep the Light of God to itself as the self-appointed guardians of truth, lest God be sullied by these lesser beings, the Gentiles. But, the Light would not be contained. He passed to Rome, spreading the Fire of Truth through that empire, and when that empire’s time was through, He passed on to other great powers. In its day, England held the Torch, spreading the Word of God throughout its globe-spanning possessions, but their day came to an end as well. We in North America have the history of having been founded, at least in the hearts of certain of our founders, as a nation set up to be once more that city on a hill, that Light to the world, letting all the nations know that there is a God, and He is One.

Over the long centuries, though, we have become like those first representatives of the True God. We have been cowed into keeping our lights close to our chests. Oh, we will let it shine in the temple, but not in the marketplace. We gladly share our faith with those who share our faith, but we have learned a certain reticence about speaking to others about it. This is not, obviously, an absolute, but it is certainly a commonplace. It holds truer in some regions than others, of course. Here on the coast, though it was the seedling of this work of faith that founded the nation, and though it was the site of that watering of the seed that came to be known as the Great Awakening, faith and belief have not so much faded, as drawn inward.

Faith has become a more private matter than ever it was meant to be. I recall visits to southern cities, and enjoying the thrill of sharing faith and belief over a meal in a restaurant. Such was the atmosphere that this did not seem odd or untoward. There was no sense of a shared secret, of whisperings that feared exposure. In contrast, this region leaves one feeling odd and exposed even to pronounce the blessing on the meal. It is something to be done quickly, lest we be embarrassed by discovery. Then, talk quickly turns to safer territory. As loudly as we proclaim the superiority of the Light when we are among friends, our behavior in the rest of our days belies a certain doubt, a certain sense that the darkness really is capable of overwhelming us. But it is not so! No, Light arises in the darkness for the upright, for those who fear God and will stand for His ways. That Light arises, and history shows that the darkness cannot comprehend it, cannot consume it, cannot prevail over the Light of Life Eternal!

O, Christian! Rise up! Shine! I do not call you to political action. I call you to personal action! I do not call you to legislate morality. I call you to demonstrate morality! I call you to believe! I call you to so believe that your own light will shine with the veil-piercing, life-giving Light of God. I dare you to live your faith! I dare you to walk out that faith in the presence of one and all, and to see the Wonders of God as He is brought to remembrance to those sitting in darkness yet. I dare you to glorify God, for to glorify Him is to make Him undeniably manifest. How shall we do that, if not by reflecting the Light of His essential being, by proclaiming the Name He has named for Himself with our every word and action!

Gracious is our LORD, and Righteous, too! How marvelous His Compassion (Ps 116:5)! That He should save the likes of me, and call me to come work beside Him! That He should so work on the wretched, sin pitted character that is mine such that it should be polished, reflective of His Own Righteousness and Compassion! That He should so manifest His Patience towards me that even when I have so shuttered that reflection and hidden it away, even so, He continues to Love me, to work upon me, and to call me His Own.

Who is like You, o Lord? What more could I need of You than what You have proclaimed of Yourself? Grace and Compassion are mine at Your hand. Behold, my inheritance! It is fine beyond imagining. My needs are satisfied in You, and my heart longs only to rejoice in You. As You have been my Provision, have I ever found myself wanting? Never, my God! Oh, I have known the dissatisfaction of a spoiled child, but never have I gone wanting for lack of Your care. Never! Though I have ached for a closer sense of Your presence, You have never been afar off. No, Your loving effort on my behalf, Your tender care for me and for those You have entrusted to my leading, this has never lessened, never faltered. No, and nor shall it! For You are Faithful. You do not begin without completing. You are no fickle Father whose vanity must be tickled. You are no fair-weather friend, though so often I know that I am. Great is Your Faithfulness, O my God! And True to Your Word, Your mercies are new every morning. What thanks could be enough? Yet, I offer You such thanks as I may, and I bless You for Who You Are. Let me never be lulled into seeking You in any other way, for Your way is good, nay, perfect!

The prophets continue an awareness of God’s name, reminding the people that His lovingkindness does not depart, nor His compassion come to an end. This is particularly needful in times of grief and affliction. Jeremiah, witnessing the bitter days of Jerusalem’s fall, reminds those around him that even if God causes grief, He will yet have compassion on His people (Lam 3:32-33). It is not from some perverse pleasure that He so afflicts His own, but of a necessity. Daniel strikes a note that is carried into the New Testament, and remains crucial to our full understanding of our relationship to God. Again, he attributes compassion and forgiveness to the Lord, and notes that this must be true, for He is still suffering us to live, and we have rebelled against Him (Dan 9:9). Surely, if it is by Him and in Him that we live, that we breathe, that we continue to have our being, then His willingness to forgive is immense, His mercy toward us immeasurable! We have only to consider that He made the first move. He saved us when we were yet His sworn enemies. Such mercy we can never think to have deserved, and yet it is ours by His good grace.

It is fitting to end my considerations of this aspect of compassion as Gods’ own name so close to the point I began. I began with that famous encounter between Moses and God, Moses asking to see His face, and God, prior to proclaiming His name, declaring that He will have mercy and compassion on whom He will. Paul looks at that and reaches a conclusion clearly informed by what I just noted from Daniel. If we see the magnitude of His mercy and forgiveness in the very fact that we remain in spite of our rebellion, then we must acknowledge that it is not about what we have earned or how hard we have tried. As Paul says, it’s not about the man willing or the man running. It’s about God who has mercy (Ro 9:15-16). Let me strengthen that just a bit. It’s about God Who Is Mercy. Were it not, then there would be no hope of redemption, for it is surely beyond us to earn the favor of Righteous and True when we are so clearly incapable of keeping faith with Him.

Father God, again I am drawn to give thanks that You Are indeed all that You say You are. The mercy I have known at Your hand, the faithfulness with which You have continued to draw me along. I confess that, as the people of Jerusalem in Daniel’s day must have wondered if Your mercy had come to an end, I have wondered much the same these last months. With all that has afflicted this household, it has been difficult to stay mindful of Your certain goodness. Yet, I see in these recent days that Your goodness abides. Your faithfulness to uphold has never changed. No, it has surely been a time of testing, and how I have felt it! Yet, if indeed I am looking with hindsight now (and I pray it is so), then what You have accomplished by this testing is wonderful indeed. The growth that has come in this household, I doubt could have come in any other way. The strength that has been discovered, the power to persevere; how should I have seen Your hand in providing these things were there no trial to face? How should I know Your hand of protection if I never knew of danger?

So, yes, Lord, I thank You. I know that trials remain, and there is certainly no end to the work that remains to shape this character in Your image. I know my struggles, and I know I despair too often of ever seeing victory in these things. Yet, I know You are with me still. And, knowing that, I know that victory will come, for it is Yours to achieve. God, how I pray You work swiftly, particularly on these most irksome habits of mine, that I find myself so powerless to change. Of course I am powerless to change! If You do not do the building, what have I built? So, Lord, build in me. Build in me a heart after Your own. Build in me a character to glorify Your name, to manifest Your name. Let the fire of Your own compassion burn bright in my deepest being, that I might make You known as I ought.

Promise and Warning (06/01/08)

It would be a hard thing to consider the name of God without considering also the Promise which His name declares. At the same time, it is difficult to look at the promise of God without also hearing the accompanying warning. As the prophets took up the name of God, spoke of His compassion and His mercy, these themes of promise and warning became more pronounced, for the situation in Israel had grown more dire. When faith is strong, it is perhaps enough to know Who God Is. But, when faith has been stretched thin, our frailty requires the encouragement of His promise, a reminder of what it means to us that He Is Who He Is. When faith has been abandoned, or threatens to be abandoned, the warnings are necessary to turn our eyes back upon the promise.

When the corrective hand of punishment has been upon us, particularly in those times when we have been particularly slow to learn from the discipline, it is not enough to hear the preacher say that God is good. It is not enough to hear him say that God is Compassionate and Loving and Merciful, because our experience in that period is quite the contrary. We are in the period of God is Justice and Wrath, and frankly, hearing of His goodness is more likely to stir up jealousy and resentment than it is to do us any good. We don’t need to hear what men in better places have to say about God. We need to hear God Himself. For, in the voice of God, we find more than just an appreciation of His nature. We find promise.

This is exactly what we hear provided through the prophet Jeremiah when Israel was at its lowest time to date. They faced destruction, annihilation, at the hands of Nebuchadnezzar. The once glorious kingdom of Israel had already been reduced to the point that only Jerusalem and the surrounds of Judah remained. Now, this, too, was falling. With its fall, those who survived would be stripped from the land, the land God had promised to their forebears. Surely, He had abandoned them utterly, that this might befall them. Surely, all hope was gone, and even Jeremiah was proclaiming that all hope of a reprieve had been withdrawn. No, the captivity and exile were not a possibility, they were a certainty. What hope, then?

Even as the assurance of this outcome was declared, though, God spoke Promise. Yes, the discipline must come, justice must be served and punishment meted out. But, “I will have compassion on you again. I will return you to your land, your inheritance” (Jer 12:15). “I will restore Jacob and have compassion on his house. The city, though it must be destroyed, will be rebuilt. The palace, though it must fall, will be restored” (Jer 30:18).

Of course, this promise comes with a darker side, for God’s Justice must be satisfied. The sin of Israel had grown too great to allow it to pass unmolested. So, there is another promise intermixed, the promise of punishment and discipline. As certain as the “I will” of restoration, there comes the “I will” of justice. “I will give the survivors into Nebuchadnezzar’s hands and I will so move upon him that he will strike them down, sparing no one. He will not have pity or compassion” (Jer 21:7). He will not because God wills not. There are times and seasons, and the immediate season was a season of wrath, vengeance and punishment for the awful and persistent sin of His people. Yet, never without hope. Never without the assurance, the promise of restoration and mercy when this time had run its course. It must come, but it will not abide.

That in itself is evidence of the limitless mercy of God. The full punishment, the due reward of each and every one of them – and of each and every one of us – is death. It is a final, infinite punishment for an infinite offense against an infinite God. That He sets bounds upon the sentence, that He promises a certainty of mercy to follow is mercy in itself. That there is any hope whatsoever is Mercy beyond measure. How marvelous the love of God! How incredible that He should promise such goodness to those who have fallen so far from grace!

This same balance of warning and promise is evident in the arc of Hosea’s prophecies. How terrible the warnings. Indeed, these were no longer warnings such as Ninevah was given. When Jonah was sent to Ninevah, there was still time. There was still opportunity for repentance to turn aside the full wrath of God. Of course, Ninevah was a people in darkness. It is no excuse, to be sure, yet we can understand that God might have a bit more patience with them, giving them a chance to turn once the light of Truth was given to them. Israel, though, was the bearer of the Light, the possessor of the Truth. What excuse could she give? There was none, and so, it seems that when the time for her punishment was come, there was no hope of repentance to hold out to her. There was only the hope of a promised end.

So, we hear the terrible verdict of God given to His own. “I will no longer have compassion. I will no longer forgive. Judah, yes, I will preserve, but Israel? No, the offense is too great.” And, notice this when it comes to the deliverance of Judah: It will not be by strength of arms that Judah survives. “I will deliver them by Myself” (Hos 1:6-7). There, again, is the theme Paul took up! How it rings throughout the history of God’s dealing with His people. It’s not about you, king. It’s not about you, prophet. It’s not about you, Christian. It’s not about how well you’ve preached and taught and worshiped and praised and evangelized. All good things, yes, but it’s not the purchase price. It’s about God. He will deliver. Your careful prayers and clever phrases, your exotic gestures and sweet incense, they are nothing. You have had no hand in it whatsoever, and to think you did is beyond foolish. It is arrogant! No, “I will deliver them by Myself.” No hand shall help the Almighty God, for He needs no help. No man shall boast of what he has done for the Lord, certainly not there before the throne. For, in the end, every man shall have to acknowledge that whatever use he has been to the kingdom of heaven, it has been God Who was working and willing in him.

God hasn’t finished with the verdict, though. Already, He has declared His Compassion removed from Israel. But, it passes forward to the next generation as well, so terrible has their moral decrepitude become. “I will have no compassion on her children, for they are born of harlotry” (Hos 2:4). Israel, those northern regions where the Canaanites had never been driven out, may have thought that they had assimilated these pagans into their lands, but in truth, it was Israel that had been assimilated. They had so mingled with the ways of their idolatrous neighbors that the two, the family of man and the family of God, had become one family. But, God is not inclined to share His glory. Becoming one family, they had become the family of man alone. Israel had sold her birthright, rejected her highborn husband in favor of the pleasures of the flesh, the plunder of the world. Harlotry. And God, her rightful betrothed husband, is a Jealous God. He will not stand for it. Nor will He pretend that these children, born and bred into a pluralism that has no place in His presence, were His. They were born of harlotry, begotten by idols of low character, let them appeal to those idols for their support, for, “I will have no compassion on them. They are not Mine.”

Yet, still His mercy shines through. These children of harlotry He will not consider, yet the bride herself is not wholly abandoned. Oh, she shall be punished and punished severely. That has become beyond question. Yet, the promise of hope remains. “I will betroth you to Myself forever” (Hos 2:19-20). In spite of these harlotries, in spite of the compassion He withdraws, and the forgiveness no longer held out, there will again come a time for these to return. “I will betroth you to Me in lovingkindness and compassion.” They are yet your promised lot, in spite of all you have done. The time of punishment, cleansing discipline, must come, but it shall not be forever. “I will betroth you to Me in faithfulness.” Here, I hear a promise of His own faithfulness, and His faithfulness is so evident in our own record. In spite of what we have done, in spite of our wretched proclivity for running around behind His back, yet He will be faithful to us. It is surely to our shame that we bring Him to this. Yet, He declares Himself willing.

What an example for the marriage in trouble! How swift we are to find cause for divorce, and how resistant to being reconciled. No! Pride will not allow it! You have made a fool of me, brought shame to my good name, and I will not, cannot return to you as though it had not happened. I cannot forget and I cannot forgive. Begone from my sight! Yet, God, whom we have treated so shamefully not behind His back, for it is impossible that we should be hidden from His sight, but before His very face! He says that in spite of all this, He chooses to betroth Himself to us forever!

Now, were I to hear this to Israel alone, this could almost be heard as a putting away. Forever betrothed, but never wed. But, the full scope of the message precludes us from hearing it thus. Indeed, so great is this promise that it runs right past the shameless bride. Not only will He treat her so shockingly well, manifesting such great Mercy upon her, but He will even go to those people who were not His people and make them His as well (Hos 2:23)!

Do you hear the total healing of the situation in this? They have never known His compassion, but now, with all their harlotries exposed, His wrath runs its course, and Compassion is not only restored, it grows in magnitude! Israel had brought herself low by becoming one with the family of man. Now, God says, He will indeed unite the family of God with the family of man, but in such a way that it is not the family of man that remains, but the family of God! Now, clearly, this passage is one of great joy to the Gentiles, part and parcel of what we find fulfilled as the Gospel goes forth to the nations. But, in a more immediate sense, it is the healing of Israel’s great wound.

Israel had, in this sense, behaved much like their forebears Abraham and Sarah. Those two, impatient for the promise, had taken things into their own hands. In so doing, they had made a muddle of it, and the repercussions of their impetuosity continue to our own day. Israel, in pursuing their course of tolerance and intermarriage with these peoples whom God had put under the ban for their depravities, had in some sense – perhaps unconsciously – been rushing the promise of God as well. Indeed, He was always for all nations, and Israel was set in place to make the nations aware of Him. But, they had pursued His purpose by their own agenda and, as such things must ever go, they had made a mess of it. Rather than bring Light into the darkness, they had dimmed their own lamps to the point of uselessness. Now, God promises to do it right. He will clean up their mess and make it not only possible but profitable by His measure to bring these other nations into His house.

What an example for the church in our own day! We are so determined to set up our plans and our projects. We look to the commercial successes around us and feel that we must incorporate their methods into our worship. We must make ourselves relevant, marketable, attractive. We must go a-whoring for the good of the kingdom! Has this ever worked out? You know, we look back to Constantine’s adoption of Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire, and we recognize it now as one of the most terrible things that ever happened to the church, for with official approval came necessity for compromise. The church began to take on the trappings of the world, and she was definitely not the better for it. It took centuries to undo the damage, if indeed the damage has ever truly been undone.

Today, our danger is not so much from governments and armies as it is from worldviews and practices. We compromise as we seek to make God relevant to our culture. In truth, we are doing no more than ‘giving the people what they want’. That’s not evangelism! That’s an entertainment industry! We decide that we must run our churches like corporations, and we look to the corporations to show us the way. But, that’s not pursuing the kingdom, that’s pursuing capitalism. Look, capitalism is no inherent evil, but it’s not the model for God’s people, either, any more than communism or socialism or any other ism. Face it: we cannot be a force to shape the world when it is the world that shapes our method and our message! How shall we turn the world upside down by doing exactly as they do? It makes no sense to try.

If Jeremiah and Amos had seen the coming of irrevocable punishment on the people of God, Zechariah had lived through it. Where those two stood on the threshold of the judgment, Zechariah stood in its midst and cried out. “How long, O LORD, how long? For seventy years, now, You have maintained Your vindication against Jerusalem, against Judah? Will compassion ever be restored?” (Zech 1:12). Now, the fact that he speaks of vindication keeps the Righteousness of God in sight. It’s not maliciousness that moves Him. It’s not capricious spite. It is vindication. He is Just in having brought this terrible punishment. He had been given every provocation and He had ever reason and right to respond as He had.

But, if Righteousness and Justice are the name of God, Zechariah knew that Compassion, Mercy and Forgiveness are likewise His name. If He is a Consuming Fire, a Jealous God, He is also Love. How long, then, sovereign Lord, before You choose to show the fullness of Your Name? How long before Mercy is made manifest once more? You set the times. You set the periods. We have heard them, and we have held on to hope, knowing that the time of punishment will draw to a close. You declared a sentence of seventy years and lo! Those years have run their course. Is it not time, my Lord? Can we expect Your Compassion once more to uphold Your people? And the promise of God rings out!

“I will return to Jerusalem with compassion. My house will be built in Jerusalem once more, and My measuring line will again stretch over the city of My choosing” (Zech 1:16). Perhaps his thoughts reflected on the message of Habakkuk. Perhaps he feared that this was not yet the appointed time (Hab 2:3). Even so, he could rest on the promise of that verse: Though the vision is for a time still future, still it will speak and speak truly. If the promise of compassion tarries, wait for it, for it will surely come!

That is the strength of God’s promise. That is the hope that sustains in times of trial and discipline. It is no good to complain of the discipline, for we are surely deserving of it. It is a fool who cries out to God that it’s not fair, although it is surely in our nature to play the fool in just that fashion. When the day of judgment comes, there will be no place for asking, “why me, Lord?” For, we will be quite aware of what we have done. If there is any place for such a question at all, it will be among those who find themselves numbered amongst the chosen. Indeed, that is the great question! Why, oh why, would You have chosen to save me? What have I ever done? Nothing! How have I honored You? Poorly if at all. What can I possibly offer You? Nothing. Yet, here I am, the possessor of that promise of hope, that promise that compassion will surely come.

God, may it ever humble me to consider. May I ever be mindful of the sheer wonder of being adopted into Your household, of being forgiven for all that I am and made more than I ever could be. Far be it from me, my Lord, to complain of unfairness in You! Far be it from me to speak of deserving better. I know that I deserve far worse. Yet, You speak to me with compassion, with love, with a forgiveness so abundant I shall never discover its bounds! All praise and glory and honor is Your due. I am at a loss to know how even to behave in Your presence today. Lord, I can only submit myself to Your purpose. Let it be done to me as You will, even though that will be obscured from my sight. Let it be done as You will and it is enough.

Assurance of God’s Compassion (06/02/08-06/03/08)

With God’s Promise we have been given the foundation for assurance, and it is this assurance which in turn serves as foundation for our certain hope. If assurance is the foundational certainty upon which hope is secured, it is also a proof of belief. After all, many have heard God’s promises and yet been numbered amongst the unbelievers. When He accompanied Israel in the wilderness, His presence was visible to one and all. For all that, His presence was visible to Pharaoh and his armies. But His presence gave them no hope. In the camps of Israel, not all were found faithful. Indeed, very few were found faithful. Yet, when the Promises of God were proclaimed, all ears heard His message. Only a very few really believed what God had said. Only a very few really believed that God Is Who He Is. It is in those few that faith arose. It is in those few that an absolute assurance of His faithfulness formed a new solidity and certitude.

Caleb comes to mind. Granted that we don’t have a picture of his state prior to God’s proclamations, but the picture we have of him thereafter is certainly one of certitude and assurance. Sent into the land, he saw the same things the other spies saw. But, he saw them through a different lens. He saw them through the lens of assurance. God has said. Therefore, whatever the eyes may see, I need not fear. What was he relying on? He was relying on the Promise. God has promised this land. Therefore, if He is saying now is the time, then what cause have we to fear?

I would note two key factors here. First, Caleb’s assurance did not lead him to pester God with reminders of the promise. He felt no need for that. If we are assured that God is true to His promise, then why would we ever feel it necessary to remind Him? If we do remind Him in hopes that maybe now He will do as we ask, how is this assurance?

Second, assurance is not an excuse to jump the gun. The promise is generally given as an assurance of outcome or result, it is not a free license to act as we will. The promise is no excuse for disobedience or independent campaign. Abraham and Sarah had the promise of God. You will have many descendents. But, they took it upon themselves to see it done. They did not submit their plans to God nor submit themselves to God’s plan. They heard the Promise and ran ahead on a course of their own devising. They forgot their dependency on God. Worse yet, they set themselves in His place, decided their wisdom was greater than His. No, I don’t believe this was any conscious part of their thinking process, but the result shows it to have been the case. Sin is sneaky like that. It moves our thoughts and actions without revealing its true intent, but sin’s true intent is always idolatrous.

David was not immune to this problem. He, too, had great promises from the God of heaven. He, too, fell into the sinful trap of taking upon himself the planning and execution of those things he thought would secure the promise. He, too, allowed himself to take God’s place in his thinking. He, too, began to trust his own strength and prowess to the degree that he no longer sought God’s wisdom. He, too, forgot Whose hand had brought the victories, and – again, whether consciously or not – began to take credit for those victories himself. One thing we can say in his favor, though, is that he came to his senses. He did not stay in that foolish place. When God brought discipline and rebuke for his overweening pride, he listened and he submitted himself once more.

The overall tendency of David was to seek and obey God. He had failings numerous and heinous, for he was a man of flesh such as our own. But, these terrible times always brought him to the place of repentance. The only reason he could keep coming back to repentance was because of the assurance of faith. He could only come to repentance because he know God to be as He has named Himself. So, in those darkest hours, we hear David cry out to God by His name. “Lord, remember Your compassion. Remember Your lovingkindness” (Ps 25:6). “These have always been Your way through all eternity.” Does this suggest, then, that David thought God could forget His own name? No. They remind his own heart of the God Who Is! “You will not hold back Your compassion from me. You will preserve me for Your lovingkindness and Your truth are forever” (Ps 40:11).

This is where the reminders are needed; in our own forgetfulness we lose sight of Who God Is. We come to a place of doubt, for the circumstances of the moment are not reflective of our conception of what compassion, mercy, Love look like. God has not changed. He has not faltered. His Compassion is no less than it was before, nor shall it be any greater in the future. His Compassion has never changed. When He speaks of it being removed from us, it is but a means of fitting His being to our understanding. We cannot fathom compassion and punishment coexisting. We cannot juxtapose Mercy and Justice. They are so black and white to us. Either we are being blessed or we are being punished. The punishment is all but impossible for us to see as blessing in itself. Justice, particularly when it is being served upon us personally, is so hard to associate with Mercy. And yet, in God, all these facets are equal, co-existent, unchanging and eternal. It is only how we are experiencing them from moment to moment that changes.

So, we hear David cry out. “Has God forgotten? Is His compassion and grace withdrawn in anger?” (Ps 77:9). “Answer me, o God! Turn Your compassion towards me, for Your lovingkindness is good” (Ps 69:16). But, notice that even in these anguished cries, there is certainty. God is still Compassion, Grace, Lovingkindness. He has not changed. If He had, there would be no further use in crying out to Him. Indeed, David’s assurance of the character and steadfastness of God is unshakable. Even in the worst of punishments, even in the severest times of rebuke, he does not forget. From the depths of sin, standing as an adulterer, a murderer and worse, he knows Who God Is. He knows that compassion and forgiveness remain.

This is the ground upon which he cries out. “Lord, in the greatness of Your compassion, blot out my sins” (Ps 51:1). Indeed, elsewhere we find him exercising his faith in a review of the history of God’s people. “How often He restrains His anger! How often He holds back the full fury of His righteous wrath. He forgave our sins rather than destroying us” (Ps 78:38). Here is strength to seek the only path out of the pit of sin. “Lord, don’t hold our father’s sins against us! Come swiftly with Compassion, for we are utterly cast down” (Ps 79:8).

David does not restrict his assurance to personal matters. Although God is a most personal God, and One with Whom David has a truly personal relationship, He is also God of the nations, particularly that nation over which David exercised authority. This, he exercised with responsibility. So, as much as he turned to God for redemption in his own, personal situations, he also counted on God for the nation. Wise leader that he was, he made sure his nation was kept aware of Whom they could count on, too. In times of national despair over national judgment, he causes them to be reminded. “God redeems you. God crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion” (Ps 103:4). “God will surely have compassion on Zion, for it is time. The appointed time is come” (Ps 102:13).

As necessary as the earnestly broken cry of repentance is for our personal wellbeing, so it is necessary for the nation. The prayer of a righteous man indeed accomplishes much. But, there will come a day in each nation’s history when only the equally earnest repentance of the whole of the people will serve. If the nation will not humble itself, God may still preserve on behalf of His own citizens who are yet within its borders. But, He will eventually remove His own that Justice may be served. Ever and always, though, it remains the case that God serves Justice in hopes of stirring up Repentance. He approaches with Wrath in hopes that those He approaches will take heed, that He may instead manifest Mercy when He arrives.

I am put in mind of Paul’s dealings with Corinth. How they had fallen from grace, even as they continued to claim the mantle of Christianity! It was a terrible insult to the character of God that they should allow such practices as they did to continue, and simultaneously hold themselves out as members of His family. So, Paul sent forward a severe rebuke. He wrote with a clear knowledge of their sins, and he wrote with an unyielding demand for change. His anger was stirred and stirred deeply. Yet, he writes as a true apostle, as a true representative of God. God, too, was deeply stirred to anger by the sins committed in the midst of worship that was His by right. But, like God, Paul was desirous that he could show mercy and compassion to those he rebuked when he arrived.

Some, he knew, would look at this as vacillation. They would think his courage flagged when face to face. But, this was not the case. Many take the same view of God. They mistake His forbearance as weakness. They think that, as He has not dealt with their sins as of yet, then He probably won’t. They think that Love will trump all, and therefore they can do as they please and still rest assured of heaven. Indeed, in many places, this is what is proclaimed as the sense of our true Assurance. It is the foolish, nay lethal, falsehood of the “once saved, always saved” message. They have taken the Truth of a forgiving God, and made it an excuse for complacency in the face of their own, incorrigible sin.

Thus have they moved from sin, straight through transgression, and right onward into iniquity. They have gone from mistake and neglect to the extremes of moral decrepitude. They have, in making excuse for their continued, unrepentant sinfulness, accused God of not caring, of not being Righteous. Indeed, they have accused Him as a liar every bit as much as the one who claims he has never sinned. For, God, Who Is Just, has proclaimed a certain result of sin, if repentance does not reach out for redemption. The just wages of sin is death, and a Just God must surely pay those wages. Those who insist that they can continue on heedlessly in their sins, counting on God’s forgiveness as their ticket out of harm’s way in the end, make God out to be horribly unjust, utterly untrustworthy and perfectly untrue. What hope can they have then, of His mercy?

“Be good to me, O God, according to Your character, Your Name. So great is Your Compassion! Blot out my sins” (Ps 51:1). This is not an application for permit to sin the more. It is an acknowledgement of the terrible failures that have brought us to this place. It is a recognition of the certainty of God’s Justice, but also a recognition of His Mercy. It is a prayer that can only be offered in honesty by one who is assured that the whole of God’s Name is simultaneously and consistently True. We cannot have the LORD God, compassionate and merciful and forgiving, without also having the LORD God who by no means leaves sin unpunished, even visiting iniquities, those most fully ingested habits of sin, upon the generations that follow. We cannot have a Love of God that is devoid of Justice, for without His Justice, there is no true Love.

Oh, but thanks be to God that there is also Patience, Forgiveness and Redemption in His Name! There is assurance of His response to a truly repentant heart. The Lord will make His compassion manifest once more (Isa 14:1). It is not a possibility. It is a certainty. The question is not whether He will do so, but when. The outcome is yet assured: He will settle them back in their lands, and not only that, but even strangers will join themselves to the house of God’s people. Not only will their own nation be restored, but it will grow! It will not grow by conquest and force of arms this time. It will not spread by driving out the peoples. Rather, the peoples will flock to them, seeking to be allied to the house of Israel. Truly, His Grace is beyond measure!

I have mentioned Jonah’s somewhat perverse assurance of God’s character before, but it bears seeing again. For, as poorly as he may have responded to that assurance, his reasoning still builds upon the foundation of assurance. “Before I left,” he says, “I knew you would be gracious and compassionate towards Ninevah, for You are Grace and Compassion, Slow to Anger, Abounding in Lovingkindness, pleased to be able to relent of the calamities of which You warn” (Jon 4:2). In other words, I know Your Name, and I know You are True to Your Name. Where there is repentance, You forgive. Such a sad conclusion he draws from that, though. “That is why I did not want to come.”

Let me just say that Jonah is assuredly a man of God, a true prophet of God. But, he is also a man of flesh, truly afflicted with all its moral weaknesses. Jonah is a man such as I. He knew God. He knew God’s heart, His essence. He had moved beyond anything we might consider head knowledge. He had internalized the character of God, and upon that character he set his faith. But, the flesh remained. What we see in that brief account of his mission is the flesh in ascendance. It is not a permanent ascendance, nor is it a final victory of the flesh. But, for that moment, so egregious were the crimes of the Ninevites against Israel that Jonah, as a patriotic Israelite could not find it in his heart to see God’s love extended to them.

Do you see? It was not that he thought them beyond God’s power to save. It was not that he thought God’s love and power were reserved to Israel alone. It was precisely because he knew that the Truth of God was quite the opposite – none beyond salvation and no nation left behind – that he tried so hard not to go. He knew if he was sent by God on this mission, it was not for the destruction of Ninevah but for Ninevah’s salvation. And this he could not bear. His wounds were too sore, his grievances against them too manifold. He knew God Forgives, and he knew as well that as God’s man he was intended to reflect God’s nature. But, in this instance, he could not bring himself to do it. He had to be brought to it by the One he served.

Now, this we must understand: we cannot condemn Jonah or point to his failures without condemning ourselves for the very same failures. Who is yet come to the place where he can forgive the greatest crime against his person? Yes, there have been many in the history of the Church who have indeed endured things that are all but beyond our power to imagine. They have endured and still clung to faith. They have endured and still been capable of proclaiming their forgiveness even as they died. But, such men are rare. Such men have been endowed with a particular grace for such a moment, that their testimony might make known the glory of our God. They are by no means the norm, certainly not in our day.

Yes, we know of those in other countries who suffer terribly for their faith. Yes, we know that martyrdoms are on the rise. But, we know of these cases because they are not the norm. They are the terrible exception, and in the eyes of faith, despite the horror, they are yet proof of the power of God to save. They are heroes not because they suffered and died, but because their faith, that precious gift of God so testified of God’s Goodness and Mercy. They are heroes because even with their dying breath, they spoke the Gospel. They are heroes because the manifested in their own character the character of the God Who Saves.

This is indeed what we are called to. We are called to weather every slight, every trial, every torment that may be set against us. And it is not just the perseverance, the longsuffering that we are called to, but the holy character of Compassion and Forgiveness that can look upon those who seek our lives and forgive. Too much of our time and energy is wasted in unforgiveness. We easily slip into becoming a proud people, just looking for an insult, that we may vent our spleen and wreak our vengeance. Oh, in our polite society, we may no longer seek physical vengeance. We do not generally go for calling a man out for a duel any longer, when our character has been maligned. No, we have found more surreptitious ways to get back at those who use us badly. Somehow, we think this absolves us. But, the truth is we have refused God His vengeance, and His right of Mercy.

Anger in itself is not evil. Outrage at injustice is not evil. The evil lies in taking matters into our own hands, for our own judgment is clouded at best, and our actions are too easily guided by passions. When we allow such behavior to take hold, we are truly sinning against God, for we are denying His sovereignty by seeking our own sentence upon the accused. We are denying His Just rule by deciding we must take matters to hand. For, in doing so we manifest a lack of faith that He will see things put to rights. In every way, such seeking of vengeance is pure rebellion against a holy God, a clear display of faith lacking. And still, God abides, awaiting the return of reason, creating the return of reason; laboring to remind us of Himself, that we might repent and receive the forgiveness we refused to our enemy. Then, perhaps, we will find our character more reflective of His own and offer the forgiveness we withheld.

That is what Jonah had to go through. He had to be shown the utterly corrupt nature of his behavior. He had to be shown how far he had fallen from grace, to be brought to the place of once more recognizing his own great need for a forgiving, merciful God. We also remain in near constant need of such reminders. Thanks be to God, that He is faithful to bring them. Let us not complain, then, of the discipline that restores, and of the Mercy of God that brings that discipline our way!

Returning to this matter of assurance: I have noted that close association of assurance and Promise. I would look, then, at a brief collation of promises given and fulfilled, that we might be reminded of His steadfast, unchanging character, and know in our own hearts that He is True to His Name. As we read through the words of the prophets, we see the promises given. We are also blessed to live in a day when we can look back and acknowledge that so much of what was promised has been fulfilled. We have a record of God’s faithfulness to His Word that reaches back through millennia! What greater assurance could we ask, that we can stand on the knowledge that He will complete all that He has promised? So, look.

Even as Isaiah spoke to a nation under punishment, a nation seemingly abandoned and forsaken for the magnitude of their rebellion against Almighty God, he pointed to this assurance of Compassion. “Indeed I forsook you, but for the briefest moment. I will yet gather you up with great Compassion. In My anger, I hid Myself from you, but for the briefest moment. My Compassion on you shall be as everlasting as My lovingkindness. In Noah’s day, I swore never again to flood the earth when once my Justice had been satisfied. Likewise, I now swear no more to be angry with you, nor to rebuke you. So certain is this promise that though mountains and hills be shaken such that they stand no more, still My lovingkindness will not depart from you” (Isa 54:7-10). Now, here is assurance indeed! “My covenant of peace will not be shaken.”

I cannot read that passage without hearing the echoes of fulfillment in the life of our Lord and Savior, Jesus the Christ of God. He Himself underwent that briefest moment of hanging God-forsaken upon the Cross, His dear Father’s eyes turned away as He took upon His person the horrid consequence of our sins. But, the assurance of this covenant promise of God sustained Him. Yes, He cried out. How could He not? Yet, faith remained because the Promise remained. And, indeed, God gathered Him back from the catacombs of death, and surely His Love has never ceased. Even as He turned away, Love and Compassion had not ceased in Him. Neither does Love and Compassion turn from us in our hour of discipline. Indeed, it is that very Love and Compassion which brings the discipline, rather than abandoning us to our stupidity.

It seems that it is in those times of most painful discipline that God speaks the most wonderful of promises. Look at the promise that comes not so long after this covenant assurance. “Foreigners will build your walls. Foreign kings will minister to your need. Yes, in My wrath I struck you, but in My favor I have also had compassion on you” (Isa 60:10). This is hardly a one off. It is a constant, resounding theme, for our need is constant. “I shall strengthen Judah. I shall save them. I shall bring them back for I yet have compassion on them. It shall be as though I had never rejected them, for I AM their God, and I will answer” (Zech 10:6)! Why? Had Judah done something to deserve this change of heart? Well, yes and no. They had done the only thing that is left to a man to do in the face of God’s wrath. They had repented and cried out to Him. Yet, this did not in any way make them deserving of compassion. No, God’s compassion is not something earned, but something freely given because He Is Who He Is.

Because He Is Who He Is, Micah could speak with assurance. “He will again have compassion on us and tread upon our iniquities. Yes, God, You will surely cast all our sins into the deepest sea, give Truth to Jacob, unchanging Love to Abraham. For this has been Your sworn promise from of old” (Mic 7:19-20). Notice the ‘again’ of that. We have seen the constancy of Your compassion in spite of our worst sins, and we are thereby assured that You abide by Your promise. Therefore we can look forward with hope, in spite of our failures, in spite of our neglect of Your ways. Therefore we know that when once we turn and return to You, Your Compassion yet awaits us. And again, we are blessed to know the fulfillment of this promise in Christ Jesus. In that terrible moment in which He cried out, “It is finished!” those sins were indeed cast into the deepest sea, to be recalled to mind no more, not by us, and not by our Father.

James had the blessing of hindsight and so, points back to the history of God’s faithfulness to those who endure. “You know of Job’s endurance and you know how it turned out for him,” he wrote. “Thereby you know that the Lord is full of compassion, truly merciful. Therefore, we hold that you who have endured are truly blessed” (Jas 5:11). How had they endured? They had endured because they had the assurance of the final outcome of endurance. They had the assurance because God had seen to it that there was a record of His faithful dealings with man. They had the record of Job to show them the character of God. They had the record of centuries to declare to them that though wrath and discipline may endure, God’s Mercy and Compassion endure even longer. Though the mourning which discipline induces may last for a night, His Lovingkindness is forever, and shall come our way in the morning.

I would end this particular piece of the study with a warning, though. Assurance is by no means reason for presumption, a concern which seems to be much on my heart of late. We are assured of Mercy, but we are not to presume upon it. “Thou shalt not tempt the Lord, thy God.” We ought certainly to know the character of God, the certainty of His answer when we come to Him with the humility and the repentance that are our only proper state before Him. We ought certainly to know Him well enough, to be so fully assured of His character that we can come before Him, loving Him for loving us, seeking His forgiveness on His terms, laying ourselves upon the Mercy of His court. But, to come in arrogance; to come insisting upon forgiveness as our right: this is by no means repentance. This is demand. This is presumption, and we need not linger in waiting to hear His answer. It shall not be one we long to hear, if it comes at all. Such an attitude before a holy God only manifests our deep need for a greater discipline, and His Love is sufficient to see that we receive what we need.

Notice the tone of Daniel’s cry, that great man of God. He had ears that heard God. He had wisdom instilled by God. He had a character that pleased God greatly. So often he had stood for the righteousness of God even in the very courts of those who so abused God’s people. Even under threat of death, he insisted on pursuing the course of righteousness, and would not bow down to any man. If there was a man who could hope to stand before God and point to his accomplishments, he was such a one. Yet, he does no such thing. Indeed, he goes out of his way to deny any such thought, any such claim. “Lord, hear me! I beg you. See how low we have fallen, see what has become of that city upon which You have set Your name! My heart breaks. But, Lord, we do not come as though to display our merits before You. What worth have they? No, we cry out to you solely on the basis of Your own great Compassion” (Da 9:18).

This is the attitude that attracts God. Understand clearly. It is not the words and the phrasing that attracts God. We can speak with all care taken to remain theologically correct. We can carefully train our conscious thought to beware of crossing the line. But, if that is the end of it, that will be the end of it. If our thoughts and our prayers are saying one thing, but our heart is saying another, we have not yet come to Him as we ought. Oh, we have heard from our youth that selfish prayers need not await an answer. We have become quite adept at constructing prayers that sound right. We assess our thoughts and our desires, and we find ways to couch our petitions that will not sound too self-absorbed, too selfish. We are so good at it, we don’t even think this is what we are doing. Yet, too often it is exactly what we are doing. We are not seeking to do and to be as God desires. We are seeking to manipulate Him into doing and being as we desire.

But when the heart truly speaks as we hear Daniel speak; when the heart truly turns to God with no claim of worth, just a desperate dependence on His compassion alone: then does God hear, and He is pleased to answer. For this is the prayer of faith. There is no trace of ‘repeat after me,’ there is no hint of idolatrous witchcraft, the old superstitions of appeasing and constraining powers and principalities. There is a purity of faith, an assurance of His Essence, His Being. There is simple trust in the God Who Is. In this He is glorified. In this He is pleased, and pleased to answer the one He loves so dearly.

God’s Activity Upon Man (06/04/08)

One of the ways, perhaps the most common, that we experience God’s compassion is through the people around us. I should have to point out, though, that while we who are His children are particularly called to manifest His compassion, we gain no bragging rights by doing so. The plain truth is that God causes His compassion to be manifested. This He does whether the one through whom He exercises His compassion is of His household or of the opposition. The key understanding to take from this is that whoever may be manifesting God’s Compassion, it remains God’s Compassion and God’s doing.

Several examples afford themselves for our consideration. The majority of these, it should be noted, involve the attitude of Israel’s enemies, not her friends or her leaders. Repeated, we find that God makes His people the object of their oppressors’ compassion. Psalm 106:46 declares the case outright, a reminder of God’s past action. Nehemiah 1:11, 1Kings 8:50, and Genesis 43:13 all present us with the prayers of God’s people to the effect that He would cause their oppressors and captors to have compassion on them. These are particularly important, for they display both the cause of that compassion which will be seen in the ensuing events, but they also show the effectiveness of those prayers that flow from a heart assured of God’s character and clear on whose compassion they need.

It is not the enemy’s compassion that they seek, but God’s own. For, they understand that apart from God’s compassion, there is no compassion. This is but the negative side of the equation, the case of Godly discipline. This is what it looks like when God’s Compassion for us must take actions that, while still wholly motivated by deep and abiding Love, manifest His Wrath, the withdrawal of compassion. Here, too, the greatest experience we shall have of His own character will come in our experience of the people around us, particularly those who have power or charge over us.

We have examples of this in the record as well, both looking forward to what must come, and looking backward over what had already come. Isaiah speaks of that day when the enemy will so triumph over Israel that even her young men will be slain, even her babies, for her enemies will have no compassion in that time (Isa 13:18). Why? Why had they no compassion? Because a sovereign God had proclaimed a need for discipline. His people had fallen into so deep an iniquity that His Justice must demand its due, at least in part. His Mercy is such that even here, the payment for their crimes was not demanded in full. A remnant remained. To this remnant, Ezekiel could speak in similar terms, but looking backward. He could almost be describing the same time Isaiah had seen coming, except now it had been accomplished in their midst. “Nobody had pity for you. Nobody helped. No compassion for you at all. Rather, you were thrown into the field on the day you were born, abhorrence on the faces of those who did this to you” (Eze 16:5).

I will grant that in both of those examples, the connection between God’s compassion and the behavior of Israel’s oppressors is left for our inference. It seems that the prophets, much like ourselves, are more inclined to credit and declare that connection when on the positive side of the coin. So, Jeremiah: “I will show you compassion and therefore he will show compassion. He will restore you to your own lands” (Jer 42:12). So, too, Daniel explains what happened in his case. “God granted Daniel favor and compassion in the eyes of the commanding official” (Dan 1:9). But we must understand that the same God who grants compassion in those over us is able to refuse it. It is God’s activity upon man that determines.

Isn’t that something? We credit the devil with so much of what afflicts us in this life, and yet, the Truth of the matter is that it is God’s activity that determines. If He is determined that we shall see compassion, then the most evil of men will look upon us with such favor or pity as will lead him to treat us kindly. He may not understand himself why he is moved to act as he does, and we, though we ought to know better, may not recognize the Source either. Yet, there is God, moving behind the scenes to ensure that our discipline does not exceed our capacity. That same controlling interest must be recognized as lying behind those who behave less favorably towards us. If there are unjust accusations, if there are oppressions, vindictiveness and all manner of evil come our way, it is still at God’s direction, and it is still bound by the limits He sets. This is not to say that He is in any way the author of those evils. Such a thing were impossible! But, He removes His hand from those who are inclined to act in such fashion to the degree that they may act up to the bounds He has determined. They may harry and harass, but they may not crush and destroy. They are sent for a time, but their own time shall come, particularly should they seek to go one step further than His purposes require.

Surely, we should learn from these examples that when our own times of discipline are come, particularly when those times are being administered by the hands of man, our cry to God ought be for His Mercy, His Compassion, that great assurance we have of His Faithfulness to His Name. Oh, we may feel free to point out the more immediate causes of our trials, but let our deepest understanding be that God remains in control, that whether we grasp it or not, these trials are in His Purpose, and He was not kidding when He said His purposes are for good and not for evil. He was not falsely described when it was written that He works all things for the good of those who serve Him. We can and should know assurance that we are of those who serve Him, if indeed we are in that number. By that assurance, which recognizes and is assured of His character, we can uphold our assurance of His Promises. He Is Who He Is, and He Is as He says He Is.

Compassion’s Claim on Us (06/05/08-06/07/08)

I move now from the importance of God’s own Compassion to the claims that compassion makes upon our own character. This could be looked at as the conditional clause by which Compassion is shown to us in Mercy rather than Wrath, or it might be looked at as the natural outflow of experiencing Compassion and Mercy. It seems likely that both are true to some extent. For, surely we cannot find true compassion within ourselves until we have known His Compassion upon us. Likewise, we surely cannot expect His Compassion upon us if we are insistently pursuing our sinful way. Righteous Justice does not permit of such a thing. At the same time, it must be borne in mind that it was solely His Compassion and no merit of our own that led Him to reach out to us and to rescue us while we were yet sworn enemies to His rule.

So, in one sense, our compassion is clearly the overflow of His own. In another sense, our failure to overflow with the compassion He has shown to us is cause for that flow of compassion to be stopped. That much we can earn.

Moving onward, I will be considering some more specific matters of our necessary response to compassion. Here, I would prefer to keep to something of a survey of the sorts of things Scripture shows us about our relation to His Compassion.

There is a clear connection, for instance, to both obedience and to blessing. That comes clearest, perhaps, in the exposition of His Law. For instance, Moses warns the people against laying claim to anything which has been put under the ban, dedicated to God’s use (Dt 13:17-18). This, he says, gives God just cause to turn His anger away, and His compassion toward. This, in turn, shall bring you increase as befits the ancient covenant of God with His people. Then, comes what strikes me as a simple summary of our due response to God’s compassion toward us: “Listen to His voice. Keep His commandments. Do what He has told you is right.” Later, Moses adds that in those times when we have experienced both the blessings that come of obedience and the curses (which are blessings in their own way) which come of rebellion, and when, because of these experiences, we have returned to God with a wholehearted obedience, then the Lord will have compassion upon us once again (Dt 30:1-3).

With these two passages, I see that feeling of combined cause and effect, prerequisite and result confirmed. Israel’s history shows clearly that God’s choosing of them as His people had nothing immediately to do with their preceding actions. He moved of His own accord, and thus brought a change in His people. Yet, having been changed, there is a responsibility. Having been made members of His holy household, there is a requirement to behave as members of His holy household. Failure to do so must bring the corrective hand of punishment. Love could do no less. We would do no less for our own children. If they cannot live by the rules of the house, they will suffer the punishment of the ruler of the house. If they will not repent and they insist on having their way, they may well find themselves expelled from the house. Yet, the love of the parent that must do so is not diminished by the necessity. Indeed, the parent that is brought to such extremes of love’s discipline is heartbroken by the necessity. His great hope is that the severity of the punishment will restore the relationship in time.

So, God’s Love moves independent of our estate to bring us to His house. God’s Righteousness will not suffer His Love to be trampled under foot. Mistakes will be made on our part, to be sure, and those He can often correct with no more than Mercy and a word of admonition. But, where sin sinks to iniquity, no. This shall not be tolerated. This is what we hear in Paul’s writing that he has turned certain men over to the devil. He did not say he had given up on them. Quite the opposite. They were committed over for punishment in hopes that punishment would bring a true repentance that allowed for restoration. The father of the prodigal son did not declare that son dead to him. He waited anxiously for a return of good sense in his son, that his love might be made whole again. This is the reflection of God’s own Love in action.

Again and again I see this relationship manifest in the pages of Scripture. If you return, repent, determine to change and walk right, then His Compassion is sure to come (2Chr 30:9). If you confess your sins and turn away from them He is faithful and just to forgive them (1Jn 1:9). For God, being Grace and Compassion, will not turn away from you if you turn to Him (2Chr 30:9). So great is His compassion that He continually sends word to His people, though they just as continually mock and misuse His messengers and His message. How great His forbearance! Only when no soul was stirred by His rebuke did Compassion require that punishment come. Only then were the Chaldeans sent, because no other remedy remained (2Chr 36:15-17). Yet, assurance remained. If you seek God, if you seek His Compassion, and determine to behave in uprightness and purity, surely He will answer and restore (Job 8:5-6).

Our delight in His Law as our example and our choice gives Him just cause to show His Compassion in mercy (Ps 119:77). Who hides his sins can expect nothing. He will not prosper in his way. But, confess them and forsake them? Surely, he will find Compassion (Pr 28:13). Let the wicked forsake his former ways and the unrighteous way of his thinking. Let him return to the LORD and the LORD will have compassion on him. Return, for He will pardon (Isa 55:7). Mere show is not what is called for. No, don’t bother with rending your clothes, for this means little in the eyes of God. It is but a display for your fellow man. Rend your heart instead. When your sorrow is that real to you, when you are that broken up over your despicable behavior in light of such a loving God, then He will manifest His Grace and Compassion. Then you will see that He is indeed Slow to Anger, Abounding in Lovingkindness, and Forgiving (Joel 2:13).

Listen to this and take it to heart. The LORD longs to be gracious to you. He is waiting to have Compassion on you. For, He is a God of Justice, and blesses all who long for Him (Isa 30:8). Now, understand that it is Justice which keeps Him waiting. It is Justice that requires Compassion, Grace and Mercy must hold back until there has been confession and real repentance. But, in that time He longs for you to come to your senses. He longs for you to set the stage for Him to manifest His Love for you in more recognizable terms. He looks for the signs that His prodigal child is ready to come home. He looks for the proof that we have learned from the necessary discipline that he might teach us once more by positive reinforcements. I dare not say that He waits to reward us, for even in repentance and a forsaking of our sinful ways, we can not lay claim to earning His favor. No, but, He is abundantly gracious towards us, that He forgives so soon as He is able to do so without prejudice to His Righteousness.

And, Oh! The promises that abound to the one who so opens himself to Mercy! The Compassionate One will lead him. He will guide that child to clear springs, that he may never again hunger or thirst, never again be worn down by the elements! For such a one, God says, He will cause His mountains to level out into a road. He shall raise up His highway such that we shall not have to exert ourselves so greatly on its incline. What great cause for rejoicing! So great that even the mountains that He lowers shout for joy! For, the LORD comforts His people, has Compassion on those He has afflicted (Isa 49:10-15). Yet, in the midst of this marvelous news, there is such a terrible, terrible sorrow, for His people have decided that He has forsaken them. They have decided He is not Who He Is. Criminal, such slander against His marvelous name! And still, God’s love holds firm. “They might forget, but I will not.” Those who accuse God of forgetting them have indeed forgotten Him. Yet, never has He forgotten. He has been waiting for us to give Him just cause to bless. He has been longing to be gracious, but we would not. But, He will not forget. He cannot forget. And He will yet let Compassion lead when once we have returned our hearts to Him.

Listen: I’ve been in that place. It is shockingly easy to reach. It is to my great sorrow that I realize how quickly I can come to think He has withdrawn from me. It is, I suppose, the natural response of the flesh to discipline. I am but a child before Him, for I recognize the ways of a child in myself. Spank me and I am sure you love me no more. Make demands of me and I hate you. Forgive me, give me a present, and I love you forever. We like to claim some degree of maturity for ourselves and yet, we are but children. It is only the scale of the issue that has changed. The disciplines we endure at the command of our loving Father are of a scale that we, thankfully, cannot deploy, for we are not so sensibly restrained as He. We are not capable of so properly judging what our children can endure. So, we being His representatives and thereby the model by which our children learn of Him, He empowers us with but a portion of His disciplinary authority, lest we break the bruised reed that He would not suffer to have broken. For our own part, though, our reaction to His discipline is not so much different than our children’s reaction to ours.

We feel the hand of discipline not as a teachable moment, but as a moment of forsakenness. We quickly convince ourselves that we have been abandoned of God, that we shall never again know His favor. We may go so far as to decide that He is not only removed from us, but from the world as a whole, for our most typical response to discipline is to lay its cause anywhere but in God. We might do so from some false sense of His righteousness, seeing that discipline as evil and unwilling to accuse Him of being the source of evil. More likely, though, even such a response as this is but an attempt to shield ourselves from the Truth. We would rather view discipline as injustice than consider what it is in us that demands that discipline. We would prefer to stubbornly pursue our sinful course, and lay the blame on the unremitting evil of the rest of mankind than consider the evil within which He is trying to uproot.

But, let Him turn to blessing and all is sunny and bright. The sorest criminal is suddenly vested with some innate goodness that allows us to see hope of redemption in him. So mercurial is our being that we quickly sway back and forth between this view of the world so like the view held by one newly in love and the forlorn despondency of one who has lost all hope. Yet, through it all, God has not forgotten. He has not forsaken. He is waiting with deepest longing for sense to return, that we might deal with that issue that prevents His hand of mercy.

How we waver is but a measure of our belief. I will not say our faith, for faith is of the Lord. But, belief, this is ours to have or not. Admittedly, it is a hard thing to hold to our sense of the goodness and the compassion of God when He is, as it were, turned away from us. No, He is never truly turned away, but it feels like it, and so we find it described that way. The Truth, the Nature of God has not changed in that time. His Compassion and His Mercy they fail not. Yet, for the moment, the equally unfailing Justice of God requires our discipline that Compassion and Mercy may be shown us again.

How we rankle under these tender mercies! How we lash out, complain, in short, look every which way but inward. It’s not our fault, certainly! Circumstance conspires against us. Else, if our imaginations allow, it is the devil and his minions seeking our destruction. Well, if we understand that much, ought we not to understand that his actions are circumscribed by the finger of God? Thus far and no more you may go. Oh, his intentions are clear enough. His aim is our destruction, to be sure. He was seeking that even in our happiest days. Only now, he is under orders that allow a certain degree of harassment, orders he is pleased to obey until he is reminded of the limits placed upon his actions. So, yes, of course it’s the devil and his minions. What use, though, to bring that to mind. It is not with him that we have to do. It is with God. It is with our own inward rebelliousness which is in need of crushing. If we will turn our eyes off of our affliction and our afflicter, and turn them back to God Who reigns, if we will seek out His purpose in all this, how much more quickly we may hope of an end.

But, our nature is to complain rather than to act. Some perverse twist of our fallen construction finds greater joy in listing the evils done to doing something about the situation. Indeed, we now live in a society that does everything in its power to promote that mindset as right and proper. Come, tell us how you are a victim and let us sympathize with you. Tell us how powerless you are and let us see to your needs. Yet, with every assist, they only push us deeper into victimhood, take away even more power and strength from us, until we have allowed ourselves to be wholly dependent on their tender mercies rather than upon the mercy of God. In short, we are slowly but certainly selling ourselves into slavery to the state, rather than face our fallen state and calling out to the God Who Saves.

No! Our attention needs to be on what change God requires in us. This ought to be true in the best of times, and it only becomes more true as we sit under discipline. What is it, Lord, that I need to recall to mind? What is it I have been doing that must cease? What have I been failing to do which ought to be my habit by now? What is it, Father, that separates us? Tell me, that I may do all that is in my power to change it. Tell me, that I may cry out to You to change what I cannot, that our fellowship may again be sweet. Create in me a clean heart, o God, that I may better reflect Your glory in this world.

It is not enough, though to say the words, or even to think them. Unless this is the true sense of our hearts, the deepest, most intimate feeling of our being, the words signify nothing. It is when this sort of cry as much as bursts from us, impossible to contain, that we have come to the teachable moment. Then may God find it in His Purpose to open our eyes to what is wrong. “You, David, are that man your own heart condemns.” Then, with open eyes, we are finally empowered to understand how grievous our sins have become, and to truly, earnestly repent of them. Then, is our mind able to set itself upon a true forsaking of the way we have been in favor of the Way. Then are we fit to experience once again the Mercy of God, that Compassion He has been longing to show to us.

But, let us also be mindful that when once more we have known His Compassion, we are returned to the risk of forgetfulness. Let us, then, stir ourselves daily, as David stirred himself daily. Remember the Lord, and forget not all His benefits. Forget not one least thing of the many kindnesses He has shown towards you. Forget not how deep your despair with each trial you made of independence from His rule. Forget not that He has taken you from sin’s slavery, and never allow yourself to consider going back. Never again sell yourself into bondage for the glittery pleasures of this world. You have seen where it leads, and it is no pleasant path.

It was God’s Compassionate intervention that brought David around, caused him to pray, “Change my heart, oh God.” He intervened by causing David to remember what he had done, and to understand how terribly wrong it had been. In contrast to this I find the prayer of Nehemiah, a prayer so bold as to seem almost presumptuous. “Remember what I have done, my God, and have compassion on me according to the great measure of Your lovingkindness” (Neh 13:22). Now, I am paraphrasing, of course, and in context I can see that Nehemiah is pointing back to some very specific activities he had undertaken in matters concerning God and His house. It is these activities specifically that he asks God to remember.

It would seem to me that drawing God’s attention to past accomplishments might not be such a great move. After all, as swift as we may be to point to the things we got right, there’s a lot more back there that we got horribly wrong, and would just as soon remained forgotten. Well, to our benefit, we have the promise of God that what He has forgiven has truly and fully been forgotten. It has been erased from the books. The court has no record of such an offense having happened. Indeed, should the enemy seek to bring these things up as evidence against us, his argument would find no evidence to support it. When God says it is forgotten, it is forgotten. Even with that, though, I would find myself challenged to point back to anything I have done and suggest to God that this was some sort of reason for blessing me. I can even look at those things I do around His house and recognize that in every case, there has been the poison of sinful thought and behavior spoiling the offering. I cannot, then, look at these as having earned me something. Indeed, the minute I start to think what I have done for Him is cause to expect payment from Him, I have destroyed whatever worth might have existed in my actions, for I have shown my motivation to be utterly impure. I have acted so as to receive, not out of simple love and devotion to my Savior.

The one saving grace I find in Nehemiah’s prayer is that, although he sets out his actions for consideration, he does not, in the end, claim them as the cause for compassion. No, even so, the compassion he seeks of God he seeks on the basis of God’s great lovingkindness. In other words, it is not that his good deed somehow demands compassion. It is God’s love that prompts him to expect compassion, knowing it is God’s preference. We might almost say that the very fact that one cries out for God’s compassion is in itself something of a confession of one’s sins. Were it not for those sins, we would have no crying need for His compassion. If we were not cognizant of our offenses against His holiness, we should not recognize any need to ask Him for mercy. We could spend all our time thanking Him for His blessings.

Repeatedly, then, we find God instructing us to have compassion on the poor, the needy, the oppressed (Ps 72:13). Indeed, he tells us to practice that compassion, taking care not to be an oppressor of such needy people ourselves (Zech 7:9-10). We are not even to think of doing wrong to another! Our compassion for life is to extend to all its forms. Even those beasts which serve us are to know our compassionate care, they are not to be mistreated (Pr 12:10a). However, we dare not let this become unbalanced to the point where our concern for nature outweighs our compassion for our fellow man. This was the great error of Jonah. “You had compassion for this plant, this plant, Jonah! You didn’t so much as lift a finger to help it grow. It grew without you. And you show such care and sorrow that it should die. What is that plant to you? Yet, here is Ninevah, more than 120,000 souls in eternal peril, and you could care less. Hey, remember their animals, maybe that will stir you. What’s wrong with you, Jonah?” (Jonah 4:10-11).

Welcome to America! Welcome to a world that is more concerned over a seal than over a child. Welcome to a humanity that would gladly sacrifice its fellow human to save a fish. Absolutely, we are called to be good stewards of this Earth God has created for us. Absolutely, as the beings handed dominion over the animal kingdom, we are to be compassionate rulers of that kingdom, just as our God is compassionate in ruling us. But, this does not change the fact that we are the beings created in His image, we are the beings we are therefore to hold in highest esteem among all earthly life. Why? Because we represent Him. No other creature has that calling upon it. No other creature shares the responsibility of that calling. But, to all of those who care more for trees than for people, who are more deeply moved by the plight of the polar bear than by the crimes of the abortion clinics, I have to ask: What’s wrong with you? It is not so terrible that you have compassion on these lesser creatures. The terrible thing is that you have no compassion for your fellow man.

This same lack of balance can infect the church. It had done so in Jesus’ day. It can do so on any given day. Even if the church itself remains on a steady footing, we may find ourselves focusing in the wrong direction. We are forever slipping into the falsehood of works. Oh! And how keenly we feel the sacrifice of those works! It is that sinful crime of thinking we have done something worth noticing. It is the sinful crime of laying our claim of worth before the King. It is, really, the criminal act of unbelief. By behaving thusly towards God, we make of Him something no different than the idols of the past. We display an understanding that sees Him as a malevolent force that must be appeased, not a loving force that can be trusted.

To such a mindset, Jesus proclaims, “Go and learn the point. God said, ‘I desire compassion, not sacrifices.’ For that cause, I have come to rescue sinners. How could I call the righteous? There are none to call! For your part, if you understood that passage, you would not condemn these innocents, either” (Mt 9:13, Mt 12:7). So it is that the apostles encourage the heart of compassion in their charges. “You who have been chosen by God, His beloved, heed this command: Have a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other. Forgive one another. However just you may feel your complaint is, let go of it anyway. Did the Lord not freely forgive you? Do likewise” (Col 3:12-13). Indeed, if you have any love by which to console me, any compassion, if Christ has encouraged you at all and you are in this fellowship of the Spirit, then complete my joy. How? Be of one mind, love, and Spirit. Be intent on one purpose (Php 2:1-2), and may the LORD bless you for having compassion on me (1Sa 23:21).

Clearly, then, as compassion is so characteristic of God, it is to be characteristic of us. We have seen that compassion is called for in the saints of God, a compassion as limitless as we, by the power of the Holy Spirit, are capable of. We are to understand that compassion and sacrifice are not the same thing. We are to do to others as we would have God do to us. If we have a duty before God, that is it. For, we are His image, His representatives. We are His children, and if we are His children, we are so by character, certainly not by lineage. With that, I shall endeavor, over the next few days, to consider some particular aspects of what it means to manifest compassion towards those we encounter in this life.

Prayerful (06/08/08)

Even given an understanding that God is Compassion, and that He seeks to find His children having compassion as well, we may be at a loss. It is well and good to know how God makes His Compassion known. It is well and good to know that His compassion towards us is reason for us to have compassion on others. But, what is our compassion to look like? How do we do this? We are not God, after all. We are not possessed of His great wisdom. Nor can we act as He acts, with the irresistible power of sovereignty. However, the Scriptures, His guide book for His children, does not leave us without instruction in this.

Primary among the ways in which we are empowered to manifest compassion is prayer. This should hardly come as a surprise to the believer. Prayer is primary in everything we do, or it should be. In conflict between believers, prayer is the first resort. But, it is to be prayer of a nature that makes no claim of being right, only of being submitted to God. Whoever is wrong, Lord, find him willing to change.

Here, too, is the mode for the restoration of those who have wandered from the path of righteousness. Again, while we may feel certain of our understanding, it would be far better were we to recall to mind that our understanding, however fine, remains a limited and imperfect thing. As such, our prayers in this regard ought also to leave room for ourselves being the one changed, if indeed it is our own understanding that is wrong.

This can prove a great difficulty for us, particularly as we grow in study. We feel we have set ourselves on firm foundation, that our doctrine has been fully vetted. Indeed, as our studies have continued, we have seen that doctrine continually reinforced, new data constantly supporting the old. The very idea of any other possibility has become so improbable to our way of thinking that to hear it suggested by another, however esteemed, tends to make that other suspect in our minds. It seems to escape us, in such moments, that our estimation of our own understanding is as likely to be overblown as not. It seems to escape us that at least some portion of that reinforcing material we have found has been found because we already decided the meaning. It was found because we had closed ourselves off to any other possible meaning. So, of course it now tends to confirm our earlier beliefs.

Truly, as marvelous and as necessary as I find this study of the Bible, this danger only increases as I proceed. It is for this cause that I have generally sought to compare my own sense of things with what other, better minds have found in the passages in question. This is necessary. Indeed, I think it necessary to hear not only those whose views I am relatively sure to agree with, but also those views which are inclined to differ. It is necessary to hear the best arguments to both sides of the question. It is even more necessary, though, to hear God. One must recognize that on every side of these theological issues stand men who love God, who believe God, and who do their utmost to earnestly and honestly represent Him in this world. There is no evil intent to deceive for the most part, only misunderstanding. I would note that in the centuries since the Church was established, God has not seen fit to settle most of these debates. Perhaps He prefers that we learn how to pray through our differences.

Indeed, He calls us not only to pray for those whose opinions differ from our own, but to pray for those who are out and out opposed to us, even attacking us. Not only that, but if we are truly to manifest the compassion of God in our own behavior, such prayers are to be a constant soundtrack in our lives. Listen to this fine example: When my enemies were sick, David writes, I wore sackcloth. I fasted. I prayed for them constantly. In God’s ears, my feelings were no different than if they had been friends, brothers, who suffered. My mourning for their situation was like I would mourn were my own mother in their state (Ps 35:13-14).

Am I able? How often do I even do this for disagreements any more? I know there were times. But, of late? Where is compassion? Listen! So long as Jesus was on the earth, He prayed with many tears, crying out in supplication to the One Who could save (Heb 5:7). Now, I’m cutting that short, I know. The particular focus of the author in that case is His prayer for His own life, but His supplication for all of us was no different, nor is it now. We know, for instance, that has He came to Jerusalem, compassion led Him to weep for its people, because He knew what must come (Lk 19:41).

Those who lead the flocks are called to have this same mindset. “Who is weak, but I am made weak as well? Who sins without my being intensely concerned for their restoration?” (2Co 11:29). In truth, though, we are all called to have this compassion towards our fellows. This is our prime motivation to pray one for another. We are made aware of these things that we might call upon God for compassion (Da 2:17-18), whether it be things on a national scale, or things on a most personal scale.

This is so fundamental to our manifesting of compassion. If God is not pouring it into us, we cannot pour it out. If we are not truly and personally concerned over the things that happen around us, we only remove ourselves from the place of blessing. We only close up that river of compassion from flowing in our own lives. God’s Compassion will continue unchecked, rest assured. But, He will find another avenue for its expression. We have had the chance to participate and chosen not to. We have had the opportunity to show ourselves mature children of His household and instead shown ourselves unready.

Pray. Pray that God’s compassion would be shown toward friend and enemy alike. This is, after all, of a piece with His constant example. He Who causes His sun to shine on righteous and sinner alike. Yet, we know He is just. We know that His patience, great though it is, must give way to punishment where repentance is not found. So, pray that repentance would be found. Pray that the hard heart of your enemy, of His enemy, might be softened that His Compassion may be seen. Pray for the miracle of salvation, rather than the selfish desire of vindication.

Careful (06/09/08)

Another characteristic of compassion is carefulness. Our pastor has been apologizing in the last few messages for our tendency, both as parents and as evangelists in general, to shove the Gospel down the throats of those we seek to save. Well, surely you can’t save a hungry man by choking him with food! Surely, a thirsty man is not well served by being held under water until he drowns. He has a point here. We do not have any sort of Biblical mandate for force-feeding the Gospel. We do not, at least I do not, have any sort of personal, experiential basis for such an approach. Indeed, if my experience speaks to the point at all, it is to say that such attempts are by and large not only unhelpful, but downright detrimental to the spread of the Good News.

Obviously, where the raising of our own children is concerned, there is a responsibility to teach them of God’s ways. However, if that teaching consists of nothing but force, it is not teaching at all. It is browbeating. If that teaching is not done by example, then it will quickly be seen as something worse than busy work. This will hold true however earnestly we believe what we teach, and it is our greatest problem. For our example can never hold up to the standards we are given. Sadly, we parents tend to be too proud to teach about our failures, about the impossibility of the task at hand – at least as it lies in our own strength to accomplish. So, we present the message that we are talking nonsense, insisting on a perfection we do not by appearances achieve ourselves. Ears that hear such a problem and no solution will quickly find better things to do with their time.

No, we are called to be careful. We are called to follow after the example of our Savior. He is described as one who will not break a damaged reed, one who will not snuff out the fire that has grown weak (Isa 42:3, Mt 12:20). That does not simply mean He will leave such situations as they are. It means He will do quite the opposite. The damaged reed He will restore to full strength. The guttering fire He will fan back to full flame. For, He is the Good Shepherd. He does not simply look out over His flocks in complacency. He gathers up those lambs which are too tired to walk. He carries them in His bosom until they regain their strength. He gently leads (Isa 40:11). Notice that! He gently leads. He doesn’t force-feed. He doesn’t push. He leads. He is gentle in dealing with us, as ignorant and misguided as we are, because He has suffered our weaknesses Himself (Heb 5:2). He has suffered our weaknesses, but He has overcome! He has been tempted by every temptation we will ever face and more, yet never has He fallen into sin (Heb 4:15-16). Thus, our High Priest is able to deal with us with sympathy, with compassion, with mercy and grace. Thus, we are confident in drawing near to His throne in our time of need.

He is, after all, the one who calls out to us, “Come to Me, you weary and burdened. I will give you rest. Learn from Me, I am humble. Take My yoke upon yourself, for I am gentle. My yoke is easy, My load light. With Me, your soul will find its rest” (Mt 11:28-30). This is compassion. It is not an invitation to idleness and sloth, for such would never do in a child of God. To offer such a life is to offer the guaranteed eventuality of death, however pleasantly we might pass the next few years. No, there will be work, but never so great that it wears us down. There will be requirements, but never so stringent that we cannot meet them. Oh, always, there will be that goal set before us, always the race to be run. But, it is rather like a relay race. We run our piece, and pass the baton to our Lord. He will carry us on towards the goal as we rest, and when we have rested, He will pass the baton back to us. If this image were to be followed through to that final few feet to the finish line, I doubt not that He will stop short, if He has the baton in that moment, and pass it back to us that we may have the thrill of crossing under our own power, as it were. Sure and we will be fully cognizant that apart from Him we could have done nothing, yet His compassion being such as it is, can we really imagine that He would not do so, unless we were yet incapable of those last few inches?

Here is the compassion we are given as our model: God loved the world so much, His compassion for those lost and enslaved to sin was so great, that He willingly sacrificed His only Son to give eternal life to we who were perishing (Jn 3:16). What part have we in this? Only believe. And even this we do not manage on our own, but that very Shepherd in Whom we are to believe picks us up, rests us against Himself, and instills in us the belief we need.

Many look upon this view of God’s Love and Compassion, and cannot rectify that view with what they see in the world around them. Many cannot rectify the image we have of God with the picture they find painted by His church, His people. That’s nothing new. Jesus’ own disciples had a problem with this. He had painted them a picture of God as the sower of seed. Long had they heard of Him as the vineyard owner, so careful of His plantings. And yet, they had but to look around to see the weeds. They had but to look around to see that many who claimed to be His planting were false. So, they turned to the Teacher and asked Him about this. “If He sows good seed, Lord, how is it we see all these tares in Your field?” (Mt 13:27).

Now, that verse taken alone, I have to admit, does not show any immediate connection to compassion. But, the answer that is given makes compassion clear. “Leave the tares” (Mt 13:29). What? How is that helpful, Lord? What damage they will do if left to themselves! They sully Your good name. They spread lies and deceit under the banner of Christendom. Yes, my child, but if you try and clear them out of the fields now, you will uproot the good wheat as well. You will destroy more by your attempts at weeding than they will destroy by remaining.

It is rather like the case of a cancerous tumor that has wrapped itself too thoroughly into the maze of nerves. The doctor would greatly prefer that every trace of that tumor were removed. But he knows that if he is overly diligent in his efforts, he will no doubt damage the nerves beyond hope of repair. He will leave his patient worse off for his healing, and this will never do. As heartbroken as he may be, and as sorrowful as the news of his impotence in fully addressing the cancer will be to the patient and the family, compassion requires another course, lest he break the bruised reed.

Sin is much more insidious a problem, and our Savior is much more skilled in His surgery. Yet, even He knows limits to what He can do without destroying the patient by His efforts to save. He knows that we are but dust, that there is a limit to what we can bear. So, He removes what can be removed, and gives us rest in which to gain strength. He does not give up. He does not turn His back on the situation, and leave the cancer of sin to grow again. No, no! But, He deals with us according to our weakness, pacing His efforts to our capacity to thrive.

It would be a poor gardener who, in pruning his plants, removed every last green branch! Indeed, he will not even remove a majority of branches. There is a boundary between pruning back hard, as it were, and dealing a death blow. The good gardener knows well where that boundary lies. He prunes selectively, so as to produce more fruit. He may leave some of those bad branches for a season, knowing that he can address them next year; knowing that to include them in this year’s pruning might well prove fatal to the plant. And then, where is the fruit?

So, our compassionate Savior is careful of us. He deals with our sins not in one extensive and immediate operation, but little by little, step by step, season by season. How we long for it to be otherwise! Yet, such longing must come from ignorance. Certainly, we would desire to be in that completed state, every step of our sanctification done and behind us. And, certainly that day will come, for He Who began the work, He Who continues the work, is faithful to complete it. But, His yoke is easy, His burden is carefully weighed so as to strengthen us, not break us.

This must also be our model in dealing with others. For that matter, it must be our model for dealing with ourselves. How well I know the sorrow of that besetting sin which has yet to be excised! How well I know the frustration of feeling it still so entangled that it seems I shall never be free. Such sorrow! Such anger to find it still there every morning. When, O Lord? How long? Yet, my trust must be in His skill and His timing. It is not that I ought ever to give up. It is not that I ought ever to cease from crying out for Compassion an Mercy to take this cup away from me. But, when I allow that sorrow to lead me into taking matters into my own hands, when I turn from seeking sanctification in His arms and instead start trying to take it for myself by force of arms, as it were, I only set myself up for failure and further frustration. And all along, there are the arms of Compassion saying, “Come, and I will give you rest.”

Sympathetic (06/10/08-06/12/08)

While sympathy is never enough, we cannot have compassion without it. I wonder if this isn’t a part of why Jesus came to minister as a man. I already looked at those passages from Hebrews which point out how His experiences fit Him out so perfectly to serve as our eternal High Priest. I also hold that God, being eternal and eternally unchanged, has been Compassion longer than time has been. It is not that He could not know and express the Compassion that He Is without His having come here, nor can I say there was a need for Him to perfect what has ever been perfect in Him. Perhaps we might say that in this, the fellowship and familiarity that make Compassion a bit easier was reestablished. In some small measure, the relationship of Eden was restored as God once more walked with man.

If God’s inclusion of the Gentiles in His kingdom was a grand fulfilling of the poorly executed Galilean intermingling with the Canaanites – a uniting as the city of God rather than the city of man, then here, in a way, we have the opposite. In Eden, God and man had walked together in fellowship, and God had come to visit, so far as we know, uncloaked and undisguised. Man was raised up to a similar openness with God, he being most literally uncloaked and free of any such guile as might seek disguise. Now, in Jesus, God again was walking with man, no longer in the Garden, to be sure, and no longer uncloaked. No, He was so fully disguised that for the most part, man did not recognize Him. He came in the form of man, lest man’s now sinful life must be struck from his breast at the sight. He came having all but eliminated the power of the Godhead from Himself, and yet still holding the fullness of the Godhead in His being. It was a restoration of fellowship, but a sad shadow of that former glory. And yet, that shadow foreshadows the future, completed restoration of not only fellowship, but glorious, unfettered and limitless fellowship.

This seed of fellowship, then, may have its connection to the growth of compassion, but it is more likely to have had this impact on us than on He Who Is Compassion Incarnate. Yet, we know in ourselves that we are far more inclined to sympathy towards those we know and love than towards the stranger or toward the antagonist. We are called to rise above this tendency, yet we know it is there in ourselves. God, however, is pleased with those whose sympathy is so great that they place their friend’s condition higher than their own in importance. Indeed, He repeatedly instructs us that this is how we ought to live, for it is how He lives, how His Son Who came and walked among us lived in our midst.

But one example will make the point. Jesus, coming with purpose and foreknowledge to the grave of friend Lazarus, saw Mary on the way, and she weeping ceaseless tears of sorrow. Those who walked with her expressed their sympathy, crying and wailing right alongside her. Jesus’ own sympathy was no less, although He kept His head to greater degree. He sought to know where Lazarus lay, and they together brought Him to the tomb. At the sight of it, Jesus wept (Jn 11:33-35). Now, I have heard all manner of reasons why Jesus wept – that here before Him were the wages of sin paid out, that He being Life is naturally offended by Death, and so on. Yet, these were all matters that He had experienced many times before. This was not the first dead person He had seen, not even the first friend who had died. Yes, of course these things moved Him, and of course He could wish that the plan and purpose of mankind’s salvation would allow for more intervention in the immediate time at hand. But, He knew as well that in this case, that intervention would be allowed. He knew before ever He prayed that Lazarus would be raised up. He had already told Martha as much, hadn’t He?

No, the tears we see from Him on this occasion of purest sympathy. They are not for Lazarus, for Lazarus is rather beyond feeling at the moment, and will be overjoyed, one supposes when he is restored to this present life. Those tears are for Mary’s tears, for the sorrow that has engulfed her, no more and no less. From what better source could Paul have learned that which he taught to the Church? “Let the body be undivided, each member caring for the other without the least partiality. If one suffers, all out to suffer alongside. If one is honored, all ought to rejoice” (1Co 12:25-26). The clear import of this is that we ought to be so fully in fellowship with one another that the other’s honor is felt to reflect upon ourselves, that the other’s sorrow is felt to strike ourselves down. If we are one body, then the body must feel as a body feels. The finger being cut, it is the mouth that speaks out the pain. The foot being lamed, it is the whole body that is made unable to walk. Likewise, when disease has been flushed from the least organ of the body, it is the whole body that experiences the improvement. So, says Paul, let it be with the Church. So, says Christ, let it be with My sheep.

Somewhere, there is a balance to be struck between zealousness for the Truth of God and sympathy for our fellow believers, and even sympathy for those who do not believe. Indeed, there our sorrow may be at its greatest, for though they are not come into the kingdom of Christ, yet they are akin to us by nature of the flesh. It is this feeling that struck Paul so often, as he tried to reach his countrymen with the Gospel of the kingdom and they refused to hear. His heart broke for their stubbornness, for the certainty of what must befall them in their rejection of God’s offered mercy. Yet, he was not so far moved by this sympathy for the fate of his people that he would pay less heed to God himself. That sympathy for the unbeliever cannot move us to share in their unbelief. It certainly ought to move us to speak out all the more of this kingdom to which we belong. It certainly ought to impel us to the prayerfulness that characterizes those who share the compassion of God.

“The despairing man should find kindness from his friend,” Job said. “Otherwise, he might be so foolish as to depart from the fear of the Lord” (Job 6:14). Clearly, then, his first thought is to the believer. Really, it’s to himself, for he is the believing, though despairing man of which he is speaking. So much to say on this! First and foremost, we must do away with the notion that despair is somehow so foreign to the life of faith as to prove the absence of faith where it is seen. Job’s faith was such as elicited particular commendation from God Himself! That commendation didn’t change because of his despair. No, though the trials he underwent were grave, and though he responded to them as any man must, God still deemed him a man of great faith.

I have seen this alternate mindset pressed upon believers as the proper understanding of counting it all joy (Jas 1:2). Yet, to suggest that we are to really smile our way through the most terrible circumstances of life, to suppose that whatever trials come our way we are expected to remain cheerful in the midst of it, this sets a standard that would cause the despairing man to despair all the more. I watched this just a few days ago. The reaction of the despairing man to such counsel was to say, “that’s fine for the super-Christian, but it does nothing for me.” Really, now. This super-Christian, if he is to be found at all, is a very rare bird. Yes, I know there have been those few in the history of the Church who stood so calm and so at one with God even in their moment of death that their stories amaze. Stephen, of course, Peter and Paul in their final moments, not to mention so many of the early fathers of the faith, and even those heroes of the Reformation; all might be counted in these superior ranks, I suppose, if we were given to such rankings. But, the fact that their stories amaze ought to tell us something right away: It’s not the norm! If it were, we should find little in their story to excite remark.

Further, the face they put on their times of trial does not necessitate that they had never known their moments of despair. Perhaps they hadn’t, but I suspect they had their moments. For most of us, though, those moments will define the greater portion of our trials, and the joy is likely to be come to in retrospect. It is when we can look back on those things that seemed fit to overwhelm us and discover that by the grace of God we were not overwhelmed, but only made stronger, that joy comes in. It is when we can look back and say, “look what the Lord has done!” that the joy of discipline is ours. Nobody, as Scripture reminds us, enjoys the discipline while it is happening. It is the fruits of discipline that bring us joy.

In the meantime, as Job said, the man in the midst should find kindness from his friends. Now, that kindness cannot consist in keeping the despairing man in the dark. If that despair is grounded in unbelief, it is no kindness to leave unbelief to persist. Kindness insists that, while we sympathize with the despair, we yet inflict the seeming wound of pointing out the deadly cost of unbelief, and that we also shine forth the life-giving grace of God who is faithful and just to forgive if we will but repent and change course.

If that man should be a fellow believer, the need is no less great. Indeed, our kindness ought to be more inclined to such a one because he is kin not only by the flesh but by spirit. He is a fellow brother, adopted alongside ourselves, in the family of God. If our own brother were brought so low, would not the simple love of kinship lead us to ease his suffering as best we can? How much more those whose kinship is on this higher plane?

Of course, experience shows that our love for family is imperfect at best. A brother may have so wronged us or hurt us that his despair does not strike a sympathetic chord in our being. So, too, a brother in Christ, though we know we are to love him, may grate on us in one fashion or another such that we find it a great difficulty to do so. We may excuse ourselves with mental gymnastics like that of saying we must love him but we don’t have to like him. Such finessing of the law, though, is more fit for the Pharisees and Sadducees than for those who claim kinship to the Christ of God! Yes, and yet, I know that tendency in myself as strongly as any other man.

Lord I must stop for just a moment and say thank You. It seems to me that the more I have been looking at this issue of compassion, the less I have felt it, the less I have felt as if I am properly presenting You to the world around me. This morning, You directed my eyes to the parable of the leaven, and it’s lesson as Chrysostom expressed it: “The leaven, though buried, is not destroyed. Little by little it transmutes the whole lump into its own condition.” And with this, my King, I combine the events of last night, and I see that yes, I am not as I was. While I may not yet be thought the most compassionate of men, I see that it is there, that leaven of Your inward working, and indeed, little by little You are transmuting the whole of this lump. So, thank You. Thank You for the evidence You set before me, for having that compassion towards me.

Is it not true that You Are indeed Who You say You Are? As if it could be otherwise! Yet, here, my God, I see that You have indeed looked upon this bruised reed and given it cause to stand firm. Now, my Lord, I await the fanning of this dimmed spark to full flame, a restoration of the passionate pursuit of You. Let this flatness be done and gone, and a heart glad to know You and glad to show You be found beating in my breast.

Sympathy: it is this emotional sharing in the lives of those we know that is to mark the Christian. They shall know us by our love one for another, by our sympathy one for another, by our willingness to rejoice in another’s joy and mourn for another’s loss. This has got to go beyond the empty words and emptier faces of programmed response. We all know how to do it. We have our wedding face for the wedding, our funeral face for the funeral, our quick, “congratulations,” or, “I’m so sorry,” that we toss out like an answering machine – no real connection. Just doing what we know we’re supposed to do and trying to get it over with so we can get back to what we’d rather be doing. We know how to be polite, genteel. But, there’s nothing there.

That’s exactly the problem God was having with His people when Jesus came down! They knew how to be polite, how to put on the trappings of legality. They knew all the proper moves for worship, had memorized all the psalms to be sung. All about purity, they were. Could wash things down without even a thought. In fact, truth be told, everything about their religion was being done without even a thought. No connection. No feeling. No sympathy for God and no sympathy for the lost. Just mechanical motions.

It may seem a strange thing to have sympathy for God, but I think that may well be the proper starting point. Do you not realize that God grieves for the condition of this world, for the lost generations of Adam? Do you suppose He was amused at the thought of the Flood? That He was entertained by those forty years Israel wandered, by the Holocaust, by any of these terrors His own people, Jew and Christian in their turn, have gone through? No! He grieves. His grief over our fallen state is as great as His love, that love that steeled Him to the sacrifice of His own Son for our salvation, to not just assuage the grief He was feeling, but to eradicate the cause of His grief.

Surely, if the pain of one limb is felt by the whole body, the pain which strikes the head is most painful of all! Well, if Jesus is the head of the Church body, and the Father yet reigns, then is the Father not in some wise a limb of this body as well, and as head of the Head, should His pain, His sorrow, not be felt even more strongly by those who name themselves as His children, as His hands and feet?

It used to be that way. Isaiah wept with the Father, and wept bitterly, for he looked upon God’s people and he saw his own people. He looked upon God purposes, and he saw that destruction, albeit not complete, must come upon these people. Some, he doubtless knew well. Most, he likely knew little to nothing about. And yet, so deep is his despair, his sympathy for the Father, that he cries out, “Don’t look at me! My misery is too great. Let me weep bitterly. No, don’t seek to comfort me, for my tears are over the destruction of my people” (Isa 22:4). Likewise Jeremiah. “I could wish that I had endless fonts of water to supply the fountain of my tears. If I could, I should weep continuously for the slain of my people” (Jer 9:1).

Yes, I see that those words express a sympathy and a sorrow over the people who suffer, but if you have ever loved one suffering affliction, you know that their suffering becomes yours as well. You may not feel the full impact of what they’re going through. You may not feel the stabbing pains of their disease, the constant discomfiture of their debility, yet, if you are partnered to them, you are going through pains and discomfitures all your own, and these are not yet anything of sympathy. They are just the fleshly reaction to a world askew. Things are not as they ought, and our first response is to scream out against the injustice of it all.

Welcome to God’s world. In Him, we have the loving companion of every man who has ever suffered. Even as He must dispense His justice, His compassion is such that He sorrows not only over the necessity of what He must do, but over the pain that the one He must so discipline is experiencing. He looks upon us in our foolish addiction to sin, He sees to only the wages that insistent sinning is earning, but the suffering it brings us even as we ‘enjoy’ the seeming pleasures of that sin. And He sorrows. He suffers in His heart for His love for us desires so much that we might be free of this disease of sin. His heart aches longingly for that moment when we shall reach out for our salvation, when we shall cry out to Him and He shall answer.

If we are truly His children, awake to His presence, and alert to His purposes, surely we must have sympathy for the constant breaking of His heart by those who slumber on. For that matter, seeing our own imperfections are yet so numerous, surely, our heart must break with knowing that we, too, break His heart so often. And yet, He is faithful. And yet, in our despair, we find Him the kindest Friend, tenderly caring for us lest our despair overwhelm us and we forget the God Who keeps us. Oh, we may grow negligent for a season. We may forget Him for an hour or a day or even a year, and yet He remains, and He is faithful to bring us back to remembrance lest we be overwhelmed by our own foolish grief. For, indeed, if He is indeed the One Who works all things for good for we who serve Him – and He IS – what cause have we for grief? What reason have we to despair? If my hope is in the One Who changes not, then never is that hope going to find it necessary to give up! Never will I find sound reason for hope to give way to despair. Though He slay me, yet will I trust Him, for He makes all things Good, even the death of this body.

Active (06/13/08)

One final aspect of compassion which cannot be ignored is that compassion is active. Sympathy, while emotionally active, does not otherwise accomplish anything to remove the cause of sorrow. We all know the saying that misery loves company, and it is this which sympathy addresses. That is not wrong in itself, as we have seen. But, it is not enough. John is particularly blunt in addressing the Christian who would allow his compassion to stop at sympathy. “If you, who have the world’s goods, see a brother in need and do nothing for him, how can you claim that God’s love abides in you?” (1Jn 3:17).

This is in keeping with the oft-repeated sense of what true religion should look like. For true religion, reflecting the love of God, must act in the face of need. Pure religion as God defines it is found in visiting the helpless in their distress, as well as remaining undefiled by worldly ways (Jas 1:27). Just keeping one’s nose clean is not enough. When you provide for the poor, you are lending to the Lord, who will Himself repay you for your service (Pr 19:17). Bear each other burdens, for this fulfills the Law of Christ (Gal 6:2).

There are times when all that we can actively do is pray. The situation is such that there is nothing in our power by which we might provide tangible assistance. Then, by all means, pray! Even where you are able to actively intervene, pray! So did Nehemiah first react to news of the state of Jerusalem (Neh 1:4). Of course, the record shows that this prayer led to action. Is that a surprise? Nehemiah prayed that God would address the issue he could not address himself, and God prayed that Nehemiah would act under His direction to end the sorrow. It strikes me that in many situations, even when we think ourselves fully equipped to help, prayer before acting is a wiser approach. Our government is a fine example of action which does not seek the wisdom of God to guide. Repeatedly, they manifest the fruit of the law of unintended consequences. When we act without prayer, without hearing God’s wisdom and purpose first, we are prone to manifest those same fruits, if on a lesser scale.

But, consider these other examples of active compassion. The Samaritan felt compassion for that man in the road (Lk 10:33). Had he felt only sympathy, he might have offered some words of commiseration in that man’s suffering and then walked on. One supposes even those others in the parable managed that much. But, they did nothing to change the situation. Compassion took action.

Compassion took hold of the prodigal son’s father when he saw his son straggling home at last (Lk 15:20). Sympathy might have stopped with feeling joyful about the restoration. Compassion took action. He not only pronounced an unfettered forgiveness, he displayed it. He brought good clothes, restored the son’s dignity, fed him. In every way, he made it tangibly clear that his son was restored in full, even to the point of admonition his less graceful brother.

These two examples are but parables, it is true. Yet, the truth that they teach is founded on plentiful examples. Pharaoh’s daughter, seeing Moses in his basket had pity on him. Oh, how sad. But, pity could have left him in his floating casket. Compassion could not. Compassion took action, and took him in as if he were her own child, even bringing in a Hebrew woman to nurse him (Ex 2:6-7).

David, at one point, came to Manahaim with his men, and the people there took note that he was hungry, thirsty, exhausted from his trek through the wilderness. They felt for him and his men. But, they didn’t just feel. They acted. They brought all sorts of provisions to provide for the need: beds, basins, and an abundance of food (2Sa 17:27-29). And, it is specifically noted that not all who helped were even Israelites. God Who Is Compassion will have compassion on whom He chooses, and He will cause that compassion to be manifested through whom He chooses. He is not limited to the sons of His household, for He rules over all mankind, whether they would have it so or not.

Of course, if we want to see Compassion in action, there is no better place to look than Jesus the Christ. The examples abound! He comes to shore, in the midst of mourning the loss of His cousin John, and the crowds are there. Is He annoyed? Does He lash out in His grief at this inconvenience? No! He has compassion on them. He heals their sick. He feeds the entire crowd (Mt 14:14). Seeing a leper, an untouchable, He does not just offer His condolences for the man’s condition. He touches the man (Mt 1:41). Never mind the healing! He healed plenty of folks without ever touching them. Here, the fact of the touch is truly an act of compassion. How long had it been since this man had known even the most careless, meaningless touch of another person? How great must his loneliness have been! The disease was bad enough, but to suffer such isolation on top of it! But, here was active Compassion breaking through to welcome him back to fellowship, and to make sure that this would not be an isolated incident.

It is compassion that moves Jesus to heal (Mt 20:34 – Compassion moved Him. He touched their eyes and sight was restored). It is not our pleading that somehow cajoles Him to act. It is compassion that moves us to act when our actions are not done with the motivation of gain. When we act without a thought to the reward, then we are acting from compassion. Then we are doing more than performing dead works. For, then we are expressing the Compassion we have received. Does God receive reward for the Compassion He exerts towards man? Does any think to repay Him for His Goodness? It is absurd! What could we hope to give Him that is not already His? No! He acts from a higher motivation, from the fundamental motivation of Love.

One last example I shall bring forth from the ministry of Jesus. In His travels, He had happened upon a funereal procession. As if He ever just happened upon a situation! A widow had lost her only son. She was now to be wholly alone in this world. But, Jesus. He stopped the proceedings. He told the woman to cease her weeping. Had He stopped there, this would be a most cruel story. But, of course, He didn’t. He went to the coffin in which her son lay, and commanded Him to arise. Who could refuse the Son of God? That boy arose, and was restored to his mother. Compassion had acted (Lk 7:13-15).

I saved that example for last because it so closely parallels the time Elijah restored the widow’s son to her (1Ki 17:18-22). This was not the first time he had acted to help this woman. Indeed, they had known each other for some time now, for he took up residence in a room she had provided for him whenever he was in the region. But, on this visit, he finds her son dead. Like the woman Jesus encountered, she was now alone in the world, no kin who might help her, no outside support. She is in despair. She is bitter. “Have I done some evil against you, prophet, that this has befallen me?” Elijah does not chide her for her unkind words. He does not correct her for such a lack of faith. He simply calls for her to give him her son, dead as he is.

Now, it occurs to me that this should have shocked her mightily not just because he was asking for the body, but because he was willing to touch it at all, to be defiled by it. Here, there is a foreshadowing of that other example of Jesus touching the untouchable leper. Again, the miracle is powerful enough, that he should raise this child from death. But, the display of compassion in Elijah, like that in Jesus, is greater than the healing. It is there in the willingness to fully sympathize, to fully contact the grief and the suffering.

What I find most striking of all in this story from Elijah’s life, though, is the prayer he offers up. He has one question for God before he makes his request: “Have You caused this?” This question says so much about the character of Elijah. He does not complain of the unfairness of it all. There is nothing of ‘why have You done such a thing?’ There is nothing of ‘how could You?’ There is only, ‘have You?’ In fact, the question is more precise than that, for this event, at least as it is related to us, comes soon after He had addressed the approaching starvation of this woman. “Have You also brought this calamity?” This, too? Of course, we cannot hear the mood in what Elijah is saying. Perhaps there is a note of reproach in his tone. But, the sum of the experience is that whatever has moved him to ask this question, he is sure of the answer. “Lord, restore life to the child.” Whether or no He had brought the calamity, He was certainly fit to bring calamity’s end!

What a lesson for us, in this example. So much is made of our lack of faith limiting God. So much energy is spent, wasted, by us in trying to talk to God properly. You know what I mean. We have those feelings, those thoughts, that we are sure would be utterly wrong to express to God. We would not dare to lay blame for the trials and tribulations at His feet. He’s Good. Therefore, He cannot be responsible for this. And, however much we might recognize that nothing happens without His authorization, that He Himself has said that He brings calamity as well as boon, we are unwilling to openly confess such a thing of Him. We feel it, but we fight the feeling, try to suppress the thought, and certainly would not consciously speak of it to Him.

But, look at this picture! Elijah, perhaps the most powerful prophet of God in the Old Testament, is not afraid to say it. Neither was David afraid to be honest with God. He knew that God would not be offended by honest expression. What other sort of expression can we suppose the God of Truth prefers? Do we really think He needs to be coddled, treated with kid gloves lest we hurt His feelings? Notice as well that there is nothing about the widow here to suggest faith on her part. Anger, yes. Despair, perhaps. But not much of faith. Yet, neither Elijah’s frankness nor the woman’s faithless anger seem to stop God from doing what He will do. Certainly, the boy himself could do nothing to attract God’s favor. He’s dead. And yet, the end of the story is that he is alive, and now faith is restored. “Now I know,” says the widow. “Now I know you are truly a man of a True God, and His word in your mouth is true” (1Ki 17:24).

As I finish out this journey in search of Compassion, let me return to something near our starting point. We have been looking at the second miraculous meal in a fairly short period. Return with me to that first one, and notice the difference of attitude between Teacher and disciple (Mk 6:35-37). His disciples have taken note of the situation. They can feel for the hunger that must be attaching to these thousands who have been around them, and they understand well enough that something must be done. But, what is their first thought? End the event. Get them underway so they can take care of themselves before nightfall. There is sympathy for their hunger, but there is no action.

Jesus, however, insists on compassion, for those who would follow Compassion, who would emulate Compassion, must manifest compassion. “No, you feed them.” Sympathy is not enough. It’s good and all that you are sensitive to the situation. It’s a fine thing that you desire them not to suffer. But, don’t just leave them to fend for themselves. Take care of the problem. Of course, the bigger picture is that, so far as physical means go, they are powerless to take care of the problem. Like Nehemiah hearing of Jerusalem, the solution is beyond them. But, it is not beyond the God they serve, and this is what the disciples needed to understand. They didn’t get it with just one lesson such as this. From what follows after this second miraculous feeding, it seems twice was not even enough. However, the more they found God’s Compassion providing their lack as they provided God’s compassion to the lacking, the more they came to know that the compassion God requires was not beyond them at all. It only required being mindful of His Compassion, of seeking His Compassion to address the situation. For, nothing is impossible with God. The concept does not apply!

This, it seems to me, is what holds us back so often. It is because we fear to take that first step, to make that first trial of acting in God’s Compassion that we fail to be compassionate. It is because, like the disciples, we are still inclined to think in terms of what we can do, rather than what God can do. To act in God’s Compassion is to be constantly reminded that apart from Him we can do nothing. We tend to think and act as though we can, but in truth we can’t. Even were we to have some capacity for action apart from Him, it could never suffice. The need of man will ever and always far exceed man’s capacity to help.

The city of man is struck with such a terrible poverty, such a terrible illness, that we who are of the city of God, we sojourners in this land, cannot possibly hope to bring its cure. “You will always have the poor with you.” When man, apart from God, attempts to address that poverty, to end all ills and bring a universal equality, he acts in utter foolishness. Every such attempt must necessarily end in failure, for those who attempt to bring the cure are poor and deathly ill themselves. It is only as we bear the power of God into the situation that we have hope of improving the lot of the lost. It is only as we bring the light of Life Eternal into their sin-darkened lives that we can think there will be any real change.

So, what are we to do? Well, it seems to me the answer has been laid out quite clearly. Pray without ceasing. Visit the stricken in their need. Inasmuch as you can help by the means God has blessed you with, do so. But, always, always, always, with prayer; always under the direction of the hand of Wisdom. Do not shrink back from the labor, for He Whose burden we bear is gentle, and He shall not suffer that burden to weigh us down. No, He shall strengthen us to pursue the work He sets before us. Indeed, as it is in Him that we live, by Him that we move, through Him that we have being at all, He shall so will and work in us that we shall do it. Together, we shall do it. Together with God.

Intro Definitions God's Name Promise & Warning Assurance Upon Man Compassion's Claim Prayerful Careful Sympathetic Active

Introductory Thoughts (05/27/08)