Let's turn back to Exodus chapter
one. I don't know if y'all remember
a couple of weeks ago, Gabe was preaching and he touched the
word compassion and read a scripture and it moved me greatly. After
30 something years of hearing the gospel, it sort of surprises
me sometimes how little I know about spiritual things, and over the last couple of weeks
after Gabe asked me to speak this morning, I think the Lord
has shown me something about this word compassion. Compassion. I didn't even bother to look
it up in Webster's dictionary. Sometimes that's helpful, but
In this case, as God's people, isn't the only thing we really
want to know is what does God's words say about compassion? That's
really all that matters. Now, compassion is a thing which
sort of defies definition. It's a hard thing to define.
And it almost has to be experienced to be understood. But I did find these two things,
these two things, that all of God's people will come to see
about compassion. Number one, all of God's children
are the objects of compassion. And number two, all of God's
children are commanded by the word of God to have compassion
on others, and they will. God's children will have compassion
one of another. Now, if we look back at Exodus
chapter 1 that Brandon read, I want you to look at verse 8
again and it says, There rose up a new king over Egypt, which
knew not Joseph. We know from Genesis that Joseph's
brothers sold him into slavery and he was taken down there to
Egypt and cast into prison and treated badly. The Lord used
all that to raise him up to interpret Pharaoh's dream. And Pharaoh,
who was the ruler of Egypt, made Joseph king of Egypt. And this
Pharaoh thought a lot of Joseph. And they must have had a good
relationship. And the people of God came down
there, were brought there, and they prospered in the land of
Goshen. And time went on. And as time passed, what happened
was This Pharaoh that knew Joseph died, and another Pharaoh rose
up, and he died, and another Pharaoh rose up, and suddenly
there rose up a Pharaoh who didn't know anything about Joseph, didn't
care about Joseph. But what he did care about was
he looked over there in Goshen, and this is what he saw. In verse
9, he said unto his people, Behold, The people of the children of
Israel are more and mightier than we are. He said, he said,
listen, there's more of them than there is of us. Man, that's
a problem. That's a problem. And then he
says in verse 10, he says, come on now, come on. He's trying
to rally them to do what he's determined to be done. He says,
come on. He said, let us deal wisely with them. Now that's
an interesting term. Y'all know what a euphemism is?
That's when we take pretty words and dress up something really
ugly. That's when we say, well, you know, a little white lie,
that's usually covering up something, a really big lie. Okay? In our family, we have a little
funny thing we talk about when somebody says something that's
a little bit not kind of ugly to somebody else. Our family,
all of us have learned to respond in this way, say, you know, that's,
we don't say to one another, that was ugly. We say, you know,
that was medium nice. Now, that's a euphemism for really
ugly. Let me tell you, this business
here of deal wisely, Those are fancy words for something really
ugly, really ugly that's going to be done. He says, let's deal
wisely with them. He said, let's try to work them
to death. And you all can read down through here and what they
did is they set up about, you know, when you see these travelogues
of the pyramids and all those big temples and carvings of those
funny looking creatures, alligators on the heads of men and all this
sort of thing, You know where that all came from? You know
who built all that? The children of Israel. That
came from this Pharaoh saying, let's deal wisely with them.
Let's work them all to death. They'll take care of it, and
in the process, we'll make great monuments and glory to ourselves.
That's wisely. You see, deal wisely with them
is a euphemism for do what's good for me. Do what's good for
me. And that's man by nature. Do
what's good for me. Whatever's good for me, that's
what's right. That's what's best. Well, it didn't seem to matter
how much he abused them. They just kept multiplying. There
just kept being more and more and more of them. And finally
he got to the point in verse 22, he said, I'm going to make
a law. And here's the law in verse 22. Pharaoh charged all
his people saying, Every son that's born shall be cast into
the river, and every daughter shall be saved alive. Now, I'm sorry, but this is just
ugly. This is a point that needs to
be made. It's horrendous and evil and vile beyond words. What this Pharaoh said was, every
time there's a male child born, I want you to take him, go get
him, can you imagine I can't imagine you and Megan giving
up little Brandon willingly just because he's a boy and saying,
well, here he is. You take him. And they would
walk down to the river. And I'm sure it wasn't done,
you know. I'm sure they just, do you know
how many there were? The population at this point
was such that they say between 100 and 200 male children every
day were taken down to the river and just hurled out there. They
say the population and the size of the crocodiles in the Nile
at this time was unimaginable. They just came by the thousands. every morning to the river waiting
for the feast. And I thought about, is there
a creature in God's earth that is more without compassion than
a crocodile? You see these, you see movies
of them, you know, they, they just rise up in the water, and
their eyeballs come out of the water, and they look, and they
wait, and they just slither, and they just come. And when
whatever it is, least expected, you know, they take them. Boy,
this was How evil, can we imagine anything
more evil than what was done to these children? It's a hard
thing, isn't it? 35,000 male children, what would,
I don't know that anything could be said about it in this country
anymore. But it wasn't in Egypt, it was
the law of the land. So what happened? Look at Exodus
chapter two. There went a man of the house
of Levi and took to wife a daughter of Levi. And the woman conceived
and bear a son. And when she saw him that he
was a goodly child, she hid him for three months. She, I can
understand that. I can understand she tried to
hide him, but there came a point at which he cried to be fed and
She couldn't hide him anymore. And I mean, the Egyptian soldiers
walked the streets listening for the cry of babies. And when
they heard it, they'd go and say, let me see that child. If
it was a male child, down to the river he went. And it says
when she could no longer hide him in verse three, she took
for him an ark of bulrushes and daubed it with slime and with
pitch, and put the child therein, and she laid him in the flags
by the river's brink. She, just off the shore, she
took this basket and put it in the water. Notice, she obeyed
the law. The law was that children had
to go in the river. She obeyed the law. She put him
in the river, okay? But now, and there's a little
lesson there, too, before we go on. You ever get between a
rock and a hard place? And you go, I don't know what
to do here. I don't know what to do. And there will always
be the temptation to break the law, to do what's not right in
the situation. And I understand that. Been there,
done that. It is always better to obey the
law and put this matter in the hands of our God. He's able to
deliver us from whatever we get ourselves into, all right? But
she took this baby down to the river and obeyed the law and
put him in the river, in a place where the bulrushes were there.
And she also, I suspect, knew this about this place. You see
in verse four, and this man's sister, stood afar off to wit
what would be done to him. He said, you know, his wife put
the baby in the bulrushes and went away. But this man said
to his sister, said, watch and see. I want to know what happens
to my boy. I want to know what happens, as bad as it might be. And look at verse five. And the
daughter of Pharaoh imagined that The daughter of Pharaoh
came down to wash herself at the river and her maidens walked
along by the riverside. And when she saw this little
ark among the bulrushes or flags, she sent her maid to fetch it.
And when Pharaoh's daughter opened it, she saw the child and behold,
the babe wept. And look at this. She had compassion
on him. This is the first mention of the word compassion, and it
is someone having compassion on a child, on a child. And she
said, this is one of the Hebrews' children. Then said this sister,
the one who was far off, she started walking towards him.
Can you see the scene here? She's over there watching, and
the Pharaoh's maidens pull this thing out, and Pharaoh's daughter
says, what's in that? She opens it, it's a little girl. She starts
walking towards him. And when Pharaoh's daughter says,
what's one of those Hebrew children? And this woman, this sister said,
shall I go call thee a nurse of the Hebrew women that she
may nurse the child for you? And Pharaoh's daughter said to
her, go. And the maid went. And who'd she call? The little
baby's mother. Oh, the providence of God's better
than anything we could do. Anything we could do. And Pharaoh's
daughter said to her, to the mother of this child, you take
this child and nurse it for me. And she said, and I'll give you
wages. She said, not only do you feed this baby, I'll pay
you to do it. I'll pay you. Our Lord's able
to take the very worst circumstances we can get ourselves into and
make it better than we could ever imagine. You know, It either
works out, all things either work out for our good and his
glory or they don't. Which is, it's a pretty good
illustration if it works out for our good, isn't it? And his
glory. And the woman took the child and nursed it and the child
grew and she brought him unto Pharaoh's daughter and he became
her son. And she called his name Moses
and she said, because I drew him out of the water. That's
his name, Moses. There's something really important
to learn here. You know, compassion, it's hard to define, but the
seed of compassion is a thing we call pity, pity. Compassion comes about when there's
a pitiful sight that's recognized and the heart of the one observing
it is moved, is moved. I don't, I'm sorry to use myself
for an illustration, but it's the only thing I know to draw
upon in this situation. I tried to think back, when's
the first time I had a conscious awareness that I might actually
be thinking and experiencing compassion? And it was, I was
such a young believer, young, young in the faith, but Becky
and I, went to Mexico on a missionary trip with Henry. And one day
Walter said to me, during the day, he said, I gotta run down
to the marketplace, come on, go with me. And so I rode down
there, we parked, and we got out, and we were looking for
whatever it was he was looking for. And we were going along the street,
and here at a corner against a wall was a man. And he was,
he was, I'd never seen anything like this. He was the filthiest,
most gruesome looking mass of flesh I had ever seen in my life. And he just sat there with his
hand out. And I said, Walter, what is that?
He said, he's a leper. And I'd never seen a leper. But
I mean, his fingers were rotten off. He was, he smelled, he was,
people just stayed all away from him or what have you. And it
overwhelmed me. And I had a pocket full of, what's
their currency, pesos. I converted a few dollars into
pesos and I just reached in my pocket and took everything I
had and went over and put it in that man's hand. And you say,
oh, that's not, well, listen, it probably had little effect
on that man at all. I don't know. But I remember
at some point somebody talking about compassion. I said, that's
what that was. And you wouldn't have known me
well enough, but I knew me well enough to know that wasn't like
me. There was a time I wasn't interested in doing anything
nice for anybody. I was always looking at the,
let us deal wisely with them. I was always looking for what
was best for me. But I look back now and I realize,
I think that was compassion. This was the most pitiful sight
I maybe have ever seen, even now, is so pitiful. And what
we are as believers, when God gives us, let me tell you, the
heart of a natural man cannot be moved. It cannot be moved. But when God comes in and gives
us a new heart, oh, it can be moved. And the movement of that
heart when we behold something pitiful is compassion. And the
desire we have is to do the very best we can to relieve that pitifulness
of the situation. And the result of that is compassion. And to spare that pitiful one
as much misery and suffering as is possible, certainly not
to add to it. Not to add to it. And when that's
done, There's another term we all know. You know what it is
when we're moved to compassion and we want to do something about
it. Do you know what the result is?
It's a thing called mercy. Mercy. And the definition of
mercy is not giving somebody what they
deserve. Being merciful. The truth of
the matter is whatever comes our way, no matter how bad it
is, we deserve worse. We deserve worse. But there are
instances in the scripture of compassion. And let me show you
where this is a place where there's absolutely no compassion, where
this all got started. When Adam was put in the garden,
God said, Adam, you've got free reign here. Eat and do what you
want. It's a great place. And he said, but this one thing
don't do. Don't eat of that tree because in the day you do, you'll
die. Well, we know Adam did it anyway, right? And when God came
to Adam and Adam knew he was busted, he knew he was caught.
And we all know that feeling, don't we? We know when it's up.
We know it's like, I did it, I'm caught, and whatever, and
did Adam do this? Let me ask you, did Adam do this?
Did he go, a few verses earlier, he's saying, oh, that woman,
oh, man, she is great. She is something else. Woo, man,
is she something. So what did Adam do? Did he say
when God caught him? Did he say, Lord, I'm responsible
for this. I did it. I'm the one who ate
it. I'm totally responsible. Kill me, but let her go. Is that
what he did? See, that would have been what?
Compassion. He didn't have it anymore. He
couldn't be moved. What did he do? What did he do?
He said, Lord, That woman. Fellas, deliver us from ever
referring to our wives as that woman. The woman. She made me to it. What he's
really saying is, God, it's your fault, but I know you're not
going to take the blame, so blame her and spare me. Kill her, spare
me. That's exactly what was going
on. Adam had lost any ability to have compassion. It was gone. It was gone. You can sooner expect
the compassion of a crocodile as to get it from your fellow
man. We don't have it anymore. We don't have it. And, you know,
so what happened? Adam died and the dead have no
compassion. Turn to 1 Peter chapter 3 with
me. 1 Peter chapter 3. Believers are commanded by God's
Word to be compassionate, and we will be. And I don't want to get sidetracked
with this, but I want to try to make a point about something. You say, well, if only the redeemed
are compassionate, does that mean Pharaoh's daughter, since
she had compassion, does that mean she was a believer? Now,
I don't know, and I don't want to get sidetracked on all that.
I know what the compassionate answer to that question is. Was
Pharaoh's daughter a believer? The compassionate answer is,
I hope so. I hope so. I hope so. Isn't that the compassionate? Because she was pitiful as Pharaoh's
daughter. You know that was a pitiful situation
to be born in. But the compassionate response
is, I hope she was. But we don't know, honestly.
And compassion, listen to me. Compassion is not proof of salvation. If you've been moved to compassion,
that doesn't prove you've been saved. But I'll tell you what
it is. It's evidence. It's evidence. God's people will be compassionate. The total absence of compassion
in a person's life is certainly not good evidence. God's people
are commanded to be compassionate and they will be. Look at 1 Peter
3 verse 8. 1 Peter 3 verse 8 we read, Finally,
be ye all of one mind, having compassion one of another. Love
as brethren, be pitiful. When we see pitiful things, be
pitiful. Be courteous. not rendering evil
for evil or railing for railing, but contrary wise blessing, knowing
that you are there unto call that you should inherit a blessing.
Why in the world do we have to be told not to be evil to a pitiful
situation? I mean, how vile could it have
been? Had I gone over to that beggar
and smacked him up beside the head and said, get up and get
a job. How vile is that? And yet God's word has to command
me as a believer to be compassionate. What's wrong with me? Oh, there's
a lot wrong with me by nature, a lot wrong with me. Turn to
Psalm 40. Why are God's people commanded
to show compassion? Well, number one, because we've
received compassion of the Lord. Aren't we glad the Lord doesn't
treat us the way we deserve to be treated? God's people are commanded to
show compassion because we know what it is, having received it,
and because we have it to give. Listen, the more compassion we
receive, the more we have to give. Look here in Psalm 40,
verse 5. Many, O Lord, my God, are thy
wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which
are to usward. They cannot be reckoned up in
order. If I would declare and speak of them, they are more
than can be numbered. I know exactly how much compassion
everyone in this room who's a believer has received. So many you can't
name them. So many you can't list them.
So much compassion. It's unspeakable. There's no
way to describe the compassion we've received. Now, let me give
you two definitions and try to make a point here. We all know
the definition of grace is God giving us what we don't deserve.
We receive the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ. We
don't deserve it, but he came here and lived 33 years and then
he gives us that righteousness and that's called grace. and
God's people receive that righteousness? What motivates God to give His
grace to His people? One word. It's love. The motivation
for grace is the love of God. God so loved this world of sinners,
this evil bunch of people, that He sent His Son who lived a perfect
life, and He gives us that life. He so loved us. We didn't deserve
it. We're a pitiful sight, and yet
He gives us that grace. Mercy, on the other hand, is
God not giving us what we do deserve. God's people receive
the mercy of God rather than His wrath. What's the motivation
for that? It's compassion. God looks at
His people And says, boy, they're a pitiful lot. Oh, they're so
pitiful. They can't do anything for themselves. They can't help themselves. All
they do is sin, sin, sin, sin. All they do is want to find out
what's dealing wisely with the others so they can get it for
themselves. And the evidence that we are
God's people is that we're compassionate one to another. God pours out
His compassion on His people. He's merciful to us and will
in turn be merciful to others. Turn over to John 19 and let
me show you, let me wrap this up, but let me show you here
how God gives His people a heart of compassion. Two things will
happen. He'll show us who and what we
are by nature and then He'll show us the Lord Jesus Christ.
And here's how He shows us. He shows us who Christ is and
who we are by nature, but the vital way we find out what we
are is in seeing what the Lord Jesus Christ did for us. Look
at John 19 verse 1, we see, then Pilate therefore took Jesus and
he scourged him. Here's the compassion of man.
Take an innocent man and beat him. Beat him with a cat and
nine tails. And then here's compassion. In
verse 2, the soldiers planted a crown of thorns. He said he
was a king, so let's make him a crown of these thorns and jam
it on his head so the blood will run all over him and his head
will bleed all over the place. That's compassion, isn't it?
And then verse 2 also says, and they put on him a purple robe
so we can laugh at him. Let's make fun of him. That's
compassion, isn't it? What a pitiful sight. Here's
a man who's been beaten nearly to death, got a bloody head full
of thorns, and put a purple robe on him and laugh at him. That's
compassion, isn't it? Verse 3 says, And hail, king
of the Jews! And they smote him with their
hands. After they'd nearly beaten him to death and done all this,
then they start smacking him in the face. They start just
beating on him in his face. That's compassion. Take a man
who's nearly beat to death and then just start smacking the
fire out of him. And do we get an image, a picture of the compassion
of man by nature from this? And verse six, it says, and when
the chief priest, therefore, and officers saw him, when they
saw what had been done to him, he'd already been beaten nearly
to death with a cat and nine tails, he had a bloody head.
He'd been smacked about and dressed up like a pseudo-king and made
fun of. They said, that's not enough. Crucify him. Crucify him. They
screamed, crucify him. After Pilate said, let him go.
He hasn't done anything. He's innocent. They said, crucify
him. Do we see what a pitiful sight
he must have been. And they're like, that's not
enough. Crucify him. Do we see man's
compassion by nature? Look at verse 15. Pilate tried
again to persuade him. He said, turn him loose. And
he said, no, away with him, away with him, crucify him. Pilate
said to them, shall I crucify your king? He said, do it to
him. That's their compassion. Verse
28, turn over there. And the final act of non-compassion
is they've now nailed him to a tree, there's compassion, and
he's hanging there and they've jammed a spear up in his side
and he's just moments away from dying and his dying request is,
I thirst. Can I just have a drink of water?
What'd they do? They sent this fella and told
him they dipped a sponge in vinegar and came back and jammed that
in his mouth. How much lack of compassion can we have? Turn back to Luke 23. I'll show you one more thing here.
To say we are without compassion is too kind. We are by nature
a merciless, cruel, hateful, unkind, selfish, wicked, despicable,
evil people, not worthy of the least of God's mercies, and yet
our Lord made intercession for us, even as we did these awful
things to him. Look at Luke 23 verse 34. Our
Lord said, as this was all being done to him, Luke 23 verse 34,
he said, then said, Jesus father, forgive them for they know not
what they do. Folks, there is compassion. All
this being done to him, and in the midst of it, he looks at
us and says, what a pitiful sight. Him who has been marred more
than any man that's ever been marred, he looks at us and says,
listen to me. Do you know who the players are
here in this thing? The people doing this to the
Lord Jesus Christ, do you know who they are? Who we are? We
understand, we've been with them. You know who we are? We're the
crocodiles of the river, waiting to devour the Son of God. The
one chance we got to show no mercy, no pity, and we're waiting
there. Crucified, crucified. And do you know what God did? God the Father said, Those crocodiles, they can't
touch the sons of God. Why? We've already been consumed. We're already done. We're done. We're free. We're free. And you
know what we are? We sit on the throne. We sit
on the throne. You know what we can afford to
do as the sons and daughters of God? We can afford to be compassionate. We can afford to look at all
the other pitiful ones and pray God will have mercy on them.
And you know that's what this is about, what we're doing here?
We pray God is going to raise up a pastor here who will proclaim,
all you crocodiles, come on in. There's a bunch of us in here
already. Come on in and I'll have mercy on you. That's compassion. That's compassion,
and I thank God he's been compassionate to us, and I pray he'll enable
us to be compassionate one to another. I ought never again
look at you and think, you're so pitiful. But the truth is, when we get
in a pitiful mess, which we'll do again, it'll come here, it'll
come there, it'll come another, come my way, when we do, Boy,
let's look at one another and say, Lord, help my brother there. Help my brother. Move my heart
to compassion, and Lord, be merciful. Be merciful. But we've got to
see those things. We've got to see Jesus Christ
as who he is and what he's done for us. And we've got to see
ourselves as what we are. If that ever happens, you know
what? Let me show you one other thing. Turn to Lamentations.
That's just one quick verse. Lamentations is a little book
right before Malachi. It's a little book next to the
last book of the Old Testament. Lamentations, chapter 3, look
at verse 1. Lamentations 3 is between Ezekiel and Jeremiah. Let me find it
real quick here. Lamentations 3. I'm going to get there in a minute.
I'm sorry. Here it is, Lamentations 3, look
at verse 1, this is our Lord, this is a pre-incarnate picture
of our Lord at Calvary and He said, I am, that's God, I am
the man that has seen affliction by the rod of His wrath. Then
look at verse 14, I was a derision to all my people and their song
all the day. He hath filled me with bitterness.
He made me drunken with wormwood. That's the vinegar in his mouth.
He's broken my teeth. Those soldiers knocked his teeth
out, his gravel stones and covered with ash. And thou hast removed
my soul afar from peace. I forgot prosperity. He said,
and I said, my strength and my hope is perished from the Lord.
Remembering mine affliction and my misery, the wormwood and the
gall, my soul hath them still in remembrance and is humbled
in me. This I recall to my mind, therefore I have a hope. It is
the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions
fail not. You know that this is only one
of two times the word compassion has an S on the end of it? We
can be moved to compassion, but the Lord here He had compassions. What that means is He had enough
compassion. He had compassion on you, He
had compassion on you, He had compassion on you. On an innumerable
number, He could have compassion. And then verse 23 says, They
are new every morning, great is thy faithfulness. The Lord
is my portion, saith my soul, therefore will I hope in Him.
The Lord is good unto them that wait for Him, to the soul that
seeketh Him. It is good that a man should
both hope and quietly wait for what? Salvation of the Lord.
That's the end result of compassion, is mercy and salvation. And one
other, I'll quote this one to you. The Lord's compassion, they
fail not. They don't fail. How often are
you and I moved to compassion and we can feel sorry for somebody
and recognize the pitiful situation, but we really can't do anything
about it. It's just, I don't know what good it did giving
that beggar that money. Probably didn't change his life a bit.
But I'll tell you what, the Lord's compassion, they don't fail.
If He's compassionate to you, you got mercy, you got grace,
He saved you. That's salvation. Well, I've
gone a little long. May the Lord bless His word.