If you could turn to Romans chapter
12, I'm gonna springboard from there.
I know I've been there a few months ago, but I wanted to look
at a few more things in relation to what we've been learning recently. When you think of the word compassion,
what comes to mind? The scripture talks about putting
on compassionate hearts. How do we do that? You know,
it's one thing that I've learned that I thought I knew is that
there's a difference in saying, you know, put on the new mind,
renew your mind, love one another, be at peace, just rest, and being
able to do it. It's like when we're young sometimes,
and we're just being children, and our parents say, would you
just grow up? Well, I'm trying. I'm doing it. Just keep feeding
me. I'll be grown soon enough. And then they get grown, and
you're like, would you just slow down? You know, we're never content.
No matter where we are in life, even when we are content, we're
not content with something. We're discontent with something.
We wish things were different. for some reason, usually establishing
a level of sentiment or a level of joy or a level of happiness
or a level of hope that we're hoping to have. And we're just,
you know, not really finding it. And so as I talk about compassion
today, there's gonna be several thoughts in our minds. The first
one is, what does compassion really mean? Okay, I'm understanding
a little bit more. The second one is gonna be, am
I compassionate? I think I'm compassionate. Oh
my gosh, I must be arrogant, because I think I'm compassionate.
Maybe I'm conceited. Surely I'm not compassionate.
Or we might think, well, I know I'm not compassionate. And the world
would say, you're very compassionate. What are you talking about? And
in that, we need to realize that we don't need validation for
who we are. We don't need to be validated
by the people around us, the people that love us, our spouses,
our children, our friends, our family. We need to understand
that who we are is who we are, and the Lord loves us in spite
of that. Not because of that. The Lord
loves us because of who we are, because he has adopted us as
his own. And parents, we get it. We get it. I mean, as many times as we have
had these murderous thoughts and these ideas, you know, I
could just like a stray cat, leave them at the edge of the
woods with a bowl of milk. I mean, you know, you could do all sorts
of things and that's a joke. Okay. Don't turn me in. Um, all of
my kids are accounted for, but that, you know, but we have these thoughts and
then we think about that stuff with our spouses too. We fight
over the stupidest stuff. And we have the stuff in our
life that annoys us. It's not the people that annoy
us. Have you ever noticed that, somebody that annoys you? You
think, oh gosh, here comes so-and-so. They're so annoying. You don't
say it out loud. Some of you do, and that's rude. But we think
it, right? You don't say it out loud. Please
don't say it out loud. If I'm coming up and I annoy you, just
tell me later. Say, hey, I'm gonna talk a little
bit later. It's a good thing, and it is a good thing. But it's
not them that are annoying, it's what they say, it's what they
do. It's something about them that irritates a status in us,
a standard in us. It irritates some resting place
that we have, either in our time or what we want to do. And so
let's just be honest that none of us have the compassion of
Christ. We put it on, we throw it off. We have it for people
who are easy to love, and we fake it for those that aren't.
Okay? So the thoughts that you're having
today, the point of teaching and the preaching of God's Word
is not to convict you. Isn't that the trope? And I know
why, I've said this to pastors too who have taught me, and I
know why we say it, because we feel like something's being done
when we feel this way. And we get to the end of the
sermon and we're like hurrying people out the door, you know
how churches, you know how some churches do. Hey, come on, the
pastor's standing at your car. Shake your hand, I was gonna
put you in here, gotta go. I mean, you know, we don't have that
problem here. But some of the times I've heard,
oh man, you just really stumped my toes today. It's not my intention. And I
hear that at my house. For some weird, really psychologically
disturbing reason, I decided this year that I wanted to hear
from my adult children how horrible a father I was. And I'm thinking,
I'm going to be validated. Oh, Dad, you're not bad at all.
No, they had a list. They had a list. And halfway
down, whoa, whoa, whoa. I mean, I'm only human here.
Hold on a second, hold your flow there. These rhymes are coming
out faster than music's playing. You gotta save those for later. Put another 16, 18, 22 years
between the next, I'm gonna ask this question. But they were
right. Because what my intention was
and what was being done, the outcome of what I wanted was
not happening, okay, through the years. It's what we do as
parents. We learn by trial and fire. Because there are older
people in our life who've done it. There are people who have
done it. And we ask questions, and they give us answers, and
we go, man, you're just too old to remember. And we do it our
way, and it's not the right way. So we love and we hear all the
things that we've done wrong, and then we what? Then we have
to validate ourselves to think, okay, I gotta make up. You can't
make it up. You can't change the past. Just
accept it, embrace it. Hey, hallelujah, praise the Lord,
my knuckleheadedness. I introduced myself last week
to someone as the knucklehead. And they thought it was very
funny, and it led into an interesting conversation. But our knuckleheadedness,
our silliness, our stupidity, it's part of God's purpose to
train us into the people that we are presently. And the same
silliness that we're going through in these seasons will create
us to be the person God has established for us to be in the future. So regret, as I've said, needs
to be like a quick punch to the gut, not a real hard punch, not
an inverted reverse with all the twists of the body, not something
that will make you throw up last week's breakfast, but just a
little bit of, I can't breathe, ooh, a reminder to rest in God's
purposes. And I just gave you some technical
terms about hurting people, so anyway. Solar plexus, that's
what that's called. Compassion. So we are compassionate,
we're not compassionate, and we don't have to strive to be
more compassionate in an attempt to become ultimate compassion,
have ultimate compassion, but we just need to learn to feel
and understand and be present in the moment now so that are
we exercising and feeling and doing and loving in a compassionate
way at this very moment? And beloved, it starts with you
having compassion for yourself. Because you can never embody
the compassion of Jesus Christ until you are secure in knowing
who you really are. And as believers, the beautiful
thing about that is that our identity is not just wrapped
up with and conjoined with Christ, it's deeper than that. It is
immersed in Him. Now, if that's not how you see
yourself, go back and listen to the last six months of preaching.
and then pay attention to the next six months of preaching,
because I'm going to really begin to emphasize that, and have been.
I also want to take note, to remember the whole point of this
little introduction, is that we're gonna have these thoughts
and feelings about trying to change ourselves, to do things
differently, and those are good ideas. It's always good to have,
without self-reflection, you cannot grow. Without the renewing
of your mind, you cannot grow. Listen to the Word of God. Romans
12, I appeal to you, therefore, my siblings, by the mercies of
God, to present your bodies, your physical lives, your mind,
your soul, your arms, your legs, your eyes, your mouth, your words,
your intentions, as a living, not a dead, sacrifice. I mean, God's not calling us
to lay down our physical lives unto death. He's calling us to
live our physical lives as a sacrifice unto life. Set apart, holy, and acceptable
to God. Just like you see the imagery.
You should have an image in your head, the picture here. Okay,
it is cold in here, I get it. The picture. of the things that
are set apart for the use and the worship of God are holy. That's what the word means, different,
set apart, set apart. So we, just like the showbread
was set apart, just like the holy of holies was set apart,
just like the inner court was set apart, just like all of the
different pieces and the elements of worship that pointed to the
mercy seat, the mercy seat itself with the cherubim and the Ark
of the Covenant and inside there, the budding staff of Moses and
the tablets of the law from Sinai, the second edition. Revised edition,
not a revised, just second edition. and everything else, the manna,
and everything else that was stored in that were all images
that were set aside to represent a sufficient hope in the promise
of God to bring Moshe, Christ, Messiah, into the world to satisfy
his righteousness because he had created a people for himself
who he had set apart for himself to be holy and blameless without
spot, without blemish, without wrinkle. So beloved, when we
sit here and beat ourselves up over what we are not, we are
literally sort of spitting in the face of grace to say that
God can't see us as He has declared us. And in righteousness and
in justice, with all the education that could ever take place in
any court of man, beyond that in the court of God, we are innocent
and forgiven. Because another has taken our
place. Now you don't have to understand
that to be born again. And when you're born again, you're
not gonna just wake up with that understanding. And there is so
much in that little improv statements that I just made that it would
take years and years of just reflection to get it. Don't listen to the culture.
Don't listen to your own mind without filtering it through
the gospel. And by all means, don't seek to find validation
in who you are in Christ by others. Because they will sorely disappoint
you. Especially when it comes to being compassionate. Because
here is something I've learned about me. You can never be compassionate
enough for me when I'm hurting. If I really start to think, well,
they don't see it. They don't get it. I remember restoring my house.
and all the intricate, behind-the-wall details of this 120-plus-year-old
home, and going and doing, and then people coming, oh, this
is nice. Nice! Nice! You see these bloody knees? You see these bloody hands? You
see this wrinkled face? Let me show you the arthritis.
I mean, you know, no, this isn't nice. I took a toothpick and
a toothbrush, and some little lizards helped me clean all the,
I mean, you know, you want everybody to know the anguish, You really
want that kind of compassion? We do. We want to be validated.
We want to feel like somebody feels. That's called empathy,
not compassion. I'm going to talk about the difference. And not everybody can do that.
Not everybody's gifted in that way. But we can all have understanding. But if we want others to see
us in that way and to just carry us in that context, then do we
want to have the same compassion for Christ? Do we really want
to go down the intricacies of what crucifixion is like? Do
we really want to go about the idea of eternal God becoming
mortal man, creating a body for himself? Do we want to understand the
angst of what an ever-present embodied eternal God experienced
when the scripture says he sympathizes with us in our weakness? When
he cries out, my God, my God, why have you forsaken me? Do
we really want to empathize? Do we really want the level of
compassion for Christ that we expect others to have for us?
And the answer to that is no. The answer to that is no. So
what level should we have? Well, let's just learn from the
scripture. Holy, set apart, acceptable to
God. It's something that can be used,
can be in his presence, which is your spiritual worship. Remember
what Jesus told the woman from Sychar in John chapter four?
That the father, the father, not Jacob, not our father, but
the father, the God, is seeking worshipers who worship Him in
spirit, for He is spirit and in truth. God is seeking these
types of people to worship Him. And those words by Christ were
the occasion of regeneration in this woman. And we can't impose,
and that's what I want to talk about next week, we can't impose
what elements of cognitive, you know, understanding that she
had or what elements of theological things that she had in her mind
that mixed in with this experience and all of a sudden, poof, she
came to her senses. Being born again and having faith that's
not coming to your senses is being given sense. And it's being
given the sense of a child to just go to bed and know that
when you wake up, all is well. But that's next week's message. spiritual worship. And when Jesus
used those words, this woman was born again by the Spirit
of God and she resolved, she took a deep breath in after that
long discourse, after that completely postured, fake, hypocritical,
that means acting, interchange with Jesus. And she just, not
exhausted in her spirit, but content. She said to him, I paraphrase. She said to him, My only hope is Messiah. I guess
he will answer these things for me. And Jesus says to her, Dear woman,
the one of whom you speak, I am. And she runs to town. exposing
herself and all of her shame. It was gone. It says, Behold,
I met a man that told me everything I've ever done. Could it be Christ? Come and see. And he spent days
with them in Sychar, the very enemies of righteousness, when
the very holders of the oracles of God had told him to get lost. Do not be conformed to the world. Beloved, in chapter 12, verse
2 of Romans, not being conformed to this world includes the Christian
world. There's a lot of fear-based and shame-based living in the
church of Jesus Christ, the assembly of Christ, and the family of
Christ. And it's far time that we patiently and compassionately
realize that just because I've worked through something for
15 years doesn't mean that you have, and so I have to be compassionate. I have to be careful not to sound
flippant. but something that you may still
have strong convictions over. But do not be conformed to this
world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind. That
by testing, by paying attention, by doing everything that's necessary
to be discerning, you may discern what is the will of God. And
the will of God is good and acceptable and perfect. And we've talked
about that there and how some people like to take and just
parse out words and create entire new chapters of theology based
on words. There's not three wills of God.
It's just God and His will. And what He tells us is what
we know and what we see, what we can infer and interpret. And what we don't know, we don't
know. But it's all the will of God. And in chapter, I mean in verse
three, it says, for by the grace given to me, I say to everyone
among you not to think of himself more highly than he ought to
think. See, it seems a contradiction, right? It seems a contradiction
that I would say what I said earlier about, I'm going to cut
this air up a little bit because some of you guys are just shaking
in your boots over here. That we need to not beat ourselves
up. But see, that's not a prescription to beat yourself up. That's not
a prescription to hate yourself. That's not a prescription to
loathe yourself as a sinner. Beloved, that's antithetical
to the rest of Christ. That's antithetical to the joy
of the Lord. That's antithetical to the command to be thankful
and to be glad. You see? But our culture, the
world, the Christian world, we've been conformed to it by thinking
that we have to think a certain way. Puritanistic, Pharisaistic,
whatever it might be, Istic, or whatever ism that might come
along, we are so easy to adopt it because it provides for us
another rule, another regulation, another adoption of a thing that
takes away our agency. that takes away our responsibility
so that in some sense we feel comfortable by just being this
way and thus we create a new law with which we stand before
God. Oh, you know, look at what I've
done. It's not in me, no words, no prayers, no things that I
do or haven't done, no people that I am not like. can satisfy. I cannot save my soul. I cannot
give myself joy. I have to see myself as God sees
me. Christ didn't look at us and
in the eyes of eternity fulfill the mission of creation, which
is to die on the cross for his people. He did not do that with
contempt. He did not do that in a way that,
I can't believe I have to die for these idiots, but I'll do
it. It's my obligation. He embraced it. He ran into it. He looked forward to the cross,
despising it because he looked beyond the cross to glory. And what's more glorious than
a people of compassion together in intimacy? Who are every one different. Do not think of yourself more
highly than one ought to think, but to think with sober judgment,
each according to the measure of fate that God has assigned.
So even in that instruction for me to say, hey, don't you beat
yourself up, don't beat yourself up for beating yourself up. When
I was a kid, you know, the funkles, the fun uncles that tickled you
till you threw up or till you wet your pants. or made fun of
it as always. They used to do the, quit hitting
yourself, quit hitting yourself. You ever have? Raise your hand if
you've ever had somebody do that to you. All right, have you done
that to your children? Stop it. I did too. Then I turned it into
some like crazy patty cake. Don't beat yourself up for beating
yourself up, for beating yourself up. Don't do it. It's not worth it. For as in one body we have many
members, you might say, well, why am I? I can't be useful because
I'm not here. I can't serve because I'm not
like you. Thank you, God, that you're not
like me, for you would be, we would be a miserable lot. I am not the man that you make
me out to be. And you, some of you, well, most
of you, but I mean, you know, there are a lot of people through
the years who have gotten to know me and went, nope, it's not gonna
be my pastor. And then they've made waves to
have me dethroned, as they say. Well, if I was on a throne, you
couldn't. I'm in a place of servant. Can I wash your feet? Can I teach
you this? I say it all the time and nobody
listens. I'm just a couple of hours ahead of you in this lesson.
Because when we're learning the Bible, it doesn't matter what
I've gone to school for or how many decades that I've been doing
this, 25 years now. What matters is is that I'm a
human being just like the rest of us and that I am learning
to apply this stuff today. If you learned to apply a portion
of scripture 10 years ago, you're not doing it now. It's today. So today is the day of compassion.
Today is the day of self-love and compassion. Today is the
day of identifying yourself according to the scripture. For as one
body we have many members and the members do not have the same
function. Let me impose this, nor the same level of maturity,
nor the same level of compassion, nor the same level of interest,
nor the same level of empathy. So we, though many, are one body
in Christ, and individually members one of another. I disavow this
idea that Christianity is this collectivism idea. Yes, we are
one body altogether, absolutely, but individually a part of the
body of Christ. Individually, we are justified
because of the work of Christ. Individually. You remember that
song from my childhood when he was on the cross? I was on his
mind, he used to love that song, and then I got into theological
circles, that's blasphemy, selfishness. God no more thought of you than
he thought of us. You know, yes he did. Because the Bible teaches that
God knows the number of hairs we have or don't have, and he
knows when they fall to the ground. In the same way, he knows the
shedding of our molecular state. He knows the regeneration and
the counts of the synopses in our brains. Oh boy, if the Bible
could be rewritten with some of those examples. It's like
our men's group yesterday. We were talking about some stuff,
just like, let's just stop. Our head melts. If the sparrows, it's about that
time, start seeing all those birds, you know? If one of them
falls to the ground, the Father, see, when that imposes, the Father,
that's when Jesus talks about Him being Father, when He's concerned
about our well-being, when He's exercising compassion, when He's
showing love. And also, the motherhood of God.
The psalmists write a lot about God's mothering. If God notices that the hair
on your head falls away, and listen, I vacuum my house with
all those girls, and I know how much hair falls out of their
heads. There should never be a bald person in America, because
I could give them what I take out of my vacuum cleaner. We
can make wigs. I digress. And then the drains. And I digress again. We have
to eat in a few hours. What was I saying? There we go. Then he is going to take note
of you. So when we need people to have
compassion for us at the level of depth that they can't give
us, and it's okay, we can grow in that. If that's what we really
need, and sometimes emotional needs are real needs, even when
they're attached to physical and tangible things. The physical,
tangible things are not necessarily needs. in some definitions, but
they can be attached to absolute needs. And beloved, our need
for compassion is paramount. Our need to be heard is true.
Our need to be loved, you can't live without it. You can't live without it. You may live, but you won't be
healthy. But no human being in this world
is going to give you exactly what you need all the time. in or out the church, in or out
of a marriage, in or with children, or any other friendship or relationship.
But Christ can answer all those needs. And we think, how? Well,
that's just it. There's no how, it just is. And
we come to the place of being settled in this way so that we
are able to rest even without the knowledge of why we're resting.
And then we can learn it. individually, members, one of
another, having gifts that differ according to the grace given
to us, according to God's purpose, according to God's love, according
to God's compassion. Let us use them. Let us use these
gifts. Use our pain, use our suffering,
use our challenges, use our understanding, use our contentment, use our
joy. One of the dumbest things that
ever happened in the history of the American church is when,
somebody, it might have been Brother Trey mentioned it yesterday,
is when we had professional people start developing ways of understanding
spiritual gifts through inventories. Well, I just don't know where
I need to start. Well, here, take this 12-page test, and we'll find out what
you like. You know what every high school
kid, their spiritual gift is Xbox, pizza, and sleep. Yeah,
see, you agree with me, right? And for me, it was chess, jazz,
encyclopedias. We didn't have Xbox. It would
have been. Billiards. We have gifts. What are the gifts?
We're the gift. Who we are, how we're established,
our mind, the good, bad, and the ugly. You know the most,
the hardest person to love in our lives, the person that we
go, oh! You see, the one I was talking about earlier? Those
people have gifts too. And then sometimes the gift that
person brings is the opportunity for us to realize that we ain't
all of that. That's another sermon. Let us use them. If prophecy,
what is that? Proclaiming what God has promised.
In a New Testament sense, it's proclaiming what God has promised.
It's encouraging one another in the Word of God. It's being
in the Bible. Some of us are like students
of Scripture, and I don't mean theological hobbyists like we
see. Let's get around and talk about,
you know, what is is. But we love to read the scripture,
we love the context, we love the stories, we love the narrative,
we love the instruction, we just love to hear it and read it.
And it's in us and it's alive in us and sometimes people come
and it pops into mind, share it. Live it, that's prophecy. And we do it in proportion to
our faith and that we're trusting and living, not trying. See,
that's the exercising gift is not, okay, I got gifts. How can
I use them? How can I use them? Oh my gosh, ah! You know, I mean,
when did you ever see Superman just keep pulling out his tie?
Just, oh, oh, I know, you know? Spider-Man. No, they just, when
trouble came, okay, I gotta get myself together. There we go.
That's how we need to be as Christians with the giftedness that we are.
Always be ready, but not so eager. Not try to make it. That guy
sneezed. Should I say God bless you in
the name of Jesus Christ, our Lord and Savior and the Holy
Spirit, amen? Or should I just hand him a tissue? Just do your
job and get back to work. Put a mask on, you know? Should I get 15 bumper stickers
for the back of my car? Should I put the whole Gospel
of John? Should it be Greek, Chinese, and English? I don't know. Why don't you just read it and
see if God might open the, you know, this energy is better suited
in resting and preparation. We have a lot of anthropological
discussions about biological things in my house. And, you
know, we had a discussion the other day about running from
a brown bear. who can in upwards of their speed, you know, be
from that door to this podium in less than three seconds. Where
am I going? Nowhere. To his stomach. That's
where I'm going. But one thing we have above everything
else in the animal kingdom is endurance. We can keep running. We can keep running. We can keep
running. And we're smart. We can outsmart
those things. It all boils down to this. It's in proportion to our faith. It's not about trying to mimic
other people or always be on call. We've just gotta keep going.
We've just gotta be faithful. to rest. The opportunities will
come. We don't have to have such urgency. You know how many times
I heard the idea of urgency in my early ministry? We've got
to get missions on the ground. It's urgent. We've got to do
this. We've got to plant these churches.
It's urgent. And I live my whole life under
urgency. And for those of you who know
my dad, I mean, it's urgent. KD can tell you. You change that
oil, it's urgent. You better check it. It's urgent. And in that field, like you're
in the medical field, the law enforcement field, I mean, it's
urgent. Phone rings, it's urgent. Gotta go to court, gotta go to
jail, gotta do this, gotta go to the emergency room, it's urgent.
But life, Christianity's not urgent. God's not sitting there
with his panic button, holding on to his oh Jesus handles. Let's
go! He's at rest. And you know what I've found
historically when you look anthropologically at why there's so much urgency
in the Christian circle is because everybody needs money yesterday.
And all of this stuff that needs money because it costs money
to put plumbing in is really just a by and large pad the salaries
that sit around and say it's urgent. It's urgent. You know if it takes me Another
22 years to finish a particular book that I've been trying to
write. That's good. You know how it's not done? Because
it was so urgent that I just burned out. And if I'd written,
like my wife says on editing, I'm editing a book on Simple
Grace right now that I really want to have published by the
end of the year. And I'm just like, ugh, ugh. She's like, just
do a chapter a week in editing. Quit worrying. No, then it'll
be like March when I'm done. It's not urgent. Our service
to the church is not urgent. It's needed. And sometimes that need is urgent. But sometimes God's provision
is going to be in His timing. No, all the time, God's provision
is going to be in His timing. So, members one of another, let
us use them. If prophecy and proportionate
faith, it's service, I've already gotten ahead of myself, in our
serving. The one who teaches in his teaching. The one who exhorts in his exhortation. The one who contributes in generosity. The one who leads, do it with
zeal. The one who does acts of mercy,
do it with cheerfulness. You know what I'm talking about
there, right? The person that's really compassionate, but really
grumpy. The person who is like, I can't
believe I have to feed all these idiots every day. I'm glad you're
not hungry, praise God. I mean, you know, it's just,
I mean, have you been there? I've been there. But I've been
taught well enough to be polished enough to not look like that
or sound like that. But on the inside, you know, same stuff, same guy, eating
the same stuff. You haven't heard, you haven't
read the Proverbs, have you? You put your hand in the bowl,
but you're too lazy to put your hand in your mouth, so you starve
to death. So what? Is he there? Do you like serving?
Feed him. Enjoy it. It doesn't matter if
it's the same guy living on the same corner in the same street,
eating the same food for the same time every day for 20 years. Does it matter? It's not a numbers
game. That's the problem too. We gotta
find more, we gotta get more, and we gotta need more, we gotta
get bigger, larger, happier. Gotta have this, gotta have that.
I mean, if half the churches in the world would just focus
on learning the scripture and walking patiently together with
one another and loving the very ones who are looking at them
without looking at the empty chairs and wondering where they
are, then we'd actually be a transformed community of compassionate people
that would make a bigger difference in a hundred years than the churches
of the last thousand. That's not going to sell any
books. Be like a five page book. Introduction. Dedication, you know, thank my
wife, thank the Lord, thank the kids. Instruction, the next two
pages, see page three. Oh, I think it's an emergency.
Tear this out, send it in with a check. That's, it's silly. With children,
it's let love be genuine, verse nine. Abhor what is evil. See, the culture of Christianity
is really good at abhorring what's evil. It's really good at it. I hate that. I hate that. God
hates that. God hates you. I mean, you see that, right? It's always out there. And it
may not be direct like some of the cults. Sometimes it's indirect. You know, I care for you, but
I just got to let you know that you're going to hell. Because you said cheeseburger
in church. Okay. Can I have fries with that?
I mean, you know, that's what I want to say. Will there be flies? I don't
know. But it's so easy to be hateful. Abort what is evil. How about
we start with what's in us? And then we're back to that deprecation,
to that Puritanism that let's get the whips and start beating
ourselves. No, the Bible disavows that. The Bible actually commands
against it. But we know what is evil. And there's a long list. So love
it. The point there is not to instruct
on abhorring what is evil. The point there is to get the
contrast. Let love be genuine. And if our love is genuine, then
we don't love that which is not honoring to God. John says the
first thing, do not love the world or the things in the world.
Hold fast then to what is good. You see the sandwich? Let love
be genuine, abhor what is evil, hold fast to what is good. And
so the emphasis there is to love one another with brotherly affection,
with sibling affection. Outdo one another in showing
honor. Do not be slothful and zeal.
I mean, that means always be ready, be eager. Don't just like,
oh, I gotta teach today, I gotta preach today, I gotta. And I
feel like that some, I do feel like that some weeks. When I'm
not physically well, or I've had a hard time, or there's something
going on in my own mind, or, you know, at home, maybe me and
Robin aren't happy with each other. Because, you know, I've
done something stupid. Do not be slothful, but be fervent
in spirit. Be ready in spite. Be patient in tribulation. Just
rest and wait, patient. Be constant in prayer. That's
not a hard one, but it's the hardest thing we do. Contribute
to the needs of the saints and seek to show hospitality. That
means take care of people in their need. Just, you know, open
the door for the weary traveler. Hospitality is not the Baptist
potluck. Hospitality's not open in my house for everybody to
hang out there five days a week. I did that in Virginia and it
was so funny. We lived on Clara Avenue that the joke amongst
the church was we had our church and we had Clara Avenue Baptist
Church. And we thought that was awesome until like three years
in. And it's like, holy cow, is there a holy cow? Not in Christianity. You know, three years in, we're
like, wow, we're really not taking care of us because we feel like
hospitality means we always have to be open to everyone else.
And so, we had to battle that. Bless those who persecute you,
bless them, do not curse them, rejoice with those who rejoice
and weep with those who weep. And I'm gonna stop there, because
that's actually the verse I'm gonna preach on today. That was
an introduction. I promise it's just application
from this point forward, so just sit back and rest. You didn't see my Facebook feed?
Time went back an hour. You know what? I thought it was
springing forward. I went to bed real early. I don't know why I got that messed
up. I said, now that time has changed, the preachers get to
preach the next hour, right? That's right. I'm getting my
time. But I want you to understand,
and I think I've shown you the importance of compassion, and
I wanna show you the idea of how empathy cultivates compassion. But I want you to understand
something about empathy. Empathy is entering into someone else's
feelings and experiences. Sympathy is feeling sorry for
someone. Sympathy is having a feeling
of, wow, I see that you're hurting. I know that you've had a hard
time. Empathy is I feel that pain. It's putting on those shoes and
experiencing those emotions as if it were happening to you.
Now, empathy is also seeing someone's point of view. It's not just
about feeling, it's about the relationship of hearing someone's
point of view, even if you don't agree with it, of saying, okay,
I can see where you're coming from, I understand how you got
there, and I appreciate your point of view. You validate the
fact that their point of view is valid. That's empathy. But neither of those are compassion. But without empathy, without
being able to see other people where they are and feel what
they feel, compassion is very rare. And it sort of lends itself to
just be sympathetic, which is a must as a human being. I used to pitch. And there's nothing
funner to pitch than a golf ball. Yeah, you know what I'm saying?
I mean, that thing flies. Me and a buddy of mine, Casey,
we were hitting golf balls into a field out behind his house
years ago. I was probably 17. And we're just knocking them
out. And the fence, you know, the
four inch square fence, and there was some birds in the fence. And I'm like, I can hit that.
Now roll that thing up, I wound up feathers everywhere. I hit that bird 20 feet. And
I was proud and disgusted. And I ran over there, I'm like,
ho, ho, ho, I nailed it. And then I'm like, oh my God,
and I started to cry. I'm like, I killed it. That bird like, peep, peep,
peep. I'm like, oh no, this is terrible. All the other birds
flying around, peep, peep, peep, because I'd, you know, I'd killed
Billy on a pitch bet. You know, that's sympathy. I
felt bad. I could feel, but I didn't have
compassion for the birds up there. I wasn't empathizing with Mama
Bird, Brother Bird, Sister Bird and all these, oh gosh, they
just saw this big white giant kill their little friend with
this ball of white fire, you know. What is this, Pokemon? Bakugan, whatever all the gons
are, you know. But yet there's sometimes some
of us who have that. I wonder how all this is feeling. Empathy is the ability to understand
and share feelings. Rejoice with those who rejoice,
weep with those who weep. This is the core of empathy.
To feel. And listen, it is great if you
can, and I do, but there is also a dark side of empathy that controls
us. And it's psychological, and I
don't want to get into that today, but I've done a lot of study,
I've had a lot of help in this area. But empathy, uncontrolled,
leads to destruction. Because what it does is it puts
us in that place where then we begin to live the pain, then
we become responsible for their pain, and then we become the
hero for their pain, trying to fix it. And that's a disaster. And all in all, it's really selfishness,
but it's not, you know, it's covert selfishness. with good intentions. The scripture
teaches us about empathy. The Bible says in Hebrews chapter
4, we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with
our weakness but one who is in every respect has been tempted
as we are yet without sin. So not only does Christ sympathize,
He feels our pain, He's experienced it and knows what it's like to
a greater degree because He's walked through it
Himself. Every single ounce of temptation that the world could
offer. Christ just walks through it. And that's the conundrum, right?
I mean, if you look at the Gospels, you start seeing how Jesus acts
and how Jesus responds to people and how Jesus doesn't necessarily
just say, do this, but He does it. He shows the way, and you
know, remember, when I started talking this morning, it's very
easy for us to say, well, you just gotta be compassionate.
You just gotta be loving, you just gotta be patient. Okay,
how? In Matthew chapter nine, verse
35, it says, and Jesus went throughout all the cities and villages,
teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good report
of the kingdom of heaven and healing every disease and every
affliction. When he saw the crowds, he had
compassion on them. Why? Because they were harassed
and helpless. Listen to this. He had compassion
on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without
a shepherd. Then he said to his disciples, the harvest is plentiful,
but the labors are few. Therefore pray earnestly to the
Lord of the harvest to send out labors into his harvest." Now,
how many times have you ever heard that text preached in the
context of sympathy and compassion? But that's what's being taught
there. No, that's the, it's urgent, missions. No, it's urgent, compassion. So there's our urgency. to emphasize
compassion, not necessarily urgent to get it together. Because if
we're zealous, if we're there, if we're learning, if we're growing,
we are where we're supposed to be if we're here. And the compassion
of Christ will grow. And why were they harassed? They
were harassed by spiritual leaders. They were harassed by the politics.
They were harassed by the inundation of being marginalized. It was if you weren't in the
elite, you were nothing. If you weren't of Israel or of
Judah, you were nothing. If you fell into some sin, you
were nothing. If you got kicked out of synagogue,
you were nothing. And yet the spiritual leaders
of that day, everybody who was focused on trying to love and
help the culture, Holy cow, they were the ones who were actually
oppressing the culture. Jesus called them blind gods. I thought about that today. A
blind god runs into a wall or over a cliff and typically takes
people with him. Don't follow a blind god. How
do you know a god is blind? When they lack compassion. I
don't know what I'm saying today. when they lack compassion. It doesn't matter how much truth
spews out of a man's or woman's mouth. If they lack compassion,
they're not to be listened to or followed. Yes, the Word of God stands true,
but there's a difference in hearing the Word of God read verbatim
and being told to follow it from a person without compassion. Because I can promise you, if
there's not compassion in our hearts toward the person we're
trying to teach, we're trying to manipulate them, even if we
don't know it. We're trying to get them to be who we want them
to be, rather than letting them be who they are. Why does that
trigger us so bad in society? Somebody's not like us. Somebody
doesn't agree with us. I mean, I posted something completely
non-spiritual on a social media site last night. I showed them
some bottles of some things. And dude, they're like burning
me on fire because they disagree that I should even think that
this thing is good. Okay. But yet there are times and there
are places in life where that kind of stuff triggers us. Compassion. When there's no compassion, there's
always arguments, there's always debates. James says, what causes
quarrels and fights among you that you have, that you don't
have, and you want, you desire, and you hate each other who do
have? That's not compassion. Is that the people who are your
biggest cheerleaders turn out to be your biggest enemies, like
we read out of the Psalms this morning? It hurts. They lack compassion. We've got
to learn to develop control and empathy. We've got to learn that
the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness,
goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, and against such
things there are no law. Why? Because it doesn't violate
any law. There's no consequence but joy, life, compassion, fulfillment,
contentment. There's nothing but greatness.
There's nothing but life that comes out of the fruit of the
Spirit. There's never anybody to indict us. But yet it is the
most impossible thing for us to have because when we don't
walk by the Spirit, we cannot have these things. So I tell
you this, beloved, because it is only through the disciplines
of resting in the sufficiency of the Lord and His Word and
with His people that we will ever become, even remotely, even
in a small way, the compassionate people that we should be. We have to have self-control
in maintaining empathy. We have to pray and seek God's
guidance. I mentioned James a minute ago.
What is the first chapter of James says? If anyone lacks wisdom,
he need just ask and pray the Lord grant him wisdom and then
not be what? Double minded. Well, beloved,
the wisdom from the Lord, if you test and say that what I
am saying today is of the Lord and from his word, and then you
second guess what you should be doing based on what the word
of God says, that's double mindedness. Well, I'm hungry, well, there's
food over there. Yeah, okay, hey, can I get something to eat,
somebody? Yeah, there's food over there. All right, all right,
great, great, great. I haven't eaten in three days. There's
food over there. You see how that works. And it's always the way it is.
Let's find the echo chamber. Let's find the Reddit sub. Let's
find the Facebook group. Let's find the X Factor. Let's find whoever we can. wherever
we can that agrees with us as much as they can so that we can
feel good about who we are, where we are, with what we don't wanna
hear. Echo chamber. But compassion is really empathy
put into action. We can feel for people, but we
have to involve ourselves in a desire to help and alleviate
suffering. I think Paul talks about that
some here, to the church of Colossae. Verbatim, this is what I was
looking for. Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved,
put on compassionate hearts. kindness, humility, meekness,
and patience. Bearing with one another. You
know the idea of bearing means enduring? And the idea of enduring
means something that probably you don't want to experience.
Nobody endures a free gift of a million dollars. Well, I guess
I'll take it. It's gonna be hard. Nobody endures a good report
at the doctor. You're as healthy as a 20-year-old. Oh gosh, that's just so hard
for me to handle. I just don't know that I want
that help. Hey, you want to have a free vacation? Oh, I just don't
know. I just think that'd be so burdensome
for me. No. So to endure a burden, that
means it's going to be something a little unpleasant. So we're
to bear with one another. Why? Because a lot of our interactions
as human beings, if we're authentic, are going to be unpleasant. We're
going to hurt each other. We're going to offend each other.
We're going to have problems. We're going to infer incorrectly. We're
going to assume too much. I wrote an article about assumption
about six, seven years ago, and it's probably one of the most
read articles, other than my second commandment violation
article, which I don't know why, on my blog. It's just the weirdest thing.
I'm like, it's just a rant. Matter of fact, I put the title,
rant, and this guy's screaming like this. Assumption is a sin,
that's what it's entitled. Yeah, assumption, it's not humble,
but we do that, right? Kindness, humility, meekness,
patience, bearing with another, and if one has a complaint against
another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you,
so you must also forgive, and above all things, Put on love,
which binds everything together in perfect harmony, and let the
peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you were
called in one body, and be thankful. Now get this, this is all instructive
and prescriptive, so listen to the rest of it. Let the word
of Christ dwell in you richly. There's step one. How do we do
this? Let the word of Christ dwell
in you richly. Beloved, if you're reading the word of God, you
know what I'm talking about. You don't have to take time out
to do devotions. You don't have to get a pen and
a paper and a pad and an audio recorder and a blog and everything
else to actually affect changing your life. Nobody needs to worry
about the intimacy of, I mean, needs to worry about the education
of the Bible until they've gotten the intimacy of the Bible down. Let the word of Christ dwell
in you richly so that you may be teaching and admonishing one
another in all wisdom, singing praises and hymns and songs together
with thankfulness to your hearts to God. And whatever you do in
word and whatever you do in deed, do everything in the name of
the Lord Jesus as you give thanks to God the Father through him. I mean, this is where it has
teeth. This is where it starts. And
what does that sound like to you? I mean, when do you just
sort of hang out, you know? And it's anywhere, in the middle
of anywhere, you just start singing hymns together with people. Now,
it sounds odd, but I did have a man one day in the parking
lot walk up to me and said, I want to bless you with something.
And it's typically a gift card or a track, or a chick track
that says, because I'm driving a Ford, I'm going to hell. But he puts his hand on my shoulder,
he's a little shorter than me, probably 30 years older than
me, and he begins to belt this hymn in my face. All five stanzas. The first three or four, I'm
going, what in the name of all things crazy is this? And by
the end, I was blessed. He said, I just want you to see
the words of that. I want you to be encouraged. I want you to be encouraged.
And then that man started coming to our church, and his family
started coming to our church. And when he passed away, it was
bittersweet. But he would. He would walk up
to any stranger in the world and just start. It didn't matter
what it was. It might have been Amazing Grace. It might have been some
hymn you've never heard. It might have been some stuff
he made up. And if you were really blessed,
and he was out in a public way, he'd pull out of his bag a ukulele,
and he'd sing love songs, Elvis style. Beautiful, beautiful person. But most of the time, you're
not gonna have the opportunity to just belt out hymns together
in the public market. When do you have that opportunity?
Right here today. This is the point. When we are gathered together,
it needs to be intentional, that we are learning and disciplined,
that we bring together our gifts, and those gifts are fueled by
intimacy with the Word of God. It doesn't take much. Just meditate
on this this week. Put it on a card. Put it in the
mirror. Do whatever. It's easy to fight. I don't have
time. Next thing you know, it's two
in the morning because you just put auto binge on Netflix. You know, that's
like the feed now. You've got settings. You want
to log out or click the thing that says auto binge. What does
that mean? We'll show you everything related to this until you die
or shut or the battery passes away in your computer. You ever
woke up on the couch and missed three episodes? What is happening? Why is John marrying her? What? Oh, I'm in season five. Gotta
go back. But we don't have time to spend
five minutes. And that's not to convict you
to make you feel guilty. It's okay, it's who we are. Beloved,
it wasn't TV in the first century, or the second, or the third,
or the fourth, or the fifth. It wasn't the 20th. It was radio
in the 19th. It was art, literature, books,
and everything else in the 17th. It was high piety in the 16th. And back-breaking labor. And
disease. It's always going to be something.
Don't do it out of compulsion. Do it out of celebration. Empathy in action. Three things
in close. How can you become more compassionate
as a believer? Learn to listen. Oh my gosh, I got my third active
listening co-op in January. So a group of us, we get together,
about 15, 20 of us online, we Zoom, we spend three or four
hours, we share a particular thing, vision, whatever project,
and then the rest of us have to actively listen. And then
there's a coach in there that goes, yeah, you weren't listening.
And you know what, I'm the one, I'm the one that the guy says,
flabbergasted, and I start thinking, I wonder where that word came
from. Flabber, it's a lot blubber, flabber. It's like somebody talking
a whole lot. What do you think, James? I have no idea, I wasn't
listening. And I've been doing that since I was a little boy. Teachers in school sounded like
the peanut people. Well, what? I don't care. It's who I am.
I'm not changing it, but I do want to be able to listen better.
Active listening. That's being fully engaged with
someone because you want to understand their perspective. You want to understand their
perspective. So I encourage you to listen actively in your relationships.
At home, with your children, with each other. Listen. Don't
just be thinking. about what needs to be said.
Sometimes nothing needs to be said. That's my problem. I'm
a fix-it-answer guy, you know? You got a question I gotta answer
before it comes out of your mouth. Yeah, I'd like to get one. Here
it is. You didn't know what I wanted, but there's that anyway. I know
you want that soon. Here's another one. You're not
listening to me. You think I'm joking. Next time
you get my wife around, ask her. She'll be honest. I'm that way.
I finish her sentences. She'll look at me, she goes,
can you let me talk? I'm going to try to catch that. Can you
let me finish your sentence? I want to say it like that. I
might be sleeping up here one night. The scripture says, know this,
my beloved brothers, let every person to be quick to hear and slow
to speak, slow to anger. That includes listening. We also
need to understand the difference between sympathy and empathy.
Sympathy feels sorry, empathy feels with. Let me say that again. Sympathy feels sorry for. Empathy
fills with someone. And so we've got to move beyond
sympathy. We've got to encourage empathy as a deeper level of
connection, because without it we cannot have compassion. And
I could go to Philippians 2 and 1 Corinthians 12, but Romans
12 tells us, rejoice with those who rejoice, weep with those
who weep. But we've got to practice empathy
without becoming emotionally overwhelmed. And I give this
caveat because it happened to me. So we have to have emotional
balance. And that means that we're not responsible for other
people's trauma, for other people's pain, for other people's problems,
but we are able to engage and help as much as we can. today. We can't fix the overarching
problem. We can't fix the... I mean, if
someone's dying of a disease, we can't take it away. We can
help them through it. We need to seek God's guidance.
We need to ask for wisdom before we engage. A man without self-control
is like a city broken into and left without walls. Beloved,
when we're out of control emotionally, We're vulnerable and we destroy
and invite destruction in every relationship that touches us.
I want to say that again. When we're emotionally out of
control, we invite destruction and we allow destruction into
every relationship that touches us. Active listening is more than
hearing words. It's fully engaging with someone to understand their
perspective. Sometimes it means we have to ask questions to better
understand. Knowing the difference between
sympathy and empathy is really just putting ourselves
in their shoes for just a minute and thinking a little bit further
about what they must be going through. Practicing this without becoming
overly emotionally invested means that we don't sacrifice our own
emotional well-being. We have to set boundaries, we
have to know our limitations, and we have to understand that
when we begin to invest emotionally in someone else's life, it doesn't
mean that we can dump emotionally over here, or that we can neglect
emotionally over here. We've only got so much bandwidth,
we can't have it all. So we have to have self-care.
We have to schedule time away. We have to be intentional. Jesus
did that. I thought I was going to have
more time today because you're going to let me preach until one, but Jesus
was intentional about getting away. He'd heal a bunch of people.
He'd preach and he'd vanish. He'd literally just vanish. Where'd
Jesus go? I don't know. Let's just get in the boat and
go over there to Capernaum. Maybe he's there. He's there a lot.
I don't know. Where's James? He's probably
at the huddle house. Let's just go to the huddle house. Maybe
we'll find him. Not so much anymore, but used to be a day like that. I don't know. You gotta get away,
and you gotta not feel guilty while you're away. And here's
a kicker. It's okay sometimes not to be
at church. When you need to rest, and you're emotionally down.
Listen, you need to be here. When you get here, you'll be
fed. But when you're not, it's okay because we love you. And the only reason we want you
here is because we love you. Sometimes it's okay to take a
vacation that includes a Sunday. You know, last year was the first
time in my life that I ever felt that freedom. And you know, from 1998, when
I started the ministry, to about three years ago was the first
time I ever took a Sunday off for vacation or for my family,
for anything. Why? Because the culture said,
This is ridiculous. I was raised that retirement
and peace and rest was worthlessness. I was raised to believe by the
culture now. I mean, my mother was raised
this way, too, and her mother was raised, I mean, you know, generational.
That when you weren't busy, matter of fact, Brother Mike and I had
this conversation yesterday. If you weren't productive, you were
pathetic. You know what, be productive
in intimacy. Be productive in rest. Be productive
in self-care. Be productive in compassion. Be productive, because here's
the kicker, if we aren't, we don't have margin in our lives
spiritually, we're not gonna have anything for anybody else.
And I said this in 2010, and I heard a sound clip of it about
six months ago. We can't give to others what
they, what we don't have. And when we're empty, there's
nothing to give anybody else. What did Christ give? He gave
it all. And He's the example. I've given
the gospel several times in this. We don't have to be so eager
and it's not urgent for me to recapitulate the gospel of grace.
You know the gospel of grace because the practical application
of this teaching is what I want you to rest in today as we quit.
as we move to the next section of singing praises, of taking
the Lord's table, remembering the body and the blood of Jesus
Christ, who is not just the example of compassion, but who is our
eternal hope, who is the lover of our soul, who is the one who
will carry us through every storm and every season of brokenness
unto eternal life. Let's pray. Father, as Paul was in chains
when he wrote these letters, He was thinking of the church. He even names specific people. He's thinking of Archippus. He's
thinking of Timothy. He's thinking of the saints there. He even greets Demas, Lord, in
that letter, who will later, as we see, abandon him. The father, he also had Luke
there, a physician to take care of his needs. So, Lord, teach
us. Teach us this balance. Teach
us this focus. Teach us this proper way of living. and that we would not beat ourselves
up, but that we would live free and authentically before you.
We can't lie to you, Lord. We know that you know everything.
Even when we don't know it, you know it about us and you love
us and you've loved us eternally forever. Before we were, you
loved us and you gave Christ for us. So help us to live in
that place, to be patient and compassionate lovers of others. And sometimes that does cost
us, and sometimes it does cost us ourselves, but Lord, help
us to be mindful, to know, to even see and help to encourage
each other to take the time to be careful, to be controlled, not out of
control, to be willed, not willy-nilly. So let our zeal be a fire, but
not without boundaries. Because even the Christ had boundaries,
he healed when he should have, he prayed when he should have,
he preached when he should have, and then he vanished when he needed to. So Lord, we thank you for Christ.
We thank you that he cried out, it is finished. And that there's
nothing left for our redemption but a promise that we will one
day be like Him. In His name we pray. Amen.