Discriminating Compassion

Okay let's turn back in our Bibles to Jude and I want us to spend a little bit more time looking closely at verse 22. Because of the end, we have to read the other two verses prior to it, but let's go back to verse 20. But ye, beloved, building yourselves up on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost, keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life, and of some, have compassion making a difference, making a distinction. We're building on and we looked earlier on at what it was for this faith to be the most holy faith and we've looked in the past at what it is to be praying in and with and by and through the blessed Holy Spirit and I pray that he grants us a desire to pray and There is a keeping of God's people in the love of God, that he keeps us, as we'll see a bit later on in Jude, and then we're always looking, God's children are always looking, we're looking for mercy, we're looking for mercy. We're looking for opportunities to be merciful, we're looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life.

And so that's the end that's so fundamental to these two verses. And this is, in a sense, these are commands of God. Having compassion is a command from God. Don't you love the commands of God? They're not burdensome at all. And others, save with fear, that's a command from God. And he says, of some have compassion.

Moses asked to see the glory of God. And I want us to, before I go to Moses, I want us to look at what this word making a difference means because I think it's just so profoundly significant and it relates to what I want to look at in Moses and obviously this is God's word. But making a difference is actually discriminating. It means to separate, to discriminate.

These people have separated themselves from the fellowship of the apostles, from the fellowship of the saints, and they've gone on. If you look at this so-called Christian world now, if you look at Julia was asking the question, it's all so confusing. If you look at this Christian world, Jude gives us the genesis of it and so do the rest of the scriptures. The genesis of it was in the Garden of Eden, the genesis of it before that was in Isaiah chapter 14 when Satan said, I will, I will, I will, I will, I will, the genesis of it.

But there is, as God discriminates, he calls on his people to be merciful and to be discriminating in that mercy, making a difference. It means to separate, to discriminate, to separate thoroughly, to decide a dispute, to give judgment, to contend, to discern. And the thing that's really struck me over these last sort of few days as I've been studying it, if you actually look at the root of that word, it's two Greek words joined together And it means, I don't want to tell you the Greek, you don't need to know Greek, you just need to know what it says. God speaks very good English. But at the very core of it is the sense of that which is judged through. The first part of that word means by reason of, or by means of, or because. And it's because of, and the second part of that word, because of judgment. That's what the word is. And if you were listening to it when Jude read this letter out and read it out in Greek, the word you would have heard was crisis. Crisis. The gospel brings a crisis. The gospel brings a crisis.

That's why the Lord Jesus Christ says, judge righteous judgment. And the crisis is always related to who the Lord Jesus Christ is, and ultimately who speaks on God's behalf in this world. And if you look at this religious world, and if you look at it through any lens of history at all, always the people that Jude has spoken so strongly about, and the people that are spoken so strongly about in Galatians, they have always been numerically in the ascendance. If you look around at this religious world you will see that these people are in the ascendance and the first question that we're asked over and over again is how many people do you have? As if somehow the judgment Their judgment is based on how many noses and eyes are listening and ears are listening. And God's calling on his people in the midst of an opposition which would render them a remnant in a religious world, a remnant in a professing Christian world.

He's calling on them to have compassion but to have that compassion with this. discriminating grace. Knowing who God is and knowing who speaks for God. That same word, I mean the crisis word is a word that John uses over and over and over again and it's translated judgment. And so the compassion that we're talking about here and the mercy that we're talking about is a mercy in light of the fact that God When he brings his gospel, he is bringing a crisis to people. He's bringing a crisis.

No one ever hears the gospel without it being a matter of life and death. No one ever does, and that's why there's a call for Mercy. We who have received mercy are calling for the Lord to be mercy in your wrath. Remember, mercy. And so that's why I'll just show you what that word is used so often.

This word crisis is used. He that believeth on him is not condemned. That word is the crisis, judged. But he that believeth not is crisised already, condemned already, because he has not believed in the name of the only begotten Son of God. And this is the crisis. This is the crisis, that's how it would read if you were listening to it when John was reading this out to the people. This is the crisis, that light has come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. because their deeds were evil.

So let's go back and have a look at what it is to be merciful. I think if we just, if the Lord will open those two words to us and cause us to see them in light of our history and our standing in this world. and the Lord would use them as commands and those commands would operate in our lives. To go back to have compassion is to have mercy. Like I said, the gospel comes and there's a crisis. A gospel comes and there's a separation. The Lord Jesus Christ came into this world and he came to a religious world and there was a separation.

He didn't come and say one bit of this religious world is right or more right than the others. He said the whole lot of them are wrong and I'm right. And that's why he sends his apostles out into this world. He sends his servants out into this world. And I love what Paul's description of it. In chapter five in 2 Corinthians, he says he's just an ambassador. All ambassadors do is say, this is what the king says. This is what the king says, this is what he says.

But he says in verse 14 of chapter two of 2 Corinthians, now, thanks be unto God, which always causes us to triumph in Christ, making manifest the savour of his glory. knowledge by us in every place. For we are unto God a sweet savour of Christ, in them that are saved and in them that perish. To the one we are the savour of death unto death, and to the other the savour of life unto life. And who is sufficient for these things? We want to be compassionate, we want to call on God to have mercy. That word savour is the word that's used for the odour of Mary's ointment when she broke that alabaster jar and she anointed the Lord Jesus Christ for his burial and that ointment filled the house. And who left that night? Who separated himself? Judas did. And he didn't go to the brothels. He went to the most religious people he could possibly find.

But he says, have compassion. It means to have mercy. It means to help one who is afflicted. If the Lord has come into your life, you will have afflictions that you've never ever had before. I've had more trials in the last 25 years than I have in all the rest of my life put together. And these have been longer and more intense and more deep and more personal in so many other ways. It means to help one that is afflicted. To bring help to the wretched, that's what the word means. It means to succor.

It's a lovely description of the Lord Jesus Christ in Hebrews chapter two. This is what it is to have mercy, the Lord Jesus Christ in Hebrews chapter two in verse 18. For he himself has suffered, being tempted, being tested, and is able to succor them that are tempted. That's that word, he's able to come to the call. He's able to come in mercy to them.

And so Moses, to go back to where we were looking at a little while ago or thinking about a little while ago, Moses in Exodus chapter 30, he had been through the most extraordinary trial. You imagine that trial of those people turning in rebellion against him and turning in rebellion against his God. And Moses asked the question, who's on the Lord's side? And then he calls on those people, if you're on the Lord's side, you strap your sword on and you go out and you slay your brothers and sisters. It's extraordinary, isn't it?

But Moses prayed that prayer that I hope we keep praying if I've found grace in thy sight show me thy way. Exodus 33 verse 13 show me thy way that I may know thee that I may find grace in thy sight and consider that this nation is thy people and he's in God said to him my presence shall go with thee and I will give thee rest. Moses had no nothing about rest at all in all that time with all of the trials that he'd been through and he says if thy presence go not with me carry us not up hence and then Moses cried out to God he said show me your glory show me your glory and I don't have time to read the whole passage But Moses could only see the glory of God when he was made to stand on a rock and the rock was cleft and Moses saw the glory of God go by. He saw the goodness and he saw the glory of God go by and God says, I'll be merciful to whom I'll be merciful. I'll be merciful to whom I will be merciful.

The Lord passed by before him, proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and mercy, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty. The only possible way you can understand that is to understand what happened in the cleft of the rock. The rock is the Lord Jesus Christ. You only see the glory of God when the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified is declared and believed as God declares it to be.

To have compassion is to have mercy. We want to be compassionate. Those who've received mercy, those who've received the mercy of God, will be merciful people. Those who've been forgiven will be forgiven people. Those who've had their sins cast behind the Lord's back and buried in the depths of the sea and hidden away, they don't want to hide other people's sins. Their brothers and sisters, they're not going to hide, they're not going to bring them up and display them to the world. have compassion, have mercy.

Who needs mercy? Who needs mercy? There's only one group of people in all this world that need mercy and that's sinners. And so who are we going to have compassion on? Those who see themselves as sinners. Sinners just like us. Those who look for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ.

Mercy and Jude began this letter in verse two by saying, mercy unto you and peace and love be multiplied. We've got to remember that the The trials that Jude is talking about here and the compassion that we're talking about are to people who have been afflicted in ways that only come. There is an affliction that comes with the gospel that doesn't come in any other ways. And that's why Paul says to Timothy in those verses you know well.

Then he describes what God has done. He saved us and he called us. Which came first? He saved us in eternity and then he calls us in time and he calls us with a holy calling not according to our works but according to his own purpose and grace which was given us in Christ Jesus before the world began and now is made manifest by the preaching of the gospel. Paul is recorded to be in tears three times in the scriptures and I'm sure they are just a few of the multitude of times that he was in tears because he loved people and because he cared, and he cared about the glory of God.

Because he had been put through what we were talking about here, he'd been put through a crisis. He had seen that the coming of the gospel brings a judgment on humanity. He had tears in his eyes when he wrote Romans 9, 10, and 11. He had tears in his eyes. He knew that these people were zealous for God and he knew that they were lost. In Philippians chapter three, verse 18, he talks of those people, those professing Christian people who lived as enemies of the cross of Christ. And he said, he spoke about it with tears in his eyes. God's people are not made to be harsh. They are made to stand, but they're not made to be harsh with those who oppose themselves.

In Acts chapter 20, verse 31, Paul was in tears again on that beach at Miletus. Do you remember the story of Acts chapter 20? He speaks, he gathered the elders of all those churches in that Ephesian reading, he gathers them down there, and then he looked at these elders, these pastors, these churches, and he said, from among your number, will men arise and distort the truth? There will be a crisis.

And he's pleading, he's pleading with his brothers and sisters, his brothers and sisters in the Lord Jesus Christ. No wonder the Holy Spirit's called a comforter. The spirit of truth is a comforter. We're praying for a comforter to comfort us. The gospel brings a crisis.

It always has. And the crisis that the Lord Jesus Christ brought is the same crisis that comes with the Lord Jesus Christ is preached over and over and over again. And we have been through it, brothers and sisters. We have seen it over and over again.

When people reject the gospel, when people do as these people in Jude do, when they separate themselves, they're making a crisis judgment about us. and they're making a crisis judgment about themselves and they're making a judgment about the Lord Jesus Christ and him crucified. They are. Over and over again, we've borne witness to the fact that the people are declaring all of our brothers and sisters in Christ throughout time have been lost, they call us a cult. We are to be compassionate to those people, making a difference, and some with fear. we pluck from the fire, and Lord willing we might look at that a little bit later on. But it's also a crisis, isn't it, when people tell me that I don't have the gospel and I don't know God.

It's personal. This is personal. If I am lost, as people have said for the last 20 odd years, and I'm blind to who God is, and blind to his glory, and blind to what his word says, then you're in trouble, and I love you too much. I love you too much not to tell you the truth. I care about you too much. And it's personal on another level as well, isn't it? It's personal because the things that are said about the Lord Jesus Christ are said about us in union with him, and we're offended. We're offended when our Lord Jesus Christ is brought down.

These people in Jude, they speak against him If you told them that they're speaking against the Lord Jesus Christ, when they turn the grace of God into lasciviousness and say to people, unless you actually put people under a bondage of rules and works and law and other things, they will just live as they see fit. This verse is saying the exact opposite of that. That's a command from God and the commands of God in the New Testament are the promises of God in the work to what he does in the hearts of his people. Our God, Our God is too glorious, too glorious, and he's too wise. And his purpose will be fulfilled in this world, and he will bear witness to himself amongst his people.

And we have the privilege of being in a place where our declaration of the gospel is challenged all the time. all the time, and what do we do? We go back and say, did God really say? Did he really say what he said? Did he really say? He did really say it, and he said it over and over again.

He said it in Genesis 1.1, and he said it in Revelation 22.31. He said it over and over again. He says it everywhere. The Lord Jesus Christ is God Almighty. He cannot fail. He has done everything that he promised to do. And he is doing everything that he promised to do, including the trials.

And that's why, if we're looking for his mercy, we're looking for his mercy unto eternal life, we're looking a long, long way ahead, brothers and sisters. We're looking, as I spoke last, we're looking a long, long way back. We're looking, our gospel is an everlasting gospel.

It's the banner, isn't it, that John prayed about? It's the everlasting gospel. It's a gospel that had no beginning. It's a gospel that has no end, and it's a gospel that has the power of God, as we read in 1 Corinthians chapter one. It is the power of God under salvation. It's a gospel that we're not ashamed of. It's a gospel that keeps, but it's a saving gospel. But in that glorious declaration, God is going to try the faith. of his people again and again.

And what's the lesson from Jude? The lesson is, if you're going to have compassion on someone, you're going to have to have compassion the compassion and the mercy that God brings in the preaching of the gospel. What do people need to hear? What do we want to say to anyone that has the opportunity? We have compassion on those making a difference. We have compassion on those who are willing to hear what we say and willing to listen to what we say.

But when we have the opportunity and we're contending for the faith, and we're laboring fervently for it, we're fighting the good fight, and we're exhorting, Jews exhorting these people, to exhort someone is to call them to one side. God has called us into fellowship with him, and we are calling others to come into fellowship. Come, like Moses said to his father-in-law, come with us and we'll do you good. Come with us and God will do you good, and God will reveal himself. And he calls on us to contend for that faith. to comfort one another in that faith and to have compassion. Isn't it wonderful that we're commanded to be compassionate?

I just love it. I love the fact that in the midst of opposition and in the midst of the judgment that we have seen, and we have witnessed over and over again, the judgment of God on people that we care about very deeply. We have witnessed the judgment of God on people that have gone from this world with their fist raised against the gospel of the Lord Jesus Christ. We've seen people go that way who have been led by people who are openly deceitful about the gospel and it's been proven that they've been openly deceitful.

It is personal, brothers and sisters. And that's why the compassion is personal, because God, we are taught of God to love one another. And if you have a brother and sister in Christ, you have a brother and sister that you can call to your side and exhort and say, I know it's tough, and I know it hurts, because I've been hurt. And our Lord Jesus Christ knows exactly what it is to be hurt and to be rejected and to live in this world amongst a people where there is no fault in him. They hated him without a cause. And yet, Out of all of that hatred, the glory of the gospel shone.

And it still does, and we call, we call our brothers and sisters, walk alongside with us. Come with us, God will do you good. Come with us, come with us. They separate themselves. At the heart of the matter, they separate themselves, because they do not have the Spirit. But where the Spirit is, he will build his people. He'll keep his people in that most holy faith. He'll keep them praying in the Holy Ghost. What a thing to do. What an amazing privilege that we have the opportunity to pray for people. Pray the Lord will come in mercy.

We have an opportunity to tell people about the love of God, the eternal, everlasting, immutable, unchangeable love of God. And God loves because he loves. He doesn't have to find anything in the objects of his love to find them. He loves because he loves. The love of God is in the Lord Jesus Christ. What love to cause our brothers and sisters to be kept in.

And we're looking for the mercy. We're looking over the horizon of time and the horizon of our lives and say, look, he's coming. He's coming. He's coming. And there's an eternal life. The stakes are huge. The stakes are huge and the reward is amazing. We get to have Christ and everything else. Have compassion, discriminating compassion.

Let's pray. Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that the gospel is a command and you command us to believe and you command us to come and our warrant for coming. is your command to come. And we just praise you, Heavenly Father, that you call and your people hear a voice, a voice of a shepherd, a good shepherd, a shepherd who finds his sheep wandering and lost in this world. And he comes to them where they are and he picks them up and he carries them in his arms and he brings them back into his fold. and his great rejoicing, Heavenly Father, cause us to walk with our brothers and sisters through the trials of their life with compassion for them, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ. And Heavenly Father, please, again and again and again, draw us back to the glory of who our Lord Jesus Christ is. The glory that he had with you before the foundation of the world. Draw us back by the blessed Holy Spirit to see in this word that he takes the things of the Lord Jesus Christ and he reveals them to us.

Our heavenly Father, may we be found in Christ, hidden like Moses in the cleft of the rock, and that we might see your glory and that we might be comforted, Heavenly Father, by the blessed Holy Spirit, and that we might be able to comfort one another in the trials that you have promised for us. And you've promised that they're good, because you are good. You cannot be anything other than good, spiritually good to all of your children. Bless your word to our hearts, Heavenly Father, and may you cause us to go from here rejoicing and looking to Him alone. We praise you, Heavenly Father. In Christ's precious name, Amen.

Discriminating Compassion

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