PT-4 "Christ's Divine Compassion" (Matt. 9:36a)

 

SPIRITUAL DIARY FOR 7/6/2021 8:05 AM

 

My Worship Time                                                      Focus:  PT-4 “Christ’s Divine Compassion”

 

Bible Reading & Meditation                                                 Reference:  Matthew 9:36a

 

            Message of the verse:  “36 Seeing the people, He felt compassion for them,”

 

            The following comes from John MacArthur’s sermon on this wonderful subject of Christ’s Divine Compassion as in this there are some quotations that I promised you would see in this SD.  I used this quotation in our revival prayer meeting and entitled it “COMPASSION-GREAT BYPRODUCT OF REVIVAL

 

Thomas Watson said this, “We may force our Lord to punish us, but we will never have to force Him to love us. That’s His nature.” 

 

“Dr. Paul Brand, who has worked so wonderfully with those who have leprosy, writes this in his book, Fearfully and Wonderfully Made – and this about his Lord he writes, “Jesus reached out His hand and touched the eyes of the blind. He touched the skin of the person with leprosy and the legs of the cripple. When a woman pressed against Him in a crowd to tap into the healing energy she hoped was there, He felt the drain of that energy, stopping the noisy crowd and asking, ‘Who touched Me?’ I’ve sometimes wondered why Jesus so frequently touched the people He healed, many of whom must have been unattractive, obviously diseased, unsanitary, and smelly. With His power, He easily could’ve waved a magic wand. In fact a wand would’ve reached more people than a touch. He could’ve divided the crowd into affinity groups and organized His miracles. Paralyzed people over there, feverish people here, people with leprosy there, raising His hands to heal each group efficiently en masse. But He chose not to. Jesus’ mission was not chiefly a crusade against disease, but rather a ministry to individual people. He wanted those people, one by one, to feel His love and warmth and His full identification with them. Jesus knew He could not readily demonstrate love to a crowd, for love usually involves touching.”

“Dr. Brand went on to illustrate this by telling about his parents. He writes, “I look at the impact my parents had. Although they went to India to preach the gospel, by living in tactile awareness of peoples’ needs, they began to respond on several levels. Within a year, they were involved in the fields of medicine, agriculture, education, evangelism, and language translation. My mother and father worked for seven years in India before anyone converted to Christianity. And in fact, that first conversion came as a direct result of their healing love.

“Villagers would often abandon their sick outside our home, and my parents would care for them. Once when a Hindu priest was dying of influenza, he sent his own frail, sickly, nine-month-old daughter to be raised by my parents. None of his swamis would care for the sick child. They would’ve let her die. But my parents took her in, nursed her to health, and adopted her as their own, and I gained a sister, Ruth, and my parents gained an unexpected response of trust. The villagers were so moved by this example of Christian love, that a few soon accepted Christ’s love for themselves.

“Years later, when my mother, Granny Brand, was 85, long after my father had died, she helped forge a medical breakthrough. She had often treated gross abscesses on the legs of mountain people by draining the pus and excising a long, thin Guinea worm. Distressed by the frequency of these abscesses, she studied the problem and learned that the worm’s life cycle included a larval stage spent in water. Knowing the peoples’ habits well, she quickly deduced that wading in water was probably the means of transmission. Cashing in on the trust and love she had built up through decades of personal ministry, she rode her horse from village to village to village” – 85 years old – “urging the people to build stone walls around their shallow wells and to prevent foot contact with the water. In a few years, this old lady had single-handedly caused the eradication of all such worms and their resulting abscesses in two complete mountain ranges.” Then he says, “I wonder how effective Granny Brand would have been had she dropped leaflets from an airplane.”

            John MacArthur writes the following after this quotation from Dr. Paul Brand:  “That sympathetic compassion is unique to Christianity, because it is unique to Christianity’s God.  Hinduism is perhaps one of the most cruelly neglectful of all religious systems.  Its caste system prohibits anyone from even touching those of and alien caste.  Its treatment of the sick and dying is sometimes shocking and barbarous, because providing them help is thought to delay the process of karma and reincarnation.  Brahmins, the Hindu priestly class, recognizes no responsibility for the care of the afflicted and downtrodden.  Islam, whose history runs red with secular and religious bloodshed, cannot be expected to show much pity for those in need.  The primary motive behind Buddhist benevolence is that the act may lay up merit.

            “How different were Jesus’ teaching and example.  In the parable of the slave who owed an unpayable debt to his king, Jesus illustrated God’s love through the grace of the king, who ‘felt compassion’ on his slave ‘and released him and forgave him the debt’ (Matt. 18:27).  When the two blind men sitting by the road just outside of Jericho cried out to Jesus, ‘Lord, have mercy on us, Son of David!’  He was ‘moved with compassion…touched their eyes,’ and restored their sight (20:30, 34).  When the leper came to Him, declaring, ‘If You are willing, You can make me clean,’ Jesus again was ‘moved with compassion,’ and He cleansed the man of his tormenting disease (Mark 1:40-41).

            “G. Campbell Morgan wrote on this passage,

‘There is no reason in man that God should save; the need is born of His own compassion.  No man has any claim upon God.  Why, then, should men be cared for?  Why should they not become the prey of the ravening wolf, having wandered from the fold?  It has been said that the great work of redemption was the outcome of a passion for the righteousness and holiness of God; that Jesus must come and teach and live and suffer and die because God is righteous and holy.  I do not so read the story.  God could have met every demand of His righteousness and holiness by handing men over to the doom they had brought upon themselves.  But deepest in the being of God, holding in its great energizing might, both holiness and righteousness, is love and compassion.  God said, according to Hosea, ‘How shall I give thee up, Ephraim?’  It is out of the love which inspired that wail of the Divine heart that salvation has been provided.’”

            MacArthur concludes this wonderful section on our Lord’s Divine Compassion with the following:  “Because the Lord is compassionate, believers who bear His name are also to be compassionate.  ‘To sum up,’ Peter says, ‘let all be harmonious, sympathetic, brotherly, kindhearted, and humble in spirit:  not returning evil for evil, or insult for insult, but giving a blessing instead’ (1 Peter. 3:8-9).”

            Spiritual meaning for my life today:  So with this SD we finish looking at God’s compassion, and it is my desire to learn much from this section as God has been speaking to my heart on this gracious subject.  Compassion, true compassion has to be a by-product of the Holy Spirit living in me in order to make my life more like my Lord’s.

My Steps of Faith for Today:  Be truly compassionate.

7/6/2021 8:33 AM