04. Can You Be Moved With Compassion?

4 -- CAN YOU BE MOVED WITH COMPASSION?

I have been trying to impress upon your consciousness the need for a total commitment of your whole being to Christ for the express purpose of making Him known to a lost and perishing world. I have pointed out the fact that your ears must hear the voice of God and must also hear the cry of a world yet unreached with the saving message of the Gospel. I have also pointed out the need for lifting up your eyes and looking upon the fields that are white unto harvest. In this chapter, I would point out that not only do you need to hear and see, but you also must get emotionally involved in reaching others with the Gospel. Our ears must hear, our eyes must see, and our emotions must get stirred to action. If we see the need and hear the desperate cry, but fail to act upon what we see and hear, it will accomplish absolutely nothing. Our efforts to convince you of the need of your involvement count for naught if you fail to take the necessary action. Your vision must be sufficiently clarified until it imparts something to your soul concerning the personal part you have to play in the fulfillment of God’s plan and purpose.

I could point you to no greater example in this regard than the example of our Lord during His earthly ministry. The scriptures tell us that the very feelings of Jesus were involved in the needs of humanity. In Matthew, chapter 9:36, we read, "But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion on them, because they fainted, and were scattered abroad, as sheep having no shepherd." At this time Israel was slave to Rome and in tremendous bondage and Jesus looked with compassion upon their situation. This word "compassion" has tremendous meaning. It is not speaking of a casual glance nor a casual interest. It is speaking of an interest that continues to be interested. It means to "suffer with or to have feeling for" someone or something. Jesus is saying that He suffers with the multitude who are scattered as sheep; He has deep feeling for a people who are held in bondage by a foreign power. You will notice that the disciples seem to lack this depth of compassion for the:~ would send the multitudes away in their fainting, half-starved condition. But the one who was moved with compassion just could not cast them aside that easily. The heart of Christ was too deeply wrought upon to make any such snap decision. Instead of sending them away, He instructs His disciples to see that they are given something to eat lest they faint in the way. What Christ is saying is this, "If you really care, share; if you are truly interested in doing the work that I have called you to do, get started right here and now." Here was a great opportunity for service and the disciples were seemingly uninterested in it. O! I feel that if Christ were present today in our generation, His words to us would differ very little from those uttered to His disciples so many generations ago. Jesus would look with compassion upon a lost heathen world held in fetters far more severe than those of the Romans; He would look with sympathetic concern upon a people held in sin’s slavery, and He would charge you and me with the responsibility of seeing to it that their spiritual hunger is satisfied. How easy it is to say, "Send them away." How easy it is to place the responsibility upon the shoulders of someone else. The responsibility is yours and mine. We cannot shrug our shoulders and thereby escape the obligations that our own union with Christ places upon us. O! How we need to see this world through the eyes of the Saviour! How we need to look as He looked and feel as He felt! Certainly your emotions will be stirred when you see as He sees. Not only in this instance, but in many others, Jesus reveals His compassionate concern for lost humanity. Look at Him as He enters into the garden and goes a little farther than the other disciples had gone. See Him as the tremendous burden of concern presses Him to the earth in an agony of prayer for others. Now look at the area occupied by the disciples and see them sleeping through the hours of His awful agony. Could they not watch with Him one hour? Could we say that their hearts were sufficiently stirred to action? Yet, I would not ask you to fault the disciples for their indifference until you have made full examination of your own. How well do you sleep through the agonizing realization that a world is lost in the darkness of sin? I wonder sometimes if we do not sleep all too well while a world wanders on without the light of the Gospel of Christ! Look at Christ as He moves from Gethsemane to the judgment hall and on to the Mount called Calvary. Watch Him suffer all the pains of death and hell in your behalf and mine. O! The depth of compassion revealed to us in the life and death of Jesus Christ. He had compassion, and it is this compassion that He seeks to impart to His followers. Do you have compassion on others? Is your heart moved to action as a result of Christ’s concern?

I suppose next to the compassion of Christ there would be no greater example than that given to us in the life of the apostle Paul. It was Paul who made such an impassioned plea for his own brethren who were outside the ark of safety. Paul tells us that he is willing to be accursed for his kinsmen; he tells us that he is willing to be lost in their behalf. Yes, He is willing to go to Hell if need be, if it will result in their salvation. What total commitment this is! A willingness to forfeit his own place in Heaven to take another’s place in Hell. When I search my own heart, I do not know that I could speak as the apostle has spoken; I do not know that I would have that depth of compassion that I would be willing to spend an eternity in Hell for the salvation of others. Certainly there is a depth of compassion suggested here that defies every means we might employ to measure it. It represents a compassion that cannot be measured.

Certainly Paul occupies a position in this regard that would seldom be sought or envied by others. I am not asking you to join Paul in his total self-abandonment; I am not asking that you commit yourself to be lost that others might be saved. Certainly it would not be my intention to make such a demand upon any individual. My concern is not that you be willing to die for others, although that might be involved in it; but what I am asking is that which Jesus asked, and that is that you live for others. Jesus calls upon us to get involved by doing all that we can possibly do to reach them with the Gospel. He calls for a selfless service and an unselfish effort to share this Gospel message with the entire world. You will recall the fact that Christ fed the five thousand with just a boy’s lunch. What a miracle was wrought in that feeding! I ask you, can He not do the same today if we will but do our part in supplying Him with the temporal necessities? I can assure you that the Lord has performed miracles in stretching your missionary dollar; He has reached out much farther than you or I could have reached, and I am convinced that He will continue to do so ff we will make the funds available.

I wonder just what you would think of the feeding of the five thousand if Christ had only fed the first couple of rows, and then after feeding them would go back over those rows again and again taking no interest in the many rows behind them? I’m sure we would see the injustice of such a situation immediately; yet are we not doing much the same here at home today? Have we not fed the first few rows over and over again with the Father’s bread while the back rows occupied by a lost heathen world is left with needs unmet. How shall we account for such injustice when we stand before the bar of infinite justice? O! How we need a sense of compassion today.

I would invite you to go with me to a hut on the mission field. Witness with me an old man about to change worlds without the knowledge of Jesus Christ. Is it not to our shame and discredit that such an individual should be perishing without the light of the Gospel? Go with me also to another scene perhaps even more tragic than this one. Look with me as the heathen perform their burial ceremony in which a live baby is buried with the dead mother. What a picture of unutterable tragedy! Such a thing would seem unthinkable to the average civilized mind, yet such a thing has happened in lands unenlightened by the glorious Gospel of Christ. I do not suggest that we can change the entire situation, but I do suggest that we can try. We may not be able to win all men to Christ, but surely we can be effective in winning some of them. There is so much to do and so few to help get it done. The needs are staggering, yet we dare not fail in doing all that we can to meet them. Will you not listen to the voice of God and the cry of a perishing world? Will you not lift up your eyes to a harvest dead ripe unto harvest? And will you not ask God to grant you the compassionate concern that will help us to do something about their lost condition? Our efforts can only be effective as you join with us in making Christ known.