What is the essence of Christianity? If you could put a one-word label on Christ, on Christianity, on God, what is the first descriptive term that comes to mind when you think about the Lord? LOVE! The essence of God is “love.” And what is the essence of love? How is love demonstrated? Love is demonstrated through compassion. God so loved that He gave. That was an act of extreme compassion. I believe that the whole earth is groaning in earnest expectation for the full manifestation of the sons of God as is revealed in Romans chapter eight. The world is waiting to see a manifestation of the sons of God. What will that look like? What is the manifestation of the Church on the earth? What is the manifestation of Christianity in the world? It is compassion! It is the people of God deliberately getting beyond their own realm of comfort and focusing on meeting the needs of a hurting humanity in order to bring glory to God. It’s not simply to relieve the needs of the hurting. Jesus said, “The poor will always be among you.” But we seek to meet the needs of a hurting humanity in order to bring glory to God. It’s part of our function on the earth.
We’re all familiar with the story of the Good Samaritan in Luke chapter ten. I want to go back and read it. Now this is one of those stories that you probably know if you’ve been in church since you were a child.
Luke 10:25, “Behold there came a certain lawyer,” this is not referring to a legal attorney so much as one who is very knowledgeable in the Word of God. He has given himself and devoted his life to the study of God’s law. It says, “A certain lawyer stood up and tested Jesus saying, ‘Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life?’ Jesus said to him, ‘What is written in the law?’ So he answered and said, ‘And you shall love the Lord with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself.’ He said to him, ‘Do this and you will live.’ But he, wanting to justify himself said, ‘Jesus, and who is my neighbor?’” And Jesus once again demonstrates this uncanny ability to seize the opportunity and use it for a teaching moment.
“Jesus said, ‘A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half dead.’” Okay, so you have the picture: here’s a guy beat-up, half-naked, and he’s been robbed and left for dead on the side of the road. So there’s an obvious need someone had right there on the side of the road. Here’s an individual who was in distress.
And we read as Jesus continues in verse thirty-one, “By chance a certain priest came down that road.” The “priest,” in modern-day lingo, would be an apostle, prophet, or teacher. He is somebody who has been “called” into the ministry. He’s involved in a priestly function in the synagogue, or in the temple. This priest would have been a very religious man; in fact, being religious is what he did. He was a church leader and lived a religious, insulated, inoculated life. He wouldn’t have really had a whole lot of exposure as to what is going on out there in the world.
I can identify through experience. It’s one of the reasons that we’re spending less and less time doing stuff around the church and more and more time out there. Recently, in fact, I’m going to confess, and I’m a little embarrassed to do it, but Vickie and I took a pretty substantial pay cut from the church. And we did that for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I was getting a feeling of dependency upon the church. After twenty-three years of doing this, I could recognize in my own life that I was living an insulated existence. It wasn’t so much “us and them,” the “laity and the priesthood.” It wasn’t that type of thinking.
Let me just tell you a few things about church leaders in the American church. You know, many times it’s easy for church leaders to think that they’re entitled to certain things because they are “pastors.” Is that offensive? I know because I’ve been there. I’m speaking from experience. Instead of having a sense of being called to serve, if we’re not careful, then we have this sense that others are called to serve us. And that’s a very risky place, and it’s very easy to grow comfortable.
So recently, we’ve been taking some steps and doing some things to make ourselves more vulnerable out there and less dependent in other areas. Listen, I’ve spent five years on the mission field and twenty-three years pastoring. I never want to get the feeling of, “My goodness sakes, without a paycheck from the church, where would I be?” God is my source! And He has more than one stream through which to supply my needs. And so we’ve been kind of pursuing some of these other streams, and it’s opened up a whole world of marvelous opportunity for us. We’re seeing God do some miraculous things in the last few weeks as a result of taking deliberate steps to get ourselves out of our comfort zone.
Let this speak to you as we all have a comfort zone. You have one; I have one. I’m just leaving myself open to you so that you understand my comfort zone. You have one, too. Your lifestyle, your routine, your paycheck, the people you hang with, the way you live, it’s easy to get comfortable. We absolutely do get to a place of living an insulated life, and if we’re not careful, we get real religious about it.
Now Jesus said, “Here comes this priest.” He’s a church leader. He’s a religious man. And how does he respond to the obvious need that is right in front of him? It says that when he saw, he passed by on the other side. Why? Well, because he’s a busy man. Everybody knows how busy the priest is! He’s too busy to get involved with the petty needs of someone who is distressed and laying on the side of the road. So he just walks right by. Jesus said, “Likewise, the Levite,” another religious man. He is one who would be very proud of his heritage and being a direct descendant of Levi.
When he arrived at the place he came, he looked. HE LOOKED! He saw! And yet Jesus said he passed by on the other side. Verse thirty-three, “But a certain Samaritan,” an unclean, defiled, “not to be associated with” Samaritan. Samaritans were looked down upon by people in the church: the religious people of God. “The Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion. So he went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine and he set him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him. On the next day when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said, ‘Take care of him and whatever more you spend, when I come, I will repay you.’ So which of these three do you think was neighbor to him who feel among the thieves?’”
Well, it’s pretty obvious to us that it was the Samaritan who was the neighbor. It was not the religious man, not the head of the church. It was not the apostle, the pastor, the prophet, the evangelist, or the teacher. It was the Samaritan who took time out of his equally busy schedule to be disrupted, to be inconvenienced. Why? Because he was moved with compassion. And may I suggest to you he was moved more greatly with compassion than the men of God were moved. Why? Because the men of God had grown somewhat calloused; they had learned the fine art of ignoring needs around them. Their hearts were no longer pierced or penetrated by a lost and distressed world. They no longer felt the pain; they could no longer even care. They couldn’t even recognize the need, the opportunity that was set right in front of them. They didn’t see an opportunity to be a manifestation of God’s love, of God’s compassion.
How many times do we read in the Gospel accounts: “And Jesus, being moved by compassion.” When Jesus was moved by compassion, something happened. There were results that came about because Jesus wasn’t just stirred; He didn’t just feel something. It was not just an emotional urge, He was moved to do something. That is the difference between sympathy and compassion. The Church is filled with sympathy. Sympathy is a feeling and an emotion. Compassion is action and being moved by that emotion to a place of seeking to make a difference in the lives of those who are distressed, who are hurting.
I believe that God is bringing us back to a place of recognizing the need for compassion in our lives in order to reflect His character and demonstrate His love to the world around us.
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