Empowerment Through Compassion

What we normally get in most simply verbal transactions. So Mark chapter 3, another time he went into the synagogue and a man with a shriveled hand was there. Some of them were looking for a reason to accuse Jesus so they watched him closely to see if he would heal him on the Sabbath. Jesus said to the man with the shriveled hand, stand up in front of everyone. And then Jesus asked them, which is lawful on the Sabbath, to do good or to do evil, to save life or to kill? But they remained silent. He looked around at them in anger and deeply distressed that their stubborn hearts said to the man, stretch out your hand and he stretched it out and his hand was completely restored. And then the Pharisees went out and began to plot with Herodians how they might kill Jesus. I've read that passage many, many times in my Christian journey. Normally looking at it from the perspective of the healing and saying, isn't that wonderful? But this week as I read that passage, two words jumped out at me in a way that had never happened before. Right buried in the middle of these verses we read that Jesus, verse 5, having turned to the crowd that had gathered and asked them the question as to what was right to do on the Sabbath to heal or to do evil. They remained silent, not a yea or a nay, they just remained silent. They didn't respond. And the two words that jumped out at me were these. The Bible says that he looked at them in anger and was deeply distressed. The word anger caught my attention. And deeply distressed, that means cold hearted. He was worried about or concerned about and impacted by their cold heartedness. And church, as I thought about those things this week, normally I associate God being angry with overt sin, don't you? I say God's angry with your immorality. God's angry with your abortions. God's angry with your drunkenness. God's angry with your stealing and slander and lies. But what does this say? God is angry with what? Your silence. You know, these religious men, they cared a lot about laws and regulations and vows and formalities, being in church, but they didn't care about people. And that greatly angered and grieved the Lord Jesus Christ. Time and time again, the Bible warns us about the scourge of cold heartedness. We won't turn to Hebrews 3, but you might want to note that in your on your pad there. Hebrews 3 warns us to listen to the voice of God every day, lest our heart become hard and we drift off into the wilderness and miss the will of God. On the other hand, Scripture over and over again exhorts us to do what we saying today, to be like Jesus, who the Bible says was full of compassion and mercy. Now, right away, out the door this morning, I'm concerned because, you know, men, I say compassion, you tune out. Now, women have a bent, as I've talked about before, of being naturally a little more compassionate. But can I say that for all parties concerned today, I believe this is a crucial need in the life of this church. And it's not by accident that I believe God led me to speak on this some weeks ago and prepared for today. Folks, we need to consider that we might just be angering God and distressing his heart with our silence. You see, I don't really find much surprise in the fact that society is about as cold hearted as it can get. Have you noticed, you know, when people break down along the road, folks just don't stop anymore. I mean, it's pretty difficult to find people when you're in a situation of need. It's like this little story that one of our elder's wives gave me this week. It's called The Pit. A man fell into a pit and couldn't get himself out. A subjective person came along and said, I feel for you down there. An objective person came along and said, it's logical that someone would fall down there. A Pharisee said only bad people fall into a pit. An accountant said and calculated how he fell into the pit. A news reporter wanted the exclusive story on his pit. A fundamentalist said, you deserve your pit. An IRS man asked if he was paying taxes on his pit. A self-pitting person said, you haven't seen anything until you've seen my pit. Charismatic said, just confess that you're not in the pit. An optimist said, things could be worse. A pessimist said, things will get worse. But Jesus, seeing the man, took him by the hand and lifted him out of the pit. It doesn't surprise me that the world around us is compassionless. And part of it, in my estimation, is what I see coming across the TV screens. Have you noticed that it's very common on any given night to watch one horrendous little clip after another during the news? Well, here's the story of a baby that was left in a trash bag right after it was born. And then comes on the story of some homeless people that have no place to go and no food to eat. And then comes a story about a million people starving in Ethiopia. And then comes a story about some children living in sewers in Buenos Aires. And then after all this heartbreaking stuff, oh, and then a man comes on who got the wrong organ in a transplant deal, got the wrong heart. And you're breaking inside. And then the commentator comes on and smiles and says, and now this. And the next thing you see is, bring this man a Miller. Big beer commercial. And life is like all these contrasting kinds of things. And we don't know what reality is. And we just get hard into it. But folks, I'm not that concerned about the world today. I'm concerned about you and about me. And I just want to ask a question this morning. How compassionate have you been lately? How in touch with the needs of people have you been lately? And I'm not just talking about the overt needs, perhaps, or the obvious needs of the poor. But I'm talking about the deep human needs that every one of us encounter every day. I just want to do a little something to settle this. Get your hands free for a moment, or have your pen ready. You have two choices. But I like the hands-free option best. I hate to break up couples. I know this is, you know, I hold hands in church. That's fine. But just for a moment, put your hands in front of you or where you can, OK? On a scale of 1 to 10, rate yourself in your compassion portion today. 1 being, you know, you could care less what's happening to people around you. And 10, you know, you're a Mother Teresa clone, OK? I mean, you're just dripping with care. All right, now I'm serious. Not five years ago, not what you wish you were, not what you, you know, hope you were, but what you are today. Now go ahead and make a few fingers, 2, 3, 5, 8, whatever it is for you. Ken, if you're just on top of it. Go ahead. Now make that impression in your mind. You got it? I'm not going to ask you to raise your hand or tell anybody. But how many of you know that that quotient needs to be a little higher than it is? Just perhaps, just maybe. There's something that you've been involved in not doing that's been bringing grief and maybe even anger to God. I just can't tell you how this has gripped me. Because you see, folks, it's very possible that we're doing the right religious things but missing the heart of God for those around us and those in need. And left unchecked, do you know that we could miss God's blessing for our lives? And beyond that, we could fall right out of His will for our lives. And beyond that, listen, Jesus made it very clear. I read this this morning at 3 o'clock in the morning in the story of the Good Samaritan. When asked, what must I do to inherit eternal life, Jesus said, keep the commandments. And the second part of that was, love thy neighbor as thyself. And then, of course, the man challenged him. He said, well, who's my neighbor? Then Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan. And at the end, he said, now, you go and do likewise. You're the neighbor to that person, whoever the person is. Never seen that before. So Jesus is linking whether or not you're really on the road to eternal life based on whether or not your heart is responding. And compassion toward others. Let me suggest to you a few reasons just for today why you might have a lower quotient than you wish you had. Number one, these are the first several things in your outline there. Number one, and I'll just touch this one today. I'd like to give it more time, but I won't. It could be that some of you are here today, and you are gripped in a condition of having a compassionless heart or at least a low compassion quotient because of past hurts and unforgiveness. For some reason, in your spirit, there's no resource to draw upon. Something's happened to you in your past or possibly in your home or growing up situation or in your work or marketplace situation that has drained the life out of you. Now, folks, listen to me. It's so obvious in this church that some of us come here from wonderful families. I mean, I know some of your families. Great families. Model American families. Affirmation rolls out the windows all the time. People laugh and have a good time together. And in families like that, there's compassion and mercy and understanding and forgiveness. And it's not too obvious, is it, to say that compassion breeds compassion. And the more you live under mercy, the more you give mercy. And the more kindness you receive, the more likely you are to give. And please, if you're one of those people, don't be smug. Just be humbly grateful because there are other people around you today. They may look just like you, but they grew up in an alcoholic home where there wasn't any compassion and mercy. But there was rancor and anger and bitterness flowing all the time. Or they grew up in a home of divorce where all they heard was fights and name-calling and backbiting. And you see, those things tend to breed themselves, too. And it's possible that you might be among those today. And you wonder, why don't I care about the needs around me? Well, the reason could be is you haven't really dealt with what you've been feeling. And you sit up here, and you hear us talk about our Norman Rockwell kind of families. And you say, well, that's great for you. But I just didn't have that. And I'm hurting inside. And folks, this church is not here just to pretend that those things don't exist. This church is here to help people deal with it. You don't need to be bound by it. You don't need to be in a bondage to some past thing. And people in the marketplace, people who are working, and how many of you work in just great, affirming, everyone loves each other kinds of environments? Good thing the staff put their hand up. I saw that, Norma. I mean, isn't it true that the majority of people out there today live in what is known as the dog-eat-dog world, where to show compassion is considered a sign of weakness? And you're afraid that if you would show the least little hint of being sensitive that someone's going to walk right over you on the way up to the top. People often tell me, if I did what you told me to do, if I did my job what you tell me to do in church, I'd be in the bottom of the ladder. And I often say to those people, well, maybe you're on the wrong ladder. The second reason why some of us might be in a deficit position today is the pace of life. Folks, who can be busier than we are? I mean, with the opportunities that we have, the transportation that we have, the communication that we have, recreation, sports, culture, travel, I mean, let's face it. This is the most mobile, opportunistic society in the history of the planet. Beyond that, many of us are working so much to try to have this good life that our pace has increased to the point where we're miles ahead of where even our parents were, in many cases, in terms of hours put in the job. George Gallup completed a poll just recently, 15 years ago, 1975 to 1990. The average work week for a blue-collar worker has jumped from 41 to 47 hours, and for a management worker from 52 to 59 hours. In just those 15 years, that's the average. This doesn't include two-career kind of family pressures, which are very common, or single-parent pressures, which are unbelievable. And so this pace begins to pick up, and people find themselves unable to even get some time in edgewise to sort of focus on what really matters. They're living in what's, in my estimation, a crisis all the time. And what happens when they get a weekend like this one, where they get an extra day off? What do people tend to do? Well, they tend to just pull back, slam the door, and go away. Get away from it all. Try to do everything they can to recharge before Tuesday morning, and they get back in on the old drill once again. I just, I thought to myself, I wonder how many people this weekend thought, hey, we have an extra day. Maybe I could go to the hospital and visit somebody. Or maybe I could sit down and write that letter that I really needed to write to a loved one to tell them how I feel. Or maybe we could have that family we've wanted to share the gospel with. Maybe we could have them over, instead of the normal thing that everyone does is, I've just got to get back online, me. I don't have time for compassion. I'm trying to survive my weekly drill in Keogh. I'm sorry if you're down on your luck, pal, and your family's having a hard time. I just got to keep my family together. This whole pace thing came home to me in spades this summer. It really did. When I left here for my break, I realized that I was, my RPMs were just redlining all the time. And I had very little extra compassion. I don't, you know, it may be a surprise to some of you, but I do have compassion from the Lord. I really do. But I was running, I was just running overboard. And this came to me so powerfully. I was in a supermarket in another town. And I was in the famous checkout line, you know, the one that God always puts me in. If it says Express, I mean, I always see Express with a ha-ha-ha on it, you know. And I was waiting in line, and finally went through a whole bunch of things. And the tape ran out and all that stuff. And finally got my groceries and was heading to the door. And I was just kind of churgling underneath. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw this gal that appeared to be in her 20s with what appeared to be her mom walking with her. And just kind of, you know, hunching along. And she had a helmet on her head. It wasn't to go out and get in a motorcycle. I mean, it was a helmet to protect her from what I would expect would be occasional seizures. You've probably seen people like that, to protect. And, you know, as I was walking toward the door, I realized that they needed someone to hold the door. But it was a pretty good distance. It wasn't one of those automatic openers. And I had to make the decision, you know, was I going to stand there and hold the door, or just get on and hurry up and make up some of the time I lost waiting in that line. And I did. I stood there. And I said something. And, you know, this gal kind of shuffled through. And the Lord spoke to my heart. He said, you know, you're more concerned about the time you're losing than the fact that this gal will never be in a hurry. And there was something that happened to me there that said to my heart, I've got to take a look at what's going on. Folks, if we don't have time for compassion, then we're too busy. And we risk angering God and grieving the Holy Spirit. And I've done some things, which maybe I'll share in a bit, to change the pace of my life somewhat. It was hard for me to realize that. How about you today? I mean, is it a big accomplishment for you to be here in church? And are you plugging in your time only to know that nothing is going to change until next week when you're plugging in again? The third reason why some of us may be a little low on the compassion quotient is just the saturation of needs. And everywhere I turn, there are more and more needs. I'd like to develop this. I just want to say today, you're right. There's a lot of needs out there. I've often said about the ministry, it'd be great if it wasn't for the people. Their lives are messy. I mean, things get hairy. People don't solve their problems just according to the book. They never have. Jesus encountered this all the time. People got complicated on it. And that's what happens with us. But folks, I believe it's a lot better to make one small little difference somewhere than to just throw your hands up in the air and say, I can't make any difference at all. You can find a place where you can make a difference. You can be responsive to need wherever you go. Just, Lord, lead me, direct me. I want to be responsive. You can make a difference. I was so marked some years ago when I read this story about little Trevor Farrell. You remember him? He was the 11-year-old boy out in Philadelphia who was watching the news about homeless people. And he couldn't believe it. He said to his mom and dad, people really live under cardboard and overheating grates like that. And mom and dad said, yes, and they do. He said, I don't believe it. They put him in the car and drove down to Philadelphia's inner city. A block past City Hall, found his first homeless person. Pulled a blanket out that they'd taken with him and handed it to him and said, I hope this helps you. That man was so touched. He looked up and he said, God bless you, boy. And that started something. If you remember the story, over the next years, the family emptied out all their excess blankets and food and clothing, and others heard about it and gave them vans and cars and food and all kinds of things. And he ended up being on Merv Griffin and all these other different nationally syndicated shows because one little boy decided he could make a difference. The interesting part of that story is, when he was interviewed, he said at the end of the time of the interview, he said, it's Jesus inside of me that makes me want to do this. He's saying, well, I'm too young to make a difference. Are you older than 11? I'm too old to make a difference. You can make a difference. Number four, this only probably applies to a few, but there are a number of people here. You don't have much compassion because you poured yours all out. You've given all of yourself. I'm going to call it excessive caregiving, overextension of care. You've gone so far that you don't have anything left. What really hurts me about this is some of these are the best people, the most wonderful workers in our church. I mean, along the way, you were in a home group leading position, or maybe you were in the nursery, or maybe you were a teacher, or maybe you were greeting. But every time you saw a need, or maybe you were out there sharing the gospel as a harvester, and you were always there when called on. But over time, you know, something happens to us. If we don't balance out the things of our lives, we start getting just a little crust. And one day, whether you knew it or not, imperceptibly possibly, you began to get a little bit, just a little bit bitter about it. How come I'm the only? But you didn't say anything because you felt it was your duty. And then you went on a little bit longer, and then one day it just all came down. Hey, Pastor Jeff, call somebody else. I'm not interested. And you see, that can really scar us. I mean, I know home group leaders. I've had you say to me, I don't want to lead any more groups. Please look back in your history. And if you find yourself burned over or somehow just hurt from the past, come to terms with it, won't you? Do what Jesus said. Get some time away from it all and get refreshed, but then get back out of the grandstands and into the playing field because folks, that's where the empowerment comes when you're there. You say, well, how do I know it won't happen again? You don't, but you can take some steps to protect yourself by being in closer contact with those that are there to care for you and provide for you. And quickly, number five. The fifth reason why many of us are just a little low today is that we have separated ourselves from the source of compassion. I love that. You know, the Bible says that our God is full of mercy and overflowing with compassion. And yet it's very easy for us to just pull back a little bit and then a lot. Don't put your hand up, please. But how many of you have not had one time with God this past week? I mean, just you and God. Not in the car when you were dreaming along. No, when you got before God, undistracted and said, God, here I am. See, we need to be regularly experiencing that love and mercy and forgiveness that we read about and sang about this morning. Because God wants to fill us up so we can be not reservoirs, but what? Rivers, pouring out love to people around us. You can't give water out of a dry well. I fear that far too often we receive a touch from God and rather than letting the Holy Spirit just pour through us to pass it on, we just kind of absorb it to ourselves and keep it to ourselves. Some of us have received a touch of salvation in the last months of our lives. Have you told anybody about it? Maybe you've been healed. Have you prayed with anyone for healing? Maybe God's provided for you. Have you provided for anyone else? See, if you're not receiving in fillings and giving out, you're just, you're cutting short the purposes and plans of God for your life. And I want to end today with three things that you can do. I always want to give you an application. Here's three things that you can do to change your compassion quotient from low numbers to high numbers. Here they are. Number one, endeavor to be in the place where you'll find compassion. And folks, you're just like me. You need to be where compassion is. And can I say you need to be there regularly? How many of you, as soon as your gas tank gets to half empty or half full and just a little below, you start looking for a gas station? Not many. How many of you, when it gets to a quarter, a fourth? Or the rest of you wait for the idiot light to come on and the, you know, that thing that, it's exciting, you know? That's very, it's profoundly bold and daring of you, but pretty dumb, I guess. I mean, it seems to me. But you know what? You know, when it comes to our infilling of God's compassion and love, I sense a lot of us slip down to the three quarters and the half and the quarter. And we don't even think about getting plugged back in until the idiot light goes off. Until we hear some kind of a crisis and, oh, I better get back to God. Better get back before the Lord and pray again. Don't do that. One of the things that we endeavor to do, and believe me, it is at no small cost to present to you the most uplifting worship services that we can by the Spirit's power on Wednesday nights and Saturday nights and Sunday mornings and lots of other gathering times in the body, in our home group meetings, discipleship meetings, even in prayer meetings. Folks, something happens. You get charged when you get in the presence of people. You do. Here on Tuesday morning, this last week, we were in our morning prayer time at six o'clock. Some of you have never even thought about coming to that and you should. You could do it. We pray, seek the Lord, and during a time when the group is all together here, about 35 of us, Jim Fulmer, who's one of our missionaries to China, asked to use the microphone for a moment. He came up, his voice was quivering a bit, and he was saying, you know, when I'm over in China, when I'm out there in the front lines of sharing the gospel with people, when I'm out there with a billion pagan Chinese people, and I get before God and I say, when I get before God and I close my eyes to pray, he said, I see your faces right there on the front lines with me. Oh, I'll tell you what. Now, that marked me. That changed my understanding of prayer. I want to encourage you folks. And see, that was enough for me. That one little impartation carried me on for several days. Well, the second thing that you might want to do, before I go on, let me just say to parents, if you have kids, you know, your children need that same consistent expression of being with God's people. I'm concerned about, Pastor Jeff Small tells me, you know, we have some kids that show up one week and we don't see them for two weeks, and then they show up again. And folks, if you're a parent and you care about your kids, they should be plugged in every week. They need to know. Their hearts might be little, but they're growing and they need to know. They need to see the model of your consistency. They need to know what it means to be regularly plugged in with God's people and enjoying His grace amidst His people. And that's true for junior and senior hires as well. Parents, the little ones can't get here without you. And it may not be convenient sometimes, but you need to do it. You need to be part of the team that helps to provide that as well. All right, secondly, be with people who are flowing compassion out to others. Just very briefly, I want to say this. When you're with others in whom compassion is flowing, you find that it just kind of rubs off on you. I was with a personal evangelist a few years ago who every place he went, he saw it as an opportunity. You know, you go to Denny's to get something to eat? Well, right away, he'd be praying for the waitress for an opportunity to share, you know. We'd stop to get gas, it'd usually be 15 minutes because he'd go into pay and he'd talk about Christ to the guy at the gas station. I mean, that's the way it was. But I found something after a week of being with him, I was much more attuned to those opportunities than I had been. I want to ask you a question this morning. Are you part of any group, playing on any team in any segment of the life of this church or any place else where you're giving out? Or are you simply on the receiving end all the time? Dear one, you're losing the battle. Empowerment comes through expression of compassion. Get plugged in. At 11.15, we're starting a new class today in network, right up in the main office up above there. Sit in there for an hour and see if it doesn't help you to know where you might fit in and make a contribution in your life. Finally, number three, it has to do with priorities. In the end, it's your priorities, it's your choices that will make the difference about the compassion level of your life. 1 Corinthians 13.13 says, Now abide these three, faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is... What does it mean when it says abides? Until the end of the decade? What does it mean? It means eternally. This is what's going to last. Love is going to last. What are people going to say about your life when you leave? What you stood for? What's going to abide from your life? I've been around a lot of funerals in the last year. I've heard these things said of people. He's a great softball player. He was a brilliant marketer. He could hold his booze. That's a good thing to say, isn't it? He loved animals. He kept a nice yard. And dear ones, standing beside a coffin, those words are very, very empty. What's going to be written on your epitaph? Wouldn't you want someone to be able to say, He or she was so caring, so compassionate, so giving of themselves, so looking for an opportunity to make a difference in someone else's life. You know, Pittsburgh is full of religious people. Of all the cities I'm ever in, this city has more people who go to church and go through formalities and keep rituals and call themselves by certain labels than any city I know of. And yet, I just want to say to you, I sense that there's a compassion deficit in our city. Like the Pharisees, they practice religion, but their hearts are cold. And that can be true of us right here in this place too. I just want to end by saying to you, I know I came to a place in my own life where I said, I just don't want to keep going on the road. It's business as usual, keep doing all my busy stuff, but not have a heart for people. And I want to ask you today, as you look into 1991 and 1992, as we start this new ministry season, where are you going to end up? Some of you are going to anger God and distress Jesus. And I don't want to be among those. And some of you are going to say, Lord, by your grace, I'm going to be all you want me to be. Full of compassion. Overflowing with those you put across my path. I've resolved to put my compassion in action this year. I want to invite you to join with me in that, and maybe God will change us all just a little bit. I've tried to see that start already, and I think there's a few things that are happening at home that would indicate that there's a little hope there. Recently a staff member came up, put his arm around me and said, I really appreciate the change in you. About time. He's no longer with us. What about you? Let's stand together. Remember those fingers you had out a while ago? Just cross your hands once again. Put up the number of fingers you want to have as a compassion portion. You have to make the tough choices. You have to reorient your life. You have to decide to be where there's compassion with people who are compassionate. I'm touching a God who is compassionate. Sing this with me as a prayer.