This post is kind of long but worth it (I think):
Luke 7:11-17 [11] Soon afterward he went to a town called Nain, and his disciples and a great crowd went with him. [12] As he drew near to the gate of the town, behold, a man who had died was being carried out, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow, and a considerable crowd from the town was with her. [13] And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her and said to her, “Do not weep.” [14] Then he came up and touched the bier, and the bearers stood still. And he said, “Young man, I say to you, arise.” [15] And the dead man sat up and began to speak, and Jesus gave him to his mother. [16] Fear seized them all, and they glorified God, saying, “A great prophet has arisen among us!” and “God has visited his people!” [17] And this report about him spread through the whole of Judea and all the surrounding country.
Notice the compassion of the Lord toward the widow of Nain. It’s not that surprising. God is a compassionate God.
Psalm 103:13-14 [13] As a father shows compassion to his children, so the LORD shows compassion to those who fear him. [14] For he knows our frame; he remembers that we are dust.
Our God is a compassionate God. From cover to cover we read of the compassion of the Lord. We read of our God looking down upon the pitiful plight of some person and having mercy upon them, rescuing them or strengthening them. This is the way God is. And it might do you some good to think about this: the Lord sees you. It says in v13 that the Lord saw her and his heart was moved. Have you forgotten this? Are you tempted to believe, in the midst of your trouble or pain that the Lord does not see you? Beloved, while your circumstances and unbelief may inhibit your vision of God, the Lord is not blinded to your pain and your plight. For you who are so weary and heavy-laden, be it sin, be it sickness, be it stress, be it anxiety, be it grief, even now your Lord sees you just as he saw “the affliction of his people” when they were enslaved in Egypt and with great compassion calls out to you, “Come to me you who are weary and heavy-laden, and I will give you rest.” (Matthew 11:28)
For those of you who are grieving over the loss of loved ones, whether that loss is recent or long ago, and your heart is breaking to the point of overwhelming pain and loneliness … your Lord knows and his heart goes out to you. Even now his compassions fail not. Even now he knows your pain as one who has grieved the loss of his only Son; did he not grieve the loss of his own friend, Lazarus, when he died? And so he knows all too well the pain of losing the ones you love; hear the Word of the living God: “when the Lord sees you, he has compassion on you.”
For those of you afflicted with physical sicknesses or mental illness or a depressed spirit, your Lord’s heart is moved. He has seen your oppression and heard your cries, even if your heart is so heavy and the only prayer you can muster is “You know, O Lord, you know.” Beloved, he knows. He has seen you and he has compassion on you. Hear the Word of the living God: “He was a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief” but “Surely he has borne our griefs and carried our sorrows.” (Isa 53:3-4)
For those of you who are lonely, perhaps the greatest and most intense pain of all, a pain that the shepherd of our souls felt sharply when he was abandoned by his followers and forsaken by his Father. Jesus knows and sympathizes with your weakness. Hear the Word of the Lord: “I will never leave you nor forsake you.”
For you who are Christians and struggling with a particular sin (maybe it’s lust, greed, anger, pride, bitterness, unforgiveness, addictions…), I don’t know how because he has never sinned a day in his eternal existence, but he knows; indeed, it was his compassion that moved him to come to this earth to save you from your sins; has he suddenly ceased to have compassion on you now even though you still sin? To you it has been said of him that “a bruised reed he will not break” (Matt 12:20) … your Lord moves with compassion upon you. He looked upon the lost sheep of Israel and the Bible says his heart was moved with compassion because they were like sheep without a shepherd and so he taught them and he will feed your faith now. And maybe you have sinned greatly but his compassion is greater; when the prodigal son returned the Bible says “his father saw him and felt compassion, and ran and embraced him and kissed him.” (Luke 15:20) Do you see the Father’s great heart? “Oh, look at my pitiful child – he has wrecked his life with riotous living; he has squandered all he had in sin; he has brought disrepute to my name; he has nothing; no friends, no money, no food, no life; sin has left him broken and bruised … but he has my compassion.” Oh, struggling saint, what is greater, your sin or the compassion of the Savior? Let his compassion turn you back to him.
For you who are poor sinners, lost and broken, do know that his coming to this earth was for this purpose; in his great vision he saw a sin-ravaged, broken and bound world, and the individual sinners in it; he saw them and he saw you; and what did his compassion move him to do? Hear the word of the Lord: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son …” (John 3:16) Do you hear of the compassion of God? Listen the plight of sinners was and is a most pitiable condition. David wrote, “Many are the sorrows of the wicked.” This testimony is sure, that sin cannot satisfy and cannot fulfill but leaves you with a gaping hole in your soul. To be sure sin can cause you manifest pain, like an addict who ruins his life or a hot-tempered man who ruins a friendship or a selfish woman who undermines her relationship with with another, but should you ignore all those symptoms that the Lord gives us to show us the destructive nature of sin, you must know that the fleeting pleasures of sin are just that – fleeting – and in the end leave you wanting more and with more wanting. Worse than that, the lost man can’t see the beauty of Christ, has no taste for the things that will satisfy his hungry soul, has no heart for God’s Word which gives life, has no desire for true communion with God’s people, does not have a true knowledge of the things that make for peace, and has no hope of eternal life. The Bible says he is darkened in his understanding, depraved in his desires, foolish in his thinking, restless in his wanderings, “having no hope and without God in this world.” Lost men are like those who would drink poison rather than mead and honey for they know no better – he is spiritually suicidal. This boy is dead because of sin and yet how men love sin, cling to it, play with it, scheme to do it, and excuse it when you would think they would run from it, hate it, war against it, and kill it. Tell me, is there a more pitiable condition than to love the darkness and hate the light (as John’s gospel says)? And yet God looked down upon sinners as such and his great heart was moved so much that he “loved you and gave himself for you,” that is, he died for you. And his heart still moves for you who are not followers of Christ. And that even now with great compassion he cries out to you to be saved.
But for you who refuse to follow Christ, who refuse to receive Christ as your Lord, who refuse to humble yourself, who refuse to call upon the name of the Lord and be saved (and you know who you are because you are the dangerous center of your life instead of Jesus being the glorious center of your life), please know that if you die in your sins, uncovered by the compassionate blood of Jesus, uncovered by the compassionate righteousness of Jesus, your condition is the most pitiful of all. Indeed, in the OT God declares your judgment to be “like the mourning for an only son and the end of it like a bitter day.” (Amos 8:10) Only that day will never end for you but instead you will wake up, as it were, every day to bitter grieving in your heart, to mourning that never ceases, and if you ask any mother here who has grieved over the untimely loss of her only son, you will wish for it to end every moment of your existence, but it will not. I beg you today, I implore you now, I plead with you at this moment, call upon the Lord to save you and make you his follower, lest the day of your bitter grief begins today. Friend, your Lord pleads with you. He sheds compassionate tears even as he did so when he drew near to Jerusalem and looked out over the city and “wept over it, saying, ‘Would that you, even you, had known the things on this day that make for peace …” (Luke 19:41-42) Friend, if you go to hell and live in eternal grief you will have to wade through a river of Jesus’ compassionate tears and step over his love-filled blood to do so. I implore you, call upon Jesus to save you today while his compassion still abounds for in hell you will receive no benefit from his compassion.
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