His Compassion

‘‘Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly, that God hath made Him both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified.’’ — Acts 2:36. ‘*But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw him, he was moved with compassion, (34) and came to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring on them oil and wine; and he set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. (35) And on the morrow he took out two pence (shillings) and gave them to the host, and said, Take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, I, when I come back again, will repay thee. (37) Go and do thou likewise.’’ — Luke 10:33-35, 37. He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk even as He walked.’’ — 1 John 2:6.

Thus far we have studied four features of the picture that God has drawn in His Word of the real Christ, His Holiness, His Love for God the Father, His Love for Men, His Love for Souls. This morning we are to study the fifth feature in that picture, His Compassion. Though I have given considerable study to this subject in years past, I never dreamed until I went to work on the present sermon how much there was in the subject, and the sermon this morning is primarily for the benefit of the preacher. I hope it will mean as much for many of you as it has meant for me as have studied what God has had to say on this subject in the picture He has drawn of the Christ in the Four Gospels.

I have three texts: Acts 2:36: ‘‘Let all the house of Israel therefore know assuredly that God hath made Hum both Lord and Christ, this Jesus whom ye crucified.’? Luke 10:33, 35, 37: “But a certain Samaritan as he journeyed, came where he was: and when he saw lim, he was moved with compassion. (34) And came to hum, and bound up his wounds, pouring on them ow and wine; and he set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. (35) And on the morrow he took out two pence (shullmgs) and gave them to the host, and said, take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, I, when I come back again, will repay thee.... Go and do thou likewsse.’’ I John 2:6: “‘He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also to walk even as He walked.

I wish to call your attention in opening particularly to my second text which we shall have occasion later to study in more detail. It 1s, as most of you doubtless recognize, taken from the story of the Good Samaritan. Any one who really understands that story must see in it in the last analysis a photograph of Jesus Christ Himself. He alone fully answers to the picture which He Himself has drawn. In it He tells us what we — should do, but in doing so He states what He Himself has already done.

What I have discovered regarding the compassion of the real Christ in the study of the picture God has given of Him in the Four Gospels we will arrange under two General Heads: First, the Objects of Christ’s Compassion. Second, the Way in which the Compassion of the Christ was manifested.

I. The Objects of Christ’s Compassion

Who were the objects of Christ’s compassion?

1. In the first place, ‘‘the multitude.’’ In no less than five separate passages in the Gospels is the fact mentioned that Jesus Christ had compassion on the multitude. One passage is Matt. 9:36: “But when He saw the multitude, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were distressed and scattered (prostrated), as sheep not having a shepherd.’’ In this case it was the fact that the multitude were distressed and scattered as sheep having no shepherd that moved our Lord to compassion. That is a true description of the multitude, the crowd, the throng, to-day even as it was of the multitude in our Lord’s day. Oh, how unshepherded the great mass of men to-day are and how sore distressed (or prostrated) they are. Suppose our Lord Jesus were to-day in Los Angeles. How would He feel toward the heedless, thoughtless, unsatisfied, unshepherded multitudes that throng our streets and parks, our places of amusement, our seaside and mountain resorts? How does our

Lord feel to-day as He looks upon the unshepherded and distressed millions of China and other lands? The attitude of our Lord toward the multitude, the ordinary herd of men, ‘‘the masses’? as distinguished from the classes, was in striking contrast to the attitude of the other religious leaders of the day, the Scribes and Pharisees. They regarded the multitude as ‘‘accursed’’ of God. When Nicodemus lifted his voice in favor of Jesus, the Pharisees said, ‘‘Hath any one of the rulers believed on Him, or of the Pharisees? But this multitude which knoweth not the law are accursed.’’ (John 7:48, 49.) The attitude of many, of our religious leaders to-day toward the multitude is more like that of the Pharisees than it is like that of the Christ. What matters it to them what becomes of ‘‘the mob,’’ ‘‘the crowd,’’ ‘‘the masses,’’ ‘‘the common herd’’ if we can only gather into our churches ‘‘the people of intelligence and position and wealth and influence?’’ There is no question how we ought to feel if we are real Christians, if we are followers of the real Christ. But how do you feel toward the great heedless masses of men and women, ‘‘the multitude?’’ In Mark 8:2, it was the fact that ‘“‘the muléz tude’’ were hungry that moved Christ to compassion. He said, ‘‘I have compassion on the multitude, because they have now been with me three days, and have nothing to eat.’’ Not only the spiritual destitution of men, but their physical need as well appealed to the compassion of Jesus Christ.,

In Matt. 14:14, it was just the fact of seeing the crowd as a crowd that is mentioned as moving our Lord to compassion. We read, ‘‘ And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them.’’ Whenever Jesus saw a crowd of men He was moved with compassion. A crowd of men is a pitiful sight. It represents so much of sorrow, so much of need, so much of pain, so much of sin. What is your feeling when you look out upon a crowd? Is it mere curiosity? Is it contempt? Is it indifference? Or is it compassion? Judging from the context of this last passage, the sick seem to have especially drawn out the compassion of the Lord Jesus.

2. In the second place, Jesus Christ had compassion on those who had lost loved ones. We see a beautiful and touching instance of this in Luke 7:12, 13: ‘‘Now when he drew near to the gate of the city, behold, there was carried out one that was dead, the only son of his mother, and she was a widow: and much people of the city was with her. (13) And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, weep not.’’? The woman was a perfect stranger to our Lord but as He saw her deep and bitter sorrow over the loss of her only son, His whole heart was stirred with compassion for her and He is just the same to-day, ‘‘ Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever.’’ (Heb. 13:8.) Ah, how many a lonely sorrower thinks no one cares. Jesus cares.

How unlike Christ Jesus are the ‘‘Christian Scientists.’’? They have no compassion on the béreaved one. No, not for a moment. ‘‘There is no such thing as death,’’ they say. ‘‘Those who you think are dead have only passed on. You must not weep and I won’t weep with you.’’ It is true that in this instance our Lord Jesus told the woman not to weep, but it was not because her only and beloved son of whom she was bereft had ‘‘nassed on’’ but because He would be immediately restored alive again to her. And at the tomb of Lazarus as He saw Mary and Martha weeping over the death of their brother Lazarus, He ‘‘wept’’ too, though He knew their sorrow was but for a moment and founded upon a misapprehension and that in a few minutes it would be changed into exceeding joy. Nevertheless, their sorrow was real; and, as it was theirs, it was His also. Oh, what an utter unlikeness there is between the conduct of the unmotherly ‘‘Mother Eddy,’’ the false Christ, and her satellites toward the sorrowing and the conduct of our Lord Jesus, the real Christ. One of the most loathsome features of ‘‘Christian Science’? is its conduct toward the sorrowing. It is cold, heartless, brute-like, utterly selfish, utterly lacking in sympathy and compassion.

3. In the third place, Jesus Christ had compassion on all men afflicted by any form of misfortame, misery, wretchedness or degradation. In Matt. 20:34 we are told He had compassion on two blind beggars at the gate of Jericho. In Mark 9:22, 25 we are told He had compassion on a poor demonized boy. In Mark 1:40, 41 we are told he had compassion on a leper. The world, even the religious world of that day, met the leper with repulsion and disgust and scorn. Christ met him with compassion. The world drew away from him, Christ drew toward him. Every form of misfortune and misery touched His heart. He entered into it as if it were His own. Here again we see the wide difference between the real Christ and the Christ of ‘‘Christian Science,’’ crazily so called. Is a man sick? In a Christian Scientist it awakens no sympathy. No, it awakens only reproach. ‘‘You have no right to be sick,’’ says the ‘‘Christian Scientist.’ ‘You are in error.’’ ‘‘Sickness is only illusion, mortal thought.’’ But Jesus, the real Christ, had compassion on the sick and healed the real sickness and gave real healing, charging nothing. But the Christian Scientist practitioner heals an imaginery sickness (a sickness that is only in your mind) with an imaginary healing (a healing that is also only in your mind) for real money — (money that is not only in your mind but is in the practitioner’s palm and is put into the practitioner’s bulging bank account).

Jesus Christ did not go about His work from a cold sense of duty, but His whole heart drew Him out towards those He helped and saved. His deeds of mercy cost Him something more than the sacrifice of leisure and the expenditure of effort and power. They cost Him heart-aches. He made other men’s sorrows His own sorrows, other men’s agony His own agony, other men’s sin and shame His own sin and shame. He could not look upon misery, sickness, pain, death or sin without heart pangs. We read in John 11:33: ‘‘When Jesus therefore saw her weeping and the Jews also weeping which came with her, He groaned wn the spirit, and was troubled.’’ Herein lay one great secret of His power. It is the misery that we make our own that we can comfort; it is the want we make our own that we ean fully satisfy; it is the sin we make our own that we can save another from and so we read about our Lord Jesus in Paul’s epistle to the Corinthians, ‘‘Him who knew no sin He made to be sm on our behalf; that we mal become the righteousness of God m Hwum.’’ (2 Cor. 5:21.) Real power to help men is a very expensive thing, but any one can have it who is willing to pay the price. But the one who is not willing to give up lightness of heart, and take instead burden of heart over the world’s sin and sorrow and shame, may as well give up the thought of being a helper and, even more, a saviour of men. Men cannot be saved by burning words. No! only by bleeding hearts.

In Dundee, Scotland, lives a lady of wealth and position, but she is also a Christian. Her interest is not in society and fashion, but in the poor, the needy, the fallen, the outcast. One time there was brought to the Home for the Fallen, in which she was interested, a very depraved and much hardened woman. This woman was dying from the results of her sin, but every attempt to interest her in the sinner’s Friend and Saviour, our Lord Jesus, had failed.. Her time was growing very short. The woman of wealth and position, the true follower of the real Christ, went to see her. As she tried to speak to her about the Saviour she so sorely needed, the dying woman only grew angry, more angry and more hard and bitter. With breaking heart the Christlike woman leaned over the dying sinner. She could not hold back the tears and they fell from her eyes upon the cheek of the dying girl and instantly that hard heart broke and the outcast listened, saw Jesus, believed in Him and was saved. Afterwards she said, ‘‘It was the tear that did it.’’ Oh, how this sorrow-stricken, sin-ruined world of ours, staggering toward its doom, needs men and women with a heart of compassion like our Lord’s to tell it the story of the dying love and the resurrection power of the Son of God.

Il, The Way in Which the Compassion of the Real Christ Was Manifested

What we have just said brings us naturally to The Way in which the Compassion of the Real Christ was Manifested.

1. In the first place, the compassion of Jesus Christ was manfested mm making the sorrows of others His own. This we see in John 11: 33-36: ‘“When Jesus therefore saw her weeping, and the Jews also weeping which came with her, He groaned in the spirit, and was troubled, (34) and said, Where have ye laid him? They say unto Him, Lord, come and see. (35) Jesus wept. (36): The Jews therefore said, Behold how He loved him.’’ As we have already seen, the sorrow of these bereaved sisters was but for a moment and it was founded upon a misapprehension and in a few minutes it would be exchanged for the exceeding joy of having their brother restored to them alive and well. But their sorrow was real and as it was theirs it was Christ’s also. Paul speaking for God commands us also to ‘‘weep with those that weep’’ (Romans 12:15). Oh, how little some of us do it. I have spoken of the utter heartlessness of the ‘‘Christian Scientists,’’ which with them is a matter of principle, an essential part. of their religion, a close following in the footsteps of their Lord, Mary Baker Eddy; but there is altogether too much heartlessness in professedly evangelical Christians, which is diametrically opposed to their religion, to the example of their Lord, and to the teaching of the entire Bible. We are too busy, too busy sometimes in religious activities, to stop to enter into the sorrow of others and to ‘‘weep with those who weep.’’ But the real Christ, in spite of all the work that was crowded into the three and one-half years of his very busy public life, was not too busy to stop to ‘“weep with those who weep.’’? We read in Matt. 20: 30-34 that when He was hurrying forward on the most urgent business of His life, with His ‘“face set steadfastly to go to Jerusalem”’ to His atoning death, two blind beggars in their misery called to Him. The disciples rebuked them and told them not to presume to bother the Great Master with their petty sorrows when He was on such an important mission, but the inspired Record says, “‘Jesus stood still and called them.’’ Oh, that we were more like Him, never too busy to stop to sympathize with and help the suffering, no matter how insignificant they may be in the eyes of the world.;

2. In the second place, the compassion of Jesus Christ was manifested not only im feelings or words, but m action, in self-sacrificing and persistent and thorough-going minstrations to the needs of those upon whom He had compassion. This we see very vividly and graphically set forth in the story of the Good Samaritan, in Luke the 10th chapter. Ags we have already said, the Good Samaritan in the last analysis is a picture of the

Lord Jesus Christ Himself. Note that when he saw the poor, wounded, robbed, stripped, naked, half-dead man, “‘he had compassion on him,’’ but that was not all. His compassion was not of that shallow, unreal sort that evaporates in sentiment and tears and expressions of sympathy. He “‘went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring on them ow and wine; and he set him on his own beast, and brought him to an mn, and took care of him. (385) And on the morrow he took out two pence (shillings) and gave them to the host, and sad, take care of him; and whatsoever thou spendest more, I, when I come back again, will repay thee.’’ (Luke 10: 34, 35.) His compassion showed itself in action, self-sacrificing action. He put the wounded man ‘‘on his own beast.’’ He walked that the sufferer might ride, he went without that the sufferer might have, he took the sufferer to an inn, stayed with him, paid his bill, and provided for his future need. His action was persistent and thorough-going. It did not last merely for the passing hour, but he stayed by the man until he could look out for himself. Ah, such was the compassion of the Christ of God’and such should be ours, ‘‘He that saith he abideth wn Hum ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked.’’

3. In the third place, the compassion of Jesus - Christ toward the unshepherded was manifested in His patiently teaching them and in healing the sick and feeding the hungry. We see the first part of this in Mark 6:34: ‘‘And He came forth and saw a@ great multitude, and He had compassion on them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and He began to teach them many things.’’? He Himself at this time was weary and sore at heart. He had just heard of the death of his cousin and faithful friend, John the Baptist, and had gone aside with the disciples for quiet and rest. But He saw the crowd, the great unshepherded mob of common people, the neglected multitude, and His heart was moved with compassion, ad forgetting His own weariness and sorrow in the crying need of these neglected thousands of the masses, He spent the whole day in teaching them the great truths of the Kingdom, which He made so simple that the common people could understand Him and they ‘‘heard Him gladly.’’ He taught them before He fed them; for the need of their souls was far deeper and far greater than the needs of their bodies. So it is to-day, the intellectual and spirittual needs of the masses are far greater than their physical needs, great as they are, and a wise, Christlike compassion will minister to their spiritual and moral needs before it does to their physical needs. It is often said that *‘ Jesus fed the bodies of men before He sought to teach and save them,’’ but the inspired record tells us differently. Our Lord was not so foolish as to try to reach the superficial need before attending to the deeper spiritual need that underlay it. Here ig where the ‘‘social service’? enthusiasts are making a colossal blunder at home and in the foreign field. We do well to follow in our Master’s footsteps.

But Jesus did not stop with ministering to the spiritual needs that underlay their physical needs. He also ministered to their bodies; He ministered to their hunger and to their sickness. He fed and healed them. This we see in Matthew’s account of the same incident. He says, ‘‘ And Jesus went forth and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and He healed, their sick.’’ (Matt. 14:14.) And we read in Matt. 15 :32, ‘‘ And Jesus called unto Him His disciples, and said, I have compassion on the multitude, because they continue with Me now three days and have nothing to eat: and I would not send them away fasting, lest haply they faint in the way.”’ Christianity exalts the spirit of man, but it does not forget or neglect the body. It first teaches and heals the spirit and then feeds and heals the body. ‘‘Social service’’ is all right if we put it in its right place. Our Lord’s compassion began with the spiritual needs of the multitude, but it did not end with them. The salvation that the real Christ brings is salvation for ‘‘spirit, soul and body.’’ (1 Thess. 5:23.) But it puts the ‘spirit’? first. The manifestation of Christ’s compassion in teaching the unshepherded is a manifestation we can all imitate, even though we have no money to feed the hungry or the gift of healing to help the sick. If you can do no more you can get some unshepherded child on the street, and the streets are full of them, and teach it:

4. In the fourth place, the compassion of Jesus Christ was manifested in putting forth His hand and touching the leper. This we seo in Mark 1: 40, 41: ‘“‘And there cometh to Him a leper, beseeching Him, and kneeling down to Him, and saying unto Him, tf Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. (41) And being moved with compassion, He stretched forth His hand, and touched hum.’’ When one stops to reflect upon this incident and our Lord’s action in it, there is something exquisitely beautiful in it. For years that leper had not felt the touch of a clean and loving hand. His nearest friends and dearest relatives shrank from him. He was indeed an outcast; whenever a clean man or woman approached him he was forced to betray his misfortune, and the danger of contact with him, by crying out in a strained, hoarse, uncanny voice, ‘‘Unclean, unclean.’’ And now he approaches Jesus and cries, “If Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean,’’ and the heart of our Lord goes out to him in infinite compassion, and He stretches forth His hand and touches him and by that touch heals him. There is many a moral leper to-day needing and longing for the touch of a clean hand, and that touch will heal him. Ah, but we shrink away. How the holy woman shrinks away from the vile woman of the street, how the holy man shrinks from the touch of the lecherous man, the moral leper. And that is natural and that is right, up to a certam pout. But, if you would help and save, compassion must triumph over moral aversion and we must get near the sinner and reach out our hand and touch him. You cannot save sinners at the end of a forty-foot pole. You must get into touching distance; you must touch.

When Mr. Alexander and I were in Bolton, England, we had a midnight sweep of the streets, gathering the drunkards whom the public houses poured out into the street at that hour, into a procession and bringing them to the Armory. Three or four thousand men and women, many of them very drunk, were brought into the building. It was an awful looking company of men and women. Mrs. Alexander had found on the streets a degraded, bloated, loathsome-looking woman, sat with her during the meeting and dealt with her in the after-meeting. This repulsivelooking woman turned to Mrs. Alexander and said, ‘‘You do not love me.’’ Mrs. Alexander replied, ‘‘Yes, I do.’’? ‘‘Kiss me, then,’’ she cried, and Mrs. Alexander kissed her and won her for Christ.

On one of my last visits to Chicago a man came to me whom I had known years before. John Woolley had sent him to me in the first instance, had sent him hundreds of miles to be helped, after he had professed conversion. He had been a drunkard and a crook and he soon went back into his drunkenness and crookedness. Attempt after attempt was made by man after man to rescue him, but all attempts failed. He simply worked the people who tried to help him. Years had been spent in the attempt to rescue him and I had not seen him for years until this night. He came to me as I stepped down from the platform and said to me, ‘‘Mr. Torrey, I am a saved man now; I have been saved for some time and I am helping to save others, but I am going fast with consumption and I wanted to see you before I die, and so have come over to-night for that purpose. I have a good position. [ need nothing, but what I wanted to tell you was this, I have never forgotten the day you knelt beside me and put your arm around me and talked to me and prayed for me. T have fallen time and time again since that time, but how often I have felt your arm about me. Even in the prison cell, time and again I have felt your arm around me, and, Mr. Torrey, that is what led me at last to really accept Christ and be saved. Oh, yes, in the prison cell it helped me, the memory of it, and it saved me at last. I am dying, I have not many months to live, but I felt I must tell you this before I died.’’ Oh, friends, this world is full of men like that, full of women like the one Mrs. Alexander kissed, and they are just longing for real compassion, the compassion that gets right alongside of them and touches them and saves them. The man of whom [ have spoken was one of the most unlikely men to be helped by such an act of all the outcasts I have ever known. Never did I feel more like telling, any man to be gone and never let me see him again than I did that man. I knew he was a -erook. I knew he was a professional worker of kind-hearted people, and they are among the most hopeless of men, but compassion conquered and saved even him.

5. What we have said leads naturally to the fifth way in which the compassion of Jesus Christ was manifested. It was manifested mm welcomimngand pardoning the sinner and bidding the sinner go im peace. This we see in an instance to which I referred two weeks ago in speaking of the Love of the real Christ to men. We find it in the 7th chapter of Luke. A woman who was a notorious outcast at Capernaum had heard Jesus say, ““Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.’’ It had gone home to her heart and led her to believe in Him. When the crowd broke up she had followed Him down the street and saw Him enter the house of Simon, the Pharisee. Then she had hurried home and, taking down her most cherished possession, her costly alabaster box of expensive ointment, she hurried back to Simon’s house, stole in through the open door, approached Jesus as He reclined at the table, leaned over His bare feet and wet them with her tears and wiped them with her hair. Simon, the Pharisee, and the other guests had been shocked that our Lord would even allow such a woman, so notorious a sinner, to touch Him, but the heart of our Lord Jesus went out in compassion toward the woman, vile and sunken though she had been, and looking up into those tear-dimmed eyes, He said unto her, ‘‘ Thy sins are forgwen,’’ and then again He said unto her, ‘‘Thy faith hath saved thee; go into peace.’’ (Luke 7: 48, 50.) So we, too, instead of turning from the sinful in disgust or repelling them when they repent and wish to do better, must welcome them and bid them go in peace.

We will close with this manifestation of the compassion of our Lord, but just these two thoughts in closing. First, Jesus Christ, the real Christ, the only real Christ, is just the same to-day as when He walked this earth: ‘‘ Jesus Christ ts the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever.’

Second, ‘‘He that saith he abideth in Him ought himself also so to walk, even as He walked.’’ It is difficult to follow our Lord Jesus, the Christ of God, in His Holiness, but for many of us it is far more difficult to follow Him in His Compassion. This is not a compassionate age. We may talk as we please about the ‘‘Brotherhood of Man,’’ we may multiply our ‘‘Humane Societies’’ and our Red Cross Societies, but our alms-giving and our ‘‘Social Service’’ and our general helpfulness is of an institutional character and lacks the warm, personal element. It lacks the touch of really Christlike compassion. We act through our various agencies instead of going forth as our Lord Jesus did and getting into actual living, loving, compassionate touch with the individual in sorrow, or distress, or bereavement, or sin, in this sorrowing, broken-hearted world of ours. Even we preachers want men to be saved by preaching to you from the pulpit, rather than getting right in touch with you and your need and sorrow and sin, and you church members follow in our steps. Oh, brethren, quit it. Follow in the steps of the real Christ and get out among men, among the poor, the sorrowing, the sick, the sinful. Make their sorrows your own, as Christ did. Then and then only, you can save them.