The Compassion of Jesus (Part 1)

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Welcome, welcome, welcome. Sawatdee. My name's Mike Gabendroth. This is No Compromise Radio Ministry.

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That kind of sounds dumb, doesn't it? This is, what's worse, I am, we are.

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Didn't Jeopardy just get in trouble for some, I don't know, some pronouns, preferred pronoun deal?

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I don't know. Maybe they did. I think they did. I don't know,

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I never really watched Jeopardy much. Did you? Maybe, who knows? Never really watched Wheel of Fortune either.

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I would hate to be on Wheel of Fortune because while I think my IQ is average and I think

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I've had a pretty good education, I have some experience, I'm older, I don't know if I would, it would be the obvious gaffe and I would think, oh,

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I totally dropped the ball. You can write me, mike at nocompromiseradio .com.

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I've only been recording a few shows every two weeks and that's why we've had some of the conference messages and Pastor Steve's gambling message from Sunday school.

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And then I got sick, today is Thursday in real time. I got sick last Saturday, had to call

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Steve and say, please preach for me. And it was just kind of a bronchial respiratory infection slash virus.

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So I immediately took the COVID test because COVID and I don't really get along very well.

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And just FYI, you're not supposed to do the COVID test with the little Q -tip thing, just kind of barely in your nose.

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COVID lives way up there, so you can get a lot of false negatives at home. So that's, I'm not a medical doctor, but read the instructions carefully.

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And if you don't cry after the insertion of the Q -tip, you didn't do it well.

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But at least you got a negative, you can tell people I'm negative. Right, your employer says you need a

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COVID test and you just barely do like the tip of your nose. Negative. A couple of things that are coming down the pike or pipe.

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We have a pike here, which is called, it's not a freeway, you have to pay for it. It goes from east to west or west to east.

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It's the 90, or as we say here in New England, 90. That's called the pike. I used to fish in Minnesota with my father,

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Minnesota, and we would fish for northern pike.

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I'm very careful not to get my hands near their mouths. And walleye. I don't know the difference between a walleye and a northern pike, but one of you

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I know will email me and say, this is the difference. Both seemed to have big teeth, especially if you're a 10 -year -old boy from Nebraska.

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I did a lot of fishing when I was younger. We had a little summer place on the Missouri River, and so we fished some, and then we decided to shoot fish with a bow and arrow and a fishing line, so you could reel them in.

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And just, you know, we would seine for fish. We would shoot fish, regular fish, throw lines, like little drop lines, just around the pylons, and you go check them every once in a while.

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Have some really gross, old, nasty livers.

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You could chop up a liver and put them in there. And we would sometimes snag paddlefish up by the

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Gavin's Point Dam from Lewis and Clark Lake. So I did a lot of fishing, and then not really been a big fisherman ever since.

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I don't even have a fishing pole. I don't have a fishing license, but I have a grandson, and so don't you think

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I should start fishing again? When he's old enough, I'm going to take him fishing, and he's going to know what a bobber is.

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He's going to figure it out, and he's going to get really bored really fast, like kids do, and we're going to skip rocks instead and scare away the fish and just eat and talk and hang out as grandfather and grandson.

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Expecting two more grandchildren this year. Very, very excited for that, and that's it.

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Cancer is not your shepherd. 31 -Day Guide to Suffering should be out soon, probably by the end of March.

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I'm shooting for that, and also The Sexual Fidelity, a 31 -Day Guide to Purity is updated and revised.

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That should be online as well, both via Amazon. I'm tired of shopping books with agents and publishers and all that stuff.

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I want the freedom, man. Today, I'd like to talk a little bit, surprise, surprise, about the

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Lord Jesus. I think

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I say that all the time, but it's true. Pacifically, that would be an ocean.

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Specifically, sometimes the Pacific isn't so pacified. Passive, passive.

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I'm reading the book, The Wager now, and I forgot the name of the author, but there's somewhere down there,

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Tierra de Fuego, Patagonia. I think Patagonia, the first part,

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Pata is from paw, dog paw. I don't know what language, but there's some more useless information.

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Remember when Jesus leaves the synagogue in Luke 4, Matthew 8 -ish,

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Mark 1 -ish, I think that's right, and he goes to Simon's house.

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By the way, when Simon left everything to follow Jesus, he had a job, he had income, he had a house.

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There were quite a few things that he had to say no to to follow the Lord Jesus, and he also had a wife.

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Now, he didn't have to say goodbye to his wife. That's not what the Lord called

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Simon to do, but he had a wife, and back in those days, and even these days, you have your mother -in -law live with you, and Simon's mother -in -law was ill, so she's at Simon's house.

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Certainly, Simon's wife is there, unless somehow she had died, and now you have the mother -in -law, and she was ill with a high fever.

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And of course, with Luke, he talks a way a doctor talks, and so she's ill, and she has a high fever, and they appealed to Jesus on her behalf.

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So Jesus leaves the synagogue with all the commotion that was going on there, demons, et cetera, and he goes into Simon's house.

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Well, he goes in there, and there's a sick lady. Would you please do something for her?

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And here, Thomas Watson says, and I agree with him, "'No action of Jesus's has fallen short of the ideal.

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"'He is full of surprises, "'but they are all surprises of perfection. "'You are never amazed one day by his greatness, "'the next by his littleness.

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"'You are quite amazed that he is incomparably better "'than you could have expected.

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"'He is tender without being weak, "'strong without being coarse, "'lowly without being servile.

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"'He has conviction without intolerance, "'enthusiasm without fanaticism, "'holiness without Pharisaism, "'passion without prejudice.

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"'This man alone never made a false step, "'never struck a jarring note.

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"'His life alone moved on those high levels "'where local limitations are transcended, "'and the absolute law of moral beauty prevails.

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"'It was life at its highest.'" Thomas Watson. By the way, if you'd like to read some older writers that we sometimes call, sometimes called wrongly,

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Puritans, unbelievers derisively call them Puritans, you could not start off with a better Puritan than Thomas Watson.

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Christ -centered, devotional, rich, and easier to read than some of the other

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Puritans. We read this and we think, that's right, hallelujah, what a savior. Jesus is great and full of surprises.

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And so what is going to happen here in this passage? Dr. Luke records, he stood over her, that's

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Simon -in -law's mother. I'll drink to that.

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That is a black coffee. And one of the things that I've been doing lately,

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I think I told you, is I'm on the intermittent fasting. I like new products,

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I'm probably a marketer's dream, and I also like different diet programs. And I finally broke down and started intermittent fasting.

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I knew everybody did it, a lot of people did it. I knew people liked it. I'm three weeks and three days in, and not even really trying to do anything, except I am losing weight.

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I think I've lost six pounds without trying. I wanted to lose some weight because the medicine that I'm taking for my chemotherapy,

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I was told causes bloating and weight gain. Maybe Jesus, I can appeal to him and he can stand over me and help me.

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So I gained about 15 pounds from when I first started treatment until,

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I don't know, a couple months ago. And I think I'm down 10 total.

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But anyway, it's kind of nice, except right about now it's 1140, it's 20 minutes from now I can eat, so I'm gonna have to wrap up the show pretty soon.

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Funny thing is, I don't even really feel hungry. So it's just, it's black coffee. Jesus, verse 39 of Luke four, stood over her and rebuked the fever and it left her.

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And immediately she rose and began to serve him. Now, what do miracles like this show us?

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What does Luke want you to see as you read these things? Of course, he wants you to say, hallelujah, what a savior.

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He wants you to be impressed with Jesus. He wants you to have the fame of Jesus, as it were, increase in your heart.

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He also wants you to see the power of Jesus, the authority of Jesus, that is all true. In addition, he wants you to see that this is in fact the

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Messiah that the Old Testament told us about. He wants you to see the fulfillment of Old Testament prophecy.

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What does the Messiah look like and what does he do? So you can properly recognize him. Later in Luke chapter seven, with John the

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Baptist's messengers, they came to Jesus. They said, John the Baptist has sent us to you, saying, are you the one who is to come or shall we look for another?

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In that hour, he healed many people of diseases and plagues and evil spirits, and on many who were blind, he bestowed sight.

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And he answered them, go and tell John what you have seen and heard. The blind receive their sight, the lame walk, lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear.

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The dead are raised up, the poor have good news preached to them, and blessed is the one who is not offended by me.

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You will know the Messiah by what he does. Lame walking, lepers cleansed, deaf hear, blind receive their sight, and more.

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And so Jesus is doing these great miracles, from casting out demons to healing people.

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And you should say to yourself, he is the one. This is not just a man who does great things.

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He is God incarnate. He is the one that the

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Old Testament has pointed to. Now, Mark gives us some more information.

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And of course, you know, if you listen to the show, that out of the four gospels, kind of theological autobiography, theological biographies, not quite, but kind of like that, out of the four gospels,

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Matthew, Mark, and Luke have a lot of similarities, and therefore we call them synoptic gospels.

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John is a little different. He has a different focus, but the synoptic gospels have a lot of parallels, and they have books called harmonies of the gospel, and you'll see

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Matthew, Mark, and Luke sections laid out, and they will give you a little bit more information when you do that.

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And so when I look at Mark, it says that Simon's mother -in -law was lying sick with a fever.

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She was thrown with a fever, laying in bed. It was like the fever was so bad, she was forced in bed, forced to lay down.

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And Luke is saying, okay, while Mark says she's lying sick with a fever,

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Luke says this is a great fever. So this is not a tiny cold.

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This is not the sniffles that I had and a little bit of respiratory issues.

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This is not that at all. This is burning fever. This is dangerous.

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Of course, they didn't have antibiotics back then. They had a bunch of kind of quack things for healing.

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Of course, they could pray to the Lord and he might heal. Luke was a physician, but he just didn't have that much to work with.

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And so Luke is saying she was taken or detained with this fever.

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Who knows? Kind of a wet, damp place around Capernaum. Mosquitoes, malaria.

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My guess is she's sweating and shivering, burning hot skin. Dysentery, some people think.

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We get the word here with a fever that it's burning with a Greek word for burning.

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And what do you do if somebody's burning with a fever? I guess you could give them cold compresses.

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I guess you could cool them down by making sure they didn't have many clothes on, don't have a blanket on.

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Sometimes they would have weird kind of quacky things to heal them. A knife made of iron tied to a braid of hair to a thorn bush and you,

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I don't know what you do with it. But anyway, most of these things were hapless and Peter was married and of course he's concerned and now

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Jesus, what can Jesus do? I know they know he can do something. That's why they ask.

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Note to self, note to Rome, note to your Catholic friends. Peter, the first Pope had a wife.

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Peter, the first Pope, I'm saying that in jest, had a wife. If he were the first Pope, he had a wife.

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If he wasn't the first Pope, he still had a wife. And so even in 1 Corinthians 9, do we not have a right to take along a believing wife even as the rest of the apostles and the brothers of the

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Lord and Cephas? Peter had a wife. You want to know why they're not allowed to marry in the

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Roman Catholic Church? You can study it as you please, but in my opinion, it's because if you have children, you have heirs to take the money of the parents and then

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Rome loses that. Anyway, that's what I think, but you might disagree.

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But Peter had a wife because he had a mother -in -law. What if you only got a mother -in -law and you never had the wife?

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You know, all the jokes about mother -in -laws and I think even S. Lewis Johnson, the venerable gentleman said something about, you know, are you sure,

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Peter, that you want her sickness cured? Well, there's an intensive here, great fever, and now comes the great physician, high fever, high priest, extreme temperatures.

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And now we have our wonderful Lord. You can see Luke's language.

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If you're a doctor and you go to your patient and you're going to examine them, care for them, you don't have your arms folded.

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You're not like the COVID distancing, like that happened to me when I was in the hospital for 16 days.

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The doctors call you first on the phone and talk to you about your symptoms so they don't have to be in the room much. Then they come in, they quickly examine you, listen to your lungs and then leave.

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It's kind of, and then you can look at your chart to see what they say. Here, Jesus, you notice he stands over her.

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Do you see that? He stood over her. It was like total bedside manner. That's wonderful.

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And Jesus rebukes, commands, tells the fever to go away, and it does.

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And you should be saying power, authority, sweating's gone, burning skin's gone, fever's gone, sore throat's gone,

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GI problems, if she had them, gone. That's amazing.

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But I don't want you to miss this on No Compromise Radio. I don't want you to miss the compassion of Jesus.

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Now, Matthew adds, remember Synoptic Gospels, Matthew adds he touched her hand. Mark says he took her by the hand and lifted her up.

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The healing touch of Jesus. Today's show is about the compassion of the

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Lord Jesus that you're to see he has for other people so you can say he has compassion on me too.

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I don't know if you could use some compassion today, someone to come alongside of you, someone to love you.

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Why do we say, you just go love on them? Why do we put that preposition there?

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If I say that in one of the books that I'm trying to write, love on them, it would have a little squiggly line underneath on, and it would tell me just delete that.

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I can't believe in the books that I just either revised or just wrote how many times

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I say actually. Picked it up and it wanted me to take it out every time.

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I think I left it a couple times, a couple few times. I actually left that word actually there, but why do

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I actually say actually? That's actually, I don't know why.

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Jesus touches, Jesus heals, Jesus has compassion and his healing was to such a degree that he comes to her, he raises her up, taking her by the hand, the fever leaves her and she waits on them,

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Mark chapter one. Now, let's just, again, not read this too quickly.

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What would the climate back in those days be for a rabbi, for a Messiah, for a prophet, for a priest, for a male

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Jew? Should they be touching ladies' hands? Do you know one

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Jewish teaching, it said a man shouldn't make contact with a woman's hand, not even to count money from his hand to hers.

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I mean, looking back to Luke chapter four earlier, coming as a Messiah to proclaim, to heal, he was sent.

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To loosen the bound, he is the great Messiah.

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And he, remember even back in Luke, Naaman Gentile, widow of Zarephath, woman

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Gentile. And while the Pharisees might say no to lepers, no to Gentiles, no to women, no to diseases, no to all these people, what does

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Jesus do? Compassion, mercy. And this is in the day and age where the

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Pharisees ruled, the scribes ruled, right? You had these legalistic people, if you go back to John chapter two, just strangling and suffocating

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Jewish people. And Jesus takes her by the hand, genuine love, tender.

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He could have just said, you're healed. And she would have been right, but he touches her. And we're gonna learn later, he touches the leper as well.

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Kind, compassionate, merciful is the savior. And by the way, if you're a believer, that's who your savior is.

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We know that because of his incarnation. We know that because of his true and perfect humanity.

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Truly God, truly man, perfectly God, perfectly man.

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I read in the fourth century BC, some Greek writings about bedside manners.

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What were they required to do at the bedside? Well, it says this, 2 ,500 years ago, the physician ought to be very confidential, chaste, sober, not a wine bibber.

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And he ought to be fastidious in everything for this is what the profession demands. He ought to have an appearance and approach that is distinguished.

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Everything ought to be in moderation for these things are advantageous, so it is said. Be solicitous in your approach to the patient.

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Not with a head thrown back arrogantly or hesitantly with a lowered glance, but with the head inclined slightly as the art demands.

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The physician ought to hold his head humbly and evenly. His hair should not be too smoothed down nor his beard curled like that of a degenerate youth or a hipster pastor.

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Sorry. Gravity signifies breadth of experience.

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He should approach the patient with moderate steps, not noisily, gazing calmly at the sickbed.

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He should endure peacefully the insults of the patients since those suffering from melancholic or frenetic ailments are likely to hurl evil words at physicians.

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Well, we've got some bedside manners even important back 2 ,500 years ago. Focus on the patient, don't argue, be empathetic, be hopeful.

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I think my worst experience with a doctor when it comes to bedside manners, I had prostate cancer and you have 10 options of what to do and urologist will tell you to get a prostatectomy, cut it out, the radiation people will say radiate it, you know, and all that kind of stuff.

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I mean, it's more complicated than that and they will say the other ones can work 80 % of the time, 9%, et cetera.

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And I decided to do brachytherapy at Memorial Sloan Kettering in New York City.

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And every year I have to go for a PSA test. And by the way, if you have cancer in your family and you're 40 and above as a male, or if you are not 40 and above, with you don't have cancer in your family and you're 50 and above, you ought to get the

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PSA test. They aren't always perfect, but they'll save your life after a couple of tries and biopsies, et cetera.

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So I can get into that whole thing I don't want to right now. But I will say that when I went to another doctor in Boston and I just needed a urologist here locally because why drive down to New York and it costs too much for extra out of network payments.

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He basically said that what I did was dumb because prostatectomy would make sure everything was gone and this brachytherapy, it could possibly come back.

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And if it comes back and you get cancer again, it's just a mess and they just have to take out everything and it's just a disaster.

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My salvage prostatectomy it's called. Anyway, basically he said I was dumb.

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I said, so was my copay for you today. I didn't.

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But anyway, Jesus' bedside manner comes from a heart of compassion because he's the true man.

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He's the perfect man, the most compassionate man whoever was on the face of the earth.

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And I just want you to know, dear Christian, that's who your savior is. When nobody understands, when no one will listen, when no one understands the pain you go through, the moments in the evening where you have doubts and struggles and pains, and you're just, you don't know who to turn to, there is a friend who's closer than a brother.

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Did you know that? Of course you knew that. And that's one of the great things about reading the gospels is you see the compassion of Jesus.

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Jesus, of course, came to die. Of course, he came to obey the law.

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Of course, he was the last Adam. Of course, he's the federal head, the covenant head.

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Of course, we look at his life and we see him, and we look at his death and we see what he did for us in his resurrection.

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That is all true. But there's more to preach the gospel to yourself every day than just thinking about active obedience, passive obedience, literal resurrection, soon return.

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There's more than that. And so if preaching the gospel to yourself or gospel -centered preaching doesn't include who

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Jesus is and his person, because remember, one of our themes here at the radio show is the benefits of Jesus come from Jesus.

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And we do not want to have the benefits of Jesus detached from his person, because we wanna make sure we understand those two go together.

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And therefore, when you see the compassion of Jesus and how he deals with sinners and sick people and those outcasts of society and those

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Gentiles and women and men and boys and girls, then you say,

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I see, I believe, I trust, and I'm thankful. You see how that works? Because otherwise, what are your other options?

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Your other options are simply legalistic. They're simply things that I declare that God is working all things together for your good.

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He has a master plan for your life. There may be things that you don't understand right now, but you don't have to worry.

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All the pieces aren't here yet. One day, it will all come together and everything will make sense.

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I declare you will see God's amazing plan taking you places that you could never go on your own.

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Well, that didn't help me. JoelCube, come on, that didn't help me at all.

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What's going on? I wanted something really bad. I do declare,