The Compassionate Heart of Christ

Grace Fellowship Church

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This sermon is from Grace Fellowship Church in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada. To access other sermons or to learn more about us, please visit our website at graceedmonton .ca.

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Well, I'm going to be adjusting, I can already tell, to my computer. So forgive me if that slows me down any.

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But this afternoon, we're continuing in our study in the Gospel of Mark, as we just heard our brother read. And we're finding ourselves now in chapter 1 and verse 29.

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And as I was studying this text this week, what I often do is I'll go through,

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I'll read the text. One of my strategies early on is to read, re -read, re -read, re -read, and I'll read it until it becomes or it feels like second nature to me.

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And one of the discoveries that I made as I was reading this text is that, again, it represents or demonstrates that this is a very

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Christocentric gospel. The Gospel of Mark is all about Christ.

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And I don't know if maybe when you get home, if you want to read the text again and ask yourself, how would you preach through this text?

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It's an interesting text because in many ways, it's so Christocentric, it's hard to know what you're to do with it.

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I mean, the stuff that Christ does here, none of us can do. The claims that Christ makes here, none of us can make that claim.

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And this becomes true, actually, of the whole of the Gospel of Mark, that it's a book about Christ and Christ alone.

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And so what we find is that the Gospel of Mark is not primarily a book of how -tos for the

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Christian life, but it's a book about the power and the personality of Jesus Christ.

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And whether we know it or not, whether we appreciate it now or not, we need this kind of book, and we need this kind of perspective, a book that is not about us, but that is about Jesus Christ.

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And this is the greatest need for this church. This is the greatest need for each of our souls today.

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Our greatest need is to have more of the Lord Jesus Christ. We need a more exalted view of him.

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We need a greater trust in his atonement. We need more love and worship of him.

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We need to learn more from his example as he conforms us to his perfect image.

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And as I was studying our text for this week, I was reminded of a quote from an 11th century medieval monk.

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I don't quote 11th century medieval monks very often, but this one at least seems to be a good guy.

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His name was Bernard of Clairvaux. He's probably one of the only medieval monks who enjoyed the approval of the reformers.

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And Bernard of Clairvaux said, When I preach myself, the scholars came and praised me.

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But when I preached Christ, the sinners came and thanked me. So whether that's true or not, we'll see.

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But one thing's for certain today in our text, what we're going to find is Christ again. Third week in a row now, we find

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Christ. And so what we're going to do is we're going to preach Christ. We're going to study Christ together.

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And so as we turn now to Mark chapter 1 and verse 29, this is what we find.

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We find again the Lord Jesus in Galilee, surrounded by the crowds, like we read about in our last passage.

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His fame had spread throughout all of that region. And now the sick and the destitute were being brought to him for healing.

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And this was in a religious culture and in a religious context that had very little to offer these people.

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But yet in this context, we find Christ exercising his power. And again, that word that we talked about for the last two weeks, his authority as the only begotten

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Son of God. As we look at this text, this is what we're going to find. Again, my banner, the main point of our text,

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I believe, is this. In these accounts, we find an awe -inspiring look at the compassionate heart of Christ.

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The compassionate heart of Christ. Today we deal with Christ's character.

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And so here what we do is we get to see Christ's compassion for his creatures, for the suffering men and women that he has made.

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And as we see this, this is what we'll find. That this serves at least two purposes for us.

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It'll serve the purpose of both exalting Jesus Christ as the

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Son of God. I hope for all of us to leave here with a higher view of Christ, with a greater view of Christ, with more love for Christ.

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And it serves the purpose of informing how we should live our lives as we follow after him.

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So those, I think, are going to end up being the two points of application as we work our way through seeing the compassionate heart of Christ.

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And then responding to him in adoration and in obedience. So let's look in our text then to Mark chapter 1 and verse 29.

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I'll read the first five verses, six verses he writes. And immediately Jesus, he left the synagogue and entered the house of Simon and Andrew with James and John.

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Now Simon's mother -in -law lay ill with a fever, and immediately they told him about her. And he came and took her by the hand and lifted her up, and the fever left her, and she began to serve them.

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That evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick or oppressed by demons.

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And the whole city was gathered together at the door, and healed many who were sick with various diseases, and cast out many demons.

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And he would not permit the demons to speak because they knew him. So here we see

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Christ's compassion for the crowds around him. The first truth that I want to bring to our attention, I'm going to bring three before us.

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The first truth is this. Here we see the will of Christ's compassion.

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The will of Christ's compassion, or you could say the willingness of Christ's compassion.

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Now you might remember that at this point in the gospel narrative, if we think back to last week, Jesus had just finished teaching in the synagogue.

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He had just finished casting a spirit, an unclean spirit out of a man. And that's where we learned that the people looked at him and they said, what is this, a new kind of teaching with authority?

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People marveled at the authority of Christ. Now just a short distance away from the synagogue, it's interesting, archaeologists and historians have actually said they think they have found the house that Peter lived in.

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I mean, we don't know that for certain, but probably within a stone's throw of the synagogue, Jesus entered

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Peter and Andrew's home. And it's clear from the text, at least here, that Peter was married. We know that because he had a mother -in -law living with them.

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A mother -in -law living with Peter and his wife would probably suggest that she was a widow.

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This was often the case with widows when they lost their husbands, they lost a large part of their social support system, and so she had to depend on Peter and his wife for survival.

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But here in Peter's home, we're told that she had a fever. And while we don't know what the ailment was, what we can probably guess is that it was a severe illness.

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We know that because in Luke's gospel, for instance, in Luke 4 and verse 38, we're told that she had a high fever.

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And the disciples, having just seen Christ's authority in the synagogue, wasted no time in telling him about her.

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And here we see, what I want to show us is the first act, or the first round of Christ's willing compassion in this text.

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We see Christ gently take Peter's mother -in -law by the hand. He lifts her up, and we're told, in that instant, she was healed.

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And immediately, it says, she began to serve them. Here Mark uses that word diakonene, similar to that word deacon or diakonos, the

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Greek word that informs our English word deacon. And what it means is to wait upon. And so when

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Peter's mother -in -law was healed from this fever, she immediately waited upon, she ministered both to the needs of Christ and to the needs of the disciples.

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And this is why I like word studies, because when we look at this word that's used for Peter's mother -in -law,

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I'm going to mess that up, the mother -in -law's service to Christ and his disciples, we see that it's the same word that was used in Mark 1 in verse 13, if we remember back when the angels ministered to Christ after his temptation.

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It's that same word, diakonene. And so, in the same way that the angels ministered to Christ, Peter's mother -in -law ministered now to Christ and the disciples.

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Interestingly enough, it's the same word that Christ uses in Mark 10, in verses 44 and 45, where it says, whoever would be first among you must be slave of all, for even the

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Son of Man came not to be served, but to serve, diakonene, and to give his life as a ransom for many.

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So Peter's mother -in -law responds to Christ's compassion in this instance by herself serving him, by ministering to his needs.

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But Christ doesn't stop there. We're told if we continue to look at the text in verse 32, that evening at sundown they brought to him all who were sick, the demon -possessed, and finally all of the city, we're told, came to Peter's door.

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And it begs the question, why would that happen? Why did they wait for a sundown? And this is an important detail that I want us to see, that it would have been at approximately 6 o 'clock, 6 p .m.

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that night on the Saturday evening, that the people would bring their sick, that they would bring the demon -possessed.

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And the reason they did this is because the sundown marked the end of the Sabbath. So the end of the

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Sabbath observance. So in Christ's day, rabbinic law prohibited anyone from carrying a burden on the

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Sabbath. And this included carrying stretchers, which probably many of these sick and many of these demon -possessed people would need in order to get to Jesus.

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And so what we find is here, Christ, in all of his compassion, enters into a culture that is very outwardly religious.

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But as we will see, even as we read through this gospel and others, outwardly religious, but otherwise cruel and unmerciful in its system of orthodoxy.

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This system that had been established by Jewish leaders. And we see it played out over and over again.

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I'm not going to point out all of them, but I'll say this. Jesus Christ was heavily criticized for repeatedly healing on the

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Sabbath because it undermined the Jewish leader's authority. In fact, it was one of the reasons why they sought to kill

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Christ. And we see that in passages like Mark chapter 12, verses 9 to 14. There, when the religious leaders were criticizing

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Christ for healing on the Sabbath, he said, which one of you, who as a sheep, if it falls into a pit on the

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Sabbath, will not take hold of it and lift it out? And then he healed the man. He said, man, stretch out your hand.

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And as the man stretched it out, it was restored healthy like the other. But the Pharisees were told, went out and conspired against him, how to destroy him.

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And so it was under this system that the sick, the demon -oppressed, the destitute people came to Christ after sundown.

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And what did Christ do? Children, maybe I'll ask you. When all of the sick and the demon -possessed people came to Jesus, what do you think he did?

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He healed them. Absolutely. Verse 34 says, he healed many who were sick and cast out many demons.

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Here we see Christ's willingness to show compassion, and then it expands. So first we see, if we look back in the chapter, we saw the demon -possessed man in the synagogue, in the center of religion in that town.

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And then to Peter's mother -in -law in the community. And then we see Christ heal all of those, or many of those, it says, who were sick.

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All the city came to Peter's door. If we fast forward a little bit to verse 39, we see that it expanded throughout all of Galilee.

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And then when Christ ends up almost full circle, back in a synagogue in verses 40 and 41, when a man with leprosy says to him, if you will, you can make me clean,

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Christ, we're told, moved with pity, responds, I will be clean.

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The reason I start here, the reason I bring all of this out, is because here we see the heart of Christ toward the suffering.

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Against the backdrop of a religious system that prized orthodoxy above compassion,

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Christ wills to show compassion. We see the will of Christ's compassion here.

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And not only does this teach us about Christ's divine identity as the promised suffering servant of God, but Matthew points out, if we were to look at Matthew 8, verses 16 and 17,

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Matthew says this, that that evening they brought him many who were oppressed by demons, and he cast out the spirits of the word and healed all who were sick.

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This was to fulfill what was spoken by the prophet Isaiah, he took our illnesses and he bore our diseases.

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And so it reinforces the divine identity of Christ, and it provides us with an example.

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Now, what are we to do with all of this? If we look at Christ's example, the compassion that he showed to the people in Capernaum, I want to give us two points of application.

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I've already left us in on some of it. But for one, this ought to move us to love

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Christ more, to love Christ better, to adore him more fully.

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Is there not room to love Christ more in your heart? Let me ask you that.

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Is there any more room for you to love Christ in your heart? This truth gives us fuel so that our love would burn brighter and hotter for Christ still.

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To worship him deeper, to come to him expecting compassion.

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When we think of Christ's perfections, I don't know about you guys, but when I think about Christ's perfections,

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I'm often inclined to think about it in negative terms, meaning that he was without sin.

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And that's true. And it's not true of anybody else. It's not true of anyone in this room. Yes, that Christ is without sin.

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But if we're prepared to see it from a positive perspective, what we'll see is this, that when we observe

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Christ's life, when we observe his ministry as it's recorded in Scripture, Jesus exceeds every expectation.

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Not just the expectations of the law, but he exceeds our expectations of him.

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If God is love, Christ is love incarnate. And so, throughout the

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Gospels, here and elsewhere, we see this compassionate heart of Christ. In Matthew 9, when he saw the crowds, it says he had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.

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In Mark 8, we're told that he had compassion on the crowds because they were with him for three days and they had no food.

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We read about it in Luke and in other places. And in light of this, this ought to fuel our worship of Christ.

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This ought to fuel our adoration of him. It ought to inspire us to come to him.

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We often think about Christ as being righteous, and he is. Of being holy, and he is.

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We think of Christ as being gentle, and he is. And he's compassionate. And what this means is when we endure difficulty, and when people endure difficulty in the world around us, and when people endure difficulty in the time of Christ's earthly ministry, he had compassion upon them.

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And so we should come to him often, and we should encourage others to come to him often. The second point of application that I want to give us is this, that when

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Christ shows us his heart of compassion, he gives us an example to follow.

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He gives us an example to follow. When Peter's mother -in -law experienced Christ's compassion firsthand, she immediately followed up by ministering to his needs, and to the needs of his disciples.

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And this is a pattern that we as Christians are well to follow, would do well to follow.

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Paul said in Colossians 3, when he was talking about the new Christian life, what the new

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Christian life should look like, he said in Colossians, oh boy, sorry, my first computer error.

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I'll find it. Colossians 3 .12, he says, Put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience.

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And William Bridge, a Puritan who was looking at probably a similar text like this one, he says,

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Is it nothing for a man to be employed in comforting, relieving, and supporting others?

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This is so great a service that the very angels are employed therein.

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Just as the angels minister to Christ, Christ gives us an example that we would minister to others, and that we would minister with compassion.

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Are you following Christ in this way? I know that we in this church, we love to be very careful about our doctrine.

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We love to be careful about being orthodox in the right kind of ways, to be straight in our theology.

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But can I ask you, brothers and sisters, is it the case that perhaps you have been more inclined to follow maybe a good but imperfect person like John MacArthur, or R .C.

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Sproul, or some Puritan person, or some person in the history of the church, and you've forgotten that what it means to be a

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Christian is to believe in Christ and to follow him. And that means to follow him with compassion.

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Christ had perfect doctrine, but it didn't dichotomize his relationship with others. He had perfect doctrine and he had perfect compassion.

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And Francis Schaeffer, who is himself a man who is very capable in the area of doctrine, he said,

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Biblical orthodoxy without compassion is surely the ugliest thing in the world.

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So like Christ, is it your will to be compassionate? Or are you more given to a cruel and an outwardly religious and orthodox system?

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I recently read a story about a man named Fred Shepard. In the early 1900s, he was an

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American who went to central Turkey in the old Ottoman Empire as a medical missionary.

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And he spent over 30 years in Turkey. And in the course of that time, he turned this little mission station that he had started there into a major medical relief center in that whole area.

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And there he treated Armenians and Kurds and Turks, many of them Muslims.

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And eventually in 1915, while Shepard was treating some victims of the

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Armenian genocide, he contracted typhus. And a result of getting typhus, he ended up dying,

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I believe, in his own medical center. And after this had happened, a poor

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Armenian was asked what they thought of Dr. Shepard. And this

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Armenian, we don't know if he's Christian or Muslim or what he was, but when he was asked about Dr.

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Shepard's life, he said, I have never seen Jesus, but I have seen

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Dr. Shepard. Even when many of these hard -hearted

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Muslim men and women would never dare to open a Bible to read about the true

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Jesus Christ, in a way, Dr. Shepard became, in a sense, an open Bible to them.

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Through his willing care, through his compassion, he showed the people Christ.

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He showed them Christ's compassionate heart. And can I ask you, brothers and sisters, can the same be said for you?

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Are you as eager to show compassion as you are to do anything else in the Christian life?

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The next thing that Mark writes in his Gospel, in verse 35, is this. He says,

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And rising very early in the morning, while it was still dark, he departed and went out to a desolate place, and there he prayed.

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And Simon and those who were with him searched for him, and they found him and said to him, Everyone is looking for you.

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And he said to them, Let us go on to the next towns, that I may preach there also, for that is why

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I came out. And he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.

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So what we see here is Christ's manner of life. Not only did he show compassion, but you could say in a sense, and this is the second truth that I want to draw our attention to, we see the secret of Christ's compassion.

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The secret of Christ's compassion. We're told that he rose very early in the morning, while it was still dark, and he went there to be with his

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Father in prayer. And the disciples, it says, they searched out

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Christ. It's a Greek word that literally means pursued or even hunted. The disciples were hunting after Christ because he became known as this miracle worker.

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And they needed to jump on the opportunity. You know, when you have momentum, we need to keep it.

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And Christ had developed some momentum as a wonder worker of senses. And so they pursued, they hunted him down and found him in prayer.

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And what we see, what's interesting, I suppose, as we look at this text is that we get a sense, in verse 39, of the dramatic extent of Christ's compassionate ministry.

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It says, and he went throughout all Galilee, preaching in their synagogues and casting out demons.

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Some people would say that this was weeks or maybe even months long ministry throughout

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Galilee. And yet, what sustained Christ? I mean, how many of us, brothers and sisters, when we think about this,

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I work in a social welfare type of workplace. And at least in my workplace, people talk about compassion fatigue.

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Now, I don't know if that's a real thing. I might just be inclined to call that sinful selfishness.

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I don't know. But what was it that sustained Christ through his ministry, even as people hunted him down with their own agendas?

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About Christ's ministry during this time, H. A. Ironside, in his commentary, he says, this Sabbath day in Capernaum is a cross -section of Christ's entire life, which was spent in proclaiming the gospel of the kingdom and meeting the needs of men and women.

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And then he goes on to say, he says, we waste so much time on the things that do not profit. But Christ, he made every moment count for the glory of God.

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In our lives, there is so much that is not of any real lasting value. In all that Christ said or did, there was a worthiness that counted for eternity.

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And so Christ showed compassion. And yet, what was the secret of that compassion?

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I think we see a couple of things here that I'd like to point out. The first thing is in verse 38, when

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Christ said, that I may preach there also, for that is why I came out.

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In Luke 4, 43, he says, I was sent for this purpose, to preach. When Christ showed compassion, it was compassion that was rooted in the proclamation of the word.

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It wasn't an unexplained random act of kindness. I remember a few years back, one of Edmonton's Christian radio stations started this program, the

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Random Act of Kindness, where people would do a random act of kindness and then, I think, write it in and share it with the radio station.

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And I remember thinking to myself, what does it benefit a person if they receive a random act of kindness, but it's not accompanied by the gospel?

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I've even heard someone say, it's actually a selfish act to engage in a random act of kindness simply because you do it to make yourself feel better.

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But here, Christ doesn't engage in random acts of kindness. He engages in acts of compassion that are carefully linked to the proclamation of the gospel message.

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It wasn't a social gospel. Christ didn't come to preach just good works, but he came to preach good news that accompanied good works.

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And not only did he do that, but we see here that Christ engaged in one of the most important aspects of our

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Christian lives, something that we often neglect. In verse 35, again, sorry, I'm circling around a little bit, but we see four verbs.

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I think we'd be very careful to learn from these four verbs. The first one is rising. The second one, departed.

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Third, went. And fourth, prayed. This was

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Christ's manner of life, these four verbs. Rising, departed, went, and prayed.

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And we read about this in other places like Luke chapter four and verse 42. It says, And when it was day, he departed and went into a desolate place, and the people sought him and came to him and would have kept him from leaving them.

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He went to that desolate place to pray. In Luke 5 .16, we actually see that this was a habit of Christ.

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It says, But he would withdraw to desolate places, and there he prayed. This was a regular habit of Christ.

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And I remember reading at one point about this text somewhere along the way that it said, If Christ, who is himself

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God, needs to pray to sustain his ministry, how much more we who are mere creatures.

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And so we see Christ continuing that same fellowship that he had with the Father before the foundation of the world.

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When Christ prayed in John 17 .24, he said, Father, I desire that they also, whom you have given me, may be with me where I am to see my glory that you have given me because you have loved me before the foundation of the world.

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That love, that harmony that Christ had with the Father before the foundation of the world was continued in Christ's earthly ministry.

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And so as Christ went, he put aside all worldly activities, and he made it a priority to draw near to the

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Father in prayer. And how much more, brothers and sisters, should we draw near if Christ himself was sustained by communion with the

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Father? How much more are we sustained by communion with the Father? Thomas Manton said,

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You should, with a holy conspiracy, besiege heaven. We've talked a lot about prayer.

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I know I bring it up quite frequently. I don't want to drive it home every single week.

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But let me ask you, brothers and sisters, how is your prayer life? Are you low in compassion?

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Is it possible that you are low in compassion because you are low in prayer? I've never met a thriving

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Christian that did not have a thriving prayer life. That would be an oxymoron to find a thriving

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Christian who did not come often to be with their God. And yet this is what

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God has opened up for us through the gospel of Jesus Christ. To believe in Christ, yes, and to follow, to use those verbs again, to rise, to depart, to be alone, to go into the inner room and to pray.

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Martin Lloyd -Jones, he says, prayer is beyond any question, beyond any question, the highest activity of the human soul.

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Man is at his greatest and highest when upon his knees he comes face to face with God.

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How often are you at your greatest and at your highest? How often are you face to face with God?

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One of my concerns, and I confess even in my own life, is that I am far too content with little praying.

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I'm far too content with little power. I'm far too content with podcasts and with books and with everything else under the sun than to drive into the presence of God.

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As the Puritans put it, they said it was the wait at the gate where you'd go there and to be present with God and to wait upon Him and to enter into His presence and to have real communion with Him.

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How often does that describe your life? Real communion with God or even the desire for communion with God?

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I remember going to Indonesia a few years ago and I've told you a little bit about that.

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Indonesia, I have to say, is a rough place in many respects for Christianity and you've heard me talk a little bit about that.

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The health and wealth gospel has gone wild in Indonesia and doctrinally, they're in a very impoverished place.

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Perhaps someone here in this room is called to go to Indonesia. I'm not sure. But one of the areas

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I remember as I traveled in Indonesia, one of the areas where they put us to shame, even with their bad doctrine, maybe sometimes because of their bad doctrine,

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I'm not sure, but it was in the area of prayer. When we would go out, we went out with a brother, his name was

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Toga. And he was a pastor in a city in Medan in North Sumatra and he was our driver and our interpreter.

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He was a lovely brother. But as we were traveling and we would go about and we'd sleep on air mattresses or tile floors or whatever in the middle of the jungle, one thing

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I noticed is it did not matter. I'm the kind of person I like to get up and to be alone. But it's not quite as safe to get up and to be alone in the jungle.

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And so you'd have to get up and to be alone in the house or in the church or wherever it was that you were sleeping.

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And I found that as we were traveling, it didn't matter how early I got up, I could never beat

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Toga to praying. He was always awake before me. He was always praying.

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And I felt almost ashamed as we would go from town to town to town and us

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Canadian guys would come up and all of the Indonesians would ooh and ahh over the

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Westerners that came to preach the Bible and they would want your pictures and all kinds of things like that.

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I'll tell you actually a funny story. One time I took a picture with a young man at one of these preaching events and the next day

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I got a friend request and I knew that I had met the man because him and I were in his profile picture.

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But they would come and take photos and broadcast it to their friends and I felt ashamed at times that our interpreter, he prayed better than us.

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That he walked with God closer than us. I remember at another occasion we were invited to a prayer meeting and as we were talking about this prayer meeting we were eager to go, absolutely we'd love to go to the prayer meeting.

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We're very spiritual, don't you know? And then they said, sure, well the prayer meeting is tomorrow at five in the morning.

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What that means, you have to know this is a corporate prayer meeting. This is the church coming together regularly to pray at five in the morning.

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And we did the math and we figured we'd probably have to be up and moving by four in the morning and so we sheepishly declined.

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But that was the prayer life of the Indonesians. Does that describe our prayer life?

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Does that describe your prayer life? I'll tell you what, it describes Christ's prayer life.

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He went to be alone to seek the face of his father. And Christ has bought that same privilege for us.

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And that was the secret, brothers and sisters, of his efficacy, of his ability, of his compassion to bring it back to that.

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Was that he was God himself and even as the Son of God, God the

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Son, he walked in communion with the Father. He drew his power from the

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Father. He drew his power from the Godhead. He drew his power from even within his divine self.

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Just to bring another story, there was a man named D .E. Host. If anyone knows

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Hudson Taylor, he started the China Inland Mission. D .E. Host was his successor.

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And so he took over the China Inland Mission from Hudson Taylor. And one day, he found himself at one point caring for two different villages.

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One village where he was living and ministering amongst and another village that he would have to travel across the country or across a mountain range to be with.

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And what he found is that as he would go about ministering the gospel and preaching and discipling and doing all of these things, he found that the believers in his particular city weren't nearly as healthy.

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I would feel very discouraged by this. Weren't nearly as healthy as the believers that lived in the village on the other side of the mountain range.

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And he thought, why is this that the people that I'm living amongst that I'm ministering the most actively to are the people that seem to be the least impacted by what it is that I'm preaching and teaching.

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And then one day he felt that the Lord showed him the answer. He found that although he was spending much time counseling and preaching and teaching amongst these people that he had lived amongst, he spent more of his time praying for the other village.

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And he found that God's work through his prayers affected more change than all of his activity in the village in which he lived.

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And so writing to other young missionaries he said that he concluded that there were four basic elements to determining a missionary's success.

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Number one was prayer. Number two was prayer. Number three was prayer.

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And then number four was faithfully preaching the word of God. He believed in the importance of the word of God but he knew that the preached word of God would not be effective unless it was accompanied by God's power that went about through prayer.

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And so brothers and sisters this is what Christ did. This was the secret of his compassion. This was the secret of his success was a vital prayer life.

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If we want to be effective in the world, if you want to reach your cousins, your brothers, your sisters, your friends, the people on White Avenue, if we want to be effective in this world and to enjoy the communion that God has purchased through the blood of his own son, brothers and sisters, let's be like Christ and pray.

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And the last point that I'll bring to our attention comes from verse 40 to 45. Here I want to show us the cleansing of Christ's compassion.

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That's the best way that I could frame it. But the cleansing of Christ's compassion.

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Verse 40 says this, And a leper came to him, imploring him, and kneeling, said to him, If you will, notice those words, if you will, you can make me clean.

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Notice that the leper, he believed already, he had faith already that Christ could heal him.

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His question was, would he will it? And Christ said, or we're told, Christ moved with pity, stretched out his hand, and touched him and said,

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I will be clean. And immediately the leprosy left him, and he was made clean.

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And Jesus sternly charged him and sent him away at once and said to him, See that you say nothing to anyone, but go show yourself to the priest and offer for your cleansing what

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Moses commanded for a proof to them. But he went out and began talking freely about it and to spread the news so that Jesus could no longer openly enter a place but was out in the desolate places and people were coming to him from every quarter.

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So here we see this man that came to Christ with leprosy. I did a little bit of study this week because I thought, what is leprosy?

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Leprosy is a bacterial infection that comes from the inside and it works its way outward.

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It works its way out. It's very contagious. And so that's why we see in places like Leviticus 13 these instructions concerning lepers that they needed to be outside of the camp.

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It was for the good of all the people because it was a very contagious illness. And I learned that you can catch leprosy either through someone's cough or a sneeze or Noah thought it was funny but by touching an armadillo.

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But it was through these acts that you could contract leprosy.

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And what the lepers were to do if we read in Leviticus 13 is they were to wear torn clothes.

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They were to let their hair hang loose. They were to cover their upper lip and they were to cry out unclean, unclean.

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One commentator said they were to make themselves look as despicable as possible so that everyone would know not to go near them.

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This man or this woman they are unclean. They were to be as hideous as possible.

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And what's interesting about this is that it says that the leper came to Christ. During that time it was expected that lepers were to remain at least 50 steps away or a distance of 50 paces away from anyone else.

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But this leper here comes to Christ. He approaches him by faith.

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And what does Christ do? I can tell you that if this leper approached a rabbi the rabbi would run in the other direction to maintain his ritual cleanliness, his ritual purity.

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But we find here that Christ reached out and he touched the man.

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Who knows when this man would have been touched last. If you can think about this. If this man was without a wife or without children who were themselves leprous.

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But we're told that Christ reached out and touched the man. And instead of Christ becoming unclean himself the man became clean.

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This is the compassion of Christ. The cleansing power of Christ.

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That when someone who is unclean comes to him they don't make him unclean he makes them clean.

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And so Christ makes the man clean. And then he tells him show yourself to the priest.

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We see that in Leviticus 14 the steps that a person would take in order to become clean.

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And one commentary says that this not only would help him to become ceremonially clean but to be socially rehabilitated.

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And leprosy was considered amongst this people a death sentence. The rabbis in that day would call the leprous the walking dead.

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Because it would be easier to save a dead man to raise a dead man to life than to cure a leper of their leprosy.

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But here Christ reaches out touches this man and makes him clean.

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We see again the compassion of Christ the cleansing compassion of Christ. And what's really interesting is when we look at the history of leprosy the use of leprosy as a disease in the gospels what we find is that leprosy was actually often associated with sinfulness.

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When we think about rebellion in the Bible some of the most notable instances of rebellion later accompanied leprosy.

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We see that in Numbers chapter 12. We see that in 2 Kings 5. We think about Miriam Moses' daughter.

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How she became leprous when she rebelled against Moses and against God. And in a sense brothers and sisters

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I want us to see this that this is a picture of the gospel. That in this leper this dead man walking who else can think of a passage that might describe us in that way?

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Maybe Ephesians 2 and you were dead in your trespasses and sins.

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Following, walking following the course of this world. And so not only do we see

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Christ's compassion but we see the telos. We see the final end of Christ's compassion which extended not only to physically ill people not only to demon possessed people but to those who were dead men walking to those of us who were dead in our trespasses and sins.

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And this in a sense is a small picture of the gospel. Christ's cleansing of the leper foreshadows

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Christ's cleansing of the sinner. And so when we look at Christ's cleansing we see the will of his cleansing.

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We see the secret power of his cleansing and then we see really the substance of his cleansing which is the gospel itself.

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Whenever we read about these accounts of the lepers we should think about Christ who himself was clean and came to us the unclean the walking dead who were ourselves wretched and vile.

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We before coming to Christ should have been ourselves calling out unclean, unclean.

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But even while we were unclean Christ willed in a sense to touch us.

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He willed to take on our uncleanliness. He willed to take on our sin that we might be right with him.

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Now I know for us as Christians this is really easy for us to hear and again just to acknowledge to nod our heads and say yep, yep, yep that's the gospel.

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That's the gospel. But we need, just as I said at the introduction we need

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Christ and we need his gospel and we need it every day. We need to meditate on it.

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I'll share a story that I wouldn't typically share but it was such an interesting experience.

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Just tonight, this last night in the middle, I think it was 1 .30 in the morning. I woke up and it was such a strange thing.

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I woke up and I had almost instantaneously a profound sense of God's holiness.

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It wasn't a dream. It was me awake and I thought for a moment to think of the arrogance that I'm going to come before all of you today and to preach

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God, to preach Christ, to preach his holy word.

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But God is holy. Holy beyond all that we can imagine.

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Holy beyond all that I can communicate to you now. The picture of a righteous and a clean

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Christ in his exchange with the leper. That's just one metaphor but God is perfect and we have fallen short of him and his glory in every single regard.

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This last week, I went to Elisa's school and was helping all the children with their memory verses.

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It was a great blessing. Christian schools are a blessing. All of the kids came out one by one and recited from Romans 5 .8.

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I don't know if Elisa's here. Maybe she's not here right now. But God demonstrates his own love for us in this, that we were still sinners.

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Christ died for us. And these little boys and little girls were coming out nervously and dutifully saying,

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Romans 5 .8 But God demonstrates his own love for us in this, while we were still sinners

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Christ died for us. Just trying as best as they could to get the words right.

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And I would coach them along and then after about the tenth child maybe, something like that I'd heard the words enough times that as the kids said it

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I would say, Yes! It's true! Amen! It's true! It's not just a fact to be memorized.

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It's not just a line that we recite and go, Yes! Yes! Christ died for us while we were still sinners.

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It's true! And so yes, little boy and little girl and all of you adults, memorize

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Romans 5 .8. But remember that while we were still lepers, while we were still separated from God, while we were social outcasts, removed far from God, without hope and without God in the world, living dead men, walking dead men, while we were still sinners,

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Christ died for us. He died for you. He died for me so that we could be right with Him, so we can walk it back, so that we can have fellowship with God every day, without guilt, but joyfully, sustainingly, so that we can show compassion to others, just as we experienced

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Christ's compassion that we can diaconate, that we can minister to and serve others.

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Christ died for the ungodly. It's true. And He died for you, if you are in fact in Christ.

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Charles Spurgeon said this. I could just preach Charles Spurgeon's sermons.

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They're just so good. I have to be careful, obviously, not to. But he says, Oh, see him die!

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See him die! Was there ever such a spectacle?

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Every drop that distills from his pierced hands cries aloud, safety for the believer, the ransom price is paid.

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If you're in Christ today, you're right with Him. And it was just as it was

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Christ's will to cleanse the leper, it was Christ's will to cleanse you, and that's why you're right with Him.

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I'll finish with these words. This is a, I believe it was from John Newton, a hymn that he wrote.

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The name of the hymn, we didn't have it in our hymnal. I would have loved to sing it. Maybe we can one day, but it reads like this.

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When the poor leper's case I read. Speaking about this text. When the poor leper's case

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I read, my own described I feel. Sin is a leprosy indeed, which none but Christ can heal.

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What anguish did my soul endure? Till hope and patience ceased.

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The more I strove myself to cure, the more the plague increased. Well thus

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I lay distressed. I saw the Savior passing by. To Him though filled with shame and awe,

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I raised my mournful cry. He heard and with a gracious look pronounced the healing word

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I will be clean and while He spoke I felt my health restored.

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Come sinners seize the present hour the Savior's grace to prove

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He can relieve for He is power. He will for He is love.