Hello, My Name Is Compassion

Welcome everybody who’s watching online again. If you’re in the room, help me welcome everybody who is watching online. We have a few thousand people who catch up in and around the Austin area, and we’re so glad that you are with us. I had a way I was going to open this service or this message, and I’m going to scrap that and go right to it.

We are in this series, The Names of God, and really understanding what God says about Himself. We have all sorts of ways that we think of God through our experience and how we’ve experienced life, so we look at things in our own way. Last week, we talked about the word Yahweh and what that means, what that looks like, and how God describes the essence of who He is. It’s this interaction that He has with Moses. If you missed last week, it’s okay. You can go back and watch it online on our website—just go to Gateway Church under messages, and you’ll see week one of this series right there.

God is interacting with Moses, whom He asked to do something pretty amazing: bringing the people out of slavery, going from Egypt to the Promised Land. Then Moses said to God, “If I come to the people of Israel and say to them, ‘The God of your fathers has sent me to you,’ and they ask me, ‘What is his name?’ what shall I say to them?” God said to Moses, “I AM WHO I AM.” It might be the most audacious statement in the history of the world. “I AM THAT I AM.” People say nowadays, “She’s her” or “He’s him.” God describes Himself as “I AM.” Then He said, “Say this to the people of Israel: ‘I AM has sent me to you.'”

What is He saying? He is saying, “I am, I will be, I forever will be.” Which means we get to say He is, He was, and He forever will be. Fast forward to Exodus chapter 34, where a lot of chaos is happening with the people of Israel on their way to the Promised Land. Exodus 34 reads: “The Lord passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, ‘The Lord, the Lord’—so Yahweh—’the compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness, maintaining love to thousands, and forgiving wickedness, rebellion, and sin. Yet he does not leave the guilty unpunished.'” You have God describing who He is and His nature, and we trust Him at His word.

We are taking a series to understand these words and what they mean. Today, we’re looking at how God reveals Himself as compassionate and gracious. God is compassionate and gracious. This all-knowing God—who is, who was, and who is to come, who was before the formation of the world, and who will be there for eternity—is compassionate and gracious towards us. Those might be words that are not in our everyday vernacular when we try to describe God, yet they are in God’s vernacular about Himself.

So, what do these words mean? To understand them and really get a picture of who God is, we’re going to look through a different character in Scripture. Last week was Moses; this week we’re talking about David, how King David interacts with God, and how he knows God.

A little backstory: David is a son in the house of Jesse, meaning Jesse was the patriarch of the family. David was the youngest son, existing in the margins of the family. We don’t read this directly in Scripture, but through historical documents and the Talmud, there is a belief that David was marginalized in his own family because of marital issues between his mother and father. Some of you might really understand that.

David was a son, and then he became a worshiper and a poet. He wrote most of the Psalms, making him perhaps the most prolific writer of songs in the history of the world. That was his nature. Then Samuel the prophet comes to town because God is going to anoint a new king. God tells Samuel, “I’m going to raise up a king from the house of Jesse.” Jesse invites his sons to the table to see which one might be king, but he doesn’t even invite David. Have you ever been at Thanksgiving dinner and they still want you to sit at the kids’ table when you’re 48? They’re giving you a hint that you’re still not grown. That was David; he wasn’t even invited to the party.

Samuel looks at Jesse and says, “These are good-looking, tall, strong sons of yours, but none of them are going to be king. Is there anyone left?” Jesse answers, “Yeah, we got David. He’s the youngest, he sings all day, and he wants to be an artist.” I think that hits home. “He wants to be an artist, but he’s a shepherd, so he smells like sheep. We didn’t even bring him in here.” They bring in David, and Samuel says, “This is the one.”

Even then, he had a long journey. He wasn’t invited to war when they were going up against Goliath. They couldn’t beat Goliath, and David went to bring his brothers some lunch. While there, he said, “Well, while I’m here, God is with me. I’ll just take out the giant.” And he did. That put him on the radar of the king, which seemed like a good thing since he was to be the next king. But the king wanted to kill him because David was a great warrior who never lost a battle. So David was running for his life. He was also a diplomat who brought all the tribes together when he became king.

Despite all these attributes, in the middle of running for his life, he sought out God. He said, “I’m being hunted, betrayed, and outnumbered. I have a small company of men. God, go before us.” Listen to this prayer, poem, and song of David’s heart, written a thousand years before Jesus—about 3,000 years ago. Open your Bibles to Psalms:

“Hear me, Lord, and answer me, for I am poor and needy. Guard my life, for I am faithful to you. Save your servant who trusts in you. You are my God; have mercy on me, Lord, for I call to you all day long. Bring joy to your servant, Lord, for I put my trust in you. You, Lord, are forgiving and good, abounding in love to all who call to you. Hear my prayer, Lord, and listen to my cry for mercy. When I am in distress, I call to you, because you answer me. Among the gods there is none like you, Lord; no deeds can compare with yours. All the nations you have made will come and worship before you, Lord; they will bring glory to your name. For you are great and do marvelous deeds; you alone are God. Teach me your way, Lord, that I may rely on your faithfulness; give me an undivided heart, that I may fear your name. I will praise you, Lord my God, with all my heart; I will glorify your name forever. For great is your love toward me; you have delivered me from the depths, from the realm of the dead. Arrogant foes are attacking me, O God; ruthless people are trying to kill me—they have no regard for you. But you, Lord, are a compassionate and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness. Turn to me and have mercy on me.”

When he says, “Turn to me,” have you ever been so upset at someone that you turn your back on them and say, “I can’t even look at you right now”? When I was in college, I got kicked out of my university—no surprise for those who know me. I had to tell my parents. My mom was so upset because this was my eighth suspension from high school and college combined. She literally turned her back on me and didn’t talk to me for three days. I was a mama’s boy, and I knew it was my fault. All I wanted was for her to turn to me and talk to me. David is saying, with all these things going on, “God, just turn to me. Have mercy on me. Show your strength on behalf of your servant. Save me because I serve you, just as my mother did.”

We don’t hear many references to David’s mother in Scripture, but he is saying that from one generation to another, we serve You. “Give me a sign of your goodness, that my enemies may see it and be put to shame, for you, Lord, have helped me and comforted me.”

What a poem and love letter in the middle of distress to the God who created him, saved him before, and was the God of his mother. What this elicits is the very nature of God. What does God’s compassionate, generous nature compel us to do?

First, God’s compassion invites us to be honest. David is being honest with his life. What would it look like if you walked in today, I gave you a piece of paper, and told you to write as honestly as you could about your life right now, and then read it out loud to God? In His compassion, God invites us to a place of honesty in relationship. You can feel David’s anguish and pain. Some of us can relate to moments where everything goes awry and we wonder what is going on. David’s honesty is about his current reality.

Our faith does not deny our fears, or that we will face certain things, or that we might experience anxiety, doubt, or worry. Faith doesn’t take those away, but it invites us to bring our fear, doubt, and worry into God’s presence. His compassion compels us to be honest. In American culture, someone asks, “How are you doing?” and we say, “I’m good, it’s all good,” even when things are broken. God’s compassion invites you into a relationship where you can be honest.

The English dictionary defines compassion as feeling deep sympathy, care, and sadness for people or animals who are suffering, and wanting to help ease that pain. Some of us feel convicted because our natural inclination isn’t very compassionate. In my own flesh, my nature is not naturally compassionate, though in Christ, under the umbrella of compassion, we grow to be compassionate like the God who created us.

The biblical term for compassion (racham) means merciful or tender mercies. When God sees our brokenness and pain, He has tender mercies. This is one of the first characteristics God states about Himself: when you are struggling, He has compassion toward you.

You might ask, “If God is so good, why do we experience pain?” Because God wanted a genuine relationship with us, He allowed free will on the earth. As humans, we take that free will and make choices that don’t honor God, which hurts our relationship with Him, with others, and with ourselves. It isn’t a loving relationship unless there is free will. Because humanity chose paths that set brokenness into motion, we experience pain. Yet God remains compassionate and tender, preserving our seat at the table and giving us the freedom to run to Him. The Hebrew root racham is closely tied to the womb, describing a mother’s deep, protective love for her child. Scripture uses both masculine and feminine imagery to describe God because both men and women reflect the imago Dei—the image of God.

Second, God favors you. This is what “gracious” means: spontaneous, undeserved favor and pure generosity. God is compassionate—He has tender emotions toward us—and He is gracious, offering undeserved favor. The root word means to bend or be inclined toward someone. One scholar noted that while compassion is the motherly emotion stirring over someone’s plight, grace is the active, generous response that fixes the problem. It transforms abstract pity into an actual rescue mission.

Do you ever feel like you experience God’s favor, or do you feel like you can never catch a break? Too often, we measure God’s love for us based on our circumstances rather than His character. God never promised a life without suffering; He promised to be with us in the suffering as a compassionate and gracious God.

Psalm 145 says: “Great is the Lord and most worthy of praise; his greatness no one can fathom… The Lord is gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and rich in love. The Lord is good to all; he has compassion on all he has made… The Lord is trustworthy in all he promises and faithful in all he does. The Lord upholds all who fall and lifts up all who are bowed down.” David wrote these words while going through intense trials, yet he opened his eyes to see the goodness of God everywhere.

Third, we can become people after God’s own heart. David was called a man after God’s own heart, yet he was also a sinner who made deep mistakes. What made him a man after God’s own heart was his total reliance on God and his deep repentance. He understood the weight of his sin, brought it before God, and allowed doctrine to become devotion—living out what he believed.

Fourth, a holy fear of God draws us closer to Him. Psalm 103 tells us: “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him; for he knows how we are formed, he remembers that we are dust… But from everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who fear him.”

In Matthew, when Jesus saw the crowds, He had compassion on them because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd. The crowd does not stop the One who created you from seeing you. He sees you in the crowd, even when you feel lost, and He acts with compassion and grace.

With the God of compassion and grace, we can say boldly: Jesus loves you. The love of God was shown in its ultimate form when His Son, Jesus, came and died for us to give us new life and connect us back to God the Father. He loves you, He is for you, He is compassionate, and He is gracious.