Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Before my wife and I went to North Africa as missionaries, we had a training in New York City.
[00:00:05] And one evening after the training was over, we went to the 911 Museum.
[00:00:10] This week is the 24th anniversary of 9 11, and if you ever get the chance to go to the 911 museum, I would highly recommend it. The museum is located at the very site where the Twin Towers once stood, and it's filled with thousands upon thousands of fascinating remnants from that day. Everything from original parts of the buildings to parts from the planes used in the attacks. The museum is very well done and it's very honest.
[00:00:40] One of the final exhibits is about the terrorists and radical Islam.
[00:00:44] While we were there, my wife and I just happened to cross paths with an older missionary couple who had spent decades serving with Muslims overseas in the Middle East.
[00:00:55] As we went through this final exhibit together, I could almost feel my blood begin to boil.
[00:01:04] How could those 19 men, most of them in their 20s, do something so evil?
[00:01:12] How could their religion inspire them to do something that would lead to the Deaths of nearly 3,000 people?
[00:01:22] The more I saw, the angrier I got.
[00:01:26] But then again, there I was, on the verge of leaving America and taking my wife to a country where 99.9% of the people practice the same religion as those terrorists.
[00:01:38] Honestly, as I walked out of that museum, I wondered if we were making a big mistake.
[00:01:47] I began to wonder if those people over there were really worth the sacrifice that my wife and I were making.
[00:01:54] Why should we leave all of our friends and family behind for those people?
[00:02:00] Why should I have left pastoral ministry? And why should my wife have left medical school for those people?
[00:02:06] As a matter of fact, why should we have any compassion on those kind of people at all?
[00:02:14] After we left the museum, that older missionary couple invited us to dinner in Chinatown. And as we sat down to a very Chinese dinner, I began to ask them how they did it.
[00:02:25] How could they have given so much of their lives to make the gospel known to a people who could do so much evil?
[00:02:33] I'll never forget what they said.
[00:02:37] Now, I don't know that many of you are on the verge of becoming missionaries and struggling with how to show compassion to Muslims overseas. But I do know that there are people right here in America that make your blood boil.
[00:02:50] There are people here that drive you crazy. There are some who it feels very hard, if not impossible, to show love to.
[00:02:59] They may not be as far off as Muslims in North Africa.
[00:03:03] They may be as close as in your living room this afternoon.
[00:03:08] Be honest.
[00:03:09] Who are the people that you struggle to show compassion toward.
[00:03:13] Maybe it's the liberals, or maybe it's the conservatives.
[00:03:18] For some of you, it could be the boomers, or it could be the millennials.
[00:03:26] For some it could be the transgender activists, or for others, it could be the Christian nationalists.
[00:03:34] Sometimes the hardest people to love aren't the random people out there.
[00:03:38] It's the people closest to us.
[00:03:41] Isn't could be a family member, or a roommate or a neighbor.
[00:03:48] Maybe it's somebody who's really hurt you or really hurt somebody you love, or both.
[00:03:56] Why should you have compassion on them?
[00:03:59] And how can you.
[00:04:00] Is it possible to really have compassion on all people, if you Even our enemies?
[00:04:09] The book of Jonah is a book about many things.
[00:04:12] One of the primary themes is God's compassion. And that is especially true of the last chapter of this book. At first glance, it might not seem that way, because in the translation I'm using, the word compassion isn't even used once. But as we will see, the point of this chapter, and really this book as a whole, is to reveal to us the greatness of God's compassion.
[00:04:38] First we see that God is compassionate to his enemies. Look at me at verse one.
[00:04:45] If we haven't been paying careful attention to Jonah's behavior in the rest of the book, then chapter four, verse one, might take us by surprise.
[00:04:52] After Jonah finally makes it to Nineveh and preaches the word of God, the entire city repents, from the greatest to the least. From the king on the throne to even the cattle in the stalls. Everyone turns from their evil way. Nineveh repents, and so God relents. God spares them from the judgment that was coming upon them. So for all intents and purposes, that makes Jonah the most successful Old Testament missionary who ever lived.
[00:05:24] So if we haven't been paying attention, we might expect chapter four, verse one, to say something along the lines of, and then they all lived happily ever after.
[00:05:35] But that's not what the text says.
[00:05:37] Rather, it says, but it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry.
[00:05:46] A more literal way to put it would be to say, but to Jonah it was evil, great evil. And it burned him up. Up.
[00:05:58] What made Jonah so angry was the very same thing that made the Ninevites so happy. God had shown compassion to them. He had spared them. And that was not okay with Jonah. It was not okay with him that God had spared their enemies.
[00:06:17] Remember, Jonah was a Jewish prophet. And don't forget about who the Ninevites were. They were the citizens of the of Israel's arch enemy, the Assyrians. The Assyrians were among the cruelest and most violent empires the world has ever seen. They were the radical terrorists of the ancient world. It's no wonder Jonah was mad. We would have agreed with Jonah that if any people deserved to be blown off the face of the earth, it was the Assyrians.
[00:06:49] But here, God is showing compassion to them.
[00:06:53] We know that's what made Jonah so angry, because of what he says in his prayer in verse two.
[00:06:58] And he prayed to the Lord and said, o Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish.
[00:07:08] Now Jonah is going to tell us himself why he didn't want to go to Nineveh in the first place.
[00:07:14] Or could say, because I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love and relenting from disaster.
[00:07:26] Jonah is not being respectful here, he's being snarky.
[00:07:30] The word translated as merciful is the Hebrew word for compassionate. Many of our modern English versions translate it that way.
[00:07:38] Given what he said in his previous prayer in chapter two, we know that Jonah isn't angry that God is compassionate. He's more than fine with God being compassionate to him.
[00:07:51] It's when God is compassionate to his enemies that Jonah has a big problem with God. In Jonah's mind, it's simple. God should be compassionate to people like him.
[00:08:03] But to evil, undeserving sinners like the Assyrians?
[00:08:09] No way.
[00:08:11] Those people are the enemies of the people of God, which makes them God's enemies. And in Jonah's mind, there's only one thing God's enemies deserve.
[00:08:22] Wrath. And lots of it. Definitely not compassion, definitely not grace. Jonah can't stand it because he thinks this is not the way things are supposed to work.
[00:08:34] If this is the way it's going to be, then Jonah doesn't even want to keep going. Look what he says next in verse 3.
[00:08:42] Therefore now, O Lord, please take my life from me, for it's better for me to die than to live.
[00:08:49] A more literal way to put Jonah's request would be to say, kill me.
[00:08:54] Better my death than my life.
[00:08:59] Suicide is not an option for Jonah because God's law forbids murder, including self murder. So he asks God to take his life for him.
[00:09:10] And if this all seems a bit dramatic, it's meant to.
[00:09:14] Jonah is meant to look unreasonable here.
[00:09:17] And that becomes even more apparent in the next part of the story, which is very Reminiscent to the story of another prophet from Israel's past.
[00:09:28] Long before Jonah's trip to Nineveh, the prophet Elijah had his own showdown with the enemies of God. They were the prophets of baal.
[00:09:38] And after God dramatically revealed himself, Elijah expected everyone in Israel, from the greatest to the least, to repent and turn to the Lord.
[00:09:50] But they did not.
[00:09:52] Instead, evil King Ahab and evil Queen Jezebel vowed to kill Elijah.
[00:09:58] So, just like Jonah a century later, Elijah went out to the wilderness by himself and sat under the shade of a plant and prayed and asked God to take his life.
[00:10:10] But that is where the similarities end.
[00:10:16] Elijah wanted to die because the people did not repent, but Jonah wanted to die because they did.
[00:10:24] As one commentator points out, Jonah would rather die than live because the Ninevites get to live rather than die.
[00:10:33] I believe this part of Jonah's story intentionally alludes back to Elijah's because we are meant to see that someone less than Elijah is here.
[00:10:44] God hears Jonah's prayer, but he does not take his life. Instead, he asked Jonah a question, verse four, and the Lord said, do you do well to be angry?
[00:10:56] We might say, are you right to be angry? Or do you have a good reason to be so mad?
[00:11:02] But at this point, there's only silence.
[00:11:05] Jonah doesn't respond.
[00:11:07] So the question is just left hanging out there.
[00:11:11] Is Jonah right to be angry that God showed compassion to his enemies?
[00:11:16] Does he have any right to be angry with God?
[00:11:20] It's a question that's just as valid for Jonah back then as it is for us today.
[00:11:27] You might not be angry with God because He saved your arch enemies, but there are all kinds of circumstances that might make you upset with God, aren't there?
[00:11:39] Do you ever find yourself getting upset with God because your life hasn't gone the way you wanted it to go?
[00:11:46] Or maybe you've gotten angry with him because you're still single or because you're still childless because he still hasn't fixed your marriage.
[00:11:57] Or do you get upset with God, maybe irritated with him because it just feels like at the end of the month there's not enough money, you can't financially ever get ahead. Or maybe you can't ever catch a break with your health. It just feels like one thing after another.
[00:12:12] You're getting frustrated with Him.
[00:12:15] Or maybe you're upset with God because He didn't heal your loved one and they died.
[00:12:23] One of the unfortunate side effects of sinful anger is that it tends to blind us.
[00:12:29] That's why when a person gets really mad, we'll say things like, they're seeing red or they're blind with rage. You ever got that way before?
[00:12:38] You get so angry and so worked up that all you can think about is what's making you mad.
[00:12:44] You lose sight of everyone and everything else around you. Your focus is so narrowed that you completely forget about the bigger picture.
[00:12:55] That's what happens every time we get angry, not just when we blow up.
[00:13:00] Think about bitterness. What is that?
[00:13:02] Bitterness is just anger on a low boil.
[00:13:07] The pot isn't spewing water all over the top of the stove.
[00:13:12] It's just on the back burner slowly boiling away.
[00:13:18] That's the picture of someone who's bitter. They can't let go of that person or that event that makes them so upset they've lost sight of the bigger picture.
[00:13:30] You already know this, but it's really hard to enjoy and show God's compassion to others when you're angry. Whether you're angry with God or with someone else.
[00:13:41] As long as we're focused on ourselves and what makes us mad, we don't have the freedom to to appreciate God's goodness and pass it on to others.
[00:13:52] So whenever you're tempted to be angry, just pause for a moment and ask yourself this question.
[00:13:59] Do you do well to be angry?
[00:14:02] Or better yet, you could ask yourself, do you do well to withhold compassion?
[00:14:07] And then before you answer that question, think about God.
[00:14:12] Think about how God actually does well to be angry at sin and sinners. Think about how he actually does have the right to blow up in wrath on his enemies.
[00:14:25] But then think about the cross.
[00:14:28] Think about how God responds.
[00:14:31] Think about how he pours out his anger on his only son in our place.
[00:14:39] Don't lose sight of the bigger picture of the gospel. Instead of blinding yourself with rage, blind yourself with compassion, with God's compassion.
[00:14:51] The more you do that, the more you'll actually be able to appreciate and share God's compassion with others.
[00:14:58] Jonah wasn't able to do that because he was so angry that he had forgotten an important truth.
[00:15:05] A very important truth that many of us are prone to forget.
[00:15:11] God isn't just compassionate to his enemies.
[00:15:16] God is compassionate to us.
[00:15:22] That's what the next part of the story reveals to us about God's compassion. Look at me there, starting in verse five, Jonah went out of the city and sat to the east of the city and made a booth for himself there. Now, don't imagine something like a ticket booth. Think something more like a lean to or some kind of shelter or tent.
[00:15:41] He sat under it in the shade till he should see what would become of the city.
[00:15:46] Now, we can't be exactly sure about the timing of this part of the story, but given that Jonah had said it would be 40 days until Nineveh would be overthrown, it's probable that it's around that time. It appears Jonah is still clinging to the hope that God will destroy his enemies.
[00:16:07] So he leaves the city and grabs a front row seat to watch what he hopes will be the exciting sequel to the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.
[00:16:17] But while he's waiting for God to teach the Assyrians a lesson, it's Jonah that gets taught a thing or 2.
[00:16:24] Verse 6.
[00:16:26] Now the Lord God appointed a plant and made it come up over Jonah that it might be a shade over his head to save him from his discomfort.
[00:16:37] Just as God appointed a fish to rescue Jonah from the water, so now here he appoints a plant to save him from the sun.
[00:16:47] The verse ends, so Jonah was exceedingly glad because of the plant. Did you notice that at the start of the chapter, Jonah was exceedingly displeased with God, but now here he's exceedingly pleased with this plant.
[00:17:04] Now, if you have one of those scripture journals, go ahead and circle or underline that word appointed here in verse 6 and then do it again in the next two verses.
[00:17:15] Verse 7.
[00:17:16] But when dawn came up the next day, God appointed a worm that attacked the plant so that it withered when the sun rose. God appointed a scorching east wind, and the sun beat down on the head of Jonah so that he was faint.
[00:17:33] God is sovereign. He rules and reigns over all of his creation. In this book alone we see how he controls fish, plants, bugs and the weather.
[00:17:46] God hurled a great wind upon the sea in chapter one. And here he hurls a great wind upon the land.
[00:17:55] This isn't a nice cool breeze like we have here in Kentucky. This is a scorching desert wind like they have in parts of North Africa. It only makes you hotter, more miserable.
[00:18:07] By now, Jonah is roasting so much that he's on the verge of passing out from heat exhaustion.
[00:18:13] But the wind is not the only thing making Jonah hot under the collar. He's getting angry again.
[00:18:21] So he prays, and he asked that he might die and said, it is better for me to die than to live.
[00:18:29] But God said to Jonah, do you do well to be angry for the plant?
[00:18:35] Jonah gets another chance to answer God's question.
[00:18:40] And here he does. He says, yes, I do well to be Angry. Angry enough to die.
[00:18:47] This repetition of this conversation and Jonah's answer shows us that Jonah still doesn't get it.
[00:18:55] He still doesn't understand God's compassion.
[00:18:58] That's the whole point of what's going on here with this plant. As God will make clear in the final verses, God is trying to teach Jonah a life changing lesson about his compassion.
[00:19:10] Think about it.
[00:19:12] Jonah is angry that God was compassionate to his enemies. But it's not just Jonah's enemies who have been the recipients of God's compassion.
[00:19:22] Jonah himself has received mercy upon mercy.
[00:19:28] When he ran off to Tarshish to try to flee from the presence of the Lord, God was compassionate to send a storm to stop him in his tracks. When he got thrown overboard and was going to drown in the ocean, God was compassionate to send a fish to rescue him.
[00:19:45] And when he was inside that stinking fish, God was compassionate to hear his prayer and give him a second chance.
[00:19:52] And then while he's out pouting under the desert sun, God was compassionate to give him shade to relieve his discomfort. Over and over and over again, God shows compassion to undeserving Jonah. And over and over and over again, Jonah shows he still doesn't get it.
[00:20:13] What Jonah has forgotten is that just like the pagan sailors and evil Assyrians, he doesn't deserve God's compassion either.
[00:20:25] If anything, Jonah might actually be less deserving of God's compassion than the pagans. The sailors repent when God displays his power and the storm ceases. The Assyrians repent when God declares His word through his prophet. But Jonah, Jonah, who has received so much compassion, refuses to truly repent because he still thinks he deserves God's mercy.
[00:20:53] And in that way, he is a representation of all of the Jewish people of his day.
[00:21:00] Israel had forgotten what God told their ancestors after he rescued them from slavery in Egypt. In Deuteronomy 7, 6, 8, God told them why he saved them. God told them why he chose them.
[00:21:17] And this is why. Listen to this.
[00:21:19] It was not because you were more in number than any other people that the Lord set His love on you and chose you, for you were the fewest of all peoples. But it is because the Lord loves you and is keeping the oath that he swore to your fathers that the Lord has brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you from the house of slavery. In other words, God did not have compassion on Israel because they were so special or because they earned it.
[00:21:47] If anything, we see throughout the whole history of the patriarchs in Israel that they did not deserve it. God saves them from Egypt and what do they do? They almost immediately begin grumbling and complaining and worshiping idols. God graciously gives them the promised land, and they almost immediately begin rebelling against him and and worshiping the false gods of the land. God rescues them again and again, but again and again they return to their old sinful ways.
[00:22:22] The story of Jonah similarly reflects the storyline of Israel. God is trying to teach Jonah and all Israel through him, that if he only shows compassion to those who deserve it, then they won't receive it either.
[00:22:41] As shocking as it is to Jonah that God is compassionate to his enemies, the greater shock should be that God is compassionate to him by his sinful behavior and attitude. Jonah is acting more like one of God's enemies than one of God's people.
[00:22:59] Yet God still shows compassion to him.
[00:23:03] That's the lesson for Jonah, that's the lesson for Israel, and that's the lesson for us today.
[00:23:11] You see, it's a really good thing that God is compassionate to his enemies, because that means there's hope that he will be compassionate to us.
[00:23:25] God's enemies are those who rebel against him, who disobey his law, who sin. And the Bible says that's every single one of us. The Bible says all have sinned. Sinful people are the natural enemies of the holy God. So it doesn't matter if we were born Jews or not. It doesn't matter if we were brought up in a good religious home like Jonah, or a pagan one like the Assyrians. We are all sinners. We are all God's enemies.
[00:23:58] None of us deserve his compassion any more than anyone else. We only deserve his wrath.
[00:24:09] But the good news is God is compassionate to his enemies.
[00:24:16] To be compassionate means to voluntarily enter into the pain and misery of of another, to grieve with those who grieve, to help others bear their burdens.
[00:24:28] The root of our English word compassion comes from the Latin meaning to suffer with.
[00:24:35] And that is exactly what God does for us.
[00:24:42] God is not some kind of impersonal deity who sits idly by and watches all the pain and suffering of the world from a distance, as if he couldn't care less.
[00:24:53] Not at all. Our God is compassionate. He is so compassionate that he voluntarily enters into the pain and misery of our world. Through the incarnation of His Son, Jesus takes on flesh and dwells amongst us. He experiences the sufferings of life in this fallen world with us.
[00:25:18] And do you know what word the Gospels use most frequently to describe Jesus?
[00:25:27] More than a century ago, a Theologian From Kentucky named B.B. warfield set out to answer that question. He wanted to know what characteristic the Gospels attribute to Jesus most frequently. He studied the original Greek New Testament and published his findings in a short book called the Emotional Life of Our Lord. In it, he points out that several times the Gospels tell us that Jesus was loving.
[00:25:53] Other times that he was sorrowful or angry.
[00:25:56] But the characteristic most frequently attributed to Jesus is that he was compassionate.
[00:26:07] Over and over again, the Gospels tell us that Jesus saw the crowds of people and he had compassion for them because they were harassed and helpless like sheep without a shepherd.
[00:26:21] But Jesus compassion goes even beyond suffering with us, doesn't it?
[00:26:30] Jesus doesn't just suffer with us on the cross.
[00:26:36] Jesus suffers for us.
[00:26:40] The cross is the pinnacle of God's compassion for his enemies. It is there that Jesus suffers the wrath of God for all our sins, even as he's being crucified. Jesus asked God to have compassion on his enemies. He says, father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.
[00:27:00] The only person truly worthy of God's compassion on was Jesus, because he never sinned. He was not God's enemy. He was God's Son. But on the cross, Jesus took the place of God's enemies so that by faith in him we may become God's children.
[00:27:19] That's what Romans 5:10 says. It says, for if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of His Son, much more now that we are reconciled to, shall we be saved by his life.
[00:27:36] The good news of the Gospel is that God is compassionate to us, his enemies.
[00:27:43] What that means is that before we can show compassion to others, we must first receive God's compassion toward us.
[00:27:52] We receive God's compassion by repenting and believing in the Gospel.
[00:27:59] We must end our sinful rebellion. That's repentance. And by faith, follow Jesus as our Lord and Savior. The moment you believe the Gospel is the moment you receive God's compassion and the moment that you can begin to show God's compassion to others. So if you've never done that, I urge you to do so right now.
[00:28:26] Repent and believe in the Gospel.
[00:28:31] The Gospel is the demonstration of God's compassion and is the source of our compassion. Without the Gospel, we simply cannot show compassion to all people, even those who seem like our enemies.
[00:28:44] That's what we see in these final verses. What we see is the main point of this whole chapter and really this book as a whole, which is this.
[00:28:54] Because God is compassionate to his enemies, to us, we can be compassionate to everyone.
[00:29:04] The book of Jonah ends with Jonah having a temper tantrum.
[00:29:08] Jonah is mad that his enemies are alive and that his plant is dead.
[00:29:14] In these last two verses, God tells Jonah the point of the lesson he's been trying to teach him all along.
[00:29:20] Look with me at verse 10.
[00:29:23] And the Lord said, you pity the plant. Or it could say, you have compassion for the plant for which you did not labor, nor did you make it grow, which came into being in a night and perished in a night.
[00:29:35] Jonah was compassionate for a plant he didn't have anything to do with. He didn't till the soil, he didn't plant it, he didn't water it. He wasn't responsible for the plant at all. But even though it was here today and gone tomorrow, Jonah was deeply attached to it. So much so that he was angry enough to die when it was gone, which makes his lack of compassion for the Ninevites look all the worse.
[00:30:00] Jonah's anger was so irrational that he was willing to die over the well being of a single plant, but not to live over the well being of tens of thousands of people.
[00:30:13] God makes an argument from the lesser to the greater in these last verses, verse 11. And should not I pity Nineveh? Or could say, should not I have compassion on Nineveh, that great city in which there are more than 120,000 persons who do not know their right hand from their left, and also much cattle.
[00:30:32] In contrast to Jonah, who has compassion for a little plant, God has compassion for a massive city with more people than all of Madison county combined.
[00:30:44] Notice God describes the Ninevites as not knowing their right hand from their left, a phrase which probably refers to the fact that they had no moral discernment, no moral compass left. They were spiritually lost.
[00:30:58] Unlike Jonah in Israel, the Ninevites do not have the light of God's word, the truth that's in God's word.
[00:31:06] Instead, they are deceived and blinded by Satan.
[00:31:11] Yet they are still people made in God's image.
[00:31:15] Unlike Jonah in his plant, God did labor to make them. God did make them grow.
[00:31:23] God is responsible for their existence. And unlike the plant which is here today and tomorrow thrown into the oven, they have immortal souls which will live for forever.
[00:31:35] With this final question, God rests his case and Jonah responds with silence.
[00:31:44] That's how the book ends with this cliffhanger, the question left unanswered, the tension left unresolved.
[00:31:51] How will Jonah respond?
[00:31:53] Will God's compassion finally sink in? Does he finally get it?
[00:31:59] We don't know.
[00:32:01] And I think that's very intentional on the part of the author because what it does is it not only leaves us wondering about Jonah's answer, but it causes us to wonder about our own answer.
[00:32:16] How would we answer God's question?
[00:32:19] Or better yet, how are we answering God's question?
[00:32:24] You see, if you believe God is right to show compassion to his enemies, then that will affect how you show compassion to everyone around you.
[00:32:37] In a sense, showing compassion to others is not hard.
[00:32:40] Anybody can do it.
[00:32:42] Doesn't matter if you're rich or poor, doesn't matter if you're Republican or Democrat, old or young. Anybody can show compassion.
[00:32:51] Even people from other religions can show compassion.
[00:32:54] It should go without saying, but the vast majority of Muslims are not radical terrorists. They're just normal people like you and me who love their families and want to have good paying jobs and be able to support them. As a matter of fact, one of the last meals my wife and I had before we came back to America was with a Muslim family who we become friends with and who wanted to say goodbye.
[00:33:17] So people from other religions can show compassion.
[00:33:21] Even people who don't practice religion at all can show compassion. There are all kinds of secular people and atheists who love their families and friends and serve their communities.
[00:33:33] Anybody can show compassion to a certain extent.
[00:33:40] What I mean is that anybody can be compassionate to people they like or people who are like them, or people who can do something for them. That's easy. But showing compassion to people who get on your nerves, like your in laws.
[00:33:56] Or showing compassion to people who seem completely different from you, like your gay neighbor.
[00:34:03] Or to people who can't do anything for you, like the homeless.
[00:34:08] Or to people who have hurt you, like your ex.
[00:34:12] Or to people who seem like your enemies.
[00:34:16] Now that's a whole different ball game.
[00:34:19] The only kind of people who can show compassion to everyone, including their enemies, are people who know that God was compassionate to them when they were his enemies.
[00:34:35] In other words, the only kind of people who who can show compassion to everyone are people who believe the gospel.
[00:34:45] Only Christians know that they were once God's enemies. But God showed compassion to them and sent his son to die for their sins on the cross.
[00:34:56] Since we know that's true, we have the power to show compassion to our enemy. We know they don't deserve it, but neither did we.
[00:35:05] And that's what sets the church apart from the rest of the world. That's why Jesus says in the Sermon on the Mount, you have heard that it was said, you shall love your neighbor and Hate your enemy. But I say to you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you so that you may be sons of your Father who is in heaven.
[00:35:30] Our Father showed compassion to us when we were his enemies. So now we bear the family resemblance. When we show compassion to our enemies, we show people what Jesus is like by being compassionate to people who are not like us and cannot do anything for us. And it's the Gospel that gives us the power to do that.
[00:35:52] So if you're struggling to be compassionate towards somebody who drives you crazy at work or at home or at school, the solution is not to just grit your teeth and make you do it. Make yourself do it. The solution is to remember the Gospel.
[00:36:09] You need to apply the Gospel to that person in that situation in order to eliminate all possible obstacles. Instead of focusing on what you don't like about them or how they're so different from you, you need to focus on what you share in common.
[00:36:24] Don't focus on your differences, on how they're from that other political party or from that other race or from that other side of town.
[00:36:32] Instead, focus on what you have in common. You are both made in the image of God. You are both sinners who are naturally enemies of God. And God showed compassion to both of you by sending His Son to die for your sins. So by faith in him, you can both be brothers and sisters in Christ.
[00:36:56] You see how that works?
[00:36:58] Now all those differences don't seem so insurmountable when we focus on the Gospel. It also eliminates all possible excuses to be compassionate. No, they don't deserve it, but neither did you.
[00:37:13] Yes, they may have wronged you in some way. Maybe it was a co worker or classmate who dropped the ball and now you've got to do a whole bunch more work.
[00:37:22] Or maybe your spouse wronged you by disrespecting you in front of the kids. Or maybe somebody wronged you in even a more serious way than that. But you know that by your sin you wronged God and He didn't withhold compassion from you, so you don't withhold compassion for them.
[00:37:39] Or it could be that they've got themselves into some kind of mess.
[00:37:45] Maybe they got themselves into a financial mess or a relational mess or some other kind of mess.
[00:37:49] But you know that by your sin you got yourself into a mess with God and God still showed compassion to you anyway, so you show compassion to them.
[00:38:00] That's how the Gospel gives us the power to be compassionate to all people. The Gospel is both the why and how of compassion?
[00:38:12] Because God is compassionate to his enemies like us, who we can be compassionate to everyone.
[00:38:20] That's the truth Jonah had forgotten as he sat fuming on that Middle Eastern hillside.
[00:38:26] And that's the truth I had forgotten as I left the 911 museum.
[00:38:32] But as my wife and I ate dinner with that older missionary couple, they gently reminded me of that truth.
[00:38:40] They reminded me that those people are blinded and deceived by Satan just like we were, but that God showed compassion to them through the gospel.
[00:38:52] The only real difference is that they just don't know it yet or believe it yet.
[00:38:58] That's why we've got to go tell it to them.
[00:39:01] When those missionaries reminded me of the gospel, my anger slowly faded away, because I knew that when they said it, they really meant it.
[00:39:13] You see, several years before, they had been serving in a closed Muslim country where they worked at a Christian hospital in order to gain access to share the gospel with the local people.
[00:39:25] One day, a group of terrorists took over the hospital and some of their fellow missionaries were martyred.
[00:39:33] If anybody had the right to say, those people don't deserve compassion, it was these missionaries whose friends had literally been murdered.
[00:39:42] But they didn't say that. They didn't think that, because they still believed the Gospel.
[00:39:49] Nabil Qureshi, himself, a former Muslim who became a Christian before he died, once said, a radical Muslim will kill for the sake of Muhammad, but a radical Christian will die for the sake of Jesus.
[00:40:06] The difference between Christians and Muslims, between Christians and atheists, between Christians and anybody else in the world, is that we can show compassion to everyone, even if that means laying down our lives, because we know that while we were still his enemies, Jesus laid down his life for us.
