The Village Church
Relating With Compassion - Audio
please pray with me. Father God we thank you Lord that you need to take our hand and that you will lead us home. That is just not a chance. That is not just wishful thinking but you will bring us safely home to glory. And then our position before you, our security before you, our standing before you is written in stone is written in the blood of Christ. And because of that we are in safe hands. We will be brought home. Lord as we come to the preaching of your Word we pray that your Spirit will again bring glory to your name. You will be lifted up. You will be honored as God and King, prophet, prophet, priest and king. Now you will meet us where we are. Your Word will be applied to our hearts. And I pray Lord that I will get out of the way and let your Spirit do His job. For it's not about me. It's all about you. Crashing my pray. Amen. I'm sure some of you have seen the the movie Blind Side. It tells the story of a young man named Michael Orr who who grew up with thirteen siblings in the poorest in the poorest part of Memphis, Tennessee. No, his father was murdered. His mother was addicted to crack cocaine. And so anyone in that type of environment know that eventually they're gonna get put into the system. That's what happened to him and his siblings. They were put into the foster care system in Memphis, Tennessee. And so Michael grew up going from foster home to foster home. He'd run away from some or he'd go to another one or he end up staying with some friends. He eventually got to the point where he was just homeless basically no place to live. Now eventually he ended up staying with one of his friends sleeping on the couch belonging to his friend's father. And so his friend's dad eventually got Michael and his friend enrolled at Bearcrest Christian School in Memphis. It's a private Christian school in Memphis, Tennessee. And that was a turning point of Michael's life because that set the stage for him meeting a family. A good family that was going to end up impacting his life. That family would engage him. That family would relate to him. And that family would help bring restoration to his life. Restoration that he probably wouldn't have and got without him. So it was doing his first Thanksgiving break from school that Michael met Shane and Lee Ann Chewy. They were going home. They were heading home from school after watching the Thanksgiving play. And so they saw Michael walking in the rain on the side of the road cold. He only had a t-shirt and some short-tone. And so they knew him. They knew of him. The dad worked at the school as a I think helping out with the basketball team. So they knew he was at the school. He went to school with their kids. But they didn't know anything about him. They didn't have any reason to stop to help. They could have just went on home. It was a late night. It was raining. Someone else may stop and help him. They could have been tired. No. They didn't. They stopped. They engaged him. Shane says in a U.S. Today article that his wife Lee Ann grabbed the wheel. Next came when you turn. She cried the second she met him. And it was over. She engaged Michael and learned that he was going to spend the night outside the school's gym because he had no other place to sleep. And so the Tuyi family brought Michael into their home and they began to relate to him. They began to learn about his childhood and his past. They began to bring restoration to his life. This family will eventually become the legal guardians of Michael. Giving him family support. Giving him accountability. Giving him stability. Shane says again in this article that God sent him to us. Earthly explanations don't make sense. In this same article Michael said that when he was 18 Lee Ann said to him I love you. He said that was the first time someone has ever said to him I love you. Wow. Those words alone can bring restoration when they're coming from someone who actually means them. Right? I love you. Last week we saw like this Tuyi family we saw near my step out and engaged. He wasn't out in the rain but he simply asked a question. A simple question. A question that showed he cared. A question that showed he had concern for his Jewish people and for their city. Did you remember the question? What do you say? I asked him concerning the Jews who escaped. I asked them concerning the Jews who who survived the exile. I asked them concerning Jerusalem. What are the conditions of my people now that they're back in their homeland? What kind of answer did he get? Did he get a good answer from his brother? Did he tell them that hey man things are great? You know that the temple is restored? We are living it up. No. Keep that tell him that people are in great trouble and shame. The walls of Jerusalem are broken down. Its gates are destroyed by fire. Things are not good brother. Our people are not doing well. So he engaged. Now the question for us this morning is what is going to be Nehemiah's response to this bear report? How is he going to respond? What is he going to do now? Now that he has his answer about the conditions of Jerusalem, the conditions of his fellow Jews and that's what we're going to look at this morning. Look at Nehemiah chapter 1 verse 4 this is his response. Here's God's word. As soon as I heard these words I sit down and wept and mourn for days. I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. In this one verse we see Nehemiah beginning to move from engaging to relating to his neighbors, to his people. We see that in his response. He had two responses to this bad news, to the shocking news about the conditions of his people. He had emotional response. That's the first response we see from him. Keep in mind that when Nehemiah ran into his brother that day it was just a routine day for him. And when he engaged in with that question about the conditions of the Jews in Jerusalem, you gotta think that he was not expecting to hear what he actually heard. Hoping for something, some better news. It's possible that he had a different picture of their living conditions. Like I said last week, the Jewish people, they have been back in Jerusalem for over a century now. It wasn't like it just went back the week before. They've been living there a long time. We realized that a long time they have been there. Two returns happen, one under Sarubah boy and one with Ezra. So the people are already there. And so you would think if a century has passed, the living conditions should be better. I shouldn't be hearing this type of report. Shouldn't things be better brother? They were not better. The Jews who survived exile were in great trouble and shame. The walls and its gates have not been restored even though a century has passed. This is shocking news. It stops Nehemiah in its tracks. It changes his attitude. It alters his whole day. It even redirects the course of his life. Now we're gonna flesh all that out later on. This information changes him. It was one of those, "Oh my goodness moments. Are you kidding me? Are you serious? Is that bad?" Yes. He said, "As soon as I heard these words, I sat down well and mourn for days." Nehemiah felt grief hurt for his people. He identified with them in what they were going through. This was not some false sense of a compassion. It was not some hyper-emotionalism. It was genuine emotion. This is him relating to their pain, relating to their trouble, sympathy, real compassion. Now this doesn't mean, you know, we got to turn into crybabies in order to relate to people, right? It doesn't mean you have to have the same emotional response as Nehemiah to relate to people. It simply means we should have compassion, sympathy to the hardships of others. Because here's the thing, you're going to find it real difficult to truly relate to people if you have no compassion on them. You may relate to them, but will you relate to them in a healthy way? Because you can engage people relate to them and you cause more damage than you actually intended to cause. Because you don't, you're not doing, you don't have no compassion. Because that, because you can help people and insult them and demean them at the same time. You do realize that, right? I can help you talk to you and I can insult you and demean you as I'm doing it. And I look down on you as I'm doing it. Compassion is what we have to have for each other, fellow family members, strangers, compassion. And this emotional response on Nehemiah, he was just being, this is being human. I mean, he was not some heartless emotional robot. What do you do when you receive bad information about loved ones? People you actually care about. What do you do? Do you just say, "Oh, that's their fault?" "Mom, well, too bad." "So to be you." "No, you feel their pain. You hurt with them. You relate to them. All of us have been stomping our tracks by something we heard and saw or seen. All of us have had to sit down, take a moment to process some shocking information or just breathe. All of us have had an emotional response about something you read, heard, or saw that brought us to tears. Whether it's a child that you know is going to sleep in a cold house tonight. Whether it's a single mom getting ready to be a victim. Death of a loved one. A child that you know is going to be abused when they go home and you can't stop it. Marriage problem of close friends and relatives. You're trying to help, but you see, you can't help them. They're not taking your advice. A friend who is destroying his life and his family and you're trying to tell him you've fallen up the cliff, brother, but he ain't listening. And so you see and hear and read all these things. And these are the people that are close to us. We see. All of this goes on. The list can go on forever and ever. You know why it goes on forever and ever? Because the world we live in, here's something that you're going to have to accept. I'm going to always remind you of. You're going to see these things, read about these things, hear about these things forever. Because the world we live in is going to always be broken and falling to Jesus on the back. Always. The world we live in is going to always be broken and fallen to Jesus coming back. And so because of that, things happen. Falling things happen. That's the first thing you're going to have to accept when you try to engage others in their pain and relate to others in their pain that you're not going to be able to fix it. You're not going to be able to save everybody. I woke up this Thursday morning about 5 a.m. You know I was this Thursday. I was excited about my day. I had meetings lined up. You know I'm I stick to my calendar. That's the time first I am. And I was looking forward to getting my sermon done and it was going to be a good day. But as you know, Thursday was not a good day for Alex because all my plans got canceled because of the snow. In the snow day. And the schools and the roads were closed and I didn't handle the situation very well at all. I didn't handle it very well at all. So you, I was mad. I was upset with Huntsville City. I was upset with the school system. I was married with the weatherman. I was married with the Lord. I felt like everybody was conspiring against me to make me have a bad day. It was not one of my final moments. I was in sin. I was self-centered, self-absorbed. I was an Alex's universe. And it wasn't until later on that day that the spirit brought me to repentance. I didn't want to repent. I felt justified by being angry, but the spirit convicted me. And here I am. I'm complaining about missing work and my plan is not going together. And the spirit was like, how about those people in the city who don't have a job, Alex, to go to the next day? You're right. How about those people who had to actually sleep in the snow last night? Alex, I'm like you. You got me again. How about those people who actually got it worse than you, Alex, got me a third time? I mean, the spirit was right. There are those who actually got it worse than me. And I was humbled. I repented. I repented. And every day I'm learning that I have to remind myself to get over myself every day. You will, too. Every day you're going to remind yourself to just get over yourself. It's always somebody who got it worse than you. A good friend of mine in South Carolina, you know, when his son went to college, he went to the citadel, and his son was having a hard time adjusting to the citadel's environment. And one of the things my friend told his son was this. He said, "Find someone who has it worse than you and help that person." Because there's always somebody that has it worse than you. Find who that is and help that person. Why did he tell him that? Because it was going to bring perspective to his son's life. Get outside of yourself, son. Because always somebody else who got it worse than you do. You see, whenever you get outside yourself and begin to engage other people, that is what you're going to actually realize. You're going to actually realize there are people in this city in my neighborhood that my kids go to school with who got it worse than me. There are families in this city and your neighborhoods you live in, people you sit in grocery store or whatever who has it worse than you. You're going to see stuff, hear stuff, and you're either going to brush it off, try to block it out of your mind, or eventually some of the stuff is going to grab hold of you. Emotion. And here's the thing. When hardships and trials grab hold of you emotionally, you're going to start to feel like you're an emotional ping-pong machine because you're going to be all over the place. Emotion. I need to help. How can I help? What do I need to do, God? You can be bouncing all over the place. You're going to move from compassion to feeling like you're feeling guilty because you got more stuff than other people have. I'm going home to a warm house, but this person is not. So you're going to go from compassion to feeling guilty, joy to frustration, hope to hopelessness. You're going to want to take on every situation, every case, every issue, but you can't do it all. You can't fix it all, and within yourself. So what do you do when these issues, situations, whether it's a family, close friend, family member, a stranger, what do you do when you see this stuff and hear this stuff? You sit down, take a deep breath, and do what Nehemiah did. He moved to action, but it wasn't to fix it. He did something else. He had two responses to this news, a emotional response, and then he had a spiritual response to the situation. What did he say? He didn't say I woke them more for days, and I'm going to the roots on the fix it. I woke more for days, and I continued fasting and praying before the God of heaven. Do you see what Nehemiah does here? He just, he didn't have a fleeting moment of concern and compassion, shed a few tears, and forgot, and moved on with his life. He truly identified, he truly related, he truly engaged, he cared deeply, and he did not immediately run off to Jerusalem to fix the situation. See that? We've fleshed that out too later. He didn't immediately run off. Don't forget, Nehemiah had an important job, right? Cut there to the king, and just because he heard about some horrible conditions about his people, it did not eliminate his current responsibilities. Hear that? Nehemiah's job, cut there to the king. That was his job, and just because he just learned about the conditions of his homeland and his people, that information did not eliminate his current responsibilities. He still had a job, he still had to go to work the next day, the day after, and the day after, with that new information. And another thing, he could just go before the king, and be like, let me get, let me talk to you for a minute, king. You know, I just heard some bad information about my people, and now my guy, Yahweh, he has called me to go, so we're not all gonna need to take six months off, to go do this, to go fix this wall. Now, no, no, that's not gonna happen, it's not gonna happen. You see, we try to see what's going on here in its historical context. This is history, this actually took place. Seeing in its historical context, see, because even though Nehemiah had a personal relationship with Yahweh, he was also under the authority of the Persian king as well. He was his boss, which means, Nehemiah could have felt called, he could have been willing to go, but if the king said he was not going anywhere at all. So, well, that means, that means, from Nehemiah's perspective, it seemed to be impossible for him to do anything. He knew, I understood the situation, that odds were against him. They seemed impossible if he operated in his own stream. You see, he realized that something supernatural had to take place in order for him to get to go to Jerusalem. Yahweh had to intercede. Yahweh had to intercede. The Lord God had to be the one to make the impossible possible. Nehemiah was willing, but he didn't have the power to control to make it happen. He understand that. Neither do we. And one of the things I love about, you know, Nehemiah and Israel and all the books that's post-exile, something we talked about in Sunday school, is you actually get to see God working, you see God working in history and pagan lands. You see in God, even though you have a pagan king in order of the exes, he still does not offer you outside the star of the tree of our God. I don't care if he does bow down the idols. There is still only one God who controls all things and his name is Yahweh. So the second response to the bad news, the spiritual one, he turned to the Lord. One commentator says, Nehemiah demonstrates his faith by turning to the fount of his resources in prayer. Do you turn to the fount of your resources in prayer? When you receive negative information, bad news or do you turn into mistle or missus fix it? What should you do? He intercedes for his people, standing in the gap for them, praying for guidance from the Lord God. He continued fasting and praying. Fasting, you know, we are all fasted before. You know, you're up staying for food for a day or two, you know, for religious purposes. Williamson says that fasting was added to intercession as they effective means of strengthening the force of prayer. Fasting is good. Andrew Murray says prayer and fasting are like two hands. Whenever we pray, it is though we are reaching out and putting one hand on the mercy seat. The mercy seat is symbolizes God's forgiving presence on the art of the covenant. And he says when you fast you take your other hand off the legitimate things of the world and cast all earthly support aside and you place both hands on the mercy seat of God. Prayer, fasting together. Nehemiah placing both hands on the mercy seat of God. But he knew in himself he could not accomplish what needed to be done. He could not do it in his own strength. And so he's casting all he has on God's mercy, crying out to Yahweh to do it. Please intervene my God. He prayed and fasted before the God of heaven. God of heaven is an interesting title for Yahweh and during this time of Israel's history it was used a lot, particularly by the Jews when they engaged in times and here dealing with the Persians. One commentator says God of heaven suggests that Yahweh had the great power to implement his purposes toward his people. Unlike the pagan gods of the land, Nehemiah's God was actually in heaven. Psalm 115 says why should the nation say where is their God? Our God is in heaven and he does all he pleases. Their idols are silver and gold, the work of human hands. They have mouths but they do not speak, eyes but they do not see, ears but they do not hear, noses but they do not smell, hands, they have hands but they do not feel, feet but they do not walk, they do not make a sound. Those who make them will be like them to all who trust in them. Even though Nehemiah lived and worked in the pagan land, he knew that his God was God and that when he prayed his God heard him because he's not an idol, he is Yahweh. Yahweh is his name. He is not silver or gold made by human hands. Whenever I put Madison to bed at night, I have four questions I ask for, four questions. One I says who made the U Madison God? Who died on the cross for the U Madison Jesus? How many guys are there Madison? One. Why is that important? One. One daddy, there's one God and always going to be one God and his name is Yahweh. He is in heaven and he does what is pleases and his sovereignty rules over all. He has the power to make the impossible possible people. Even working the heart of a pagan king, like I said, this is what Nehemiah is trusting in, not in his own strength, but the strength of his God. So he waits on him in prayer. How long do you think Nehemiah is fitting prayer? How long? Was it a week? Make it in the session. How long do you think he spent praying about this? Now he eventually meets up with the king and eventually having meeting with the king. If you know the story then you realize that. But how much time passed before he heard the news about Jerusalem and then he goes and meet the king about the situation. Four months. Four months. Pass. From the time he heard the news from his brother, from time he actually met with the king about it. Four months. Now don't sit here and think he prayed and fasted four straight months without all day every day. I mean come on, he is human, so he has to eat. And don't think that Nehemiah some super saint that you need to be like. That's a tendency when you read about the Old Testament. You try to be like the Old Testament for people. No, there's only one example that you follow that's Christ. The point here is that Nehemiah took his emotions to his God and he waited patiently for his God to move. That's the point. He had presser being prayer for the situation. Presser being prayer. Presser being to God in prayer about whatever is on your heart. Whatever it is. For us believers and those who know Christ this should be the same way that we respond for the issues and situations that that grab hold of us. Now every situation not going to grab hold of you, but some of them will. But do you have the humility to hand it over to God in prayer? Prayer about it, fasting about it. Placing both of your hands on the mercy seat. Don't tell him you don't have the resources people. You don't have enough resources, enough strength, enough stamina to really end within yourself. Help those who are hurting. If the spirit and God does not move, you need to take that into consideration. Because if you don't, you gonna have a lot of sleepless nights. Because you're trying to fix it yourself. When you engage other people and begin to relate to them, fall down on your knees before your God in heaven. Impressive fear with him in prayer. Be a intercessor. You realize that Jesus still intercedes for you? Paul says in Romans that Jesus said that the right hand of God the Father and he is indeed interceding for us still. Like that we're interceding for others. Through prayer. Through prayer. And the reality that you got to itself, people, and I got to itself, that you're not gonna bathe it down every hill. You're not gonna bathe and fight every battle. You're gonna fight some and you're not gonna bathe and do everything. We got to learn to fit through our lives, life experiences through the gospel. Through prayer, asking the Father for guidance. Because he might not call you to do this, but he may call you do that. But if you never pray about it, how are you gonna know? Because you can't do everything. When God have called you, then he is gonna make a way for it to happen. He always does. All of us can look back through our lives and see how God made a way for us. I don't care what it is we went through. He always made a way. And so whatever's facing you now, whatever situation you're going through now, if you look at something deflate, I don't know how God's gonna move, he's gonna move. I don't care what it is. I don't care if it looks like the enemy is winning. He ain't winning. There's always things going on behind the scenes that you can't see. We're not infinite. We're not Jesus. We're not God. We're not the Holy Spirit. That's why he says we have to live by faith, people. Not by sight. Not by sight. Can't lose sight of that. He will move. And I know one of the frustrations that we have is that he don't move when we're wanting to move. Usually that's just the battle. But we see things. We want God to do it now. We want God to fix it now. Fix it now. Fix the family now father. Fix the situation for this kid now father. And then we get impatient and frustrated with him. I've been there. I'll probably be there this week with him about it. But I still have to always go back that he is an on-time God. He's gonna move. But he ain't gonna move because Alex said move. He has purposes that we can't see. We always see the hearing now. He sees things from eternity perspective. You got to go back to Romans 8 and 8. It says he works all things to work to the good of those who love him. That's what you got to go through when you see those situations that people are going through. That God got to be working something here. I don't know how it's gonna fit together. I don't know how it's gonna work to the good. But Lord you said it's gonna work to the good. And I got to trust in that. Got to have faith in that. Whatever it is. Live by faith. Let us pray. Father God we we too have these type of responses Lord. And we have emotional response but we should also have a spiritual one. Because we're not here alone. We have to filter wherever you go through through you. Turn it over to you. The source of our resources. The fount of our resources are you. You are God. You created this where I didn't. None of us did. And you care more about what people go through than we do. I don't care how much compassion that we have. We cannot compassion you. You died for everybody. You died for the sense of the loss. We did not. We did not. So we need a little perspective here. And realize we are on the wind inside. We realize that our God is not an idol. That he is at work even when we can see it. And I thank you father that when we come to your world we can see through history. The history of your people that you are constantly moving. And you even use pagan kings Lord for your purposes. Because you're God and you can do that. And we thank you for that. And we thank you for how you have restored us. We thank you for how you raise people up. Lighten your mind to use for your glory. And we pray father that as we go out this week. We're going to seek things. We're going to hear things. Give us compassion for one another. Give us compassion for our family. Give us compassion for those that we're going to run into. Help us to relate. Help us to turn to you about how we should relate and engage and help. Because we can't do anything. But you can in the Christ in my prayer.