Touches of Compassion on Tons of Needs, Part 1

What does it mean to show compassion? How do we express sympathy in tangible ways that are readily received by those who suffer?

Those are relevant questions, especially in times when acts of kindness and concern are rare. Today on Insight for Living, Chuck Swindoll continues our study through the New Testament book of Matthew. We've come to a passage that demonstrates the opulent love of Jesus. Through several of his personal encounters, we discover timeless lessons on how to receive love and how to share it.

Chuck titled today's message, Touches of Compassion on Tons of Needs. You brought your Bible with you this morning. Please turn to the 15th chapter of Matthew. Matthew 15, I'll be reading verses 29 down to the end of the chapter verse 39. We're traveling with Jesus these days in our study of Matthew and the journey never gets boring nor is it ever predictable. Though on occasion, we come across scenes that seem identical but they're not.

They're different. However, when we get into them, we realize the same Lord is meeting the needs of those who were a part of the story and how magnificent it must have been to to be one of the disciples who was right there at his elbow for most of the things that took place but the tragedy is they often didn't get it. They heard what he said and they saw what he did and they witnessed what others did in response but much of it never came through and we'll see an example of that today as we look at Matthew 15. Matthew 15, 29.

I'm reading from the New Living Translation. Jesus returned to the Sea of Galilee and climbed a hill and sat down. A vast crowd brought to him people who were lame, blind, crippled, those who couldn't speak, and many others. They laid them before Jesus and he healed them all. The crowd was amazed. Those who hadn't been able to speak were talking.

The crippled were made well. The lame were walking and the blind could see again and they praised the God of Israel. And then Jesus called his disciples and told them, I have compassion for these people. They have been here with me for three days and they have nothing left to eat.

I don't want to send them away hungry or they will faint along the way. The disciples replied, for would we get enough food here in the wilderness for such a huge crowd? Jesus asked, how much bread do you have? They replied, seven loaves and a few small fish.

Jesus told all the people to sit down on the ground. Then he took the seven loaves and the fish, thanked God for them, and broke them into pieces. He gave them to the disciples who distributed the food to the crowd. They all ate as much as they wanted. Afterward, the disciples picked up seven large baskets of leftover food.

There were 4,000 men who were fed that day in addition to all the women and children. Then Jesus sent the people home and he got into a boat and crossed over to the region of Magadan. Our hope is to lift the print from the page and see the scenes in our minds and enter into it in such a way that we realize these are words for us to learn from and to be changed by, not just another lesson found in the Bible. You're listening to Insight for Living.

To study the book of Matthew with Chuck Swindoll, be sure to download his Searching the Scripture studies by going to insightworld.org slash studies. And now the message from Chuck that he titled, Touches of Compassion on Tons of Needs. Compassion for others begins with a love for others. It is a love that is willing to be vulnerable knowing that when we reach out, the response may not be what we expected. Compassion is often a one-way street. We witness the need and we want to be a part of helping to meet that need, but the response may not be something that brings us a sense of satisfaction. But love doesn't wait for that.

It doesn't even need that. It is a love that reaches out regardless of how others may reach back. No one ever said that better than C.S. Lewis in his immortal work, The Four Loves, where he writes, to love it all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will certainly be wrong and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one and not even an animal. Wrap it carefully around with hobbies and little luxuries.

Avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken.

It will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. Nevertheless, how great it is to live with a huge heart of compassion. How powerful that action is. You might think it's strange that I call compassion an action, but it's not truly compassion until it has become that. Compassion means suffering with another. In fact, the word compassion is from the two Latin words with suffering. When I suffer with someone else, I have a sympathetic concern for their suffering.

And I look for ways to be involved in helping to meet the need that individual may have. Showing support or mercy or even giving words that are timely. Solomon wrote that words are like apples of gold in pictures of silver.

As an ornament of gold, words are like a wise reprover on an obedient ear. When we reach out with our words of compassion, including words that say things like, I care enough to help in any way I can, they mean something. I'll take you all the way back to the year 1963. It had just begun. I was finishing my fourth year at Dallas Seminary, and it was the beginning of the first semester. Actually, it had not yet quite begun. It was in the in-between time. It was January. Cynthia and I, with our only child at the time, our son Kurt, had traveled to Houston to visit our two folks who were both living at that time, but in separate parts on opposite sides of the big city of Houston.

So we would go on those particular holiday occasions, and we would stay with one, and then later we would stay with another of our parents. And we were on our way out of church this icy morning, driving carefully because I knew it was dangerous. And when we reached an intersection, our light was green. As I went across, coming full bore against us, was a man who was drunk and driving at a pretty good clip, and he hit our car on the left side, drove the engine over the right wheel, broke the windshield, threw me into the window on the left, Cynthia into the steering wheel, and our son against the front windshield and broke his jaw.

It was a terrible experience. Also broke the back of the man who had hit us. Oh, by the way, when I said our son was standing up, some of you look at me like, why wasn't he in an infancy?

Well, remember the date? There weren't such things, or if they were, you certainly didn't have them in a car, and seat belts were not heard of, so your children stood up, and parents made the habit of this, as they would come to a stop. They'd throw their arm out. In fact, we still do that when people ride with us. Cynthia said the other day, she was riding along with her executive assistant, and Kathy was here, and Cynthia was here, and she had to stop. She threw, Kathy said, I'm really fine. I'm really gonna be okay.

I'm all buckled in. But in those days, you suffered terribly, and our son with a broken jaw, we didn't know a pediatrician in the city where we had grown up, and so we were left at a hospital to wait. I'll not go into all the details, except to say the Lord set his jaw, and I rarely say things like that, lest you think I'm a little goofy, but in this case, he really did. I mean, it was a perfect, his jaw had been broken, and then it was set.

When the doctor finally got there, and did the x-ray, there was a hairline, but it was perfectly reset. That was great, but I still had no car, and we still had no money, and our folks wondered where in the world were we, and I don't remember how we even got back to the school. It was the low-water mark of my four years at the seminary. I will never forget the angst that accompanied it. What in the world were we gonna do?

We'd already lost a baby after the birth of our little Kurt, and we were afraid because she has now begun hemorrhaging again, we're gonna lose another one, and that was just almost an unbearable thought for us. I was on campus and making my way to a class, and I'm sure I looked like death warmed over when Dr. Howard Hendrick saw me, and he said, Chuck, what's wrong? You need to understand, I'm a terrible poker player. You never want me as a partner playing poker, because I go, well, look at this hand.

This is great. You see, I just kind of let it out, and I wasn't hiding my sadness. I literally didn't know where we were gonna get food to eat, where we were gonna get a car.

Like I said, I don't remember how we were driven back to the school. Maybe our parents brought us, but I told him a story, and he listened. We sat on the bench that he by now had made famous under that great oak tree out front, just in front of Mosier Library, and by now I was sobbing, and he reached his arm around my shoulders and pulled me over to him.

You know, it was wonderful. He didn't quote 12 verses on how strong I should be. He didn't use it as an opportunity to preach last week's sermon that he had delivered somewhere on standing strong in the Lord. He told me he cared, and if I didn't miss it, I think I caught a tear in his eye. He said, I don't know what I can do, but you need to know whatever it is, I will do.

I'm here all through this semester, and any time I can help you, please ask me. I will say yes. Here's a man with a full load to teach, and here I am finishing my time at the school, but for a moment, I felt the warmth of compassion. What compassion does is it reminds you you're not alone in this journey from earth to heaven, and that someone cares enough to demonstrate the love of Christ. Those are not idle words. John writes in his first letter, if someone has enough money to live well and sees another and sees a brother or sister in need, but shows no compassion, how can God's love be in that person? You see, to have compassion for another means you love another person enough to reach out. They're not a bother.

They're not more important than your schedule. They're not an interruption. I remember a scene out of Elephant Man. Remember the movie years ago where this dear man with this horrible disease that has disfigured his face and enlarged it and wrinkled it and gave him the appearance of an animal, and he's being chased down into the labyrinth of this building, and he winds up in the latrine, and the people are all around him pressing in, people wanting to take pictures, and there was no compassion, and he finally says with enormous emotion, I am a human being.

You just want to burst into tears. I'm a human being. I may have this grotesque disease, but I am no animal.

I'm a person with enormous needs. Can't you see that? I set all of this up as we get into Matthew 15 in that way because I don't want you to do what you'll be tempted to do, and that is yawn your way through the story. It is so similar to the feeding of the 5,000, which really was the feeding of the 20 to 25,000, and yet you will think as the disciples did, here we go again, just another story about another group of people, have a lot of needs, and Jesus heals them, and what's next? Where's the interesting part?

Stop. It doesn't get a lot more interesting than this scene, for this is God's love on display. He's been busy with crowds for a long time. He has walked a long ways, making his way back to a place called Ten Cities, Decapolis, which is alongside the eastern rail shore of the Galilean Sea, and he stops there, and he goes up on a hill, I'm sure, to find a little time of refreshment, but that was not to be because soon you could hear the crowd in the distance moving toward him. We read in verse 30 that a vast crowd brought to him people who were lame, blind, crippled, and couldn't speak, and many others. According to verse 38, there were in all 4,000 men, not to mention women and children, we're talking a massive-sized crowd. Nameless, faceless human beings, all of whom had needs. Some had been caregivers, and they're the ones that dropped them off. Look at how it reads. Verse 30 ends with the words, at least this version reads, they laid them down before Jesus.

The word is an interesting term. It means to kind of drop off in haste. They left them there, as if to say we've done all we can do here, and here's one man, Jesus, the God-man, to be sure. In the shadows are the disciples, and here are the people in need, some paralyzed, some mute, some not knowing where they were because they had no sight, others on stretchers, whatever, they all wound up on the ground, dropped off. I love it that the verse ends rather rapidly, but it represents three days he healed them all. He loved them all. He had compassion for them all.

They were all human beings, and though they may have never met him, they were worthy of his time, as he saw them through the eyes of his father's love. Some years ago, I was leading a group of interns on a pastoral intern trip, a couple of other pastors from our staff in another church, and we had traveled in a van. We called it a thousand-mile conversation as we went up and down the coast of Southern California on up into Northern, visiting five, six, seven different churches to learn from them and to see how they do ministry and to compare notes and hopefully to bring some encouragement.

As well as to make some discoveries ourselves. One of the churches we stopped at was fairly new in construction. You could see the older building, and now the larger building had been built, and the pastor wasn't available right when we arrived. We got there a little early, so we decided we'd walk in and just maybe visit with someone who was there. We met the custodian. Trust me, custodians know a whole lot, and they're very helpful in knowing what a church is really like.

They're great folks to talk to if you wonder about a church. So we decided we'd visit with him, and he was busy collecting the worship folders from the day before. This was a Monday, and he was picking up the stuff from Sunday. So I said to him, my, this is a lovely building.

He hardly looked up. He said, yep, we just built it a few months ago. I said, that's great. I said, like, how many would you minister to here? He says, we process about 2,500 people here at the church. Do you hear my ears pop up?

This little Doberman Pinscher ears of mine go process. I didn't say it to him, but I did think, and we talked about it later in the van, may we never process people. And now I say today, here at this wonderful church, my hope is that you will never feel you are being processed. We may not have time for each person as much as we would like to, or elders as well as pastoral team as well as others on the staff. We, we care, and we want to reach out, and we want you to know that our mentality is never processing people. We get that from Christ, who didn't think of this as an opportunity to process 8,000 sick people. He cared about each one. He even cared about them after they were healed. Compassion doesn't end just because a prayer is answered.

Look at this response. The crowd was amazed because he healed them all. They were amazed. Those who hadn't been able to speak were talking. Can you imagine how much they talked? They'd been wanting to talk for the longest time. Talk, talk, talk, talk, talk, talk.

They're having a great time conversing, conversing, talking, talking, talking, talking. And the one who had been carried in is now dancing. The one who had not been able to walk is now walking around. Look, look, look. And the one who had not been able to see is now able to see. It was one great scene. Enter into that scene.

It was magnificent. And the best part is the crowning part of compassion. They, they praise the God of Israel. Teaching from the Gospel according to Matthew chapter 15, you're listening to Chuck Swindoll, and this is Insight for Living. And there's much more to absorb in this message, Chuck titled, Touches of Compassion on Tons of Needs.

And to see what resources we have available for today's topic, please visit us online at insightworld.org. Perhaps you never stopped to think about it, but while you may be listening to this program all by yourself, you're not alone. You're actually joined by countless others who are listening right now as well.

In fact, someone left a message that said it this way, I am a senior citizen living alone. Your laughter is contagious. It brightens my day. Thank you very much, Chuck. You are a blessing to many, both to the lost who came to know the Lord because of your preaching and to believers who need daily spiritual feeding. May God continue to bless you and your ministry. Well, such an encouraging word from someone who listens to this program every day. And if you're among those who financially support Insight for Living, you played a significant role in reaching this person who lives alone. We're especially grateful to our monthly companions who understand the importance of their monthly gift.

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Join us when Chuck Swindoll continues to describe the lavish compassion of Jesus, Thursday on Insight for Living. The preceding message touches of compassion on tons of needs was copyrighted in 2016 and 2021. And the sound recording was copyrighted in 2021 by Charles R Swindoll Inc. All rights are reserved worldwide. Duplication of copyrighted material for commercial use is strictly prohibited.