Introduction
The Father’s
compassion. Funny that, most people associate compassion as a mother’s
speciality. I’ll come back to that a bit later, but I think we all suspect that
men don’t always do compassion quite as well as women.
Men are
sometimes a bit awkward in times of emotional stress. Men don’t tend to read
the signals so well. Everyone’s knows about agony aunts, but how many agony
uncles have you heard of?
Actually, I did
hear about one agony uncle column called “Dear Phil.” Here’s an example of how
it went: “Dear Phil. I left home for work last week and after less than a mile
my car stalled and wouldn't start. I walked back to my house and found my wife passionately
kissing the postman. Can you help me? I'm desperate.”
“Dear Reader.
The most common cause of vehicles breaking down in the first mile is dirt in
the fuel lines. Hope this helps.”
Sadly, as I
said a few weeks ago, not all of us have a good mental image of God as Father because
for some of us our experience of human fatherhood is so bad. If your dad was
absent, or hot-tempered or frosty, or lazy, or self-centred, or unreliable, or
immature, or moody, or unaffectionate, or unfaithful you have quite an obstacle
to overcome when you say the words “heavenly Father.”
The Holy
Spirit wants to bring healing there – and that’s one of the strengths of Sozo
by the way; Sozo has been designed to bring our vision and experience of God’s fatherhood
into line with truth - and the truth sets you free.
When you see
a good father, you are looking at an artist’s impression of God because God has
designed human fatherhood to be a pale picture of what he is like. Good fathers
are strong, they protect and they provide. They discipline, they affirm, they
have tender hearts full of love and their children bring them pleasure.
Like every
dad, I have made mistakes as a father with all four of my children. To be honest,
it’s a miracle that my four haven’t all grown up with a complex. No parent gets
it right with all their kids all the time. If you have had kids you know what I
mean. So no one’s picture of God as Father is perfectly true or precise.
A recent
survey in the USA revealed that only 4.1% of American teenage girls felt they
could talk to their father about a serious problem. The most popular source of
help in a crisis was music, followed by peers and, thirdly, the Internet. Dads
were 48th on the list and even mums came in at 31st.
Something has
gone wrong, but it was not that way at the beginning and God wants to bring
restoration where there is brokenness.
Psalm 103 is
like a photo gallery with a line of pictures showing aspects of God’s father
heart. This is one of the ways, probably the most important one of all, that
God has chosen to reveal himself.
Psalms are
prayers, but there is not one request in Psalm 103. Psalms are prayers, but in
this one David is mostly talking not to God but to his inner self, to his soul.
Count Your Blessings
Psalm 103,
when you look at it closely, is actually a list of all the things this one man thought
of to thank God for in his life. It’s a great thing to do at any time but
perhaps especially after a bad week. If you took a sheet of A4 and started to
write down, one by one, the blessings of God in your life I think you could
fill it in no time.
Let’s have a
quick look at a few of the things on David’s list.
First of all,
forgiveness (v3). However irreparably bad the mess you’ve made of your life,
God has forgiven you all of it if you
are truly sorry. The blood of Jesus makes even the foulest, filthiest, lousiest,
rottenest life clean. Jesus is the friend of sinners. He turns wretchedness
into righteousness and rags into riches. The more you see your own flaws, the
more precious, electrifying, and amazing God’s forgiveness appears to you.
Then healing
(v3). Have you ever wondered how many illnesses the auto-immune system God made
you with stops you getting sick? Without it we would all die within days. Have
you ever worked out how many more days in your life you’ve enjoyed good health compared
to days of ill health? Have you ever counted the number of times you got better
again after being ill?
The gospels
tell us that when Jesus saw the crowds, they brought many sick people, and he
was moved with compassion and healed all who came to him.
Then the
times he gets you out of the fine mess you’ve got yourself into (v4). It says
“he redeems your life from the pit.” That means when you feel you’re at rock
bottom, he lifts you out of that deep darkness and brings you up, out into the
light. He brings cheer to the despairing. He breaks the power of depression.
He satisfies
your desires with good things (v5). It doesn’t say he’ll give you expensive
things, or extravagant things; in fact the pleasure you get from them won’t
satisfy you because the enjoyment of luxury doesn’t last long and just leaves
you wanting more.
It says he
satisfies your desires with good
things. Air to breathe, food to eat, love to share, friendships, family, time
to rest, a home to live in, music to enjoy…
The preacher
and writer Geoff Lucas, was talking recently about the anointing that comes
from the Father heart of God. Can you think of the best church experience you
have ever had? Maybe a baptism, a testimony, the presence of God in worship, an
extraordinary miracle… whatever it might be. Well, Lucas said this;
“Out of all
the thousands of services I have attended, there is one that stands out as the
most remarkable. Decades later, I still meet people who say to me whimsically
‘I was there that night’…”
Geoff Lucas was
the speaker that night and he says, “I had planned to begin my talk with a
simple illustration of fatherhood… My then two-year old son would toddle out
onto the platform and I would hold him in my arms for a minute or two, while
talking about how secure he was with me as his dad… When the moment came, my
little boy suddenly threw his arms back, and for a moment, it looked like he
was going to punch me, which would have been awkward. But instead, he wrapped
his arms around me and buried his head in my neck… People suddenly fell to the
ground, instantly succumbing to the wave of the Holy Spirit that filled that
place. Others cried out, a response to the unfathomable awe that pervaded…
Within minutes… a queue of people formed, folks who had been instantly healed
in that moment. I tried to preach – without success.”
Michael did
something a bit like that with his little girl Evie a few years ago. People
still remember it and talk about it. See, we are hard-wired to respond to a
demonstration of the Father’s compassion. Something inside us years for it.
Here’s
another blessing: He renews your youth like the eagle (v5). Eagles regularly molt
their feathers so they always have a lustre about them making them look healthy
and youthful. The Bible says “even though we are getting old and wrinkly on the
outside, on the inside we’re getting younger and younger.”
Compassion
Then these
lovely words; v13; “As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has
compassion on those who fear him.”
Compassion is
an overused word. The word compassion comes from the Latin cumpassus and it’s composed of two parts; com - passion. ‘Com’
means ‘coming together’ and gives us words like ‘communication’ and
‘community.’
We know what
‘Passion’ means. The Passion of the
Christ is a film about extreme suffering. Our word ‘patient’ comes from
this root and means literally ‘one who suffers.’ Then again, people talk about
being passionately in love or having a passion for a cause. Passion describes both
the overwhelming feelings and deep experiences of loss and love in our lives.
Whatever we’re
going through, God is with us in it. That’s compassion. His Father heart shares
it; he weeps with those who weep. He laughs with those who laugh. God’s
compassion isn’t just a bit of tea and sympathy; its’ a full bloodied entering
into our brightest joys and darkest sorrows.
Think of your
happiest moments on earth - when your joy just bubbled over. When you had to
push your cheeks in because they ached from laughing so much.
That is a faint
echo of the Father’s pleasure in creation, surveying all he had made and saying
with complete satisfaction, “Ah, this is very good!” Your times of greatest
bliss and elation are just a vague hint of the Father’s delight in his Messiah;
“This is my Son whom I love, with him I am well pleased.” And he delights in
you as his son or daughter too.
Now think of
the most wretched moments in your life – when you had no more tears to cry.
When everything looked as depressingly bleak as anything can, when you
despaired of life itself, when pain felt like it was ripping you in two.
That is just
a tip-on-the-tongue taste of the searing, unbearable, excruciating agony in the
Father’s tearing heart as it all gets too much and he turns his face away from
his Son’s broken body; the most beautiful life ever lived, going through hell
on the cross.
A guy called
Tim White once wrote about his experience as a father when his son was young.
This is what he said:
“In the first
15 years of his life, our son Ryan had over 30 surgeries. When he was about
eight years old, he was in the hospital for another operation. The medical
staff had already given him the ‘barney juice’ a purple liquid with something
like morphine in it.
The medical staff
began to roll him to the operating room. As usual, we accompanied him to the
two big doors that led to the theatre. That is where we stopped, and told him
all would be OK for the last time before the op.
This day, as
we got to the doors and they opened, he sat up in the bed, looked at me in the
eyes and pleaded, ‘Dad, don’t let them take me!’
At that
moment my heart was broken. I would have done anything to take him off that bed
except for the fact that he had to have the surgery. That knowledge didn’t ease
the pain in my heart at all. I just stood shaking inside as the doors closed,
and he disappeared. That is when I broke down in tears.
Shortly
after, when I was asking God how such a good love could hurt so much, I
realised that he had gone through the same thing. In the Garden of Gethsemane
Jesus prayed: ‘Father, if there is any other way, let this cup pass from me.’
Translated into the language of a child, ‘Daddy, don’t let them take me.’
I allowed the
surgeons to take my son for his own good. God allowed the crucifiers to take
his Son for our good. That is how much God loves us. It has been said that
something is worth what someone else is willing to pay. Christ’s willingness to
give his life shows the value he placed on me.”
“As a father
has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear
him.”
I said I’d
come back to compassion being a mother’s speciality rather than a father’s.
Well, God is neither male, nor female; God is God and he made us – male and
female – both in his image.
I’ve just
explained the etymology of the word ‘compassion’ in English but in Hebrew the
word for compassion in v8 is connected to the word meaning ‘womb’.
There is no
force in human nature stronger than the overwhelming love from a mother for the
child she carries in her womb and brings to birth. That bond is instinctive and
indestructible and it’s what God feels about you.
“Compassion”
in Psalm 103 comes four times and it’s a heart word that literally means God is
moved by what moves you.
When our son
Nathan was about 9 or 10 he was besotted with basketball. We bought him a really
nice Wilson Evolution ball for his birthday and he would love to play with this
thing. There was a park with a basketball hoop about 3 or 4 minutes’ walk away from
our house and he’d often go there and practice, shooting a few baskets, dribbling
with the ball and all that.
Well, we
didn’t live in the prettiest of neighbourhoods and sometimes there would be a
gang of a dozen or so teenagers in hoodies, hanging around looking for a bit of
trouble. One day Nathan came home in tears because they had stolen his ball and
pushed him around a bit and told him to get lost.
Seeing him
broken-hearted, something snapped in me. All my adrenaline started to pump. I
was fearless. As I walked down to that park, mad as a bear with a sore head, it
occurred to me that they might beat me up and leave me for dead, but somehow I
didn’t care. All my compassion was stirred up. I could see Nathan wide-eyed,
not quite believing that I was going – unarmed – to confront these youths but I
was an unstoppable force.
As I walked
into the park, there they were with my son’s ball. I was so emotional and provoked,
I could probably have slain them all instantly. But, being English, I politely
asked them for my son’s ball back and explained that he was very upset. They looked
a bit sheepish gave it back. And I said thank you very much and went home for a
nice cup of tea.
Here, ‘compassion’
means that God accepts you and loves you as his child, that he involves himself
deeply and emotionally with your pain.
The Fear of the Lord
And notice
who he is compassionate towards. “The
Lord’s love is with those who fear him.”
Some years
ago, I led an Alpha discussion group and this expression “fearing God” came up
in the conversation. One person in my group, very wary, really anti-church,
instantly folded her arms and became angry.
She absolutely
would not accept this idea of fearing God. So we asked her why she found it so
repulsive and she started to talk about a man she had been married to and became
scared of, because he was a violent alcoholic. He was controlling, coercive, unpredictable,
and aggressive and she lived in constant fear that he would assault her.
And now we
were talking about how God is compassionate to those who fear him. It’s
understandable that she reacted like she did.
She had unhealthy
fear – it led to panic attacks, anxiety, feeling vulnerable and scared for her
safety. But there’s another kind of fear that is healthy. Unhealthy fear of a
father is being terrified that he’s going to come home drunk and start
shouting, swearing and throwing furniture around. Of course the Bible never
means that kind of fear. God is niot like that. He is the very opposite of
quick tempered. It says in v8, look at it, that he is compassionate and
gracious, slow to anger, abounding in
love.
I think I
grew up with a healthy fear of my father. I never once felt unsafe with him but
my heart would be in my mouth whenever I deliberately did something he had
specifically told me not to do. I respected his authority even though I quietly
spent my entire childhood inventing new ways of defying it. Now I’m older I can
see why he grounded me for playing near the railway line – though it seemed
excessively fascist of him at the time. It’s good for us to have a healthy
fear. And this is what the Bible means by fearing God.
And those who
fear God (in the healthy way) experience the Father’s compassion, his presence
in our highs and lows.
Ending
Let’s end
with v17: “From everlasting to everlasting the Lord’s love is with those who
fear him.”
God’s heart
of compassion for you is from everlasting to everlasting. Long before you were conceived
or born, God’s heart for you and his commitment towards you were absolute and unwavering.
And long
after you’ve died and are forgotten no more his commitment towards you will
still be total and unending.
Let’s stand
to pray…
Sermon preached at All Saints' Preston on Tees, 10 July 2016
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