0303. The Compassionate Christ
The Compassionate Christ
"Jesus wept. Then said the Jews, Behold how He loved him" (Joh_11:35-36).
1. These wonderful words, "Jesus wept," have great significance. Our Lord certainly did not weep, merely because Lazarus was dead, nor merely because He was sorry for Martha and Mary and the mourners about the grave. He knew Lazarus would soon "come forth," and the weeping ones would rejoice.
Christ must have seen in the death of Lazarus, and in the tears of the weeping ones, the havoc of sin and of death down through the ages. He saw our grief, as well as theirs, and He wept.
2. Carrying out the spiritual lesson in which the death of Lazarus is used as a type of those who are spiritually dead, we are immediately brought to the compassion of Christ over the lost.
When Christ saw the multitude, "He had compassion upon them." There is not a soul that is lost, apart from the yearnings of the compassionate Christ.
Christ wept over Jerusalem, as He saw her Temple overthrown; her cities devastated, and her people driven away among the nations.
Christ also is grieved over sinners and their doom. He is the compassionate Christ.
3. The thing we need today is to examine our own attitude toward those who are dead in trespasses and in sins. Do we weep? Have we compassion?
Paul said, "I tell the truth in Christ; I lie not * * I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart * * for my brethren, my kinsman according to the flesh." Are our hearts also heavy? Do we sorrow over the lost?
In the 9th chapter of Ezekiel, an angel with a destroying weapon in his hand, is going forth to slay utterly all who neither sigh, nor cry for the abominations that are done in the midst of Jerusalem. If God took such a course today, would we escape the angel of His wrath?
While men are dying around us, and going to hell, is it the time for us to laugh the laugh of those who have no care for the lost?
Illustration: It is said that Mr. Booth was stirred to action in behalf of the unsaved by the slurs of an infidel. The infidel was speaking on a street corner. He said something like this: "You Christians do not believe in hell because you are not disturbed when a man is lost. If you believed that sinners were going to hell, would you sit still and let them go? No, you would bestir yourselves."
Autor: R.E. NEIGHBOUR