1. Compassion: Disciples, the Downtrodden and Doubters
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Compassion: Disciples, the Downtrodden and Doubters

2. An Opportunity to Share

3. In our culture, compassion usually carries with it a vague, mushy sort of bleeding heart sentimentality, but biblically compassion is a little more concrete than this.
Compassion means “to suffer together” and comes from a Greek word that means “to be moved in the inward parts”.
Compassion is a “sympathetic consciousness of others' distress together with a desire to alleviate it” (Merriam Webster Dictionary).
Compassion is a deep gut connection to another’s suffering, paired with a desire to enter into that suffering and do something about it.

4. Compassion, Empathy and Altruism Jesus models beautifully compassion to a number of different types of people, so this morning, I’d like to explore with you Christ’s compassion as shown to His disciples, the downtrodden and the doubting.

5. He saw their harassed and helpless condition.
Exploring Christ’s Compassion: His Disciples
Though Christ interacted very closely with 12 specific disciples, He had many more disciples who learned from His teaching.
Why does Jesus bother teaching the fickle crowds, instead of just focussing on the twelve disciples?
“When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.” (Matthew 9:36)
He saw their harassed and helpless condition.
He recognized their lostness and He ached for them.
He understood how those charged with tending the flock of Israel had failed their people.
He saw the plight of the people, ached for them, engaged their brokenness and suffering with His presence, and put into action a plan to alleviate their suffering.

6. Exploring Christ’s Compassion: The Downtrodden
Jesus is in constant interaction with the downtrodden – prostitutes, adulterers, tax collectors, lepers, the infirm and sickly.
Jesus even earned this beautiful endorsement from the Pharisees: ‘Here is a glutton and a drunkard, a friend of tax collectors and sinners’ (Luke 7:34).
Not only did Jesus associate with these undesirables, He stood alongside them, entering into their world and delivering many of them from the disease and patterns of sin that so entangled them.
Learning from John 8:1-11

7. The Pharisees knew exactly what kind of a woman she was - she is referred to as one “having been caught in adultery”; literally caught in the act of adultery.
How did the Pharisees catch this woman in the act of adultery?
Either the Pharisees set the woman up to catch her in the act or they knew that this woman repeatedly committed adultery and they allowed her to continue without confronting her until her “behaviour” could be of some use to them.
The woman was nothing more than a pawn to be used by the Pharisees in their onslaught against Jesus.
Where was the man with whom the woman committed adultery?
The Law states that both participants in adultery received a death sentence.
The Pharisees believed they had Jesus in a no win situation. He would either be seen as immoral or unpopular and unmerciful.

8. This woman needed rescue; she needed someone who would recognize her plight, stand alongside her and alleviate her predicament.
Many commentators believe Jesus began writing a list of various sins in the dust of the ground.
His request - “if any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to throw a stone at her” – is met with silence as the gathered crowd dropped off one by one.
Jesus stands with the woman and refuses to condemn her, instructing her to “go and leave your life of sin”.
Jesus is quick to ensure the woman is not victimized again, showing compassion, caring about her and her possible restoration. He directs her towards forgiveness and a new life.

9. To those who might doubt or oppose Him, Christ too shows compassion.
Exploring Christ’s Compassion: Doubters (Thomas)
After experiencing the overwhelming grief that accompanied the arrest, trial, crucifixion and death of Jesus, everyone around you is now celebrating having seen the resurrected Jesus. That is everyone but you.
Imagine this went on for a week – seven long days of doubt and suffering.
In an amazing act of compassion, Christ appears to Thomas, encouraging him to touch His hands and feet, eliminating the doubt that had been eating away at Thomas.
Christ recognizes the suffering, enters into it and alleviates the suffering in an act of compassion.

10. “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing.” (Matthew 23:37)
Fully knowing the rejection that He would soon experience, the intense persecution that would shortly befall Him, Christ sets the events that would unfold over the next few days within framework of compassion.
God recognized our predicament – the barriers that sin creates for us. He sent His Son, Jesus, to enter into our suffering, to suffer alongside of us.
The glory of the gospel is not that He came to suffer alongside of us, but that in His suffering, He alleviates our suffering, providing us a way to restored and eternal relationship with God.

11. Are we willing to enter in to their suffering, not to mope alongside of them, but by God’s Spirit to alleviate their suffering through the sharing of the incredibly Good News of Jesus Christ – you are not alone, you are loved, there is a way out of your suffering and His name is Jesus?