In a world of misery and want, how blessed to know One whose heart feels it all, who makes it His own, and whose emotions of pitying love are so expressed that we can know and see them: “He was moved with compassion.” That blessed face plainly told of the throbbing of divine mercy that worked within. The heart expressed itself before the hand moved to relieve what the eye looked upon. Nor was it a transient feeling, a passing emotion. Human misery has found a home in the heart of Jesus, and He, who is “the same yesterday, and today, and forever,” although now on the throne of God in glory, is still “moved with compassion” as He looks out upon and takes in all the misery and want that plead incessantly, in accents of ever deepening intensity, at the throne of mercy.
The Shepherd of Israel
If the Shepherd of Israel was moved with compassion as He looked upon the children of Abraham, “as sheep not having a shepherd,” how deep must be the emotion with which the Lord Jesus now views the children of God again “scattered abroad”! What havoc the “grievous wolves” have made in “the flock of God”! How the speakers of perverse things have led away “disciples after” them! What widespread division and offense have they wrought who “serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly”! Surely all this appeals with touching force to Him who “loved the church and gave Himself for it.”
But was it only that Jehovah’s people were “as sheep not having a shepherd”? Had they not sinned themselves? Had their hearts been “right with Him”? Had they been “steadfast in His covenant”? Full well He knew the long, sad history of that perverse and stiff-necked people; it was all before Him, “but He, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity” (Psa. 78:3838But he, being full of compassion, forgave their iniquity, and destroyed them not: yea, many a time turned he his anger away, and did not stir up all his wrath. (Psalm 78:38)).
The Church of the Living God
And has the church of the living God suffered only from false teachers and bad guides? Have the children of God a better history than the children of Israel? Have they been less perverse and stiff-necked? Have they altogether kept His Word? And have their hearts been right with Him who redeemed them with His own blood? How well He knows that higher privileges and better promises have only brought out deeper sin and relatively less response to His love! Surely every heart knows this. How sweet then, in our day, to turn to Him whose “compassions fail not” and who, “having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end”!
We do well to be at home with that deeply moved heart of pitying, forgiving love, as it “began to teach them many things.” True enough, He now speaks from heaven, but that heaven is open to us, and there is no distance to faith.
Failure and ignorance are on every hand. Only rightly can we feel the one and minister to the other as we are really with Him who, above all evil, sees it all, only to find in it the occasion for the ministry of love.
Serving the Sheep of Christ
They who would, in any little degree, serve the sheep of Christ need much to ponder these words, spoken to one of old: “Execute true judgment, and show mercy and compassions every man to his brother.” While doing this, they need to be in spirit with that “merciful and faithful high priest,” who Himself is not encompassed by infirmity, yet who is touched with the feeling of ours and is “able to have compassion on the ignorant and on them that are out of the way.”
Most merciful High Priest,
Our Saviour, Shepherd, Friend;
’Tis in Thy love alone we trust
Until the end.
C. W., from Words of Faith, 1:5