Sunday Class @ 9am; Worship @ 10am & 5pm
Articles
People in This World Are Sick!
“Those Baptists are just ignorant! Anyone who can see through a picket fence can see that you must be baptized to be saved!” “Will you look at that guy with the long hair! I never saw so many rings hooked in so many places! It’s disgusting to see what people have become!” “My neighbors are just hard-headed. I’ve told them there is only one church, but they just think I am narrow-minded.”
Have you ever said something like that? Have you ever heard another Christian say something similar?
Listen to the words the Pharisees spoke to their officers after they returned without arresting Jesus: “Are you also deceived? Have any of the rulers or the Pharisees believed in Him? But this multitude that does not know the law is accursed” (John 7:47-49). Sound familiar?
Let’s contrast this to the way Jesus saw the multitudes as recorded in Matthew 9:36-38: “But when He saw the multitudes, He was moved with compassion for them, because they were weary and scattered, like sheep having no shepherd. Then He said to His disciples, ‘The harvest truly is plentiful, but the laborers are few. Therefore pray the Lord of the harvest to send out laborers into His harvest.’” I’m impressed with the words, “moved with compassion.” The literal words are, “He was moved in His bowels.” We would not say it that way today, but to the Greeks the bowels were the depths of one’s inner being. Because of the condition of the multitudes, the very conditions we see in the world around us, the depth of Jesus’ heart was moved for them.
How would you like to attend a dinner party made up of a bunch of cheats and sinners? Earlier in Matthew 9 Jesus attended just such a feast held in Matthew’s house where many publicans and sinners were gathered. The scribes and Pharisees predictably condemned Jesus for His participation. Jesus’ answer was that those who are sick need a physician. We ought to be struck with a simple truth: only a doctor likes to be around sick people, and only a spiritual physician like to be around sinners. Most of us would have found a reason not to accept that invitation. But that is exactly what made Jesus such a great teacher and so effective in bringing the lost to God. He saw a way to save people, to heal them, not a reason to avoid them or an opportunity to condemn them.
Paul said, “Knowledge puffs up, but love edifies.” Why is it that as we grow in knowledge we often become more distant, more condemning, more hardhearted toward the world around us? The answer partly lies in the fact that we typically remove ourselves from close relationships with sinners. We are happy to preach at them and make rash generalizations from our pulpits and in our classes about their ignorance and dishonesty. But sit down and “eat” with a sinner and really try to understand them and love them, and you will usually find someone completely different from the prejudicial picture that has so often been painted.
Yes, there are a lot of sick people in this world, but how are we going to “see” them? Will we see them as the Pharisees saw, an ignorant multitude that is accursed? Or will we be moved with compassion, go personally into the harvest, and pray that the Lord of harvest will send laborers into His harvest?
