few Bibles that are in front of you. Matthew is going to be towards maybe about 60% in your Bible. Matthew, it's the first book of the Gospels. It's the first book of the New Testament. Matthew chapter 9. And I want you to, if you haven't gotten there and you want to pick up a Bible, we're going to walk through a couple passages. we're going to point out some things, so hopefully you'll follow along. There in Matthew chapter 9 verse 35 through 38 is where we're going to read. So we read this passage that if you've been in church any time it's a familiar passage, but I want to point a couple things out to you this morning. We look at verse 35 and the Bible says this, you can follow along in your Bible and I'll read it aloud. And Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with, what's that word? Compassion on them, because they fainted and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. Then saith he unto his disciples, the harvest truly is plenteous, but the labors are few. Pray ye therefore, the Lord of the harvest, that he will send forth labors into his harvest. begin with a word of prayer. Father, we love You. We thank You for the day. And we thank You for this time. Lord, the work here, the rest of the work in this service is up to You. I just pray, Lord, that we would understand this word that You have put in Your Scriptures for us to understand. Help us, Lord, to learn from it. Help us, Lord, to have the compassion that Christ had in Father, that we would learn so greatly how important this is in our life, and how as a result we can take action on that as well. Lord, I ask that You bless this time. Bless Your people. Thank You for being here. Thank You for them being here this morning. And Lord, I just pray that You would work in our hearts today, in Jesus' name, amen. First, I want you to see compassion defined. Compassion defined. When you look at this passage in the scripture, that word compassion, it appears many times in the Bible. And the Bible was translated from, the New Testament was translated from Greek. And so the Greek word here, I'm not even going to try to say it because I don't know that my mouth can form the sounds that are supposed to express the word. For any of you Greek scholars, I can share it with you afterwards. But that word that's translated, compassion, is a very interesting, interesting word. It's important to understand this meaning and first, what you do in the scriptures when you come across a passage like this, to understand the scriptures, what you do is you look through the Bible and you see where that word is found to help understand it more deeply. And so we're gonna walk through, there's plenty of places in Matthew that we can look to. So turn over if you would, hold your place there in chapter nine of Matthew. turn over a couple pages to Matthew chapter 14, and in verse 14, I'll read it for you, and if you see it there in the scriptures, I'll point it out once we get there. Matthew 14, 14, this is talking about the feeding of the 5,000, a story that we all know, where there was a little boy that took his lunch of five loaves and two fishes, and it was given to this multitude. But look at verse 14, it says, and Jesus went forth and saw great multitude and was moved with, what's that word? compassion toward them, and he healed their sick. If you turn over just one page, you go to chapter 15, and you go down to 32, there was another instance where there was another multitude that was fed, and in verse 32, the Bible says this, then Jesus called his disciples unto him and said, I have, what's the word? Compassion on the multitude, because they continue with me now three days and have nothing to eat. If you turn over just a couple more pages to verse 20, or chapter 20, excuse me, chapter 20, verse 34, the last verse of that chapter, and this story here talks about a blind man that Jesus healed. Verse 34 says this, so Jesus had, what's the word? Compassion on them, and touched their eyes, and immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed him. I'm not gonna have you turn there, but if you look throughout the rest of the Gospels, in the book of Mark and in the book of Luke, you find this word once again. The Bible says in Mark 141, and Jesus moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and saith unto him, I will be thou clean. Mark 634 says, and Jesus, when he came out, saw much people and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were a sheep not having a shepherd. Mark 8.2 says, I have compassion on the multitude because they have now been with me three days and have nothing to eat. If you continue to go in Mark 9.22, this word appears again in Luke 7.13, then a familiar story that we know, a parable on the Good Samaritan, Luke 10.33 says, But a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was, where the man that was beaten and laid for dead, came where he was, and when he saw him, he had compassion on him. And then another verse in Luke, another familiar story of the prodigal son, Luke 15, 20 says, and he arose and came to his father, but when he was yet a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him. There's a couple interesting things about this word. It's only found in the gospels. In these passages, from what I can tell, it's used for a character, either a character in a parable, so it's not necessarily a real person. The only real person, from what I see in these passages, that has compassion in this way is attributed to Jesus Christ. So what does this word mean? This word is broken down, and the first part of that word, again, that I can't pronounce, gives the idea, is the word for your innards, your abdominal area. And the ancients in this time, they believed that the deep feelings that a person felt, those emotions came from your lower abdomen. That would be love, pity, sympathy. And this may be the idea or where we get the idea of having a gut feeling. That's the thought that is conveyed. Today, if we were to consider this today or use the vernacular of today, we would use the terminology of the heart. We would consider it and say, oh, it's the heart. It's something that's a deep-seated emotion. And that's what this word gives us the idea of, this word compassion. So now that we understand this word, let me give you this piece of advice. We have compassion that's been defined, but compassion makes a difference. My exhortation to you is don't lose your compassion. Compassion is a duty. Compassion is demanded of you. But I must also say that compassion is demanding. It's difficult. Compassion does not necessarily mean that you give someone a pass, that you let them go. It does not mean you don't uphold the law. It means that you remember that these people that keep you busy, that keep you in business, are people as well. I have to confess that this is true in ministry as well. I remember talking to a man very often. He's since gone home to be with the Lord. I remember talking to a man very often who was an alcoholic and sometimes he would call me sober. And I would talk to him and he'd say, man, Gus, I gotta beat this, you know, and I wanna beat this, I wanna do right, I wanna get rid of this, this is plaguing me, I wanna get rid of it. And so we would talk, we would pray together, and we would, you know, I would encourage him and try to help him out and say, hey, you gotta avoid these areas, you gotta take these steps, you gotta keep yourself busy. And then there would be some times when he would call me and he would call me drunk. And it was this cycle over and over and over again. And I loved him. I loved the guy. But it was difficult to have compassion because it was like you knew what you were supposed to do and you didn't do it. And it's frustrating and it's difficult. And it's easy to become calloused. It would be understandable for someone to be cynical. but compassion is what's going to make the difference. When you look at this passage, what stands out the most to me in Matthew chapter nine, if you turn back there, is how Christ approached this problem. He looked at this village, and the Bible says that he was moved with compassion on them. Why? Verse 36 says, because they fainted. and were scattered abroad as sheep having no shepherd. He looked out and said, there's a lot of work to do in this area. And the follow on in that passage, he says, we need to pray for more people to help. He looked out and the people, it says they fainted, the people were wore out. They were a sheep having no shepherd, the people had no direction. The people had no purpose. And how similar is that today if you're serving as a police officer to look out and you see people that are struggling, that they have no direction, they have no purpose, they're wearing their bodies out with different drugs and alcohol, tearing themselves, killing themselves slowly. And it's easy to become calloused. I want you to consider that, that as you look at this passage and Jesus looks out into these villages, he saw multitudes of people and he had compassion on them. Understand for a minute that God, Jesus was God in the flesh. And as he was standing there looking at these multitudes, he knew what sins that they had committed. He knew what sins they were going to commit. He knew how bad they were. He knew how bad they were going to be. He knew there was gonna be a time where they were gonna reject him, that they were gonna crucify him. He knew all the sins that they were gonna be involved in, and he still had compassion. He knew the struggles that they went back to, but he had compassion. And so we look at this passage and we see Jesus that has this compassion, that he's defined by this compassion. We see that. We see this compassion that Jesus showed. We see it over and over again throughout the scriptures, this yearning, this feeling from deep within him that he looked out at people that had no purpose, that had no direction, and he had compassion on them. Lastly, what I want you to see this morning is that compassion paid a debt. When we stop and consider what compassion, the compassion of Christ, what led him to do this is quite amazing to think about. Jesus did not get hardened at the world around him. He didn't disregard and give up on humanity. That's what a lot of times, if you look at people, people are in a mess. And you look at things and you can look at people and their lifestyles and different situations, and you know what? Within church, we can do that for lost people as well. We can see that they're running to and fro and not having necessarily the right directions, the right things that they need to focus on. And we can become calloused. And we can give up and say, you know what? They're hopeless. And so many times we can look at people that way, but understand that Jesus took his compassion and he acted on it in a different way. He made a way to reconcile people, those people, to him. He took action based on his compassion. He did not get frustrated at our offenses. I want you to think for a moment that Jesus was face-to-face with the person that betrayed him. He looked him right in the eye, and he knew what he was going to do, and he had compassion on him. I have no doubt in my mind that between the time that Judas betrayed Jesus to the time that he took his own life, I have no doubt in my mind that if he would have repented and trusted in Jesus as Lord and Savior, that he would have been forgiven. I have no doubt in my mind that that would be the case. But Judas rejected that compassion that was shown to him. Jesus faced his accusers knowing that they were lying about him. But out of Jesus's compassion, he chose to die on the cross. There's one passage in Matthew that we did not stop at when we talk about this compassion. I wanna go there at this point. If you can, if you have your Bible open, go to Matthew chapter 18. This is a familiar parable, a parable that we understand of forgiving one another. want you to see some of the truths that are in this passage in Matthew 18. There's a parable of an unforgiving servant if you go down to verse 23. Jesus was telling this parable, therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king which would take account of his servants. And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him which owed him 10,000 talents. But for as much as he had not to pay, his Lord commanded him to be sold and his wife and children and all that he had in payment to be made. The servant therefore fell down and worshiped him saying, Lord, have patience with me and I will pay thee all. When the Lord of that servant was moved with compassion and loosed him and forgave him, the debt. Now this parable goes on to talk about how that same servant had a debt from another servant and he was giving him a hard time and he said, hey, pay me what you owe, what you owe me, even though he had been forgiven of this giant debt. Now we look at this passage and we see, oh, 10,000 talents, that doesn't sound so bad, but I want to put these things into perspective for you. 10,000 talents, the idea of this passage, this parable, is that that value was more than he could pay in his lifetime. So I want you to think about this for a moment. If you take the average American, according to some statistics that I looked up, the lifetime annual earnings of an American person today As of last year, 2022 was somewhere between 1.1 and 1.7 million. And that was given a $50,000 salary over a certain period of time. That would be considered the lifetime earnings of a average American today. All right. And so the idea here is that this person had a debt that he had incurred that was more than he could pay in his lifetime. And we could consider that and say, oh, let's say his lifetime earnings is $1.7 million. Maybe he owed like $5 million. That would take two lifetimes or three lifetimes. But it was a great debt, a huge debt, a debt that when we think about this, when people, when a bank gives you a loan or when you're given some debt to utilize, there's a debt to income ratio that is considered. And this man, his income was way lower than his debt could ever repay. That was the problem with this servant. It was more debt than he would pay in his lifetime. But the Bible says here in Matthew chapter 18 that the king was moved with compassion. And if you look at that passage, look at what he said in verse 26. The servant fell down and worshiped him, saying, Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all. He was still delusional. He was still thinking that I could, be patient with me, don't sell my family, don't take my family from me, and I'll pay you back. And he couldn't, there was no way. And this passage gives us this illustration, it gives us this picture of this man who was indebted with a debt that he could not pay because that was us. We have accumulated a debt of sin. The Bible says that the wages of sin is death. So what we earn for our life, for our life of sin, those wages that we earn accumulate this sin debt. And that sin debt is more larger than we could pay in our lifetime. And we're just like this servant because we say, Lord, we can pay you back. Just give us time, give us patience. I will be a good person. I can do good works. I'll go to church every Sunday. Maybe not so much on Wednesday nights or anything, but I'll go to church every Sunday. I'll give offerings. I'll do this. I'll do that. Whatever I can do, I'll try to pay you back. But the idea is, is that debt is too big to pay. And what pays it off? Compassion. Because Jesus, the Lord in this picture, the King in this parable, is evidenced by the compassion to forgive that debt. So we can look at life and look at people, and again, it's not a matter of letting them off. It's a matter of taking action based on that compassion. And so that's why my exhortation to you is don't lose compassion. When you go out and we visit people and we talk to them and we share the gospel with them, some of them, they don't want to hear anything. They don't want to hear, and many times we can get calloused by that and say, well, you know what, forget them. We don't want to talk to them anyway. And over and over, a door is closed in your face or when somebody comes in and says, hey, I need help, I'm struggling with this, and I have this problem and you try to help them and then eventually they say, they're back to it. Happens over and over and over again. I encourage you, keep that compassion. But this idea here is that the action that was taken as a result of that compassion paid the debt of sin that we owed. So I've talked to you about a compassion that we should have, but I've also shared with you compassion that has been extended to each one of us. Jesus Christ, when we see these passages, when we see the compassion, we need to put ourselves in that place, that He had compassion on me. Because the Bible says in 1 John 2, 2, that He is the propitiation. That means that He's the substitute. He's the payment. He's the payment for our sins and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. When you look at any man, any person, any living being that has walked the face of the earth, Jesus Christ had compassion and paid their debt by dying on the cross. The sins of every person that's ever lived. Here's the thing, when we come and, you know, I have a debt. that I owe that is unfathomable to pay. I cannot pay it. And I would say, well, what if I got this rich guy on my side to pay my sin debt, or to pay my debt? Well, the truth of the matter is, he could pay my debt, but he still has to pay his. And any person that we bring along, each person has a sin debt, except that one who was sinless. And that was Jesus Christ who walked the face of the earth. And we hear about Jesus and we hear about what he did and his love. But most importantly, what we need to understand is that that representation of him on the cross was paying for our sin debt because of the compassion that he had for us because he wanted to forgive our sin debt. If you haven't had your sin debt forgiven, that compassion's been shown to you already. All you have to do is accept it.