The Father's Compassion by Louis Bartet

What is the condition of your spiritual health? This lesson will help you examine yourself to see if you are in the faith and if Christ is in you. EMAIL US

SERIES TITLE: The Prodigal Son
MESSAGE TITLE: The Father's Compassion
TEXT: Luke 15:20
DATE: July 1, 2001
But when he was still a great way off, his father saw him and had compassion, and ran and fell on his neck and kissed him.

The father's actions were motivated by compassion. My personal definition of "compassion" is love's deep awareness of the suffering of another coupled with the wish to relieve it. Loving compassion motivates action that sets the needy person on a new course of life.

In verse 20, we are told, "his father saw him and had compassion". His love for his son made him deeply aware of his son's painful condition and moved him to relieve it. The actions of the father tell us 3 things about his love and God's love.

I. IT IS UNCONDITIONAL - While the son was still a great distance away and before he had said or done anything to endear himself to his father, the father ran to where he was, fell on his neck and kissed him.

· Kenneth Wuest: Wuest, in Golden Nuggets makes the following distinction between Phileo and Agapao.
PHILEO is a love which consists of the glow of the heart kindled by the perception of that in the object which affords us pleasure. It is a love called out of one in response to a feeling of pleasure or delight which one experiences from an apprehension of qualities in another that furnish such pleasure and delight.
AGAPAO speaks of a love which is awakened by a sense of value in an object which causes one to prize it. It springs from an apprehension of the preciousness of an object.
AGAPAO is a love springing from a sense of the preciousness of the object love, while PHILEO arises from a sense of pleasure found in the object loved.

· Conditional Love: A soldier was finally returning from the Vietnam war. He called his parents from San Francisco to tell them the good news, he was being shipped home. "Mom and Dad, I'm coming home, but I have a favor to ask of you. I have a friend I'd like to bring home with me." "Sure," they replied, "We'd love to meet him." "There's something you should know," the son continued, "he was hurt pretty badly. He stepped on a land mine and lost an arm and a leg. He has nowhere else to go, and I want him to come live with us."
"I am sorry to hear that son. Maybe we can help him find somewhere to live." "No, mom and dad, I want him to live with us." "Son," said the father, "you don't know what you're asking. Someone with such a handicap would be a terrible burden on us. We have our own lives to live, and we can't let something like this interfere with our lives. I think you should just come home and forget about this guy. He'll find a way to live on his own." At that point, the son hung up the phone. The parents heard nothing more from him.
A few days later, however, they received a phone call from the San Francisco police. Their son had died after falling from a building, they were told. The police believed it was suicide. The grief stricken parents flew to San Francisco and were taken to the city morgue to identify the body of their son. They recognized him, but to their horror they also discovered something they didn't know, their son had only one arm and one leg.
"If only we had known," I am sure they said over and over. If we had known it was our son, we would have welcomed him."

· Unconditional Love: At the height of the Vietnam conflict, Roever received his draft notice. Having no desire to go into the infantry, he joined the Navy and served as a riverboat gunner in the elite Brown Water Black Beret stationed in Vietnam. Eight months into his duty in Vietnam, Roever was burned beyond recognition when a phosphorous grenade he was poised to throw exploded in his hand. The ordeal left him hospitalized for fourteen months, where he underwent fifteen major surgeries. While in a military hospital he watched as the wives of other soldiers would come in, look at their husband's disfigured bodies, then take off their rings and walk out of the hospital never to return. He was fearful that his young wife might do the same. Instead of rejecting him, his young bride welcomed him home with a kiss. Roever apologized to her for his appearance only to here her jokingly say something like, "you never were that good lookin' anyway."

Unconditional love dispelled his fears and gave him the security to pursue life.
The father's love was given and expressed before the son had a chance to earn it. Before he could ever bring his father any pleasure he was valued by his father and viewed precious.
Paul tells us this is how God loves us: "…God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us" (Rom. 5:8).

The father's love was not only UNCONDITIONAL, it was also UNQUENCHABLE.

II. IT IS UNQUENCHABLE - The writer of Solomon's Song declared, "Many waters cannot quench love, nor will rivers over flow it…" (Song of Solomon 8:7). Nothing the son or anyone else did or said quenched the father's love for his son.
A. The son's disrespect did not quench it (v.12).
B. The son's debauchery did not quench it (v.13).
C. The son's dirtiness did not quench it (v.14-15).
D. The son's distance did not quench it (v.20).
E. The elder brother's disapproval did not quench it.

In Jeremiah 31:3, God told Israel through the prophet's pen "I have loved you with an everlasting love".
Through Isaiah the Lord declared, "Can a woman forget her nursing child, and have no compassion on the son of her womb? Even these may forget, but I will not forget you. Behold, I have inscribed you on the palms of My hands; your walls are continually before Me" (Isaiah 49:15-16).
In his letter to the Romans, Paul asked, "Do you think anyone is going to be able to drive a wedge between us and Christ's love for us? [TMB] Shall tribulation, or distress, or persecution, or famine, or nakedness, or peril, or sword?" (Rom. 8:35). Later, in verses 38-39, he gives his powerful answer.

"…I am convinced that neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor principalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, nor height, nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus our Lord" (Ro. 8:38-30).

When the object of PHILEO ceases to bring pleasure to the lover, then PHILEO ceases. But according to Paul, God's love for us is not based on the pleasure we bring Him. He views us as precious and valuable, thus there is nothing that can stop Father from loving us. Jesus did not die to get Father to love us, but because He loved us-"God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son" (Jn. 3:16).

God loves us with an UNCONDITIONAL love, an UNQUENCHABLE love and with an UNDENIABLE love.

III. IT IS UNDENIABLE - The father never told his son "I love you," rather he showed him. Wherever the term COMPASSION is used, it is usually accompanied by movement. This suggests that this kind of love cannot sit idly by, but must act so as to alleviate suffering and pain.

Mark 6:34 And Jesus, when he came out, saw much people, and was moved with compassion toward them, because they were as sheep not having a shepherd: and he began to teach them many things. (KJV)
Luke 7:13 And when the Lord saw her, he had compassion on her, and said unto her, Weep not. (KJV)
Matthew 14:14 And Jesus went forth, and saw a great multitude, and was moved with compassion toward them, and he healed their sick. (KJV)
Matthew 20:34 So Jesus had compassion on them, and touched their eyes: and immediately their eyes received sight, and they followed him. (KJV)
Mark 1:41 And Jesus, moved with compassion, put forth his hand, and touched him, and said unto him, "I will, be thou clean. And…immediately the leprosy departed from him and he was cleansed." (KJV)

In the story of the Good Samaritan, we are told "…when he saw him, he had compassion on him, 34And went to him, and bound up his wounds, pouring in oil and wine, and set him on his own beast, and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. 35And on the morrow when he departed, he took out two pence, and gave them to the host, and said unto him, 'Take care of him; and whatsoever you spend more, when I come again, I will repay you.'" (Luke 10:33-35)

In each case the person who cared was moved to act so as to set the needy person on a new course of life.

· The shepherdless were taught.
· The widow's son was raised from the dead.
· The multitude was healed and delivered.
· The blind received their sight.
· The leper was cleansed.
· The Samaritan was saved from death and cared for.

If we are going to reach our world then we must be gripped by a deep awareness of their plight and actively involve ourselves in relieving it.

· Watchman Nee tells about a Chinese Christian who owned a rice paddy next to one owned by a communist man. The Christian irrigated his paddy by pumping water out of a canal, using one of those leg-operated pumps that make the user appear to be seated on a bicycle. Every day, after the Christian had pumped enough water to fill his field, the communist would come out, remove some boards that kept the water in the Christian's field and let all the water flow down into his own field. That way, he didn't have to pump.
This continued day after day. Finally, the Christian prayed, "Lord, if this keeps up, I'm going to lose all my rice, maybe even my field. I've got a family to care for. What can I do?"
In answer to his request, the Lord put a thought in his mind. So, the next morning he arose much earlier, in the predawn hours of darkness, and started pumping water into the field of his communist neighbor. Then he replaced the boards and pumped water into his own rice paddy. In a few weeks both fields of rice were doing well-and the communist was converted.

He made himself my enemy an sought to shut me out.
But God's love shed abroad in my heart sought to turn things about.

CONCLUSION

God's love is
UNCONDITIONAL - Given to the undeserving.
UNQUENCHABLE - Nothing can keep Him from loving us.
UNDENIABLE - It is a love that sees our needs and moves to meet our needs.
Agapao love is not passive, but bases its actions on a deep awareness of the needs of another and its desire to set the other on a new course of life. This is the way God loves us and the way He wants us to love the world.

o Sawat had disgraced his family and dishonored his father's name. He had come to Bangkok to escape the dullness of village life. He had found excitement, and while he prospered in his sordid lifestyle he had found popularity as well.
When he first arrived, he had visited a hotel unlike any he had ever seen. Every room had a window facing into the hallway, and in every room sat a girl. The older ones smiled and laughed. Others, just 12 or 13 years old or younger, looked nervous, even frightened.
That visit began Sawat's venture into Bangkok's world of prostitution. It began innocently enough, but he was quickly caught like a small piece of wood in a raging river. Its force was too powerful and swift for him, the current too strong.
Soon he was selling opium to customers and propositioning tourists in the hotels. He even went so low as to actually help buy and sell young girls, some of them only nine and ten years old. It was a nasty business, and he was one of the most important of the young ''businessmen."
Then the bottom dropped out of his world: He hit a string of bad luck. He was robbed, and while trying to climb back to the top, he was arrested. The word went out in the underworld that he was a police spy. He finally ended up living in a shanty by the city trash pile. Sitting in his little shack, he thought about his family, especially his father, a simple Christian man from a small southern village near the Malaysian border. He remembered his dad's parting words: "I am waiting for you." He wondered whether his father would still be waiting for him after all that he had done to dishonor the family name. Would he be welcome in his home? Word of Sawat's lifestyle had long ago filtered back to the village. Finally he devised a plan.
"Dear Father," he wrote, "I wanted to come home, but I don't know if you will receive me after all that I have done. I have sinned greatly, father. Please forgive me. On Saturday night I will be on the train that goes through our village. If you are still waiting for me, will you tie a piece of cloth on the po tree in front of our house? (Signed) Sawat."
On that train ride he reflected on his life over the past few months and knew that his father had every right to deny him. As the train finally neared the village, he churned with anxiety. What would he do if there was no white cloth on the po tree?
Sitting opposite him was a kind stranger who noticed how nervous his fellow passenger had become. Finally Sawat could stand the pressure no longer. He blurted out his story in a torrent of words. As they entered the village, Sawat said, "Oh, sir, I cannot bear to look. Can you watch for me? What if my father will not receive me back?"
Sawat buried his face between his knees. "Do you see it, sir? It's the only house with a po tree."
"Young man, your father did not hang just one piece of cloth. Lookl He has covered the whole tree with cloth!" Sawat could hardly believe his eyes. The branches were laden with tiny white squares. In the front yard his old father jumped up and down, joyously waving a piece of white cloth, then ran in halting steps beside the train. When it stopped at the little station he threw his arms around his son, embracing him with tears of joy "I've been waiting for you!" he exclaimed.

God is waiting for you with open arms. There are no rags on the tree because God went far beyond that by placing his own Son on it. Father demonstrated His love for us by giving His only Son to die for our sins (Jn. 3:16) and Jesus demonstrated His love for us by giving His life for us (1Jn. 3:16).

How will you respond to God's UNCONDITIONAL, UNQUENCHABLE, UNDENIABLE love?

© 2001, by louis bartet, all rights reserved