The Unleashed Compassion of God

Exodus 1-3

Southern Gables Church

Dr. Rich Peterson

February 6, 2005

I want to ask you a few questions this morning.

The first question is a big one – Does God care? Before you answer too quickly think a minute as to how you might answer that question if you were the people of God living under the adverse conditions of Egyptian captivity and oppression.

For as many as two centuries the Israelites had been asking this question. They had entered the land of Egypt “seventy in all” (1:5) on the coattails of the patriarch Joseph. They “were fruitful and multiplied greatly and became exceedingly numerous, so that the land was full of them” (1:7).

At first blush (and for the first hundred years or so) it would appear that God did indeed care. After-all God himself had orchestrated their coming to abide in Egypt.

Even in the midst of emotional reunion with his brothers the betrayed sibling, Joseph, directs their attention to the unmistakable sovereignty of God.

Then Joseph said to his brothers, “Come close to me.” When they had done so, he said, “I am your brother Joseph, the one you sold into Egypt! And now, do not be distressed and do not be angry with yourselves for selling me here, because it was to save lives that God sent me ahead of you…God sent me ahead of you to preserve for you a remnant on earth and to save your lives by a great deliverance. So then, it was not you who sent me here, but God. He made me father to Pharaoh, lord of his entire household and ruler of all Egypt (Genesis 45:4-8).

In his final conversation Joseph again reminds his guilt-ridden and anxious brothers of God’s great care for them.

But Joseph said to them, “Don’t be afraid. Am I in the place of God? You intended to harm me, but God intended it for good to accomplish what is now being done, the saving of many lives (Genesis 50:19-21a).

Does God care seems to be an almost silly question to ask of the first several decades of abiding in Egypt, but then a new king, who did not know about Joseph, came to power in Egypt. “Look,” he said to his people, “the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. Come, we must deal shrewdly with them or they will become even more numerous and, if war breaks out, will join our enemies, fight against us and leave the country (Exodus 1:8-10).

So they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor, and they built Pithom and Rameses as store cities for Pharaoh. But the more they were oppressed, the more they multiplied and spread; so the Egyptians came to dread the Israelites and worked them ruthlessly. They made their lives bitter with hard labor in brick and mortar and with all kinds of work in the fields; in all their hard labor the Egyptians used them ruthlessly (Exodus 1:11-14).

And so the question changes somewhat. From does God care, to more immediately important, does God care…NOW?

“Where is God now?”

Why has the God of our fathers, the God who promised his abiding faithfulness to our ancestors and us, allowed us to become slaves?

Why doesn’t our God take care of this young upstart pharaoh and deliver us?

Why has God forgotten us?

These are the questions of the oppressed.

These are the questions of those who have been treated with unjust harshness.

These are the questions of those who have been made to feel mentally, spiritually, emotionally, relationally and financially burdened. And on one level they are questions only those who have experienced the apparent absence of God in their life ever ask.

Frank Reed was held hostage in a Lebanon prison cell from 1986 to 1990. For months at a time Reed was blindfolded, living in complete darkness, or chained to a wall and kept in absolute silence. On one occasion, he was moved to another room, and, although blindfolded, he could sense others in the room. Yet it was three weeks before he dared peek out to discover he was chained next to Terry Anderson and Tom Sutherland.

Although he was beaten, made ill, and tormented, Reed felt most the lack of anyone caring. He said in an interview with Time magazine, “Nothing I did mattered to anyone. I began to realize how withering it is to exist with not a single expression of caring around me…I learned one overriding fact: caring is a powerful force. If no one cares, you are truly alone.”

While Reed’s experience is extreme, I wonder if there are those in this room who have felt the spiritual loneliness and despair, which is the refrain of Job and forms the substance of many of the psalms?

“Where are you, God?”

Why does God let this happen? Doesn’t he see what’s happening? I thought being a Christian meant always feeling God’s presence. Many have (or are even now) struggled with God’s apparent disinterest in their personal affairs.

But wondering where God is and what he is doing is not a mark of spiritual immaturity or distrust in God. Rather, it represents the honest yearnings of God’s people living in this world, who long to feel his presence in their lives. (My thanks to Peter Enns, Exodus: The NIV Application Commentary, for these thoughts).

Does God care?

The answer, of course – is made plain as the story unfolds and we read:

During that long period, the king of Egypt died. The Israelites groaned in their slavery and cried out, and their cry for help because of their slavery went up to God. God heard their groaning and he remembered his covenant with Abraham, with Isaac and with Jacob. So God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them (Exodus 2:23-25).

The answer, of course, is that God’s people are never alone. God is always with his people even though it doesn’t appear to be so. But….

Does God care…now?

The answer of the Exodus is “yes.” Generations have come and gone, but God has been with them. It was he who directed their paths, who brought blessing in times of peace, and who, as, and when he sees fit, would bring deliverance in their time of distress and oppression.

David, the psalmist connects the dots for us in Psalm 103

The LORD works righteousness

and justice for all the oppressed.

He made known his ways to Moses,

his deeds to the people of Israel:

The LORD is compassionate and gracious,

Slow to anger, abounding in love…

As a father has compassion on his children

So the LORD has compassion on those who fear him (Ps. 103: 6-8, 11a, 13).

Yes, God cares. And yes, he cares now!

The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with mile and honey – and now the cry of the Israelites has reached me, and I have seen

the way the Egyptians are oppressing them (Exodus 3:7-9).

This is very good news, but how exactly will God’s compassion be unleashed?

More than likely God’s compassion is unleashed through the means of a person. Often a very ordinary person called to serve in God’s extraordinary plan of redemption.

So now, go. I am sending you to Pharaoh to bring my people the Israelites out of Egypt (Exodus 3:10).

You have to wonder how the face of Moses must have contorted when he found out that God was going to display his compassion through him!

The idea of rescuing his people from Egypt had been something Moses had not thought about for a very long time. After living peacefully for forty years in the dessert, he had almost forgotten about the pain and misery of his nation and was content to remain where he was.

Moses tried to bring about revolution many years before. But his actions were met with rejection and the need to flee for his very life. But now God was asking of him the impossible, and though Moses had watched the Israelites in their hard labor and been sickened and saddened by their oppression – that was a long time ago.

But the God of his fathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob was calling him. He was being called and sent because God had heard the groaning of his people and remembered his covenant. The rescue of the Israelites was now something God was going to do. There would be no revolution – this would be the extraordinary effort of God to bring about the redemption of his beloved first-born.

God’s compassion would be unleashed through the means of his servant. The cries (prayers) of the Israelites would be answered in part through the actions of this called one of God.

It didn’t make any difference that Moses felt himself disqualified or unqualified, God had “come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land…flowing with mile and honey (Exodus 3:8).

So now, go. I am sending you…

God’s plan is revealed. The outcast is chosen to bring God’s special people out of bondage and into the freedom of God’s sovereign will.

Don’t miss this critical theological point. The real purpose for which Israel was delivered is not simply that they be set free from the bondage of Egypt, but “that they may worship me (God) in the desert” (Exodus 7:16).

In recent years a popular theological movement called “liberation theology” has grown in both American and Latin American countries. And although there are differing nuances of this theology what they all seem to have in common is the notion that God is, without qualification on the side of the oppressed and that relief from oppression is the true goal of all Christian work.

Peter Enns explains it this way:

Appeal is commonly made to the Exodus as support. An oppressive political force enslaved the Israelites, and God came to destroy this force and set his people free. Now, most everyone agrees that God is not for oppression, nor does he approve of injustice, whether political, cultural, judicial, or private. In fact, liberation theology has been a healthy reminder to evangelicals that God is not simply concerned with matters of personal piety, but also with broader societal sins.

What liberation theologians tend to neglect, however, is the theological context in which the Exodus occurs. The assumption is often made that according to Exodus, God is always on the side of the oppressed. But the focus of the book of Exodus is the oppression of Israel, God’s firstborn son. There is an element of truth to their assertion, since elsewhere God cautions the Israelites not to oppress aliens living among them (Ex. 23:9), that is, God seems to show concern for more than just Israelite oppression. Nevertheless, Exodus is not a story of how God hates oppression and will go to great lengths to deliver the oppressed. Rather, it is a story of how great the Father’s love is for the son. In other words, Israel is not redeemed simply because it is oppressed, but because Israel is God’s firstborn son (Peter Enns, The NIV Application Commentary: Exodus, 144).

This is what the Lord says: Israel is my firstborn son, …”Let my son go, so he may worship me” (Exodus 4:22a).

The point of the Exodus is not freedom. It is about God’s calling his own people back to him in order that they might enter into a relationship with him as Father.

Does God care? Absolutely! Does God care now? Yes! How does he reveal his unleashed compassion to his people? Through the means of his chosen instruments used in perfect harmony according to God’s will in order to fulfill God’s sovereign plan.

How marvelous this all is for those of us who have been liberated through the shed blood of Jesus Christ and called into his kingdom’s service.

You, my brothers, were called to be free. But do not use your freedom to indulge the sinful nature; rather, serve one another in love (Galatians 5:13).

And so ask one more question this morning, a very personal question: How might God’s compassion be unleashed in us?

It is very interested in looking at Exodus 1-3 again, that injustice began with a look.

“Look, the Israelites have become much too numerous for us. Come we must deal shrewdly with them…so they put slave masters over them to oppress them with forced labor…and worked them ruthlessly…made their lives bitter…used them ruthlessly (Exodus 1:9-14)

Injustice begins with a look-of fear and prejudice, which often leads to oppression.

It is also interesting to note that compassion began with a look. The only time the word compassion is used in these first three chapters of Exodus is in connection with the Pharaoh’s daughter who “saw the basket among the reeds and sent her slave girl to get it. She opened it and saw the baby. He was crying, and she felt sorry (had compassion) for him. “This is one of the Hebrew babies,” she said (Exodus 2:6).

Compassion also begins with a look- of concern, which can lead to a desire to help.

“God looked on the Israelites and was concerned about them” (Exodus 2:25).

The LORD said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt, and I am concerned about their suffering…. I have seen the way the Egyptians are oppressing them” (Exodus 3: 7, 9).

“I have watched over you and have seen what has been done to you in Egypt. And I have promised to bring you up out of your misery…and I will make the Egyptians favorably disposed toward this people, so that when you leave you will not go empty-handed. Every woman is to ask her neighbor and any woman living in her house for articles of silver and gold and for clothing, which you will put on your sons and daughters. And so you will plunder the Egyptians” (Exodus 3:16b, 17, 21-22).

I wonder – how do we see those around us? Do we see them through the eyes of compassion or through the eyes of fear and prejudice?

How do we look upon those in poverty – the physically disabled, the elderly, the sexually confused and broken, the abused and victimized, the mentally challenged, the uneducated or undereducated, the person with AIDS, the social misfit, those of a different racial background, the prison inmate or ex-convict, the person with tattoos and piercings, the neighbor doing drugs, the lonely, the disenfranchiezed, the marginalized, the outcast, the poor and oppressed?

Do we look upon them with scorn and judgment or are we able to see their misery, hear their groaning and cries for help, feel their pain (be it financial, relational, emotional, physical, spiritual) and ask how might the compassion of God be unleashed through me?

When I was twenty-two years old I started serving an inner city church in Dallas, Texas as a staff member.

My very first Sunday I was responsible to travel on our church bus around the immediate neighborhood and pick up children from the housing projects for church services. As the bus rounded the corner of Douglas and Harry Hines Blvd (four blocks from my new church) I heard the sixty or so children begin to laugh and make fun of some people on the corner. As I looked out the window the children were pointing at and laughing at the nine prostitutes standing there.

Coming out of a middle-class upbringing and have lived my entire life without ever seeing such a thing – I was overwhelmed.

I sat down on the front seat of the bus directly behind the bus driver and said under my breathe to God, “I can’t do this!” This is no place for a guy like me. Look God at the children seated behind me, none of them are white – only black and Hispanic and Korean. What kind of place is this? What kind of neighborhood would allow this to happen? Why am I here? What could I possibly do?

And finally, my prayer’s main point: “Get me out of this place!”

I prayed basically the same prayer everyday until one day it dawned on me that perhaps God had me in this place to make some kind of difference for His glory.

When that happened I began to see things differently. I began for the first time to see those around me and the misery that was theirs on a daily basis. I began to listen more intently for the cries of hungry children living on junk food and soda pop, and I began to feel their plight just a little more personally as I experienced a daily bombardment of human need. And I began to have a little more compassion.

God did answer my prayer to “get me out of this place” – five and a half years later. By then I was serving this same church as pastor and was able to be a part of the creation of a ministry called “Crossover Ministries” The vision of this new ministry was to establish a multidimensional ministry and missions center to assist the physical, emotional, educational and spiritual needs of the community through the joint-efforts of the six major ethnic people groups in the immediate area.

It was to be a place where the nations and tribes came together under one roof to worship God and to engage freely in the kingdom work that God was calling each to achieve.

It was a dream of compassion, born in the environment of oppression. That was 1991. The ministry of “Crossover” remains to this day.

So, how might God’s compassion be unleashed in us?

It begins with a look – a look for our extraordinary God at work in the midst of our often extremely ordinary lives.

It begins with a prayer – as we ask for his eyes, his ears, and his heart as we relate with others.

It was a bitter cold evening in northern Virginia many years ago. The old man’s beard was glazed by winter’s frost while he waited for a ride across the river. The wait seemed endless. His body became numb and stiff from the frigid north wind.

He heard the faint, steady rhythm of approaching hooves galloping along the frozen path. Anxiously, he watched as several horsemen rounded the bend. He let the first one pass by without an effort to get his attention. Then another passed by, and another. Finally, the last rider neared the spot where the old man sat like a snow statue. As this one drew near, the old man caught the rider’s eye and said, “Sir, would you mind giving an old man a ride to the other side?”

Reining his horse, the rider replied, “Sure thing. Hop aboard.” Seeing the old man was unable to lift his half-frozen body from the ground, the horseman dismounted and helped the old man onto the horse. The horseman took the old man not just across the river, but to his destination, which was just a few miles away.

As they neared the tiny but cozy cottage, the horseman’s curiosity caused him to inquire, “Sir, I noticed that you let several other riders pass by without making an effort to secure a ride. Then I came up and you immediately asked me for a ride. I’m curious as to why, on such a bitter winter night, you would wait and ask the last rider. What if I had refused and left you there?

The old man lowered himself slowly down from the horse, looked at the rider and replied, “I’ve been around these here parts for some time. I reckon I know people pretty good. I looked into the eyes of the other riders and immediately saw there was no concern for my situation. It would have been useless even to ask them for a ride. But when I looked into your eyes, kindness and compassion were evident. I knew, then and there, that your gentle spirit would welcome the opportunity to help me in my time of need.”

“I’m most grateful for what you have said,” the rider told the old man. “May I never get too busy in my own affairs that I fail to respond to the needs of others with kindness and compassion.”

And with that, Thomas Jefferson turned his horse around and made his way back to the White House.

“Therefore, as God’s chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion….”(Colossians 3:12).