Dr Greg Bahnsen - Proverbs: Proverbs 12:10 (The Mercy of the Wicked is Cruel) (Part 46)

Proverbs, the 12th chapter and the 10th verse. And that will be quite sufficient for our considerations. So please turn to Proverbs 12, where we'll take as our text simply the 10th verse. Hear now God's word. A righteous man regardeth the life of his beast, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Thus far, the reading of God's Word. I'm learning a great deal about the Proverbs as I'm preaching through it. I knew, of course, before I began the series that I didn't know enough about the Proverbs, and I expected that I'd be learning something. But I think I'm learning much more than I had really anticipated as well. I hope that's true for you, too. However, before beginning this series, there were certain proverbs that stood out in my mind, things which it seemed to me were really little golden gems of insight and spiritual truth that I really looked forward to preaching. And one of those is what we find in our text today, that the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. That's one of those phrases that I hope you will commit to memory. I hope you will think about that and reflect on it and keep it in mind as you evaluate things that are going on in the world round about you. The mercy of the wicked is, in fact, cruel. This last few weeks we've been hearing a little bit more of a section of the Beatles repertoire, because four more of the compact discs have been released dealing with the middle section of the Beatles history in the 60s. And for that reason, I've been hearing on the radio a little bit more than normal, I suppose. All you need is love. And, boy, how that brings back memories. The Beatles song here summarizes, I think, the fuzzy thinking of the era all you need is love. But it not only summarizes the fuzzy thinking of that particular era, it also summarizes the perennial humanistic confusion of the ages. All you need is love. Is that right? And while we certainly need more, it seems to me, than a universally utilized emotive word, love, about which the content nobody substantially agrees, we certainly need more than just say, well, it's love that motivates the Aztec Indians of many years ago to sacrifice their children and to drink their blood, they did that in the name of love. We certainly need more than what Hitler called love because he thought in love toward the human race. Exterminating the Jews is what we needed. We certainly need more than what is called love when it comes to cases of marital infidelity. And yet people are Unfaithful all the time in the name of love, oppressive taxation in the name of love, perjury in the name of love. All of these things have been done in the name of love, along with, by the way, things like risking your life or a child, founding hospitals for the poor, giving yourself to a lifetime of affection to your spouse, assuming somebody else's financial debts, forgiving an insult that has been directed to you. That too is done in the name of love. And so it should be obvious at the very outset that we need much more than this fuzzy emotive word love. Because love covers a host of conflicting attitudes, actions. Just about anything that you can imagine can be done in the alleged name of love. And I think we certainly need more than the mushy good intentions that are called love. Well, I'll tell you, this is a real area of gooeyness when it comes to talking to people. I get real uncomfortable. Not because I'm some kind of legalistic uptight personality, but I get uncomfortable because I just. I'm not really sure what we're talking about. It seems so, so nebulous, so like a warm mushroom. It's just yucky. To me, these talks about love and good intentions, undefined, ambiguous feelings that seems to me lead to the same conflicting set of actions that we've already talked about this morning. Moreover, good intentions are really not sufficient when it comes to helping someone if you think about it. I mean, just remember the time a thoughtful motorist stopped to to help you change a tire, ended up dropping the car off the jack and cracking your axle. Those loving good intentions were not enough. So when the Beatles sing all you need is love, I hope you're saying, wait a minute. We need much more than love in word, and we need much more than love in just good intentions and motivation. What we mean by love can be very ambiguous and very equivocal. And the adequacy of what we take love to be is not really established simply by our good intentions. And I think that's likewise true of a whole host of kindred words. Words like charity and kindness and generosity and concern and tenderness and care and good will and mercy and compassion. That word compassion is perhaps the best translation of the Hebrew word that is found in Proverbs 12:10 where we read the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. I like that. It's perhaps a little old fashioned. The word could be translated, the compassions of the wicked are cruel. It's a word in Hebrew that really carries the connotation of most all these others, whether it be love or grace or concern or tenderness, it's a word that bespeaks something that comes from within, a very deep feeling. The Bible tells us that it's not enough to be compassionate, that your compassion, your love, your tender mercies, whatever you want to call it, must be directed by the word of God, or they turn out not to be compassions at all. You see, there are two entirely different notions of tender mercy, two entirely different notions of love and compassion that we have to deal with this morning. And we see this in every area of thought and conduct. If you will, reflect on this in every area of thought and conduct. The Christian conception and the non Christian conception of something are at odds with one another. And yet in every area of thought and conduct, there's a way of speaking with where it kind of looks like we're saying the same thing. There's a way of speaking that masked the complete difference in orientation or substance of what we're dealing with. The Christian conception of tender mercy proves to be at diametric odds with the non Christian conception of tender mercy or compassion. We really have two diametrically opposed ideas about human life. We don't see human life the same way. We have diametrically opposed ideas about reality. We don't see the real world about us in the same way. We have diametrically opposed ideas of truth. And of course, we have diametrically opposed ideas of ethics too. In essence, what we have is two worldviews, two outlooks on life, the Christian and the non Christian. And in terms of these conflicting worldviews, or we might say these presuppositions or fundamental perspectives. In terms of these conflicting perspectives, the Christian and the non Christian arrive at very different notions about love and tender mercy and compassion. The Bible tells us that the believer's attitude toward love and mercy leads him so far as to not only be considerate toward his fellow man, other human beings. Proverbs 12:10 tells us that it leads him to have a kindly concern for his animals as well. That's a very interesting thing about this particular verse. We're looking at it. Notice the contrast between the righteous and the wicked. On the one hand, the righteous man is said to regard the life of his beast or of his animal. And then we leave off talking about animals altogether. And we read the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel not just toward animals, but are cruel in general, categorically speaking. Stop and think about just the literary nature of this verse that's before you. Why is it put this Way. Why is this proverb worded in the way that it is? Well, I'm going to suggest to you that the righteous man is described as being kindly toward his animals. Because the righteous man, if he's truly righteous, has that godly attitude pervade his life from the most important to the most mundane. You should notice the concern for animals which the law of God requires of us. I'll give you a couple of illustrations. In Exodus 23:12, we read, Six days shalt thou do thy work, and on the seventh day thou shalt rest, so that thine ox and thine ass may have rest. You see, the law of God says that we are to rest on the Sabbath day. We are to work six. And we are to rest one. And one of the reasons for that is we are supposed to give rest to our animals, to our beasts of burden, if you will. It is important that we rest them, that we show compassion toward them. You get tired. You probably like your Sunday afternoon nap. I like mine. The Bible says we should have the same attitude toward our animals. It's hard for us to imagine that in Orange county because we don't have animals out in the stall, and we don't have beasts of burden that do our farm labor and so forth. But the attitude that one has toward his animals, whether it be a dog or a cat or what have you, is an attitude that reflects the nature of your own heart. The law of God says you're to show compassion toward them. In Deuteronomy 25, verse 4, we read, Thou shalt not muzzle the ox when he treads out the grain. It is not compassionate for you to put a muzzle on your ox while he's doing the work of treading out your grain, that an ox should be allowed to support himself from his own labor. Now, Paul applies that twice in the New Testament. One place we see it is First Corinthians, chapter nine. And when he speaks about how a pastor is to be paid for his service, he says, doesn't the law itself tell you that you should not muzzle the ox when it treads? And then Paul adds this interesting parenthetical remark. Is it for the oxen that God careth or saith he? Assuredly for our sake. See, Paul recognizes that the law of God that is laid down at that particular point has an application to human beings, and that God is very concerned that human beings be compassionate toward one another. Paul says it's for our sake that God said this. And yet, why does God mention the oxen then? Because if we're going to be righteous, really righteous, and thoroughly righteous. Our righteousness will extend beyond our relations with other human beings and will be shown in every aspect of our lives, including the way we treat our animals. We learn from these moral lessons that are in the law of God that righteousness extends throughout life, from the big matters to the small matters. Genuine godliness is not restricted to what we consider central. It's not restricted to what we consider important in life. But it covers the mundane and the apparently trivial as well. Jesus put it this way. He who is unrighteous in a very little is unrighteous also in much. And so are you a righteous person? Are you truly compassionate? Is godliness the character of your heart? Then it's going to be shown in everything that you do. Don't think, well, I've mastered these big areas. I'm nice to people even though I kick my dog, and so I'm really a nice guy. The Bible would say that's not correct. If you're unrighteous in the little matters, you're unrighteous in the big matters of life as well. Last week we saw that our true character is made evidently in the things about which we think and dream and reflect, as well as in the things we listen to and the things we say and the things we do. One of the proverbs we read said that even a child is known by his play. You know the character of a child from the way the child plays. And this week we can now add to that. We can see that a person's moral character is revealed in the way that he or she acts toward animals. There are people who neglect their animals. Is this not the place to point out, children, that when it is your duty to feed your dog every day, that it tells you something about your character? Whether you feed your dog every day, whether you water your dog, whether you clean up after your dog, taking care of your animals, whether they be rabbits or dogs or cats or whatever it may be, taking care of your animals may not to us today seem as important as taking care of one's ox or one's donkey in the days in which agricultural work was performed with them. But the fact of the matter is that he who is unrighteous in the little things of life is unrighteous in the big things of life too. Those who are truly righteous will be good to animals. They will not be cruel to animals. They will not take delight and find entertainment in torturing animals. I remember as a child what it was like walking back from elementary school, back Home. And one of the routes that I would take took me by a place where people had a horse in the back of their yard. And sometimes the schoolboys would stop and throw rocks at the horse and got a great deal of delight out of seeing the horse flinch and the horse hurt from that. That's cruel. And it's not only cruel toward animals. It shows that you have right there a budding juvenile delinquent on your hands, someone who will grow up to be cruel toward others as well. The righteous man shows regard for the life of his animal. He takes good care of his animal and his godliness extends even to the subordinate matters of life. But now the proverb adds something else. You would think now that we're into, you know, animal kindness themes, the proverb goes another direction. It says, but the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. You see, the unbeliever's attitude toward love and toward compassion goes entirely the other direction from the believer's attitude where the believer is so concerned with righteousness throughout life that it extends even to subordinate matters like the care of your animals. The unrighteous doesn't even have a genuine and fruitful care for other human beings in the name of tender mercy, in the name of compassion. He actually proves to be a very cruel individual. You see, according to the Bible, those who depart from the law of God, those who depart from the revelation of God's will as it's been laid down in the scriptures of the Old and New Testaments, those who do not trust in the Lord and follow his word cannot truly do good. Do we believe that? Has that really sunk into us? It is so hard to believe it over against the thrust of our culture, against the mass media all around us. You see, the idea today is we're all basically good. We're all basically brothers. We're all children of God if there is a God. And we all are well meaning, compassionate, kindly, big hearted individuals. And some of us get off the track because we've had a bad illustration set before us and our parents or our friends. And some of us get off the track because we don't really understand things. Maybe we didn't graduate from high school, we didn't get enough education. Some of us, you see, have these problems that get in the way of our big heartedness and our kindliness. But basically everyone's a pretty good chap, really. We're okay, you're okay and I'm okay. That isn't what the Bible says though. The Bible says that those who don't trust in the Lord and those who do not care for His Word and those who repudiate His Word cannot do good and are not good people. Those who are self directed and let me remind you, if you don't follow the Bible, you are self directed rather than directed by God. Those who are self directed and those who are self motivated. And let me remind you, if you don't trust in the Lord Jesus Christ and have the power of His Spirit working in your life, then the motivation in your life does come from yourself and is directed toward yourself. Those who are self directed and those who are self motivated in their good deeds, well their conduct is going to be self centered, short sighted and ultimately unloving. And that's what the Bible teaches. If we will not trust in the Lord and we will not follow His Word, ultimately all of our apparently good deeds are self centered and short sighted and unloving. Here's the way the Westminster Confession of Faith puts it in chapter 16, section 7 works done by unregenerate men because they proceed not from an heart purified by faith, nor are done in a right manner according to the Word, nor to a right end. The glory of God are therefore sinful and cannot please God. This reflects the words of the Apostle Paul himself in Romans the eighth chapter where he says those who are in the flesh cannot please God. It reflects the outlook of the author of Hebrews in chapter 11 where we read that those who would come to God must believe that he is and the rewarder of them that diligently seek Him. You cannot please God. You cannot do good works. You cannot be acceptable in anything that you do. If your works are self directed rather than directed by the Word of God, if they are self motivated rather than motivated by faith and love as given by the Holy Spirit. Unbelievers don't do good and yet we have do gooders all around us. And that's why we need this proverb. Not to be fools that look at the surface of things, but be wise and see to the heart of the matter. Even the compassion of the wicked is cruel. Despite any outward verbal similarities, Christians and non Christians mean different things and they pursue different patterns of conduct in the name of compassion. And what this proverb adds is that the good intentions of those who have unregenerate hearts, hearts which are not directed by God's holy Word, those things that they do are not manifestations of mercy or of love or of compassion at all. If you will just look at the consequences of the professed compassion, if you'll Just look at the consequences of the apparently compassionate actions of the unbeliever. You will see in actuality how uncompassionate, indeed how cruel are their efforts. And I have a series of illustrations I want to share with you this morning about that matter. The tender mercy of the wicked is cruel. Here we have a woman who has become pregnant, but she doesn't want the pregnancy. It was unintended, she didn't plan on it and she's not really pleased by it. Maybe she's unmarried, maybe she's married. But the fact is, to her way of thinking, a child is going to be born into this world that is not really wanted, not planned for. Not a child in whom she rejoices and therefore, she reasons, an unwanted child will live a miserable life. And the most loving, compassionate thing for me to do is to have an abortion, lest there be another child that's really unwanted in this world. You think I'm making this up? I read this stuff. I hear this stuff all the time. People say this with a straight face, but I start with an obvious illustration. Do you see that? How the tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. In the name of tender mercy toward this child, we will murder it. Well, here's a reductio ad absurdum of that way of thinking. Let's take a three year old child that has been born, is living in your home, and you decide this child's life will never be happy. We're not getting along, we're not enjoying this child. Disciplining this child is taking too much out of us. And so in love for this child, in compassion for this child, we're going to kill him. And you look at that and you say, how monstrous, how absurd. And yet the same line of thinking is applied to the unborn. As long as we haven't seen them yet, apparently our hearts are open to that ridiculous line of thinking. The Bible says the tender mercy of the wicked is cruel. I want you to think about the humanitarian approach to the punishment of criminals in our society. Our society has been rocked for half a century with new ideas about punishment. You see, though not everyone understood theologically the truth about the law of God and its application to the state. The surprising thing is even a basically secularized society for a long time continued to look to the law of God and at least to its traditions and its general framework and equity to find an approach to punishing criminals. And so it's only been within our lifetime, my friends, that many states have taken off their books. For instance, the death penalty for kidnapping or the death penalty for rape. And of course, many would challenge the death penalty for murder as well. And the reason people do that, and because of the nature of things that I've written and debates that I've engaged in publicly, we don't try to make a hobby horse of that here. But I mean, it just applies so obviously that I can't avoid saying it. I hear all the time people who say it would be so horrible to follow the law of God in the way it calls for punishing criminals. It would be so harsh, so unloving, so lacking in compassion. Well, I think those are insults against the very character of God when people say that. But let's just temporarily shelve that consideration and ask, what's the alternative? If we don't do what God says we should do toward criminals, then what will we do? Well, here's what the modern world does. The modern world reasons the reason we punish people is not for the sake of absolute justice as defined by God, the one and only living and true God, but we punish criminals for the sake of their rehabilitation. And so men are sent to a penitentiary where they're supposed to learn to do penance for their crimes and they're to be reformed. We send people to reformatories, too. We have these different euphemistic words that really get at the heart of what we're trying to do. We're trying to change the hearts of people. We're trying to make them different. We're trying to rehabilitate them. Or another theory of punishment says we send people to prison so that we can keep them from committing further crimes. We quarantine them from decent society. We quarantine them from civilization so that they won't perpetrate further misdeeds against individuals. C.S. lewis wrote a famous essay entitled the Humanitarian Theory of Punishment, in which he examines these two approaches to punishment. And he says, you know, the interesting thing is on these two approaches to punishment, you need not worry about whether you're punishing the guilty. These two approaches to punishment fully exonerate and justify the punishing of those who have done nothing criminal, at least as yet. You say, well, how can that be? Well, let me give you a couple of illustrations. First of all, you want to stop someone from being a thief. You want to stop someone from committing rape or engaging in any other form of criminal behavior. The theory says, put him in prison, quarantine him. But the fact of the matter is that if you really want to stop someone from his criminal misdeeds, what you should do is torture his relatives, torture his wife, torture his children, and say, every time that you go and you steal again, we're going to cut off another finger from your son's hand. And I'll tell you, if you want to talk about motivational theory, that will stop someone from much more effectively, although not entirely. It will stop someone much more effectively than threatening to hurt him. You know, you can do a lot of things to me, and I can be pretty tough about it. You threaten to hurt my wife, and I back off. And so if your theory of punishment is stopping the man from doing something, then you can punish those who have done nothing wrong. You can punish his wife and his children on that theory of punishment. Or on the other approach, the rehabilitation of criminals. As CS Lewis points out, all of us need rehabilitation. All of us have got personal problems and psychological things that need to be worked out. If the state takes it in hand to rehabilitate people, the state would really do us a favor to start rehabilitating us before we do anything wrong, before we've become criminal, before we've transgressed the bounds of civil law. And so the thought is here, you can punish, namely rehabilitate, psychologically, reprogram and brainwash anybody you want in the name of social hygiene, if that's your theory of punishment. But see, that is our theory of punishment. Now, what is the effect of it? The effect of our theory of punishment is to put men in penitentiaries where they don't get rehabilitated. By the way, nobody in his right mind after the last 30 years believes anything about rehabilitation. The statistics are overwhelming about rehabilitation. It doesn't work. But we continue to put people in prison where they learn what to be more efficient in their criminal misdeeds, where they are homosexual, raped, where they are driven crazy in solitary confinement, and on and on and on. In the name of a humanitarian approach to people, in the name of greater compassion than what the law of God lays down in the name of tender mercy, we end up being entirely cruel and unjust to people. Think about the socialist approach to helping the oppressed. In socialism, back in the mid 19th century, socialism propagated by Karl Marx and others had something that sounded right about it. There was this kind of appealing hook in the rhetoric of socialism that made it sound so compassionate, made it sound good, made it sound merciful toward people from each according to his ability, to each according to his need. It sounds so right, it sounds so ideal, it sounds so wonderful. And yet after 100 years or more of experience of socialism around the world. Where has the socialist economy yet to work to the benefit of the oppressed? Where? You know, we have no difficulty debating socialists and Marxists. All we have to say is, would you show us just one instance where it has worked? You've had many opportunities. It's being tried now in South America. Are those who are living under socialist regimes in South America doing any better today? If you believe so, you've not been reading. In the name of the social ownership of the means of production, in the name of a socialist approach to economics, the poor are not allowed to own their own property South America. They are not allowed, therefore, to get insurance on their businesses, and they are oppressively taxed when they do become successful. Now, does that help any poor person better his lot in life? It hasn't. Yet. Statistically, it demonstrates that the poor get poorer. And it is true that the rich don't get richer under socialism. That's because the rich have their things taken away by the state. The bureaucrats get rich under socialism and the poor get poorer. And the wealthy are defrauded of their goods in the name of compassion, in the name of tender mercy and love. The socialist approach to helping the oppressed oppresses the oppressed all the more because the tender mercies of the wicked are really cruel. Or how about the welfare state as we see it all around us in our society today? The welfare state's approach to helping the poor. Does the welfare state help the poor? Consider minimum wage laws, which are always bantered about on the floor of Congress in the name of helping these poor, underprivileged individuals who cannot get a decent paying job. And so what you do is you raise the price that has to be paid by an employer to these underprivileged individuals. And what happens is an employer says, if I have to pay that price, the labor that I'm getting is not worth it. It's a bad market choice to hire a person at that rate when I'm not getting labor that's commensurate with it. And so what happens is that the underprivileged individual who wasn't being paid, great, there's no doubt about that. The underprivileged individual is now without a job at all. And so minimum wage laws in the name of helping the poor hurt the poor because they can't compete. Or think about union labor. You hear the rhetoric of people who argue in favor of unions. It's just amazing how they care for the downtrodden and those who have Terrible working conditions and those who need better coverage, their insurance or higher wages or what have you. But in the name of those things, legalized organized union lobbying keeps people out of the workplace because you have to fit into the union's demands in order to work. What the union basically does in the name of tender mercy is say we're going to be good to our own and we're going to keep everybody out from competing with us. And so look at the tender mercy of the automobile manufacturers of our nation, the tender mercy that says we want to continue receiving wages at a certain level, we want a certain style of life to be given to us because we do this hard work. And in order to do that, we don't want you to allow anyone in a foreign land, in a third world country or some other more economically depressed economy to compete with us. And so we set up tariff boundaries, we set up labor boundaries as to who can work in factories. And then what we do in the name of tender compassion is that we drive prices up and put, it turns out, automakers out of work and we are now out of jobs and we're screaming bloody murder because people are not being compassionate to us. Unions have a great rhetoric, but the tender mercy of the wicked proves to be cruel. Just think about the welfare state and how it helps the poor. The poor who become slaves of the state, who are deprived of their dignity and of their initiative and are given no usable skills. It's just amazing how people rail upon slavery as it's outlined in the Old Testament. Slavery, in which arrangement, a man sells his labor for six years and in return receives a marketable skill training, his debts paid, and when his master lets him go, must set him up in business. And that for six years of labor doesn't sound like such a bad deal to me. But we rail against slavery. We just think it's terrible and oppressive and the law of God is ridiculed and we just swallow the welfare state, which demeans individuals, really does good to the bureaucrats who are administering the system, does not. I mean, how many times do you have to see the statistics? If we were to take the money that is given to welfare and just divide it up among the number of recipients that we have, they would be 10 times better off than under the system that we now have. And yet we continue going along with our compassionate rhetoric and our political welfarism that turns out to be ever so cruel. Think about indulgent parents. Don't you love that? Indulgent parents, loving, compassionate parents who don't believe they should spank their children, who don't believe they should ever raise their voice to their children, who don't believe they should get in the way of their children's creativity and self expression. Doesn't it just make you sick? And we hear it all around us. The results, the consequences of that approach are all around us. In the public schools, you see it in the supermarket, all around you, don't you? And what happens to children who grow up with indulgent parents? They grow up to be self disciplined. They grow up to have self control and dignity. They grow up able to handle the challenges of life. They grow up with the ability to work through adversity. Do they grow up with the spirit of compassion and helping others rather than their own self indulgence? No, they don't. And so, in the name of tender mercy toward our little ones, we are cruel to them. Think of the progressive teachers approach to educating students. We wouldn't want to give too much homework. We wouldn't want to force a certain amount of content to be mastered. We wouldn't want to be harsh and get in the way of the free choices of our students by having a certain curriculum that is required of all individuals. No, we need to be more loving. We need to be more compassionate. We need to let people express themselves and follow their own paths. And what happens is we have students that that have nothing in their heads, who have no ability to master a problem, have not even gained the tradition of the culture that has led to their education, that they could pass it on to others. In the name of compassion and a progressive approach, we are cruel to our students who end up to be ignoramuses. If I could overstate the case, one more illustration. How about the loving church's approach to false doctrine and sinful conduct? Throughout the 20th century, you've seen this. In the name of compassion, we wouldn't ever want to criticize someone. We wouldn't ever want to put somebody down or perish the thought, have a heresy trial. Boy, that's the Middle Ages, right? That's back in the harsh, bad old days. And so, in the name of love and compassion, we allow people to fill the pulpits of our land who fill the heads and hearts of God's people or those who could be God's people with soul denying destructive heresy. Is it really loving to allow the church to have in its pulpit those who don't believe in the deity of Christ? Is it really compassionate to allow those to be in the pulpit who denied the infallibility of the Scriptures? Is it really compassionate to be so legalistic and hard and harsh about doctrine that you don't want someone to preach in the pulpit who doesn't understand the grace of God and therefore predestination and limited atonement and irresistible grace? No. In the name of love and an ecumenical spirit, in the name of brotherly compassion, we have let the church degenerate to the point where you can hardly tell the difference between what you hear in the popular media and what you hear from the pulpit about. The biggest difference is the way it's packaged, but the underlying philosophy and the approach to life is essentially the same. No, it is not loving for the church to not clean house. It is not loving and compassion for the church not to stand up and say, no, you must preach the word of God or you don't preach at all. Is it loving for the church to ignore sin on the part of its members? Is it loving the part of the church to give people the cozy idea that they can come and take the Lord's Supper even though they are living in unrepentant sin? No, it's not loving. It is cruel. And the consequences of, be they hell or a terrible life of inconsistency, as a believer, the consequences will demonstrate it. And so I hope you see from all of these examples and much more that could be given this morning, that the compassion which tries to correct the law of God, the compassion that tries to improve upon the word of God, is a fraud. It is a sham. It proves not to be compassionate at all. It proves to be the very opposite. It an ungodlike compassion works to the opposite of saving men and their cultures. It brings not blessing and deliverance and joy, but an ungodlike compassion brings cruelty and further curse upon men. And so the compassion of God is our only hope. If we trust ourselves, our own direction, our own motivation to be compassionate, loving people, we're going to be cruel individuals in the outcome. The only hope we have is the compassion of God. You see, true compassion requires the corrective direction of God's revelation. In the book of 2 John 6, the apostle John writes, and this is love that we should walk after his commandments. How simply put, but how profound. This is love. Not the compassion that the humanistic world lays upon you, not the mushiness of your heart, not the sinful mistakes that you will make. But this is love that we obey God's commandments and walk in his word. True compassion requires then God's revelation. And secondly, true compassion must proceed from a heart which, having transgressed God's revealed word and known the cruel consequences of sin, has experienced the compassionate grace of God. 1st John 4:11 John writes, Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. You know where true love and compassion comes from? It comes from a heart that's known the love of God. And when we know God's compassion toward us this then we are able to demonstrate compassion toward others. Those who don't know the Savior Jesus Christ don't know what love is. They don't know what tender mercy is. They don't know what genuine compassion is. But those of us who have known the love of God know that out of that wellspring we are able to love others. The blessings of God upon our lives are expressions, according to the Bible, of his tender mercy toward us. I love the words of Psalm 103 bless Jehovah, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits. Who forgiveth all thine iniquities, who healeth all thy diseases, who redeemeth thy life from destruction, who crowneth thee with loving kindness and tender mercies? You see what the apex of that expression is? Who crowns thee with compassion? That's where we learn about true compassion. That's where we find the wellspring of grace and love and tender mercy in the work of our God in saving us. And it's only because of God's tender mercy, only because of his loving kindness that we have any basis upon which to appeal to him for the forgiveness of our cruel sins. What did David say in Psalm 51:1 have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy loving kindness, according to the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions. David said, God, show me compassion in yourself because of your compassion. Blot out my iniquities. The tender mercies of the wicked are cruel. Genuine compassion is found in a forgiving Heavenly Father who knows much better than we do what love is all about. Indeed, one who paid the ultimate and cruel price of sending his own Son to die for our sins, for our mucky thinking about love, our self serving ideas of what would be good and noble and right for our transgressions, of his holy commandments. And so God the Father sent his Son, his only begotten Son, to the cross. And there we see the true compassion and love of God that is willing to buy us back, to wash us clean, to adopt us into his family and set us on the right road. The compassion of the wicked is cruel. God's Compassion by diametric contrast saves, delivers, cleanses and redirects our lives. There's a lot we need to learn from this proverb. Righteousness extends to every detail of life, even to the way we treat our animals. But if you don't have the right kind of compassion, the right concept of righteousness and godliness and love, then the outcome will be cruel, not only for others about you, but in the end, cruel to yourself. Let's throw ourselves then on the genuine compassion of God and learn to be compassionate people by following his word. Let's pray. Father, we confess that we have so often fallen into the dreadful, misleading pit of thinking that we can improve upon your word, that we can be more loving than you are, that we have ways of demonstrating compassion which really correct what you have told us in the Scriptures. Father, forgive us for this. We know every time we sin. In essence, that's what we are doing. We're saying, we know better than you. We are more loving than you. We know what we need better than you. We know what would demonstrate love better than you. And so rebuke our hearts this morning and teach us that genuine love is found in following your word and obeying your commandments. And Father, show us also that if we are to have the compassion of which we have spoken this morning, a compassion that is not cruel, that our only hope is to first be forgiven and cleansed by you according to your true and genuine compassion, a compassion that goes as far as the cross. Now, we thank you for the tender mercy you show us. We thank you that you put up with us day by day. We thank you that you continue to forgive us and to receive us back, to adopt us into your own family and to show us fatherly care. Father, we ask that you would, on the basis of your own compassion, forgive us and transform us. That we would become a truly compassionate people, not with the cheap compassion of the world, but with the deep and lasting and merciful compassion that we see in you. For it's in the name of our blessed Savior that we pray. Amen. It.