Let's turn to the book of Colossians chapter three. We begin at verse 12. Put on, then, as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other. As the Lord has forgiven you, so also you must forgive. And above all these things, put on love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony. And let the peace of Christ rule in your hearts, to which indeed you are called in one body. And be thankful that the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs with thankfulness in your hearts to God. And whatever you do in word or deed, do everything in the name of the Lord Jesus, giving thanks to God the Father through him. There we end the reading of God's word. The sermon title this evening is Compassionate Listening. And I was a little bit surprised how much the Bible has to teach on this topic. Never preached on it before. But a few months ago, my pastor, Steve Igoe, asked me to fill in for him. And I said, I'd be happy to. And he said, well, could I ask one more thing? I said, well, sure, what's that? Would you preach on a specific topic? Well, what's that? Compassionate listening or empathetic listening. I said, well, I can't recall reading about that. and seminary. None of my theology books open to a page on that. But the Bible teaches compassion and it talks to us about the value of listening. So I'll look into it and do my best. And as I began to look into it, I found the Bible has an awful lot to say about listening and about listening with compassion. And so I'm going to try to bring that to your attention this evening. You can judge whether my argumentation is valid or not. Compassion or empathy is a cognitive and emotional reaction that leads to action. It's not just empathy, feeling for somebody. It makes us think, it makes us respond, it leads us to action. Now let's begin by remembering why listening is so important to Christians. In Matthew chapter 17, It says, after six days, Jesus took with him Peter, James, John, his brother, and led them to a high mountain by themselves, and he was transfigured before them. His face shone like the sun, and his clothes became white as light. And behold, there appeared with him Moses and Elijah talking with him. And Peter said to Jesus, Lord, it's good that we are here. If you wish, I'll make three tents here, one for you, one for Moses, and one for Elijah. He was still speaking when behold, a bright cloud overshadowed them. And a voice from the cloud said, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. When the disciples heard this, they fell on their faces and were terrified. But Jesus came and touched them saying, rise, have no fear. When they lifted their eyes, they saw no one but Jesus only. And the transfiguration. They see these things. They don't know what to make of it exactly. They've never seen anything like it before. And Peter, general consensus is he wasn't sure what to do. So he started babbling and making suggestions that really weren't all that helpful. But while he was still talking, the father appears in this cloud and speaks. He said, this is my beloved son with whom I am well pleased. Listen to him. And isn't that the heart? of our religion, listening to God, listening to Jesus Christ, hearing what he has to say, and attempting to live out what he teaches. It's added to, in Ephesians chapter 4, there it's explained that when Jesus ascended into heaven, he gave gifts to men. He gave some apostles and some prophets, some evangelists, shepherds and teachers to equip the saints for the work of ministry, for the building up of the body. And so when Jesus was not going to be here, we could not listen to Him, He appointed those who would follow Him and the people of God would listen to them. Which is why so much of our worship service is based around the reading and the preaching of the Word of God. It's God's intention that we hear these things. Paul goes so far as to say, how can they be saved if they don't hear? He doesn't say if they don't read about. He says the proclamation of God's Word, people actually hearing it, has been ordained by God as an important way of making himself known to his people. And so listening is a very important part of our faith. This morning we looked at Hebrews 2 and it said we have to take greater caution for how can we escape having heard the things we've heard. He said because we've heard the truths of God, we bear greater responsibility. You could do further study. Just, you know, get your concordance. Go to biblegateway.com. It's a great site. And you can just type in any word you want there. It'll show you everywhere in the Bible it appears. So you can say listening. It'll show you all the listening things. A lot of interesting proverbs about listening. And you can do a study on it and learn more about it. But we want to go on and look at our subject from another point of view. And that is compassion. So I think I've established pretty well that listening is an important part of the Christian faith. But what about compassion? Well, I probably don't have to argue with you a lot, but I found it very edifying to look at a number of passages of scripture that reminded me of how much compassion God has shown us. Psalm 78 beginning at verse 32 says, in spite of all this, all the things God had done for his people, they still sinned. Despite his wonders, they did not believe. So he made their days vanish like a breath and their years in terror. When he killed them, they sought him. They repented and sought God earnestly. They remembered that God was their rock, the most high God, their redeemer. But they flattered him with their mouths. They lied to him with their tongues. Their heart was not steadfast toward him. They were not faithful to his covenant. Yet he, being compassionate, atoned for their iniquity and did not destroy them. He restrained his anger often and did not stir up his wrath. He remembered that they were but flesh, a wind that passes and comes not again. You know, he was the farmer who comes to the tree expecting fruit and there is none. He tells his worker, cut it down. It's wasting space. And the worker says, no, Lord, let me dig around it and fertilize it. And if there's no crop next year, then we'll cut it down. And that's exactly what he did. He called the people to repentance when their heart was hard. He put the fear of God in them when they saw some of their number dying and being falling into the judgment of God. But their repentance was not all it should have been. And you would think, so the wrath of God will burn out against them. And yet the text says, yet he, being compassionate, atoned for their sins and did not destroy them. And we know what it took to atone for our sins. The death of Christ, he who knew no sin becoming sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God. We look at how tried God is, how we test his patience. And then we read those words. But he, being compassionate, did not let their stony hearts drive him to anger, push him to judgment. He had determined to show compassion and love to these people, and they were not going to stop him, though it seemed as though they were bent on it. Psalm 103. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor repay us according to our iniquities. For as high as the heavens are above the earth, so great is his steadfast love toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far does he remove our transgressions from us. As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him. For he knows our frame. He remembers that we are dust. Sometimes people come in for counseling because their hearts are grieved. They have grievously sinned. They have disappointed themselves. They know they've disappointed the Lord, and they're just at odds. How how can I go back and ask forgiveness again? Why would God put up with me? That's a standard text I take them to. Psalm 103. Because I find the words be very comforting. God says, I forgive you because I remember your frame, that you are but dust. I know how weak you can be sometimes. I know how frail you are. I know how strong temptations can be. I know that in times of desperation, people do desperate things that they sometimes regret. He is kind and understanding. and He has mercy upon us, because He is compassionate. Isaiah 63 tells us, I will recount the steadfast love of the Lord, the praises of the Lord, according to all the Lord has granted us, and the great goodness to the house of Israel, that He has granted them according to His compassion, according to the abundance of His steadfast love. For He said, surely they are My people, children who will not deal falsely, and He became their Savior. In all their affliction, He was afflicted. And the angel of his presence saved them in his love and in his pity. He redeemed them. He lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. In our afflictions, he was afflicted. The scriptures tell us that Christ counts the wrongs done to us as done to him and the goods done to us as good done to him. God is with us. Once again, the scripture chooses to use that word. He granted them according to His compassion, not according to what we deserve, not according to, I made my bed, now I have to sleep in it. Jesus says, you made your bed, and it's a really uncomfortable one too, Smith. Why are you being so foolish? You like being in misery? He said, well, no, Lord. I didn't think so, so I'll fix it for you. What? You just admitted it's all my fault? I knew better, I did it anyway. Now I bring these unpleasant results on me. I care about you, Ken. Even though you deserve misery, I don't want you to have it. Wow, that's compassion. He cares. In Micah 7, we read, who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity, passing over transgressions for the remnant of his inheritance? He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in steadfast love. He will again have compassion on us. He will tread our iniquities underfoot. You will cast all of our sin into the depths of the sea. Compassion is a beautiful thing and we need it frequently. Therefore, we should cherish it. And as God has sacrificed greatly to show us compassion, when he asks us to make sacrifices to be compassionate, we should be willing to go there as well. But there's a problem, and we have to be honest about it. Receiving God's compassion is a wonderful thing, but when it's time for me to be compassionate to somebody else, I become aware of the cost, and I don't like it. Sometimes it's easier to be mean to you than it is to go out of my way to be nice to you. Sometimes it's easier for me to tell you how disappointed in you I am instead of to say, you know what? I am disappointed in you, but there's something else too. I love you very much. And I want to show you more of my love than my disappointment. It's hard to do that. It's exactly what Christ does for us over and over and over again. It required the father to sacrifice the son. There would be no compassion without the sacrifice of Christ. It requires us to consider others more important than ourselves. As Philippians 2 says, do nothing from selfish ambition or empty conceit, but humility of mind, consider others more important than yourself. Let each of you look not only to his own interest, but also the interest of others. Have this mind among yourself, which is also in Christ Jesus. And of course, compassion is commanded. Colossians 3, 12, put on then as God's chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience, bearing with one another. And if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other, as the Lord has forgiven you, so you must also forgive. And so we look at listening being foundational to the Christian faith, compassion being the heart of who God is and who he calls us to be. Then we think about this thing of compassionate listening. When you stop to think, there's all kinds of listening. I hadn't gone through it before. I never thought of it. You know, there's the obligation listening. You know, parents you sometimes do with your children, you know. Young lady, are you listening to me? Yes! It's not the most, it could be a young man too. Sometimes our children don't want to listen to us. It's an obligation they have, and they'd rather do something else. They don't think they're going to like what it is we say, and they'd rather not hear it. There's distracted listening. You know, your husband's trying to watch the football game. The wife's trying to talk to him. What annoyance. Everybody knows the football game is more important. Well, maybe it's not. Maybe we should be better at listening. But we're often not. There's annoyed listening. You know, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom, mom. What? And I'm not saying that's never deserved, because you've taught your children, they don't come and pull on your clothes and say, mom, mom, mom, or dad, dad, dad. They wait. You're on the phone, you're talking to somebody else. They don't get to burst in and have it their way immediately. Sometimes they have to be patient and wait. But they weren't. We listen in a lot of different ways. Sometimes we pretend to listen because I'm rather bored of what you're saying. I have one lady, she calls the office once or twice a month and she wants to talk for 15, 20 minutes, but she can't get her thoughts together. So she starts, she wants to tell me that she'd like to ask me to pray for her sister who has some health issues. But she says, well, I called you to talk to my sister. Now, this is a sister with a strudel recipe, not the sister who sews. And this isn't the one with the strudel recipe. You know, she won first prize for that at a Connery Fair once. And so every time we have family functions, she makes strudel for us, and we all just love it. Sometimes she makes extra and sends some home with me. And then there's my other sister who sews. Now, she's very good at sewing, but she's never won any prizes or anything. And it's just this flow of thought, consciousness, anything that pops into her mind, it comes. And so I see the caller ID, and I'm going, oh, it's her. But I'm busy. And the Holy Spirit convicts me and says, kid, You're important. You're support. She looked forward to that. You've got 15, 20 minutes. So I pick up the phone. Hello, Biblical Counseling Center. Hi, this is, oh, hi, how are you doing? And off we go. And it's an obligation listening. She doesn't want counsel so much. She wants to matter. She wants somebody to listen to her. That's all. It's not the funnest kind of listening. But I think we should be willing to do it nonetheless. It falls under the heading of compassionate listening. Because compassionate listening takes time. It's dedicated time. We give attention. We don't multitask. We look at the person. We give them our love. It requires genuine care about others. Empathy is not the same as sympathy. We're not seeking to judge or evaluate the person. We're seeking to hear and understand. And you see, our value judgments often get in the way from that. They say something early on that you disagree with, or you're looking for your chance to correct that. No, compassionate listening doesn't start out with correcting. No, I want you to explain yourself to me. What's the value of that? Well, say they are wrong in that thing they said. You like when somebody corrects you? I didn't see anybody go, oh yeah, I love it. Nobody likes to be corrected. So what happens when somebody does correct us? Well, we tend to become defensive. What happens when I am patient in listening to you? You get a sense that I care. You get a sense that I think you have value and worth. Because you do, you're creating the image of God, you have value and worth. Even if your stream of consciousness is such that you can't put two consecutive thoughts together. You still have value and worth. And we should be willing to treat each other that way. Though, I freely admit, I frequently don't want to. You know, this thing of compassionate listening. Oh, I know about it. I know more about it than I used to know about it. So I get convicted about it more than I used to get convicted about it. Because I was just blind to it. And that was nice. But now I'm not. I figure, well, I have to be in this boat. You guys are going to sit in it with me, huh? And getting good at it, I don't know. It's annoying how much effort it takes. But if I listen to you, even though I hear something that I don't agree with and I think is wrong, what's the first message I send to you? You matter to me. And when the time comes, if it even comes in this particular conversation, to share with you a different point of view on this place where we disagree, you're much more open to hear what I have to say. Because I've already demonstrated to you, I'm willing to hear all that you have to say. I will give you the gift of time. I'll give you the gift of attention. I will show you that you matter. So guess what? I start to matter back. And because you feel safe, you're not as quick to be defensive when another idea is presented. And I'll say something like, I may be wrong, but it seems to me, and I share an opinion that's different than theirs. But I started it by saying, it's possible that I'm not right about this, and you are. Now, obviously, if I thought I was wrong, I wouldn't be sharing what I was going to say. But it's gracious and it's kind. Compassionate listening is very active listening. We want to understand. We want to see the other person's point of view. I had a discussion last week with somebody who's supporting Black Lives Matter, which to me seems like a terrorist organization. I'm going, help me understand this. You know, they say they're against the family structure, they're against two-parent homes. It just, it seems like many of the things they have are anti-Christian and you're a brother in Christ and yet you're supporting them. Help me understand what's going on. What am I missing? And they went on to explain to me why they found themselves supporting the aims of this group. They didn't convince me. At the time, I didn't push it because I thought, I got to do more relationship building here before I can speak contrary to where this person is right now. If I start out right away challenging some of the places that they're at, they're not going to hear me. So I'm hoping to have some more conversations. And it's largely because in God's providence, he made me study this issue. and I learned how important it is to listen. Sometimes it's more important to listen than speak. Sometimes you have to build up the right to be heard, and you do that after you've listened a lot. Compassionate listening is slow to share a differing point of view. It values the person speaking, even if they're wrong. Don't you find 1 Corinthians 8 to be annoying? 1 Corinthians 8 is the passage that talks to us about meet sacrifice to idols. Now, I know perfectly well, an idol is nothing. You can take a lamb and sacrifice it to Baal or Diana or whatever God you want to, and you've done nothing. There is one God, and only one God. He's the one we worship. Now the Temple of Diana is having this festival and they sacrifice all these lambs and then the market gets flooded with lamb. They got nothing to do with it. They can't eat it all. So they sell it and they sell it very, very cheaply. I'm for a bargain. And what's wrong with it? Nothing whatsoever, but As Paul explained, and I have to admit he's right, you know, sometimes you're annoyed when people are right. But he said, you got to understand, this believer used to worship Diana, used to go to these festivals. And from their way of thinking, if I ate meat that had been sacrificed to Diana, that would be akin to me denying Christ and I will not do it. Oh, wow, I really like their faith. I like their commitment. I've turned from darkness to the light and I'm not going to turn back. And if I have to make sacrifices to stay true to the true God, then I'm going to make sacrifices. And every other Christian ought to be willing to do the same thing. We see that part of it I agree with. That's great. But his faith is still kind of weak. Because he feels like something's happened to that lamb. And now it's unclean. And I know better. God owns the cattle on a thousand hills. He owns the sheep on ten thousand hills. The earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof. There's absolutely nothing wrong with that lamb. But God says have compassion. Don't eat it. Don't go there. And to have compassion. I have to sacrifice a bargain. I have to pass up on a good deal. And I'm supposed to love my brother enough that I'm happy to do it. Well, that's the way compassionate listening is. It's not always easy. It's not always something we really want to talk about. But we care for the other person more than we care for ourselves. Compassionate listening builds unity, companionship, fellowship. Ephesians 4 says, therefore, I, a prisoner of the Lord, urge you to walk in a manner worthy of the calling with which you have been called with all humility and gentleness, patience, bearing with one another in love, eager to maintain the unity of the spirit and the bond of peace. It seems to me that compassionate listening is a duty we have And it's not one of the easier ones. And so we conclude. We've seen the value of compassion or empathy. Where would we be without it? It just brought me joy to read those passages to you. And be reminded of how kind God has been to us. How undeserved His kindness is, but how full it is nevertheless. Made me think, too, of the high cost of empathy. We admit that it often costs more than we care to pay. It's like having to be patient. Patience is great when it's shown to you. When I have to show it, I'm aware of how much it costs. And sometimes I resent the cost of it. We have applied the biblical principles of compassion to listening and found that when we practice compassionate listening, we build stronger relationships. Most wives would say, I wish my husband were a better listener. I've been practicing it, using my wife as a case study. So she tells me something. Boring things about something that happened at work. Janie said to Denise about this, and then Denise said to Janie about this, and I'm going, I have little interest in these office politics and conversations. But they're important to her, and it's not wrong for them to be important to her. So the next day I say, well, anything more happen between Janie and Denise? You know, you told me they had that. And she's surprised that I remember. It does make for better relationships. But I don't care about those people. But will I care enough about my wife to care about those people? Because she shares her life with those people. And they're important to her. I've never met them. Probably never will. I should still care. When we listen compassionately, we build stronger relationships. We understand others better so we can minister to them better. As I said, my friend who's supporting Black Lives Matter, I'm concerned. What's his thinking on this matter? And I'm still trying to figure it out. I'm still trying to get him to figure it out. But I think if I am patient, I'll be better positioned to minister to him than if I just rush in with condemning words. Compassionate listening communicates our love to another person more clearly. And it creates a relationship that is safe enough for the other person to hear us, allowing us to minister to them when that time comes. Listening is an important part of the Christian faith. And I could do a better job of listening to God at times, too. Sometimes He tells me things I don't want to hear. They're a bother. And so I pass over them more lightly than I should. In the fullness of time, God always brings it around and says, no, Ken. Did not let the people of old not listen to me. I'm not going to let you not listen to me. I will in my holy providence bring things around to open your eyes. You will be the kind of person I want you to be. Because I've started a good work in you and I'm going to finish it. He's doing the same with every one of us and we can be grateful for that. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we thank you for the richness of your word, and we confess that we are not good at listening, and it's such an important part of our faith. We sometimes let our minds wander when the scripture's being read or a sermon's being preached. We don't listen to each other as much as we should. We're not disciplined in our listening, and we pray that you would give us grace to heed what we've heard and to put more effort into being the kind of people you want us to be. Receive glory as you work in our hearts, we pray in Jesus' name, amen.