Hi, this is Erin Michelle, and welcome to steps to trusting. It is my goal here to meet you where you are in your faith journey and encourage you to continue to take steps to trusting the Lord more fully.

[00:00:19]I’m so glad you guys are here. Thank you for joining me today.  Last time on the show, I was joined by Shelby Hughes.  And one of the things that Shelby and I talked about was God’s compassion. She was seeking out to know “is God good?”    One of the things that really struck her and changed her was looking at how in the Bible, God showed his compassion. And so  I wanted to, I wrestled through some scriptures with you guys. Because actually the ones that I chose, there are some really hard parts in them, but they talk about God’s compassion. And so I don’t pretend to have all the answers or know how this all fits together, but I do know that God is a compassionate and loving God.

[00:01:05] And so, let’s start there. I want to read from Romans 9. I’m going to be starting in verse 14. I do recommend you guys go back and read a little context, of how this fits into the narrative  of scripture.

[00:01:19]Romans 9:14, “what shall we say then? Is God unjust? Not at all! For he said to Moses,

[00:01:27] ‘I have mercy on whom I have mercy and I have compassion on whom I have compassion.’

[00:01:33] It does not therefore depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.”

[00:01:39]That verse always strikes me,  the first thing that I think when I read, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

[00:01:49] The first thing that comes to my mind is, “why me God?” Why do you choose me to be your child? And I say that because  back in verse eight, it says, “In other words, it is not the natural children who are God’s children, but it is the children of the promise where are regarded as Abraham’s offspring.”

[00:02:09] So why me? Why did God have compassion on me to choose me to be part of the promise?

[00:02:17] I don’t think this is a bad question. But I do think it’s actually the wrong question because it tells us in the very next verse it says “it does not therefore depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.”

[00:02:32]And sometimes when I have asked why me, it has taken me to a place of thinking, well, I was willing to admit that I need God. I was willing to turn to God. I was willing to admit my sin. But that’s not what God is saying here. He’s not saying,  I’ll have compassion on those who are willing. I’ll have compassion on those who love me.

[00:02:57] “He says I have mercy on whom I have mercy. I will have compassion on whom I have compassion.”

[00:03:04]It’s not our actions or our decisions that decide if God will show mercy to us.

[00:03:11]This is super humbling and super confusing. And I’ll just be honest in that because I see day by day, we have choices, right? There are choices. I come to a crossroad and maybe I’m frustrated at something and I can choose, am I going to yell or am I going to remain calm?

[00:03:31]I come to a situation that, would be easier to walk away than to deal with the hard thing. And I have a choice. Am I going to continue to seek the Lord and deal with something that even though it may be hard? Or am I going to just say, you know what, this is easier if I just don’t deal with it. If I just walk away and I follow my own desires of what’s easy instead of what’s right or good.

[00:03:58]There are so many moments in our lives that we have the opportunity to choose. And the Bible even tells us,  in Romans 10: 13  ‘whoever calls on the name of the Lord will be saved”. There’s this hard thing to understand that we have a choice.  But yet God has compassion on some and  mercy on some, but not on others. And that’s so very, very hard to understand. I want to keep reading a little bit in Romans to help us think through this. Just a little bit more.

[00:04:32]We’ll start again in verse 16. 

[00:04:34] ” It does not, therefore, depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. For the Scripture says to Pharaoh: ‘I raised you up  for this very purpose that I might display my power in you and that my name might be proclaimed in all the earth.’  Therefore God has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom he wants to harden.”

[00:04:58]This is a challenge. And actually  let’s keep reading. ” One of you will say to me:  ‘Then why does God still blame us? For who resists his will?’ But who are you, oh man, to talk back to God?  ‘Shall what is formed say to him who formed it, ‘Why did you make me like this ?’ “

[00:05:17]   See, that’s the question I want to ask.  Why did he pick me?  But it’s saying here. Do we have the right to say, why did you make me like this? ” Does not the potter have the right to make out of the same lump of clay some pottery for noble purposes and some for common use?”

[00:05:35]I don’t pretend to understand.   Even from Ephesians 2:10, which I close every show with.  God has laid out the steps for us to walk in them, but yet we still have to walk in them. We still have to participate and  I don’t fully understand that.

[00:05:53] But what I do know is that God is a God of mercy and compassion. When I look at these scriptures and when I consider the truth of the scriptures, what it comes down to is that it has nothing to do with me whether God has compassion on me or not. It’s not a question of is God good or not good by the circumstances or the compassion, because God is good.

[00:06:21]It’s deeper. It’s deeper to the fact that we don’t actually deserve the compassion.  So often we think that we deserve the good thing, right?   I’m going to jump back where we finished saying,  it’s “not the natural children who are God’s children, but the children of the promise who are regarded as Abraham’s offspring. For this was how the promise was stated: ‘At the appointed time I will return, and Sarah will have a son.’ Not only that, but Rebecca’s children had one and the same father, our father Isaac. Yet before the twins were born or had anything good or bad- in order that God’s purpose of election might stand not by works but by him who calls- she was told, ‘The older will serve the younger.’ Just as it is written: ‘Jacob, I loved, but Esau, I hated.'”

[00:07:17] I have not liked this verse. I have not liked this passage. I have twins. And I’m like God, it doesn’t seem fair. It doesn’t seem kind. It doesn’t seem like how I expect God to be.

[00:07:32]And yet that’s because I look at myself and my kids and I don’t want to look at the truth, the reality, that fallen man is sinful. Fallen man does not deserve  the compassion of God. And yet he chooses to give that compassion to some.

[00:07:55] It makes me think of  the land owner in Matthew 20, who goes out and he gets some people to work in his field at the beginning of the day and he tells them what he’ll pay them.   Then he continues to go out later and later in the day and have people come and some people come very close to the end of the day.

[00:08:13] And he pays them the same amount that he told the workers in the beginning of the day that they would be paid for an entire day’s work. They think, wow,  if that’s what he’s going to pay, the people that have only been here  this short period of time, we deserve so much more than that.

[00:08:29]And the reality of it  is no. We don’t deserve more because God chose to be kind to some.

[00:08:37]Those workers, they didn’t deserve it, but he chose to have compassion on them. And that’s where we are. We are in a place where we don’t actually deserve the compassion that he gives us. But Jesus has made a way that we can come to him.

[00:08:55] When I look at passages like this, that are so, so hard   I have to flip in my mind,  the pride in who I think I am or  what I think I deserve. I have  to flip that and look at the truth of the scripture. Truth of scripture tells us that man chose not to follow God. They chose to walk away and they chose to walk and sin.

[00:09:20] Now that’s the fall of man, but each time we choose not to follow God, we are following in the footsteps of Adam and Eve, walking away from God.

[00:09:29] I believe that we do have that choice to follow after him or to walk away.

[00:09:36]And God has the choice to have compassion on some and not on others.

[00:09:43]I’ll be honest, guys. This is really hard. This is hard to even think through, talk through.  How do we understand that we have a choice in a responsibility? Like, as we mentioned, ” all who call on the name of the Lord will be saved.” We still have the responsibility to call. And yet we can’t soften our own hearts.

[00:10:05]So again, I think I’m leaving you with more questions than I’m helping you with, and I’m sorry about that. But I think it’s important to wrestle through questions and to look at the character of God. And so I want to continue to do that. We may not fully understand  this mercy and compassion  versus the hardening of hearts,  but we can know that God is a compassionate God.

[00:10:32] And I want to take you to another scripture. It’s a bit long, but please stay with me.  Because one of the steps to trusting God is to know who he is  and I want you to know that God is a compassionate God.

[00:10:46]We’re going to turn to another passage that we’ve actually looked at before, probably because it’s one of my favorites. It’s Nehemiah nine and it talks about God being a compassionate God.

[00:10:58]I want to give you guys the context. The context is people that have come back from exile, people that are looking at God’s word and seeing their sin and at the beginning of nine, they are fasting and repenting.

[00:11:13] As they’re doing so, some of the leaders cry out to the people “Stand up and praise the Lord, your God, who is from everlasting to everlasting.” They then began to cry out in praise to the Lord for who he is. They start with the fact that he has made the heavens and the earth and gives life  that’s in verse five. They continue on to proclaim who God is.

[00:11:42] Let’s look at God’s compassion that we start seeing  with Abraham. Verse seven. ” You are LORD God, who chose Abram and brought him out of Ur to the Chaldeans. You named him Abraham, you found his heart faithful to you. You made a covenant with him and to his descendants, the land of the Canaanites Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites,  Jebusites and Girgashites. You have kept your promise because you are righteous.

[00:12:12] ” You saw the suffering of our forefathers  in Egypt; you heard our cry at the Red Sea. You sent miraculous signs and wonders against Pharaoh and his officials and all the people of the land,   for you knew how arrogantly  the Egyptians treated them. You made a name for yourself which remains to this day.”

[00:12:31] They continued to tell of how he divided the sea and  led them with a pillar of fire, how he came, came down on  Mount Sinai and “gave them regulations and laws that are just, and decrees and commands that are good.” Which is in verse 13.

[00:12:47] It talks of how, when they were hungry, he gave them bread from heaven. And when they were thirsty, he brought them water from a rock.

[00:12:56]Verse 16, “But they, our forefathers, became arrogant and stiff-necked, and did not obey your commands. They refused to listen. They failed to remember the miracles you performed among them. They became stiff-necked and in their rebellion appointed a leader to return to their slavery. But you are a forgiving, God gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love.”

[00:13:25]You guys.

[00:13:26]Do you see that compassion here? Do you see that God chose a people and that people chose not to follow him. He showed them who he was. He gave them the law. And when he gave them the law here, this has really struck my heart.   Listed in all the ways that God loved them- is that he gave them the law.

[00:13:46]And I think reading this was one of the first times that I saw and understood in a different way that the law that God gave the people was because it was from the very heart of God. It was what  he wanted for them. He wanted good for them. And the law had protections in it. It had mercies. It showed them how to follow him and obey him, please him and bring glory to him.

[00:14:11] He wanted relationship  with them and he showed them how. He didn’t just let them wander and try and  figure it out themselves. He showed them what that looked like and he cared for them and he provided for them. And still they  walked away . They did not follow in obedience instead they rebelled.  I see here, they don’t deserve it. In other places, that’s harder to see. It’s, it’s harder to see  with Jacob and Esau because we see before anything happened before he did anything wrong, God chose. It’s easier to see here. God chose these people before they did anything wrong. But look, they’re showing that they’re not willing to follow.

[00:14:57] They’re not willing to seek after him, but God already chose. He already said that they were his people.

[00:15:07]And so he remained true to who he was.  Let’s look again at verse seventeen,  “But you are forgiving God gracious and compassionate, slow to anger and abounding in love. Therefore you did not desert them. Even when they cast for themselves an image of a calf and said, this is your God who brought you up out of Egypt or when they committed awful blasphemies.”

[00:15:36] Verse 19 “because of your great compassion, you did not abandon them in the desert by day the pillar of cloud did not cease to guide them on their path, nor the pillar of fire by night to shine on the way they were to take. You gave your good spirit to instruct them.

[00:15:57]You did not withhold your manna from their mouths and you gave them water for their thirst.  40 years, you sustain them in the desert. They lacked nothing. Their clothes did not wear out nor did their feet become swollen.”

[00:16:12] Many of you may know the story of the Israelites. They had this back and forth relationship where they start to follow God and do some of the things that he desires and then they totally rebel.  But God continues to have compassion and love to draw them back.  In the original language, this word compassion. I don’t know if I’m going to say it right, but it’s, Racham, meaning compassion and it is often translated according to your great mercies. When it says that God is compassionate, it says that he treated them according to his great mercies.

[00:16:52]Looking at compassion. Compassion is not just a feeling for people. It is  active.

[00:17:00]God  did not just feel bad for us. He had compassion. He treated us according to his great mercies. That’s who God is. He is a God who treats us according to his great mercies. And in his great mercies. He sent Jesus to die for our sin. His compassion is active and it flows right out of the character of who he is.

[00:17:29]God is a compassionate God. And he will have mercy on whom he desires to have mercy. And he will have compassion  on whom he desires to have compassion. His compassion is him treating us according to his mercies.

[00:17:46]You guys that is so humbling to me, that God being compassionate to one does not mean he is being mean to another. He is taking us, plucking us out of what we deserve and treating us  according to his mercies and not according to our actions. Back to Romans 16, ” it does not therefore depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy.”

[00:18:15]That’s where I want to leave us today. And like I said, I know that this is hard to understand. I am still wrestling through these  scriptures, but I encourage you guys to wrestle through the scriptures. Being in God’s word, is a step to knowing him and a step to trusting him.

[00:18:35]I’m going to close this in prayer.

[00:18:37] Dear God, you are good, compassionate and merciful Lord.  Help us when we want to ask why me and we want to look at the things in us that we think make us deserving, Lord, that you would help us to remember, it is not of us. It is of you. It is of your character, that you have compassion on us. Lord God  may we, instead of looking at ourselves and seeing the good that we think that we have done, may we turn to you in praise and say, thank you, Lord Jesus.

[00:19:10]It’s in jesus’ name that I pray. Amen.

[00:19:14]Thank you so much for joining  me today. I pray you’re blessed as we contemplated and struggled through looking at the compassion of God. If you want to continue looking at this topic I have included in the show notes, journaling questions, where you can do so. To find those show notes,  while you are on my channel.

[00:19:34] And you see a list of all the podcasts, click details next to this episode,  and you will find those there.  I hope that those questions help you continue to dig deeper  into looking at the compassion of God and seeing God’s compassion in your life.

[00:19:50]Erin: There is also a link there for a free journaling resource to help you look at God’s word alongside some questions and help you think through what is your next step?

[00:20:02]Friends.  If you enjoyed the show, please like, and subscribe and share with a friend.

[00:20:07] I hope to see you back here next time. Till then I want to leave you with this reminder from Ephesians two 10 “for we are God’s workmanship created in Christ Jesus to do good works, which he prepared beforehand that we should walk in them.”

[00:20:23]  Friends, I am praying for you as you keep on stepping.