Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 134 - The Responsibilities and tests of Leadership - compassion, indignation, and sorrow.

Class Outline:

Title: Joshua and Judges: The doctrine of leadership part 134 - The Responsibilities and tests of Leadership - compassion, indignation, and sorrow.  

 

Announcements / opening prayer:

 

 

The test of failure in leadership. All fail, it is not the failure but how we respond to it that makes leaders of us.

 

This does not condone failure but simply states its reality. Peter looked as if his leadership potential was fully crushed when he denied the Lord, but it was not. But to be a leader he had to first get over his guilt and move on following the Lord.

 

A leader cannot be constantly failing, though we understand that an actual frequency cannot be put on failure that equals disqualification. How can he lead the way if he is hardly ever on the way? But he will fail from time to time and he must handle that in grace. He will make wrong decisions and go the wrong way, but his humility will allow him to make adjustments rather than stubbornly staying the wrong path.

 

The trial of a jealous rival(s).

 

Moses faced this several times, most prominently from Korah.

 

Though this is not a full list of all the trials that a leader can face, it is enough for us to be prepared to lead in the midst of opposition, both without and within. In every case the battle is the Lord's. It is enough for us to continue to pick up our crosses and follow Christ.

 

The responsibilities and trials in Christian leadership will mimic our Lord's. He stood firmly against evil and had compassion and benevolence upon His creatures who were beset by evil.

 

To assist in relieving another from the ravages of evil will result in attacks from that evil. To have inward compassion from agape love resulting in benevolence to others will be the result of complete selflessness, servitude, and exhaustive sacrifice.

 

Yet the good leader is not a pile of mushy compassion akin to pacifism, but also has indignant anger towards the evil that besets mankind and can destroy the spiritual lives of those whom he leads.

 

Compassion and righteous indignation are not opposite ends of the spectrum, but stand together in the makeup of the effective leader.

 

Moral judgments or Christian ethics are not merely intellectual, but involve approval or disapproval. It is impossible for a believer with Christian ethics to stand in the presence of perceived wrong indifferent and unmoved. Within the scope of the arena of human beings, where evil rages and so many face great misery by its hand, the Christian leader cannot sit silent, but rather must stand firm, compassionate and fully sacrificial for its victims and righteously and indignantly angry against the evil itself. This was our Lord and He is the only one to follow.

 

Yet before we speak of the anger, we must be sure to know, just as in comparing anything ascribed to the Son of God in light of man's equivalent that they are not remotely equivalent. The indignant anger of our Lord is not at all the same as the anger of mankind, which is always malicious both in intent and in result. And in like manner, His compassion is not remotely the same as man's.

 

Both of these virtues carry with them a certain amount of sorrow.

 

An indignant attitude towards evil and the people who implement it runs alongside a sorrow and compassion for the ones who are enslaved to it.

 

Compassion upon the distress of others carries with it a sorrow for the many who will not chose our Lord but another. They will be forever distressed. And then there is the sorrow of love for those who suffer in this life due to the evil that has beset this fallen world in sin and death.

 

The leader carries with him a bit more of these burdens than non leaders, but he must be resolute and find divine joy in the midst of them so that he does not grow weary and lose heart. He must learn to bear these burdens in the way our Lord did, by depending fully on the Father and the Holy Spirit, and knowing that Christ has born all burdens and temptations, yet leaving a small bit of this battle for each of us, so that we may know Him more. "My yoke is easy and My burden is light." They are not worthy to be compared to the glory that is to be revealed to us.

 

The most frequent emotion ascribed to our Lord is compassion. The Greek term (splagchnizomai) is unknown in Greek classics.

 

It was not a virtue that the world held in any esteem.

 

His inward movement of compassion always resulted in an external act of benevolence. He not only pities the miseries of His creatures but He relieves them.

 

Whether it was individual distress or man's universal misery, it moved Him within and also moved Him to action (compassion = benevolence).

 

MAR 1:40 And a leper came to Him, beseeching Him and falling on his knees before Him, and saying to Him, "If You are willing, You can make me clean."

 

MAR 1:41 And moved with compassion, He stretched out His hand, and touched him, and said to him, "I am willing; be cleansed." 

 

MAR 1:42 And immediately the leprosy left him and he was cleansed.

 

The same compassion welled up in Him at the appeal of two blind men and the sight of a bereaved widow wailing at the coffin of her only son.

 

At the sight of the misery of the multitude:  

 

MAR 6:30 And the apostles gathered together with Jesus; and they reported to Him all that they had done and taught.

 

MAR 6:31 And He said to them, "Come away by yourselves to a lonely place and rest a while." (For there were many people coming and going, and they did not even have time to eat.)

 

MAR 6:32 And they went away in the boat to a lonely place by themselves.

 

MAR 6:33 And the people saw them going, and many recognized them, and they ran there together on foot from all the cities, and got there ahead of them.

 

MAR 6:34 And when He went ashore, He saw a great multitude, and He felt compassion for them because they were like sheep without a shepherd; and He began to teach them many things.

 

MAR 6:35 And when it was already quite late, His disciples came up to Him and began saying, "The place is desolate and it is already quite late;

 

MAR 6:36 send them away so that they may go into the surrounding countryside and villages and buy themselves something to eat."

 

MAR 6:37 But He answered and said to them, "You give them something to eat!" And they said to Him," Shall we go and spend two hundred denarii on bread and give them something to eat?"

 

MAR 6:38 And He said to them, "How many loaves do you have? Go look!" And when they found out, they said, "Five and two fish."

 

MAR 6:39 And He commanded them all to recline by groups on the green grass.

 

MAR 6:40 And they reclined in companies of hundreds and of fifties.

 

MAR 6:41 And He took the five loaves and the two fish, and looking up toward heaven, He blessed the food and broke the loaves and He kept giving them to the disciples to set before them; and He divided up the two fish among them all.

 

MAR 6:42 And they all ate and were satisfied.

 

MAR 6:43 And they picked up twelve full baskets of the broken pieces, and also of the fish.

 

MAR 6:44 And there were five thousand men who ate the loaves.

 

He states His own compassion at the hunger pangs of the great many who have come long distances to hear Him.

 

MAR 8:1 In those days again, when there was a great multitude and they had nothing to eat, He called His disciples and said to them,

 

MAR 8:2 "I feel compassion for the multitude because they have remained with Me now three days, and have nothing to eat;

 

MAR 8:3 and if I send them away hungry to their home, they will faint on the way; and some of them have come from a distance."

 

But when we take in the whole of the gospel narratives we would not conclude that Jesus was only moved by the physical suffering of mankind. If He came to feed the hungry then there would never have been a hungry person ever again.

 

It is the spiritual destitution of the world that makes for and enables the evil in the world.

 

People go hungry because of other evil people or because of the cursed earth (famine, natural disaster, lack of water). Sin and death and the curse upon this world is what Jesus came to correct, and that He did with His own life, a life that is by nature divine, but he emptied Himself of the characteristics of deity and limited Himself to humanity so that He may deliver all of humanity.

 

The evil He witnessed that weighed heavy on the captives to whom He was to free, moved Him with compassion. This is fully spiritual and not physical, though the physical is affected.