Loving and Caring Christians

Scripture: Lamentations 1:1-12

Introduction: Our text this morning is from the Book of Lamentations, chapter 1, vs’s 1,8,11-12. Please listen as I read.

V1 How lonely sits the city that was full of people! How like a widow is she, who was great among the nations! The princess among the provinces has become a slave!

V8 Jerusalem has sinned gravely, therefore she has become vile. All who honored her despise her because they have seen her nakedness; yes, she sighs and turns away.

Vs 11-12 All her people sigh, They seek bread; They have given their valuables for food to restore life. “See, O Lord, and consider, For I am scorned.” “Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?

Jeremiah is describing in the 1st chapter of Lamentations the city of Jerusalem. Jerusalem had once been a proud city - a witness & a testimony about God to the world. Inside its walls families had lived, children had played, & love had been shared. There they had known peace & prosperity.

But in 586 B.C. that great city was destroyed, & the scene in the 1st chapter of Lamentations is a scene of destruction. The walls of the city & the homes in which families had lived had all been reduced to rubble. Mixed with the stones were the broken toys of children and the remnant of what were people’s homes.

As Jeremiah watched, he saw people passing by the ruins. He was appalled at their reaction, or, rather their lack of reaction. They did not cry, nor did they laugh. They simply walked on by, showing no emotion or concern at all.

Jeremiah looks at them & speaks the words of vs. 12, "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?" They were insensitive to it all, but I wonder, how sensitive are we?

Maybe we need to take a test - not an I.Q. test, but an S.Q. test - a Sensitivity Quotient test. Just how sensitive are we?

What does it do to you when you hear about thousands of men, women & children that were slaughtered in the Sudan?

What does it do to you when you hear that one-third of the world’s population will go to bed hungry tonight, & many will die of starvation?

But more importantly, does it mean anything at all when we are told that there are millions of people in the world who are lost & will die without a saving knowledge of our Lord & Savior? Just how sensitive are we?

Does it mean anything to you that an impending Judgment is coming and there are those who haven’t herd the Three Angels Message? Just how serious are we?

I have a proposition in this sermon. I want to state it for you & I hope you will listen carefully & remember it. The proposition is this, "If we are children of God - if we claim to follow Jesus - then we must be loving, caring people."

Now, think about that proposition, & let me draw some conclusions from it. The first conclusion is this:

I. THERE ARE MANY PEOPLE IN THE WORLD WHO ARE UNCARING.

ILL. Years ago, there was a woman who drowned in the waters of Lake Michigan? As she was drowning she cried for help, & three able-bodied men could hear her cries - but they just watched her drown.

Well, someone called the rescue squad, & when they drug her lifeless body out of the waters of Lake Michigan, they asked these three men, "Why didn’t you help her?" Their response was revealing. They said, "The water was too cold."

All of us here recall stories about women being attacked in parking lots, crying for help - while neighbors closed their doors & windows because they didn’t want to "get involved."

So the question is not, "Are we or aren’t we sensitive to the needs of others?" The question is "Why are we so insensitive?" "Why are we a society of people that seems not to care about one another?"

A. I think the answers to that question are two in number.

ILL. Victor Frankel, who was a prisoner of Nazi Germany during WWII, wrote about his experiences, & in his book he tells about the emotional stages a prisoner goes through during captivity. He wrote that the final & most awful stage of all is one where the prisoner actually ends up murdering his own emotions.

"Because," says Frankel, "you can only view human suffering so long. If you are sensitive - if you are compassionate - then it hurts. So, finally, when you have seen so much suffering, you kill your own emotions. The result is that you can watch your friend being knocked down & picked up, & knocked down again, & never look the other way & never feel anything."

It becomes a defense mechanism that we use to shield ourselves, because we don’t want to hurt any more.

Maybe our all-pervading coverage of the news of the world has done that for us. Every time we pick up the newspaper - every time we turn on our TV, we hear of more human suffering.

Maybe we have heard too much - maybe we have cried all the tears that we can cry - maybe we have felt all the sympathy that we can feel - until finally, we have murdered our own emotions. And now we can sit stoically, & look at it all & never weep - never register any emotion at all.

Maybe that is the safe place to be - a place where we can’t hurt any more.

B. Then I think we are an insensitive people because it costs something to be sensitive - it costs something to care.

ILL. A prime example of that is the story of the Good Samaritan, which Jesus told.

Do you remember the story of the man who was beaten and left for dead? Three other men pass by and all three noticed his need.

You see, the two who passed by on the other side were busy people, can you relate? But not even a dying man would keep them from meeting their appointments on time. They had just as much money in their pockets after they saw the man bleeding & near unto death as they had before. They went on their way & it didn’t cost them anything.

But the Samaritan, who dared to stop, found that it cost him a great deal. It cost him time - it cost him possessions - he gave of his oil & of his wine to bind up the man’s wounds. It cost him money because he paid the Innkeeper to keep the man until he was well again. He was late for his next appointment, & probably he was ridiculed because of what he had done.

Yet, he is the only one in the whole story that we call "good." It always costs something, doesn’t it, when you dare to care?

ILL. Dawson Trotman died a few years ago. Maybe you have heard of him. He was the founder of the Navigator Program. Trotman was convinced that the hope of the church was for older Christians to take younger Christians under their wings & teach them - in much the same way that Jesus taught His disciples.

Trotman died tragically. He died from drowning. Yet, he was an expert swimmer. Two girls were drowning, & he dove in to help them. He was able to rescue one, bringing her safely out of the water. Then he dove back into the murky waters, searching for the second girl - but he never surfaced. Finally, they drug the bottom of the lake & found both bodies.

Time magazine had a write-up about his death & in it they said, "Trotman was always lifting somebody else up."

But it costs something to do that, doesn’t it? Sometimes it may even cost you your life. Jesus said something about that, "He who saves his life shall lose it, & he who loses his life for my sake shall find it."

SUM. Dawson Trotman cared. But sadly, the first conclusion that I draw from the proposition is that there are many people in the world who are uncaring.

The second conclusion is this:

II. WHENEVER WE ARE UNCARING WE PLAY INTO THE HANDS OF EVIL.

ILL. C.S. Lewis, in his classic book, Screwtape Letters, records a conversation as taking place between Satan & his nephew, Wormwood, an apprentice devil.

It goes something like this: Satan is talking to his nephew & he said, "Now, your task, your assignment, is not to go out & make bad people. I’ll take care of that. I’ll supply the world with an abundant number of evil people to do evil things.
"But what I want you to do is to cause good people to do nothing. That is all you have to do. Just make all of your people comfortable - cause them to be content with things as they are. If they ever begin to think seriously about anything of great importance, then get them to think instead about what they are going to eat at their next meal. Cause them to worry about their digestive system.

"Get their attention off of whatever is important & keep them comfortable. You just keep good men doing nothing - I’ll supply the world with evil men."

You know, Wormwood has done a good job, hasn’t he?

ILL. William Wilberforce was a member of the English parliament who vigorously crusaded against slavery in the late 1700’s. In fact, in 1789 he authored & presented a bill before Parliament that would have made it unlawful for Englishmen to sell slaves to the brand-new United States of America.

Wilberforce presented his bill twice in Parliament, & it was tabled both times. But on the third occasion he had crusaded & worked so hard that he was convinced he finally had more than enough votes for his bill to pass.

On the night that it came up for a vote for the third time, a comic opera premiered in London. Twelve members of Parliament who supported Wilberforce’s bill went to the opera instead of Parliament. And at the very time they were applauding the new opera - the vote was taken & the bill was defeated, 74-70.

I wonder how much the history of our nation was affected, how much misery occurred - how many suffered - because 12 men went to the opera instead of taking care of their responsibilities?

And today, as terrible as it is, our greatest threat is not materialism or communism or Islam. I’m convinced that our greatest threat arises from good men & women who are children of God, but who are insensitive to the needs of this world & who do nothing about them. You see, for us to be insensitive or indifferent is to play into the hands of evil.

The third conclusion that I draw is this: And it is a positive one.

III. THERE ARE GOOD AND CARING PEOPLE IN THE WORLD.

There are good & caring people in the world & we need to remember that.

ILL. I read the story of Henry Dunant. Henry Dunant was born in 1828 in Switzerland. He was born of wealthy parents, born with a silver spoon in his mouth, so to speak. He could have lived a life of lazy luxury.

Yet, Dunant was a caring, compassionate young man who visited the sick & poor. As a young man he established an organization in Switzerland called, "The Young Men’s Christian Union," designed to help teenage boys.

When he became an adult he went into business on his own, & did very well. One day he had an appointment with Napoleon III, whose armies were at war in Italy.

Dunant traveled to Italy to meet with Napoleon III. But on the way he passed the latest battlefield & saw the atrocities of war. He looked at bayonets & guns rusting in the mud. He saw the bodies of 40,000 soldiers, most of them dead, but some of them still alive. He heard their cries of agony & pain. Some were cursing as they breathed their last breath of life.

Dunant couldn’t turn away from that. He went to the nearest town & persuaded the townspeople to turn the church into a first-aid station. He persuaded citizens to help him & they took stretchers & went out into the battlefield & brought the wounded back.

He worked side by side with the doctors for three weeks, with almost no sleep - ministering to the wounded & to their needs.

Dunant finally went home, but he couldn’t forget what he had experienced. So he started writing - to this nation & to that - to all the influential people he knew & to others.

Finally, one day in Geneva, Switzerland, to an international gathering, he presented a resolution that we know today as the Geneva Convention, signed by 22 nations, granting immunity to doctors & nurses & ambulances so that they could go out into the battlefields & bring back the wounded & dying without fear of being shot at.

They adopted as their symbol the red cross upon a white background. Today, wherever there are floods, wherever there are tornadoes, wherever there is war - there is the Red Cross.

You knew about the Red Cross, but did you know that it all started because Henry Dunant could not shrug his shoulders at the misery that he saw? Did you know it was all because a young man couldn’t forget - he couldn’t pass by without doing something?

Conclusion: My proposition is this: "If we are children of God - if we claim to follow Jesus - then we must be loving, caring people."

So, we may become weary in well-doing, but we will continue to do well. Our shoulders may sometimes slump because we are tired, but they will never shrug in indifference.

And when someone says, "Is it nothing to you, all you who pass by?" The child of God will respond, "It is something to me. I cannot pass by on the other side. I care because He cared. I love, because He first loved me."

Hymn: # 579 Tis Love That Makes Us Happy

Hymn: # 251 He Lives
Children’s Story

The Emperor’s Seeds

Once there was an emperor in the Far East who was growing old and knew it was Coming time to choose his successor.

Instead of choosing one of his assistants or one of his own children, he decided to do something different.

He called all the young people in the kingdom together one day.

He said, "It has come time for me to step down and to choose the next emperor. I have decided to choose one of you."

The kids were shocked!

But the emperor continued. "I am going to give each one of you a seed today.
One seed. It is a very special seed.

I want you to go home, plant the seed, water it and come back here one year from today with what you have grown from this one seed.

I will then judge the plants that you bring to me, and the one I choose will be the next emperor of the kingdom!"

There was one boy named Ling who was there that day and he, like the others, received a seed.

He went home and excitedly told his mother the whole story.

She helped him get a pot and some planting soil, and he planted the seed and watered it carefully. Every day he would water it and watch to see if it had grown.

After about three weeks, some of the other youths began to talk about their seeds and the plants that were beginning to grow.

Ling kept going home and checking his seed, but nothing ever grew. Three weeks, four weeks, five weeks went by. Still nothing.

By now others were talking about their plants but Ling didn’t have a plant, and he felt like a failure.

Six months went by, still nothing in Ling’s pot. He just knew he had killed his seed.

Everyone else had trees and tall plants, but he had nothing.

Ling didn’t say anything to his friends, however. He just kept waiting for his seed to grow.

A year finally went by and all the youths of the kingdom brought their plants to the emperor for inspection.

Ling told his mother that he wasn’t going to take an empty pot.

But she encouraged him to go, and to take his pot, and to be honest about what happened.

Ling felt sick to his stomach, but he trusted his mother was right. He took his empty pot to the palace.

When Ling arrived, he was amazed at the variety of plants grown by all the other youths. They were beautiful, in all shapes and sizes.

Ling put his empty pot on the floor and many of the other kids laughed at him. A few felt sorry for him and just said, "Hey, nice try."

When the emperor arrived, he surveyed the room and greeted the young people.

Ling just tried to hide in the back.

"My, what great plants, trees and flowers you have grown," said the emperor. Today, one of you will be appointed the next emperor!"

All of a sudden, the emperor spotted Ling at the back of the room with his empty pot. He ordered his guards to bring him to the front.

Ling was terrified. "The emperor knows I’m a failure!

Maybe he will have me killed!"

When Ling got to the front, the Emperor asked his name. "My name is Ling," he replied.

All the kids were laughing and making fun of him.

The emperor asked everyone to quiet down. He looked at Ling, and then announced to the crowd, "Behold your new emperor! His name is Ling!"

Ling couldn’t believe it. Ling couldn’t even grow his seed.
How could he be the new emperor?

Then the emperor said, "One year ago today, I gave everyone here a seed. I told you to take the seed, plant it, water it, and bring it back to me today.

But I gave you all boiled seeds which would not grow.

All of you, except Ling, have brought me trees and plants and flowers. When you found that the seed would not grow, you substituted another seed for the one I gave you.

Ling was the only one with the courage and honesty to bring me a pot with my seed in it.

Therefore, he is the one who will be the new emperor!"