Matthew 5:7-Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.
Micah 6:6-8-With what shall I come before the Lord, And bow myself before the High God? Shall I come before Him with burnt offerings, With calves a year old?
Will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, Ten thousand rivers of oil? Shall I give my firstborn for my transgression, The fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?
He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you But to do justly, To love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God? (NKJV)
Micah 6:6-8-6 What can we bring to the LORD ? What kind of offerings should we give him? Should we bow before God with offerings of yearling calves?
Should we offer him thousands of rams and ten thousand rivers of olive oil?
Should we sacrifice our firstborn children to pay for our sins?
No, O people, the LORD has told you what is good, and this is what he requires of you: to do what is right, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. (NLT)
Matthew 9:12-13-When Jesus heard that, He said to them, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick.
But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice.’ For I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners, to repentance.”
Matthew 12:7-But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the guiltless. For the Son of Man is Lord even of the Sabbath.”
Now think about this a doctor tending to a sick person is not necessarily an act of mercy.
It is his or her obligation. It is their job. It is something they are called to do, now maybe they had the desire to help others, but it’s still something that is expected of them.
So what is Jesus saying?
What does it mean to be merciful?
Being merciful is not being a door mat or not facing up to the reality that someone is taken advantage of you!!
To be merciful is when we don’t give up on someone, we may get mad at them, we may not can believe they did something again, but we do not give up hope for them!
We believe they can change, we believe that, that relationship is worth saving!
When we are merciful, we are willing to give them a second chance, a third chance and so forth, but when we begin to count how many times we have been merciful to someone, I think it may not be mercy that we are extending to them!
When someone has done something to us, we can only think of what they have done to us, but when we are merciful towards them, we see past their sin and see the sinner, we see them for who they could be, not who they are right now!
None of us wants to be remembered for sins, for our mistakes, for our faults, we don‘t want those things to define us!
Lets say, you said a hurtful word to a love one, then you died, you would not want that one word, you said to them, to define who you are, are what kind of person you are, are how much you care for them, or how your relationship was with them!!
We want people to look past our mistakes, our sins, our faults and see us for who we really are, in other words extend mercy to us!!
A man was caught committing a crime and when he went to trial, his lawyer leaned over to him and said, “Don’t worry, today I am going to get you justice!” and the criminal said, “I don’t want justice, I want mercy!”
When we want mercy, when we want another chance, then it should be easy for us to give mercy to those around us!!
When we give mercy to others, we are counting on God to change them, we are believing that He can change them!!!
We are giving them hope, a hope that things can be different, a hope that things can change, a hope that things can get better!!
We are not dismissing what they did, or letting them off the hook, we are not saying “Yes” to their sin but we are saying “Yes” to the sinner!!
Sometimes the one thing someone needs to help them change is, someone to believe in them!!
That’s what mercy can do for us and thru us!!
Jacob received grace but David received mercy!
God showed such remarkable mercy to King David, especially in the terrible ways in which he sinned. One reason God gave him such mercy was because David was notably merciful to King Saul, and on several occasions was kind to a very unworthy Saul.
