Matthew 5:1-12 Now when he saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them, saying: 3 "Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. 7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. 8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. 9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called sons of God. 10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. 11 "Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me. 12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you
Introduction
A weighty matter of the law
Did you know the commands in God’s Word have different weights? Some are more weighty, more important – others lighter and less important? In Matthew 23 Jesus was rebuking the Pharisees and Scribes for following the less important matters of the law and neglecting what Jesus called the weightier matters of the law. And one of the weightiest of all is mercy.
Matthew 23:23 Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices … But you have neglected the weightier matters of the law--justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former.
Giving your tithe is less important than justice, mercy, and faithfulness. That is not to say the less important commands are optional; but it is to say there are some things in the law that are supremely important. And mercy is one of them.
The mercy of God
And that is no surprise given the emphasis on God’s mercy. It is hard to overstate the importance God places on His own mercy. When Moses asked God to show him His glory, God said, “OK,” …
Exodus 34:6 And he passed in front of Moses, proclaiming, "The LORD, The LORD, the merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness…”
That is the glory of God. He could have said, “The LORD, The LORD, holy and just, abounding in anger over sin” but instead He placed the focus on His mercy. And that description of God dominates the Old Testament portrait of God’s nature.
Psalm 103:8 The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, abounding in love.
Psalm 86:15 But you, O Lord, are a merciful and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.
Nehemiah 9:17 you are a forgiving God, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love.
Joel 2:13 Return to the Lord your God, for he is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in love
Nehemiah 9:31 But in your great mercy you did not put an end to them … for you are a gracious and merciful God.
Psalm 145:8 The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and rich in love.
2 Chronicles 30:9 the Lord your God is gracious and merciful.
Psalm 111:4 the Lord is gracious and merciful.
Deuteronomy 4:31 the Lord your God is a merciful God
Psalm 116:5 The Lord is gracious and righteous; our God is full of mercy.
Numbers 14:18 'The Lord is slow to anger, abounding in love and forgiving sin and rebellion.
That is just the tip of the iceberg. We could go all day long with this.
We know God is holy, and we know God is just, and wrathful – so why does He not give Moses a little more balanced view of Himself when Moses asks to see His glory? God’s wrath and anger are subordinated to His mercy and kindness. Does God set His holiness and justice aside in order to show love? Never! His justice must be satisfied. However He made provision for His justice to be satisfied, and therefore delights in setting forth His mercy at the forefront of the revelation of His glory.
And that fact about God – the fact that God was more likely to show mercy than to pour out wrath – that was so predictable that it was a huge irritation to people who were unmerciful. It is what irritated Jonah. When the enemies of Israel repented and God had mercy on them, Jonah said, “I knew it!”
Jonah 4:2 He prayed to the Lord, "O Lord, is this not what I said when I was still at home? That is why I was so quick to flee to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger and abounding in love
“I knew it. From the first day You told me to go tell the Ninivites that You were about to destroy them in Your wrath, I knew exactly what would happen. I would warn them, You would grant them repentance, then You would have mercy on them.” God is so merciful it drives unmerciful people crazy.
That is the clearest portrait of God in the Old Testament. And so is it any surprise in the New Testament when Christmas arrives and God takes on human flesh, and His whole life is nothing but one, constant, continual stream of mercy? Two blind men in Matthew 9 call out to Him, "Have mercy on us, Son of David!" “OK,” and He gives them sight. A Canaanite woman with a demonized daughter in Matthew 15, “Lord, Son of David, have mercy on me!” “OK,” and He casts out the demon. The guy whose son is having seizures in Matthew 17, “Lord, have mercy on my son!” “OK,” and He heals him. Some other blind men in Matthew 20: "Lord, Son of David, have mercy on us!" Each time He heals them.
There are a million different ways He could have displayed His divine power. A million different kinds of miracles He could have done to prove He was God. But mostly His miracles were acts of mercy, because He wanted to show us not only the power of God, but also the heart of God.
Matthew 9:36 When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
Did Jesus show wrath over sin? Did He speak of judgment and hell? Yes, Jesus talked more about hell than any other person in Scripture. But still, the greater emphasis was on mercy.
John 3:17 God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.
So God’s mercy and love are supremely important. That is the primary way He acts toward us. He does not strike a balance between wrath and mercy. He satisfies His own wrath in the cross so He can freely pour out the riches of His mercy on those who believe.
So it is no light matter what we are doing here this morning. We have been studying verse by verse through the Sermon on the Mount and we come this morning to Matthew 5:7 – the fifth beatitude.
Matthew 5:7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
We are on standing on holy ground this morning because we are about to delve into what Jesus said is one of the weightier matters of the law.
What is mercy?
Relieving misery
Let’s begin with a definition – what is mercy? Mercy is relieving misery. It is an action word. It is when love and compassion in your heart drive you to take action and help a person who is in trouble. Jesus has been using Old Testament language to formulate these beatitudes, and this one is no exception. The language seems to me to come from Proverbs 14:21-22.
Proverbs 14:21 He who has contempt for his neighbor sins, but blessed is he who is merciful to the afflicted. 22 Do not those who plan evil go astray? But those who plan what is good find mercy and faithfulness.
Mercy is something shown to the afflicted. And when you show mercy to the afflicted you will be shown mercy by God. The classic portrait of mercy is the one Jesus painted in the parable of the Good Samaritan. In that parable Jesus told a story about a man who had been robbed and beaten, and three men walked by and saw him lying half dead in the ditch by the side of the road. And according to verse 37 the first two failed to have mercy and the third did have mercy.
Luke 10:31 A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. 32 So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.
Ok, so that is what non-mercy looks like. Now here is mercy:
35 But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. 34 He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, took him to an inn and took care of him. 35 The next day he took out two days’ wages and gave it to the innkeeper. 'Look after him,' he said, 'and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.'
It is a beautiful portrait of mercy because you can see it come from the inside out. It starts with genuine pity and compassion in his heart (v.33). It is not just a forced religious duty - he has real compassion in his heart. But that compassion does not just stay locked up in his heart - it compels him to act. He takes action to relieve the man’s misery at significant cost to himself. It takes a huge chunk of time out of his day, not to mention the two days’ wages he spends on the guy. It is one thing to buy someone a hamburger at McDonalds, but to fork out two or three hundred dollars off the cuff like that – this guy’s compassion is definitely driving him to action. That is mercy. Mercy is compassion in the heart that drives you to take action to relieve someone’s misery.
A use of power
And it is always a use of power. If you have no ability to help, then you are not responsible. But when you are in a position of power, that power must be used for mercy. It does not have to be a lot of power. The Samaritan was not a king, or rich or anything special as far as we know. He was just a guy walking down the street who could help.
How much power you have varies from circumstance to circumstance. Sometimes you have the upper hand and other times you do not. For example, maybe someone is telling lies about you and that person has a large, widespread hearing. They have the power; you don’t. You need them to show you mercy.
But then at one point you get into a conversation with a couple friends who are on your side. And they are listening to you, and no one is there to defend the other guy while you talk. These friends are going to form their opinion based on what you say. Now you have the power and that guy needs you to show him mercy.
And there is one place where you have total power – inside your own mind. There are a lot of trials that go on in the courtroom of your own heart, and in that courtroom you are the prosecuting attorney and the judge and jury. That other person has no advocate in that courtroom – they are totally at your mercy. If you decide to focus only on their faults and ignore good things about them, there is nothing they can do about that. Their only hope in the courtroom of your mind is for you to show them mercy in the way you think about them.
And Expression of love
So mercy is a use of power. And it is also an expression of love. The reason Jesus told the story of the Good Samaritan was to answer a question that the Scribe had presented to Jesus about what it means to love your neighbor. What does it look like to love your neighbor? And Jesus told a story about showing mercy to someone in trouble. So from that we see that mercy is an expression of love. Love has a lot of expressions. It expresses itself one way toward people who are happy, another way toward people who are sad, another way toward people in need, another way toward the lost, etc. And mercy is the way love responds toward people who are in trouble.
Forgiveness
And there are a whole lot of different kinds of trouble people can get into. They can be like the guy in the story and get mugged and left for dead in a ditch. They can get sick, injured, run out of money, they can be treated unfairly, unjustly accused, lose their job – there are a million different kinds of trouble. But there is one kind that is the worst of all. It is worse than lying semi-conscious in a ditch with broken bones, bleeding to death with no one to help you. The most severe and horrible calamity that can strike you is to be guilty of sin. (I don’t mean to feel guilty – I am not talking about guilt feelings; I am talking about actual guilt.)
And if that is the worst calamity, then the greatest expression of mercy is forgiveness. When someone sins against you and you forgive that person, that is the supreme example of mercy. In fact, many times the word mercy in Scripture is used as a synonym for forgiveness.
In Matthew 18 Jesus told a parable about forgiveness. There was a king who called one of his servants to settle accounts. This servant owed the king ten thousand talents, which is equivalent to about ten trillion dollars in our money. So even if the guy could gather all the money in existence at that time he could still never pay this debt.
But the king has compassion on this man and ends up forgiving the debt altogether. He lets the guy go free without paying a single dime. So that servant then goes out and immediately runs in to a fellow servant who owes him some money – one hundred days’ wages. So for us that might be something like $10,000 to $20,000 – a pretty significant debt, but nothing compared to what he had just been forgiven.
And at that point a shocking thing happens. The man forgets the fact that he had just been forgiven his $10 trillion debt and refuses to give this guy a break. He chokes him and throws him in prison. Word quickly gets back to the king, and here is what the king says to this guy:
Matthew 18:32 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I forgave all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?'
Can you see the close relationship between mercy and forgiveness?
We are never more in need of mercy than when we sin. You are literally at the mercy of the person you sinned against. King David committed his horrible sins and was finally broken over his sin and he prayed a prayer of repentance in Psalm 51. And the very first thing he did in that prayer was beg for mercy.
Psalm 51:1 Have mercy on me, O God
When someone sins against you that person owes you a debt. Justice requires that they make it right and restore everything you lost – which is impossible. If they stole some money they could give that back, but they cannot restore the hours of anxiety, tears, sorrow – they cannot do anything that will ever make up for your pain and suffering. When someone sins against you they owe you a debt that is impossible to pay. Justice requires something of them that they have no way of giving.
And so they are a lot like the guy in the ditch. They are in trouble and they are helpless. And in Jesus’ parable He described that in very vivid terms – the one servant was choking the other servant. When someone sins against you, you have them down on the ground with your hand around their throat. And there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.
Being helpless on the ground with your enemy’s hand on your throat is worse than being beaten up and thrown in a ditch. And when that happens there is only one person in this world who can have mercy on that poor soul who sinned against you, and that is you. No one else can cancel that person’s debt to you. Any passer-by can have mercy on a guy in a ditch, but only you can have mercy on the person who has sinned against you. So it is not hard to see the connection between mercy and forgiveness.
Soul mercy
Thomas Watson calls this “soul-mercy.” “We must be merciful to the souls of others. This is a spiritual alms. Indeed soul-mercy is the chief of mercies. The soul is the most precious thing; it is a vessel of honor; … The soul has the blood of God to redeem it, the image of God to beautify it. Therefore … that mercy which is shown to the soul must needs be the greatest.” The soul is the place of greatest need and therefore spiritual mercy is the greatest mercy of all. Patch up a guy’s bleeding body, and you have made him more comfortable for the remainder of this brief life on earth. But in a few years that body you patched up will be in the ground. Show mercy to his soul and you have patched up something that will exist forever.
For God’s Sake
This particular beatitude has made some people a little uneasy because at first it does not seem to be distinctly Christian. Help the afflicted? Be nice to people who are suffering? Every religion in the world says to do that.
And the idea that we get mercy from God as a result of being merciful – that sounds like earning your salvation. Since when do we get to heaven by being nice to people? That is the false religion of the world, not the gospel of grace.
But obviously Jesus is not teaching a system where you earn your way to heaven by being nice to people. That cannot be what He is saying, because if I deserved to go to heaven based on all the mercy I show people, then what do I need mercy for? If I am so good that I deserve heaven, then all I need to get there would be justice – give me what I deserve. But what Jesus is saying here is that even after you have lived a life of showing mercy, even then you are still in need of mercy. Even after living a whole life of compassion and love and helping the poor and afflicted, still I arrive on Judgment Day having to beg for mercy so I will not be cast into hell. So the fact that the reward He promises is mercy shows that He is not talking about a system where you earn or deserve favor with God.
So what does this mean? I think the reason for the uneasiness and confusion when Jesus says things like this without any explanation, is a failure to remember that Jesus spoke out of the context of the Old Testament background.
Rahab
Where in the Old Testament does Scripture teach the concept of “blessed are the merciful”? One of them is the account of Rahab. Rahab risked her own life to show mercy to the Israelite spies. And then she made this request:
Joshua 2:12 Now then, please swear to me by the Lord that you will show mercy to my family, because I have shown mercy to you.
14 the men assured her. "… we will treat you mercifully and faithfully when the Lord gives us the land.”
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Rahab was merciful to God’s people and as a result she received mercy.
And that gives us some insight into the nature of mercy in the Jewish mindset. Rahab was spared, not because she had a policy of showing mercy to spies in general, but because she feared the God of Israel and wanted to be on the side of His people. Her mercy was a direct expression of her faith in the true God. And when they showed her mercy in return it was not because they had a general policy of showing mercy to all Canaanites, but because of her faith in God. Those who rejected God received no mercy.
Joshua 11:20 For it was the Lord himself who hardened their hearts to wage war against Israel, so that he might destroy them totally, exterminating them without mercy, as the Lord had commanded Moses.
We do not have time to go through it, but you see the same thing in the book of Ruth. Both Ruth and Boaz were blessed because of the mercy they showed, and it was mercy that was not merely a general altruism and humanitarianism; but it was mercy that expressed faith in the God of Israel. So the Old Testament context out of which Jesus is speaking defined mercy in that way. Mercy is showing kindness to the afflicted and needy – especially the people of God who are afflicted and needy – and doing so out of fear of and love for the true God.
In other words, it is when you are nice to people because of Christ. Being nice to people in order to show off, being nice to earn your way to heaven, being nice to make money, being nice to people so people will be nice to you, being nice just to pacify your conscience – none of that is true mercy. Mercy is being nice to people for the sake of Christ. It is compassion and love that arises from the heart out of faith in the one, true God.
What makes a command important?
Symbolic Laws vs. Direct Expressions of Love
That is why it is so important. I began by talking about the weightier matters of the law. The rabbis back then thought that the weightier laws were the ones about your direct relationship with God (especially sacrifice and ceremonial rituals), and commands about how to interact with people were secondary. Prayer, worship, praise, seeking God – those things were most important. And commands about how to treat people were also important, but not as important.
And Jesus says, “No, it is not whether a law is about dealing with God or dealing with people that gives it more or less weight, it is whether that law is a direct expression of love or just a symbol.” Water baptism is a symbol. Is it important? Yes. But what is more important – going into the water, or the pledge of good conscience before God in your heart that baptism symbolizes? What is more important – the symbol or the reality? Obviously the reality. If you are the thief on the cross and there is no way for you to be baptized before you die, you still go to paradise with Christ. You can have the reality without the symbol. But on the other hand – what happens if you have the symbol without the reality? What if you get baptized but have no faith in your heart? You die and go to hell wet.
When the symbol reflects the reality of the heart it becomes just as important as the reality in the heart. That is true in everything we do. An engagement ring is a symbol. If a man gives a woman that symbol and she accepts it as a representation of what is in her heart, it has tremendous meaning. But if she accepts it with no desire or intention of marrying him, then her accepting it becomes a terrible thing.
That is what God meant in Hosea 6:6 when He said I desire mercy, not sacrifice. How can God command sacrifices in His law and then turn around and say – “I desire mercy, not sacrifice”? When God says that, He is talking about the symbol divorced from the meaning. Sacrifice as intended in the law, as a symbol of genuine worship, did delight God very much. But mere sacrifice – mere symbols without the reality in the heart was like taking the engagement ring without any love or willingness to marry – it is offensive to the bridegroom.
And Jesus was constantly trying to teach that to the Pharisees. In Matthew 9 the Pharisees are looking down their noses at a bunch of repentant sinners and Jesus gives them a homework assignment.
Matthew 9:13 go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'
They thought what really mattered was all their religious trappings and practices. And it did not even register on their radar screen that there might be something wrong with them looking down their noses at a bunch of repentant sinners who had been involved in especially gross and disgusting kinds of sins. And so Jesus gives the homework assignment. Go study up on Hosea 6:6. Next time I see you I want you to understand the meaning of “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.”
Well, it was not long before Jesus did see them again. Three chapters later they pop up in a grain field on the Sabbath day – pointing their fingers at the Disciples for breaking the Sabbath rules. The Disciples were hungry, and they were eating some grain from the stalks as they traveled through the field. And they pop up in the middle of the grain field pointing fingers at the Disciples for breaking the technicalities of the rabbis’ Sabbath rules.
Matthew 12:7 If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent.
In other words, “If you would have just done your homework we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”
Judgment Based on Mercy
If you want to know how important mercy is, Jesus made it real simple. If you are merciful you go to heaven; if you are not merciful you go to hell.
Matthew 25:31-46 "When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, he will sit on his throne in heavenly glory. 32 All the nations will be gathered before him, and he will separate the people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. 33 He will put the sheep on his right and the goats on his left. 34 "Then the King will say to those on his right, 'Come, you who are blessed by my Father; take your inheritance, the kingdom prepared for you since the creation of the world. 35 For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, 36 I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.'
Jesus went on to explain that when we show that kind of mercy to one of His brothers (a Christian) we have done it to Him. And to all the rest of the people on Judgment Day – the ones who were not merciful He will say
41 'Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels.
46 "Then they will go away to eternal punishment, but the righteous to eternal life."
Loving mercy
There are some special circumstances in which we are not to show mercy.
2 Thessalonians 3:10 If a man will not work, he shall not eat.
Normally if someone is going without food, you show mercy and feed him. But if he refuses to work, we are not to relieve his misery.
So there are a few circumstances in which we withhold mercy. However those are rare exceptions. And even in those times we can display the heart of God by wishing we could show mercy. If you ever find yourself scouring the Bible looking for more and more excuses to justify withholding mercy, remember Micah 6:8.
Micah 6:8 what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy
If you are showing mercy because the Bible says you have to, but you do not like it, that is not enough. God requires that we love mercy. Then we will have hearts like God. He loves mercy.
Micah 7:18 Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives … You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy.
In those rare times when we have to withhold mercy it should break our mercy-loving hearts.
They will receive mercy
The Blessedness of receiving God’s mercy
And that brings us to the reward that is promised in the fifth beatitude. People who are merciful and love mercy for the sake of Christ – those people have it made because God will show them mercy. Literally, …for they will be mercied.
That is a great and precious promise. It is an exceedingly wonderful experience to receive mercy from God.
Worth the suffering
Remember when we studied the second beatitude about being comforted by God, and we saw Isaiah 66:13?
Isaiah 66:13 As a mother comforts her child, so will I comfort you; and you will be comforted … your heart will rejoice
Little children absolutely love receiving mercy from mom when they get hurt. That is why they come running with even the slightest little scratch. The pleasure of mom’s comfort is so desirable to them that it is worth dropping what they are doing, running all the way upstairs to find mom, and generating some tears and a whole song and dance – just to get that kiss on the elbow. (I think it is wise parenting not to fall for that when there is no real injury – otherwise you train your child to be a wimp.) But when a kid falls and is genuinely hurt, and he receives comfort from mom and dad – I think in many cases the kid is actually glad he fell. The scrape hurts, but the comfort is so sweet to him that it is worth it.
I can tell you that of all the joys I have experienced (and I have experienced many) by far the greatest was the joy I experienced in 2006, which was also the most agonizing and painful year of my life. When I was at the bottom of despair, and the Lord came to me and comforted me – that was the greatest joy I have ever known. And it was a joy that came in the midst of the bitterest tears I have ever shed.
The farther the swing from sorrow to joy the greater the joy. The mercy we receive when Jesus returns will be so sweet that we will be glad we suffered. The mercy you will receive will be so sweet that you will be glad the horrible things that happened to you happened to you. That is one reason why it will be better for us in the age to come than for the angels, because they most likely have never experienced suffering. The greater your sorrow in this age the greater your capacity for joy in eternity because the greater will be your ability to experience God’s mercy.
People are always giving God advice. And no doubt the most common tip God gets from the people He created on how to run things better is this: “There is too much suffering. It would have been better if we had gone straight from Eden to heaven and never had a fall or any suffering of any kind.” I think He gets that a lot. It is a good thing God does not follow that advice – it is terrible advice. That world in which suffering never existed would be a world in which no one would ever have experienced God’s comfort or forgiveness or patience or compassion or mercy.
When is God ever going to have an occasion to have compassion or pity or show His forgiveness or have mercy on you in paradise? He’s not. We experience those things in this life, and then one last time in an ultimate way when Jesus returns, and then never again. Of course, there is a sense in which we will experience those things forever, because God’s forgiveness of our past sins will never come to an end. But throughout eternity our only connection to those marvelous attributes of God will be our memory. A billion, trillion years from now you will look back to this life, which then will seem like a blink of an eye – and that will be your only experiential knowledge of God’s mercy.
So enjoy the mercy of God as much as you possibly can in this life. It is such an amazing thing. When your joints ache, when it is hard for you to get out of bed, when you are tired and lack energy for work, when you struggle to get something to work right, when you have grief because of relationships, when you have the frustration of running out of time each day, when you can’t sleep – all of that moves His great heart. And not in small ways. His mercy fills the heavens! Scripture compares it to the sunshine. Just one ray from the sun engulfs the entire earth. One tiny, thin ray of God’s mercy engulfs this whole planet in a bath of mercy too great for comprehension.
Wouldn’t you agree that one of the most staggering truths in the universe is the fact that our blessings outnumber our sins? We miss out a lot on experiencing God’s mercy because we do not recognize it for what it is. We get depressed, and then God comes and shows us mercy, and we just say, “Oh, I guess I’m feeling better for some reason. Must be from a good night’s sleep – or the chemicals in my brain evened out – or I got a better perspective on things.” You can get all the perspective and chemicals and sleep you want and apart from God’s mercy you will remain in the pit of despair. We suffer and then recover and we write it off as just the suffering running its course – or a sickness running its course. The only place any suffering runs its course is in hell. When suffering comes to an end it is never a natural phenomenon. It is God’s mercy.
Every time the weeping came to an end and joy returned, that was God showing you mercy. Every time fear gave way to faith, despair gave way to hope, sorrow turned to joy; every time the truth came out that you were in the right – it was God’s mercy. Every time you sinned and were not given over by God to a depraved mind and allowed to fall hopelessly and irreversibly into rebellion and darkness – every time you were plucked out of that downward plunge, it was God’s mercy.
Degrees of mercy
And that brings us to one final question. We all receive mercy constantly every day, so what are we to make of the fact that this promise of receiving mercy is conditional? You only get it if you are merciful. I think there are two parts to these promises. First, in the absolute sense you will get ultimate mercy from God when Jesus returns if you are a merciful person (that is, if Christ has transformed your heart through faith and placed this virtue of showing mercy to His people for His sake in your heart). In other words, if you are a Christian you will receive ultimate mercy on Judgment Day.
That is the absolute part, but there is also a relative part. As you live your Christian life you will experience more or less mercy from God depending upon whether you show more or less mercy to people. The more merciful we become the closer we can approach God. And the closer we approach the more we experience all His attributes, including this one.
So next month when some huge, painful hardship hits your life, the quickness and degree of mercy you experience from God may very well be greater or lesser depending on how you respond tomorrow night when someone sins against you. If I distance myself from God tomorrow or the next day by being unmerciful to people around me, I forfeit a certain amount of grace, and push myself a little farther from God’s presence, and when the time comes when I need mercy He will not be as near. And maybe that mercy will not come nearly as soon as it would have otherwise. Or maybe it will come but it will not be nearly as much mercy as it might have been.
Conclusion: The System of mercy
And so we live in a system of mercy. Everything about the way this whole world is set up just oozes with mercy from every direction. I read a great statement this week from Thomas Watson about alms. The world translated “alms” is just the Greek word for mercy. When they gave money to the poor, that was known as “alms,” or showing mercy to the poor.
Here is what Watson said: “We ourselves live upon alms. Other created things generously contribute to our needs. The sun does not have its light for itself but for us; it enriches us with its golden beams. The earth brings us a fruitful crop … One creature gives us wool, another oil, another silk. We are eagerly willing to go a-begging to the creation. Shall every creature be for the good of man and man only be for himself? How absurd and irrational is this!” We receive alms every moment of every day. Every breathe we take is alms. We are poor, miserable beggars who will die if the atmosphere does not give us a handout every single time we need a breath of oxygen. This whole created world is nothing but one giant machine for the dispensing of mercy from every direction at every moment. What an absurdity it is when we stand out as the one created thing that fails to dispense God’s mercy! When we do that we become a tear in the fabric of the entire created order. Mankind is the crowning glory of all that God created – and so what a ridiculous travesty it is when we become the one gear in the machine that turns in the opposite direction and damages and destroys the whole process!
But on the other hand, how beautiful and fitting it is when we display God’s mercy, because when we do so it is a far greater picture of God’s nature than the sun or the soil or the atmosphere, because unlike the sun and the earth we can show God’s mercy willingly and with a heart of intentional love and worship. And so just as God’s glory is seen in His great mercy, so it is with our glory.
Proverbs 19:11 It is a man’s glory to overlook an offense.
God created us as glorious creatures – the most glorious of all created things because we bear His image. And sometimes that gloriousness is clouded and obscured and distorted, but it is never more polished and beautiful and brilliant as when we show mercy to God’s people out of love for the Lord Jesus Christ.
Benediction: Luke 1:46-55 "My soul magnifies the Lord 47 and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior, … 50 His mercy extends to those who fear him, from generation to generation. 51 He has performed mighty deeds with his arm… 53 He has filled the hungry with good things but has sent the rich away empty. 54 He has helped his servant Israel, remembering to be merciful 55 to Abraham and his descendants forever, even as he said to our fathers."
Summary
Mercy is one of the weightier matters of the law (a direct expression of love rather than a symbol). It is supremely important, and is at the forefront of God’s revelation of His own glory. Mercy is when love and compassion compel action to relieve misery. It is a use of power and an expression of love and finds its greatest expression in forgiveness (because guilt is the greatest misery). We are to love mercy, like God does. If we do we will receive mercy – ultimately at the Second Coming and in degrees now in proportion to our mercy.
Q&A (Answers on the Recording)
1) What is the balance between mercy and justice toward people who hurt us?
2) If we keep showing mercy, aren't we enabling them? How will the person ever learn?
3) God promises judgment on the non-merciful. But aren’t we all guilty of failing to show mercy?
4) What if we just can't show mercy?
5) What if someone doesn't ask forgiveness or is unrepentant? Do you still have to forgive?
