Mercy Me

Matthew 5:7, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”

As we continue our study in the Beatitudes it is important to remember the makeup of the crowd Jesus was speaking too. Many of them were the religious Scribes and Pharisees who suppressed the people and were merciless in their enforcement of the laws that were for the most part outside the realm of Biblical tradition. They added hundreds of laws, traditions, and statutes to God's word and put an unnecessary burden upon the people to keep these laws to the letter. These religious leaders had become so self-satisfied with their own religious attainments that they did not sense their dangerous condition of total spiritual bankruptcy and their desperate need for God’s mercy. Jesus warns them in Matthew 23:23, “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you tithe mint and dill and cumin, and have neglected the weightier provisions: justice and mercy and faithfulness; but these are the things you should have done without neglecting the others.”

Being merciful constitutes a lot of things. It means having an active compassion that desires to alleviate the pain and heartache of others. It also carries the meaning of offering forgiveness to those who do not necessarily deserve it. Still further it means speaking life and healing into situations by kind words and prayer. Mercy is something we give and merciful is who we are! Charles Swindoll comments, “It does not mean only to sympathize with a person in the popular sense of the term; it does not mean simply to feel sorry for someone in trouble. It means the ability to get right inside the other person’s skin. Clearly this is much more than an emotional wave of pity; this demands a deliberate effort of the mind and of the will. It denotes a sympathy which is not given, as it were, from the outside, but which comes from a deliberate identification with the other person, until we see things as he sees them, and feel things as he feels them.”

In no better way do we imitate Christ as when we show mercy. Jesus says in Luke 6:35-36, “But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men. Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” God could have left us in our sins but rather he showed great mercy to us by sending His Son Jesus to die on the cross for our sins, in order to cancel the debt that was against us. (Romans 5:10)

Showing mercy does not make us believers because we know only faith can do that (Eph 2:8), but showing mercy demonstrates we are believers. We bestow mercy because we have received so much of it. Ephesians 2:1-7 says, “You were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved), and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places, in Christ Jesus, in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.”

If we cannot fully understand how merciful God is towards us and how there is nothing we can do to alleviate the debt that we have accumulated due to our sin, we can never fully offer mercy to other people.

God wants those of us who have received mercy to show mercy to others. Problem is that when we’ve been hurt or wronged, being merciful and forgiving isn’t the first thing that comes to our minds. We want to get back. Like the man who went to the doctor and the doctor told him he had rabies. The man immediately took out a piece of paper and a pen and started writing feverishly. The doctor thought he was writing his will so he said, “Wait a minute. No need to write your will. You’re not going to die.” The man replied, “Doc, I’m not writing my will. I’m making a list of people I want to go bite.” (Matt 18:21-35) The Lord’s Prayer says, “Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors.”

Consider for a moment what Jesus said the merciful would receive as their blessing. What is promised for the merciful? MERCY! Each of the blessings Jesus offers in the beatitudes is given by God undeservedly. In response we must apply the words of Micah 6:8 where he says, “He has showed you, O man, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly to love mercy and to walk humble with your God.”