A Mercy Investment
Written by Ed Allen
Saturday, 04 May 2002 19:00
- What kind of life is being described here? What does it mean to be merciful?
- How do we get this kind of life? How do we become more merciful?
- Are there limits to mercy? Are we always supposed to respond with pity? Can a Christian boss fire an employee when the company is not making enough money?
- What does it mean that we will obtain mercy? When will this happen?
What does it mean to be merciful?
Definitions:
- 'Grace is getting what we don't deserve. Mercy is not getting what we deserve.'
- Martin Lloyd Jones = 'pity in action.'
- Word = mercy, compassion, pity, used frequently to describe God's posture toward us.
How Jesus used it:
Matthew 9:9-13 Calling of Matthew, "not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick. But go and learn what this means: 'I desire mercy, not sacrifice.'"
Matthew 12:1-8 Disciples picking grain on the Sabbath. Cites an OT reference when David did the same. "If you had known what these words mean, 'I desire mercy not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the innocent."
| Mercy | Merciless |
| Open to others' needs | judgmental |
| Open to God | focus on rule-keeping |
| Driven by compassion | driven by religious trivia |
Matthew 18:23-32 Parable of the merciless servant
| Mercy | Merciless |
| Releases others | demands of others |
| Forgives others | unforgiving |
| Bear with others | intolerant of others |
Luke 10:25-37
| Mercy | Merciless |
| Activated pity | justified indifference |
How do we get it? How do we become more merciful?
Not prescriptive, but descriptive
- Not - must be merciful in order to obtain mercy
- This is a description of someone in whose life Christ is at work. That's how we become more merciful: simply allow Christ to have his way in us.
These beatitudes build on one another in intensity.
- Spurgeon p. 487
These beatitudes also build on one another in substance.
- Piper "Mercy comes from a heart that has first felt its spiritual bankruptcy, and has come to grief over its sin, and has learned to wait meekly for the timing of the Lord, and to cry out in hunger for the work of his mercy to satisfy us with righteousness we need ?
- Recognize poverty of spirit. This is the starting place. Then mourn over our own distance from God and our rebellion against him. Then we come to see ourselves aright and we move out with meekness. This drives us to want Him more and to want more of Him so we hunger and thirst for righteousness.
This is the foundation for mercy.
- Piper "The key to becoming a merciful person is to become a broken person. You get the power to show mercy from the real feeling in your heart that you owe everything you are and have to sheer divine mercy. Therefore, if we want to become merciful people it is imperative that we cultivate a view of God and ourselves that helps us to say with all our heart that every joy and virtue and distress of our lives is owing to the free and undeserving mercy of God."
Are there limits to mercy?
Can a parent spank a child? Can a Christian businesswoman fire her staff because her company is not making enough money? Can a Christian teacher give a bad grade to a student who is trying? Are there limits to mercy?
The answer is a qualified "yes."
God is the standard. Important to remember that God's character is complex. God is loving, but He is also just and righteous and holy. The Bible talks about God's patience, but it also talks about His anger and His judgment.
My own politics got more conservative in the city, because many social service projects did not work.
I said qualified yes, because even when we act in a way that is not directly the result of mercy, our actions will still be influenced by mercy.
What does it mean that we will obtain mercy? When will this happen?
Biblical principle that I call the Just Return Principle. This is what Paul is talking about in Galatians 6:7-9.
(7) Do not be deceived: God cannot be mocked. A man reaps what he sows. (8) The one who sows to please his sinful nature, from that nature will reap destruction; the one who sows to please the Spirit, from the Spirit will reap eternal life. (9) Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.
Jesus promises as much here. I read a great illustration of this recently.
There were once two young men working their way through Leland Stanford University. Their funds got desperately low, and the idea came to one of them to engage Paderewski for a piano recital and devote the profits to their board and tuition. The great pianist's manager asked for a guarantee of two thousand dollars. The students, undaunted, proceeded to stage the concert. They worked hard, only to find that the concert had raised only sixteen hundred dollars.
After the concert, the students sought the great artist and told him of their efforts and results. They gave him the entire sixteen hundred dollars, and accompanied it with a promissory note for four hundred dollars, explaining that they would earn the amount at the earliest possible moment and send the money to him. "No," replied Paderewski, "that won't do." Then tearing the note to shreds, he returned the money and said to them: "Now, take out of this sixteen hundred dollars all of your expenses, and keep for each of you 10 percent of the balance for your work, and let me have the rest."
The years rolled by--years of fortune and destiny. Paderewski had become premier of Poland. The devastating war came, and Paderewski was striving with might and main to feed the starving thousands of his beloved Poland. There was only one man in the world who could help Paderewski and his people. Thousands of tons of food began to come into Poland for distribution by the Polish premier.
After the starving people were fed, Paderewski journeyed to Paris to thank Herbert Hoover for the relief sent him. "That's all right, Mr. Paderewski," was Mr. Hoover's reply. "Besides, you don't remember it, but you helped me once when I was a student at
college and I was in a hole."
But the Bible is also honest in its assessment that life is sometimes not fair. Sometimes accounts are not evened here on earth. But they will be perfectly evened in heaven. All wrongs will be addressed ?
Is this just pie in the sky? Karl Marx suggested that this particular doctrine of the Christian life was used to keep the masses in line. Is this just wishful thinking?
If our faith is not real, if Christ is not raised from the dead, then it is absolutely pie in the sky. If Jesus is not who he claimed to be then this idea is the worst kind of trickery. But if Jesus is who he said he was, if he was raised from the dead, then this life is a very, very, very short part of our overall existence. And we would do well to invest heavily in that part of our existence where we will spend the overwhelming majority of our time.
(Summarize ?)
We must be honest. Mercy is costly. It involves putting ourselves out like the good Samaritan in Jesus' story. It involves forgiving others like the servant in Jesus' story. There is a cost. But the payoff is well worth the cost.
When the first missionaries came to Alberta, Canada, they were savagely opposed by a young chief of the Cree Indians named Maskepetoon. But he responded to the gospel and accepted Christ. Shortly afterward, a member of the Blackfoot tribe killed his father. Maskepetoon rode into the village where the murderer lived and demanded that he be brought before him. Confronting the guilty man, he said, "You have killed my father, so now you must be my father. You shall ride my best horse and wear my best clothes." In utter amazement and remorse his enemy exclaimed, "My son, now you have killed me!" He meant, of course, that the hate in his own heart had been completely erased by the forgiveness and kindness of the Indian chief.
The merciful have that kind of impact on the world around them. Blessed are the merciful, for they will obtain mercy.