The blessing of mercy
Matt 5: 1 – 12 (II Tim 2:22 – 3:5*)
Rev. Peter R Green, Sunday morning, 27 July, 2003

CHRISTIANS TALK about grace, Muslims talk about mercy. Perhaps for that reason, Christians often underemphasise God’s quality of mercy and our need to be merciful.
  Jesus tells us,

As I hear from many of my Greek friends, “What goes round comes round.” And if it’s mercy you give, it’s mercy you’ll get.
  So this morning I want to compare mercy and grace, so we know something of the range of meaning of both ideas, I want to illustrate mercy at work, I want to talk about the growing opposition to mercy in our world, and then I want todiscuss how we can learn to be merciful and how we can be sure of mercy at the judgment.

MERCY AND GRACE COMPARED
  I was teaching Romans in a Sunday School class, and I wanted the kids to understand grace and mercy.They were aged from around 14 to around 16, some were quite bright and had good all–round knowledge, but some were not exactly heading for high level academic careers. I needed a way of helping both groups to understand.
  One explanation I thought of at the time, and it probably isn’t original, is
“Grace is being given the blessing you don’t deserve, mercy is not being given the punishment you do deserve, and peace is what you have when you’ve got the other two.”

  In the book of Genesis, we read about Joseph. He was a spoilt brat, and his brothers resented him for it. Worse still, as a prophet, he told them that he foresaw a time when they would bow down and honour him. Not the way to win friends and influence people!
  So his brothers faked his death, and sold him as a slave.
  Joseph became a slave to an Egyptian named Potiphar. Potiphar’s wife kept offering Joseph a promotion to bedroom duties, but Joseph refused to betray his owner.
  One day they were alone in the house and she tried him again. He decided to get away, but, as he was leaving, she grabbed his cloak. He slipped out of it and ran. So she accused Joseph of attempted rape, and he was cast into prison. He was lucky not to be executed!

  Over the years, he had a vast impact on the lives of fellow prisoners. One he helped had been Pharaoh’s butler.
  When this man was released from gaol, he eventually thought of Joseph back in his dungeon, and told Pharaoh about Joseph’s prophetic gift. So Pharaoh called Joseph into his presence, asked him to interpret a dream he had received, and was so pleased with the interpretation that he had Joseph entirely released from prison.

  I want to stop the story there. At this point, we see an illustration of mercy. As far as Pharaoh was concerned, Joseph was properly in gaol as someone who had attempted to rape his employer’s wife.
  As far as the law was concerned, Joseph could stay in there until he rotted.
  But the Pharaoh had mercy on him and commuted his sentence.

  Now Pharaoh’s dream was about the coming years. He dreamt of fat cows and skinny cows, and seven fat cows were eaten by the seven skinny cows. Joseph said it meant that there would be seven years of plenty, followed by seven years of famine.
  Pharaoh asked Joseph, “What should I do?” And Joseph replied, “You need to build warehouses to store the surplus from the good years. You need to put someone trustworthy in charge of collecting the extra produce.”
  So Pharaoh said, “I choose you.” He put his own symbols of power on Joseph, as though to say, “Joseph is my representative. He is second only to me in power from today on.”

  Let’s stop again. This is grace. Mercy ends the negative. It ends punishment. But grace elevates; it lifts the sinner into the house of the saint, it makes the rebel into a son of God.
  Joseph was a supposed criminal. But mercy released him from prison; and grace raised him to a prince’s palace.

  Generally, if you don't get mercy, you can't have grace. Mercy is a pre-requisite for grace. Joseph couldn’t have become second ruler in Egypt if Pharaoh had sent him back to gaol.
  If you intend to be a grace-filled person after God’s own heart, then you have to begin with being a merciful person, because God himself is merciful.

ILLUSTRATIONS OF MERCY
  There are many different ways that mercy is revealed. Pharaoh was merciful to Joseph, mainly because Joseph helped him.
  So it was a basically selfish act. And we do find a kind of mercy that is basically selfish.

  But God’s mercy is never selfish.

  Some more extreme forms of Christianity, and also Islam, really view God’s mercy as self–centred if not entirely selfish. The idea is that God is too pure to feel compassion or to have any empathy with those who suffer.
  Imagine it.This god is aloof, moved only by his own unfathomable will. He is not merciful because he understands; he is merciful because of random choice to be merciful. It is an act of sovereign will. We would be no better off if God numbered us all and used a random number generator in a computer to select those he would be merciful to. I do not believe that. God's mercy arises from his compassion for us, his creatures.

  But, in fact, if you think about it, mercy is far wider than the merely legal or forensic sense that we are used to. For Joseph, it was a legal thing. He was a convict, freed from captivity.
  But what about releasing captives who are bound by satanic forces? What about liberating people trapped by their own experiences of life or even their own sin?

  C Peter Wagner believes that a large part of mercy is the exercise of compassion, and I think he’s on the right track. He says that caring ministries are part of mercy.

  I thought about a program they used to have at the Petersham Assemblies of God.
  An older couple went out with a Youth with a Mission team after the man retired. They loved it, and they caught a vision for ministry.
  They used to pick up people with severe disabilities each Sunday and bring them to church. It was touching to see 10 or 15 people who couldn't talk, making joyful noises to the sound of the music, swaying to the beat, clapping roughly in time with the rhythm, and, above all, knowing they were loved.
  After the music was over, this couple and their helpers took them out into the hall for activities while the service went on in the main chapel.
  There was a sad note to it. The man developed dementia himself, and eventually became a learner in the classes he once ran. But he received love as he had given love for many years.

  Isn’t there something merciful in releasing people like that from the monotony of their everyday lives? Isn’t there something merciful in freeing them from captivity to their limitations, if only for an hour or so? After all, don’t we, in part, come together to find some release from our own limitations, whatever they are? We receive mercy; what mercy do we give?

  Jesus told of a debtor:

  In this case, mercy is a financial thing. But, once again, it is a matter of liberating someone from bondage. But you can see that the servant learnt nothing from the mercy he had received. Some people take, but never respect the gift or the Giver.
  People are merciful when they understand what others go through and decide to be lenient out of that understanding.

GROWING OPPOSITION TO MERCY
  Sadly, mercy, like meekness, is in decline. The reason is that people who have no idea of mercy have little concept of holding their power in check.

  I began to feel disturbed about 20 years ago, maybe even longer ago. We began seeing lots of films about policemen or other law-enforcement figures going outside the law so that they could get the conviction they wouldn't get if they played strictly by the book, or so that the baddy got punished even if the courts might not have been able to touch him.
  Once people begin justifying such attitudes, it’s the beginning of the end of civilisation. If I dislike you and believe that you are a danger to society, if exterminate you. It doesn't matter if 've made a mistake about every single fact in the case. No one is there to test what I think. Law and order are booted and the jungle wins.

  But our world is gradually losing its sense of mercy. The more evidence emerges, the more clearly we see that the Australian Authorities turned a blind eye to the sinking of the Siev-X between Indonesia and Australia and the drowning of 139 asylum–seekers. Mercy has been denied at the cost of so many lives!
  The more evidence emerges, the more clear it seems that that fellow Hicks did nothing in Afghanistan that would be illegal in any country except the US, and it is only illegal  under US law because their Government is desperate to punish. Mercy has been denied at the cost of so many people’s freedom!
  The more evidence emerges, the more clear it is that British Government departments hounded that chap Harris until he committed suicide. There was no mercy for a whistle-blower who dared criticise the politicians for going into Iraq without proper evidence. Mercy has been denied at the cost of one man’s life, and that is one life too many! Every man’s death diminishes me.

  Mercy is a disappearing concept, because mercy can only exist where the naked use and abuse of power is restrained, and that, too, is a disappearing art.

LEARNING TO BE MERCIFUL
  We can never afford to think that, if the world is not merciful, the world should be our pattern. When Jeremiah said,

he wasn’t telling women to stop their worldly use of makeup, he wasn’t telling men to cease their worldly practice of drinking beer. He was warning righteous people to flee from Babylon so as not to come under God’s judgment on Babylon’s idolatry and the merciless way that Babylon had slain the Israelites.

  If we worship a merciless god we will become merciless, too.

  You have seen today how interconnected are the qualities Jesus spoke about in his Sermon. A Kingdom person has to learn meekness and mercy. They go together.

  I want to say that we learn to be merciful. As you give mercy to others, it will begin calling mercy forth from them. And, as you experience mercy from others, then you will begin giving it to others.

  Years ago, a young woman who was coming to this church went though a very hard time in her life. I listened to her story, gave her tissues as she cried, and, when she had done, I hugged her.
  A long while afterwards, she phoned me and told about a work colleague. She noticed he wasn't looking happy, so she asked him about it. He poured out his story and she listened. She gave him tissues when he cried. And, when she had done, she hugged him and said, "That’s what my pastor did for me.”
  As Paul wrote,

  Do you remember what Wagner said, that mercy includes exercising compassion? The compassion we receive is the compassion we pass on.

MERCY AT THE JUDGMENT
  Finally, I want to remind us all that the merciful are blessed for one very simple reason: they will obtain mercy. As Big George used to say, “What goes around, comes around.” It applies in this life and in the next. If we want mercy now, we need to begin giving it to others now; if we want it in the future, we heed to begin giving it to others now. We need to show it, to campaign for it and to expect it in all aspects of life.

  If we are going to be merciful people, we can’t afford to stand idly by while our world rejects the concept of mercy altogether. We have to be merciful and demand mercy for others.

  May God bless us as we do it. AMEN