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Blessed are the merciful—it sounds really good when we are the ones receiving mercy. That call suddenly sounds a lot worse when we’re the ones called to show mercy. Jesus calls us to that mercy, against our natural inclination for payback.
The following study questions are AI generated and may contain errors.
The preacher describes a moment when he wanted vengeance on the “bull horn car” that dented his Volkswagen. When have you felt that same impulse to make someone “hurt” because they hurt you? What stopped you—or didn’t—from acting on it?
The sermon emphasizes that mercy must flow from recognizing we are all sinners in need of God’s forgiveness. How does this shift your perspective on showing mercy to people whose actions you find genuinely repulsive or harmful—or to those who doubt the faith entirely?
Jude urges us to “snatch others from the fire” with urgency. Do you experience that same urgency about people in your life who don’t know God? What barriers—fear, discomfort, fatigue, or simply not wanting to get involved—keep you from acting on it?
Jesus calls Matthew the tax collector—a collaborator with oppression and self-enrichment—into his inner circle. Who are the “Matthew figures” in your community, and how might Jesus be calling you to show them unexpected mercy even when it makes others question your judgment?
The sermon uses the metaphor of an unused gift card to describe hoarding mercy instead of dispensing it. What specific act of mercy have you been “setting aside” for someday that might need to happen now—and what would it look like for our church to be so overflowing with mercy that the world outside sees more of it, not less?
This transcript has been automatically generated and may contain errors.
Well, here we are, we’re in the middle of the Beatitudes now. We’re coming to a Beatitude that sounds really good until we’re called to do it. Blessed are the merciful. And mercy is a good thing. We like mercy, right? I like when people are merciful towards me. I don’t always want to show mercy, though.
I was thinking about this, and one time really came back to mind. I think most of you here know I have my little Volkswagen Beetle that I’ve had now for, let’s see, 16 years. And it was about six months after I got my bug, and I was at seminary. I parked it in the last parking spot available in the row. I always like to park next to the crosswalk so no one will park next to me. I parked there because I didn’t want someone to pull up next to it and bang their doors against it. I really don’t like dents and dings and scratches and stuff. I worry about it too much, but I had this nice new car. I love my little bug, and I found this perfect parking spot. And it really was necessary.
I remember one of my friends at the seminary mentioned, it was kind of mind-boggling, but all these seminary students, you’d think that they’d be very kind and merciful to each other with each other’s cars. And he said, my car came in, it looked like a new car, and now it looks like an old junker because it was just so scratched up and beat up on the sides from people just throwing their doors open and rushing off to class. So that’s why I always wanted these sorts of spots. And I found this one, it was great. I parked there. And I went to class, and I come out. I’ve never seen a car like the car that I decided to park on the crosswalk. This car had bull horns, literal horns, attached to it. It had bumper stickers covering every visible part of the paint. I think if the car could have snorted at me, it would have. And it was this far away, and I knew it was like, ahhh. Look down, there’s a dent on my door.
I didn’t feel very merciful in that moment. I thought a lot of things in that moment. And what I really wanted to do was to bring the wrath of myself down upon that bull car. I don’t think the owner would have even noticed. I mean, this car, it wouldn’t have mattered. And I would have just felt guilty because I would have done that. But in that moment, I didn’t want to show mercy. I wanted to make sure that at least what had happened to me had happened to that car.
Thankfully, I’m kind of timid, and I worry about a lot of things. I second guess everything. I didn’t do anything. But boy, did I want to not show mercy in that moment. And I think we’ve all had those moments, that someone does something to us. And it’s clear that they’re in the wrong. And the thing that we want to do most is make sure that they know that they’re in the wrong. They’ve hurt us, and we want them to hurt. They’ve made things difficult for us, and we want things to be difficult for them.
And I think most of us would say, well, I don’t want it to be that way. And if you ask me right now, do I want to do that to people? And I’d say, of course not. I want to be merciful. But it’s so hard when we actually get into one of those places. It’s a great thing in our heads, ah, yes, mercy. It’s a really hard thing to do. But Jesus calls us to do it. And so that’s what we’re going to be thinking about tonight. And as we do, we need to come before our God, because this is ultimately something that we absolutely cannot do on our own. So let’s come before our merciful God, and ask him for his help. Will you join me in prayer?
Father, you are the God of mercy. And as we have sung tonight, as we have prayed tonight, we come before you recognizing that you show us mercy time and again. And yet, in our own lives, it’s so easy to receive that mercy, but it’s much harder to give it. Father, would you help us to be people of mercy? Would you help us to be those, as the world looks to your church, that the world sees more mercy, not the same amount of mercy and not less mercy, but more mercy from us? May we reflect you to this world, we pray in Jesus’ name, amen.
What does Jesus say there in that verse? He says, in verse 7 of Matthew chapter 5, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” Now, as Christians, our starting point is having received mercy. If you’re a Christian, you’ve received mercy. You’ve experienced God’s mercy in your life.
When we think about what might make us the most angry in life, the perceived or real wrongs we’ve experienced, no one’s experienced more wrong than God. Our very lives, our minds, our hearts, our actions are constantly demonstrating things that are displeasing to God. And yet, and yet, he shows us mercy.
But what about when things are really bad? Now, okay, so God shows mercy, but he’s God. He’s in charge of everything. What if things are really bad in my life? Do I need to show mercy then? And our world would say, no. Our world would say, absolutely not. If life has you down and things are going against you, what should you do? You should show the world who’s boss. You should be in charge. And teach those people who have not shown you mercy what not receiving mercy is like.
As one commentator said, our natural human inclination when we’re in a downtrodden state, when we’re suffering, when we’re persecuted, when we’re wronged, when we’re not being shown mercy, is to see if we can kick people in the teeth. And now, I’d like to think, and knowing those of you that are here tonight, I think most of us aren’t the violent type, all of us, hopefully.
We may not physically do that. We may not even verbally do it, but what’s happening in our minds in those moments that we feel wronged? That’s the challenging thing. Jesus reminds us over and over again in the Sermon on the Mount that God cares about what’s happening in our mind and our heart.
Am I showing mercy even before anything comes out my mouth or is done with my hands? And when you go to that level, it’s hard. Because there are a lot of times that I know that what I’m thinking isn’t good, and so I backtrack and I realize, okay, I can’t do that, or I shouldn’t do that, or I don’t, even as a whole of who I want to be, I don’t want to do that, but it’s still in there. And what Jesus is calling us to here is to move in a direction in which our natural inclination when being wronged is a reflex of mercy, and not a reflex of vengeance.
But won’t people just take advantage of us then? We live in a dog-eat-dog world, a world that will consume us and spit us out. Jesus doesn’t say otherwise. He doesn’t say, if you show mercy, everyone’s going to show mercy to you, and everything is going to be great. Jesus’ life doesn’t demonstrate that, if we think about it. What do we see in Jesus’ life? We see the opposite of that.
But what do we do when we’re shown the lack of mercy? Do we respond in mercy? Well, again, we can’t do this on our own, but we can look to Jesus. But we can look to Jesus, and in Jesus, we see the way to actually do it. Because as Jesus goes to the cross, and He looks down on those people who are hurting Him, what does He do? He prays for them, shows them mercy. Why is He on the cross? To show us mercy.
And that’s what we see time and again in the New Testament. If we take a look back. I need to show mercy to technology, or maybe to my foot just then. I hit the wrong button. But if we go to Hebrews chapter two, what do we see? The author of Hebrews writes, “‘Therefore He had to be made like His brothers in every respect, so that He might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people.’”
Look at another New Testament book, the letter to Jude. But you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith, and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord, Jesus Christ, that leads us to eternal life.
I think my microphone might have, it’s gain way up too much, and I have a feeling another microphone might be on that shouldn’t be. We have to have mercy with our technology, right? How many of you have at some point thought, I want to throw this computer out the window? Your phone out the window, yeah. And you should, and then you should buy an Apple product, it’ll be so much better, no. Not always, not always, right? And sometimes you want to take these microphones and throw them out the window. It’s silly, but we know, even in inanimate objects, we want to take out our vengeance on them, right?
But what are we told? In Jesus’ life, he showed mercy to something far worse. You know, if this microphone is wronging me, it’s not thinking, I want to cause feedback, I want to cause trouble. What’s it thinking? Nothing. I still think, ah, you know, microphone.
But what do we do? Well, oftentimes, we actually think directly. I know what God wants me to do. I’m going to do something else. In the Exodus, as God took his people out of Egypt, he looked at those people, and he already knew what they were going to do. He already knew that they were going to time and time again choose to do the opposite of what was pleasing to him. They were going to reject him over and over again. They were going to seek after other gods. And yet, and yet, he showed them mercy.
Notice what he tells them in Exodus 34. It says, the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, the Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness.
That steadfast love shows us God’s mercy. Oftentimes, you know, we’ll talk about how much we love something or someone, and what we really mean is it’s going pretty well at the moment, right? I love the microphones here until they don’t work, right? We love our friends and our family, but then they get on our nerves and we think, ah, let me think here.
What does God show us? He shows us what love really should look like, a love filled with mercy, overflowing with mercy. If you stuff your Thanksgiving turkey and you have some of that stuffing coming out because you want plenty of stuffing, the mercy flowing out of us should be so much more. We should just be overflowing with mercy. Our hair should be just tangled with mercy. Our clothes should be soaked in mercy. We should be people of mercy.
You see, as we look to the life of Jesus, we see not only the mercy that God shows us as God dwelt in human form in this world, but also what he calls us to be. Because after all, Jesus was not only, and is not only true God, he’s also true man. And in that, he demonstrates what a Christian should look like.
Notice what he encourages us to do as we pray to him each day. Matthew chapter six, Lord’s Prayer. Think about this for a moment. “And forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors. As we also have forgiven our debtors.” Jesus goes on a couple of verses later. He says, “for if you forgive others their trespasses, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their trespasses, neither will you, your Father, forgive your trespasses.”
Ooh, that kind of hurts, doesn’t it? Yeah. So if I’m not forgiving, God doesn’t forgive me? What are we, what is Jesus saying here? Jesus, are you really saying that if I struggle to forgive someone, I’m not going to experience God’s forgiveness? Is that, is that the message of mercy of scripture? Because I need some mercy there.
Well, that is not what Jesus is saying there. Notice the way that he says, I’m gonna go back to it just one more time here. Let’s go back to verse 12. “Forgive us our debts as we also have forgiven our debtors.” Have forgiven, he’s assuming we’ve already done it. Now, how does that work?
What Jesus is referring to is he is calling us to be a people who are exemplified by forgiveness. Not that we get it perfectly, because we’re not going to get it perfect. We’re going to struggle to forgive. And if you’ve ever been deeply hurt by someone, you know that oftentimes forgiveness isn’t even something that you achieve and then hold on to. It’s more like fighting the tide. You know, you’re battling it, and you feel like you’ve forgiven this person, and it’s going pretty well, and then you see an old photograph, or you’re someplace where you were deeply hurt or whatever else, and all of a sudden it comes back and you think, ah.
And if you’ve been working for a while to forgive, it’s really kind of frustrating, because you thought, I thought I had it down. I thought I’d finally forgiven. So what is Jesus calling us to do here? He’s calling us to be a people who are exemplified by forgiveness. We’re not God. We’re not going to get there perfectly. Not in this lifetime. But to be striving towards that, to be people who want to show mercy, and people who show mercy more and more and more. Not to dwell in a place of unforgiveness.
Because a lot of times we kind of find it satisfying. It’s satisfying not to be forgiving in a weird way. Not long-term. It eats up at you, but at first it feels pretty good. I am angry. I am not going to forgive this person. I don’t want to forgive this person. They’ve wronged me, and they may not know it, and I may not be bold enough to tell them it, but at least I’m going to know that they were wrong.
Jesus calls us to something else. I love what John Stott says, thinking about several of these beatitudes together. He says, “for to be meek is to acknowledge to others that we are sinners. Listen to the second part. To be merciful is to have compassion on others because they too are sinners.”
You see, the mercy that we show is held together because we know that we need mercy. The more that we come before our God confessing our sins, the more we come before our God and read his promises and read what he has already done for us, the more that we see that and we remember that we’re sinners, that flows into recognizing that the people around us, the ones that are wronging us in this moment, what are they? Well, they’re sinners too. Sinners against us at times, sinners against God, but in that, they’re not something different than us. They’re like us because that’s exactly what we are.
And so Jesus calls his church, calls his ambassadors as those who proclaim his kingdom to be those who have wronged God and received forgiveness. And so when we look at other people who wrong us, we look at them not through the lens purely of what we initially feel in our fallen human heart that I’ve been deeply wronged, but oh, there’s another person who does the sorts of things that I’ve done. There’s another person who needs mercy like I need mercy.
Now again, this is, I think, a lot easier conceptually than in practice. I would bet every person listening online, every person here in this room, I bet if you went on the street, for the most part, you’d ask people, do you respect people who show great mercy? Oh yeah, and you’d say, well, do you know someone who shows great mercy? And oh yeah, I really, this person in my life who’s just so kind and just merciful to a fault, but wow, what a kind person.
And we think about different historical figures that were super merciful and on and on and on until it’s time for us to actually show it.
We looked a moment ago at Jude, and I want us to turn back there because I think something that’s important that we do is we not just talk about this conceptually. Okay, I’m going to be a merciful person now, but we think concretely, what’s the calling of the church in terms of mercy?
Because as long as it’s abstract, it’s really easy to do, and we can go on being not that merciful in reality, and yet feeling pretty merciful. And this is a huge challenge for us as the church because over and over again, not surprisingly as fallen human beings, and yet unacceptably, the world doesn’t see the church and see mercy.
I think if you were to survey our country and ask most of the people that don’t attend church, is the church an entity that shows mercy to the world? Most of them wouldn’t say, yes, I fully agree with that. I believe most of them would actually say the opposite. No, the church is an organization that seems to look out for itself, that seems to want to exact revenge on those that they feel are their enemies.
And it’s quick to point out the faults of the people that aren’t aligned with them. What do we read in Jude verse 20? Jude says, “but you, beloved, building yourselves up in your most holy faith and praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God, waiting for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ that leads to eternal life.”
Now listen to this next part. “And have mercy on those who doubt.”
Here’s the first challenge we’re given in this letter. Are we merciful to those who doubt the faith? And there’s different categories even there, right? There are people that attend church but have a lot of doubts and questions and aren’t really sure what they believe. Are we merciful to those people? Are we merciful to the outright skeptic who mocks the church, who says, why do you go and worship this fairytale God? Why do you bother?
Now rightly, we should want to be those who defend God, right, when people start picking on God, we should feel some protectiveness there. But when Jude talks about those who doubt, he’s talking about a particular merciful way to respond, to take that protective energy we feel wanting to defend our God and to use it in a constructive way.
Because we shouldn’t say, oh great, I’m so glad there are people in this world that doubt that God exists.
Actually, I know someone who feels that way, a theologian, and he’d tell me, he would be teaching students and he’d tell me, I’m so glad I caused these students to question their faith.
You know, that’s not what we’re called to do. And that’s not what Jude is calling us to do when he says to show mercy to those who doubt. Rather, he’s calling us to look at people who doubt, look at people who question their faith and recognize that they are simply fellow fallen human beings, struggling to understand life, in need of God’s mercy as much as we are.
And when we look at them, we don’t think, how dare you, or how dumb are you, or what’s wrong with you, but we think, I sure hope that God can use me in some way that helps you to see what God’s mercy’s like.
We look in our own hearts and recognize the huge list of ways that we’ve needed God’s forgiveness and he’s provided his forgiveness. And we look at that, and we look at this person who’s questioning, and we recognize that they’re not getting to experience all that forgiveness and mercy, because they aren’t there yet. And we think, I want what I’ve experienced for that person.
How can we help other people to rest in the faith? Jude talks about resting in our holy faith. In other words, that teaching that has been passed down by the apostles, the things that we find in God’s word, to rest in it. When we feel unsettled, when we wonder if God’s going to be merciful to us, and we turn to his word, and we read that, yes, indeed, God is a merciful God, we’re called to rest in it.
But then as we show mercy to those who doubt, we’re called to be those who desperately want others to rest in the same. Is that how my heart always is?
We’re not called to shout down those who doubt. We’re not called to be those who bring about vengeance on those who question the church. What are we called to do? We’re called to do what Jesus did. We’re called to go to them, minister to them, and help them to be able to experience rest. We’re called to do that with urgency.
Notice what Jude goes on to say. It’s like a half of this verse. He says, “save others by snatching them out of the fire.”
You see, mercy isn’t only about wanting to see other people rest. Mercy is feeling it so urgent that we actually want to do something about it. Again, abstractly in my head, I can think, well, I want everyone to believe. I want everyone to know the promises of Jesus.
But as I think of those promises and I think of the people that I encounter day to day is my thought, and I urgently want to snatch them out of the fire. I don’t want them to experience judgment. I don’t want to prove how wrong they are on social media. I want them to experience God’s promises. I don’t want to humiliate them when they try to push God out of the schools or the workplace or wherever. I want them to be so excited about God, they don’t want to do it anymore.
Is that what I think? And more than that, just because it’s gonna benefit me in some way because they’re no longer causing me trouble, am I thinking it because, oh, what if this were that person’s last day? I don’t want, even this person who has done all kinds of horrible things to me, I don’t want that person to go in eternity without God.
Is that my thought process? Are we at a drop everything, this is urgent level of urgency about the people around us that don’t know God?
Now, part of the showing that mercy is going to mean we show it in different ways. It doesn’t always mean we go with a tract and hand it to them and say, here, you need to read this, you know, and we have a little tract with some flames on it and say, you know, read this. It doesn’t always mean, you know, debating them and arguing with them. Sometimes it starts with simply showing them mercy. They’re unkind to us because we’re Christians and we are kind to them.
It may not stop there, and it probably shouldn’t stop there because very few people just by, say, one act of kindness are going to immediately say, ah, okay, I didn’t think there was a God, but, you know, this guy walked up to me and he was nice to me, and so there must be a God. I wish it happened that way more often. But it’s a starting point.
I remember one of my professors in seminary said that you should never want to interject where someone has stuff wrong in their life unless you’re willing to actually walk through life with them. And I think that’s a really good guide. We’re called to walk through life with people.
And so it’s not, you know, carpet bombing tracts around and trying to correct people. It’s actually saying, we care about people. I care about people. You care about people. We love these people even when they’re unlovable because what do we know? We have a God who loves us when we’re unlovable. And as we reflect on that more and we see more that this is the character of the family that God has adopted us into, then we want to show that to other people.
Here, I don’t know if it’s been resolved yet, but there was a big controversy last year about 911 service in St. Louis. And it really hit sort of a big headline level when one of the aldermen in St. Louis City saw a burning building in his district, called 911 and was put on hold. I think for like 10 minutes or something. Just sitting there on hold, the building’s burning. You know, other buildings could potentially catch fire and he’s sitting on hold. I don’t know if they did, but in my head, I had this sort of peaceful elevator music playing as he’s sitting there.
But even if it was silent or even if it was, you know, repetition of your call is very important to us, your emergency is very important to us and will be answered in the order it was received, you know, that sort of thing. It wouldn’t matter. It’s just, I want my emergency taken care of. I don’t want that building to burn down.
And last year, apparently, in St. Louis, only 63% of those calls that went into 911 were answered in what was considered the acceptable time range. You think, okay, this is bad. And suddenly people were calling for hearings. We need to get to the bottom of this. We need to redistribute how the departments work because apparently the fire department and police department and EMS had separate 911 dispatchers.
We need to fix all this because it’s just not acceptable that the people are sitting on hold while buildings are burning and people are dying. We need to fix it. It felt urgent.
Do we feel that same urgency when we think about someone who doesn’t know God? Do we say it’s unacceptable that I’m putting that person on hold? Is that always my inclination or do sometimes I just, I think I’m tired?
Your life crisis is very important to me and will be answered in the order it was received. I’d like to say I never do that. I’d like to. Sometimes I have an awful really long argument in my head. Do I answer this call? Don’t I answer this call? Do I answer this text? Don’t I answer this text? Oh. What’s wrong with me?
It’s not 911 level urgency all the time. How do we fall into that sense of complacency? Sometimes it’s because we don’t really want to get involved because we know it’s going to be a pain. It’s going to be difficult.
As Jude goes on, he talks about not only snatching these people out of the fire, but going to snatch them when it’s uncomfortable. That’s what he says here at the end of verse 23. “To others show mercy with fear, hating even the garment stained by the flesh.”
That’s kind of a weird phrase, isn’t it? What does that mean? Well, as commentators have wrestled with this, and I think this is a pretty good way to break this apart. We’re starting with mercy again. We’re going to show these people mercy. So we already have that established.
Now, why are we showing them mercy with fear? Because sometimes the people that we need to show mercy to, sometimes the people that we need to get involved in the lives of are people who have really, really, really messed up lives. They’re doing things that we know are wrong and we don’t want anything to do with. We don’t even want to be associated with it. And quite rightly so, oftentimes.
But what do we do about it? What do we do about it? What do we do in those situations? Do we say, this person, irredeemable. I don’t want anything to do with that person. It’s going to stain my clothing if I get involved with this person.
No, no, what Jude says is you go with fear and their soil, their clothes are just filthy, he says. But we still show mercy. And in that, we follow the example of our Savior.
We turn back to Matthew chapter nine, and as Jesus reclined at a table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came. This is right as he has just called Levi or Matthew. Many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples.
And when the Pharisees saw, did Jesus want to be associated with tax collectors and the worst of society, the sinners, this lumping together all the people that were in the house, the sinners, this lumping together all the worst elements of society? I don’t even need to list them off. Think about the people that, if you were traveling around our region and you ran into them, you think, oh, let me back away.
Did Jesus want people to think, oh, Jesus is that kind of person? Jesus likes this. Well, no, he doesn’t like it, but he loves the people.
Why does he call a tax collector into his inner circle? And tax collector, to be clear, why are the tax collectors so bad in that day? Not because they collect taxes for the government, because they took advantage of their position. The tax collectors could go and collect funds, and they had to get a certain amount for the government, and then if they wanted to collect whatever else they wanted, they were welcome to.
And so these tax collectors were collaborating with an oppressive government, and as they were doing that, what else were they doing? They were living very, very well as everyone else suffered.
They weren’t people that you really wanted to hang around. They were not nice people.
What did Jesus do? He calls one of them and says, hey, I’m gonna have an inner circle of 12 people. Would you be one of them? Would you, one of the people that’s resented most in society be part of my cabinet? My trusted advisors, the people that I’m gonna teach and send out?
You think about whatever title we give an inner circle of people today, advisors, cabinet, protegees, whatever else it might be. We wanna pick people that people are gonna like, right? Can you imagine thinking of someone who just does awful, horrible sins, walking around saying, hey, I’m your protege, shouting out, hey, and everyone’s looking? They know what that person’s done.
That’s what Jesus does. He shows mercy even when there’s this person with this soiled clothing of sin.
And indeed, it’s messy getting involved with people. There’s people that have these really repulsive sins. I mean, we all have our sins, but we’re generally pretty good at keeping them neat and tidy. We put on a nice pair of clothing covering our sinful clothing. But then there’s those people that don’t.
Jesus says, for those people, you should go and have mercy on them too. And you shouldn’t say, whoo-hoo, I’m so glad I’m going to embrace what they do. I’m going to sin with them so they feel encouraged. I know what God’s forgiveness looks like. It’s not that.
Jesus doesn’t say, well, I’m going to go and see if I can swindle some people so that Matthew feels more accepted. He doesn’t pick up all the habits of the sinners and say, I’m gonna do all those.
But that’s what the Pharisees think. They think Jesus has said, okay, I’m gonna set up this ministry, and it’s going to usher in the kingdom. And by the way, I just hired a bunch of people from Las Vegas, and they’re going to run it.
That’s what they think. I’m gonna hire all those lobbyists from Washington, D.C. Those are the people that I’m going to have in my inner circle.
And the Pharisees are doing what we would do if someone said that today. They’re saying, can you believe this? Jesus, he’s insane.
And we say, well, why do I want to show mercy to those people? Because you know what happens when you show mercy to those people? People around you start to kind of scratch their heads, and maybe they start to wonder about you.
It gets really uncomfortable. And we say, but blessed are the merciful.
If blessed are the merciful, and I’m showing mercy to these people, I’m going to be getting so much less mercy directed towards me, a lot of people are going to be thinking the exact opposite of that. They’re going to, I don’t know, think the exact opposite of that. They’re going to call me some kind of backslider. They’re going to call me someone who isn’t really faithful, doesn’t really believe the faith, because look at the people that he hangs out with. Look at the people she hangs out with.
How’s that blessed? How’s that happiness being experienced?
Well, the happiness, the blessedness we experience isn’t how the rest of the world is going to react as we do that. That we show mercy to others, and are reminded of how much mercy God has shown us. That’s where the blessedness comes in, that we’re receiving God’s mercy.
And just as Jude says, as we’re anticipating that ultimate fulfillment of that mercy, when at the end of all things, we are in Jesus’s presence, and not as those to be condemned, but those to be invited to his family dinner table.
As we experience that, we experience blessedness. We experience happiness, because Jesus is right there with us.
Sometimes we think, well, I can do that to an extent, but I still need to be happy, and I’m not going to be happy if I do that. And in that, we kind of fall into the trap I’ve fallen into at times when people give me gift cards.
Gift cards are pretty neat things, right? Especially if it’s someplace you like to go, someplace you like to eat, someplace you like to shop, and oh, great, I can go, and I’ll set them aside and use them for something that I normally wouldn’t do, or wouldn’t buy.
They can be great. But one thing that I run into is that sometimes I think, but I’m not quite sure what that’s going to be yet, and so I’m going to just keep setting it aside. And I’m going to keep setting it aside. Someday, this is going to be great. I have this mercy towards whatever I need to purchase here. I’m just going to set it aside.
Well, maybe I’ll use this gift card to a restaurant. I’ll use it to take a friend when it’s just a crucial, special moment. And then I’ll convey some of this mercy alongside that I’ve received. And those gift cards sit there. I have a few from places like Borders Books.
I don’t think I’m going to ever get anything out of it. I love bookstores. I went to Borders and bought stuff with cash when I had these gift cards, because I was waiting for that moment to finally dispense of this mercy that I’d received.
A lot of times we do that with God. He dispenses this mercy upon us. If you’ve trusted in Jesus, you’ve received his mercy. We’re holding onto that mercy gift card, and we’re holding onto it, and we know we’ve experienced it, and yet we’re not fully experiencing it because we’re not giving it back to anyone.
We’re thinking, yeah, I’d give it to them someday.
What if someday doesn’t come? They don’t experience it. What if it’s that friend that needed to go out to lunch, and instead the restaurant’s now closed, and no one got to experience it?
Well, that’s not the end of the world, right? It was just a missed lunch. But what if that is really a case where someone didn’t experience Jesus? Because they were too messy, or we weren’t urgent in our approach. It didn’t feel that important. Or they were annoying us with their questions.
Jesus calls us to show mercy, and not mercy someday, but mercy now. Because we’ve received mercy, and we will receive more mercy. We have more mercy than we can ever know what to do with until the last thing that we need to do is hold onto.
You see, the blessedness that Jesus talks about doesn’t come from withholding mercy so we still have some of it, but recognizing the mercy that hasn’t been withheld to us. The more we recognize that it hasn’t been withheld to us, the more we can’t hold onto it either. May that be our experience today.
Would you join me in prayer?
Lord, we know that you walked this earth that we might experience your mercy. You taught us, you lived amongst us, you suffered for us, you died for us, and you triumphed over death for us. In everything you did, you demonstrated your mercy.
Yet sometimes it’s so hard to believe and sometimes it’s so easy to run the other way.
Lord, would you make us people of mercy? Not because we’re so merciful in our own right, but because we have a God who is. That through your Spirit, you might nudge our hearts when we’re going to hold onto the places we’ve been wronged, places that we feel put out. You might instead show mercy.
People might see the mercy that we show and know more about the God whom we are called to show in this world.
We pray in your precious name. Amen.
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