Mercy Me

The Good Samaritan is a good example of mercy (Luke 10:30-37). Jesus said, "Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy." The Good Samaritan was a blessed man. Mercy is compassion in action. While grace deals with sin, mercy deals with the consequences of sin and pity for the sinner to relieve their suffering. Thomas Watson said, “love is the friend who visits all and mercy is the doctor who visits the sick." Grace offers pardon while mercy offers relief from the sorrow.

Jesus told the story of a man traveling from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves. They beat him, robbed him blind, then left him half dead on the side of the road. A priest, whose job was to have compassion (Hebrews 5:2) crossed the road to avoid him. Next, another religious man did the same. Later, a Samaritan comes to the scene.

Samaritans and Jews were not on the best terms. The forefathers of the Samaritans didn't follow God's commands of remaining separate from the Gentiles, married into pagan families then adopted some of their practices. The bad blood goes back centuries and the Samaritan man was the enemy of the priest, the Levite, and the beaten man – what would he do?

As this man laid dying, there was no 911, no ambulances, no expert to call. The first responder was the first person to have mercy and respond. The Samaritan stopped, mended the man's wounds, set him on his own animal to ride and led the suffering man to an inn to care for him. The next morning, the Samaritan still had his business to take care of, so he told the inn keeper to keep on taking care of him and put it on his tab. This is mercy. He saw the pitiful condition, recognized the hurt, the harm, the suffering, and went out of his way to relive the misery of someone else at great cost to himself. Empathy is good, but is not enough to have compassion. Feeling sorry about the situation wasn't going to help the man dying in the ditch. Compassion feels bad for someone. Mercy goes to help. Compassion feels sorry, mercy then steps to action to alleviate the pain and hurt.

Jesus is the perfect example of mercy. He came to us, dead in our sins and showed mercy to His enemy. He drew us to Himself, loved us, and cared for us. The Lord Jesus clothes believers in robes of His righteousness and binds our spiritual wounds and healing us through the stripes He bore. The Saviour took all we owed and put it on his account, paying our sin debt.

It's terrible that someone who receives mercy can be so slow to show it to others. Christians have received mountains of mercy from Jesus an so we should follow the Lord's example and be merciful as our Father is merciful (Luke 6:36; Ephesians 2:4) and who delights in mercy (Micah 7:18-20). Our compassion and mercy needs to be guided by Scripture and not our feelings. We can't trust our feelings to guide us because sometimes true mercy and compassion to sinners does the hard thing, which won't seem like mercy to those on the receiving end. Our love, compassion, and mercy must be guided by the Biblical standards of love, compassion, and mercy, not our standards, or the world's standards. 

Thirsty

July, 1945, Cpl. Edgar Harrell was one of a small group of soldiers and sailors who survived the torpedo strike on the USS Indianapolis in WWII. In a few minutes, the ship was gone and he was floating in the ocean. He tells about some of the horrors of the aftermath in his wonderful book, Out of the Depths. He was in danger of the sharks below the water, the Japanese who sank the vessel, drowning in the water, and, ironically, not having any to drink. Many succumbed to dehydration in the vast ocean because there was no water to drink. He wrote, "By the time the sun reached its zenith at midday, our lips were cracked and bleeding and our tongues were beginning to swell in our parched mouths and throats, making our speech slurred almost beyond understanding. Dehydration was becoming our new and dreaded enemy— one that had taken the place of the sharks that would come and go. The only answer for the dehydration was the one thing we did not have— fresh water." Unquenchable thirst.

"Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they shall be filled," Matthew 5:6. When Harrell thirsted, nothing else could satisfy the great need – water. He must drink or he would die. They desired, thirsted for live giving water. Believe it or not, our culture is hungering and thirsting and striving for a twisted pseudo-righteousness, an arbitrary standard of what is good and right and the only way to be in good standing is to have the perfect righteousness of the zeitgeist. But it's an ever changing standard and it is never enough.

The righteousness Jesus spoke of is God's righteousness. Our righteousness is just not good enough. Usually it's our own standard of good, not God's anyway. You may feel the weight of condemnation of sin and know you've done wrong and know that you should do right. You thirst to be clean. So you decide to live right. Give to charity. Love your neighbor. Get right with God. But you are gulping sea water. Others try to become judge, jury, and executioner of their own standard of righteousness and appease their conscience by setting judging those who don't live up to their standard. But that self-righteousness is shallow and vain and is a dirty sort of righteousness (Isaiah 64:6) making you worse off than before (Matthew 23:15), dead in sins and dry as bones.

The blessedness of the gospel is God not only forgives sins through faith in Christ's blood, but also gives us Christ's pure and perfect righteousness by faith (Romans 3:22). The poor in spirit, desperate for forgiveness and righteousness may come to Christ, without money, without cost and be filled (Isaiah 55:1-2). John 4:14, "But whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst." Do you thirst to be clean and to be free from condemnation? Come and drink and you will be given His righteousness for your own.

Meekness and Weakness

Ambrose Bierce, said meekness is, "uncommon patience in planning a revenge that is worthwhile.” Meekness is not a quality we want or admire in society. I knew a man who thought meekness as an attribute to be pitied and suggested the meek Christian needed to work to get out of that frame of mind. I think his problem wasn't with meekness, but with the dictionary. The meek are not fighters(!) and lack strength while getting run over by anyone and everyone. But that is timidity, not meekness. We are commanded to "be strong in the Lord" and "watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong." The armor of God isn't decoration to hang in the living room, but we are to put it on and make use of it. God's people are not "men-pleasers" doing anything and everything we are asked to do, not to upset anyone one, or at least we shouldn't. As for getting run over? Matthew 5:5, "Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth."

Meekness is the Spiritual result of the Spirit's work in our soul. It's not a natural attitude or something you are born with, it's humility of spirit, lowliness of mind put into action in our souls. Matthew Henry wrote, “The meek are those who quietly submit themselves before God, to His Word, to His rod, who follow His directions and comply with His designs, and are gentle towards men” Meekness is gentleness, forbearing wrongs, and submissive to God's will. Happy are the meek? Happy are the assertive, not the submissive and blessed are the renegades not the followers. Happy are the rough and heartless, not the gentle. If you want to inherit the earth, you have to go get it by any means necessary, says the wisdom of the world. If you want temporary wealth and power, then by all means. The strong survive, for a little while. Do you think we could ever again elect a meek president? And if you think having a meek leader means weakness, read Numbers 12:3.

Broken by the poverty of Spirit, mourning for his own unrighteousness, the meek in Spirit is pliable to God's commands to obey, especially when it goes against our heart and natural tendencies (James 1:21). Followers of Christ have a teachable spirit and will come to the truth (Psalm 25:9) and readily receive correction from God's Word and will be pliable to God's direction. God's Word is to reprove, rebuke, exhort us, and the meek will be willing to hear.

Meekness, in fact, is strength under control, reigning in our emotions under God's direction. The meek know there is a resurrection. God will judge the wicked and set all things right. The Lord God will raise up, reward and bless. The earth will belong to the meek, because the Meek One is our King. Jesus Christ will rule this world, and the meek will rule with Him in His kingdom.

Good Grief

"Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted," Matthew 5:4. Mourning is grief too deep to conceal so how can someone who mourns be considered blessed? I have attended funerals where the deceased did not know Jesus Christ as Saviour and unless God had mercy at the last moments of life, they were in Hell. The family, themselves without Christ, were despondent mourners, without hope. Does Jesus say these mourners are blessed? No, I don't believe so. The particular kind of blessing comes from a particular kind of mourning. The gospel mourning that brings blessing is a Holy Spirit produced mourning over sin. There is a worldly kind of mourning that works death and has no good end and produces nothing but more sorrow. Judas mourned this way after betraying Christ and his self-centered sorrow led him to commit suicide. 2 Corinthians 7:9-11 gives us a clear picture of the two different types of mourning, "godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation…but the sorrow of the world worketh death."

Jesus is talking about mourning over our sin, what it is, and what it does. Sin is the true cause of all our sorrow. The wages of sin is death and when sin entered the world, so did the curse for it. We should weep over sin, because of its treachery, and the destruction it wreaks on humanity. Sin is rebellion and lawlessness. It is enmity against God and dishonors His holy name. Iniquity tramples on God’s law, makes light of His love, and grieves His Spirit. Personally, sin steals our joy and robs us of all comfort. Trespassing the law is the path of the Devil, it wounds us, hurts us, hardens us, and kills us. Sin is a reproach to any people and the filthy garments of a wicked people. And we do it willingly.

Do you weep over sin? Do you cry out like the Apostle, "Oh wretched man that I am!" and if you cannot weep, do you mourn it? Sin hardens the heart and worldliness sears the conscience all the while, pulling us down the broad path that leads to destruction. The wages of sin is death. Not only physical death, but spiritual death and those who die in sin will spend eternity in the Lake of Fire. The idea of the eternal night, where the worm dies not, is a horrid prospect. And the Bible says, "all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God."

Do you mourn? Then lift up your eyes, because there is hope. 1 John 1:9, "If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness." Don't follow the path of Judas, but Christ. Indeed, mourn over sin, but then go to the one who can cleanse you. Christ heals those wounded, and brokenhearted mourners. There is happiness because those who truly mourn over sin will find hope, help, healing in the blood of Christ.