The Element of Mercy

Good afternoon, everyone! Hope you're enjoying a nice Sabbath day at the end of a—hopefully it's been a good week. It's a warm day out there, but as we have to keep reminding ourselves, in about six or eight weeks, we'll be wishing for a day like this, right? Well, we've been encouraged over the years as we think about all the different messages that we hear from the world at large to do a lot of different things. Everything from join the Pepsi generation to more recently to be all-in for the Cavs. Not really sure what the equivalent of that is for the Broncos—or I'm sorry, for the Browns. I'm revealing my biases here by talking about the Broncos.

We're told as well that we should lean in, which can mean different things to different people. We're told above all, in today's world, that we have to be different. We hear a lot of different messages about a lot of different things, but I'd like to ask you a question of what does the Bible ask us to be? In line with what we heard in the sermonette earlier today, we have to rest the way that we think and the things we do on the foundation that we see and that we hear in the Bible.

So if you think for a moment, if you take notes, if you feel like writing a word or two on the upper corner of your page, if you think of a quality or two that describes God and describes what we are to become the way that we're supposed to be, what word would you choose? Turn with me, if you will, to Micah 6 and verse 8. Micah 6 and verse 8. Read a few scriptures to you here that describes a certain attribute, a certain way of being that's attributed to God and that's asked for from us that I'd like to spend the time today talking about.

Micah 6 and verse 8. Here Micah says, He has shown you, O man, what is good, and what does the Lord require of you but to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. So three things talked about here, narrows things down just a little bit. Do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. Let's turn forward to Matthew and see what Jesus Christ said. This won't narrow it down all the way just yet because He's going to name three things as well.

We'll turn to Matthew 23 and verse 23. Matthew 23 and verse 23. This is a section where Jesus is starting to confront the Pharisees and the scribes, the leaders of the religious establishment of His day. He says to them, Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, because you're hypocrites. You pay tithe of mint and anise and common, and you've neglected the weightier matters of the law. Justice, mercy, and faith. These you ought to have done without leaving the others undone. So we see both in the New Testament and the Old Testament fairly similar qualities that are talked about. And today I'd like to focus on one element of those three qualities, and that element is mercy.

The element of mercy. How often do we think of mercy as being one of those top qualities that we as Christians are supposed to demonstrate? Turn with me, if you will, to one more section in the book of Matthew in Matthew 5. In this section, the Sermon on the Mount is pretty well known. Words that Jesus Christ spoke to the multitudes as they were gathered around. He talks about the different attributes, different ways of living, and attitudes that we are to display as Christians. In Matthew 5 and in verse 7, Jesus Christ said that, "...blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." We think of all the things that go on in the world in the end.

What is it that we want? I think if most of us were honest and it came down to a choice between having justice and having mercy, we would probably choose mercy, because at least those of us who are self-aware would realize that whether we talk about man's laws, whether we talk about God's laws, we've all transgressed those laws in some way and not always received the full penalty that the law prescribes for what we've done. Perhaps some of us were speeding on the way to church today and made it here without getting a speeding ticket.

We would hope for mercy more than we would in a case like that for justice. We think about this, too, in terms of the way human societies are set up. So ideas like pardon and clemency are things that have lived for ages and been there for a long time, whether it's from a king who would be able to overrule a court and pardon someone. And today in our justice system as well, we see that governors can do that. For example, in states like Texas where there's a death penalty, the governor has regularly brought the death sentence for prisoners and has an opportunity to grant clemency. The governor can look at the facts of the case, can look at how the court ruled, can look at the verdict that a jury brought down, and a governor has the right to commute that sentence and to commute it to life imprisonment, for example.

And likewise, the president, as many of us are aware, also has the right to pardon. There have been numerous presidential pardons that are made by every president that's been in office. It's part of what's built into our political system. It stems from this idea of mercy that's been there through the ages, and the fact that, together with justice, mercy has to be bound together with it. It's a fundamental characteristic of God, as we're going to look at in a moment. And after that, I'd like to look in this message at some examples about how Jesus Christ specifically acted out mercy.

And rather than just giving a dictionary definition of what it means, look at how it is that Jesus Christ lived out this attribute in the way that he interacted with humankind. Then lastly, we need to think about how we exercise mercy in our own lives. So I'd like to look today at those three dimensions.

So let's start first about with mercy as a fundamental characteristic of God. I don't think this is too foreign a thought. We've probably at least passively thought about different passages that mention God and His mercy. Let's turn to Exodus 34 as a first passage that talks about His mercy.

Exodus 34. And this is an interesting scene because it's the second giving of the Ten Commandments. We don't always think about that, but God actually gave the Ten Commandments twice in rather rapid succession. And if we remember, the reason they had to be given twice was the first time they were given when Moses came down from Mount Sinai. He found that the people had built themselves an idol, a golden calf, and depending on who you listen to, perhaps that golden calf just kind of sprung up out of the fire magically and got there.

Obviously, that wasn't the case. God was angry. Moses was angry and frustrated, and he acted out in his own temper. And he took the tablets of stone that had the Word of God inscribed on them, and he smashed them on the ground. He was so angry. We probably had reactions like that in the past.

This passage that we read in verse 34 takes place the second time around. After things stabilize, after the children of Israel realize what they've done, Moses goes back up on the mountain, and he is again given the words of the law. And in Exodus 34, verse 5, the Lord descended in the cloud, and he stood with Moses there, and he proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and the children's children to the third and fourth generation.

So here again, we see this same sort of theme of mercy bound together with truth. So God doesn't say, I'm the God who's tolerant. I'm the God who says that everything is okay. Go ahead and do what you want, as long as you have good feelings in your heart. It's okay. We're good. He says, he makes it clear, he has a way, he has a law, he's about to write those laws again on the tablets of stone.

But at the same time, he identifies himself as a merciful God, his inherent quality and trait, his mercy. And that's what is his motivating factor in reaching out to the children of Israel, to gathering a relationship with them, to calling them as his physical people, having brought them out of Egypt.

It's all attributed to that quality of mercy that he had that drives him to want to have this relationship, in this case with Israel in the Old Testament, and as we'll see later with us, as called out Christians after the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. Turn with me, if you will, to Psalm 136. We'll see this theme carried on in Psalm 136. Now, I'm not going to read every word of this Psalm, and you'll understand why if you don't already, when you open it up and read every verse.

This is a Psalm that David wrote, and when you read it, it sounds pretty repetitive because every line ends with, His mercy endures forever. And reading through it, it might get a little bit repetitive, but David writes out all of these lines and gives thanks to God, for He's good. He's the God of God. He's the Lord of Lords. He does great wonders. He made the heavens. He laid out the earth. All of these things that happen as he then goes through the history of Israel, talks about the ways that God has delivered them, taking them out of Egypt, leading them through the Red Sea, overthrowing the Pharaoh in verse 15, leading His people through the wilderness, striking down great kings, named some of those kings, and then giving them the land in their heritage, remembering Israel in its lowly state, and rescuing the people from their enemies.

And in all of these things, over and over and over again, in every verse, He attributes this to God's great mercy that endures forever. Now, of course, this sounds, again, better in a song because it's not quite as repetitive. And being the person that I am, I had to go out to the Internet and find out what the hit songs were that had the least number of words in them. Anyone have any guests out there? I actually found a 1975 disco favorite called Fly, Rob and Fly by the Silver Convention, which had six words in the entire song.

So David wasn't alone writing a song that repeats and repeats and repeats. And actually, when I heard about it, I looked it up. There was another disco song called Do the Hustle. Does anyone remember the song Do the Hustle? If you count the word oo, I think the Do the Hustle actually had five words in it. So if you can beat that, let me know.

There probably is something out there with one or two words in it. Anyways, I'm not sure how we got onto that. Back to the subject. Let's turn to Micah 7. Micah 7 goes on in laying out God's mercy. And in this case, it attributes it to the pardoning of iniquity or sins. Not only delivery of a physical nation, the nation of Israel, out of Egypt, but as we know, the corollary to that, what that pictured, taking us out of our sins. Micah 7 in verse 18. Here Micah writes, Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of his heritage?

He does not retain his anger forever because he delights in mercy. God delights in mercy. It's something he wants to do. How often do we see people today who don't probably know the Bible beyond a few verses that they've been told about, saying that the Old Testament is just all about lightning from heaven and stones falling on people and an angry God. But what it tells us here, even in the Old Testament, is the motivation of God, one of his prime factors, one of his prime characteristics, is mercy.

And he loves mercy. He delights in mercy, not only in the quality that he has in himself, but in seeing that quality lived out in us. Turn with me, if you will, to 2 Corinthians 1 and verse 3, where we continue to see the same thing expressed, not surprisingly, in the New Testament. 2 Corinthians 1 and verse 3. This is a preamble or some opening statements to 2 Corinthians that Paul is writing. And in verse 3 he says, Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.

So a little repetitive through all of these verses, perhaps, but I wanted to make the point that we look through the Bible, start to finish. Old Testament, New Testament. God working with Old Testament Israel. God working with us as called out Christians through the blood of his Son Jesus Christ under the New Covenant. Mercy is at the center of how he describes himself. So let's look now in the second part of the message, then, at how God has demonstrated his mercy.

How has God demonstrated his mercy over time? Now for those who have spent a bit of time reading through the major prophets and the minor prophets in the Old Testament, you'll know that there's kind of a recurring theme that happens. It even starts earlier in the Bible as we read through the books after Israel first settles the Promised Land. You get into the book of Judges, for example, and what is it that happens?

It's this ongoing cycle that takes place. Children of Israel are there, everything's going fine. As things are going fine, they start to wander away from the worship of God. They start to turn to idols. They have enemies attack them. Things go poorly. They call on God, and God comes back and helps them out again.

And in the prophetic books, as we get into Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, and then into the minor prophets, we see a similar cycle going on. But what is interesting to me is always, even in some of these books like Jeremiah, Jeremiah is known as a very pessimistic prophet. There's even a word we use today talking about people writing something called a geramied, right?

Because it's so negative. Many people see the book of Jeremiah that way, but in all of these books, what comes out of it in the end, it's like the end of a storm when the sun shines. And God always comes back to, I will call my people back to me. When they call upon me, I will have mercy. Even though they've transgressed in all of these ways, when they turn to me and repent, I will have mercy on them.

It's a recurring theme that we see throughout. Let's look at it in the New Testament as Jesus Christ lived out that same theme. How is it that Jesus Christ worked out His mercy when He was on the earth?

Turn with me to Mark 10. Mark 10. There are accounts in all of the Gospels that talk about a whole batch of miracles that Jesus Christ did, usually within a single chapter or so. There's five, six, seven miracles that are put together. And these miracles are really the outgrowth of God's mercy. They're even named that way as we look at the accounts. And that's the viewpoint and the attitude that He had towards the people that He was dealing with on the earth at that time.

Mark 10, verses 46 through 52. In verse 46, they were coming to Jericho, Jesus and His disciples. And as He went out of Jericho with His disciples and the great multitude, blind Bartimaeus, the son of Timaeus, sat by the road begging. And when he heard that it was Jesus of Nazareth, he began to cry out and say, Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me. And then many warned Him to be quiet, but he cried out all the more saying, son of David, have mercy on me. So Jesus stood still and commanded Him to be called.

And they called the blind man, saying to him, be of good cheer, rise, He's calling you. And throwing aside His garment, He rose and came to Jesus. And Jesus answered and said to him, what do you want me to do for you? And the blind man said to Him, Rabboni, that I may receive my sight. And Jesus said to him, go your way, your faith has made you well. And immediately He received His sight and He followed Jesus on the road.

It's a great miracle of Jesus, someone who had been blind from birth, who was asking for mercy. He knew that Jesus Christ had that quality, that He would want to give mercy to Him. And He appealed to that. And even though it was someone that wasn't in His path, as He called out, Jesus Christ had mercy on Him by healing Him. And as I mentioned, many other instances of the miracles that we see in the other Gospels show that same type of cycle happen.

But these miracles, as we probably know, were not only to give people physical healing. They were meant to show that Jesus Christ had much greater power than just to be able to heal physical ailments. Turn with me, if you will, to Matthew 9. And as we experience much more personally in our own lives, Jesus Christ's power and His mercy is what gives us forgiveness from our sins. It's purely by that mercy that that comes to us. Matthew 9 will start in verse 1. Here, they are by the Sea of Galilee, and they are leaving one area.

And He gets into a boat in Matthew 9, verse 1, and He crossed over and He came to His own city. And behold, He brought to Him a paralytic lying on a bed. And when Jesus saw their faith, He said to the paralytic, Son, be of good cheer, your sins are forgiven you. And immediately, some of the scribes said within themselves, this man blasphemes. He's putting himself in the place of God by saying He can forgive sins. And Jesus, knowing their thoughts, said, Why do you think evil in your hearts?

For which is easier to say, your sins are forgiven you, or to say, arise and walk? But that you may know that the Son of Man has power on earth to forgive sins, and then He turned to the paralytic, and He said, arise, take up your bed, and go to your house. And He arose, and He departed to His house. And when the multitude saw it, they marveled, and they glorified God, who had given such power to men. So the mercy that was acted out and demonstrated and shown through Jesus Christ in this verse is tied together as starting through the physical healing that He was given, but moving much farther than that to show that He has the power to forgive sins, and eventually through His death, that all of our sins can be forgiven.

Let's turn to one more chapter, one more passage, that lays out this final portion of the picture, and that's in 1 Peter 1. 1 Peter 1, we'll read verses 3 through 5. 1 Peter 1, verses 3 through 5. Here again at the beginning of one of the epistles that Peter writes, he says in verse 3, Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to an inheritance incorruptible and undefiled that does not fade away, reserved in heaven for you, who are kept by the power of God through faith for salvation, ready to be revealed in the last time.

We see that this mercy, this inherent characteristic of God, as He shows it in His interaction with human beings, starts in the Old Testament by Him showing mercy to people, taking them out to children of Israel from slavery, bringing them into the Promised Land, and then it extends down through to Jesus Christ coming to the earth, first healing people of their physical ailments, but then much more importantly through the giving of His life, forgiving us of our sins and drawing us into a relationship with God, a relationship that we can't have of ourselves, a relationship that we don't deserve, but through His sacrifice, through Jesus Christ, His blood that He gives, we're able to come to God.

So what do these examples show mercy to be? I told you I didn't want to just read a dictionary definition of this is mercy, but what is it that's pointed out in these things? What are some of the characteristics that come around into this definition of mercy? I'd like to point out a few. This is a big topic. This is not going to be all of them, but let me point out a few that strike me as I've gone through this.

First one is that mercy is an action. Mercy is an action. In all the situations that are described here, mercy ends up with a result. It's not, I feel pity towards you. It's not, I feel bad about the situation you're in, but it's an action. God's mercy on the children of Israel took them out of Egypt and brought them to the Promised Land. Jesus Christ's mercy on someone who needed healing resulted in the blind man's seeing. It resulted in a lame man walking. It resulted in a woman who had some sort of issue where she couldn't stop bleeding being healed where that stopped.

There was action, there was result, it was more than just a sentiment. And likely, his mercy, the mercy of God through Jesus Christ's sacrifice that comes to us ends in an action of us being forgiven of our sins. It's not that God says, well, I feel bad for you guys because you're a bunch of sinners. And then he moves on and goes and does whatever else he wants to. It was an action.

He gave the life of his son Jesus Christ for us, taking that action so we could be forgiven. It does, though, also include sentiment. In the Greek, the word aleo, that is translated as mercy in the New Testament, has that depth of feeling of compassion and of pity that goes along with it. And we'll read a passage later on that lays that out further. And it's very clear, as Jesus Christ was interacting with the different people that he did, that he had a great deal of pity and compassion on them. So mercy is not without feeling, but it's not limited to feeling.

It acts out. It's an action. It's something that happens in the end. Another element of it that is very important is the fact that it's undeserved and it's unearned. Again, we'll dig into this a little further in the last part of the message. But in none of these examples of mercy, can we point out anything that the person who was receiving the mercy did to make themselves worthy of it?

And I think we know that in the end. We can't come to God and say, God, I've done X, Y, and Z, and because of those things, you owe me mercy. You owe me forgiveness. You owe me salvation. It doesn't work that way. It's something that's granted by the person who's giving the mercy. And that's an inherent quality of it. And it's related, lastly, to a desire for a relationship. So in the Old Testament, there's a word called hesed, a Hebrew word that's translated mercy.

And I was talking with a friend about this topic back a few weeks ago. He showed me a book about this thick. And it's filled with commentary and chapters, page after page, about what the meaning of this word has said is and taking apart all of the depth of the meaning of this Hebrew word, which has everything to do with mercy, with kindness, with an intent to build a relationship with a desire to pursue someone and to bring them into a relationship with the loyalty and the commitment that goes with it.

All of those things are bound into this idea of mercy. And it relates to the fact that God, in the Old Testament through Israel, was that intent on having a relationship with the people of Israel. Even though they were sinning, even though they went astray, he was always intent and loyal to that intent to have a relationship with them. And likewise, as we know in our lives as converted individuals, we're not always living perfectly.

We always turn back to Jesus Christ for forgiveness, and we lay ourselves before Him and ask for mercy and trust that His loyalty and the commitment that He has to that relationship with us motivates the relationship that we have together. And that's what enables us to have the relationship with Him. So, in the remainder of the message, I'd like to spend some time on ourselves. What does this mean for us in terms of how we live every day?

Because we are to practice mercy. It's a quality and inherent quality of God. It's part of how He defines Himself, and it's something that He expects of us. We discussed in the beginning of the message already how mercy is considered one of the three weightier matters of the law. So it's something that we should be understanding and thinking deeply about, and how it is that we put godly mercy to action in our lives. Our understanding of what we've received from God should motivate us to practice mercy in everything that we do. Turn with me, if you will, again to 2 Corinthians 1.

We read verse 3 of 2 Corinthians 1. Let's reread that and read down into verse 4 and see how it lays this out for us. 2 Corinthians 1, verses 3 and 4. Verse 3, Blessed be the God and the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort those who are in trouble with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God. So similar to other aspects of our lives, as we walk as Christians, we see this same cycle coming up.

God is at mercy on us. God has acted out in that mercy and forgiven us of our sins. And He wants us to express that same attitude towards other people in everything that we do. It should be at the core of our being. It should be our prime motivator, a weightier matter of the way that we live our lives, just as it is for God and His character. So how do we go about doing that? We've not been given the ability to take people who are in slavery and lead them out and miraculously spread the waters and give them new land somewhere.

We can't do that. It's just not what we're capable of. God's not given us the ability to do miracles, to heal the sick. So what is it that we're supposed to do with this attitude? And what's the action? We talked about the fact that mercy is an action. What's the action that we're supposed to take? What is it that we should do?

Turn with me, if you will, to Luke 10. I'd like to spend the balance of this message taking apart some aspects of this well-known parable of the Good Samaritan and look at how it instructs us about mercy and a few elements that we should think about in our lives as we contemplate mercy and putting it to action in our lives.

Luke 10, and let's start in verse 25. This sets the backdrop for the parable that Jesus Christ is telling. So in verse 25 of Luke 10, Behold, a certain lawyer stood up and he tested Jesus, saying, Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? So the whole background of this incident is this is a lawyer, so somebody who's schooled in the Jewish law, understands the Old Testament probably better in terms of words and phrases than we ever will, and he wants to test Jesus Christ, maybe to see if he's a real teacher or not, maybe to trip him up like others were interested in doing.

And so he wants to know, Jesus, if there's one thing I need to do, what is it that I need to do to inherit eternal life? And so Jesus said to him and asked him a question right back and said, well, you know the law. What is it that you see in there? What is it that you should do? And so the man answered and said, You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, with all your strength, and with all your mind, and your neighbor as yourself. And this is a central tenet that nobody's going to argue with. And Jesus said to him, You've answered rightly. Do this and you'll live.

And the lawyer, wanting to justify himself, said to Jesus, Who is my neighbor? So you can just imagine this as he's trying to narrow the thing down. If he's honest about this, then what he's doing is he's trying to kind of strip out the stragglers and say, Okay, I'm supposed to love somebody as myself. So let's narrow this population down, right? Because it really only applies to my neighbor. Okay? I don't want to complicate this by widening the lens too far. So let's narrow this down to who's my neighbor, and I could focus on being good to those people. And that's when Jesus Christ tells this parable.

And he answered and he said, A certain man went down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among thieves, who stripped him of his clothing, wounded him, and departed, leaving him half-dead. Now, that reads fairly quickly, but there's more that's behind this. So this stretch between Jericho and Jerusalem was about a 17-mile stretch. Okay? It's not a long distance, and in those days you could walk it.

It'd probably be about a day's journey, I would guess, to go 17 miles. It was a dangerous road, and it was known because of all the robberies and killings that happened on it. It was known by many as the Way of Blood. So as soon as Jesus would have talked in this parable and said, we're talking here about the road between Jericho and Jerusalem, people would have right away said, aha, he's talking about the Way of Blood.

There's a lot of bandits there. You've got to be careful. It's an uphill. Remember, we read in the Bible always about going up to Jerusalem. So if they were walking from Jerusalem to Jericho, I'm sure they could picture the road as they're walking downhill. They could probably picture some of the twists and turns in it. And they probably thought in their minds about people that they'd known, whether it was friends or things that they'd heard in the marketplace about people who'd been fallen on by bandits on this Way of Blood and been robbed or killed.

Now, by chance in verse 31, a certain priest came down that road. I'm sorry. Yeah, in verse 31. And when he saw the man lying there, he passed by on the other side. And likewise, a Levite, when he arrived at the place, came and looked, and he passed by the other side.

Now, again, this is not unusual in terms of the people walking. So in temple service at that point in time, the priests would have been the ones in charge. They would have been leading the temple service. And below them, there would have been other Levites. The priests are Levites as well. But below the priests, there would be other Levites fulfilling other types of duties in the temple.

This could be tending to the fire. There was a fire that was always burning in the altar. It could have been burning incense. Some of them served as singers singing in a choir. Others served as musicians. So this idea, and many of them, historically, would have lived in Jericho, because it would have been less expensive, probably, than to live in Jerusalem, perhaps a better situation for their families to be in. So again, he's using a very familiar situation here. And the fact that there would be priests and Levites, they worked on certain calendars and rotations, and they would be walking regularly, in this case from Jerusalem back to Jericho, probably going back to their homes after fulfilling their days of service in the temple.

So these would be people who had done their duty, they'd been working in the temple, and probably eager to get back home to their families. And then, in verse 33, a certain Samaritan, as he journeyed, came where he was. And when he saw him, he had compassion. Now, the Samaritans, as we might have heard explained in the past, are people that were typically looked down on by the Jews of that time. So this would have been a group of people that you would be prejudiced against if you were a typical Jew of those days.

They were viewed as being half-bereeds, they were viewed as being kind of less than complete members of society, and they were looked down upon for a variety of different reasons. And so Jesus Christ is intentionally now inserting into this parable, in a known situation, a known road, people going back and forth like priests and Levites, Levites, now he's inserting the Samaritan. Someone who, as soon as he mentions it, his audience would be thinking, okay, this is a lesser human being that we're talking about right here.

Okay, we've got the priests, we've got the Levites, they serve in the temple, now we've got this other guy. We kind of try to stay away from those guys because they're kind of unpure, and he's going down the road, too. But he stops, and he saw the man, he had compassion on him. So he went to him, he bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine, and he set him on his own animal, brought him to an inn, and took care of him. On the next day, when he departed, he took out two denarii, gave them to the innkeeper, and said to him, take care of him, and whatever more you spend, when I come again, I'll repay you.

So which of these three do you think was a neighbor to him who fell among the thieves? And the lawyer had to say the only obvious answer you could say, the one who showed mercy on him.

It's kind of interesting here, he doesn't say the Samaritan, does he? He simply says, the guy who showed mercy on him. And Jesus said to him, go and do likewise. So you can just imagine how this guy thought, as Jesus looked at him and said, go be like that Samaritan. Okay? So he was using an example, and using extremes, to make a point here.

And that was the fact that when we see need, what is the showing of mercy? It's tending to that need, like we talked about before. It's taking the action. It's going ahead and doing something, not just passing by, because there might be other more pressing things that are going on.

So I'd like to draw out three points for us to think about, as we're exercising mercy in our lives, coming out of this parable. We look at verse 33 onwards. There are three things here that are identified as having happened. The first is seeing. And I don't mean looking, but I mean seeing. Just like there's a difference between hearing and listening, I want to draw a distinction here between looking and seeing. Because two people looked in the parable, one person saw.

Okay? We had the priest look and walk by. We had the Levite look and walk by. And didn't see a need that they felt was compelling enough for them to fulfill. The Samaritan saw. That's the first point we'll talk about for a little while. Secondly, when he saw him in verse 33, he had compassion. So we have to not only see, we have to feel. And the feeling is one of compassion. And then the third thing we'll talk about a little more is we need to act. Because that's what the good Samaritan did after he saw and after he felt. He took action.

Took the man, put him on his own donkey, slowed his own schedule down, took him to an inn, and made sure that he paid for whatever was needed until this person was fully restored to health. So the three elements and three things that he did in this example that Jesus lays out for practicing mercy. So let's think about the first point a little bit and dig a little deeper. He saw. Now I've got a friend that I worked with back a few years ago, a couple of moves before I lived in Colorado.

He actually grew up in Akron. His name was John. And John went to Catholic school. And he loved to tell stories. And there's one story that I've heard probably five or six times. It was about the nuns in elementary school and the Catholic school that he went to. The story he would tell was how he was a rambunctious kid, like a lot of the other boys in the class. And whenever things got out of hand in his school, the nun had a refrigerator box.

I don't know if a parent had donated it or what, but you know, you've seen these boxes. They're probably five, six feet tall. They fit a whole refrigerator inside of it. And if you got enough trouble in this nun's room, she would take the refrigerator box and she would just drop it over your desk. And so John would describe how he'd be getting in trouble in school.

And the nun would just come and drop this refrigerator box over his desk. He said, so now you're sitting there, you're third grader or fourth grader, and you're sitting inside this refrigerator box. It's kind of dark. You can sort of hear what's going on outside. So if you're a third, fourth grade boy, what are you going to do next? Well, of course, you take out your pen or your pencil and you start poking holes in the box, right? You've got these little shafts of light coming in from the box in different directions. You sort of peek your eye to it and you can see what's going on in different directions, right?

But you don't get the full perspective, do you? You're looking through these little eye holes and you can see little bits of what's going on. If you can look through one, you probably see the teacher. You look through the other side, you might see one of the kids in class. But you don't get the whole picture, the whole panorama of what's going on in the classroom.

How similar is that to what happens in our lives? How often do we live our lives really from the inside of a refrigerator box with a few holes poked in it? I think some of that is what God was laying out, where Jesus Christ was laying out here in this parable when he was talking. There was a different filter that came over the Samaritan than for the priest and the Levite, as they saw the guy sitting on the side of the road.

Now, I'm guessing since these were people who'd served in the temple and were making their way likely back home to Jericho, they were probably thinking about their families. They were probably thinking about the fact that they were tired. They'd been serving the temple all week long, or however long their course of action was. They probably wanted to get home off a dangerous road before the end of the day. There were all these filters that came on, all of these reasons that stopped them when they looked, that stopped them from really seeing the need.

And for whatever reason, it was the Samaritan who saw the need and realized it was important enough that he needed to show mercy and he wanted to do that. The other thing I want to draw out of this, I find really interesting, the parable that I hadn't seen before, is how does it start off?

What's the original question? The original question from the lawyer is, who is my neighbor? He wants to know who is my neighbor. Who do I narrow down this attitude of treating neighbor as self? Who do I narrow that down to? When Jesus Christ gives the answer in the end, he asks which of the three people acting in this parable acted as a neighbor? So Jesus Christ doesn't define for him who are the set of people that I should think of as my neighbor. What he's defining for him is, you must act like a neighbor, regardless of who else is out there.

A very different question that he answered. And if we think about it, give it some thought, I think it opens up the meaning a lot more in terms of how we need to think about the way that we act. Are we, when we see people, regardless of who they are, regardless of what situation that they're in, do we see them as though we are the neighbor?

Or do we put filters or categories as we see different needs and say, well, that one's not so deserving of it. You know what? They deserve the situation they're in because they did this, they did this, and they did this. But mercy, by definition, is not deserved. Which one of us deserved to have our sins forgiven us? Of course, we know none of us did, but Jesus Christ died for our sins. God forgave us of our sins.

So often, I think, we tend to think on that justice piece of it, which is one of the weightier matters of the law. But we don't always think about the mercy piece of it, which is that same unconditional forgiveness that was given to us, that same unconditional attitude that God wants us to pass along to other people.

So as we see, as we look, what filters are there on our eyes that stop us from seeing, that change the viewpoint from God's viewpoint of mercy to our own viewpoint, whatever that might be.

Let's turn, if you would, to Matthew 7. While we're turning there, I'll call your mind briefly to another parable that Jesus Christ gave. If you want to just jot it down, you won't read it.

But in Matthew 22, Jesus Christ gives a parable of the wedding feast. For those who were at the Beyond Today presentation a couple weeks ago, one of the presenters used this in that presentation. In the parable of the wedding feast, he talks about the ruler who's having a wedding, and he invites a whole lot of people to come to his wedding.

And what is it that happens? They've got excuses. They've got different things that have come up. I've just bought a farm. I'm really busy. I've got to get things put together. Another one, I just bought a yoke of oxen. I've got to get them broken in so they'll be productive for working in the field. Another one says, I just got married. I'm not going to be able to make it.

Other priorities, other things got in the way. And what does he do in the end? He says, forget all those people. Just go out and grab whoever wants to come in, whoever will come to me and bring them into the feast. And that's a parable that's meant to attach to us and the world, and the way that people in general relate to God and react to His calling, and the fact that many will say they have more important things to do than respond to God's calling.

It's similar to mercy. If we're not thinking about that, what do we put ahead? What do we think gets in the way of us acting out mercy in our lives? Matthew 7, verses 1 through 5. Another part of the same attitude that I was just referring to briefly. Matthew 7, verses 1 through 5. Here, Jesus Christ says, judge not that you be not judged, for with what judgment you judge, you will be judged, and with the measure you use, it will be measured back to you.

And why do you look at the speck in your brother's eye, but don't consider the plank in your own eye? Or how can you say to your brother, let me remove the speck from your eye, and look, a plank is in your own eye? Hypocrite! First remove the plank from your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye. So you can almost see Jesus Christ kind of acting this out and talking about how ludicrous it is, right?

And pointing to his eye and saying, you know, you're gonna go to your brother, and you see, see right there? You look really, really close. It looks like there's a little speck there, right? Meanwhile, you've got this 2 by 4 sticking out of your eye, and you have to be careful turning around so you don't whack somebody with it, and you've ignored it while you're pointing to your brother and saying, I think there's a little tiny thing in the corner of your eye. And it's that same attitude that we're talking about here in terms of mercy.

Again, mercy is undeserved, right? And if we think of it in terms of, well, that this person's in this situation because of these things they've done, and they don't really deserve mercy because they've gotten themselves into a problem, they need to get out of it. Which one of us wants God to act that way with us? So are we looking for a neighbor, or are we looking to be a neighbor? So we think about the question that the young rich man asked Jesus Christ. Hopefully we're not looking to narrow down that set of people that were supposed to be merciful, too, but rather thinking about how we can act out this attitude and this mindset towards people whenever we have the opportunity to do so.

Second element in this parable, he felt. He felt. The Samaritan felt. Now we know that mercy is more than a feeling. It's an action, but as I mentioned earlier, mercy does involve feeling. Turn with me to Matthew 9. Again, we're going to go back to the example of Jesus Christ and how he related to human beings when he, as God, was on the earth living a human life.

Matthew 9 and we'll read verses 35 and 36. Verse 35, Jesus went about all the cities and villages teaching in their synagogues, preaching the gospel of the kingdom, and healing every sickness and every disease among the people. But when he saw the multitudes, he was moved with compassion for them because they were weary and scattered and like sheep having no shepherd.

So you can feel, and there are other situations, right? The shortest verse in the Bible that says Jesus wept, and it was when he saw the faithlessness of the people. And so he looked at the condition of humanity at that time. He looked at the way that people were thinking. He looked at the way that they were living their lives. He was just moved with compassion because he was saddened for them. They were just kind of casting around in the dark trying to do the best they could do, and they weren't doing real well. A lot of the ways that really describes the world that we live in today as well, doesn't it? But he saw that as a reason to act out with mercy for people.

He didn't see it as a reason to go up to every single person that he saw and said, you're doing this wrong, you're doing that wrong, you're doing that wrong. But he had mercy on them. And that's an example I think we need to take to heart as well and see how much are we doing that? How much are we acting out and modeling that same mercy? In today's world, the sheer volume of suffering that we see makes it tough, doesn't it? In fact, one of the downsides, big downsides of global communication network that we have today is that not a day goes by, barely a half day goes by, that we're not informed of another cataclysm that's going on. There's floods in Baton Rouge, there's the earthquake in Italy, there's things happening all over the place. I don't know if you get it, but I've got BBC app on my smartphone, I've got one or two other news sources, and at random times during the day, suddenly I'll see the light go on, and it's usually not good news. It's usually an earthquake here or a killing there or a terrorist attack somewhere else or police chasing someone. And it's just constant, and it can wear us down, because at a certain point as human beings, it's hard to absorb all of that without being desensitized to it, isn't it? In fact, if you don't have to turn there if you don't want to, but 2 Timothy 3, 2 Timothy 3, verses 1 through 3, talks about conditions that will exist at the end time before Jesus Christ returns. And in 2 Timothy 3 and verse 3, one of those conditions in the Old King James translation is said to be without natural affection, that people will be without natural affection. Unloving, I think, is how the New King James Version translates it. But to me, it's not hard to see that based on the way that our world is today, because at some point as a human being, it becomes very difficult to absorb all of this and still have feeling towards other people, because that reservoir of feelings just goes away at some point because of all the things that are happening in the world. So how do we deal with that? How do we deal with that?

The best explanation I can give is an example of a friend of mine that I have who lived in India for a number of years. And I don't know if any of you have visited India, but I've been there a few times for business and I've seen some other documentaries and TV shows where people go there. And it's not unusual to see people get to India and break down in tears. And the reason for that is the poverty is crushing. I mean, it is absolutely crushing. I mean, I've been in a taxi going to the airport in India and literally having five or six women, some with babies in their hands, scratching on the window glass asking for money. And if there's something that just tears you apart, it's just, you know, because people just live in certain places, they're in such terrible conditions. And we just honestly do not know poverty in this country to the scale that a place like that knows poverty. And you can travel down the streets in the evening and you'll see, along entire blocks along in some of the big cities, and you'll see people strapping blankets to the fences that are on sidewalks and kind of making a lean-to so they can sleep there for the night and cooking their dinner out on the sidewalk every night. And millions of people live that way. And it's very difficult. And I asked one of my friends, you know, how do you deal with that? What do you do?

And the example that he gave, which I think is really instructive for us as well, is you look at what your sphere of influence is. You know you cannot, you can't cure poverty in India. But if you live there, there are people that you deal with. And because labor there is so inexpensive, many people, especially if they're Western Europeans, Americans, living there will have household help. They'll have someone helping to clean, they'll have a cook, they might have a driver because it's very difficult to drive in those circumstances. And he said, you know, what you do is this. You look at the families that are working for you and you help them. And this particular person I talked to told me over the course of a conversation how he'd put five or six children through college, kids of the household staff that he was working with, and how he'd gotten braces and other medical services done for the different people who worked for them, and how through working with that set of people that were within his sphere of influence that he touched and worked with every day, he was able to change the trajectory of three or four families during a five to six year span that he lived in that country. And he was acting out mercy. He was doing it in the way that he could, and he was impacting the people that he could. I think as we think about feeling and that part of acting out mercy, we have to find a way to focus back on the areas where we have ability to make a difference, and where we have a level of control that we can make a difference, and focus on those areas and do it. Because otherwise, it becomes so difficult when we look at the big picture and we look at all of the things that are out there, we can feel powerless against the whole world, and we are.

But within those spheres of influence, whether it's our neighborhood, our school, our place of work, certainly here within the congregation, we have an opportunity to do a whole lot of things that can change the trajectory of people's lives as we act out those acts of mercy for people.

So let's look at the third element, then, that we see in this parable after seeing and feeling and take it down to action. Turn with me, if you will, to James 2.

James 2 verses 14 through 17.

James is well known for being a chapter in the Bible that talks about works, sometimes a dirty word in Christianity, because people don't understand the connection between faith and God and works, in other words, doing things. And James points out very powerfully the fact that, exactly like we were reading about with mercy, and the fact that mercy always ends up in action, he's saying that faith is something that's exhibited in the way that we live our lives, exhibited in the way that we do things. It's not that those works that we do earn us points with God or earn us special favor, but they're the natural follow-on to true faith. And so in James 2 verse 14, James asks, So what he's laying out in this situation is, if we see a need in that sphere of influence that we have, the people that we're interfacing with, and if all we say is, well, I sure hope that gets better, good luck to you, we haven't really done what we've needed to do. We need to think about what can we do tangibly in order to help, as an act of mercy, to help that person to move forward in the situation that they're in. You know, I think about the example that I've seen the last few days. I don't know if some of you have seen the footage out of Baton Rouge, but they have this group called the Cajun Navy, and they basically have gone out. It's just citizens who've gone out in their swamp boats and other watercraft that they have, and they go house to house just looking for people and trying to save them. There's one piece of footage I saw in one of the networks that was particularly compelling, and it was a guy approaching a car, and the first time I saw it, I didn't really understand what it was, because I just saw kind of a dome sort of thing, and a guy dive under the water, but what it turned out was this was a car that was sinking in the flood waters, and this guy looked like a young guy, comes around, dives under the water, and you can see him pulling on the door of this car as it's sort of half sinking in the water, and once it's all the way down in the water and the pressure equalized, he was able to pull the door open, he pulled the lady out, and then he went back down again. She was screaming. He went back down again. He pulled the dog out afterwards, and so I think of that in terms of action. Right? He was there, it was in front of him, and he wasn't going to ignore it, and at the risk of his own life, we call those people, because of this parable, good Samaritans, right? No connection to the person, but he was in a situation, he was going to be a neighbor, and he was going to act, and he went in, and in this case, he was able to pull both the lady and the dog out of the car and into safety, which was really incredible to see.

So he acted, and likewise, we need to act as well. So as we wrap this up and conclude, we live in a difficult world. We receive a lot of different messages all the time, but thanks to God's mercy, we've been called out. We've been called out to a new hope. We've been forgiven of our sins. We have the opportunity to live a new life, and one of the characteristics that's just at the top of the list is mercy. Justice, mercy, and faith is talked about as one of the three weightier matters of the law. Back in Micah, mercy is talked about as one of the things that's required of us. So as we go along in our lives and as we deepen our understanding of this key element of God's character, I'd like to encourage us all to look for and see the opportunities to be a neighbor to others and to exercise mercy. Feel that same compassion that Jesus Christ had towards the multitudes as he saw the difficulties that they were having as they were casting about trying to live their lives, and most of all, that we look for those opportunities to exercise mercy in our actions towards other people. Hope you all have a good rest of the Sabbath.