Giving & Receiving Mercy

SERMON: 2006-11-09--sm0607--giving-receiving-mercy SOURCE DURATION: 00:44:25.000 PROPOSED CUTS: 1 CONFIDENCE: 1.00 APPROVED: false REASON: The sermon begins with narrative storytelling and theological exposition at segment [0]. The recording ends during a sustained acoustic music interval (worship/hymn), which is authoritative evidence of the material belonging to the overall service context. Acoustic segmentation found sustained music at the end edge and moved the boundary to the adjacent transcript segment. ACOUSTIC EVIDENCE: available ACOUSTIC MUSIC INTERVALS: 00:40:05.720-00:44:20.700 ACOUSTIC SPEECH OVERLAP: yes ACOUSTIC BOUNDARIES APPLIED: end Inline CUT markers identify each proposed audio boundary after the relevant word. --- ORIGINAL TRANSCRIPT WITH PROPOSED CUTS MARKED --- The story is told of a mother who once approached Napoleon Bonaparte, the emperor of France, seeking a pardon for her son. And the emperor replied that the young man had committed a certain offense, not only once, but twice, and that justice demanded death. Said the woman, "But I don't ask for justice. I plead for mercy." And Napoleon is said to have replied, "But your son does not deserve mercy." And the woman cried out, she said, "Sir, it would not be mercy if he deserved it. And mercy is all I ask for." "Well then," said the emperor, "I will have mercy." And he spared the woman's son. The word mercy in the dictionary is defined as showing compassion or kindly forbearance towards an offender, an enemy, or a person who is in your power. In other words, you not only do not give to people what they deserve, you in fact give them what they do not deserve. And mercy is not only what God extends to us, a sinful human race, but it is also what he requires us to extend to each other. And a good case can be made biblically speaking for the fact that we receive mercy to the degree to which we extend mercy to others. Listen again to Matthew 5-7. "Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." Now there are many stories in the Bible that illustrate this relationship between giving and receiving mercy, but I think there is no story that presents it to us more powerfully and more starkly than does the story of the unmerciful servant recorded for us in Matthew chapter 18. And I want us to take a few moments and read that story together. It's very familiar probably for most of us, and then I want to make a couple of observations based on that story. "The kingdom of heaven," said Jesus, "is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. As he began the settlement, a man who owed him 10,000 talents was brought to him. Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. The servant fell on his knees before him. 'Be patient with me,' he begged, 'and I will pay back everything.' The servant's master took pity on him, canceled the debt, and let him go. But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him 100 denarii. He grabbed him and began to choke him. 'Pay back what you owe me,' he demanded. His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him. 'Be patient with me, and I will pay you back.' But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. When the other servants saw what had happened, they were greatly distressed and went and told their master everything that had happened. Then the master called the servant in. 'You wicked servant,' he said, 'I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?' In anger, his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed. This is how my Heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart." Three observations this morning I want to make on the basis of that little parable. Observation number one, we are all in need of mercy. We are all in need of mercy. Notice how the story revolves around unpaid debt. This one servant, he owes the master a debt of 10,000 talents. That's a huge amount because a talent in that story is 15 years' worth of wages. You multiply that out and the talents that he owes the master here is somewhere in the neighborhood of over $500 billion. A very large amount, obviously. Clearly an exaggeration because Jesus is trying to make a point. And the man who owes him, owes him 100 denarii. A denarius in those days was a day's worth of wages. So 100 days' worth of wages, multiply that out, probably between $10,000 and $15,000 in terms of today's money. Still a lot of money, but nothing compared to a $500 billion deficit. And the reason the Lord Jesus uses this kind of story is because sin makes us incur a debt, both over against God and over against one another. Whenever we fail to give the Lord the honor, the obedience, and the worship that are due His name, we are incurring a debt. Whenever we don't treat one another properly, give them their fair due. We are incurring a debt. And if the universe were to operate on debt collection, if we were to keep track of all that we owe God and all that we owe each other, we would discover very quickly that everything would spiral down into destruction because nobody can fully pay the debt. And that is why we all need mercy. We need mercy from God, and we need mercy from each other. Very important to keep in mind, because most of us are far more keenly aware of the debt that other people run up against us than we are about the debt that we run up against other people or certainly against God. And it's so easy for us to insist that every T be crossed and every I be dotted. It's so easy for us to grovel in our pain and in our loss, forgetting altogether how much of a debt we run up against God by virtue of not honoring Him, obeying Him, and serving Him. We all are in need of mercy. That's the first observation I want to make. The second observation that I want to make on the basis of this story is that God specializes in extending mercy. And of course, that's the whole point of the story. When the man who owes Jesus comes, or the man who owes the Master 10,000 talents, falls on his knees and cries out, have pity on me. I'll do everything that I can to repay. The Master doesn't draw up a payment schedule because he knows there is no way this dude is ever going to pay his $500 billion, even if he lives to be 1,000 years old. And so the Master graciously cancels the debt and forgives him. And that, of course, is precisely what mercy is. Remember the definition, showing compassion, or kindly forbearance towards an offender, an enemy, or a person who is in your power. And mercy is one of the defining characteristics of the heart of God. Psalm 103 puts it this way, beautiful Psalm. "The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love. He will not always chide, nor will He keep His anger forever. He does not deal with us according to our sins, nor requite us according to our iniquities. For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His steadfast love to those who fear Him. And as far as the east is from the west, so far does He remove our transgressions from us. And as a father pities his children, so the Lord pities those who fear Him." And Paul, writing to the Romans, quoting from the Old Testament, says, "In the words of the Lord, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion." The Lord specializes in extending mercy to the fallen sons and the daughters of Adam and Eve. Now, here's what I want us to understand. This extending mercy to you and to me and to the whole human race is costly business. A lot of people think God can just sort of wave a magical wand, turn a blind eye to our sin, and keep on running the universe. Doesn't work that way. Why not? Because God's mercy must be offset by God's justice, because God runs a just universe. Picture it this way. Somebody does serious damage to you or to your family, maybe kills your child, gets caught, dragged into court. And the judge says, well, you know, I'm in a good mood today. I am filled with mercy. And I'm going to drop all the charges against you. How would you feel if somebody who did serious damage to you or to your family got off scot-free? You'd be paying the price for somebody else's sin. And the angels in heaven long to look into salvation, because for ages they were trying to figure out how in the world is a just and a holy God going to demonstrate mercy to the fallen sons and the daughters of Adam and Eve. And we know, of course, from the New Testament and from the Old Testament that grace and mercy meets at the cross of Jesus. Because Jesus, on the cross, paid the debt that our sins have accrued before God. As the little old chorus puts it, I owed a debt I could not pay. He paid a debt he did not owe. And in the cross of Jesus, mercy and justice come together. And God pays his own debt so that you and I no longer have to pay. And why is it important to understand that? Because as I said a moment ago, there are tons and tons of people, particularly in a day and age when many hearts are broken, who have a very superficial understanding of mercy. They want to love everybody. They want to accept everybody, regardless of their repentance, regardless of the cost or the price that sin has caused. And we need to understand that mercy and extending mercy is not turning a blind eye. It's not pretending that a debt has not been incurred. It is recognizing that because of Jesus, God himself has paid the debt. And because God himself has paid the debt, he then-- and this is the third observation that this story illustrates-- God expects you and me to show mercy. And again, clearly, that's the whole point in the story, isn't it? If you read the context of the story, it's Peter who comes to Jesus. And he says to Jesus, Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother when he sins against me? And Peter is feeling particularly spiritual today. He says as many as seven times. I mean, he's just really pushing the envelope here. And you can imagine how his face drops when Jesus says, I tell you, not seven times, but 70 times seven. Or as another translation has it, 77 times. And again, the point is not for the figure to be taken. Literally, Jesus is making the observation that even as God forgives us infinite numbers of times, so we must forgive and extend mercy an infinite number of times to those who have sinned against us. And that's why he tells the story. And when this man, who has been forgiven this huge debt of over half a billion dollars, goes out and he grabs hold of the servant who owes him the 10 or the $15,000 and demands payment and then puts him in jail because he cannot pay the debt, when the master's other servants hear that story, they are some upset. The story says they were distressed, like they were beside themselves. And they immediately go tell the master. And the master, when he hears this story, he is furious. You wicked servant, he said. I canceled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. Shoot and you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you. The story then goes on to say that in anger, his master turned him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed. And then Jesus ends that parable with this disconcerting little lesson for you and me. This is how my Heavenly Father will treat each of you, unless you forgive your brother from your heart. Why is it so important to show mercy? Because the demonstration of our mercy becomes the practical test of whether we understand the mercy that God has extended to us. As I said a few moments ago, it's so easy for you and me to be debt collectors. It's so easy for you and me to remember and to keep track of every injury, every debt incurred against us, whether real or imagined, and to demand full payment. It's so easy to forget. And it's so easy to overlook how much, in fact, we owe God and how many times we have failed him and how, if he held us accountable for the debt that we have incurred, we never, ever could pay. He has graciously forgiven us because of Jesus and because he has forgiven us. And we no longer owe the debt. He wants us to do the same thing to one another. Blessed are the merciful, said Jesus, for they will be shown mercy. Now let's try to flesh that out just a little bit in terms of practical living. What does being merciful look like in everyday relationships? Well, let's suppose-- and this is a story that happened to a colleague friend of mine. Let's suppose that you just built a brand new house and you're going off on a vacation and you have a number of teenagers living at home. And like all wise parents, you've told them, no parties when I'm gone. Right? Well, your daughters don't quite hear you. And they invite a couple of friends over. And the couple of friends invite a few other friends. And before you know it, you've got a house filled with about 70 or 100 teenagers who are leaving it up in your house, drinking, and highly destructive behavior. And you hear about this when you're away on vacation. That kind of ruins your vacation. And you come back and you find your brand new house significantly damaged because of the conduct of these kids. What are you going to do? What does mercy look like? Well, it doesn't mean that you just ignore the damage that they did. Doesn't mean that you just ignore the fact that they haven't listened to you. And it doesn't mean that you don't get angry. But it does mean that when all has been said and done, somewhere along the line, you recognize, look at how much God has forgiven me. Look at how many times I have failed him and how gracious he is with me. And you enter into your children's shoes. You extract repentance from them not only. But you extend forgiveness. And you recognize it's part of the price of growing up. And you don't withdraw your heart. And you don't put them on probation for the rest of their lives trying to make them pay for how they disappointed you or how they messed up your house. Or suppose, just to keep things even, you've got a son. And you're on vacation, and he takes your vehicle. And he does a number on it. A fellow by the name of Mark Strand in an article in Decision Magazine some years ago described a similar kind of situation. He had borrowed his father's pickup truck, got into an accident, and he wrecked the passenger door and parked it on the yard with the door not showing. And when his father came home and discovered the damage and asked him about it, he denied having anything to do with it. He lied about it. And much to his amazement, the hired man came forward. And he said, I think I might have done the damage. Because he had driven by the truck with a cultivator with the sides up, and he had heard a loud noise. And he had wondered if maybe the cultivator had hit the truck inadvertently. So the young man heaved a sigh of relief, except conscience has a way of catching up on you. And it continued to stew away in his heart until he could bear it no longer. And he finally sought out his father. And he said, Dad, I've got something I want to tell you. Remember that pickup truck? His father remembered it very well. He said, I'm the one who did it. And then here is how he relates the story. He says, Dad looked at me. I looked back at him. For the first time in weeks, I was able to look him in the eye as the topic was broached. To my utter disbelief, Dad calmly replied, I know. Silent seconds, which seemed like hours past. Then Dad said, let's go eat. He put his arm around my shoulder. And we walked to the house, not saying an other word about it. Not then, not ever. That is a demonstration of mercy. I'll never forget years ago, and some of you have heard me tell this story. Good friends of ours, Albert and Betty Teamstra, went to a prison cell in Edmonton to meet with and forgive the murderer of their daughter. Marg was 17 years old. She was graduating from high school. It was, as I remember, a graduation, either a ceremony or a graduation dance, I think. The kids were milling around in their formal attire outside the school, when all of a sudden, a shot ran out. And 17-year-old Marg dropped to the ground, mortally wounded. In the subsequent police investigation, it turned out that the shooter was a young man who lived not very far away from where the family farm was. And what was particularly galling about his capture was their discovery. But before he was captured, when the family was receiving guests at their home to extend condolences, this young man had been one of them. And he had brazenly walked into their house, had shook everybody's hands, and expressed his condolences at the death of their daughter when he knew full well that he was the shooter. Run the clock forward. Justice takes its course. He gets tried, gets found guilty, gets sentenced to jail. And I'll never forget the day when Albert and Betty went to that jail. And they had a conversation with this young man. And they extended forgiveness and mercy in the name of the Lord Jesus. I don't know if you could do that. I don't know if I could do that. I know it would take the grace of Jesus to do it. But it's the grace of Jesus that God provides for us. And it's that kind of mercy that the Lord invites us to when scripture says, blessed are the merciful. For they will be shown mercy. What happens when we do that? What happens when God gives us grace to cancel the debt that stands against us incurred by people over against our position? Well, scripture says that we, in turn, ourselves receive mercy. Blessed are the merciful. For they will be shown mercy. And that mercy that we receive then, we receive, I think, on at least two levels. We receive mercy, first of all, from God. And this raises some very interesting theological issues. Because there are many who interpret this verse then as saying, God won't forgive you unless you forgive others. In other words, you must earn your forgiveness by living right. And the story that we read from Matthew chapter 18 would seem to teach that. The Lord's prayer, forgive us our debts as we forgive those who have sinned against us, would appear to teach that. But think it through. If we can only be forgiven as we have, in turn, forgiven others, then we're all going to be in trouble. Because sooner or later, we run short on mercy. As well, that runs contrary to the whole thrust of scripture that we are saved by grace through faith. So what does scripture mean then when it says, blessed are the merciful, for they shall be shown mercy? Well, as I referred to earlier, it is inconceivable from a biblical point of view that you have received mercy from God, own it as God's gracious and free gift to you, and then not extend mercy to your fellow man or fellow woman. And it's the extension of mercy that becomes the practical demonstration of the realization that you have learned to live by grace and by mercy and have freely received it from the hand of God. If you know what God has forgiven you, and if you know how God has canceled the debt against you, then you cannot but take the same approach and the same attitude over against other people. And as you live that way, as you learn by drawing on the grace of Jesus, and you extend mercy, even as God has extended mercy to you, you discover that God gives mercy to you afresh every time again. Because you see, we keep on running up a debt against God. It's not like we ran it up 10 years ago, and now God has paid it off, and glory to God. No, we keep incurring debt all the time. We keep needing mercy. And even as we extend mercy to people around us, we demonstrate that we have learned to live by grace through faith. And we now extend His mercy to other people all around us. Failure to do that, as I've said, is a failure to understand the dynamics of mercy. And that will put us in a place where God can no longer show us mercy because we're not humbling ourselves before Him. And if you understand that correctly, you will see how Beatitude number five is the logical progression of the Beatitudes that have gone on before. It starts with knowing my sin and misery. It progresses into mourning over my sin, learning how to live meekly because I know that I have no rights other than what God gives me in Christ. It leads to a hungering and thirsting of righteousness. And even as a hunger and thirst for righteousness, and God fills me with His righteousness, I become more and more like Jesus. Well, the more I taste of God's goodness and God's provision and God's love towards me in my own life, the more generous I can afford to be towards you. Because what is a debt of 10 or 15 grand when I have just been forgiven half a billion dollars worth of debt? You see, it's all a question of perspective. 10 or 15 grand is a lot of money until I understand how big my debt has been and how graciously God has forgiven me. Very important for us to understand, the universe cannot work on debt collection. It has nothing to do with canceling justice. It has nothing to do with holding people accountable. But when all has been said and done, the universe operates on mercy. As a matter of fact, in the Old Testament, God's throne was between the cherubim and the tabernacle on the Ark of the Covenant. And what was it that he was seated on? The mercy seat. Because God's people could only have a relationship with God when God demonstrated mercy. And Jesus says to you and to me, we need to demonstrate that kind of mercy to each other. Because that's what cancels the debt and enables the universe to keep on working. So we receive mercy from God, even as we demonstrate his mercy. But we also receive it from other people. Because in a very real way, the golden rule says give unto others as you would have them do unto you. And one of the best ways to understand that is to put it in the negative. Imagine that you're the kind of person who is a debt collector. You keep track of every injury headed in your direction. And you demand payment in full. You cross every T, and you dot every I, and you're one of these people with an elephant memory. And you can remember exactly who said what when. It is lodged in your heart, and you're not going to forgive. You're not going to have a relationship with that person unless that person comes and pays the debt they owe you and pay it to you in full. And I'll suppose that you find yourself in a situation where you have run up, so to speak, a debt you cannot pay. And you find yourself in a situation where you need to be forgiven. How are people going to feel towards you? Well, they're human enough to look at you and to say, buddy, you got that coming. And they're going to watch you squirm on the hook and wiggle in the wind, wondering how you're going to get out of that one. But if, on the other hand, you're a man or a woman who has lived extending mercy, and your whole way of life has been a gracious cancellation of debt, you haven't been a debt collector. You've let it go, not because you're a martyr, not because you don't have the gall to stand up and be counted, no, but because you've understood how much God has shown his mercy to you. And you have made a deliberate decision out of the core of your heart to extend that same kind of mercy to other people, while all things being equal. And there will be exceptions, but all things being equal. People will give you grace. And people will allow you the space to recover. And they'll root for you, and they cheer you on. I want to close this morning with a story that comes out of the book "Miracle on the River Cai." And a lot of us will have seen the movie "A Bridge Over the River Cai." And this is a story of how the Scottish soldiers in that camp degenerated into a dog-eat-dog mentality towards each other and towards their guards because of the way they were being treated. And the story is told how one day a shovel was missing, and all the prisoners were called out into formation. And the guard, whoever was in charge of that operation, demanded that the man who had stolen the shovel should come forward. And if nobody came forward, he was going to shoot everybody. And they were cruel enough in those days that the captured troops knew this was not an idle threat. And so everybody heaved a sigh of relief when a man stepped forward. The guard put his gun back in his holster, took the shovel, and in full view of the people that were there, beat the man to death. And so afterwards, they took his body and they buried it. And the next time they had to count shovels, they discovered there, in fact, had been no shovel that was missing. They had miscounted. And here's what the story goes on to say. The word spread like wildfire through the whole camp. An innocent man had been willing to die to save the others. The incident had a profound effect. The men began to treat each other like brothers. When the victorious allies swept in, the survivors, human skeletons lined up in front of their captors and instead of attacking their captors, insisted no more hatred, no more killing. What we need now is forgiveness because, you see, sacrificial love has a transforming power. As we draw this to a close this morning, here's the challenge I want to leave with each of us. The twofold challenge, the first is this. Contemplate the debt you have incurred before God and the mercy that he has extended towards you. Think of all the times when you have deliberately stepped into sin, defying the Almighty, when you have deliberately skewered someone else because your feelings were hurt or because you didn't get what you wanted. Ask God to show you, if you will, how big the debt he is that you have incurred before God and the mercy that God has shown you in forgiving you. Because, you see, you'll never learn to be merciful. You'll never learn to expend mercy to other people unless it dawns upon you to the core of your being. How big is the bill that you've run up before God and what is the price that Jesus had to pay for your deliverance on Calvary's Cross? Begin with that. And then ask him, Lord, is there somebody in my circle of acquaintance whose bill I am collecting, whose debt I need to cancel? Maybe it's a floundering husband, and you've been deeply wounded by what he did. Maybe it's an unfaithful wife. Maybe it's a child who has disappointed you and disappointed you deeply and has cost you a great deal. Maybe it's a neighbor down the road who goes out of his way to make your life miserable. Maybe it's a co-worker at work who has gotten advances at your expense. Maybe it's somebody who should have known better, but who causes you infinite pain, maybe a bully at school, a teacher who's got it in for you. Then ask yourself, Lord, what is it that you want me to do in this relationship and in this situation? What does extending mercy look like? Do I write a letter? Do I exercise forgiveness? Do I cancel the debt? How do I go about doing this? And then as the Holy Spirit-- and you might need to talk to somebody else about this to know what is the wise and prudent strategy. But as the Holy Spirit speaks into your life and shows you where you need to go with it and how you need to do it, then step into it. Because what you'll do is you'll break the cycle of tit for tat. And relationships, instead of spiraling down infinitely until there is nothing left but destruction, such as you see it in places of war around the world, that cycle will be stopped. And God's grace will begin to take root and build a new humanity. Blessed are the merciful, said Jesus, for they will receive mercy. Father, we acknowledge this morning that we are often debt collectors. And we know how to keep track of every injury, whether real or imagined. But we also know that if you were to do that, Lord, we'd all be in such trouble. Thank you that in the cross of Jesus somehow, you managed to extend mercy without throwing justice by the wayside. Help us in our relationships with each other, with the world, and with people all around us, to find that same balance. So that, Lord, we may live in a relationship that is based on the grace and the mercy and the peace of God, knowing that if you're for us, it doesn't matter who is against us. Because in you, we're more than conquerors. And then, Lord, help us to worship you and your majesty because of the incredible price that you have paid. We pray it together. In Jesus' name, amen. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 START at 00:40:05.720; remove through 00:44:25.000] [MUSIC PLAYING] (SINGING) Here I am, humbled by your majesty, covered by your grace so free. Here I am, knowing I'm a sinful man, covered by the blood of the Lord. Now I've found the greatest love of all. It is mine, since you laid down your life, the greatest sacrifice. Majesty, majesty, your grace has found me just as I am, empty-handed but alive in your hand. Here I am, humbled by the love that you give, forgiven so that I can forgive. Here I stand, knowing that your desire is sanctified by glory and fire. Now I've found the greatest love of all. It is mine, since you laid down your life, the greatest sacrifice. Let's stand together. Majesty, majesty, your grace has found me just as I am. Empty-handed, but alive in your hand. Majesty, majesty, forever I am changed by your love, in the presence of your majesty, we're singing. Majesty, majesty, your grace has found me just as I am, empty-handed, but alive in your hand, we're singing. Majesty, majesty, forever I am changed by your love, in the presence of your majesty. [CUT] [PROPOSED CUT 1 END at 00:44:25.000; resume after this marked segment]