Be Merciful Even as Your Father is Merciful
Notes
Transcript
Our Scripture lesson today is taken from Luke 6:27-42:
“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you. To one who strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also, and from one who takes away your cloak do not withhold your tunic either. Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
“If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven; give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”
He also told them a parable: “Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? A disciple is not above his teacher, but everyone when he is fully trained will be like his teacher. Why do you see the speck that is in your brother’s eye, but do not notice the log that is in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, ‘Brother, let me take out the speck that is in your eye,’ when you yourself do not see the log that is in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the log out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to take out the speck that is in your brother’s eye.
The title of today’s sermon is taken from Luke 6:36. The passage as a whole is about love, but Jesus does not say, “Be loving even as your father is loving.” Why is this? It is because Jesus is calling us to a standard of love that is not like the world’s. The world speaks a lot about love. In fact, one of the chief accusations the world makes today is that the church is not loving. However, what they mean by this is that the church does not measure up to their standard of love.
The world’s standard of love is tolerance—that is to say, we must accept and affirm any moral choice another person makes. Let me give you an example:
Recently, Rosaria Butterfield urged Christians not to compromise the truth by caving into the demands of the world to use “preferred pronouns”. The response from the world was predictable, “You Christians need to stop being so hateful and intolerant. Didn’t Jesus say to not judge others?”
Sadly, many Christians fall for such faulty arguments because they have been indoctrinated by the world’s standards. Fifty years ago, Francis Schaeffer warned us of where our society was heading, writing, “In the absence of a biblical morality, a new elite will always come forward to dictate arbitrary absolutes to society.” Let us be brave enough and bold enough to call these people what they really are fools and false teachers. Rather than listening to their nonsense any longer, let us sit at the feet of the Master Teacher—Jesus of Nazareth!
In this text, Jesus teaches us that God’s standard of love is mercy, not tolerance. In fact:
Mercifully Intolerant
Mercifully Intolerant
Mercy by definition implies that the person you are merciful to does not deserve your favor. In this text Jesus calls them “enemies” who “hate us and curse us”. This is how unregenerate fallen humanity treats God. “Sin” as R. C. Sproul liked to remind us “is cosmic rebellion.” Nowhere in Scripture is God said to be “tolerant”. In fact, the opposite is true:
You who are of purer eyes than to see evil
and cannot look at wrong,
why do you idly look at traitors
and remain silent when the wicked swallows up
the man more righteous than he?
The Hebrew word translated “look at” in our ESV pew bibles has the connotation of “tolerating” or “condoning” an evil action. In fact, this is exactly how the translators of other English versions of the bible have translated it. The NIV is the most notable example:
Your eyes are too pure to look on evil;
you cannot tolerate wrongdoing.
Why then do you tolerate the treacherous?
Why are you silent while the wicked
swallow up those more righteous than themselves?
Do you see what is happening here? Habakkuk is confusing God’s mercy with tolerance. Habakkuk knows that as a holy God, God cannot compromise on His standards. As the Holy Judge of the Universe, God cannot just overlook sin; He must judge it and punish it! This is why, according to the Apostle Paul, God the Father sent Jesus to the Cross, “in order that he might be just and the justifier of the one who has faith in Jesus” (Rom 3:26). The Cross stands as bloody evidence that there is no tolerance of sin with God—it must be punished either on the Cross or in the fires of Hell!
Apparently, in one of the churches the Apostle Peter was overseeing, people were making a similar accusation against God that Habakkuk did. They were claiming that Christ was compromising His standards of righteousness by being slow in returning again in judgement. Peter replies that the answer is found in God’s merciful patience:
The Lord is not slow to fulfill his promise as some count slowness, but is patient toward you, not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.
This patient mercy that gives people an opportunity to repent has a special name in Scripture. It is called longsuffering. This is what Jesus is calling His followers to in our text. Too often we are like the Twelve who wanted to call down the fire and brimstone upon the Samaritans. Rather than calling fire down from heaven, we should be calling the Holy Spirit down from heaven, in order that they might be born again:
“But I say to you who hear, Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.
God’s vengeance and judgement against sin and sinners is coming. It is surer than the sun rising tomorrow morning, because God’s judgement might come today! This is why true love is not tolerant, but rather it is merciful. We do not have the luxury of being tolerant towards sin and sinners. Christ’s coming again in judgement is imminent. It is like a dark cloud building on the horizon. The wind is picking up, the temperature is dropping and the storm sirens are blowing. Love compels us to warn and pray for every sinner we know to take shelter in the safety of Jesus Christ before the storm of God’s judgement comes!
This means we must be...
Mercifully Forgiving
Mercifully Forgiving
In an often misquoted and misused passage, Jesus said:
“Judge not, and you will not be judged; condemn not, and you will not be condemned; forgive, and you will be forgiven;
This verse is misquoted and misused, because people forget that the controlling standard is God’s mercy, which is found in vs. 36, not human standards.
How does God the Father forgive? He forgives based on the atoning death of His Son Jesus upon the Cross!
The mercy of Christ’s atoning death on the cross is the standard by which we forgive those who have sinned against us as well. In Mt 18, Jesus tells a parable of a master who forgave his servant a massive debt. The servant however, is unaffected by the master’s mercy—he finds a fellow servant and throws him in jail because this man owed him a small sum, and here is what happened:
Then his master summoned him and said to him, ‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
Because of God’s mercy, we do not only live in the shadow of Christ’s impending judgement, we live in the shadow of Christ’s merciful death on the Cross! If we are truly enjoying the shade of “the Old Rugged Cross”, then we must be quick to forgive personal offences. The command “not to judge others” is not about compromising God’s moral standards, it is about mercifully forgiving the debt that others owe us.
With all their talk of “tolerance”, have you noticed how “intolerant” the WOKE are towards anyone who holds to God’s standards of righteousness? It is not without reason they are called the “cancel culture”. Any person or institution that stands in their way, is targeted with cancellation. There is no forgiveness with them—only the total and complete eradication of their enemies—with their chief enemy being Christians!
What a contrast the merciful, forgiving love Jesus calls us to is to the world’s “tolerance”! As we heard Jesus remind us a few verses back in the Beatitudes:
“Blessed are you when people hate you and when they exclude you and revile you and spurn your name as evil, on account of the Son of Man! Rejoice in that day, and leap for joy, for behold, your reward is great in heaven; for so their fathers did to the prophets.
To mercifully forgive is prophetic—it points people to the Father and His Son Jesus Christ!
This brings us to the final way Godly mercy should express itself in the life of a believer:
Mercifully Generous
Mercifully Generous
Jesus commands us to:
Give to everyone who begs from you, and from one who takes away your goods do not demand them back. And as you wish that others would do to you, do so to them.
“If you love those who love you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what benefit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. And if you lend to those from whom you expect to receive, what credit is that to you? Even sinners lend to sinners, to get back the same amount. But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return, and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, for he is kind to the ungrateful and the evil.
Then “for good measure” He adds:
give, and it will be given to you. Good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, will be put into your lap. For with the measure you use it will be measured back to you.”
As I pointed out in the Children’s Sermon, we have a beautiful picture of generosity, but it is not just a picture of how our generosity is to be, but how God’s is. Remember in the Children’ Message how I spoke of small, medium and large measures? Well, God only has one size of measure—infinite!
The standard is not our generosity, but God’s!
This is clearly a standard of generosity we cannot live up to. It would take a miracle to be this generous, and that is the point!
Throughout this series I been reminding you that Christianity is a supernatural religion. Without the power of God, no one can love like this. This is why Jesus told Nicodemus in John 3:3, that in order to see the Kingdom of God we must be “born again” or “born from above”.
Have you been born again? If not, there is no way you can be merciful like God is merciful. The commands of Christ, drive us to the mercy of Christ. The Apostle Paul writes:
But when the goodness and loving kindness of God our Savior appeared, he saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewal of the Holy Spirit, whom he poured out on us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior,
These are words to each and every one of us today who hear this message—the first-time believer, as well as the seasoned saint who as walked with the Lord for decades. We all need to “cling to the old rugged cross” to experience the mercy of God, in order that we might be “merciful as our Father is merciful”.