2024-02-25 Mercy or Justice
Sermon on the Mount: Beatitudes • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
0 ratings
· 1 viewNotes
Transcript
Well, we are continuing our series on the / / Beatitudes this week. Let’s just jump in let’s read the whole of the scripture from Matthew 5:3-12:
/ / Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God.
Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.
So, we’ve gone through the first 4 of those.
Being poor in spirit, or always recognizing our need for God and more of God.
Being comfortable with our own ability to mourn, grieve, and connect with our emotions so that we can receive the comfort and healing of Jesus.
Working at being meek, humble and gentle to all people, regardless of how they treat us.
And desiring a life of being righteous, doing the right thing before God.
I’ve been reflecting Philippians 2:12-13 this week. It says, / / Work hard to show the results of your salvation, obeying God with deep reverence and fear. For God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.
This is such a powerful verse. One of my current classes is on Spiritual Development, or our discipleship to Jesus - and the reality is that there is real work involved in becoming like Christ. There is a constant choosing to be different than our human nature wants to be. And we have to make that choice until it becomes second nature.
We all know that thought, right? We use that term, it’s Second Nature, meaning, it just comes naturally at this point. You’ve worked at it so much that it just is. And I would suggest we’ve all experienced both types of people, those who it comes naturally for something and those who have to work at it.
Let’s think in the context of these beatitudes we’ve been talking through.
Some people have what seems to be a natural temperament of meekness, or gentleness about them. I always look to Mama Su on this one. She’s just a gentle, humble, lovely, kind, considerate, caring person. It’s why we all call her Mama Su and we all want to hug her, because we all need a Mama Su in our lives! Now, whether she’s always been like that, I don’t know, but I can speak to the last 9 years that I’ve been here and that’s the Mama Su I know.
Some other people I’ve known have to work really hard at being meek, and gentle. It seems that anger or agitation seem to be more their speed. And so this particular invitation from Jesus in the Beatitudes is more difficult for them.
Here’s the thing, just because it comes natural to one person, and not natural to another, there is no excusing these things from one or the other. We don’t get to just choose to do what comes naturally, and not worry about the other stuff. Jesus’ invitation to be meek is part of following him, and becoming like him, and living in the kingdom of God for the purpose of bringing Glory to God.
Remember what I said last week, Jesus’ invitation to live in this way is because we are called to rule and reign with him for all of eternity, and these are the ways of God’s rule and reign. I am not perfect, and I don’t live in a perfect world, but my destiny is perfection in Christ in his perfect kingdom, so the call to life now is to live in that way in the midst of our current imperfect world to represent him, as ambassadors of reconciliation, reflecting the glory of God to those who need His salvation, so that we can then turn back to him and worship Him, give him glory.
This is why we started this year in the second section of the Sermon on the Mount, Matthew 5:13-16, rather than verse 1, because we had to establish who we are in Christ, and for what purpose we are meant to live.
Matthew 5:14-16 says, / / You are the light of the world. A city set on a hill cannot be hidden. Nor do people light a lamp and put it under a basket, but on a stand, and it gives light to all in the house. In the same way, let your light shine before others, so that they may see your good works and give glory to your Father who is in heaven.
So Paul calls us ambassadors of Christ, ministers of reconciliation, and Jesus says that when we let our light shine, when we live out of the good deeds of God, the world around us sees something that draws them to give praise to God themselves.
Go back to Philippians 2. / / God is working in you, giving you the desire and the power to do what pleases him.
So we’re choosing to live a life of obedience and following the way of Jesus, whether it comes naturally or not. Whether you’re Mama Su who is naturally meek, or whether you’re Robert Augi, who has to work harder at it, the goal is the same, 2 Corinthians 3:16, 18, / / …whenever someone turns to the Lord… [they] can see and reflect the glory of the Lord. And the Lord - who is the Spirit - makes us more and more like him as we are changed into his glorious image. That’s the goal, becoming like Him! Romans 8:29, / / For God knew his people in advance, and he chose them to become like his Son…
This is why John Mark Comer says that discipleship to Jesus is summed up in:
Being with Jesus
Becoming Like Jesus
Doing what Jesus did
But it doesn’t happen automatically. We don’t say the sinners prayer and are instantly transformed. That doesn’t mean we aren’t instantly made new, but that also doesn’t mean we know how to be our new selves! If that were the case then Jesus would have said, “If you want to be my disciple, say a prayer and you’re good.” But he didn’t. He never said that. What he said was, / / “If any of you wants to be my follower, you must give up your own way, take up your cross, and follow me. If you try to hang on to your own life, you will lose it. But if you give up your life for my sake, you will save it.”
This is also why Paul says in Romans 8:12-13, / / you have no obligation to do what your sinful nature urges you to do. For if you live by its dictates, you will die. But if through the power of the Spirit you put to death the deeds of your sinful nature, you will live.
You ever hear the saying, “Kill or be killed.” ?
Deciding to not do what we want in the flesh is not easy:
It takes the conscious choice to lay down what we want for a better way.
It takes knowing what that better way is.
It takes asking the Holy Spirit to remind us of that better way, in the moment.
And it takes choosing in that moment to actually go that better way.
The promise, and we see this naturally, psychologically, and spiritually, is that the more you make a certain choice in your life, the more natural it becomes. So maybe it makes sense that 2 Corinthians 3:18 says that our transformation is moving from one degree of glory to the next. From glory to glory. One bit at a time. Better today than yesterday, and better tomorrow than today because each day I make the choice to follow Jesus and do what is right for the sake of the gospel and those around me, and for the sake of my own soul, and as I do that I am transformed little by little and this way of living becomes a little more natural, a little more second nature.
So, let’s keep going, and look at the next verse in the Beatitudes, we are at Matthew 5:7:
/ / “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
This one seems pretty straight forward. This for that. And this is almost a direct challenge on the law of Moses, which Jesus will actually do more directly in the coming lessons he teaches. We’ll be getting into that after Easter as we look at a series of teachings that Jesus gives where he starts a bunch of sayings with, You have heard it said… and he begins to talk about the law, and he reframes their thinking.
Well, he’s starting here in Matthew 5:7.
Let’s just define mercy and then we can go from there.
Ok, so Strong’s bible dictionary says that this word, / / mercy [eleeō] means, to have mercy on, to help someone afflicted or seeking aid
When the definition says that mercy means to have mercy on, that doesn’t tell us much, does it. But, the definition of / / mercy is - compassion or forgiveness shown toward someone who it is within one’s power to punish or harm.
ok, so those are our two definitions boiled down, / / forgiving someone you could demand justice from, and giving help to someone you don’t need to give help to.
So, keep those things in mind as we’re going through all of this this morning.
I was listening to scripture this past week, and I was in the book of Numbers, and I’ll be honest, there are times I want to just skip over things. Leviticus, Numbers, Deuteronomy. They can be long books. But, I’m in the car for hours a day, what better use of that time than to listen to and allow scripture to get into these ol’ ear holes…even if I don’t understand it all. Even if some of it can be boring. Listing clan after clan after clan, or the series of sacrifices offered by each tribe, and each one brought the same thing, but it’s a long list, and scripture lists it out for every single tribe, and so I’ve got this voice just repeating over and over the intense amount of animals sacrificed.
But this is a good point. This is why reading scripture isn’t always about what we are reading. The very choice to read scripture and honor it as the word of God is spiritually humbling, and creates in us some endurance toward a better end. And God honors that. I have seen it in my own life and countless others.
Well, Numbers 35 begins talking about cities of refuge. There were meant to be 48 cities in the promised land given to the Levites as their inheritance, and 6 of those cities were to be cities of refuge where if someone accidentally killed someone, it wasn’t intentional, they could go to one of these six cities and the person who wanted to avenge the death of their family member was not able to go into the city to kill the person who accidentally killed their relative.
Why is this important? Because Numbers is very clear:
Numbers 35:16 - / / if someone strikes and kills another person with a piece of iron, it is murder, and the murderer must be executed.
Goes on to say the same punishment if you use a stone, or a wooden tool, or even just pushes him and he dies. The consequence is execution.
And as I’m listening to this, I feel like I’m getting angry, or confused, or just thinking, “Wow, God, where’s the mercy? Where’s the grace?” And suddenly I felt like God took a veil off my eyes, or off my ears, or something, but I realized that without the law there is no wrong. Without the law there can be no grace or mercy because there is no need for grace or mercy if nothing is wrong.
Hear me this morning: We can not be offended by what is wrong, because without something, without anything being wrong, we don’t need grace, and Jesus would have never had to die. It is because there IS a law that we can experience his grace.
Now, here’s the important part. I was starting to almost get offended, but then I realized, this is actually very fair. Isn’t it? And the world might hate that Christianity has a set of things in the bible that God says are right and wrong, but the world does the same. They just call it karma. What you do to me, you will experience.
This is 100% fair.
You killed my brother. You must die.
You killed my sister. You must die.
You killed my father. You must die.
Life for life is not MORE severe, it is not unfair or unjust, it is actually the right kind of sever. It is true justice.
Now, having said that, we know that there is a better way, isn’t there?
It was either Mohandas Gandhi, or the guy who wrote his biography that coined the phrase, / / “An eye for an eye will leave everyone blind.”
But really they are just quoting Jesus 1900 years after he said it. / / Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
See, we are fully within our rights to demand justice when something has been done wrong to us. But here’s the deal. / / We live under the rule that we subscribe to.
If I want justice for every wrong done to me, by way of judgement on the person who did that wrong, then I too must have justice and judgement handed down upon me when I do wrong against someone else. I can’t have it both ways.
T.D. Jakes once said, “We want everyone else to be 100%, but we want grace from everyone else for where we aren’t.”
We’ll be getting to this one in the coming weeks as well, Jesus will eventually say what we now call the golden rule, don’t worry, by the time we get to it you’ll have forgotten we talked about it today because it’s half way through chapter 7. Matthew 7:12, / / “Do to others whatever you would like them to do to you. This is the essence of all that is taught in the law and the prophets.”
Say what? That’s what the law teaches?
Yes, because it shows us the error of human thinking and revenge.
Jesus, bringing clarity to what the law truly says. But, how is that possible? Clearly we just read, If you kill someone you deserve to die. What’s good about that?
Let me ask you a question. Today’s Christian, even todays world at large, gravitates toward the word love. We want everything to be focused on love. And we tend to see the Old Testament as tougher, or maybe even void of it sometimes. But when Jesus was asked what the greatest commandment was, they were asking in reference to the Old Testament. They were challenging his knowledge of the Law and the Prophets. The story is in Matthew 22:34-40, and it actually says that the Pharisees went to Jesus and one of them, this is vs 35, / / an expert in religious law, tried to trap him with this question, “Teacher, which is the most important commandment in the law of Moses?”
What’s Jesus’ response?
Go ahead, call it out.
Right, / / “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your mind.”
But he doesn’t stop there, does he? No, He continues, (vs 39-40) / / “A second is equally important: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ The entire law and all the demands of the prophets are based on these two commandments.”
Ok, the first part, loving God, that’s Deuteronomy 6:5, and Jesus gives almost a direct quote, / / And you must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, and all your strength.
He actually switches strength and mind. Now, this is a parallel verse to Mark 12:30, and in Mark’s writing he actually ADDS mind, so he writes that Jesus says, / / “You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your mind, and all your strength.”
Now to the really important part. The second part, in both Matthew and mark the words are the same, Jesus says, / / “A second is equally important.” or the ESV says it this way, / / “a second is like it”, which would read like, “the same as.” If some is like something else, you’re saying it’s of the same value or importance.
And what does he say, / / “Love your neighbor as yourself.” Now this is a quote from Leviticus 19:18, and I want you to hear this, because he doesn’t quote the whole verse. It does indeed say love your neighbor as yourself, but listen to how it starts.
/ / Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against a fellow Israelite, but love your neighbor as yourself. I am the Lord.
Wait a second, that first part seems pretty stinkin’ important. Do NOT seek revenge or bear a grudge. And we’re going to jump back to this thought in a minute.
“But I swear the law said most definitely seek revenge, in fact, Moses told us to literally kill someone if they killed someone else. And there’s other laws that didn’t involve murder that also included death. So, which is it? Kill or let live?”
Again, this is revolutionary as far as I’m concerned, and I don’t know why I didn’t see this before, but without there being a punishment for something considered to be wrong, you can’t show mercy and remove the punishment. If nothing’s wrong there’s no forgiveness.
You can’t experience grace when there’s no consequence for actions. And you want to know why the world right now is not experiencing the grace of God? Because they have convinced themselves that there are no consequences because there is no wrong.
You can’t tell me my way of living is wrong.
You can’t tell me I’m sinning.
You can’t tell me I’m breaking some moral rule or law that I don’t even recognize.
God just accepts everyone as they are, because God is love.
Man, this is going to be two weeks in a row I’m referencing the super bowl. I’m not a big sports analogy person, but there’s just some relevant things here. Dr. Mike Campbell, who is the pastor over at Old Cutler Presbyterian Church did an absolutely masterful job at breaking this one down. If you watched the Superbowl you would’ve seen the two commercials by an organization called, “He Gets Us”, or at least the campaign goes under that banner.
There’s already a lot of controversy over all of that simply because some people think it’s a horrible thing that someone would pay 14 million dollars for 1 minute of air time when that money could have gone to better things like feeding people or looking after people etc… Judas had the same argument. And, I personally think that’s a poor man’s mentality. The people funding this thing have so much more money than me and you can even imagine that 14 million is a drop in a bucket for them and doesn’t even register as a blip on their financial standing.
And let’s just run down this rabbit trail for a moment, because I think this is important. People can easily get bent out of shape over stuff like this, and we really shouldn’t. Ok, just one of the poeple that I know of backing this ad campaign is worth $15.6 billion. If he’s the ONLY funder, which he’s probably not, but if he was, 14 Million would be 0.09% of his net worth. To put that into perspective. Let’s say you make $50,000 a year, and you wanted to donate to K-Love to help them in their mission of sharing Jesus to a world that needs it. You know how much that would equal? 0.09%….. $45. $45!!! Now, we look at 14 million and get bent out of shape, but it’s no different than us spending $45 on something we believe in.
Now, if we as a church were to even put $14,000 into advertising some sort of campaign that would be suspect because it goes beyond our financial means.
But, like I said, that’s a rabbit trail and besides the point - I just think we need to have right perspective of these things. Now, in these commercials this year they kept showing clips of people who they were stereotyping into different avenues of living and showing really contrasting characters - showing both sides of the America we live in that maybe frustrates the other side. And the banner it all falls under is that He gets us.
Dr Campbell said this, “At it’s best, it is misleading, and at it’s worst it is just wrong.”
His point, and I agree. At the end of the commercial it says “Jesus didn’t teach hate, Jesus washed feet.” And that’s the funny part is that both of those statements are true in of themselves. Jesus did not teach hate. And Jesus did wash feet. But they are not connected in that way. That is, in my opinion, wildly out of context.
And Dr. Campbell continues to say that the problem is in what we now see as the meaning of hate. Hate used to mean that you disdain someone and you seek to do them harm, but now, the whole world, it seems, is on a mission to define and push that hate is simply when you disagree with someone.
So when you say something is wrong, you’re hating,
when you say something is sinful, you’re hating,
and if you say something has to be changed, you are hating.
And the images that this ad campaign was using was identifying itself with this ideology.
His point was, and this is so important for us to understand in todays world, that you are NOT being hateful by standing on the truth, or by saying that any of us, regardless of our lifestyle, need to repent and turn to God. You are not being hateful by living your life by and standing up for a biblical standard of living. Jesus didn’t just go around washing people’s feet and saying “you’re good’, don’t worry about your lifestyle, or your sin, or your way of living.”
And he finished with this line, and this is my point of saying all of this.
He said, / / Why would we need the cross if no one is sinning?
And that seems to be where the world is at. I’ve said it before. The more we remove a moral baseline the more morally corrupt the world will become. The less you say is wrong, the further you can go into your own sinfulness and flesh.
And it’s not like the bible didn’t even warn us. Read Romans 1 this week, Paul tells us that even though the world can clearly see that God is real by looking at the wonder and miracle of nature around us, they chose to deny him, not thank him, not worship him, and as a result, and this is vs 21, / / they began to think up foolish ideas of what God was like.
That’s what we are seeing here. A foolish idea of what God is like. Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not condemning anyone who has invested in this campaign. I can not speak to their honesty and integrity of heart in doing this campaign or any agenda they may or may not have, all I can speak to, and as Dr Campbell did as well, is to what we see being expressed and how people may receive that.
Again, my point is this. Without sin there is no need for the cross. Without the law there is no definition for sin. And the law, if you stand back and look at it, is just. Eye for an Eye, tooth for a tooth, life for life. You did to me, I will do to you. Right?
That is, until you add the first part of Leviticus 19:18. Let’s go back there for a second. Again, Matthew or Mark don’t say that Jesus mentions this part, but it’s kind of important. And maybe this is because even referencing it the people who were listening to Jesus would have known what he was talking about. I’m not sure.
But, the first part again is this, / / Do not seek revenge or bear a grudge against a fellow Israelite, but love your neighbor as yourself.
Do you see what I’m seeing here.
On the one hand you have, “If someone murders someone, they are a murderer, and they should be executed.” And that is the law, and I would say 100% that is a just act. We even still do that in some states here, don’t we? Corporal punishment, the death penalty, and many people uphold that as justice being served.
Now, let’s challenge ourselves in the way of Jesus and this new mentality he’s bringing in with the Beatitudes. Matthew 5:7, / / Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
You know how I’ve mentioned Jesus saying that the healthy people don’t need a doctor, and the sick people do, and that’s who he came for? Well, I’ve been reading that from Mark 2:17, but listen to Matthew’s writing of that. It’s actually when Jesus calls Matthew to follow him as his disciple, and Matthew invites Jesus to his house for dinner, and the Pharisees ask his other disciples, “Why does Jesus eat with such scum?” And Jesus says in Matthew 9:12-13, / / “Healthy people don’t need a doctor - sick people do.” ok, we’ve read that from Mark, but Matthew adds this, “Now go and learn the meaning of this Scripture: ‘I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices.’ For I have come to call not those who think they are righteous, but those who know they are sinners.”
What’s the issue, or what’s the point here?
Well, the point is that these Pharisees are still living in Numbers 25, not Leviticus 19. They still want their pound of flesh for the wrongdoing of the sinners. They still want justice to be served and Jesus is trying to get them to see the better way.
But here’s the absolutely mind blowing part about this.
First of all, Leviticus 19, in the middle of the law, in the middle of all of that, had already invited them to do something different.
Yes, it would be “just” to demand the life of someone who killed someone, BUT, I also challenge you to not hold a grudge or seek revenge against your brothers, against your neighbors…
SO when Jesus says, Go figure out what this means, I want you to show mercy, not offer sacrifices. What he is saying is, You can do all the right religious things, but you’re still missing the point that I called you to thousands of years ago, to LOVE each other AS YOU LOVE THE LORD and Yourself!
Was demanding death for death justice, yes. But was that living out of the greatest part of the law? No.
And this wasn’t just for Israel, but Israel was meant to be a blessing to the whole world. You will see this throughout the books of the law it says something to the effect of, “And this is for all of Israel and for those who are sojourning with you.”
One example straight from scripture, Exodus 12:49, / / This instruction applies to everyone, whether a native-born Israelite or a foreigner living among you.
The Law was available for all by accepting the way of living under the law. The ESV says it this way, There shall be one law for the native and the stranger…
That was Old Testament. What about New Testament? Same. Salvation is available for ALL by accepting Jesus Christ and living under his authority.
Jesus is trying to get us to see a better way. But here’s the problem, our human nature, Paul calls it our flesh, or our sinful nature, desires justice. All too often we actually want karma. We want people to “get what they deserve.”
Tell me I’m wrong. That’s why I’m saying this is the hard work of character development in our discipleship to Christ. Our flesh desires differently. Which is precisely why we have to deny ourselves and take up our cross so that we can follow him. It’s precisely why Paul says we have to crucify our flesh…
If you don’t believe me, let’s ask the Apostle Peter. Matthew 18:21-35, and you can read it for homework, but let’s look at a bit of it.
(vs 18) / / Then Peter came to him and asked, “Lord, how often should I forgive someone who sins against me? Seven times?”
Ok, let’s just reframe that question in light of our Matthew 5:7 Blessed are the merciful…
So, let’s just say it like it is, / / “Lord, how many times do I have to give someone mercy before I get to demand justice?”
Jesus decides to tell a story to give an idea of what is going on here in the heart of Peter. His story is about a king who decides that he wants to call to account all the people who owe him money. Meaning, the time has come, you have to pay it all now, or you get thrown into prison. If you know the story of Dave Ramsey, this is what set him up for finding God’s way of dealing with finances. He was young and had built up a pretty big real estate empire. Except he didn’t have the money to settle those debts, obviously, he had mortgages. A bank bought the mortgages he had, and decided, which I guess they are allowed to do, to call them all in. Meaning, “You owe use all of the money now.” I think as the story goes they gave him 21 days. He couldn’t do it. He ended up filing for bankruptcy.
Well, they didn’t have bankruptcy in Jesus day - they would just sell you and your family and everything you own to pay the debt, or throw you in prison until you could pay, which would be impossible, because you’re in prison, not working and making money.
So the story continues. One of the men who owes the king money comes to him, he can’t pay because he owes him millions of dollars. So the king demands he be sold, along with his wife and all of his children and everything he owns , and they’ll squeeze as much out of him as possible, and him and his family will live as slaves for the rest of their lives. He falls to the ground, begs for more time and he will surely pay. Well, the king goes one step further and forgives him of the entire debt. He doesn’t say he has more time to pay, he forgives the whole thing.
Well, the man leaves and runs into another servant of the king who owes him money. Just a few thousand dollars. Having just been released from this debt he owed, of millions, maybe he thought, I need to build up my financial status because that was a close call. So he demands that this servant pay him. He can’t. He doesn’t have the money. So this guy demands that he be thrown into prison.
Well, the crowd around must have had their cell phones out taking video, and they post it and the king sees it on tik tok and he’s furious. This is the guy who he just released from millions of dollars of debt, and he couldn’t forgive a few thousand. He has his police go get this guy, they bring him in and he sends HIM to prison to be tortured until his entire debt could be paid.
Now there’s so much in that story to pull from, but the point is this, this is where Jesus lands in regards to Peter’s question, “How many times do I have to show mercy before I demand justice?”
Jesus concludes the story with this, (vs 35) / / “That’s what my heavenly Father will do to you if you refuse to forgive your brothers and sisters from your heart.”
Wow, and I’ll be honest, there have been times where I did not want to even read that portion of the story because I wrestled with the severity of it.
But, is Jesus saying that God wants to throw us into prison and torture us and sell our wives and kids to pay a debt we owe him?
No, wouldn’t that be absolutely terrible? And suddenly, as I’m readying here and seeing the greater context of the scripture. It’s the same way any one of us would tell a story to shock someone into understanding the truth.
Although it’s not a direct commentary, James actually gives really good insight into this in his book.
In James 2 he writes about treating everyone the same and not favoring some people over other people. He says if someone comes into your meeting and they are in dirty clothes, give them the seat in the front just like you would someone who comes in with really expensive clothes. And he says this in James 2:8-9, / / Yes indeed, it is good when you obey the royal law as found in the Scriptures: “Love your neighbor as yourself.” But if you favor some people over others, you are committing a sin. You are guilty of breaking the law.
Ok, you might be thinking, what does that have to do with mercy and judgement or justice. This is about preferential treatment.
James 2:12-13, / / So whatever you say or whatever you do, remember that you will be judged by the law that sets you free. There will be no mercy for those who have not shown mercy to others. But if you have been merciful, God will be merciful when he judges you.
James is saying the same thing that Jesus said, whatever system you put your hope in is the system you will be judged by.
In the story Jesus tells, the King chose to show the man mercy, but he chose to live by the rule of judgement. He demanded justice from the man who owed him, so the King in turn demanded justice against him.
If you choose to live by the law and demand justice be done against your adversaries, then how will God, who is a Just and Merciful God, not judge you in the same way? By judging others you are saying that is the system you want to live by.
I don’t know what it’s going to look like, but scripture seems to lean pretty heavily toward a day where I’m going to stand in front of God and be judged. I want to be judged on the merits of mercy, not judgement. I want to be under the law of grace, not the law of Moses.
So what does that look like on a day to day basis?
I can choose to judge the person who hit me in the round-a-bout, demand justice, tell God how unfair it is and make them want to pay.
Or I can release, forgive and show mercy.
Now, here’s where people get bent out of shape. And this is something I had to learn while we were in our lawsuit with our previous tenants in the school, and also when we had three teenagers break into our church and vandalize everything. I would be in conversations with our lawyer, and he’s a good christian man, and he would say to me, “You’re being to nice, Pastor.” And I would explain how I was having a hard time demanding justice when I felt like I was supposed to just forgive and doesn’t that mean releasing them from any burden they have to make things right.
This is what I’ve learned. And I’m not saying this is how it works all the time. And I have seen times where God invites people to radical forgiveness, I’ll share a story for that as well in a moment, but this is what I’ve learned. Again in Mark 12 there’s this story. The Pharisees come to Jesus to try and trip him up again, but this time they also bring what Mark calls, “supporters of Herod”. Herod was the local government official, so we can assume these guys are connected to the government in some way. So, Pharisees, who are the religious leaders, and a bunch of government cronies come to Jesus and ask him a question to try and trap him, and the question they ask is, (Mark 12:14) / / “Teacher,” they said, “we know how honest you are. You are impartial and don’t play favorites. You teach the way of God truthfully. Now tell us - is it right to pay taxes to Caesar or not? Should we pay them, or shouldn’t we?”
Now, the best part of this story is that Jesus sees right through it and says, / / “Why are you trying to trap me? Show me a Roman coin, and I’ll tell you… Whose picture and title are stamped on it?”
“Caesar’s,” they replied.
“Well, then,” Jesus said, “give to Caesar what belongs to Caesar, and give to God what belongs to God.”
What Jesus is doing is pointing out something very interesting. We live in two worlds. And I said this last week, right? We will eventually rule and reign with Jesus when he returns and brings his kingdom to the full - new heaven, new earth - but until that day what do we live in? The world, that is full of broken and hurting people, that is filled with the influence of the enemy, that is filled with people who have free will to do right and do wrong. And it is our responsibility to live like we live in the kingdom that is to come, while we are living in the present age.
So, when it comes to judgement and mercy. There are times where people will reap the consequences of their actions under the rule of Caesar, but it is my responsibility, under the rule of heaven to forgive them and not hold them to any sort of spiritual or personal debt. Listen, I fully expected the person who hit me, their insurance to cover my bill. I was at 0% fault. I did not make any offer to forgive that. I also very quickly prayed in my heart, “I release you, you owe me nothing.” I don’t need judgement hanging over my head. Will she pay. Yes. Because she owes me under Caesar’s law. But will I make her pay under God’s law….no, there I show mercy.
It was the same with the lawsuit. There are rules, there are laws, they were breaking them, and they needed to be held accountable. But I also did my absolute best to not hold a grudge, to forgive and let go, to not talk negatively or demand in my heart that God make it right, or make them pay. I tried to stand in the mystery of “why” without demanding God give me those answers. And that leads my why to a place of “It doesn’t actually matter if I ever know why, or if there is ever an actual reason. I can be content and confident in God through the mystery.”
Now, in the case of the teenagers that broke into our building. I had to go to court downtown. Two of them actually took a deal with the state attorneys office which included $10,000 in reparations for damages done. To this day, more than 5 years later, I have never seen 2 of the 3 kids or their parents, and never received a penny from anyone. I called the Assistant State Attorney one day and asked about it and they said, “Oh ya, you would have to bring them to civil court to go after that money, they’re over 18 now.”
So, I had a decision to make. Do I demand Justice, or do I forgive. And I do my best to live my life following the leading of the Holy Spirit. Sometimes the rule of Caesar plays out, but in this case I simply felt God leading me toward forgiveness. Also, we’re not going to be a church that sues teenagers. I feel like that just doesn’t send the right message. Would I have been 100% within my right to demand justice, yes, absolutely, but I also felt God leading me to a better way.
That’s not to say that is the case for every situation. It’s not. This is why we are led by the Spirit.
/ / Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
We live by the system we choose. Do we choose the law of grace and mercy, or do we choose the law that demands justice, and in so doing, put ourselves under that law as well? The choice is ours.