Are You Mercy-full or Mercy-less? Jason Jackson; May 5, 2024; Matthew 5:7

Boy… What a great song to begin preaching after! Right? “Lord have mercy, Christ have mercy. Lord have mercy on us.”

I’m Jason. Great to be back with you this Sunday morning here in our Saylorville Church family! Meredith, my wife, and I were gone last weekend. We were speaking at a couples retreat at Lake Ann Camp just outside Traverse City, Michigan. You know, Saylorville Church has sent hundreds, maybe even thousands, of teenagers to Lake Ann for summer camp over the years, and it was really fun to see how God is using Gospel-centered people in that Gospel-centered place to make an impact for His kingdom outside of what we already know about what God is doing here in the Des Moines Metro and through the Engage Network of Churches and other churches like ours. So… really fun to be there, but great to be back.

Okay I know this is a little dangerous. The 8:00 service did okay in this but you guys are gonna do better. I think we’re gonna play a little game here this morning to just kind of get warmed up. You’ve had your coffee and donuts, you’ve had more sleep than the eight o’clock, so you’ll probably do better. It’s simple. it’s easy. Don’t worry about that. But here’s how it’s gonna go. I’m gonna explain a problem or a predicament that you might find yourself in, and you’re gonna tell me what’s needed most in that situation. Okay?

So here’s the first one. Maybe you’re a parent and your kid has a soccer game here in Ankeny while you’re speaking at a retreat in Michigan, okay? Hypothetical situation. And your kid’s team loses by 15 goals in his 10 and 11 year old recreational soccer league. The final score is 16 to one. Okay, so you’re a player or a parent, part of the losing team, and at some point you’re just hoping for a little bit of “this.” Now don’t say it out loud. Okay? Turn to somebody next to you. Tell them your name, and then tell them the word. Okay? Hoping for “this.” Just tell them. Okay?

Maybe that’s not you, that hypothetical situation. Here’s another one maybe you find yourself in. Maybe you didn’t get a big assignment at school done on time, and you’re hoping your teacher will be compassionate instead of giving you the grade you actually deserve. Okay? Here’s a hint… same word as last time. Just look at your friend and tell him what you desperately need in that moment.

Maybe that’s not you. Maybe you missed a deadline at work. Your boss wants to get an update on the project that was due last week and so you’re hoping she’ll forgive you for falling behind. Right? What is the thing that you need right then? Tell your friend. Yeah, Hey… say it silently. Okay, don’t give it away. Don’t leave justice here this morning. There’ll be consequences.

Or maybe, again hypothetical, you get pulled over for speeding or running a red light, and you know you deserve a ticket, but as you see the police officer walk up to your window… None of you’ve been there. I’m sure of this… — you’re just praying that he’ll give you a warning. What… what is that called? Okay, say it out loud. What are you looking for in those moments? Mercy! You’re asking for mercy! Right? I also would have accepted the answer, the Rapture in that moment, okay? [Laughter] Very similar type of answer in those moments.

Listen, when you’re desperate, when you failed, when you feel like you’re losing at life, when you know that you deserve whatever penalty is coming to you, what is that thing that you’re just crying out for? It’s mercy! That’s mercy!

And here’s what I want you to know as we kick this off this morning. When you can’t see a way out of misery, it’s mercy that comes to the rescue. When you can’t see a way out of whatever misery you happen to be in in life or in just that moment, that thing that comes running to the rescue, that is mercy.

And mercy is the subject of our next verse in this series on the Beatitudes of Jesus. It’s the very beginning of what we call the Sermon on the Mount. It’s recorded in the Gospel of Matthew, chapters 5, 6, and 7 and these Beatitudes that we’ve found are statements of blessings. Sometimes they’re called, they kind of give us a window into the principles that rule in the kingdom of God. So these are characteristics, you might say, of citizens that are living under the rule and reign of King Jesus. Now we’ve seen this. These are the people who are truly blessed. The ones who should be congratulated or celebrated. These are the people who should be imitated as examples for the rest of us. And who are these people? What kind of people are they? We’ve already learned in the series that they aren’t exactly the kind of people that we usually think of as blessed, or bless-ed if you’ve been around church for a while.

So picture this. Here’s Jesus. He’s on a hillside overlooking the sea of Galilee and he’s surrounded by his disciples, his closest friends, and then the crowds that had started following him. And these people were really hoping that Jesus would be the guy that would finally overthrow the evil Roman Empire and the oppressive, Jewish religious system. The crowd was looking for a political leader, a warrior, someone that was gonna pick up a sword and go “Braveheart” on everybody. Okay? That’s what they were looking for. And so they’re already starting to think, this Jesus of Nazareth, this guy, He could be the answer to our problems. He could ignite a revolution that would set us free and really stick it to those jerks in charge, the Romans and their oppressive Jewish religious elite. So Jesus opens His mouth. And you know the crowd is just waiting for some great motivational speech that gets everybody riled up, and fired up, and ready to overthrow the status quo and usher in a brand new political kind of kingdom. And Jesus opens His mouth and He says,

[Matthew 5:3] “Blessed are the poor in spirit.” The ones who lie down at the foot of the cross and confess that they’re empty and broken.

[Matthew 5:4] Blessed are the mournful, the ones who grieve over their own sin, who’ve repented and accepted the great exchange of Christ’s payment for their sins. And Jesus says,

[Matthew 5:5] “Blessed are the meek,” the ones who are humble and gentle and don’t constantly feel the need to defend themselves.

[Matthew 5:6] “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness…” The ones who love what is right, and they feed themselves on the truth of God’s word and on His character.

And then this morning, the fifth be-attitude, this statement of blessing right out of the Bible in Matthew chapter five, verse seven. Jesus says to his disciples, and then to the crowd, and then to us that are listening here this morning,

[Matthew 5:7] “Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy.”

Blessed are the merciful. They will receive mercy. And once again, Jesus turns this idea of “blessing” upside down. And He says, ‘In my kingdom, the kind of people who experience life at its very best are the ones who extend mercy to others around them. They are the ones who are blessed.’ And this is revolutionary! Right? But not in the way that most of Jesus’ listeners were hoping for. And so let’s try to get into the mind of a first century Jew or Roman citizen here this morning when they think about mercy, hearing Jesus’ words for the first time maybe on that hillside in Galilee. What are they thinking?

Okay, we know that the Romans weren’t exactly known for their mercy. Right? This was the culture that celebrated ruthless gladiators. Remember this and this? [Jason demonstrates thumbs up and thumbs down] Right? They allowed men to kill their servants, even children, without reason. This is the kind of culture that lit humans on fire and used them as torches in the Imperial gardens at night. This was the Rome that invented death by crucifixion. No Roman citizen ever wanted to be known as merciful.

On the other hand you’ve got the Jews that are listening. So their context would have been the Old Testament scriptures, passages that they had memorized since they were young children, stories that they’d heard from their family, their parents maybe in their tent or around a campfire, maybe even at the synagogue. Stories like the one about Jonah. Right? Maybe you’re familiar with that. God commands this Old Testament prophet, Jonah. He says, ‘Go to these wicked people called the Ninevites, and I want you to tell them to repent, and I’ll forgive them.’ And Jonah says, ‘No way, God! These people are way too far gone! They don’t deserve mercy!’ Jonah says. And so Jonah gets on a ship, and he heads the opposite direction. There’s a storm, and he gets thrown overboard, and gets swallowed by a big fish, and then he ends up going to Nineveh after all! Right? And in maybe like an ironic twist, the Ninevites repent and God saves them, and then Jonah actually gets angry with God for being so kind! Look at what he says in Jonah chapter 4. He actually says this to God,

Jonah 4:2b, “… I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding and steadfast love. I knew you’d relent from disaster.“

And Jonah’s saying, ‘I knew it! I knew you just couldn’t help Yourself but to be merciful, God It’s like, what you do. You just looove showing mercy to people who don’t deserve it!’ And Jonah throws himself a pity party, and he shakes his fist to God and he basically says this. ‘I’d rather die than live in a world where sinners get mercy instead of justice!’ Yikes! And that’s how the story ends! The book of Jonah ends like abruptly right there. But everybody that reads that story understands this. Here’s the point. God is a God of mercy, even for those who deserve it least. God is a God of mercy, even for those who deserve it least. And that comes up over, and over and over again.

And these stories are all throughout the Old Testament. And what about the story of King David who committed adultery with Bathsheba, and then he had her husband killed to try to cover up his sin of adultery? And you’d think it would be over for David. Right? I mean, adultery is kind of one of the biggies, and then murder on top of that! And yet twice in the Bible, God refers to David, (listen to this) as “a man after His [God’s] own heart.” [1 Samuel 13:14, Acts 13:22] That’s incredible! God says this guy, David… He’s not perfect, and there are consequences for his sin, but instead of giving him the full punishment for what he’s done, I’m gonna show compassion on him. And so David knew firsthand what it was like to feel like you’ve been shown mercy. And that’s why he could write statements like this in Psalm 145, starting in verse 8,

Psalm 145:8, “The Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.”

He’s saying the same words Jonah is, but from a different motivation. Right? The Lord is good to all and His mercy is over all that He’s made. David understood that God is a God of mercy, even for those who deserve it, least. And so, when Jewish listeners heard Jesus say, “Blessed are the merciful,” They would have connected that mercy with all those stories of men and women who deserved justice but got compassion instead. So God withheld the punishment that they deserved, and instead showed them mercy. And actually, if you were to trace this idea of mercy throughout the Bible, you’d find that God is called merciful more than any other person in the entire scriptures. It’s one of his defining characteristics.

There’s a preacher, a pastor, a writer named A.W. Tozer who said,

“Mercy is not something God has, but something God is.” A.W. Tozer

It’s who He is. He can’t help it. It’s at His very core. God is mercy. And we see this in the way that Jesus lived too. Don’t we? How many times does Jesus treat people with kindness and compassion? Can you think of stories of Jesus extending mercy and forgiveness to someone when they deserved something else? I’m sure you can. Jesus loved the outcasts. He healed the sick. He forgives the sinner. That’s what He does, right? When you read the Gospels of Jesus going from one act of mercy and compassion to the next, He’s showing kindness to those who the world said deserved it the least.

One of my favorite stories of Jesus showing mercy is in John chapter eight where he meets a woman who’d been caught in the act of adultery, caught in the act! — and she’d been dragged out into the public square to be stoned. People literally picked up rocks and they were going to throw them at her to kill her! That was the punishment. And there she is. There’s this woman in the middle of the self-righteous, bloodthirsty crowd. And Jesus looks at the crowd and He says, ‘Go ahead and punish her. In fact, those of you who have never sinned, you should be the ones to throw the first stones.’ And, one by one, starting with the older going to the younger, they drop their stones. Thud… thud… thud. They walk away. And there’s this sinful woman, and she looks right into the eyes of mercy. And Jesus says, ‘I don’t condemn you, but go and sin no more.’ Mercy is the sound of the stones of judgment hitting the ground. Can you hear that?

Over and over again, Jesus enters into the messy lives of sinful men and women and He shows them mercy, because when we can’t see a way out, mercy comes to the rescue. Mercy, mercy, mercy. And here in the Beatitudes, Jesus is saying, ‘In my kingdom, one of the defining characters of My followers is mercy!‘

And one of the things we’ve learned about these Beatitudes already in the series is that these statements are kind of like mirrors that we look into, and we see whether or not our lives reflect what we’re reading. And so when we see Beatitudes like, “Blessed are the poor in spirit,” we need to ask, ‘Am I poor in spirit? Is that true of me? Does my life reflect that kind of statement? Is it who I am? And if not, why not?

And so this morning, when you look into the mirror of this Beatitude, “Blessed are the merciful,” is what you see a reflection of how you live? Are you merciful, or are you mercy-less? And here’s some questions I started asking just over the last few days of myself, and maybe they’ll be helpful to you as you think through this idea of mercy in your own life. Okay, so here’s where we’re going this morning. Are you mercy-Full or mercy-Less? And we’ll give three questions that reveal sort of your mercy meter. Okay? Get it… mercy-full, mercy-less. Where are you? Where’s your meter?

Here’s question one.

The merciful person sees people the way Jesus does. Do you? Do I? That’s the question.

One of my spiritual heroes who passed away several years ago was a man named Frank Vega. Frank was a pastor in inner city Philadelphia in a neighborhood that the locals called “the Badlands.” Okay, if the locals call it that, you know it’s bad! And so for several years, Frank ministered to drug dealers, and prostitutes, homeless addicts, orphans, gangbangers, convicts… You saw them all. And somehow he did it with compassion. And when I asked Frank once about how he’s able to see past the sin and instead see people mercifully, he said,

“I don’t see past the sin. I see the sin… but I also see the sinner.”

And then he made the statement… I’ll never forget it!

“Only when you see people the way Jesus did, can you treat people the way Jesus did.”

Frank Vega

Only when you see people the way Jesus did, will you treat people the way Jesus did.

So, over and over, we see Jesus treating people with mercy. And what does it start with? It starts with Jesus seeing them. Read it in your Bible. Just do a quick survey of the Gospels and you’ll see it yourself when Jesus extends mercy. It starts with Him seeing them. Jesus sees the crowds and He has compassion. Right? Jesus sees the woman at the well, and He loves her. Jesus sees the paralyzed man, and He heals and forgives him.

And then He gives us an example of this in Luke chapter 10. He tells a story about a Samaritan man who comes across a Jewish guy that had been beaten up by a bunch of robbers and left for dead on the side of the road. And back then, Jews and Samaritans they hated each other! Jews called Samaritans “half breeds” and Samaritans called Jews “dogs.” This wasn’t like a friendly rival like CyHawk game in Iowa. Right? This is like all out war! Jews… Samaritans. They were enemies! And so when Jesus, in telling the story, He looks at his Jewish readers and he says, ‘Hey, a Samaritan man came across this Jewish guy in a ditch.’ His Jewish readers are like, ‘Oh great… That half breed will never help our guy! He’s the least likely to show mercy to one of us, a Jew.’ But you probably know a little bit of the story. Instead of ignoring him, or passing by on the other side of the street, the Samaritan man moves towards the mess and he shows mercy. He picks up this Jewish man… an enemy, half breed, a dog… and he cleans up his wounds and he gives him a ride, takes him to a hotel and he pays for him to stay there until he’s healed up. Well, the Samaritan wasn’t the only person to see the man lying in the ditch that day. You remember the story. A priest and a Levite, two of the Jewish religious elite… If anyone should have stopped and helped this guy, it would have been those two Jewish guys… but they didn’t! They saw the man, but they were too repulsed by his messiness to engage. The Samaritan man saw the Jewish guy too, but with different eyes, with the eyes of mercy. He saw the person behind the misery.

And so I’ve been thinking through this week, who is the person that I need to see through the eyes of mercy today? And maybe for you, it’s that person that you’re least likely to wanna show mercy to. It’s the person that drives you crazy, that makes your blood boil, that makes you wanna duck into the nearest room when you see them walking down the hall… Right? And you might never call them an enemy, but you sure treat them like one. Okay, so do you have a name in your mind? Actually, better yet, do you have a face in your mind? So focus on that face. See that person. See them! — and this week be that person’s Samaritan. Show mercy. Merciful people see the mess in others, and they move in. How do you see people? How do you see people are even looking?

Here’s question two. The merciful person always makes a sacrifice. The merciful person always makes a sacrifice. Do you? Do I? Here’s a reality that makes me pause before showing mercy. This is why it doesn’t happen sometimes in my life, because real mercy hurts. Mercy comes at a price. Right? The good Samaritan had to sacrifice to be merciful. You might say it this way. Kindness isn’t convenient. It’s not our natural way. Mercy always comes at a cost to the one who extends mercy.

Meredith and I have some friends who are just so good at this! They’ve opened up their homes literally dozens of times to people who are hurting, whether they’re struggling to make ends meet financially, and they just need respite from a… maybe an abusive relationship, or they’ve been cast out of their community, or family, or friends, literally thrown out under the streets. This couple literally opened up their lives, their homes to the desperate, and they invite them in, and they move toward the misery. They enter in! See… They see people like Jesus does, and they invite outsiders to become insiders around their table, and in their living room, and in their spare room, and even around their kids. Dozens of times they’ve done this. And I asked this last week, “Doesn’t that take sacrifice?” And their response was something like this, “Well sure it does! But it’s our way of showing Jesus’ love to people who need Him.” That’s just incredible to me! What an example!

So how are you doing at showing mercy even though it hurts sometimes? How are you doing knowing that mercy means you have to go out of your way to help someone that may not be able to offer you anything in return? And we have to put aside what you would rather have so someone else can have what they don’t deserve? How are you doing with that? That’s mercy!

So wives, I’m going to ask you, did you sacrifice for your husband this week? I mean really sacrifice? Now, to tell you the truth, most wives are pretty good at this. So guys, how about you? Husbands, did you give up something that means something to you for your wife? What have you done this week for your wife that cost you something? What have you sacrificed for her? Okay, here’s one for single guys. We’ll leave the ladies alone.

This is for our single guys, all right? A couple of weeks ago, Judah… 10 years old, comes into our bathroom while we’re getting ready for work. We’re all dressed and he wants to use some of Dad’s cologne. So I’m like, “Why all of a sudden with the cologne buddy?” It’s his first time. So he turns to me and straight faced, he says, “Dad, I need to smell good if I want to woo the ladies.” (audience laughing) I have no idea where he comes up with this stuff, right? Okay, single guys, you wanna woo the ladies? I know you do! Nothing smells sweeter than sacrifice. Nothing smells sweeter than sacrifice. Be a man of mercy! Show that girl that you’re willing to put her needs first starting today, and see what happens. Write it down. You’ll thank me later, I promise! Getting dating advice during a sermon on Sunday morning… (audience laughing)

You know, a few weeks ago, Pastor Abe suggested that we reclaimed the word “meek.” I love that! This is for our men. I think we should make t-shirts and stickers and eat bacon and grow beards and be called men of mercy. Why? Because men put the needs of others before their own. Real men are merciful men. And that’s true of all of us, men and women. Merciful people always make the sacrifice! Do you? Do you?

Here’s our last question for this morning. We’ll spend a little time here.

The merciful person recognizes how much mercy they have been shown. Do you?

So here’s Jesus and Peter in Matthew chapter 18. Peter asks Jesus this question. He says, ‘Jesus, how many times do I have to forgive this guy that keeps sinning against me?’ Right? You’ve been there. And then Peter comes up with a number that seems like way over the top, like way more than what should be true. And Peter says, ‘Do I have to forgive him like seven times, Jesus?’ And Jesus blows Peter’s mind when He says, ‘Actually Peter, you need to forgive him seven… times 70!’ And His point was this. You just keep forgiving, and forgiving and forgiving. You don’t stop after 490! You just keep forgiving! Right? You just keep showing mercy! And then Jesus tells this story to illustrate what He’s talking about. He says, ‘Okay, there’s this king who has a bunch of servants and they all owe him money. And so he starts to collect on the debts, and there’s one servant specifically who owes him 10,000 talents! ‘ So if you went to Google right now and did a search for how much is 10,000 talents in today’s money, you’d come up with something between $161 million and $12 billion. Okay, the point is not how much money the servant owed, but that it was a ridiculously large debt! All right, we get that. And so this servant who owes all this money, he realizes there’s no human way he can possibly repay that debt! And so he falls on his knees before the king and he begs for mercy! And instead of giving him the punishment he deserved, the king has pity on him. He shows him mercy, and he forgives… that entire debt! That’s incredible! Right? I mean, what mercy? And so then this same servant who’s just been forgiven, he goes out of the palace, he bumps into his buddy that owes him about $5,000, $5 grand compared to the millions or even billions that he owed the king. And this servant looks at his buddy and he says, ‘Hey, where’s my five Gs?’ And the guy’s like, ‘I can’t pay!’ And he’s like, ‘Pay up, dude!’ And when his buddy can’t pay, he grabs him by the throat and he throws him into prison! And the king, he catches wind of this and he calls the servant in and he says, ‘What’s this I hear about, you not forgiving your buddy that owed you a couple thousand dollars? What’s wrong with you?‘— he says. ‘I had mercy on you, and I forgave your ginormous debt, and you couldn’t do the same for a guy that owed you hardly anything in comparison?’ And in the end, the king calls this unmerciful servant a wicked man, and he locks him up and puts him in prison. But the most chilling line in the entire story is what Jesus says to you and me at the very end of this parable. Look at verse 35.  (it’s on the screen)

Matthew 18:35, “So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.” Whoa!

I gotta tell you, this is the one that hit me this week, because I accepted Christ as my Savior when I was five years old… just a kid. And sometimes I actually catch myself thinking, “God, you got a pretty good deal when you saved me.” Maybe it’s just me. I mean, I didn’t come with a ton of baggage that you had to clean up. It wasn’t really too much debt to forgive, was there? I mean, “God, I’m sure it took a little bit of mercy to save me, but come on, it didn’t take that much, did it? I mean, my goodness, I was five years old! But this guy over here, Yikes! You really had to save him! He’s got lots of years of sin piled up! That took some mercy, didn’t it?” And so when it comes to showing mercy to other people, sometimes I’m blind to the mercy that God showed me. And like the wicked servant, I forget what it took to forgive me of my sins. So I struggle to forgive others.

And this, I believe, is the point of the parable in Matthew 18. If you understand the kind of mercy that you have been shown by God, you respond by showing that same kind of mercy to others around you. And here’s how it works. If you like math, this is a formula. Okay? The mercy we show to others is a reflection of how much mercy we believe God has shown us. That’s how it works. So if we believe that God got a good deal when he picked us, that there wasn’t really too much for Him to forgive, or that it was really other people’s sin that held Jesus on the cross, even more than ours, well then we just won’t show others much mercy, will we? We’re happy that God showed us mercy. We just don’t think we needed very much of it. And so then someone hurts us and we find ourselves saying things like this. ‘I know I sinned, but her sin is so much worse than mine,’ or ‘He needs to learn a lesson! If I forgive him, he’ll just keep doing this over and over again, won’t he? Well, only I don’t wanna enable that kind of behavior!’ — or ‘She kinda needs to know how much she hurt me!’ ‘How can I forgive him if he doesn’t even seem sorry?’ Is that you, Christian? Have you said those things in your heart, in your mind, maybe with your mouth? Be honest. How’s that going for you? Feel good about that? Is God blessing that kind of reaction? Of course He’s not! You’re miserable, aren’t you? Why? — Because holding on to all those stones of judgment gets kind of tiring after a while, doesn’t it? Just drop them. Withholding forgiveness and mercy is the opposite of the Jesus way. Not forgiving someone is like locking yourself in prison from the inside and holding onto the keys. You’re on the inside and you’ve got the key to get out! You can get out, but you don’t want to! But if we understand how completely lost and desperate we are, that we were born sinners, an enemy of God, that there was nothing we could do to ever earn God’s favor or forgiveness, and that God sent Himself in the form of Jesus, mercy with skin on it for us, well then we tend to be a lot more merciful to other people because we understand the kind of mercy that God has given us. Don’t we? Here’s how the Apostle Paul said it in Ephesians chapter four,

Ephesians 4:32, “Be kind one to another, tender-hearted,” (What’s the phrase?) forgiving one another, (Why? Because) as God in Christ forgave you,”

…friend, if you walk out with nothing else except this today, I want you to know this is the essence of the Gospel, that you and I were standing before King Jesus with a huge debt of sin that we could never repay, and all of our righteousness was like filthy rags, the wages that we earned, what we deserve from our sin was eternal separation from God. If you are a follower of Jesus, whether you were saved at the age of 5 or the age of 95 or somewhere in between, you were once an enemy of God, destined for hell, a very real place of eternal torment where you die in your sins forever, and through Jesus Christ’s death and resurrection, He has absorbed our sin! He paid the price! Jesus took the punishment that you and I deserved! That is mercy!

And instead of being so caught up in what other people owe us, let’s be caught up in the mercy that God showed us! Because those who have been forgiven much, Forgive much. And I’ll just say this as straight as I can right here. Forgiveness isn’t a feeling to wait for. It’s a command to follow. Forgiveness isn’t a feeling you have to wait for. It’s a command you get to follow. In fact, if you’re unwilling to forgive someone who hurts you, that probably says more about your relationship with God than it does about your relationship with the person that hurt you.

And so people who are merciful recognize how much mercy God has shown them. Do you? Do you? “Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.” The Beatitudes are like mirrors that reflect the priorities or practices of someone already committed to being more like Jesus, someone who is already a Christian, living under the rule and reign of King Jesus. These Beatitudes, they’re pictures. They illustrate what happens to people when their hearts are gripped with the Gospel! People who understand how much mercy they’ve been shown, — And people who are gripped with the Gospel, these are followers of Jesus, these are the kinds of people that will be shown mercy in the coming kingdom. And what a mercy that will be to spend an eternity with the Savior who absorbed our sin debt that we deserve!

And so the question this morning is are you a merciful person? Do you see people the way Jesus does, through the eyes of mercy? Do you make sacrifices to show kindness and compassion on the people around you, even the kind of people who seem to deserve it the least? Are you merciful? — Or do you recognize the desperate need you have for God’s mercy, for God to look at your sin and your mess and your misery and instead of giving you what you deserve, for God to send Jesus in your place to pay the penalty? God is a God of mercy, even for those who need it most… like you and me. That’s us this morning.

And so as we transition to the Lord’s table, communion, what an amazing picture of mercy in our lives! And I’m gonna pray as we move to the Lord’s table, and I’m just gonna pray the words of King David in Psalm 51, who said these words after he was confronted about his sin with Bathsheba and the murder of Uriah. And so close your eyes, listen and pray with me.

Psalm 51:1-3

1 “Have mercy on me. O God, according to your unfailing [steadfast] love, according to your great compassion, blot out my transgressions.

2 Wash away all my iniquity, cleanse me from my sin!

3 I know my transgressions and my sin is always before me.”

God, we need your mercy. What a merciful thing for God to do for us to invite us to His table, to commune with Him, to give us these two elements, these two pictures, illustrations of mercy. The unleavened bread, the crackers symbolizing Christ’s perfect, sinless life, and the small cups of grape juice, the juice symbolizing Christ’s blood, His sacrificial death.

In a couple of seconds, you’re going to get up, those of you that are believers, those of you that are participating this morning, and take these two elements in one hand and go back to your seats, and there’s an opportunity there for you to repent. Maybe, maybe, maybe even repent for the very first time! Maybe to say, ‘Oh God, I’m a sinner. I didn’t even realize it till today. I desperately need your mercy! Thank you God for sending Jesus to pay the penalty for my sin on the cross and to be risen again to rise again so that I might have victory over sin and death.’ And then we’ll all wait to eat and drink in unison as a family of God right here in our building. In just a few seconds you can stand and go to one of these elements and then come back to your seat and wait for all of us to eat and drink together. [Music]