Blessed are the Merciful

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Blessed are the Merciful

5th of a Series of 10 messages on the "Beatitudes". This sermon was delivered by Pastor Eric Chang on Mar 16, 1980.

Matthew 5:7
We continue now our study of the Word of God in the words of our Lord Jesus in Mt. 5:7. And here we read this: "Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy." As we have seen from week to week, there are so much riches that the Lord Jesus compresses into these few words. And because there are so much riches there, I am really puzzled when I looked at some commentaries to find how they have apparently rather little to say about any of these beatitudes, or as they are called, these blessings. Some of the commentaries require more comments than the passage. I find that truly, sometimes, it is quite frustrating and that is why I very rarely ever look at a commentary. I have to confess that I have no great inclination to look at commentaries, but whenever I do, often I end up with more questions than answers because these words are so deep, so precious.

The Merciful Obtain Salvation
Now what does it mean? Let us first of all notice this - let us begin at the end: "for they shall obtain mercy." What does it mean to obtain mercy? Now in all these places what it means to obtain mercy is quite simply to obtain salvation. The meaning of this will become clear as we proceed. In other words, we are talking about salvation, or rather, the Lord Jesus is talking about salvation. They shall obtain mercy, they shall receive mercy from God, that is, they shall be saved. So the question then again is: who are the people who shall be saved? The Lord's answer to this is: the merciful! They are the ones who shall be saved.

And let me stress again, for I shall not tire of stressing on this point, that the Lord's teaching on salvation is based not upon a salvation by a profession of faith, nor is it a salvation that can be earned by works. But it is a salvation promised to a certain kind of person, in this case described as the merciful. A certain kind of person! If you desire to be saved, you must become that kind of person. And as we look at the kind of person that the Lord Jesus is talking about, we realize that we simply, of ourselves, cannot become that kind of person but for the grace of God. That is, only by God's saving grace, more specifically by God's transforming grace, can we become this kind of person. We are not saved by faith alone, neither are we saved by works, but we are saved, in other words, by God's transforming grace in our lives who makes us the kind of person that we by our own nature cannot be.

By Nature We Are Not Merciful
Now by nature we are not merciful. We are not merciful. Nobody who puts himself first and his own interests first is likely to be merciful when his interests are threatened. This is a common everyday experience. We see it from the point of how you get into a bus where it is you who get into the bus rather than the other guy gets into the bus, so it is a free fight for all. It is a free-for-all business. And those from Hong Kong know this business of free for all. As I have many times shared, I always wonder, whenever I was staying and enjoying the hospitality of Betty and Shirley in Shatin, when I was lining up there to get into the bus and I would think, "Wow! Since the last time I came, the Hong Kong people are so changed. They are so well behaved. They actually line up." And then the bus arrives and then the line disappears. What happened to the line? I thought we are all going to march up along the line and suddenly the last ones rushed to the front and the front ones, which included some elderly, are still trying to maintain their position with the elbows and the line has disappeared. Merciful? No, no. It is the "survival of the fittest". Mercy does not come into the discussion. Of course do not despise the elderly people, the elderly have had a great deal of practice in Hong Kong with the use of their elbows. So when it comes to surviving, I guess they would not be elderly if they have not learned the art of survival to this point. Mercy is not [in] the discussion. By nature we cannot be merciful. But God - and the whole point of salvation is this - God changes us. We become people like this: people who have become merciful. And it is through faith [we become merciful].

Through True Faith We Become Merciful
I am scared of this word "faith" because it is so misused. By faith we mean commitment, by commitment we mean the kind of faith in which a patient puts himself in the hands of a doctor. That is faith. What a doctor will do to a patient, only the doctor will tell the patient. But that is faith because you need to have this kind of commitment. Faith is not just believing that this doctor is good and believing that he can do something, but it is putting yourself, that is, testing that faith, putting yourself fully into that doctor's hands, and letting the doctor do whatever he sees fit for you. That is faith. Faith then is putting yourselves totally in God's hands, committing yourselves totally to Him, to let Him transform you, heal you spiritually. Anything short of that is merely a profession of faith, and a profession of faith heals nobody anymore than a profession that you believe the doctor can save you, can heal you. That belief will not heal you until you put yourselves into his hands, wholly and without reserve. Today the hospital is going a bit further. Before they perform an operation they make you sign a statement which means that even if that operation fails, you will not sue them. They are free of every responsibility. They will try their best - hopefully they will try their best - and if they do not succeed, well, do not take them to court. But faith means this kind of utter commitment in which you put yourself without reserve into God's hands.

Now I say again, let us be very clear about this. The biblical teaching of salvation is not a salvation by a profession of faith nor is it salvation by works. It is a salvation by transformation through a faith which is total commitment, totally putting ourselves into the hands of God that He may do with you whatever it is necessary to do. I cannot be merciful, but God can make me merciful. That is very important to understand. I have great respect for Martin Lloyd-Jones who used to be the pastor of a church that I attended for many years. But I frankly do not understand him at all, when he says, "that if this is true then nobody can be saved", i.e., that if it is necessary to be forgiving or merciful in order to be saved, then no one can be saved. I do not understand what he means by this at all. For, of course, no one can be saved in his own strength. But what is grace? Grace is nothing but God's grace. What is grace if it is not God's transforming power to be able to do what I cannot do in my own strength?

By Grace, We Can Be Transformed to Be Merciful
So when Lloyd-Jones says that if salvation depends on my being merciful, then no one can be saved, the statement is true and false at the same time, depending on what exactly what one means by this. If I cannot be saved unless I, as a natural man, through my own striving and energy, be merciful, then of course, that is hopeless because we, as we have seen, as natural man, cannot do it. But Lloyd-Jones wants to say more than that. He wants to say that under no circumstances could this work. I regard this - I must say very respectfully and sorrowfully - as a denial of grace. It denies that God's grace can be effective, that God's grace can be so effective as to make an unmerciful person, merciful; an unforgiving person, forgiving; an unkind person to be kind. Now unless God's grace can do this, then what is grace at all? What is this transforming grace? What does it mean to become a new person? Has it got any kind of meaning left? I must say that on Lloyd-Jones' definition, it has no further meaning, because that grace does not transform anyone at all. So I have no Gospel to preach. I do not know what is there left to preach.

To preach a forgiveness (and that is all Lloyd-Jones has to say: that grace is simply forgiveness) without changing anyone, I must say I cannot regard that as Scriptural teaching. I do not find that in Scripture and we shall continue on with our examination of this in a moment. No, no! I am confident in the grace of God which effectively, and I say effectively, can change you and can change me. I rejoice and glory in the Gospel because God can change a person; He can take even a sinner who is as degraded as they come. I have seen and I have heard the testimony of gangsters and criminals being utterly transformed by this grace. I glory in the grace that can transform a person. Not just forgive him and leave him as he is, so that he continues sinning day after day after day with no hope of change. That is not grace. Grace is that which transforms a person; is that not the Gospel? And therefore, I must say I am disappointed in Lloyd-Jones at this point (although I had great regard for him), that his concept of grace goes no further than forgiveness. My concept of grace, I hope is rooted in the word of God which goes beyond forgiveness to transformation. It both forgives and transforms so that you do not have to be constantly doing the same sins over and over again. Anyone who has tried seriously to live their Christian life will know that if that is all that the Gospel has to offer, you have nothing but a lifelong expectation of frustration. Because you will be forever committing the same sins and forever going back and saying, "Sorry, I wish I did not have to do it but I have done it again." What kind of a Gospel is this? Why do we need the Holy Spirit then? What does the Holy Spirit do for me? Does He do nothing for me? If the Holy Spirit lives in me, does the Holy Spirit do anything at all? Because He does not have to live in me at all if all I have to do is to be forgiven all the time. I do not need the Holy Spirit. I just have to go back every day and say, "God, I'm sorry I did it again" and tomorrow I go back and I say, "I am sorry again" and "I am sorry again" and "I am sorry again". And what does the Holy Spirit do? Does He do anything? What, according to Lloyd-Jones, that the Holy Spirit does, I would be interested to know.

The Holy Spirit Effects the Change in Us
If the Holy Spirit does anything at all, then He must be causing His fruit to grow in me. The fruit of the Spirit according to Gal 5:22 onwards is love, joy, peace and all these things. Now if He can make an unloving person loving, that is transformation. And if He can make an unmerciful person merciful, then that is transformation. How then can we say that we cannot be saved if being merciful is the condition? We can be saved. I have seen this work. Surely! And then strangely enough and uncharacteristically of Lloyd-Jones (and I am talking about his message on the Sermon on the Mount), he contradicts himself two paragraphs later. And I say uncharacteristic because Lloyd-Jones is normally very, very sharp and not given to this kind of self-contradiction, if indeed it is a self-contradiction. He goes on to say two paragraphs later, that "if we have been forgiven by God then we must of necessity forgive others who transgress against us". We must "of necessity" - that is his words - forgive those [who transgress against us]. If we must "of necessity" forgive others, then what does the necessity mean? What does it mean by "of necessity?" Then can we forgive or can we not forgive? If we can forgive, then we are simply fulfilling what the Scripture here is teaching. We must come to a day in which we clearly understand, I stress this again and I spent some moments on this, we must clearly understand that salvation in Scripture is God's grace effectively transforming a sinner into a saint. And I say effectively transforming a sinner into a saint. And that is why His teaching is possible because His power is available. Without the power the teaching would simply be vague ideals. "Blessed are the merciful", but we cannot be merciful, so there is nothing left to talk about. So who is going to be blessed? Since according to Lloyd-Jones nobody can be merciful, then nobody will be blessed. Then the statement is irrelevant. I think that somehow our dear Lloyd-Jones has missed the mark here. It is possible because God's power can do it. God's grace is sufficient for us. That is what Paul says in 2 Cor. 12:9. His grace is sufficient for us and His power is made perfect in our weakness. That is the glory of the Gospel. Now I am mentioning this about Lloyd-Jones because he preached of this very passage in the Sermon on the Mount on this very verse. In case you are reading it (I am expecting that some of you might have been reading it, or might read it in the future), therefore I made my comments upon this passage on Lloyd-Jones' comments on this passage.

Watchman Nee also has some comments. But then in Watchman Nee's case, I am afraid that he requires more commentary than anything else, for I frankly do not know what he is saying, much to my disappointment, and again, with due regard for Watchman Nee. He says that: "Mercy is that which you give to someone who does not have a right to it." That is, to have mercy, to show mercy, is to give that to which a person has no right. What that means, I frankly do not know. Frankly some commentaries require more commentary. A statement like this... what is "that which"? What is "that which we give to a person to which he has no right"? What does that mean? Does it mean kindness? Does it mean love? It seems to apply to a whole range of things, not just to mercy. What is that which a person has no right to but that which I would give to him? What is it? I wish to God that when someone writes a commentary that one should write so that one knows exactly what he is talking about. In the next sentence he goes on to say that "Christians should not seek to gain advantage over others in this world." What does that have to do with showing mercy - I am not too clear. And what does he mean by gaining advantage over others? This requires a great deal more clarity of definition than vague statements of this sort. I simply say this because, unfortunately, as many of you may have discovered, looking at the commentaries is a frustrating process. You are more confused after reading the commentary than before it. I know a good friend in England who specializes in reading commentaries and he has often protested that after reading many commentaries, he is utterly confused. Now the reason why I want to say this is because so much of the weakness of the church today lies in the fact that we do not really understand what the Word of God means, and our teachers do not help us much either and leave us in still further confusion by the time they have pronounced upon it.

In Lk. 6:36 the Lord Jesus said that you must be compassionate as your Father is compassionate. You must "be merciful, even as your Father is merciful." In order to obey this command, I must understand what merciful means. Is it not so? How shall I obey a command the meaning of which I do not understand? I do not understand what it means to be merciful. Nor am I being helped when I am told that to show mercy is to give to somebody that which he has no right to. I do not know what that means. For in what circumstances do I give to somebody that to which I think he has no right? What is it that he does not have a right to and what is it that I give to that person? I pray to God that when you preach the Gospel you will preach with a greater degree of clarity than that. And when leaders of churches are speaking like this, you suspect that they themselves do not really understand what the Lord Jesus is saying. That really is the root of the problem. When church leaders themselves do not know what they are talking about, when pastors themselves are speaking this kind of vague terms, then how are any of us going to be able to obey God's Word? So let us get to the Word of God. Let us aim to understand clearly what the Lord Jesus is saying to us here.

The Meaning of "Mercy" in Scripture
What does it mean - without beating around the bush, without being vague - what does it mean to be merciful in the light of Scripture? Well, the way to study any passage in the Word of God is not just to open a dictionary and look under the word "merciful" because that in itself will not take you very far. The way to study the meaning of any particular word in Scripture is to see how that word is used in the Scripture itself. How is this word used in the NT? [In finding that out you will realize the value of a concordance.] A concordance is not useful just to locate a particular passage the reference to which you have forgotten. You cannot remember where this passage is and you look it up in a concordance. That is one of the uses of a concordance. But a concordance has a much more important use. I am explaining this because I do not just want to explain the passage to you but I would like you to know how to understand a passage. I do not want just to give you a fish but to teach you how to fish, so that you know how to feed yourself in the future. A concordance is valuable because you can check every reference of a particular word and how that word is used. Studying the use of that word will give you the definition far better than any dictionary can do. When you go to the expense of buying a theological dictionary, all that the theological dictionary is doing is just that. What the writer of theological dictionary does is simply that he checks every reference of a particular word in a concordance and sums it up for you. That is all he does for you, and you can very well do that for yourself. But if you do not want to do it, or you are too lazy to do it, or you do not think you have time to do it, then you can spend half an hour or one hour reading a theological dictionary. And if you are any clearer at the end of it, then that is fine. If you are not any clearer, then that is too bad. A theological dictionary does simply that. That is all it does.

Now when we look at this word "mercy" and how it is used in the NT, we begin to observe one very important factor. We observe that the word "mercy" is always used in a context in Scripture which deals with the consequences of sin. That is, God's antidote to the poison of sin is mercy. The way God deals with sin in the NT is by His mercy. For example, the word 'mercy' is used in the case of the blind man who cries out to the Lord Jesus and says, "Son of David, have mercy upon me!" What is he asking for? In his mind he is asking for healing. But the Lord Jesus is showing mercy in the sense that every physical ailment is a consequence of sins. Now supposing there was no sin in the world, there will be no disease and all the doctors will be out of jobs. Because there is no sin, there is no disease; but because there is sin, there is disease. But do not make the mistake of thinking that there is direct relationship of sin to disease in the sense that a person is sick because he has sinned. That direct connection is a mistake! You must never say, "You are sick because you have sinned." That is not the connection at all. This kind of a conclusion is wrong.

That is why when the disciples asked concerning the blind man in Jn. 9:1f, "Who sinned? He or his parents?" The Lord Jesus said, "Neither him nor his parents sinned." The question is not: "Is he blind because he sinned, or is he blind because his parents sinned?" He is blind because there is sin the world; sins in the world, generally. There is disease in the world, and we, being partakers of mankind, must suffer this common disease. For example, there is an epidemic of flu going around. If you catch the flu, the question not to ask is: "What sin have I committed that I got flu?" And therefore the quick way to get rid of the flu is to simply quickly kneel down and repent - and the moment you rise up, the flu is gone. It is not quite as quick as this. No, no! The flu is in the world. You get the flu not because you sinned necessarily but because there is such a thing as flu in the world. And because someone sneezed next to you and blew all the germs in the air and you inhaled it all in and so you got the flu. That is the quick way and it has nothing to do whether you sinned or not.

If there is such a direct connection we should be very happy because all the Mafia would be dead by now, because they would be all stricken with the most horrible diseases. Those of us who committed less sins should be inflicted with much lighter diseases, like small things like colds, whereas all those gangsters would be crawling around with the most dreadful diseases. Unfortunately, of course the gangsters all go around driving their Cadillacs in very good health while all these good people are limping around with illnesses. It just does not work out like that at all! There is not a direct connection between disease and sin. But there is an indirect connection in the sense that all diseases are present in the world because there is sin. If there were no sins, there would be no diseases. I must spend a little time explaining on this because there is still a very foolish notion, among Christians even, that when somebody is sick, you ask, "What sin did he commit?" This is ridiculous! This is utterly ridiculous! This error is still being committed among some very good people, notably the Pentecostal brothers and sisters who put a lot of emphasis on spiritual healing. You must not fall into this error.

Mercy Undoes the Effects of Sin
Having said this, you must understand that mercy is God's antidote to sin. So when the Lord Jesus shows mercy to the blind person, He is removing a consequence of sin from that person, not that he sinned, but there is a consequence of sin: blindness, disease and all these things. That is why you find the Lord Jesus, when He embarked upon His ministry and when he explained His ministry to John the Baptist, He said "Look! The blind have their eyesight restored, the deaf hear again, the lame are healed because the Gospel is being preached!" The connection is this - that the effects of sin are now being undone through the presence, the saving power of Christ.

Now to make it more specific. We find that mercy in the NT refers most specifically to the forgiveness of sins. I say, most specifically. And the examples of this are simply too numerous to cite in detail. For example, in 1 Tim. 1:13&16 Paul said he received mercy from God when he persecuted the Christians and put some of them to death. He received mercy because he did these things ignorantly when he persecuted the church. Now mercy here clearly means forgiveness. He received mercy in that he was forgiven because he persecuted the Christians in ignorance. He acted ignorantly. He did not realize that Jesus was the Christ. As soon as he realized these things, he repented.

In Lk. 1:77-78 you will find that forgiveness of sins mentioned in v77 is paralleled with mercy in v78. That makes it very specific and very clear. Again in Rom. 11:31-32 when Paul says that the Gentiles received mercy, he means that they have been saved, that they have been forgiven. Again in Eph. 2:4 Paul speaks about God's forgiving mercy by which we are saved. Or in Tit. 3:5 he says that "God saved us not in virtue of works of righteousness which we have done, but out of His own mercy, he saved us." He was merciful to forgive us our sins and save us. So when we examine this there is nothing very difficult or confusing to observe. The word "mercy" does not have to be defined in vague and unintelligible terms, like "giving to somebody what he does not have a right to"; this is unintelligible. We can simply put it very specifically - and thank God for Scripture that is so specific - mercy is simply forgiveness! To be merciful is to be forgiving. What's so difficult to understand about this when we study it from Scripture? "Blessed are the merciful - that is, the forgiving - for they shall receive mercy - they shall be forgiven." The meaning is so lucid, so clear. Why do we have to resort to vague and unintelligible expressions, unless of course in the first place we did not understand it ourselves?

Now this is a fundamental teaching of the Lord Jesus - that we are forgiven when and if we forgive. But if we do not forgive, neither shall we be forgiven. The Lord Jesus said this in such plain words in Mt. 6:12: "Forgive our debts, as we also have forgiven our debtors," in the Lord's Prayer. And in v14, He said this, "For if you forgive men their trespasses, your heavenly Father also will forgive you; but if you do not forgive men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses." Now more plain than that we cannot get. That is putting it in black and white. Nothing like the vagueness of our church leaders who talk in terms we hardly comprehend, assuming that they comprehend what they are saying. The Lord Jesus is very specific. If you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven, exactly contradicting our dear friend Martin Lloyd-Jones' words. Whether or not you are forgiven, the Lord Jesus says specifically, depends on whether or not you forgive. Whether or not I forgive or not, depends on whether or not I have been transformed. Because if I have not been transformed, you are not going to get any forgiveness from me. That is for sure because granted my natural man, my putting [myself] number one first, you do not stand a chance with me because if you owe me anything, I will see to it that you will pay me my dues to the last cent. But because God has transformed my life - He has changed me - I do not insist that you pay me the last cent or maybe that you pay anything at all. As God has freely forgiven me, so I freely forgive you. It is God's transforming grace that makes this teaching at all possible. But we must not dilute that teaching. We have not the right to dilute this teaching. But God can change us.

Mercy is Forgiving the Enemy
I was very touched and I am going to tell you about Dennis Yeo. Since he is to be our speaker in our summer camp, you should know something about him. Dennis, as many of you know, is an engineer working with nuclear fuels in Westinghouse in the United States. Dennis grew up never knowing his father. Why? Because his father was murdered by the Japanese in the Second World War in Singapore. He's from Singapore, by the way. His father was out on a mercy mission (we are speaking of "mercy") because his father was a Red Cross worker. He was out on a mercy mission driving an ambulance clearly marked with a Red Cross on it. When the Japanese were bombarding Singapore - as many of you know they used long range guns and artillery bombarding from the Malaysian side onto Singapore - there were heavy casualties all around. Dennis' father was going around picking up the wounded, rushing them to hospital and trying to save their lives. When the Japanese crossed the channel between Malaysia and Singapore - as you know the Japanese had no respect for any kind of international law, they had no respect for Red Cross or any other kind of cross - so they went around and just shot and murdered everyone in sight. Dennis' father who went out on a mercy mission was last seen being taken away by the Japanese. He was never seen again. So, Dennis grew up without ever having seen his father because he was only a baby at the time. I felt very touched because really, what would you feel about the Japanese if they brutally murdered your father?

Well, one day he came to our apartment in London, in England and I had a Japanese friend in our apartment. This Japanese is a Christian. And so Dennis (whom you shall meet, God willing, in a few weeks' time at the summer camp) came to my place and I thought, "Oh no, I didn't know he was coming to visit me and there was this Japanese sitting in my apartment. I thought, "What would his reaction be when I tell him that there is a Japanese in my apartment? So, as he was coming up the stairs, I said to him, "Look, Dennis, I know the Japanese had done a lot of bad things to you and your family (his uncle has been arrested and all other kinds of other things). There is a Japanese in my apartment right now, but he is a Christian." Dennis turned to me. He paused and thought for a moment. He said, "It's all right. It's all right." So when we came in, Dennis shook his hand and greeted him. Then after a little while Dennis said, "You know, I might as well tell you truthfully, my father was killed by the Japanese. I thought, 'Oh, no! What is going to happen in this discussion?'" And this Japanese brother looked very sorrowful about it. And then Dennis went on to say, "But don't be worried. The love of Christ has changed my heart. I love you all the same." That is the transforming grace of God!

He could have looked at the person whom by nature he would have hated to the depths of his being, but he said, "I love you in the name of Christ. All is forgiven." Now this is the transforming grace! He has mercy upon those whom he by nature would have hated. Unless you forgive, you shall not be forgiven. Why does Lloyd-Jones say that if it depends on us to forgive we could not be saved? How pitifully he has underestimated the grace of God? Does he really mean to say that? Surely it is not impossible because with God all things are possible. He can make us to be forgiving. I say frankly of myself, I also could not stand the Japanese. I mean, how many Chinese can stand the Japanese after what we suffered in the Second World War? We suffered lots of things. My home was broken up. I nearly did not even recognize my father anymore. My father went into the interior, determined to fight the Japanese to the last man if it had to be done; determined that if we could not win, he would never see our faces again. We were left behind the Japanese line. I have known loss of things. But I could learn to forgive because God changed my heart. Today I love the Japanese. I can honestly say that I do love them, not that only I forgive them, and say, "Okay, forget it!" but I do really love them. With the love of Christ that even I find it quite hard to understand, I do not know why I love them but I do.

Mercy is Loving the Enemy
Loving the enemy - that is what mercy is all about! Anyone who takes or makes an offense against you, who offends against you, by that very fact, becomes your enemy, no matter how short the time. If, assuming your wife offends against you, or your husband offends against you, even your husband or wife becomes for that moment {in which they have offended against you, they become} your enemy. Is it not so? So you need to forgive your wife or your husband or your friend who has offended against you, because during that moment in which they have offended against you, they have become your enemy.

Even a disciple can become the enemy of his lord. Remember what Peter did? When the Lord Jesus said He was going to the cross, Peter said, "Lord, let this never happen to you." This should not happen to you. He tried to stand in the way of the Lord Jesus' progress to the cross. And the Lord Jesus said, "Get behind me, Satan." The word "Satan" means enemy. The very word "Satan" means adversary. He said [to Peter]: "Get behind me, Satan" because at that moment Peter has become Satan, has become an enemy, has become Jesus' enemy. Therefore, mercy means loving your enemy. That is what it means, because forgiving a person, whom at that moment if he did not offend against you, he would not be your enemy, you would not have to forgive him, but because he has offended against you, you need to forgive. And God gives us the grace to forgive all the damage that people have done to us. People who have spoken wrongly against you - can you forgive? We must forgive! We must forgive, if we are to receive mercy - as He has fully forgiven. In fact, so important is this that the Lord Jesus dedicates an entire parable to teaching this very point.

Mercy in the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant
This parable is known as the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant and this parable you need to read in Mt. 18:23f for yourself. And there you find in this very parable the word "mercy" occurring in v33. This whole Parable of the Unforgiving Servant is there to illustrate the very teaching of the Lord Jesus in Mt. 6 that if you do not forgive, you will not be forgiven. Now I have preached on this parable and I shall not go into detail again on this parable. But the message of this parable is very exceedingly clear beyond any shadow of doubt. Let me quickly sum it up for you.

You remember that there was a government official who owed millions of dollars to his lord, his king. And he could not pay up these millions of dollars. So he had to be sold into slavery together with his family, which was the standard thing that would be done for high officials of government in those days who failed to do their job. (Maybe they should do that to high officials today, too, who mess up their jobs.) But this person came before the king and begged for forgiveness. He said, "I can't pay up. Have mercy upon me. Have mercy upon my family. Have mercy." The king said, "Okay, I forgive you. Since you repent, I forgive you freely." I think you know the rest of the parable. This person went out and found a fellow official who owed him a few dollars and he grabbed this fellow by the scruff of the neck and said, "Where are the dollars you owe me? You owe me $20. Dish up the 20 bucks." The fellow did not have $20 to dish up, so this fellow threw him into jail. Now when the news of this came back to the king, he called this official and said, "I forgave you. I had mercy upon you. Should you not also have had mercy upon the other person? Now because you did not have mercy upon that person, therefore the forgiveness you have received is revoked. Because you did not forgive, neither shall you be forgiven" - even though he had already been forgiven.

Notice this carefully: it is very hard on once-saved-always-saved doctrine. Although he had already been forgiven, it was revoked and he now is cast into jail. There he is said to be delivered to the tormentors until he should have paid the very last farthing, which of course means he will never be able to pay up because in jail, you do not earn a cent anyway. There is no way that he is going to pay up. He is finished. That is another way to say that he is absolutely finished. Because he did not forgive, neither will he be forgiven! Though he has already been forgiven, his forgiveness was revoked because he proved to be unworthy of that forgiveness. The Lord's teaching is absolutely clear. There is nothing vague about it. There is no way you can twist this around or fool around with these words. They are very clear!

Our Present Need for Mercy
So then, let us sum up on this first point. To be merciful means, quite simply, to be forgiving. And if you do not forgive, neither shall you be forgiven. But if you are merciful to others, you will receive mercy. How can we be merciful? So may God change us! So may He transform us that we become merciful persons by His grace, His transforming grace!

The second thing is this and this is the other part of it. When we study the use of mercy in Scripture, we see two ways the word mercy is used. And if we stop at the first point, we would not have seen the full riches of it. The first point speaks about God's forgiveness of our sins, but that does not mean the only time we need mercy was when we first became Christians. That the only time we needed God's mercy was when we repented of our sins, we were baptized, we came to Christ, and after that we do not need mercy anymore, do we? If we think like this, we are seriously mistaken. Then we have missed out the other half of the meaning of mercy, which is exceedingly precious. And you will find the other half of the use of the word "mercy" many times in the NT where Paul speaks of "May the grace, mercy and peace of God, our Father be with you." "Grace, mercy and peace of God, our Father." We still need His continuing mercy. This we see in 1 Tim. 1:2, for example, where Paul speaks to Timothy, "Grace, mercy and peace... from God, the Father...." We still need grace. We still need mercy. We still need peace. And then also in 2 Jn. 3 for example, we find exactly the same words: "grace, mercy and peace." Also in Gal. 6:16, Paul speaks of "Peace and mercy... to the Israel of God." So I am citing these instances to show that mercy is not just something you needed in the past when you were forgiven, but mercy is something we continue to need in the present.

Why? Why do we still need mercy? Because we are still struggling against sin. Remember I said the scriptural teaching is that mercy is God's antidote to sin. We are still battling against sin. And because we are constantly battling against sin, we need God's sustaining mercy in the struggle against sin. We see 'mercy' used for example, in Heb. 4:16 in precisely this way. This is what we read in Heb. 4:16: "Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in the time of need" - that we may receive mercy now, not just in the past. Why do we draw near to the throne of grace? Why do we come to God in prayer? That we may receive mercy! And what is the context? The context in v15 for example tells us, that it is because we are tempted by sin and we are very weak. We are weak. Because we are weak and tempted by sin, we need this sustaining mercy to hold us up day by day. This mercy of God is God's wonderful answer to sin, to our spiritual weakness, upholding us and sustaining us. So mercy is that grace of God, that specific grace of God (but in mercy we are narrowing grace to the specific sense of help to have victory over sin). It is very precise in Scripture, nothing vague and woolly about it.

So we notice that mercy and judgment are contrasted. For example, Jam. 2:13 we have very much James' own commentary on the Lord's words here in the beatitude. Jam. 2:13 reads like this: "For judgment is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy." Bear this very carefully in mind. Judgment is without mercy to a person who has shown no mercy. This is the negative side of the Lord's teaching. It is the same teaching but put in the negative. But here is the positive side: "Yet mercy triumphs over judgment." It shows God's mercy triumphs over judgment. God's mercy, His saving grace to us, delivers us from judgment. That is why it triumphs over judgment. Isn't that beautiful? But if you show no mercy to others, then judgment to you will be without mercy. You have to become a certain kind of person to be saved; namely, a merciful kind of person. Ah, this is truly beautiful! We are called to be merciful. We are required to be merciful. It is not optional. Our salvation depends upon it! Let God's grace become effective in our lives!

The Lord Desires Mercy and Not Sacrifice
But one last thought and we must close because I want to show you the beauty of this sustaining mercy of God, which we are called to exercise. The Lord Jesus twice quotes the beautiful words of Hos. 6:6. First He quotes it in Mt. 9:13 and then again in Mt. 12:7, showing the importance of this verse quoted twice. And the words are "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice." I desire mercy, not sacrifice. What does that mean? Sacrifices are the outward performances of religion. You slaughter a lamb or a bullock, whatever it is you offer and sacrifice. These are the outward performances of religion. The Lord Jesus is saying, "I desire not these outward fulfillments of religion called sacrifice, but I desire mercy in the heart. I desire that you become a different person from what you are."

There are an awful lot of sinners and hypocrites and terrible people who have a lot of religion. It's sickening. They go around with all their religious performances. They think that is the sum total of religion - that you offer sacrifices at the altar, that you wave your incense thing and that you mumble loud religious phraseology and punctuate everything by saying a few "Hallelujah's" and "Praise the Lord's" and all this kind of things called religion! But the Lord Jesus said, "I do not care about your outward performances of religion and your offering of sacrifices, but what I want to see is mercy in the heart. That is what I am looking for." What then is He looking for? Well, we have seen first that it means if I am merciful, I forgive. By God's grace I forgive. By myself I cannot do it. But secondly it means what then? God's sustaining grace working through me. What does it mean that God's sustaining grace works through me? Well, let me tell you.

Building a Team with an Atmosphere of Mercy
I wonder if anyone of you have ever been coaches? The other day I was sharing with our Sis. Margaret how in my youthful days, I coached a ball team. I had decided to build a baseball team, so I dragged a bunch of fellows off the streets many of whom have never seen a baseball in their lives. I pulled these guys off the streets and said to them: "How about learning to play baseball?" They said, "We will try if we know what the game is." So I got this bunch of green recruits off the streets and I trained these fellows together. After two months of this training I said to myself, "Now is the time to put these guys to the test." I had a friend who played in a very good ball team in a school called St. Francis Xavier's in Shanghai. They had a very good ball team: extremely efficient, extremely well organized, and extremely skilled. And here was my bunch of raw recruits coming to play against St. Francis Xavier's College. So we went in there and we took the beating of our lives. They really beat the daylights out of us. The score was getting to the point of becoming ridiculous; it was hardly worth chalking up the scores anymore. When we reached the score of 36 to 2 - 3 points it was hardly worth talking about; it was becoming astronomical as far as we were concerned. So after the game we saw a bunch of very dejected fellows throwing their bats and their gloves away. And so, I could have said to these people, "You fellows are absolutely hopeless. I mean, you people are fit for the garbage bin. All you can do is to just clear out of here; I do not want to see the likes of you again. You are an absolute disappointment; you waste of my time; you're rubbish!" Well, if you train a team like this, what is the point of training a team, because there would not be much of a team after saying that?

Now what is mercy? Mercy is this: when people have done a terrible job - after all they did a terrible job and have made a complete mess out of it - and you come to them and say, "Look! We did a bad job. We did a bad thing here and we deserve to be wiped out. But do not lose heart! Let's pull ourselves together. Let's examine our faults; let's see what went wrong; let's not weep over spilled milk. We have been humiliated today. They treated us as a carpet; they walked all over us. But this is not yet finished. Let's take heart; examine our faults, our failings and our weaknesses; and work at it and seek somehow to improve. We will have a rematch. Let's get down to business and analyze all the things we did wrong." Needless to say that took ages, because we did everything wrong. So we studied all the faults and failings and went through them point by point and then we worked out a schedule by which we want to deliberately improve on every one of these points.

Next year, we said to the team at St. Francis Xavier's: "How about having another game?" They said, "Oh, no. Not this bunch of guys again. These fellows are ridiculous! They're wasting our time." So we said, "Okay! Okay! Just give us another chance to play with you again." And they said okay, seeing that we were friends and for friendship's sake, they can waste another couple of hours. So we came on the field and we played them. They said, "Hey! This is a different team!" Well, they took a beating! They were beaten 12 to 8. All right, we did not actually walk all over them, but we actually beat them. They were the most surprised team in that in 12 months we could come back and beat them. By the following year we were playing in the A-Division in Shanghai, in the top division, while they (this team from St. Francis) were struggling for a place in the 2^nd Division. We were playing with the best!

Mercy Applied in the Spiritual Realm a Beautiful Picture
This is what I mean by the lesson about mercy. Mercy! It was mercy that did it. We could have written these bunch guys off and said, "You guys are hopeless! Forget it!" But there was mercy, an atmosphere of mercy in that we said, "Never mind. We made a mess but we are going to learn from our mistakes and we are going to be better." Applied to the spiritual realm, it is very beautiful. A fellow may have committed sin and you say, "You are a Christian and you do things like this!" You press him down, saying, "Christians do not behave like this. You are disgusting!" Then the fellow says to himself, "Maybe I should stop calling myself a Christian. Maybe I will not come to church anymore. I am a disgrace to God; a disgrace to the church; and disgrace to everybody. Bye-bye. I am going now."

How do you help this person? You have, through judgment, crushed the person into the ground since he failed. But you can take the attitude of mercy and say, "You failed. You made a mess of it. Truly you made a mess." You are not going to mince words: a mess is a mess. "But God's grace is sufficient. Don't give up! Let's press forward together. Let's try again. Maybe next time you will fail, but not so bad as this time. And the time after that you will fail again but...and then you make it through God's grace. You are going to come forth victorious after a time. You will come through victorious. You'll make it. Yes!" You give that person a hope through mercy. But by condemning the person you have knocked out all hope for that person. It's finished! I wonder how many people have actually committed suicide because somebody has judged them and condemned them and said, "You are hopeless; you are nothing; you are useless." Since there is no more hope, they commit suicide. Life is not worth living anymore. God's mercy, God's loving-kindness, is His grace. David sinned - God could have said, "You are just garbage and I throw you out." But God had mercy upon him. David repented and said, "Lord, I have sinned. I have done terribly! Now, you deal with me as you see fit." And God judged him but God had mercy. He did not wipe them out. Then he sinned again and God had mercy upon him again, when he repented. This is the attitude.

Being merciful is the exact opposite of taking a condemning attitude. The Lord Jesus said (and this is the other side of it) in Mt. 7:1-2: "Judge not, that you be not judged. For with what measure you judge, you will also be judged...". Sometimes we are very hard on fellow Christians because we expect a high standard of them. And I have to confess that sometimes I am very hard on fellow Christians; I expect a high standard. And I am very disappointed and sometimes frustrated and fed up and angry, when Christians fail. But when there is repentance and there is an attitude of being sorry, and they repent before God in genuine repentance, we must be merciful. "You made a mess. You start again; try again." In this way, when the whole team functions like this, when the whole church functions like this, I am confident that we can build a spiritual team that is going to be victorious. I am amazed what you can do with this scrap of fellows who had never seen a ball in their life, put them through 12 months of training and they can actually play with an astonishing standard. Put them through another 12 months and they can play with the best. It is incredible, but it is because we constantly encouraged them on. Very interestingly, in Shanghai, many teams fell apart, due to internal bickering, fighting, accusing each other, backbiting, etc. But our team held together in a spirit of compassion because we started from the beginning, making an awful lot of mistakes and learning to forgive one another for them. And together we grew and advanced until we were among the best.

I find it a very precious spiritual lesson - learning to be merciful to the weak. So the Scripture teaches us, be merciful to those who fail. Help them along. Help them to stand up again. Help them! Talk to them! Don't just bang them into the ground. Shouting at them or condemning them won't get them anywhere. Now let me say this. Sometimes I find many husband-and-wife relationships fail because you become very unforgiving as husbands and wives. You finally say, "I am fed up with you. You have made this mistake 50 times before and I am sick of it. Now stop it. I am furious! We can go on like this, but I'm not sure we will get anywhere." The initial loving relationship begins to degenerate into a very condemning attitude, and when that happens, the marriage begins to fall apart. Marriage only holds together when you function as a team, when you say, "Okay! That was bad. You made a bad mess of it. Okay, we will do it again. We will try to make better next time. Don't be discouraged. We'll move together. We are going to win this battle yet." This is the beauty of the Christian life.

And so let us close and sum up. We now see the meaning of mercy. Mercy means, in the first instance, to forgive, but it also means continuing to sustain those who are weak. Helping them through to victory until finally they are able to be victorious over sin. This is the beautiful teaching of the Lord. When we live in this way: both forgiving our enemies - forgiving those who offend against us - and helping them to victory spiritually, we can be sure to receive God's mercy on that day.

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