True Mercy

Luke 18:10-14


"Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood up and prayed about himself: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other men — robbers, evildoers, adulterers — or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'

"But the tax collector stood at a distance. He would not even look up to heaven, but beat his breast and said, 'God, have mercy on me, a sinner.'

"I tell you that this man, rather than the other, went home justified before God. For everyone who exalts himself will be humbled, and he who humbles himself will be exalted."



In The Godfather, Michael Corleone asks whether it is better to be loved or feared. He comes to the conclusion that if you have to be one or the other, it is better to be feared by your enemies. Lovers and friends can betray you out of love, but if they fear you they dare not.

The Romans agreed. Love is untrustworthy. The Romans, like the Mafia, did not believe in mercy. Mercy to them was a sign of moral weakness.

To Jesus though, love was greater than fear. God does not first all demand our fear, but our respect. We are not Christians because we fear God, but because we love Him. As the apostle Paul put it “Perfect love casts out fear.”

We Christians at least give lip service to mercy. But we seldom practice it. When we do practice mercy, we often get it wrong, giving mercy in the wrong way and to the wrong people. Much of what we call mercy is no mercy at all.

Mercy is false when it leads to our unnecessary destruction.

A man was traveling through the woods came across a bear cub separated from its mother. “I’ll take it home with me,” he said. “I’ll raise it in my home as a pet.” So he took and fed it on a bottle. The bear got bigger. Then one day the man realized he had a full grown grizzly bear on his hands. He opened the door and said, “Go! You are too big for the house.” But the bear did not go. Instead, it turned on him and ate him.

Some people are that way. We give them love, yet they can return nothing. They are incapable of returning the love we offer. Instead, they turn upon us.

Martyrdom is a noble thing, but it must be done for the right cause. Just because we suffer for mercy does not mean we should suffer for mercy. Many people make martyrs out of themselves serving ungrateful children or friends who finally are no more appreciative than a grizzly bear. Solomon said in Proverbs 20:15 “The leech has two daughters—‘give’ and ‘give.’” Heaven help us if we show mercy to a leech.

Mercy is false when it causes the innocent to come to harm.

In February of last year, the nation was horrified by the shocking news story of a Connecticut woman who kept a chimpanzee as a pet. For years, this chimp lived in her home and gave them no problems. Then it began to make threatening moves to others. But the woman could not bring herself to have it killed. One day the chimp became unmanageable. She asked her neighbor to come over and help. The chimp attacked her neighbor and almost killed her.

When we show mercy to criminals and terrorists, we are doing the same thing this woman did. We are eventually allowing the innocent to be harmed. When a person stands by an watches animals or children beaten, we are doing the same thing. Sometimes we must forcibly stop evil without mercy to those who harm others.

Mercy is also false when it cripples the person to whom mercy is given.

In both the previous stories, the bear and the chimp were not evil. They were just animals doing what they do. But the animals were in the wrong environment. We do no favor to a wild animal to bring it into a human environment. Making them dependent on our mercy.

Suppose you have a pet Chihuahua. How long to you think the Taco Bell dog would last if you let it loose. Yet it has descended from wild wolves. All the ferocious, predatory nature of the animal has been bred out of it. By loving on these little animals, we have made it impossible for them to live without us.

You can never give to others without taking something else away. If we give food and shelter, we take away independence and self-reliance. Giving to the poor is good, but not if it creates an underclass of people who are unable to take care of themselves.

There is a false mercy. But there is a true mercy as well. False mercy can hurt, but true can redeem, and save..

The Bible gives us an example of true mercy in the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. The mercy of God is best portrayed in the free gift of God through Jesus for sinners who don’t deserve it Christ.

God’s mercy is predicated upon three propositions.

First, we realize that none of us deserve it. Mercy is not mercy if we deserve it. Only those who do not deserve it can receive the mercy of God.

In Luke 18, Jesus told the story of two men who went to the temple to pray. The first one was a Pharisee. Today the word Pharisee is synonymous with the word “hypocrite.” But that was not the case then. The Pharisees were clergymen of the largest denomination of Jews.

The Pharisee represents a particular kind of person—the religious person. He was not all that different from religious people like you or me. They were God-fearing people who tried to keep God’s Law. Most of us are the same. We don’t wish to offend the living God. There are consequences when we break God’s law. We are appalled at homosexuality, drunkenness, moral laxity, and so forth. In this we are in agreement with the Pharisees, conservative Jews, Mormons, Muslims, and Jehovah’s Witness.

In spite of his moral virtue, the Pharisee in Jesus’ story had one fatal moral flaw. He had a blind side when it came to his own sin. He was proud He looked around at the rest of humanity and concluded that he was better than most. He was sure God must be pleased with him.

But God does not grade people on a curve. Just because we are better than most does not mean we are good enough for God.

Suppose you go to an “all you can eat” restaurant. You go back to the buffet seven times. If you go back seven times, but the man next do you go back eight times. Will you therefore avoid getting fat? Do your extra calories not count?

If you smoke two packs a day, and your neighbor smokes three, will you become any less sick?

Suppose a policeman catches you going eighty miles an hour in a thirty-five mile an hour zone. Will he be more lenient on you, because some other motorist was going ninety?

God does not grade on a curve. Each of us receives the punishment due us, because of our own individual actions. He has an absolute standard of goodness. That goodness is so far above us that we will never attain it. All of us are equally guilty before the Lord.

The tax collector in the story was the opposite of Pharisee. He knew he needed mercy. Romans tax collectors had no fixed tax rates to collect. They were free to collect anything above that amount they could. In effect, tax collection was a license to steal. No wonder the other Jews hated them! If they were to have any friends at all, they were Romans and other unclean people. They were the only friends their money could buy.

Jesus makes it clear in this story. If we have sin in our heart, even though there may be people much worse than we are, we are equally condemned before God. We are all sinners. There are no exceptions.

Second, we see that anyone can receive God’s mercy, if they want it.

This tax collector was no better than the rest of his profession. He had cheated others. He had entertained Romans. He had prostitutes, and had been drunk. But he realized one thing that the Pharisee did not--the distance that separated him from God.

The tax collector hungered and thirsted for God. More than anything, he wanted to close the gap between him and God. He bowed his head. He beat his chest. He behaved like a man who has just lost his best friend or closest relative. He had lost his way and he wanted it back, A man is better off if he knows he is lost, than being lost and not knowing it.

Here is the wonder of God’s mercy--anyone can receive it. It is free and readily given. God’s mercy does not take away the consequences of our sins, but it closes the gap between us and God so that we do not have to go through life alone, without His help. If we gain all things and do not have God, we are lost. But if we lose all things and have God, all is gained.

This isn’t the weak mercy of the lazy man, or the sloppy mercy of the weak and sentimental. This is the tough, sinewy mercy of a God who knows full well our capability of betrayal, yet doesn’t care. He knows even as these two men pray that the tax collector will still be a tax collector, and that that Pharisee will still be a Pharisee. Outwardly, the Pharisee will likely still look like the better man. But God knows better. Only one has received mercy, and only one will experience a change of life. God knows their inner hearts and judges accordingly.

Finally, we see that God’s mercy is at Jesus’ price. God is not a fool. He knows the price of betrayal is death. But God, in infinite understanding and full knowledge paid that full price himself, allowing Himself to be sacrificed for our forgiveness.

t could be no other way. There is no true mercy without sacrifice. The wages of sin must be paid. But if God punished sinners without mercy, no one would survive. So God became a man, living among us, and dying on the Cross so justice and love could both be fulfilled.

You need mercy. Don’t think for a moment that God won’t give it. But consider the price God paid for your mercy. Think of the awful sacrifice of Jesus. Then we might begin to understand what is true mercy.