Last week we started our brief look at “The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant”. Our context for studying it is to learn the heart of our king so that we can understand the nature of His kingdom; Jesus’ context for teaching it was for His disciples to learn that humility expresses itself through forgiveness and forgiveness is an act of love that encompasses both mercy and grace. Mercy removes, it doesn’t simply forget the wrong that we have done, it forgives it; there is a huge difference between the two. Forgetting acts as if a wrong was never done and simply tries to move on, forgetting is often pretending which does not heal it perpetuates. Forgiveness applies mercy which means that it pays for the wrong, it decides to accept the cost so that the offended is no longer hoping for the offender to receive what they deserve. Mercy doesn’t say “it’s OK”, mercy says “I forgive you”; it doesn’t say “let’s forget it and move on” it says “let’s deal with this and move forward”. Mercy is the movement of compassion, it is the only way that we can ever be in right relationship with each other because the truth is we are all offenders as much as we are offended and so the only way to ever live in relationship is to learn to practice forgiveness which begins with mercy. For a lot of us, talk of mercy and forgiveness is very difficult for us because we immediately think of all those in our lives that are honestly not worthy of being forgiven because they are not sorry for the hurt they have caused but this message is not nearly as much about the mercy we give it is learning to understand the mercy that we have been given. Mercy isn’t sensible to us, it’s not safe, not careful, you could even make an argument that it’s not wise and yet what we see in Scripture is that mercy is not just an attribute of God like holiness or omnipotence but mercy is part of His character that He chooses to walk in moment by moment. Because God is love, because He is good, because He is patient, because He is our Father He is merciful. Psalm 145:8 says “The LORD is gracious and full of compassion; slow to anger and of great mercy.” The Hebrew word that is translated as mercy in this verse is so broad that it can be translated as “mercy, kindness, goodness or lovingkindness”. What we see is that mercy is a part of love and love is a part of mercy; mercy is the movement of compassion it is not a feeling it is the action that comes from a character that is rich in love. Many of us feel sympathy but mercy is not when we feel sorry for someone it is when we act in love. Jesus said to begin this parable “The kingdom of heaven is like a certain king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants.” Mercy begins with the calling of accounts. God’s mercy is not when He overlooks our sin it is when He reveals our sin because He has already paid for it. The beginning of forgiveness is the conviction of sin, if we were never aware of our condition we would never be able to receive His compassion. As we begin to go back to the parable today let’s remember that Jesus told this story to show the disciples what He was going to do for them so that they could later understand how to follow Him. Our king called our accounts, He revealed our sin, He convicted our hearts not just to warn us of the danger of our debt but to offer us the depths of His compassion. Mercy takes off, it releases us from our debt but then when mercy has done it’s work and removed our sin and our shame, when it has paid our fine and died our death, mercy gives way to grace. As I said last week, mercy always has a partner. Compassion does not only take off sin it also imparts strength. Mercy without grace leaves us without the debt of sin but also without the ability to live in holiness, truth and strength. I believe this is missing in a lot of our salvation teaching, we concentrate so fully on the mercy of forgiveness from sin that we forget the necessity of power to overcome sin. When Jesus was presented with a woman caught in adultery first He gave her mercy, He defended her, He advocated for her, He was not ashamed of her or by her, He chose not to condemn her and He forgave her but then He gave her grace by telling her “Go, and from now on, sin no more.” He was not telling her to try harder, He was not lecturing her and telling her “don’t do this again”, He was telling her that she had been given something that would enable her to be different; sin was not only removed grace was imparted, her heart was not only emptied it had also been filled. Salvation is not merely the forgiveness of sin it is the impartation of grace. We have a gracious king, today I pray that we can learn that as much as we enjoy mercy we have to grab hold of grace. Transformation is not when the weight of sin is removed it is when the wealth of grace is received. True change is not when we take off sin it is when we put on Christ. Today I want us to see what grace is so that we can learn that where mercy is given grace is expected not as a form of repayment but as a reflection of God’s image.