Matthew 5:7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
Have you ever seen the kid’s game “mercy”? It’s terrible actually. It is two people locking hands and then inflicting pain until somebody asks for “mercy”. I played it with my friends, I’ve played it with Noah, the truth is that it’s named wrong, the game has nothing at all to do with mercy. Just like the name of the game, I think that many of us have a limited and even skewed understanding of what mercy really is and what it means. Jesus said “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” Before we learn how to be merciful people we are going to have to see mercy in its fullness. John Piper wrote “Mercy comes from mercy. Our mercy to each other comes from God’s mercy to us.” Before we can consider what it means to be merciful people we have to see ourselves as people who have received and are receiving mercy. We have to see the mercy of God, it must be in our view and even what we look through at all times. In Luke 6:36 Jesus said “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” Today we are going to take the first step to being merciful people—seeing, examining and acknowledging the constant mercy of God.