GIFTS OF THE SPIRIT – GIFT OF MERCY
DR. JIM DIXON
MATTHEW 18:21-35
NOVEMBER 3, 1985
He was called the wicked servant. He owed his master and lord the equivalent of $10,000,000 American dollars, a massive debt, a debt so great that no servant could ever hope to repay it but he was not called wicked because of the measure of his indebtedness. He was called wicked because of the measure of his mercy. He had no mercy. He had received mercy. His master and lord had actually forgiven him that entire debt and released him but he, then, went out and found a fellow servant who owed him a small debt of 100 denarii, about 3 months wage, and seized him by the throat and said “Pay what you owe” and as he could not, he had the man thrown into prison. And it’s for this reason that the master and lord summoned that servant and said to him “You wicked servant. I forgave you that entire debt because you besought me. Should not you, therefore, have had mercy upon your fellow servant even as I had mercy upon you?” And it is for this reason that the master and lord punished the wicked servant. And to all of us in this place, the Lord Jesus Christ says “So shall my Heavenly Father do to each one of you if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
Obviously, God wants Christians to be a merciful people. As Christians, we have been shown mercy. We have been forgiven much. A massive debt of sin. The moment we accepted Jesus Christ as Lord and Savior of life, the moment we invited Him to come and make his home in our heart—in that moment He forgave us of all of our sin by the sacrifice that was made on Calvary’s Cross. In that moment, He made a great promise to us that He would grant us eternal life in a New Heavens and a New Earth and the promise of new glorious resurrection bodies. In that moment, he commissioned us and He gave us a ministry on this earth and in this world to serve the Kingdom of Christ from this day forth and forevermore. But as He has given much, so now He expects much. He has been merciful to us and now He demands that we be merciful to others.
I want to share with you this morning on the subject of mercy and particularly the Gift of Mercy. Those people who have the Gift of Mercy live lives that are characterized by two qualities and these comprise our two teachings this morning. First of all, those who have the Gift of Mercy are people who see the best in other people. If you have the Gift of Mercy, you have a capacity to overlook the flaws that exist in another person’s life and to see the good.
In the year 1894, two people, a married couple – Gabriel and Teresa – left Italy and came to the United States of America. They came to the land of promise, to the land of opportunity, but things didn’t go very well for Gabriel and Teresa here. Gabriel was a grocer and a barber, and Teresa was a dressmaker, but they could barely make money, barely make money sufficient to feed and clothe their seven sons and two daughters. In the year 1920, after decades of hard labor and poverty, Gabriel collapsed in a poolroom on 20 Garfield Street in New York City. He collapsed and died while watching his son, Alfonso, shoot pool. He would never see Alfonso grow up to maturity and it’s just as well because when Alfonso grew up, he discovered that he could do more than shoot pool. He could shoot people as well. Alfonso became one of the most notorious criminals of the 20th century.
In the year 1925, he came to head the Chicago Crime Syndicate and he became the King of the Underworld. He would drive his car down the streets of Chicago. An armor-plated Cadillac of bullet-proof glass. People would flood the streets, hoping to get a glimpse of the man that some people called Scarface. Alfonso would sit in the backseat on his silk pillows, smoking a large cigar. In the front seat, there was always a body guard with a Thompson submachine gun. Alfonso made a great deal of money. He traded in beer and liquor in a time of prohibition. He ran prostitution houses and gambling casinos. He owned warehouses and trucking lines and restaurants. In 1927, Alfonso grossed one hundred and five million dollars.
On February 14, 1929, he executed seven people in what today is known as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre. It was not hard for him because historians say that Alfonso killed 60 people personally and ordered the execution of 400 additional people. He considered himself above the law and he was very, very rich. But in 1931, he was apprehended, he was tried and he was convicted of income tax evasion. For twelve years, he went to prison and he died in the year 1947, his body riddled with syphilis. His name, of course, was Al Capone. His mother, Teresa, outlived him and she believed in him through all those years. When Al Capone was in the penitentiary at Atlanta, Georgia, Teresa went to live by him, and every day she went to visit him. She brought him his favorite food and his favorite candy, and she would talk to him hour upon end. And then when Al Capone was taken to Alcatraz, Teresa moved he too, and she visited him as often as she was allowed and again, she brought all of his favorite things. When Al Capone died in 1947, the authorities asked Teresa what she thought of her son’s life and she responded with five words. She simply said, “Al was a good boy.”
Obviously, love is blind. The world could not view Al Capone with the same eyes that his mother had. She had mercy upon him. She overlooked the flaws and somehow, she saw the good that only a mother could see. There is a sense in which people with the Gift of Mercy have special eyes. They’re not blind to flaws or they should not be, but they are compassionate towards those flaws and they are able to see the good—the good in people that perhaps other people cannot see.
The Lord Jesus Christ was like this. You know the scribes and the pharisees in the days of Christ judged other people. They judged the publicans and the sinners and drunkards and wine-bibbers. The Bible says that the Lord Jesus Christ actually associated with publicans and sinners and drunkards and winebibbers—not because he condoned their activity but because He loved them and He saw in them some capacity for beauty by the power of His Spirit. He gave them hope. He gave hope to the woman at the well in spite of the fact that she had five husbands or had had five husbands. He gave hope to the woman caught in the very midst of adultery though the crowds would have stoned her to death. He had mercy.
You know Michelangelo was one of the greatest artists of history. One of the great leaders of the Italian Renaissance, he was born 510 years ago, and he became famous for his paintings and for his poetry, for his architecture. He became most famous for his sculpture and particularly his sculpture of the human body through which he portrayed both power and grace. I have seen some of Michelangelo’s works. I’ve seen the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel in the Vatican. I’ve seen the Pieta outside of St. Peter’s Basilica, the sculpture of the Virgin Mary holding the crucified Christ. I’ve seen the Majestic Last Judgement. I’ve seen some of his works in the Vatican Museum. I’ve been to Florence, Italy and I’ve seen the Statue of David. In all honesty, I must say whenever I’ve seen something that Michelangelo has done, I’m impressed and that’s incredible because I’m not really into the arts. I’d much rather watch a football game in America than visit the Louvre in Paris. I don’t think anybody who really knows me has ever described me as cultured. It’s said that a cultured person is a person who’s able to listen to Rossini’s William Tell Overture and not think of the Lone Ranger. I think of the Lone Ranger every time! But when I’m in the presence of a great work of art, I generally know that I’m in the presence of something very, very special and the works of Michelangelo were special. He created 44 different sculptures, 14 of which he completed, but perhaps the 30 unfinished sculptures were the most impressive because there you see crude blocks of marble and the beginning of a hand, perfectly formed, coming out of the crude block. Or the beginning of a foot, perfectly shaped, or a head and shoulders, a torso, coming out of this crude block of stone. The rest of those bodies are still locked in those blocks of marble. Only Michelangelo could free them. He could look at a crude block of marble and he could see something beautiful just waiting to come out.
God is like that. He. looks at us in spite of all of our flaws, in spite of all of our crudeness, and He sees something beautiful waiting to be released and revealed—unveiled by the power of His Holy Spirit when we give our lives to Christ as Lord and Savior. He has power to transform us into the very image of the Son of God and people who have the Gift of Mercy have something of this quality.
The Apostle Paul said, “Whatever’s true, whatever’s honorable, whatever’s just, whatever’s pure, whatever’s lovely, whatever’s gracious, if there be any excellence, if there be anything worthy of praise, think on those things.” And Paul was not referring simply to our attitude towards life but our attitude towards other people—that we be merciful towards the flaws and we would see the good.
Secondly and finally, a person who has the Gift of Mercy is a person who is ready, willing to grant forgiveness. The Gift of Mercy in the Bible is expressed through the Greek word’s charismata elione, used to refer to a person who did not want another person to receive the bad they deserved. It was used to refer to a person who wanted people to receive forgiveness and to grant forgiveness, and a person who was personally always willing to give forgiveness.
Years ago, in England, there was a young doctor recently out of medical school, He was given a tremendous privilege. He was placed in charge of a country hospital. He was nervous. He had never had such responsibilities before, and one day a 6-year-old boy was brought into the hospital with a severe case of diphtheria. The boy was choking, the boy was grasping for air, he was dying. This young doctor knew that unless he performed emergency surgery, this boy’s little life would be snuffed out, and so he performed a tracheostomy though he’d never performed co one before. He cut an incision in the windpipe and he slipped a little tube into the windpipe so the boy might receive life-saving air. He was assisted by a nurse fresh out of her nurse’s training, a woman named Mary Peters. After the surgery, the doctor was exhausted. He’d been up for a long time and he asked Miss Peters if she would be willing to stay up with the 6-year-old boy and make sure that everything went well through the night, that the tube wouldn’t be blocked and that the boy was still breathing freely. The nurse agreed to do this gladly. The doctor then went downstairs to his office area where he had a couch and he fell asleep. It was 3:00 A.M. when there was a knock at the door and the doctor, in some confusion, opened the door and it was Mary Peters. She was devastated. She was crying. She said “Sir, the little boy died.” She said “I don’t know how to convey to you how horrible I feel.” She said, “Sir, I fell asleep. ” She said “I wanted to stay awake. I don’t even know how I fell asleep. I don’t remember it, I just know I did, and somehow the tube got blocked and the little boy died. ” Well, the doctor was enraged. He told this young woman that she would never practice medicine again in any form, anywhere in the world. He instructed her to come to his office at 10:00 that morning and this the woman did, and when she came, the doctor had a letter that he had typed out and that he was going to send to the medical authorities, asking that she’d have her credentials removed and that she no longer be allowed to practice her nursing. Mary Peters fell on her knees and she began to cry. She said “Sir, please give me another chance.” The doctor could only think of justice and he said, “You were grossly negligent and it cost a life. You must pay.” She said “Sir, I’m not asking for justice. I’m begging for mercy.” The thought of forgiving this woman had never occurred to that doctor. He told her that he would think about it for one day’s time and instructed her to come back the next day. This doctor was a Christian man. He prayed about it all day long. He struggled with it and that night he could not go to sleep. He was concerned that maybe this woman was incompetent but he knew that her history, brief that it was did not indicate incompetence. He didn’t want something like this to ever happen again, but he just felt like God was saying “Have mercy upon her and forgive her” and so finally he agreed to do that. When she came into the office the next day, he took that letter and he ripped it up and he said “I’m going to give you another chance.” Mary Peters went on to become the head of one of the greatest children’s hospitals in all of England, acknowledged as one of the greatest hospital administrators this world has ever known. Hundreds of lives were saved in the years to come through her ministry and the outpouring of her life. It never would have happened if that doctor hadn’t of said “I’ll give you another chance.”
Now I don’t believe that that doctor had the Gift of Mercy. If he had the Gift of Mercy, it wouldn’t have been so hard for him to forgive her. It wouldn’t have taken so long for the thought of giving her another chance to occur to him. What he did, he did after a great struggle. People who have the Gift of Mercy—the first thing that enters their mind is to forgive somebody or to give somebody a second chance. It’s so hard for somebody who truly has this gift to implement the demands of justice. A person who has this gift delights, receives their highest joy in forgiving.
You know, eight years ago, I was driving my car in Cherry Creek—I’ve shared this story with some of you. I was going down Second Avenue behind Sears Department Store and I turned on Clayton Street, visiting a friend, and a policeman pulled me over. I saw the red lights flashing in the rear-view mirror. He asked me if I knew what I’d done and I said “Was I speeding?” He said “No.” I said “Well, did I run a red light?” He said “No, there was a stop sign back there and you just really didn’t completely stop. You went right through it I told him I was sorry and he said “Well, I feel bad but I really need to write you up a ticket” and I could tell it really did bother him. He began to write the ticket and he asked me for my license. My license had expired by just a little bit—about 3 years—and it wasn’t a Colorado license. I still had my California license. He asked me if I knew that when you switch states, that you were supposed to get a new license, and if I understood the requirements of the law and I told him I did. He said “Gee I really need to write you up for driving without a valid license,” so he began to write me up for that and he asked me what my job was. I told him that I was a Presbyterian minister and suddenly, I saw this big smile come across his face, and he looked up at me and he said “Listen, if you’re a Presbyterian minister, you got enough trouble!” He took those tickets and he just ripped them up and I could tell he loved doing that. I believe this man was a Christian though I don’t think he was a Presbyterian, and you could tell that it was just his greatest joy to be able to take those tickets and rip them up. That’s mercy!
Now mercy cannot be the predominate attitude of the civil authorities. Policemen just can’t go around ripping up tickets. We’d have chaos in society and the Bible says “the government does not bear the sword in vain.” And mercy cannot be the predominate attitude even of the home with respect to our parental authority because we are to rear our children in the nurture and the admonition and the discipline of the Lord. Mercy cannot be the predominate attitude of the business world because businesses must be run with accountability and with a certain measure of discipline. In all of these fields, justice can be tempered with mercy, but you see, there’s one area where mercy must be predominate, and the Bible says that’s in our personal relationships.
Peter said “How often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him. As many as seven times?” Jesus said “I do not say to you seven times, but seventy times seven.” Now Jesus wasn’t telling us that we’re supposed to forgive people 490 times. He’s simply saying that we should always forgive and that that should be the attitude of our hearts. And we’re to forgive not only our friends who hurt us but we are to forgive our enemies. That’s why the Bible says “Love those who hate you.” That’s why Jesus says “Love those who hate you. Bless those who curse you. Pray for those that abuse you.” And the reason the Bible tells us that as Christians we are to give such mercy is because we have received such mercy and because we ourselves are in such desperate need of forgiveness.
One of the most beautiful passages in the whole of the Bible is in the eighth chapter of the gospel of John where the Apostle John says that “Early in the morning, Jesus came again to the temple and the people came to Him and Jesus sat down and taught them, and the scribes and pharisees came, bringing a woman who had been caught in adultery. Placing her in the midst, they said to the Lord “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the very act of adultery. Now in the law, Moses commanded us to stone such What would you do with her?” This they said to test Him, that they might have some charge to bring against Him, but Jesus bent down, began to write with His finger on the ground, and as they continued to question Him, finally Jesus stood up and He said “Let him who is without sin be the first to throw a stone at her” and the Bible says He bent down and again began to write with His finger in the ground.
We do not know what he wrote but we do know that when they heard His words, they began to leave—one by one beginning with the eldest until Jesus was left alone with only the woman standing before Him, and He looked up at her and He said “Woman where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said “No one, Lord.” He said “Neither do I condemn you Go. Do not sin again.” The Holy Spirit didn’t lead the Apostle John to write those words or to record that incident. In order to help us understand God’s attitude towards adultery, we already know God’s attitude towards adultery. God hates adultery. It’s an abomination in His sight. It is a taint upon the marriage commitment and marriage relationship, but the Holy Spirit led the Apostle John to record this story that we might understand what God expects of us in terms of our attitude towards other people and the sins of other people, that we might not be judgmental or condemning because we are in such desperate need of forgiveness ourselves. That’s why Jesus said “Let he who is without sin be the first to throw a stone.”
Jesus said “Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.” Jesus said “Judge not and you’ll not be judged. Condemn not and you’ll not be condemned. Forgive and you shall be forgiven.” Jesus said “If you do not forgive men their trespasses neither shall My Father who is in Heaven forgive you your trespasses.” The Bible says “So live and so act, as those who are to be judged under the law of liberty, for judgement is without mercy for those who have shown no mercy.” So God wants us as Christians, as believers in His Son, to be a merciful people, to see the good, to not focus on the flaws in people but to focus on the good, and He wants us to be a people who are very, very ready and willing to forgive. He warns us that if we do not do this one day we will stand before Christ. The measure we have given will be the measure we receive. If we’ve not shown mercy to others, He will show a lesser measure of mercy towards us.
If you have the Gift of Mercy, then you’re not simply called to forgive people, but you’re called to help others forgive. You’re called to minister in the Body of Christ because the Gifts of the Spirit are given for the sake of serving the greater body. Your call is to help other people see the best and your call is to help others forgive. Let’s look to the Lord with a word of prayer.