MERCY
DR. JIM DIXON
MATTHEW 18:21
FEBRUARY 21, 1993
In the seventh century before Christ, Manasseh was the King of Judah. He was the King of Jerusalem. Manasseh ascended the throne at age 12 upon the death of his father, Hezekiah. Hezekiah had been a great king. Hezekiah had brought reformation to Jerusalem. Hezekiah had torn down the pagan shrines. He had reinstituted the temple worship. He had re-established the Passover as the national celebration, and he had led his people back to the one true God. But Manasseh was very different than his father. Manasseh was in rebellion against the ways of his father and Manasseh was in rebellion against God.
Manasseh entered into an alliance with the Moabites and with the Edomites, with the Ammonites. Manasseh became a kind of connoisseur of other religions, and he began to enter into occultism. Manasseh rebuilt, re-established the high places of Baal worship. He reinstituted the cult of Astarte, the pagan fertility goddess. The people of Jerusalem began to follow Manasseh’s leadership and the incense and the offerings to Egyptian and Babylonian gods would rise from the rooftops of Jerusalem’s houses. Wizards and necromancers began to practice their trades in the city of Jerusalem by the invitation of King Manasseh. The citizens of Jerusalem began to waste their money, seeking the power and the enchantments that these diviners could allegedly offer.
Of course, the prophets of God protested, but Manasseh just killed them. According to Josephus, the historian, it was Manasseh who had Isaiah, the great prophet of God, sawn asunder. It was Manasseh who actually made an image of the fertility goddess, Astarte, and put that image in the very temple of God in Jerusalem. Even worse, it was Manasseh who reinstituted the cult of Molech, a pagan deity, who required, in sacrifice, children as burnt offerings. So it was that outside the city of Jerusalem in the Valley of Hinnom, called Gehenna, the Jewish parents began to sacrifice their firstborn as burnt offerings to Molech. They had their children run through fire and there was the burning of children’s flesh, so tragic that in future days Gehenna would come to refer to hell itself.
Under the leadership of King Manasseh, Jerusalem hit bottom. Its people were morally degenerate. They lacked self-control and so when the armies of Assyria swept into Jerusalem, there was no resistance. The kingdom of Judah fell, and King Manasseh was cast down and he was taken into captivity. Then he began that long journey on that dusty road towards Babylon. Perhaps he looked back, took one final look at the city of Jerusalem where once he had been king. He was now bound in chains as he walked, the swords of mocking Assyrian soldiers at his back. No more crown on his head. No more servants to meet his every need. No royal robes now. He had a kind of leash through his nose. He was led like an animal to the slaughter. When Manasseh reached Babylon, he was thrown into a dungeon.
There he would rot away until he drew his last breath and who could deny that he deserved it? And yet the Bible tells us that something incredible happened in that dungeon—that there in that dungeon King Manasseh began to, for the first time, take an honest look at himself and he saw the horror of who he was. The Bible tells us Manasseh began to repent and Manasseh cried out, the Bible tells us, to the God of his father. From that hole, he cried out for help. The Bible tells us that God, the consuming fire, utterly holy, looked down and the Bible says an amazing thing. The Bible says God listened. Then the Bible tells us that God was moved with compassion, moved with compassion, at this most wicked king in Judah’s history. God was moved with compassion and the Bible tells us that God forgave Manasseh. God forgave him. God wiped the whole past away and God delivered Manasseh from the Assyrians, brought him back to Jerusalem, set him on the throne again, that he might rule Judah again.
He was back to day one in a moment in time, a brand-new start. All the past wiped out, washed away, by the incomprehensible mercy of God. You see, God’s mercy is incomprehensible. This morning I want us to focus on this unbelievable mercy of God.
Now there are really four principals biblically to God’s mercy and we are going to try to take a brief look at each of them. If we don’t get through all of them, we just don’t. The first principal is God wants to forgive everybody. I mean this is the first principal of mercy biblically. We have a God who wants to forgive everyone in the world. God really wants, longs, to forgive.
Now you have all heard the story of the prodigal son told first by our Lord Jesus Christ. You know how the prodigal son came to his father and demanded his inheritance prematurely. You know how the father granted the inheritance to the prodigal. You know how the son ran away, how he wasted his money. He lived a riotous life, probably a promiscuous life. He lost all of his money. He fell into ruin and poverty, and he wound up feeding pigs in a pigsty. He wound up eating pig food. There in that pigsty, the prodigal son came to his senses, the Bible tells us, and he came home.
He came home to his father in humility. He came home to his father in repentance, saying, “Father, I have sinned against God, and I have sinned against you. I am no longer worthy to be called your son. Make me as one of your hired servants.” But you know the story. You know how the father saw his son coming from afar and the father, with joy in his heart, ran to meet his son and embraced him. You know how the father threw a great party because his son who was lost was now home.
We all like that story. We all like that father. We like the way the father was so willing to forgive and yet I think most of us would be a little different than that. I mean I think most of us dads would probably have handled that situation a little bit differently. You know, I think we would have wanted to forgive our son, but we probably would have used it as an opportunity for a little instruction, you know. I think most of us would have said, “You know, it’s about time you came to your senses. It was really stupid of you to demand the inheritance in advance like that.” Probably most dads would have said, “By the way, where is the inheritance?” And upon hearing that he had wasted it all, most dads probably would have given a lecture on responsibility—would have said something like, “You never could hold onto anything.” And I think most dads would have tried to get a little guilt in there and said something like, “Do you have any idea what you have done to your mom?”
Now Jesus tells us that this dad, in joy, put a ring on his son’s hand, giving him the authority of the family once again, put shoes on his feet. He would not be a slave. The father clothed him with a royal robe and killed the fatted calf and had a great party, a celebration. And here is the incredible thing. Jesus tells us that that father is an example of God the Father. Jesus tells us, we have a God in heaven who thinks and feels like that. We have a God in heaven who longs to forgive, who loves to forgive. That’s what God the Father is like and that’s what God the Son wants us to understand.”
You see, Jesus tells us that there is joy in heaven among the angels of God when one sinner on earth repents. Joy in heaven. The Bible says, “God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance.” The Greek word translated “willing” should be translated “wishing.” God is not wishing that any should perish, but that all should reach repentance. You see, God is wishing that none should perish. God is wishing, wanting, longing that all should reach repentance. He is not simply willing to forgive you. He really wants to forgive you. Biblically this is the first principal of mercy. God wants to forgive everyone in this world.
There is a second principal of mercy biblically. That is that you must repent. You see, biblically, this is the second principal of mercy. We must repent. If we are to receive the mercy of God, we must repent.
Thomas Tarrants was a fascist. He was the head of the Mississippi Knights, White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, in the 1960’s. It was the most violent terrorist organization in the United States of America. Thomas Tarrants had declared war on Jews, and he had declared war on blacks. He bombed Jewish synagogues, and he bombed the homes of NAACP officials. Finally, in a bloody gun battle, Thomas Tarrants was apprehended. He was tried. He was convicted and he was sentenced to life in prison. He found himself in solitary confinement at the Parchman State Penitentiary. There, for the first time in his life, Thomas Tarrants was given a Bible and he began to read about the love of God, love for all people. He began to read about the mercy of Jesus Christ and the Holy Spirit of God convicted him. Thomas Tarrants repented, and he gave his heart to Jesus Christ, asking Jesus Christ to come and be his Lord and Savior. I tell you, in that moment, Thomas Tarrants was completely forgiven, all the hideous sin of his past completely wiped away.
How do we know that? I mean how do we know he was completely forgiven? Because the Bible tells us that we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous. He is the expiation for our sins and not for our sins only but also for the sin of the whole world. If we confess our sin, the Bible says, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness. If we repent truly, He forgives.
Now we live in a world where a lot of people do not repent. We live in a world where many women and many men have no desire for divine mercy. I think some people do not repent because they feel like their sin is just too great. Of course, that’s tragic because God is able to forgive all sin except for the rejection of His Son, Jesus Christ.
I think, though, that most people do not repent not because their sin is too great, but because they think their sin is too little. I mean, that is my observation regarding the world in which we live. I think most people who do not humble themselves in repentance and do not seek God’s mercy, it’s because they really think their sin is too little. They do not feel much of a need for mercy. I think even Christians, many Christians, who have asked Jesus Christ to be their Lord and Savior—and perhaps some of you—do not really live day by day with a deep appreciation for God’s grace and mercy. Many Christians do not live day by day with the deep appreciation for their desperate need of Christ’s forgiveness and appreciation for the forgiveness of Christ.
Now I want to take a moment and focus on the Pharisees. I feel like the Pharisees have kind of been given a bum rap. I think all of you, when you think of Pharisees, think it is a very evil group, but I want to say that really there were a lot of good qualities that the Pharisees had. I mean when you look at the Pharisees and the Sadducees in Israel, which group did Christ most agree with theologically? It was the Pharisees. The Sadducees denied the supernatural. They denied the angelic realm. They denied the resurrection and they denied the reality of eternal life. They denied the very core of biblical theology but the Pharisees embraced the core of biblical theology. Certainly, Christ would have agreed more with their theology.
Politically, in Israel, there were four groups, four religious political groups. There were the Sadducees. There were the Pharisees. There were the Essenes and there were the Zealots. Which of these groups would Jesus have most agreed with politically? I tell you, I think without a doubt, it was the Pharisees because the Sadducees had sold out to Rome. The Sadducees had sold out to Rome, and they had compromised their beliefs in order to be given favors by Rome. They were kind of puppets of the Roman authorities, and they were given favors because of that. That is why the Sadducees were wealthiest class. They had all the prominent. They ran the high priesthood. They headed the Sanhedrin. They had all the special privileges. They had sold out to Rome and surely Jesus would not have agreed with them.
And if the Sadducees sold out, the Essenes bailed out. The Essenes just went into monastic seclusion. They lived in little communities like Qumran, away from everybody. They just bailed out, left the craziness of the world and tried to live in a little isolated pocket of their own. Surely Jesus would not have agreed with them because Jesus has called us to be salt on the earth and light in the darkness.
The Zealots advocated the violent overthrow of the Roman government. I can guarantee that Jesus did not agree with them. Jesus said, “He who would live by the sword shall die by the sword.” But it was the Pharisees who sought to resist Roman abuse through legal channels while remaining faithful to what they really believed. The Pharisees were very moral. They were really moral. You did not see a lot of sex sin among the Pharisees. They advocated that if you were married you should be faithful to your spouse unto death and that if you were single, you should be celibate, and they were celibate. Of course, sex sin is very grave. In 1 Corinthians, chapter 6, we are clearly told that sexual sin is among the most serious sin because every other sin, the Bible says, is outside of the body but sexual sin, particularly for the Christian, is a violation of the very temple of God in which Christ has come to dwell.
You didn’t see sins of intemperance in the life of the Pharisees either. You did not see a drunk Pharisee. You did not see a gluttonous Pharisee. In fact, they condemned Christ because He hung out with winebibbers and drunkards. And you know they condemned Him because He hung out with publicans and sinners. The Pharisees, in many ways, were very moral and yet, above all others, Jesus Christ condemned them. Jesus Christ saved His heaviest artillery for the Pharisees. To the Pharisees, Jesus Christ said, “You are destined for hell.” Christ called them hypocrites. He called them whitewashed sepulchers, clean on the outside, dead on the inside. He said they were a brood of vipers. He said to them, “You search the whole world over to make one convert, and when you make that convert, you make him twice the child of hell that you are.”
Strong language. And why? Why did Jesus speak this way to the Pharisees and why was He so enraged at them? The answer is they had no need of mercy. The Pharisees just felt no need for mercy. They were good, so good they felt self-righteous. They did not even recognize their own sin. They felt no need for mercy or grace. Self-righteousness is perhaps as great a sin as we could ever participate in. They felt no need for mercy, and it seems to me that this is the great danger that many of us face in the evangelical Christian community. We might think that somehow we are so good that we don’t desperately need Christ’s mercy, we don’t really need His grace.
You know the story in Luke, chapter 7, how Jesus was at the home of Simon the Pharisee. He was having a meal with the Pharisee. This woman came in, a sinful woman. She came in and she fell down before Jesus Christ and she kissed His feet and she continued to kiss His feet and she began to cry, and she began to wash His feet with her tears and then she wiped His feet with her hair. The Pharisees rebuked Jesus Christ, saying, “How can you allow this sinful woman to touch you?” Jesus said to the Pharisees, “I came into your house, and you did not give Me so much as a welcome. She has not ceased to kiss My feet.” Jesus said “I tell you. He who has been forgiven many loves much. He who has been forgiven little loves little.” Jesus said to the woman, “Your sin is forgiven you.”
I think a lot of people misunderstood Christ’s message. I think the Pharisees did. Certainly, Jesus wasn’t saying to the Pharisees, “You need to sin some more that you might be forgiven much and loved much.” I mean Jesus felt like the Pharisees had already sinned plenty. What they really needed was tears. They needed tears, and I think that’s what Jesus would say to us today, some of us, is we need more tears to recognize our need for mercy and the beauty and the wonder of His forgiveness. You can’t possibly have the joy day by day or the peace that Christ wants you to have unless you are just in awe of the mercy of God and His forgiveness in your life. So repentance… God wants to forgive everybody, but we must repent.
A third principal of mercy biblically is this: Having received forgiveness, we must now forgive others. Having received mercy, we must be merciful towards others.
In the year 1876, Ulysses S. Grant was the President of the United States. The problem was that the Grant administration was accused of corruption and particularly Grant’s Secretary of War, a man named William Belknap. William Belknap was accused of bribery. It is said that he had taken money in payment from various people in exchange for special favors and that he was particularly guilty of doing this in the western states and the western territories.
So, Grant’s Secretary of War, William Belknap, was brought before congressional trial. The chief testimony against him came from a man named George Armstrong. George Armstrong had been a soldier. He was a soldier and an officer, a famous Indian fighter who had been stationed at Ft. Abraham Lincoln in the Dakota Territory. It was George Armstrong who came before these congressional committees to bear testimony against the Grant administration and against William Belknap. His testimony was strong, and he brought hard evidence. He brought documents and he also implicated the President’s brother, Orville Grant, of some culpability in some of the alleged criminal activity.
As a result of all of this, William Belknap, the Secretary of War, resigned and the Grant administration was tainted. Even Grant’s family was somewhat tainted. Ulysses S. Grant swore that he would never, ever forgive George Armstrong. He would never forget what George Armstrong had done and he would never, ever forgive him. In the subsequent months, George Armstrong wrote letters to President Grant asking for forgiveness and saying that he only wanted to serve the truth and he was simply seeking to be a servant of justice, that he meant nothing personal by it, but Grant refused to answer his letters. George Armstrong came to the White House, and he waited for hours to see the President that he might have an audience and the President refused to see him.
President Grant stated that he would see to it that George Armstrong never receive any promotion militarily, any of the desired positions in the military that he would seek. I must say, George Armstrong did want to advance militarily, and George Armstrong wanted to certainly move up the power ladder.
Well, George Armstrong, in June of that year, 1876, found himself in charge of a regiment in the Montana Territory and his responsibility was to get Sioux Indians and Cheyenne Indians back on the reservation. Of course, the Indians were not cooperating. In fact, it had become a full-scale war.
George Armstrong found himself in the midst of a battle. He really wanted to win the approval of the President. He knew he had to do something dramatic. He wanted to change the President’s view of him. He had a scout come back and report that there was an Indian encampment down along the Little Big Horn River and the scout said he thought there were about 1,000 Indian braves, 1,000 Indian warriors, there.
Armstrong knew he only had 650 men, but he thought if their strategy were good enough, they might be able to win this thing and he would come out a hero and the President would be impressed, and everything would be changed for him. So, he went into that battle not knowing that at Little Big Horn there were actually more than 2,000 Indian warriors including the great Indian Chiefs, Crazy Horse and Sitting Bull. The battle lasted less than one hour and, of course, it was the “last stand of George Armstrong Custer”—Custer’s last stand.
You see, George Armstrong Custer maybe wouldn’t even have died, maybe wouldn’t even have gone into that battle if he’d only been forgiven by the President of the United States, if he’d only had enough mercy to not feel so desperate.
Of course, when we refuse to forgive people, sometimes it really hurts people. When we refuse to forgive people, sometimes it really hurts ourselves. You know, in Matthew 18, our passage of scripture for today, we’re told how the wicked servant had been forgiven an incomprehensible debt, 10,000 talents and understand, a talent was equal to 15 years wage. He was forgiven 20,000 talents. The Lord Jesus wanted us to understand this was an incomprehensible debt that had been forgiven him by his lord. Then he went out and he found a fellow servant who owed him a hundred denarii, and a denarius was equal to one day’s wage, and he refused to forgive that fellow servant. Having received incomprehensible mercy, he gave no mercy.
Through this passage, we have the warning of Christ that if you would embrace the mercy of God, then you are instructed to show mercy towards others. The Bible says judgement is without mercy for those who show no mercy. The Bible says, “Forgive and you shall be forgiven.” Even in the Lord’s prayer, we say “Forgive us our sins, forgive us our trespasses as we forgive each other.”
About two or three months ago, Heather, our daughter, got a ticket for turning into the left-hand lane too soon. She was going north on University, and she wanted to make a left-hand turn onto Orchard Road. She turned into the left turn lane one car length too soon. There was a lot of traffic. There were a lot of people in the left turn lane. You oftentimes see people do that. I mean, I must confess I know I have done that, turn into the left turn lane a little too soon. A policeman saw that, and he must have been in a bad mood and he pulled her over and he gave her a ticket for that—4 points, $20—for turning into the left turn lane too soon.
Now technically the policeman was right, but it seemed a little picky to me. Last week we went to court. Last week Heather and I went to court at the Littleton Court House. Immediately the District Attorney offered mercy. Immediately the District Attorney said, “We’ll cut it from 4 points down to 2 points immediately, if you’ll plead guilty to this lesser thing.” So, we said “Alright.” He said, “You’ve got to go do that before the judge.” So, we go into the courtroom and the judge calls Heather’s name. Heather comes up. The judge says, “How do you plead?” She says “Guilty.” The judge says, “Before I assess the fine, do you have any explanation?” And Heather gave her explanation. The judge said, “Well I’ll cut your fine in half, from $20 down to $10.” Mercy again.
I think we can kind of be grateful that we live in a government that tempers justice with mercy, but God wants us to understand the mercy that we have been called as Christians to exercise in our relationships is very different than that. You see, it is the will of God that governments be a deterrent to evil and that they enforce justice even if it requires the sword. But for us as individuals, as believers in Jesus Christ, it’s the will of God that we show complete mercy towards others in our relationships. We do not just reduce their penalty by half. We do not just partially forgive them. We do not just reduce their fine in half. I mean we really have mercy, and if we’re really having mercy towards others, that means you just forgive completely whatever it is that that person has done to you. This is God’s instruction to us—that we would be women and men who are ready and willing to forgive.
There was a fourth teaching. I really don’t have time to give it, but it simply was this, that as Christians this principal of mercy also requires that we have mercy on ourselves, that we be willing to forgive ourselves. Having received the forgiveness of God, through repentance, that we not only then show mercy towards others but mercy towards ourselves.
I cannot tell you the number of times I’m in counseling and I’m with moms or dads who have such guilt because their children aren’t turning out so well. Maybe their child is into drugs. Maybe their child is into criminal activity. Maybe their child has rejected Christ or maybe their child is just living an immoral life. Maybe their child is lazy and non-productive and somehow these parents feel incredibly guilty, and they just cannot forgive themselves. Of course, we must all admit there are no perfect parents. We all make many mistakes. We really do. You know if we come to the Lord as parents and we ask for His forgiveness, if we come in repentance, He does forgive us and He wants us to forgive ourselves. He wants us to not blame ourselves for the way our children turn out. It’s not easy sometimes, but I know the Lord really wants us to have mercy on ourselves. There’s just not enough joy in the life of most Christians, not enough peace because we’ve not really embraced the mercy of God and we’ve not had mercy towards ourselves.
There are two kinds of guilt. There’s true guilt and false guilt. True guilt is when we’ve done something wrong and we don’t repent of it. What we’re feeling is true guilt. But there’s also false guilt. False guilt is because we did something we thought was wrong, but it really wasn’t wrong. I think a lot of children, a lot of people who were reared in fundamentalism, sometimes experience that kind of false guilt where they feel guilty because they think they did something wrong and it’s not even wrong biblically. That’s false guilt, but there’s another kind of false guilt and that’s the kind of false guilt you feel when you’ve done something really wrong and you’ve repented of it and yet you still feel the guilt. That’s false guilt too and so the Lord wants us to forgive ourselves.
We have these great principals of mercy biblically, that we have a God who longs to forgive everyone in the world. We must repent. Having received His mercy, we are to show mercy towards others and even towards ourselves. Let us close with a word of prayer.