Micah 6:8 "Love Mercy"

Micah 6:8 

He has shown you, O man, what is good;
And what does the Lord require of you
But to do justly,
To love mercy,
And to walk humbly with your God?

I want us to notice that in this passage we are not told just to act mercifully.  The previous line says to act justly or do justice –obviously, if we have a true and right relationship with God, it is going to affect our actions -but here we are not told just to act with mercy, we are told to love mercy.  God was not talking about any specific action that we do, He was talking about a character quality that He desires His children to have.  Anybody, even the coldest hardest-hearted person alive might in some circumstance be moved to pity and respond with some act of compassion.  Feeling sorry for the beggar on the street corner does not make me a merciful person.  Getting upset by child abuse does not make me a merciful person.  Taking in stray cats and dogs does not make me a merciful person.  The mercy God is talking about involves action, but goes way beyond simply feeling pity and acting compassionately, it has to do with who we are.   It is not a matter of sometimes acting compassionately, it is matter of being compassionate people. 

In the Scriptures, there are 8 different words used for mercy.   Of course, most of the words are loosely related.  Mostly, they have to do with pity and compassion.  The Biblical concept of mercy has to do with identifying so completely with someone that their problems become our problems, their feelings become our feelings.  Mercy speaks of the strongest possible type of empathy.  The ultimate example of mercy is given to us in the book of Hebrews chapter 2, verse 17, where the writer of Hebrews is explaining that the reason Jesus is such a merciful High Priest is because He took on the flesh and blood of humanity and lived among us and was subject to all of the same temptations and feelings and emotions and struggles that we are; since Jesus lived as a human, He fully understands humanity and is therefore compassionate, merciful, toward the human dilemma, the human struggle.  Jesus knows what we are going through. 

  Now, I want to take this thought one step further.  In the Beatitudes –those wonderful teachings that Jesus gave us on what the Kingdom of God is really like, Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”  In this beatitude, and, in fact in all of the beatitudes, Jesus was speaking emphatically –what that means is that Jesus was not simply mentioning that the merciful, will receive mercy from God –He was stating that only the merciful will receive mercy from God.  To put that in the negative sense, Jesus is saying that those who are not merciful will not receive mercy from God.  This is because a right relationship with God always produces the inner character of mercy.  

I want to pause for just a second and ask you to close your eyes and think of something with me.  Think back to the most recent time, the most recent circumstance in your life in which you needed God’s mercy.  Can you think of a time or a situation in which you needed God’s mercy?  I’m willing to bet it didn’t take very long and it you didn’t have to look very hard.  I believe we can all easily affirm the truth taught to us in the book of Romans that all have sinned.  We know that this is truth, don’t we?  We know that we all have done things and said things and thought things that were not of God and did not please God.  We have all sinned.  The Bible also tells us that the wages of sin is death.  Knowing that the only way to avoid the death the Bible says we deserve and guarantees we will receive, is if God grants us mercy, and knowing that the only way God will grant us mercy is if we are ourselves merciful people, I would think should produce a strong desire to love mercy and be merciful.

So, it is probably worth our while to be reminded again of what being merciful looks like in real life.  This Biblical ideal of mercy is not simply that we should pity and feel sorry for those who struggle, for those who suffer, for those less fortunate than ourselves because God feels sorry for them;  rather, it is that we should indentify with them so completely that their struggle becomes our struggle, their pain becomes our pain, because when we see things through the other person’s eyes, when we feel things through the other person’s skin, when we understand absolutely and completely why the other person is like he is doing the things he does, thinking the things he thinks, it is very difficult to be judgmental and condemning, and much easier to be forgiving, and forgiveness is what the kingdom of God is really all about.