Acts 2:46-47 "True Worship As Evangelism"

I believe true authentic worship is the best witness we have to an unbelieving world that Jesus is, indeed, the Way, the Truth, and the Life. I’m convinced that when unbelievers enter our midst and see first hand Christians in communion with our Savior -when they see us remembering the saving deeds of God, and bowing humbly in brokenness before God with thanksgiving in our hearts and giving praise, when they see us singing joyfully to a God with whom we have a personal relationship, when they see us letting down the walls and the masks that hide us and separate us from each other, when they see us reaching out to God and to each other with love -they begin to understand that something real is going on. When unbelievers see true, authentic worship, they begin to see the truth. When unbelievers see true, authentic worship, they get a glimpse of the otherliness, the holiness, the transcendence and the majesty of God.

We see this dynamic clearly in the experience of the early church. Acts 2:46-47 tells us, "Every day they continued to meet together in the temple courts. They broke bread in their homes and ate together with glad and sincere hearts, praising God and enjoying the favor of all the people. And the Lord added to their number daily those who were being saved."

This Scripture tells us that in the early church the Believers went to the temple to worship everyday. Why do you suppose these young, new Believers wanted to gather together to worship everyday? I think that their desire to worship is a reflection of something very significant that had happened in their lives. When they turned to Jesus for forgiveness, a radical change took place in their lives –in effect, their entire lives changed –their priorities changed. For these new Believers, Christianity was not just something that they added into the routine of their daily lives –it became the routine of their lives. Because of what Jesus had done in their lives, worship became a significant and routine part of their existence. Whatever else they had going on in their lives before knowing Christ, now took a back seat to their new priority of worshiping the God who had redeemed them. So the routine of their lives included gathering together with other like-minded Believers for corporate worship.

These first Christians regularly met together for worship, and regularly met together for fellowship –and because the fellowship was grounded in a mutual relationship with Christ, there was not even a great distinction between the times of worship and the times of fellowship –it was all part of the Christian lifestyle –it was all part of the new routine of their lives. And this passage tells us that whether at worship as a congregation or whether fellowshiping over a meal in individual homes, everything this church did was characterized by glad hearts and praise to God.

Now, here is an interesting thing. We are told that one of the consequences of this unity –one of the consequences of sincere, authentic corporate worship and intimate friendships was that these people found favor in the community. Happy, friendly, graceful, merciful, forgiving people are nice to be around.

We live in a time when many people are, frankly, prejudiced against Christianity. Many people have serious misunderstandings about what we believe and how we think. Often times the media portrays us as narrow-minded, unthinking, bitter, angry, hateful bigots that can’t get along with other religions and can’t get along with other viewpoints. So, in movies and on television and even in new reports, Christians are often shown as stupid, mean-spirited, ignorant people. And yet, interestingly, these same people who are prejudiced against Christians in general, are often attracted to the qualities they see in the lives of the Christians they actually know.

Several years ago when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were in the first game of the NFL playoffs, the sportscasters were trying to describe the character of Tony Dungee, the Buccaneers’ coach at that time. Tony Dungee is a very vocal, very serious Believer. These cynical sportscasters didn’t have enough good words to describe Dungee. They talked about his honesty and his integrity and his kindness. One of them, in all seriousness, said that Tony Dungee is the best human being in the whole world –it was interesting to me that the qualities they affirmed in Tony Dungee are explicitly Christian qualities.

The truth about Christians is that we are good citizens and good neighbors, and good employees, and good friends. True Christians are people of integrity and compassion and mercy and grace. And the result for the early church was that they found favor in the community –and that God used all of this –the authentic worship, the sincere, glad fellowship, and the good citizenship to draw people into the Kingdom. The Lord added to their numbers daily.

I believe that God added to their numbers daily because everything they did daily was a reflection of Christ working in their hearts and lives –there was no separation between their secular lives and their religious lives. Joyful, sincere worship was a way of life that was attractive to a cynical, unbelieving world –and I believe it still is.

  

Lord,
Teach us as Your people to love Your house best of all dwellings, Your Scripture as best of all books, Your provisions as best of all gifts, and the fellowship of Believers as the best of all company. May we as one family give thanks and adore Your glory. Amen.

Romans 1:21-32 "True Worship 2: Acknowledging God and Giving Thanks"

They know God, but they do not give him the honor that belongs to him, nor do they thank him. Instead, their thoughts have become complete nonsense, and their empty minds are filled with darkness. They say they are wise, but they are fools.... And so God has given those people over to do the filthy things their hearts desire, and they do shameful things with each other.  They exchange the truth about God for a lie; they worship and serve what God has created instead of the Creator himself.... Because they do this, God has given them over to shameful passions. Even the women pervert the natural use of their sex by unnatural acts.  In the same way the men give up natural sexual relations with women and burn with passion for each other....  Because those people refuse to keep in mind the true knowledge about God, he has given them over to corrupted minds, so that they do the things that they should not do.  They are filled with all kinds of wickedness, evil, greed, and vice; they are full of jealousy, murder, fighting, deceit, and malice. They gossip  and speak evil of one another; they are hateful to God, insolent, proud, and boastful; they think of more ways to do evil; they disobey their parents;  they have no conscience; they do not keep their promises, and they show no kindness or pity for others.  They know that God's law says that people who live in this way deserve death. Yet, not only do they continue to do these very things, but they even approve of others who do them.  (Romans 1:21-32)

Mankind was created to worship God and have fellowship with God. Mankind was created to have a relationship with God. And it is within the context of this relationship that humans find purpose and meaning. As Paul so graphically pointed out in the Romans passage we just read, apart from the relationship, our minds become darkened and our thinking becomes futile, and we think we are wise when actually we are fools, and we begin a cycle of deceit and treachery and violence and aggression. And because we are essentially spiritual beings, we try to fill the spiritual vacuum that is produced when we leave God out, with created things rather than the Creator. We try to fill the spiritual vacuum with cars and houses and careers and education and family and alcohol and sex and drugs and movies and sports and hobbies and all kinds of thing –some of them good things, some of them not so good, but none of them actually able to fill the hole in our souls. It is a meaningless, pathetic existence and it leads to a horrible logical conclusion –eternal death. All this caused by refusing acknowledge and worship God.

Without a sense of gratitude to God, I begin to think that I am the most important thing –I need to take care of number one. I think that every good thing that happens I did for myself, and every bad thing that happens is because other people did me wrong. Not surprisingly, I lose any sense of responsibility to my neighbor –to those around me. And the ultimate consequence of this perverted thinking is found again in that list Paul gave us in Romans chapter one. We become filled with every kind of wickedness, evil, greed and depravity. We are filled with envy, murder, strife, deceit and malice. We are gossips, slanderers, God-haters, insolent, arrogant and boastful; we invent ways of doing evil; we disobey our parents; we are senseless, faithless, heartless, and ruthless.

These are not qualities that make for good neighbors are they? They are not qualities that make good friends or husbands or wives or children or bosses or employees. And yet, these are qualities that we begin to see in ourselves when we are ungrateful and refuse to acknowledge God and give Him praise.

And that’s not all of it. There is at least one other arena of life in which sin has caused brokenness. Sin has broken our relationship to nature. John 3:16 tells us that God so loved the world that he sent His only Son. The word used here for world means His creation. When we read this verse, we most often think of the world meaning the people in the world –and it does –but it means even more than the people; it means that God loved everything He created. You might remember that at every step in the creation story in the book of Genesis –after God created, He paused and said, “It is good.” Mankind is the crown jewel of creation. Unlike anything else God created –even unlike the angels, we alone were created in the image of God –so, we are, indeed, special to God. But it would be a mistake to think that God doesn’t care about the rest of His creation. He does. God loves His creation. And in the book of Genesis, we are told that God gave man dominion over the world, over what He had created. What that means is that God entrusted the care of His world to men. We were to be the caretakers. But because our relationship to God is broken, and because our relationship to other people is broken, and because we think that the only thing that matters in life is taking care of number one, we have over the centuries used and abused creation to the point where our relationship with nature is horribly broken. The water is polluted, the air is polluted, and in many areas the very dirt is polluted. The depletion of the ozone, the so-called, “greenhouse affect,” the mass destruction of the rain forests. All of these are examples of how alienated we are from nature. What we were entrusted with to take care of, because we are sinful, we destroy.

Because we do not worship as God deserves, life has no meaning or purpose and we fail at everything we were created for -we fail to know and love God, we fail to love others and we fail to care for the earth. There is only one solution to the human dilemma. We need to acknowledge God and give Him thanks.

1 Peter 2:9-10 "True Worship"

If we want to understand what worship is –or what it consists of, we need to start by looking at the Bible. Instead of looking at random passages about worship, I'm thinking more about the big picture of the Bible. If we look at the story of the Bible in its entirety, from beginning to end, we will notice that the story revolves around events. There are several defining events in the Bible –events that have shaped the Hebrew people, and the Christian Church. There is the act of creation, and the event of the fall. There is the event of the Jewish Exodus from slavery in Egypt. There is the Christ Event –the birth and life and death and resurrection of Jesus –and there is the promised event of Christ’s second coming. This is the story of the Bible in a nutshell, isn’t it? And since these are the events that shape the story of the Bible, and since the Bible is our official Book of Worship, these same events form the basis for our worshipof the God of these events.

What I’m suggesting is that true worship is not a warm fuzzy feeling that we get towards God. True worship is not an emotion. And, in fact, true worship is not even an action exactly. True worship begins at least as a remembrance. Worship begins as we remember the saving events of God. In the Old Testament, many of the Psalms, for instance, recount how God called them into being as the Children of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob, about how God established a covenant with them, and how God, after the Exodus and the wandering in the desert, went before them into the land He had promised them and drove out the other nations before them. And as they remembered what God had done for them as a people, they also acknowledged how God provided for them as individuals. Again, in the Psalms, David wrote often about how God had saved Him from the miry pit, from destruction by his enemies, from despair.

These remembrances of God’s saving events became the basis for worship. In fact, throughout the Old Testament, almost always when we find people worshiping, we also find them remembering.

The primary saving event in the Old Testament was, of course, the exodus out of Egypt. Consequently, the vast majority of Hebrew corporate worship, including most of their holy holidays, Passover, for example, revolve around remembering how God saved them as a people from slavery in Egypt.

In the New Testament, we also have a saving event around which almost all of our worship focuses. Jesus lived and died and rose again from the dead. In the Christ event, God brought us out of our bondage and addiction to sin, and he forgave us and he restored our relationship to Himself. Through Jesus God gave to us a new covenant and we became His people and He became our God.

In 1 Peter 2:9-10, Peter tells us: “But you are a chosen people, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a people belonging to God, that you may declare the praises of him who called you out of darkness into his wonderful light. Once you were not a people, but now you are the people of God; once you had not received mercy, but now you have received mercy.”

In other words, since we once were not a people, but are now the people of God, since we once had not been forgiven, had not received mercy through the shed blood of Jesus, but now our sins have been forgiven, we declare the praises of Him who called us out of darkness into light. There is a cause and effect relationship between acknowledging and remembering how God has saved us and our ability to give Him praise.

In worship, God does what He has always done. He reaches out to us with compassion and mercy; He brings us out of bondage and addiction. He heals and restores us. He forgives both the guilt of our sin and the shame of our sin. And He calls us to gather around His throne and give Him thanks and give Him praise. 

John 15:1-2 "Living On The Vine"

On the evening that Jesus was betrayed, after the Passover meal Jesus walked with His disciples to the Mount of Olives where they were going to pray.  Jesus, of course, knew what was about to happen.  Although the disciples didn't know, Jesus knew that this walk to the Garden of Gethsemane was His last walk before His false arrest, unjust trial, and brutal execution.  

So, when Jesus pauses at the ancient vineyards near the foot of the hilltop garden to tell them an object lesson, it is significant.  Because Jesus knew this was His final teaching time with the disciples, He was not wasting time talking about trivia.  There was so much He still wanted them to understand, and such a small amount of time left to Him; certainly, He didn't waste it.

As Jesus paused by the ancient grape vines, He told His disciples, “I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser (gardener). Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit."  John 15:1-2

Since these disciples came from a culture where grapevines were a way of life (the vine is actually a national symbol of ancient Israel) there are probably a few things that the disciples knew about grapes and vines that we might not know.  Because of their agrarian background, this object lesson made good sense to them.  

First, it made sense that a branch had to be connected to the vine in order to grow.  So, if Jesus is the vine, they are the branches and they needed to remain connected.  Also, it was understood that the purpose of grape vines was to produce grapes.  There is no purpose for a branch that does not produce fruit.  So, it makes sense that the gardener would cut off any branch that remains perpetually fruitless.  What they understood that most of us probably don't is how a gardener got the maximum amount of fruit from a vine branch.

Under the right growing conditions, grapevines grow aggressively.   In a single growing season, a branch can grow as much as 50 ft.  The dilemma is that while a branch is growing outwardly, it does not produce much fruit.  The nutrients and energy of the plant are used for new growth, not fruit. 

What this means is that a grapevine can be big and robust with lots of greenery and apparent health, but have little to no fruit.  The casual observer would think that the vine is a perfect specimen -yet there is no fruit.  If there is no fruit, there is no purpose for the branch.

So, a good vinedresser watches and monitors new growth, allowing for a some outward growth, and then at the right time, cuts back the new growth forcing the nutrients and energy into producing fruit.  If he does this right and the vine responds as it ought to, there will be a good amount of healthy new growth and fruit as well.

Once the vinedresser cuts back the new growth, if the branch doesn't set fruit but just starts growing again, the fruitless branch is cut off completely.  There is no purpose in a branch that continues to drain nutrients and energy but won't produce fruit.

On the other hand, once it has been established that a branch will set fruit, the vinedresser continues to selectively prune off non-fruit-producing runners and unneeded foliage so that the branch can produce the maximum amount of fruit.

So, the big picture here is that there is a season of growing and a season for basic pruning and a season of selective pruning -all with the end goal of producing the maximum amount of fruit.

If Jesus is the vine and we are the branches, it follows that Father (our gardener) desires us to produce the maximum amount of Kingdom fruit.  In order for us to produce fruit, we need a season of growing.  So, we study and learn and memorize Scripture and pray and prepare and build community and fellowship and do all the things that we equate with growth.  But we understand that after a season of growth, there will be some pruning.  This is not punishment, it is a necessary process to move us from becoming large fruitless branches full of greenery and apparent health to strong branches actually bearing fruit.  And as we cooperate with God, He further hones in on the areas that are not fruitful and trims away all that holds us back from maximum fruit.

Things that in the beginning did not seem like a big deal might actually become a big deal as God identifies the things that need to be trimmed away.  Until He begins to prune, it is not an issue.  However, when Father says it is time for something to go, it is time for it to go or we risk becoming fruitless.

Let me give an example from my own life.  For several years I had a very old copy of a high end photography editing program on my computer.  A friend had installed it my my computer for me and I used it regularly -even though I knew that my friend had obtained his copy illegally.  I justified keeping and using the program with the knowledge that it was so old that it couldn't even be purchased anymore and the company didn't even support that old version anymore.

Then one night in the middle of the night I woke up with a start and felt like God was telling me to delete that program.  It wasn't an issue for me until God said it was -then it became an issue.  God wanted to prune away an area that lacked integrity even though I didn't realize there was a breach of integrity.  Once God identified it, however, my choice was simply obey or not obey.  I obeyed.  Almost instantly the effectiveness of my ministry grew.  God was pruning to produce more fruit.

Do you want to be fruitful?  My understanding is that there are actually steps for us to follow and if we cooperate with God in this we will be fruitful.  First we study and learn and grow in grace and knowledge.  Next, when God begins to bring conviction and understanding to the general areas of life, we stay connected and allow God to cut away the big obstacles to intimacy with Him -and to Kingdom fruit.  In effect we begin to value righteousness over knowledge.  And then as God begins to identify the specific areas of our lives that need change, we obey.  The end result: spiritual fruit.

1 John 1:9 "Why Confess?"

 1 Peter 5:7 Cast all your care on Him, because He cares about you.

 1 John 1:9  If we confess our sins, he is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.

 

God desires to carry our burdens.  He cares about the things that weigh us down and keep us separated from Him.  Sin is an awful heavy burden.  The Bible tells us that the wages of sin is death.  The Bible also tells us that the soul cleansing blood of Jesus washes away our sin.  Through the death and resurrection of Jesus we are forgiven and restored to right relationship with God.

Even though through Jesus we are forgiven, we still struggle with the burden of sin. The experience that many Christians have is that even though we have been changed from people who like and enjoy sin into people who hate sinning, we still continue to sin. I do not want to excuse this fact or make light of it, but it does us no good to pretend.

We live in a fallen, broken world, we are constantly surrounded by evil influences, and we are weak willed people; so, even though we believe in Jesus and have accepted His death as the punishment for our sin and have turned to Him for forgiveness and new life, we still struggle with sin. 

Because we still struggle with sin, God made a continuing provision for sin.  The Bible tells us, “If we confess our sin, He is faithful and just to forgive our sin and cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”  This rich promise was given to the church -to Christians.  It reminds us of the fact that Jesus has already paid the penalty for sin –in that sense, God made provision for our forgiveness once and for all, and for all time.  The penalty has been been paid, and we have been forgiven.  Yet, Christians are specifically instructed to confess sin as it occurs.  We should probably seek to understand what this means and why it is such good news.

 

There is a very good reason God wants us to confess our sin.  It’s because unconfessed sin turns into baggage that we have to carry around with us.  When we sin and do not confront it, and do not repent, and refuse to confess it, we end up with a load of guilt and shame and bitterness and anxiety and fear.  God doesn’t want that for us.  God wants us to unload those kinds of burdens.  We unload by confession and repentance.

Now, don’t misunderstand.  God doesn’t need to hear our confession so that He knows what we’ve been up to.  He already knows every wrong thing and every right thing we’ve ever thought or said or done.  Our confession doesn’t change God, and it doesn’t change God’s mind, and it doesn’t change God’s opinion of us.  Our confession changes us.

When we are humbly confessing our sin to God, something happens.  In order to truly confess, we must examine ourselves.  In order to realistically examine ourselves, we need to quit pretending to be people we’re not –we need to let our defenses down, we need to take our masks off.  In order to confess, we need to be brutally honest about ourselves before God.  And it is in the context of humble honesty, with no pretense and no defense that a relationship with God begins to develop.  And the relationship is what God desires.

When we confess our sin, God forgives our sin.  But He does even more.  He cleanses us from unrighteousness.  Unrighteousness is a result of participating with the enemy.  Sin defiles us.  The defilement of sin is a continuing burden even after we have been forgiven.  Forgiveness takes care of the guilt -but the cleansing is what takes care of defilement.  God doesn't just forgive, He cleanses and restores.  He carries the burden.  That's how much He cares.

Micah 6:8 "Walking Humbly With God"

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?

--> For the last couple of posts, we have been looking at Micah chapter 6.  This was written to the Israelites concerning a general attitude that seemed to develop concerning sin and what God actually desired of them. 

Under the Old Covenant, you remember, sins were forgiven through a process of animal sacrifice.  The people would come to temple and through the priest, make sacrifices.  That was God’s law.  It has always been God’s law that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sin.  It’s not because God is a bloodthirsty God who delights in gore.  Its because God wants us to be aware of the awfulness of sin.   

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The Israelites were willing to make whatever sacrifices at the temple were necessary in order for them to get off the hook for their sins, not necessarily because they wanted to quit sinning, but simply because they didn’t want the punishment for the sin that they knew for certain was coming.  They really didn't understand why sin was a problem or what God actually wanted from them. 

--> Since they could always go to the temple and make sacrifices, they didn’t think sin was that big of a deal.   

Micah, in this passage, points out to the people, and to us, that although God instituted the sacrificial system, He was never actually interested in their sacrifices.  What He really wanted from them and from us is a relationship.  He wants an authentic, day-to-day, ongoing relationship.  

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What we have seen so far is that if we have a right relationship with God it will affect both our outward actions and our inward character.  A right relationship with God will always lead us act justly, to do justice.  Also, a right relationship with God will produce in us the quality of mercy.   

--> Now, we are looking at the third and final thing that Micah lists as God’s requirement: walking humbly with God.  The obvious key to understanding what Micah is trying to teach here is the word humble.  But, as we will see, the word walk also has implications for us.

--> There are three basic ways in which the concept of humility is used in the Bible.  The first use of the word humble is to describe the condition of poverty.  When people are poor or deprived or needy, they are humble –they are not fancy and frivolous.  The second use of the word humble has to do with abasing oneself, lowering oneself.  It is the opposite of arrogance.  Arrogance puffs up and calls attention to itself.  Humility lets others get the attention and the glory.  And the third use of the word humble has to do with submission.  Like when a soldier, for instance, submits to the authority of a commanding officer.  It has, in a sense, to do with understanding our rank, understanding and accepting where we fit into the scheme of things.

All of these things are loosely connected, and they all have some implications for what Micah is telling us.  A right relationship with God involves our admission of spiritual poverty, admitting that we need God.  A right relationship with God involves letting go of our pride and arrogance –giving God the attention, giving God the glory, instead of trying to glorify ourselves.  And a right relationship with God involves submitting to God.  It involves understanding exactly who we are in relationship to God.  When Micah tells us that the Lord requires us to walk humbly with God, he is implying all of this.

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In a sense, though, it is impossible to walk with God if we don’t submit and give up our arrogance and recognize our spiritual need.

--> We are either walking humbly with God, or we’re not walking with God at all. So, perhaps, the bigger understanding we need to have of this passage has to do with that other word: walk.

 

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The Hebrew word used for walk here, halak, is loaded with implications for us.  It means to move surely and steadily.  It means to keep apace.  It means to go along side.  It means to move forward.  All of these are descriptions of what it means to walk with God.

--> Walking with God means that we going where God is going.  We aren’t going off in our own directions following our own whims and desires.  It means we are keeping apace with Him.  That means we don’t stop unless He stops.  It also means we don’t run ahead of Him trying to find the path on our own.  If we are walking with God, we are walking beside Him, letting Him choose the direction, letting Him open the right doors, letting Him close the wrong ones.  

We often get in trouble over these things don’t we?  Don’t we try to figure things out for ourselves and get way ahead of God and try to push open doors that God doesn’t want open?  And at other times don’t we see God’s open doors before us, and refuse to go through them.  Don’t we sometimes dig in our heels and sit down to rest, or maybe even lay down and go to sleep instead of walking along side of God?  And what happens when we do this?  Does anything good ever come from our insisting on doing it our way?

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At the point we insist on our own way, we get out of step with God –we actually quit walking with God, and we lose benefits of walking with God.  When we are walking with God in close relationship with God, His closeness comforts us and gives us assurance and hope.  When we are walking with God, He opens the right doors and we don’t have the anxiety and worries and fears about making the right or wrong choices in life.  But when we intentionally quit walking with God, when we say "no" to God, or when we refuse to go through the doors He opens, or we insist on going through doors He didn’t open –in other words, when we demand our own way, we left are on our own.  We’re not on left our own because God got angry at us and abandoned us, we’re on our own because we quit walking with God and started walking in some direction other than the direction God is going.

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The bottom line is this.  We were designed to have fellowship with our Creator.  Since sin interfered with that, God made a way for our sin to be forgiven.  But, if we then refuse to actually walk with God and have fellowship with God, we are missing the point entirely.

So, if you are saved, but are somehow missing the intimate fellowship, the personal relationship –if you have believed in Jesus and trusted Him for salvation, but are not truly walking with Him, how do you get your life back on track?  How do you reconnect with God?  How do you figure out where He is and what direction He is going so that you can walk with Him?   

Listen carefully now, because I’m going to tell you.  Are you listening?  Do you want to know where God is, so you can start truly walking with Him again?  You will find God waiting for you at the point where you last told Him "no."  

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.