What is the gift of mercy?
Listen carefully. It is the empowerment by the Holy Spirit to joyfully and cheerfully manifest and practice compassion toward the body of Christ first because the Bible speaks of the priority of the household of God and then show it to everybody else. Gives often require extending mercy, which is usually, if not always, difficult. Today on Leading the Way, Dr. Yusef shares a message he's called The Gift of Mercy and is from his life-impacting series called Who Me? Gifted? I know you'll be encouraged to use your unique giftedness to draw others closer to Jesus.
So listen with me as Dr. Michael Yusef begins today's Leading the Way audio message. Some of you might have read in history about the Turkish massacre of the Armenians. There's a one particular story comes out of that horrible time in the history of the Armenian people. It's about a nurse and her brother who were fleeing the Turkish massacre. But this particular nurse and her brother got trapped in an alley. Her brother was brutally murdered before her own eyes, but she managed to climb a wall and escape. A number of years later while she was nursing in a hospital, she recognized one of her patients. There was no other than the very man, the very soldier who brutally killed her brother.
The first thought that came to her mind that this is justice, that this is time for revenge. As it happened, she doesn't have to do anything because the man was literally hovering between life and death. The slightest bit of neglect on her part, the man would die. The good news to her was that nobody will know.
Nobody will know. She didn't have to do anything. This man's life was in her hands. But instead, she decided that for the sake of Christ, the one who eternally saved her, to have mercy on that merciless murderer. And so she fought for his life and won. She nursed him back to health. Later on while this Turkish murderer was convalescing, she told him who she was.
And that vicious man looked at her with astonishment. And he said, why did you not let me die when you had me in your power? She said, I could not because Jesus is my Savior and my Lord. And when he hung on a cross, he prayed to the Father to forgive those who nailed him to that cross.
And I must do the same. This hardened Turk in utter astonishment said to her, it if that's what it means to be a Christian, I want to be one too. The gift of showing mercy according to the scripture, not mercy as you understand it, is one of the rarest. One of the rarest gifts. Now because I'm not talking about feeling compelled to help somebody in need. And I'm not talking about just the occasional thing when you feel a tug on your heart to do something or to volunteer or do a kind thing.
No, no, no. That's not what the gift of showing mercy is all about. I'm talking about people who wronged you and hurt you and caused you pain and yet you show mercy to them. In Romans 12, 8 Paul includes mercy and showing mercy in that list of gifts of the Holy Spirit. This particular gift, he puts it with a qualification there. Romans 12, 8, those who showed mercy, let them do so cheerfully.
This is it. This is the component that goes with the gift. This is the evidence of the gift.
And here is no exception. Why all commanded to show mercy, but there are some who are endowed with special gift of showing mercy cheerfully, joyfully. The Lord Jesus Christ himself said blessed are the merciful for they are going to receive a lot more mercy. And that is why we all must show mercy because the very fact that we are regenerated, the very fact that our hearts have been transformed on the likeness of Christ, that we show mercy. But there are some nonetheless who have been given this distinguishing mark of showing mercy cheerfully and joyfully of those who do it as a spiritual command. Now, those who show mercy because they don't have the gift, they might not do it cheerfully and they might not do it joyfully, but do it anyway.
Okay? What is the gift of mercy? Listen carefully. It is the empowerment of by the Holy Spirit to joyfully and cheerfully manifest and practice compassion toward the body of Christ first because the Bible speaks of the priority of the household of God and then show it to everybody else. And I want to make absolutely certain that you're not going to misunderstand what mercy is all about.
And I'll tell you why. Most Christians take mercy, forgiveness and love and grace and they kind of muddle them together in a big salad. They're kind of all mixed up. While reality of the Bible makes it very clear that there is a distinction with each one of those.
And that is why I want to show them to you. I want to show you this distinction in three ways. First, I want to show you that mercy is more than just forgiveness. That mercy is less than love and that mercy is different from grace. Mercy is more than just forgiveness.
Titus chapter 3 verse 5. The Bible said that Jesus saves us not on the basis of our good works, you already know that, but according to his mercy. What did his mercy cause him to do? Paul said the washing of regeneration.
What does that mean? It means forgiving of our sins. You see, it means his mercy is more than just forgiveness.
You see, how come? You see, God forgives us when we sin and turn back to him again and again and again. He forgives us, right? But God is merciful to us all of the time. That is why his mercy is greater than forgiveness. Mercy is with us even when we don't sin. You and I can be merciful to someone who may never have wronged us. But forgiveness only takes place when wrong is committed. I want you to hear me right.
This is important. You see, mercy is operational all of the time. But forgiveness is as need basis when the wrong is done. Mercy leads to forgiveness. Mercy results in forgiveness. Mercy produces forgiveness and that is why the person who has mercy find it easier to forgive and the person who doesn't have mercy have a very hard time forgiving. You have to understand that mercy and love are uniquely Christian concepts.
They really are. You see, back in the high days of communism, they were sending missionaries overseas to do charitable work. The Muslim Brotherhood that you hear about all the time, they're running all kinds of charitable work.
Why? So that they may recruit followers. They're doing it in order to recruit people to their side. In fact, mercy for Christ's sake was such a phenomena in the first century that both Judaism and Roman culture could not understand Christians. See, that's why they persecuted them.
People always try to persecute and kill those whom they don't understand. In Judaism, you can only show mercy to those who show mercy to you. In the Roman culture, they called mercy the disease of the soul.
The Romans and in their culture, to them mercy is the supreme sign of weakness. In those days, husbands were allowed to put their wives to death at the slightest provocation. Listen, Sharia never shows mercy to the wives and the daughters. They never show mercy to them.
They will beat them. They even kill their wives and daughters and they call it honor killing. And that is why we need to be aware of the forces that desire to turn a society like ours that is built and impacted by Christian principles into a society that glorifies brutality. They call Allah merciful. They call him merciful.
And they want his mercy for themselves that they would never have mercy on their wives and their daughters. The Bible teaches that God's mercy does not just forgive our transgressions when we repent, but his mercy reaches down and touches every area of our lives. His mercy reaches down to our weakness. His mercy reaches down to our needs. His mercy reaches down for our protection. His mercy reaches down for giving us direction and lead us and guide us. His mercy is more than forgiveness. Secondly, mercy is less than love.
I want to explain this. You see, forgiveness flows out of mercy. Ah, but mercy flows out of love. Do you know that in the Muslim Quran they have 99 names of Allah? Love is not one of them.
Not one of them. Listen to Ephesians 2, 4 and 5. Here's what the Apostle Paul said. But God being rich in mercy because of his great love. You see, love motivates his mercy because of his great love with which he loved us.
Even when we were dead in our transgressions he made us alive together with Christ. His mercy is more than forgiveness, so is love more than mercy. You see, love can manifest itself in many ways.
Ways that do not involve either mercy or forgiveness. You see, love loves whether wrong is committed or not. Love loves for the sake of love. Love loves whether it is manifested or not. Love loves all of the time.
My love for my wife and my wife loves for me is constant regardless of the circumstances because our love is not that warm and fuzzy stuff that you see on television. But it's an absolute commitment to one another. That love manifests itself in mercy as soon as the need arises. Just like mercy is expressed in forgiveness as soon as the need arises. Love is expressed in mercy when it's needed. And so mercy is more than forgiveness. Mercy is less than love. And thirdly, mercy is different from grace. Every believer in the Lord Jesus Christ who has elementary biblical knowledge and walking with God for any length of time knows that at the very core of all of our troubles is sin.
It's like an onion. You peel it and right there, I don't care what the excuses are, I don't care what the circumstances are, I don't care what the counselors say, you go down into the very depths and there you find sin lurking. It is the source of all of our troubles. It is the source of all of our problems. Marital problems, they all emanate from sin. Even discord between friends and believers in the Lord Jesus Christ and family members emanate from sin. Many of our emotional and psychological troubles, they emanate from sin.
Deal with sin and the trouble is over. And that is why mercy plays a vital part in giving relief to our troubles. That's what mercy does.
It gives relief. Mercy comes in and gives a reprieve. But listen, grace takes care of the root of the troubles. Mercy deals with the symptoms of the pain.
But grace deals with the symptoms and the disease. Mercy offers temporary reprieve but grace gives a complete pardon. Mercy relieves our pain but grace cures it.
When the good Samaritan went out to a Jew who was by the side, by the wayside, bleeding, sworn enemies of each other and yet when the Samaritan went there and he bound his wounds, he showed mercy. When we put the Jew on his donkey and took him to the hospital and paid for his treatment, that was grace. You see, his mercy relieved the pain but his grace provided the healing.
It's the same thing with our salvation. You see, when we turn to the Lord Jesus Christ in repentance and in faith, his mercy says, now you're not going to hell. But his grace says, now you're going to heaven. Mercy says, I feel sorry for you. But grace says, I pardon you. Mercy said, I will overlook your transgression. But grace says, I remember your sins no more. So mercy is more than forgiveness. It is less than love. But mercy is different from grace.
But it's something else that is of vital importance that I must tell you. Mercy must always be balanced with justice. Mercy must always be tempered with justice. If God is only the God of mercy as thousands of false preachers and teachers are teaching that he's just the God of mercy, it means that he will never punish sin. And if he doesn't punish sin, then he's not a just God. Did you get that?
Do you know what that means? It means that if God is just the God of mercy and not the God of justice, it means that this makes absolute mockery of the cross of Jesus Christ. Because when Jesus hung on that cross, he offered mercy to everyone who came to him.
And he paid for the justice. And that is why so many false preachers and preachers today are saying, it doesn't matter whether you come to Jesus to receive his mercy or not, you'll get it anyway. Everybody's going to make it to heaven. Really?
Really? Christian, listen, think with me, think with me. Think of that means, it means that Jesus left the glories of heaven for nothing. It means that he came and lived for 33 and one third of a year in utter poverty, where he had nowhere to lay his head for nothing. It means that he suffered for nothing. It means that he bled and died on that cross for nothing. It means that he was buried in Joseph of Arimathea's tomb for nothing. It means that he rose on the third day for nothing. It means that all of his disciples who died martyrs death for his sake, it means nothing. It means for millions of people today who are suffering persecution and imprisonment and even death and are beaten and paying a hefty price for their faith in Jesus Christ is for nothing.
That's what it means. And that is why the Bible is so clear that mercy that ignores sin is a false mercy. Mercy that winks at sin is not mercy at all. That mercy that refuses to deal with sin is sentimentality, not mercy. That's the kind of mercy that our government want to exercise, handouts without accountability. This false mercy is the kind of mercy that King David exercised with his children and he paid such a heavy price with sorrow and bitterness for the rest of his life.
This false mercy that caused David's son Absalom to rebel against his father, this is a false mercy that stops many appearance today from disciplining their children and bringing up the fear and nurture of the Lord to their own sorrow. It is the kind of mercy that is causing our court system to pervert justice. To ignore justice is to desecrate mercy. To ignore justice is to create an anarchy. To ignore justice is to cheapen grace. To ignore justice is to deny the truth of Psalm 85 10 which tells us that mercy and truth must go together. And beloved, God did not ignore justice. He did not ignore justice. He paid for it.
In the precious blood of his son, he paid for the justice. He didn't wink at it. He didn't say ignore it.
He didn't say forget it. No, he paid for it. And that is why only those who come to him for mercy through the cross of Jesus Christ will receive that mercy. The Armenian nurse paid a price for showing mercy. Make no mistake about it, there is a price in showing mercy joyfully.
There is a price. Exercising mercy is never cheap to the person who is exercising that gift. It is costly and that is why those who have been given the gift of mercy are really imitators of the Lord Jesus Christ.
They really are. Our savior paid a hefty price. So does everyone who exercises mercy. Those who have been given the gift of mercy, they do not exercise that gift begrudgingly. They do not exercise it halfheartedly. They do not exercise their gift with a growl.
No. Above all, they exercise their gift with joy, with cheer as if they're doing it unto the Lord himself. I'm personally convinced that most of the people who are drawn into the medical profession, particularly the believers, they are drawn to it because God gave them the gift of mercy. It doesn't mean they don't get exhausted. It doesn't mean that they get fatigued and they need rest. It doesn't mean they don't get sick.
No. But they practice their gift in their profession. I want to share with you this true story as I pray for those with the gift of mercy. During the Italian occupation of Ethiopia, they persecuted evangelical Christians.
Sad, but it's true. As a matter of fact, they put many evangelical Christians in Ethiopia in prison for the faith. And back then, in those days and in Ethiopia, not like our prisons where they get food and color television, all the luxuries, they were not given food. Food was not provided in prison.
So they relied on their families and their friends to bring them food. The evangelical Christians who were in the prison, they were in the prison with the non-believers. They were the non-Christians with the criminals and everybody else. And so the believers were bringing abundance of food to the evangelical Christians who were in prison. And then when they saw that so many prisoners, non-Christian prisoners are forgotten by their families and their relatives and their friends and were starving, they brought enough food, not just for fellow evangelical Christians, but for the non-Christians as well.
And that prison turned into a church. Shall we pray? Father, I bless you. I glory in you. I glory in your name and in your name alone. I thank you, Lord Jesus, that when you ascended in heaven, you sent gifts to your children and you did not leave yourself without a witness. And Father, I thank you for those with the gift of mercy. Father, I pray that you would give them encouragement when they desperately needed, that you renew and strengthen and restore them when there are times of tiredness and fatigue. Father, I pray in the times of doubt and the times of discouragement that you lift them up and remind them that blessed are the mercy for they shall receive more mercy. And so Father, I pray for them as I pray for the rest of the body. Strengthen us to serve you as even we see the day is growing nigh. For we pray this in Jesus' name.
Amen. Thank you for joining Dr. Michael Youssef for his message called The Gift of Mercy on Leading the Way. Learn more about Leading the Way and Dr. Youssef when you visit the ministry website at ltw.org.
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