1013. The Making of a Merciful Minister of Grace

Welcome to The Daily Platform from Bob Jones University in Greenville, South Carolina.

The school was founded in 1927 by the evangelist Dr. Bob Jones Sr. His intent was to make a school where Christ would be the center of everything, so he established daily chapel services. Today, that tradition continues with fervent biblical preaching from The University Chapel platform. Today's message will be preached by Dr. Sam Horn. I'm going to ask you to find the book of James in your Bible, and we're going to look together at a number of texts this morning. Our theme is grace and mercy and the oceans of it that we experience from the Lord. And as we come for a brief time together this morning, I want to consider one aspect of that grace and one responsibility of that grace as it relates to each of us who are thinking about using our life in some aspect of ministry. Whether it is full-time vocational embracing of a call that God extends to you or participation in the ministry of the word and the ministry of the gospel through partnering with those that do, all of us are in this room because there's a sense of that in our life.

And how do we connect that sense to this mercy? And so what I'd like to talk about this morning briefly is the making of a merciful minister of grace. And I want to call your attention to some texts, and we'll put them on the screen, but you may want to follow along in your Bible whether it's in your hand or on your device.

But I want to just read you some texts. So Matthew chapter 5 verse 7, very familiar text right out of the Beatitudes. Jesus looking at his disciples and expressing to them what it is going to take internally for them to actually be effective as salt and light in the world says to them, blessed are the merciful.

Approved of God is the idea of blessed there. These are the people of whom God approves and they are people who are merciful, literally who are full of mercy. And then there's this comment that sort of follows for they shall obtain mercy. And then you keep reading in your New Testament and you come to Luke chapter 6 and Jesus speaking in that chapter says in verse 35, love your enemies, do good and lend hoping for nothing in return and your reward will be great and you will be the sons of the most high. The idea there is that you will be like the most high when you do this. That's the idea of sons of the most high.

Four, why? Why will you be like him? Because he is kind to the unthankful.

Think about that. I mean that's an immense statement. He is kind to the unthankful and evil. Therefore be merciful just as your father also is merciful. And then James says in his letter, indeed we count them blessed, chapter 5 verse 11, indeed we count them blessed who endure you have heard of the perseverance of Job and you have seen the intended end of the Lord.

In other words, you've witnessed this, you've read this, you've seen this in the scriptures and here's what you're to conclude with Job. The Lord is very compassionate and merciful. And then in James chapter 2 speaking about the freedom that we have as believers following Christ who fulfilled the law of Moses and no longer feeling the weight and terror of that law, James says for judgment is without mercy to the one who has shown no mercy. And then he makes this comment, mercy triumphs over judgment.

These texts force us to ask some really uncomfortable questions, don't they? I mean think about the weight of those words as you kind of pull them all together and you think about what the Lord is saying that mercy is not just sort of this side thing that we do that it is essential to who we are as people not just because we've experienced it but because of the fact that we bear that mercy to others. So whether you're in here because you're headed that way vocationally or you're in here because you have a heart to be involved in ministry at the center of all of that is God cultivating in you a merciful heart, a heart of mercy.

And so let's talk briefly and quickly about four aspects of that and maybe the best way to do that is try to answer four basic questions. Number one, what exactly is God talking about when he speaks about mercy? What is it that the writers of scripture have in mind when it comes to this concept of mercy? And so as you kind of reflect over it in the scriptures, you begin to immediately associate it with the concept of biblical love, the idea of God has said, the idea of loyal committed love, but it's more than that.

It's more than the undeserved favor that you experience in grace. It's more than just an emotional sort of response that you have when you meet people that desperately are in need of help and you meet these people all the time. I was speaking somewhere and I went to, I was on my own for a meal and I was out west and one of my favorite places to eat is In-N-Out Burger, so I said I'm going to go to In-N-Out Burger. And as I was walking in, there was a woman seated on a little bench by the door who was old enough to be my own mother. And for whatever reason we got talking and I began to hear her story and it was excruciatingly difficult for me to hear because I kept thinking about this could be my mom.

Homeless, no insurance, no sustenance, no place to live, and no money to buy food. Here's a woman in the final decades of her life and she's reduced to sitting on a bench outside of an In-N-Out Burger hoping for somebody like me to come along who would have enough compassion to say, hey let's go in and let me buy you dinner. And the only thing I want in return is the opportunity to have a little bit of conversation.

Can we talk for a few minutes while you eat? And that conversation was an opportunity to share the gospel. But what the Lord is talking about is more than that.

It's more than that feeling of pity. It's the idea of actually getting involved in the life of people that you would not normally consider getting involved with. It's the ongoing gracious kindness that is extended to those who need it and to those who don't deserve it from you. And that's what the stunning text we looked at in Luke where we discovered that God is kind to the unthankful and to the evil.

And that's the calling of what you and I are to do. It's not just that we're nice to people. It's not just that we sort of are sorry for people and we act in kind gracious ways to one another and we sort of overlook the flaws of people that are around us which we should do. Love covers a multitude of sins, right? We do all those things.

And you do them well. Most of you in this room are gracious, awesome people that God is using here on our own campus to show that kind of grace to one another. And I'm thankful to be the recipient of it from many of you. But what Jesus is talking about is more. What Jesus is talking about is this ongoing gracious kindness that is extended to people who need it and especially to people who don't deserve it from you. So I'm going to ask you a question. Are you merciful like that?

And here's the difficult piece. Jesus said your heart needs to be full of that kind of mercy. That that really shouldn't just be the odd moment of your life where it's called your attention or it shouldn't just be the sort of one off that happens every once in a while that this should be the overflow of your life. That as you live life, as you do life, as a merciful minister of grace, this is flowing out of you to people who need it and who don't deserve it from you. And that's exactly what Jesus is talking about when he talks about merciful. Be merciful.

Be full of this kind of mercy. Now that brings us to a second question that's maybe even harder to ask and it's this. Why is this quality so important to God? I mean why of all the things that God could talk about does he talk about this in terms of why we have to be like this? Why does this matter? And there are many reasons. I have about eight of them here.

Let me just give you two for sake of time. Number one, the reason this matters to God is because he is like this. I mean at the end of the day, this is the abundance overflow of who God is.

And it's an amazing thing. I mean if you stop and think about the identity of God as he has described to you in scripture, he is described as a consuming fire. So that anything that is unholy or anything that is unclean or anything that does not match the level of his pure holiness is immediately incinerated. And there are visible images of that that he instructed for his people so that they would see that visibly as every day in the temple courtyard or in the courtyard of the tabernacle there would be a whole burnt offering. There would be fire consuming things and then because of your sin as you came in to deal with that sin, all of a sudden you would see something that was living being completely consumed by fire and God says now you need to understand that that's my nature.

That is what happens. And then you have this verse that says now God is kind to people who are unthankful and to people who are evil. And it's like how those two images go together. And those two images go together, they're possible because of Jesus. That's how they're possible.

That's how you and I are not incinerated . It is the common grace that God extends. It's the mercy and the kindness of God that God extends to people who are evil and unthankful and don't even recognize that he exists. And it's the unbelievable grace which is the second thing that you have experienced that has brought you close to Jesus or close to the Father through Jesus. It's not just that God was kind to you as an evil person, as an unthankful person by not consuming you.

He actually was kind to you by bringing you to himself. Do you really believe that you came to believe on your own? Do you really believe that? Can you explain honestly why some person hears the same thing that another person hears and one person embraces and the other doesn't? And you understand the embracing part because that's what happened to you.

But do you really think that was you? Can you think for a moment that it might have been the unbelievable mercy of God to you who caused you to see like he did in the beginning when he said let there be light. He caused you to see something in the gospel that reflected the glory of God in the face of Jesus and you believed unbelievable things. Like a virgin birth. Like a fully God, fully human man. Like a sacrifice who took away the sins of the whole world. Think about the multiplied millions of lambs that took away or covered the sins of one tiny nation for two thousand years from Moses to Jesus. Think about the multiplied millions of lambs that took away the sins of one tiny nation. And in the mercy of God, he sent his own son to bear away the sins of the whole world. That's the weight of John's statement as he was baptized and he looks on a river bank and he sees a man walking and he points to him and he says that one is the lamb of God. And that lamb bears away the sins of the whole world. That's what God is like. And you have experienced it.

That's why this quality matters. And then our third question as we move quickly through this and that is this. What does it actually look like in action? We know what it is.

Right? It is the ongoing gracious kindness rooted in the character of God that is extended to those who need it and to those who don't deserve it. And it's important because this is what God is like. This is what he does. And this is what you have experienced.

That's the second reason it's so important. But what does it actually look like in action? And there's a story in the scripture that you are very familiar with in Luke chapter 10 where a young lawyer, a scribe stands before the Lord to ask him a hard question and he wants to know what it's going to take to enter the kingdom of heaven. And basically as it comes down to the end Jesus looks at him and he says you need to love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and then you need to do this. You need to love your neighbor like you love yourself. And so this young student, this young religious scholar looks at Jesus and he has this question. I want to know who you think my neighbor is because I think I'm doing that. That's the essence of the question.

Who's my neighbor? And Jesus answers this question in an amazing way. He tells the story of three men who have an unexpected meeting.

One of those men is in the middle of the road, wounded, lacerated, beaten to the point of wondering whether he's going to make it in life physically. He's been so beaten by the thieves and two religious men come by. One is a priest and one is a Levite and they see him. It's not like they miss him.

They see him and they actually have to go around him to get to where they're going and they don't stop. There could be all kinds of reasons why the Levite didn't do this or the priest didn't do this. You know the priest would probably not have done it because he didn't want to take the chance that he would be unclean and then have to go through the process of ritual, ceremonial cleansing so that he could continue to do his duties in the temple. The Levite may have been on his way to the temple because the Levite didn't always spend 365 days at the temple. Usually they were going to the temple because they had an allotted time that they were supposed to be there and so the Levite may have been thinking I can't miss that. If I miss that window I'm really going to miss it so I don't want to take a chance to touch this guy in case he's unclean. So off they went.

Perhaps. And then comes the fourth man who is a Samaritan and everybody knows about the Samaritans. These are the unclean untouchables and he doesn't just stop. He gets off his animal, takes this man, bears him to an inn, places him under the care, ministers to him physically and pays for everything. And Jesus said to this young religious scholar, now you tell me, which of the three was the neighbor to this wounded man? And the religious scholar was forced to give the answer, the one who showed mercy on him. That's mercy. And then Jesus says go and do likewise. So it looks like somebody in a road, untouchable, inconvenient, costly, needing mercy. And here's the thing. If that man in the road had been healthy and sound, he would have had nothing to do with that Samaritan.

Period. So here's the man on the ground who needs mercy, who doesn't deserve it from the Samaritan because of the way the Samaritan himself has been treated for his entire life and of the three men he's the one that Jesus said, now if you want to know what mercy looks like, that's what it looks like. It looks like that. It looks like Jesus and a leper. Another untouchable that looks at Jesus and says to him, if you will, if you want to, you can make me clean. And Jesus says, I want to.

And he touches him. And instead of becoming unclean for the first time, a person touches an unclean person and the unclean person becomes clean. That's what Jesus does. It looks like people who are moral outcasts and social outcasts and religious outcasts, who all of a sudden become the centerpieces of story after story after story in your gospels, because God is full of this kind of mercy. And that brings us to the last question then and that is this, because if you're like me, after hearing something like this, I want to be like that. So how does God go about cultivating that kind of mercy in us?

More specifically, how would he cultivate it in somebody like me? How would God go about with this sort of uncomfortable mercy? I mean, this is radical, uncomfortable mercy.

It puts me way out of my comfort zone. I am okay buying somebody lunch. I am okay extending help for, you know, an occasion to somebody that God brings across my path. But I would not describe my own personal life as full of this. Not to the level that Jesus is talking about. So how does God do it? And I'm going to say it to you this way and we'll be done.

Until you find yourself in the road desperately needing mercy, you aren't going to be merciful. I lived in Minnesota for many years and there was a, I lived in a very wonderful neighborhood. We had all kinds of nationalities in the particular area where we lived and down the road from us was a woman from India. And I remember we had, I think it was a five or six foot snowfall that fell and I remember Robert and I were getting out of our, we plowed our driveway, we were getting ready to go to work. We looked down to our neighbor and there she was with the garage door open and this mountain of snow in her driveway. And she had a spoon. And she was taking her spoon and trying to plow her way through that driveway with a spoon. And so Robert and I went over and we took our snow shovels and we plowed or snowed, you know, made a lane for her, enough of a lane for her to get out and she was profoundly thankful. We became really good friends, lots of gospel opportunities.

And so here's the point I want to make. Why did I do that? What motivated me to do that? Well maybe I felt sorry for her. Maybe I felt bad, a spoon.

Man, you ever tried to snow drive or snow shovel or drive with a spoon? It's unimaginable. It's the right thing to do. Morally, you know, socially, neighborly.

She's my neighbor. Maybe I can bank some good will with her because I might need her to watch the dogs sometimes and maybe I can bank some good will. Or maybe, you know, maybe it's going to give me a great opportunity to teach my kid a lesson. Or maybe it'd be an awesome illustration someday. Right?

I mean, let's be honest. Man, I need an illustration. This is a good one.

I got half an hour. Let's build an illustration out of this so I can use it in a sermon. We're shameless preachers when we do that. Maybe, maybe it happened because I've been there. I've been in that spot with no shovel.

Nobody around. Trying to figure out how to get all the snow out of the way so I can get where I need to get and just being desperate and crying out to God, God, can you send somebody to help me? I've not been there. And if you've ever lived in snowy country, you have to. You've pulled your credit card out because you didn't have the windshield thing. One of the worst things to do is clean off your car from all the mountain to snow and then click your door locker in the car next to you. The lights blink. That's actually happened to me.

It's horrible. You didn't intend to be merciful. That's unintended mercy so it doesn't count. But you know what makes us merciful? When we see ourself in that untouchable spot, that leper is me.

That prostitute is me. That moral outcast is me. And until I see myself in the road and then I stand amazed at the wonderful merciful savior that God sent me, that's how God cultivates mercy in us. It's not because we see the plight of others.

I mean it is. It's because we have come to understand that that is our plight and we found mercy. So as you think about being a merciful savior, learn all that you can about the theology of mercy. Understand the grace behind that mercy but realize you know what it feels like because you've been the man in the road. You've been there.

And by the way, some of you may still be there. And the mercy that we're talking about today is not just a foreign concept. It's available to you if you will come to the savior and ask for it. Lord, thank you for our time today. Thank you for the opportunity we have to talk about your mercy and your grace to us. Thank you for the experience of it in our own lives. Now Lord, would you fill us with that mercy so that we would be like you because we have experienced that mercy from you. In Jesus' name, amen.

You've been listening to a sermon preached at Bob Jones University by Dr. Sam Horn. I'd like to thank you for listening to The Daily Platform. I hope that you've enjoyed it. I hope it's been a blessing and an encouragement to you.

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