Hi, I’m Pastor Brent of Faith Alive Family Church in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada. Welcome to God Today. I want to talk about mercy, which I have been discussing in the last 3 or 4 devotionals. Let’s turn in our Bibles to Matthew 5. I am going to read in verses 45 and 46. “So that you may be sons of your Father in heaven. For He causes His sun to rise on the evil and on the good. And sends rain on the righteous and the unrighteous. For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have?”
I’m just thinking about the mercy God has given us. How many of you have received God’s mercy? How many of you deserve God’s mercy? I know I didn’t. I did not deserve it, I did not do anything to earn it and none of us can. In that way God treated us better than we deserved. That’s kind of the point that God is making here in this chapter. He treats people better than they deserve. In fact, He is so merciful that even when we were enemies of Christ, Jesus died for us. It says in Romans somewhere – I forget exactly – it says, “Someone might dare to die for a really good man. But, who would give their life for a sinner? Who would give their life to the evil and to the unjust?” You know what? Jesus did. Jesus gave His life for all of us. None of us deserved it. None of us earned it. None of us had the right to have life, and yet He died for us.
In this manner, God treats us better than we deserve. In fact, we deserve hell and God gave us heaven. We deserve condemnation, God lifted our heads. We deserve death and God gave us life. I want to encourage you today. Even though we all know that God is good – there are slogans, there are signs, there are sermons preached that God is good. There are books written about it. That’s all great, and fine, and dandy. But, did you know to be true sons and daughters of God, God asks us to go farther than just knowing, or recognizing, or acknowledging that He is good, and becoming a person who walks and acts just like He does – by treating people better than they deserve.
I know that if the Spirit of the Lord is in you, you have the power and the glory, and you’ve got the strength and the courage to treat people better than they deserve. Even people that have let you down, people that have failed you, people that have disappointed you. We still have the power to treat them better than they deserve. I want to encourage you today that mercy is not for the deserving, but for those who don’t deserve it. That’s something we need to understand. Human nature tends to want to give mercy to those who we think deserve it. If we did that because they deserved it then it wouldn’t be mercy, would it?
I want to encourage you today to be a son and a daughter of God to do show mercy everywhere you go. Let’s pray. Father, I thank you, today, for everyone that is watching. I ask you, Lord, to touch their hearts, touch their minds, and increase their level of mercy, increase their compassion, and increase their love for their brother and sister, and to do good to even those who don’t deserve it. Amen.