We’re in the 2nd week today of a 3-week look at some words coming out of the book of Micah, these words from 6:8 > ‘What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.’
We started off last week thinking about the first part of the answer, the ACTING JUSTLY part > what does it mean toΑCT JUSTLY, what is JUSTICE – we looked at what the world might say about that, and what God says.
We heard that God is our judge, he is the ultimate judge over us, over all people, and to ACT JUSTLY is to act how God calls us to act, in line with what he says.
But our God is also a God of love, his judgment is MERCIFUL – and that brings us to our key words today:
LOVING MERCY. What does God ask of us here? To LOVE MERCY.
What does that mean, what is Micah talking about there, what is LOVING MERCY in God’s eyes??
Usually the best place to start with questions like these, what is the bible talking about here, what is the deeper layer of meaning underneath all this > is the bible itself! Turn the page, what else is going on here?!
Letting ‘scripture interpret scripture’ we call it, God’s word revealing to us what God’s word means!
So if we’re asking what Micah’s talking about when he says God calls us to LOVE MERCY, a good place to start is to ask: where else does God talk about this??
We have so much information, so much content to go on! We don’t have to come up with the answer ourselves, there is already so much there for us to dig into to get to closer to the bottom of what this all means.
Two other things for us before we think about some of these deeper meanings and layers, two tips for how to read the bible: (I always feel I need to be very careful here when I’m speaking to people who already know about this stuff or who may work in the teaching profession themselves, so the best thing I can do is to share what I’m learning and growing in I think and hopefully there’s something useful for you there!)
- Taking our time. Slowing down, stopping and giving ourselves time to think > this is not something to rush through and tick off as quickly as we can! If we always do that we will almost always miss something important God has for us.
- Keeping an open mind, which taking our time helps us with! Taking God at his word, noticing how it hits us, making note of the questions or concerns or amazing things we might hear, and then we can really start to learn and grow in our faith. Letting the Holy Spirit in, so he can teach us how God works.
So to understand what it is to LOVE MERCY, I’ve got 3 verses for us to think about:
Our theme verse here from Micah 6, a verse from Lamentations 3, and another verse from James 2 – broad spectrum there, different words from different eras but packaged together in this thing we call the bible for the purpose of what? For the purpose of helping us to know God. To know who he is, what he’s done for us and who he says we are.
Micah 6:8
‘Loving mercy’ here goes alongside ‘acting justly’ and also ‘walking humbly,’ which we’re going to look at more next week.
What is MERCY??
“Compassion or forgiveness shown towards someone whom it is within one’s power to punish or harm.” (Oxford Dictionary)
That already sounds biblical doesn’t it! Compassion, forgiveness > 2 things God is pretty big on
And also the bit about holding power… God does have the power to punish or harm us > that’s true, he could do that to us if he chose to, he is God and we are not!
Sometimes the dictionary can throw up very different definitions of words in the bible – different understandings from ancient times to modern times today – but this one hasn’t changed a whole lot has it! And ‘mercy’ probably isn’t a word we use a whole lot today either… Maybe in sport where a team is getting badly beaten and the winning team applies the ‘mercy rule’ where they ease up a bit.
So we get what MERCY is, not only stopping the punishment but showing compassion and forgiveness even… But what about LOVING mercy? Easy to love mercy if you’re on the receiving end!
If you’re that team that’s getting badly beaten you might happily receive some mercy, so the punishment can stop!
But what if you’re the winning team, the team that this game has been a ‘walk in the park’ for… Maybe it’s a bit harder to give mercy than to receive it…
This is where we hear about what our good and gracious God does, our loving and merciful God does:
Lamentations 3:22-23
2 translations for you here, NIV:
‘Because of the Lord’s great love we are not consumed, for his compassions never fail. They are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.’
And here’s the ESV, which brings in the word MERCY:
‘The steadfast love of the LORD never ceases; his mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.’
It looks like there’s a bit of blending of meaning going on here, but it does all come back to a central idea:
The Lord’s great love is actually a translation of the original Hebrew word for – you guessed it – mercy, which can also mean ‘great love’ or ‘steadfast love’ as we see in the other translation.
God is a God of all these things > he has mercy, he has great love, he has steadfast love, he has compassion, faithfulness, and maybe the best thing about this verse: the ‘new every morning’ part.
All these things, from God and for us, are available to us, given to us each new morning, it doesn’t stop! How good is that, if we’ve had a bad day, a bad sleep, if we’re tired or sick or struggling and also when we’re going ok or even really well > God has all these things for each of us each and every morning. That’s faithfulness right there isn’t it, also loyalty – another way the original word for mercy is translated. Loyal, steadfast love > love that keeps on going, the gift that keeps on giving!
Third verse to touch on today, this one gives us some direction for how we should act based on how God has already acted towards us:
James 2:13
‘Mercy triumphs over judgment’
We also see in the rest of this verse that those who judge without mercy will not be shown mercy themselves – words of warning there, being wary of our own actions and the way God acts – but at the same time we know God is a God of forgiveness and compassion, who’s judgment is merciful.
When we turn to him, we put our lives in his hands, there we can receive what he has already done for us, we can receive the judgment he hands down > LOVING MERCY.
And this is where Jesus comes in > the one who came to live among us, who died on the cross for us, who rose again so we could have life with him. Jesus’ death on the cross is where God’s judgment is made, his judgment that we should all be called guilty, but God says I will call you loved, my own children, part of my family. A judgment of MERCY that we do not deserve, but it is the one we receive.
It’s an incredible thing that Jesus would wear all that for us, he would pay the price for our sin, but it is the core and central message of all this > Jesus loves you, he loves me, he loves us enough to give his life for us. And he has done that, and he also beaten death and the devil (no ‘mercy rule’ there!) so we could have life with him and life to the full.
So we can say that to ‘LOVE MERCY’ is to receive the MERCY God offers us, and to share that same MERCY with others, with those we LOVE personally, we those we are called to love > love God, love each other as the bible teaches. ‘Let your light shine’ as we heard in our bible readings today, in God’s love we can ‘be like a well-watered garden, like a spring whose waters never fail’ Isaiah says, beautiful imagery.
To love something is to be all about something isn’t it, in the same we love our partner or our kids or maybe even our work or our sporting teams or our hobbies!
We say we love those sorts of things, and to know who God is to know that he loves us like that – he loves us not only like a favourite team or weekend activity but much more than that, as a unique, gifted, loved, seen and known individual that he has made and who he calls to do life with him.
So I pray the peace of God, the LOVING MERCY of God that passes all understanding would guard our hearts and minds in Jesus’ name. Amen!
Tom Kitson 