I did not get today's sermon, so I am filling in with the mid-week sermon from the evening prayer service I had to miss this past month.

Jesu Juva

“Merciful”
Text: Luke 6:36-42; Genesis 50:15-21; Romans 12:14-21

Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

I think that’s a very good summation of the Christian life. If someone were to ask you how to live the Christian life, you could go into all sorts of details, about going to church, repenting, praying, keeping the commandments, and lots more stuff. But I think mercy sums it all up. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.

With those words, Luke starts where we need to start any understanding of the Christian life - with our Father in heaven. We know mercy because of His mercy shown to us. His mercy to Adam and Eve when they fell into sin. His mercy to Israel when they were stuck in slavery in Egypt. His mercy to His people in the wilderness when they rebelled against Him. His mercy to David after his adultery and murder. His mercy to us in sending His Son to be our Saviour. And His mercy in coming to us poor wretched sinners still today in His Word and Sacraments, to give us His forgiveness, life, and salvation. In all that He does, our Father is merciful. Preserving us in our physical needs, and upholding us in our spiritual needs. And if He did not, none of us would be here. We would have been lost and destroyed by satan long ago.

But our Father is merciful. And it is all of His mercy because we have not earned or deserved any of it. In fact, we have deserved only His wrath and condemnation. For consider what Luke goes on to say regarding the Christian life - what such mercy looks like. It does not judge, but tries to explain everything in the kindest way. It does not condemn, but loves, and leaves all vengeance to God. It forgives, not holding grudges, or resentment, or bitterness. And it is generous, and not begrudgingly so, but pressing down the measure and giving all that it can give. And it does these things because this is what God, in His mercy, has given to us.

But if we are honest, we have not done these things, have we? At least, not as we should. Because the Old Adam in us is daily trying to convince us that it doesn’t work, this Christian life. It just makes you a doormat for people to take advantage of. It just makes you not get what you have coming. And so, that Old Adam in us tells us, you have to look out for yourself, because no one else is going to. Get what you can while you can. And of that rather large, distrusting, rebellious, sinful log in your eye, you need to repent. And so do I.

For to repent and receive absolution is to have that large, distrusting, rebellious, sinful log taken out of your eye. Taken out by the mercy of your Father, who in His mercy and love sent His Son to be hung on the log of the cross for you and your sin, to receive the wrath and condemnation you deserve. And through that sacrifice, give us what we do not have and make us what we are not now. That we may be His children and be merciful to others, even as He is merciful to us.

And His child He has made you, when He claimed you as His own and marked you with the sign of the cross in Holy Baptism. And so you no longer belong to your Old Adam, although he still kicking and screaming in you. You belong to the New Adam, to your Saviour. His life you now get to live as He lives in you, and His mercy you now get to give as He gives to you. A life no longer of judging and condemning, but of giving and forgiving. A life of blessing and not cursing, of weeping with those who weep and rejoicing with those who rejoice. A life not of measuring ourselves against others, but seeing the needs of others and bending to help them. For as our triune God has been for us, so we now get to be for others.

And Joseph is a perfect picture-prophesy of this for us. For instead of getting even with those wretched brothers of his who had betrayed him into slavery and a life filled with all kinds of evils and troubles, he saw the hand of God behind all the events of his life so that even though his brothers had intended evil, God overturned it for good. And in the end, Joseph was exalted and made ruler of all Egypt and promised to forgive and provide.

Just so our Lord Jesus was not overcome by evil, but instead overcame evil by good. Both the evil in the world, and the evil in us. For Jesus too was hated and betrayed and sold into crucifixion, and yet trusting His Father was vindicated in His resurrection on the third day. For He too, saw the hand of God behind all the events, so that even though intended for evil, God overturned it for good. For our good! As now Jesus forgives and provides for us, until we too are exalted with Him who lives and reigns to all eternity. And so even if you are in the dungeon right now, you will not be forever. Your Saviour does not forsake His own. The Lord will fulfill His purpose for you.

And so with the locks and chains of sin and death opened for us, we are now free to live - to live the life now given to us, showing ourselves to be sons and daughters of God. Not that you won’t have problems - you most certainly will! But with the body and blood of Jesus given for you and living in you, how you live in those problems will be changed, for you have been changed. Changed from a son of man to a son of God. Changed from a sinner to a saint. Changed from selfish to merciful. To be merciful, even as your Father is merciful. To Him be the glory with the Son and the Holy Spirit, now and ever and unto the ages of ages. Amen.