Transcript

Shelby Abbott [00:00:00]: Welcome to The Connecting Podcast with Paul Tripp. My name is Shelby Abbott and this podcast exists to connect the transforming power of Jesus Christ to everyday life, right here, right now and so, today we're looking at 7Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

Paul Tripp [00:00:18]: How long have we known one another?

Shelby [00:00:21]: Since 2015, so it's been 11 years or so.

Paul [00:00:27]: When we met at that Cru event, we had no idea this is what we'd be doing together.

Shelby [00:00:32]: I know. I certainly had no idea. Yes, it's been one of the best blessings that I've ever had in my life.

Paul [00:00:39]: Well, it's very cool and it's just another indication that a man plans his way, but the Lord directs his steps, that we just never know what God has in store for us and this has been one of those wonderful blessings.

[00:01:00]: Well, we're looking at The Sermon on the Mount. Think about how to live with Christian joyful sanity in a world that is insane and the episode today is "blessed are the merciful". I would entitle this "Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment", which is a biblical quote. Now, there's confusion about mercy and grace, and I don't want to say anything about grace because we did eight hours on grace.

Shelby [00:01:44]: Yes, I remember.

Paul [00:01:45]: So I think we've...

Shelby [00:01:48]: We've covered a lot. Yes, what's the difference between grace and mercy because...

Paul [00:01:53]: Well, I'm not going to talk about grace.

Shelby [00:01:54]: You're not?

Paul [00:01:55]: I'm just going to define mercy.

Shelby [00:01:57]: Paul Tripp's not going to talk about grace?

Paul [00:01:59]: If you want to understand grace fully, we have eight hours for you. Thank you and good night. Mercy is withholding what you deserve and moving to relieve suffering. It has two aspects in scripture. When mercy is in its fundamental form, it's God's moving to remove what we naturally deserve in our sinful state.

[00:02:44]: It is also a depiction of God's tender-heartedness toward those who are suffering. He comes near to the brokenhearted and to the weak. Now, I've said already that I think that The Sermon on the Mount is amazingly current. You could think this is just written by somebody who is addressing from a Christian perspective the craziness that's going on in our culture.

[00:03:22]: Mercy is the exact opposite of the cancel culture that is now so current in our world. It's "you blow it, there's immediate judgment and you are done". Can I just say this? I don't know why I'm asking permission. I'm going to. No one can sustain that. Nobody.

Shelby [00:03:50]: Nobody can stand up under it.

Paul [00:03:53]: You can't stand under that kind of culture because we all blow it. We all either make mistakes because we're frail human beings or we sin because that sin still lives inside of us; and with the dominance of social media culture, none of us have any privacy. Our lives are all lived in the public, so those mistakes will be magnified, those sins will be known.

[00:04:31]: Who can live with this kind of culture? You just can't. Imagine if that was the culture of your marriage. No one would be married a week. Or imagine if that was your attitude toward your children. I mean, you begin to magnify this. It can't work and yet I want to say this. This is even more heartbreaking to me. This cancel culture reigns in Christianity right now.

Shelby [00:05:07]: It definitely does. Yes, we're not immune to it at all.

Paul [00:05:10]: If you go on X or other social media, it's there literally multiple times everyday. You sin, you're done; and that's just not biblical in any way, shape, or form. It's just not. There's a second aspect of this that I think is the opposite of mercy.

[00:05:43]: It's subtle celebration. The "I told you so, you're getting what you deserve" that accompanies cancel culture. What does mercy do when someone sins? It weeps, seeks to restore, seeks to rescue. It doesn't write a long post on how "you're getting exactly what you deserve and I knew you were going there and..."

Shelby [00:06:25]: Creating some sort of reaction video on Instagram that basically delights in the fact that someone messed up. That's the opposite of it.

Paul [00:06:35]: By people who do not know the person they're writing about, do not have the intimate details, but who jump quickly to judge.

Shelby [00:06:49]: Yes, yes, and you've experienced that tons online. I've experienced it a little bit, just the lack of nuance that people have, the lack of care and kindness that they have, certainly, the lack of mercy that they have for others.

[00:07:06]: And it's like, if this is how you're going to approach relationships out there online, what kind of relationships are you in personally? You know, in a way that nobody would want to be your friend if you're that type of person.

Paul [00:07:22]: Well, that's exactly right. I was going to say mercy is a pathway to blessing. Judgment brings all kinds of trouble into your life. Just set yourself up as everybody's judge and holding the right to "I am now holding the hammer of God's law and I can hit you with it anytime you fail". Who wants to be with that person unless you're with a little tribe of other hammer-holders? And so, you can celebrate together what you're doing, but that's horrible.

Shelby [00:08:04]: And it's not real connection anyway. It's dedication to an ideal. It's not dedication to people and you know that if you stepped out of line and you messed up one time, you'd be canceled yourself within your own little community, so you know that that's not real connection with people. Try to think through what it really means to be a human being. We all need mercy, every single one of us. We need mercy. We don't need more judgment in our life.

Paul [00:08:32]: So the reason I argued that the title for this should be "Mercy Triumphs Over Judgment" is because clearly, mercy is the heart of God. The story of humanity as written in scripture culminates in mercy. Think about this with sinners standing in front of the throne of Almighty God worshiping and celebrating when they should be in abject fear because mercy has triumphed. That's the story. That's where the story is going and so when, when you opt for mercy, you are moving in the same direction as the divine story is moving.

Shelby [00:09:25]: I love that, yes. That's beautiful because you're aligning yourself with the heart of God.

Paul [00:09:31]: You're going where the story is going. I want to go where God's story is going. I don't want to fight God's story and along the way are all the blessings of moving the way God is moving. So if that's the beginning and end of the story because it comes out of the heart of God — remember, right after the fall, God promises mercy — and it culminates in the actual triumph over mercy.

[00:10:00]: So mercy is a dominant theme in scripture. Self-righteous judgmentalism is not enjoined in scripture. It's not encouraged. If you're there, you may call yourself a Christian and you may pride yourself in your righteousness, but you're not living the story.

Shelby [00:10:24]: Yes, I think it's important that we remind ourselves of that, that we put a mirror up to our face or at least have a friend who's willing to put a mirror up to our face and be like, "You're a pretty judgmental person. You're not a merciful person." That's actually God's grace to you, that you're being called out on your judgmentalism.

Paul [00:10:41]: Let me read some passages of scripture. This is Isaiah 30:18.

¹⁸Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, [Isn't that amazing? It can't wait to be gracious to you.]
and therefore He exalts Himself to show mercy to you.
For the Lord is a God of justice;
blessed are all those who wait for Him.

[00:11:03]: Lamentations 3:22-23.

²²The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases;
His mercies never come to an end;
²³they are new every morning;
great is Your faithfulness.

Shelby [00:11:14]: You should write a devotional about that.

Paul [00:11:17]: Yes, I should. I'll get right at it. Psalm 23:6.

⁶Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me
all the days of my life,
and I shall dwell in the house of the Lord
forever.

It doesn't get any better than that. Why will goodness and mercy follow me all the days of my life? Because the Lord is with me.

Shelby [00:11:36]: Yes, It's beautiful.

Paul [00:11:42]: Micah 6:8.

⁸He has told you, O man, what is good;
and what does the Lord require of you
but to do justice, and to love kindness,
and to walk humbly with your God?

What the ESV translates as kindness is the word "mercy" used all over the Old Testament.

Shelby [00:12:07]: Oh, really? Yes, I didn't know that.

Paul [00:12:08]: So let's talk about Micah 6:8. Why does Micah say, "What does the Lord require? Justice, mercy, and humility." Of all the character qualities he could have chosen, why those? Well, I can tell you why.

Shelby [00:12:33]: Yes, I was going to say I don't know. You're going to have to answer.

Paul [00:12:35]: Because those three words, in three words summarize the whole redemptive story. God of justice looks at His fallen world. Because He's holy and just, He can't leave His world in that condition and rather than ending it all in judgment, He chooses to respond with mercy.

[00:13:06]: In order for mercy to reign, there has to be a satisfaction of His anger and Jesus, in humility, says, "I'm willing," and carries our sin in a victory on the cross. Just God who moves in mercy and humble Jesus comes to provide what we could not provide for ourselves. That's the whole redemption story. Three words.

Shelby [00:13:45]: Yes, beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

Paul [00:13:48]: And so, what is mercy, the call for mercy? Be part of the story. Just be part of the story. Respond to people the way God responds to you. How about being excited? You can't wait to give the next mercy. That's what the psalm says. God waits to be gracious to give mercy. How about looking for opportunities to be merciful instead of looking for the next opportunity to judge somebody?

Shelby [00:14:27]: Yes, that's a whole paradigm shift on how to live.

Paul [00:14:29]: How about saying, "If I can't handle myself on social media, I'm going to get those apps off my phone because I do not want to be part of judgment culture. I do not want to be part of cancel culture. I do not want to celebrate the fall of somebody when I should actually be weeping. And if I can't control myself, I'm going to get off of it."

[00:14:50]: I got off Instagram. I couldn't deal with Instagram. It was a black hole to me, eating up too much my time, encouraging attitudes in me I didn't need and I just got rid of it. And it's just so important to make those choices and they're available to you because God is in you and for you and with you. When you're celebrating judgment, when you're lacking in mercy, you are pushing, you're swimming against the current of God's story and that never works.

Shelby [00:15:32]: Yes, it's not natural for us to be merciful. It's natural for us to be judgmental, so again, this is asking God in a position of neediness. "God, You're going to have to provide this for me because I don't like who I am online. I don't like who I am with my neighbor. I don't like who I am with my spouse or my kids. You have to come in here and help to make me a merciful person because it is not natural for me. I want to be judgmental. I don't want to be merciful. Help."

Paul [00:15:58]: I've got to say one other thing. I think this may be speaking to the most important confusion that we talk about with mercy. Mercy is not being soft on sin.

Shelby [00:16:15]: Yes, that's good.

Paul [00:16:17]: Mercy is not compromise. One of the things that cancel people always say is, "Yes, all these other people just want to compromise." That's not that at all. Sin is horrific in the eyes of God and it ought to be horrific to us. Mercy is a way of dealing with sin that wants for the sinner rescue, transformation, and not judgment.

[00:16:50]: Now, mercy recognizes consequences. Mercy recognizes the heinous nature of shaking your fist in the face of God and going your own way, but it doesn't celebrate judgment. It celebrates forgiveness. It celebrates rescue. It celebrates restoration because that's what God celebrates. That's why He sent His Son. Listen, if all God wanted to do is judge you, none of the warnings would be in scripture.

Shelby [00:17:26]: Right, it would just happen.

Paul [00:17:28]: Every warning is mercy because God is rescuing you before the event. Isn't that beautiful?

Shelby [00:17:36]: Yes, to let you know that, "I value mercy."

Paul [00:17:39]: Yes, that's right.

Shelby [00:17:40]: "Turn, change, repent."

Paul [00:17:43]: And so, if you're quick to judge, you're not exhibiting the character of God. He's slow to anger and plenteous in love. Well, I know for me, I just want to travel in the same direction as God's story and I know there are instincts in me that go in the opposite direction; and so, I need God's grace and I surely need His mercy, that I don't get what I deserve.

Shelby [00:18:22]: Yes, let mercy triumph over judgment.

Paul [00:18:25]: Again, you can just see how form-fit this is for what we're talking about this year. What our world needs is not more self-appointed judges. What this world needs is people with a moral conscience who understand the nature of sin, but who love mercy because what the Bible says is that mercy wins.

[00:18:57]: You want to be on the winning side? Mercy wins because the celebration in eternity won't be a judgment celebration that, "Wow, all the people who deserved it got it, yes." It will be an overwhelming celebration of God's mercy, a celebration that will never end because God's mercy is just that big. It's a beautiful thing.

Shelby [00:19:30]: You don't want to see that judgment celebration because if so, it's going to turn on you very quickly and go, "Oh, I'm actually just as guilty as other people are."

Paul [00:19:39]: Sure, and that's why we said cancel culture can't work. I just want to say move in the direction of God's story. Mercy triumphs over judgment.