Jesus, you are a great high priest, and you stand in the Holy of Holies, wearing our names on your chest, right on your heart. And you pray for us to the Father, and we're so thankful for this, Jesus, and we ask now that as we look into your word and look at your father's heart, that you would be praying that the Father would be so moved as to bless this, his church. We pray this Jesus, in your name. Amen. Amen.
In the climactic scene of the play, The Merchant of Venice, the beautiful Portia comes to the defense of her friend, Antonio. Antonio stands condemned in the court of the Duke of Venice. Now, Portia knows that justice isn't so much on the side of Antonio. So in a famous speech, she appeals not to the rigors of justice, but she appeals to the lofty heights of mercy. She stands, and she speaks,
"The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven, upon the place beneath. It is twice blessed. It blesseth him that gives and him that takes. 'Tis mightiest in the mightiest. It becomes the throned monarch better than his crown. His scepter shows the force of temporal power, the attribute to awe and majesty, wherein doth sit the dread and fear of kings, but mercy is above this sceptered sway. It is enthroned in the hearts of kings. It is an attribute of God himself, and earthly power doth then show likest God's, when mercy seasons justice."
Shakespeare beautifully lauds mercy in this soliloquy, and he rightly identifies it as an attribute of God. Throughout the Bible, we find God not only upholding his standards of justice but so often bestowing the blessings of mercy, which "Droppeth as gentle rain from heaven," especially when they drop on the undeserving. This is what mercy is. It's an act of kindness on behalf of another, not because of obligation, but because of some type of affection arising in the giver. The Bible says much about God's acts of mercy, whether they be forgiveness, or deliverance, or giving support. However, the Bible speaks also of the motivations behind these acts of mercy. You might say that behind the acts of mercy lie the merciful heart. There is something about God's nature that makes him move with acts of mercy.
Moses points out this heart quality in an interesting scene with Israel. He's writing to them and he's telling them, "Look, you will turn away from God and fall into sin, and when you do, you're going to look for help," and Moses says, "Do not appeal to yourself or your own goodness, rather, your hope lies solely in a certain character quality of the heart of God." Here's what Moses says. "When you are in tribulation in the latter days, you will return to the Lord your God and obey his voice. For the Lord, your God is a merciful God. He will not leave you or destroy you, or forget the covenant with your fathers that he swore to them."
Moses says, "Your final hope is realized in God's merciful heart." God's actions of mercy overflow from his merciful heart. His mercy is the spillover, as we'll see, of some of his deepest and most treasured passions. As we continue in our sermon series, Thy Very Heart: My Heart Healed by His, it is to this aspect of God's heart, his mercifulness, that we now want to place our own hearts. We want to put our often burdened, and at times, callous hearts before this fount of mercy.
To see what makes God's heart merciful, we're not just looking at actions that we would describe as mercy, like forgiveness. We're asking at a deeper level: what emotions, what movements, what dispositions give rise to a merciful heart in the first place? Because mercy has its motives. It arises from a passion of the heart. So where would we turn if we wanted to try to see deeper into what exactly makes God's heart merciful?
Well, we're going to turn to what at first seems like a strange place, but it'll make sense in a moment. We're going to turn to look at Jesus' role as our high priest, which was explained in our reading from Hebrews today. So if you want to turn to Hebrews 4, we'll move around a bit in that chapter today, we're going to look at Jesus' role as our high priest because as you'll see, Hebrews tells us that he is a merciful high priest. This is what it says in Hebrews 2:17, "Jesus is a merciful high priest," and then Hebrews tells us in Chapter four that Jesus is then the key to us having access to more mercy. Chapter 4:15, picking up, "Since we have a great high priest, Jesus, let us with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in a time of need."
So apparently, and this doesn't make sense at first look, but apparently, Jesus' function as a high priest has something to do with mercy. Now, none of us grew up in a context where we were talking about having a high priest. This wasn't something you looked for in officeholders in your culture, but for the first readers of this letter, the recipients of the Hebrews letter, this was normal. They understood exactly what The writer's talking about when he brings up a high priest. The high priest was an officeholder in the nation of Israel, and his function was very simple. He stood between God and man, and he would make sacrifices and offer prayers so that an unholy people could become clean before a holy God. In essence, the priest was there to maintain the relationship between God and his people. He stood before God on behalf of his people.
So the writer's saying, "Look, you need to understand that Jesus is that for you," and I want to take a closer look at Jesus' role as a high priest because it's going to reveal to us more of the affective core or the emotional movements that give rise to mercy in God's heart. And we'll see, as we look at this, that there are primarily two heart movements or two essential dispositions that you must have if you're going to be merciful. The first is compassion, and the second is desire. Put in a sentence, God's mercy rises out of compassionate understanding of our pain, and deep desire to keep us close. The emotions giving rise to mercifulness in our God, are compassion and desire.
Now, let's unpack these, let's look at them more closely. So first, how does Jesus give us a window into compassion's role in mercy? There's something very soothing to the soul when you're around someone who understands you, someone who can deeply identify with your own experience of life. You're going through that, they say, "Well, I've gone through that too. I totally understand how you feel." Compassion is born out of this type of understanding, and this Is precisely what the writer of Hebrews is trying to tell us about Jesus as high priest. He is adamant to make this point that "Look, you need to know that Jesus gets you. You don't have feelings that he hasn't felt in one way or another. He understands."
Let me show you how the writer draws this out. So here's a few verses where he makes this point, Chapter four, verse 15, "For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weaknesses, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin." The writer goes on, "He, Jesus, the high priest, can deal gently with the ignorant and the wayward since he himself is beset with weaknesses." Earlier in Chapter two, the writer says, "Therefore, he, Jesus, had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted." There is no experience that you've had that doesn't fit into this statement. "Therefore, Jesus had to be made like his brothers and sisters in every respect." That's just what it says. "Every respect."
Now, what this means and what the writer's trying to tell us, is that there's a type of co-suffering, or shared suffering that Jesus enters into by becoming human and somehow, this is going to link up with us understanding why God is merciful. We'll see that in a moment. God did not become an angel, because he's not trying to save angels. God became a human because he's trying to save humans, and this meant he had to become like us in every way. So the writer tells us, "Jesus has been tempted in every respect as we are, has been beset with weaknesses, and was made like his brothers in every way."
Let's try to unpack a little bit of this and think more deeply about what Jesus experienced. Jesus knows temptation. He knows the enticement of sin, and in a radical way. Now, I personally think it's weird to think of Jesus feeling tempted. I tend to think the more good you are or holy you are, the less you even feel temptation. Wouldn't it just be the case that sin never enticed Jesus? Well, not exactly. The writer of Hebrews says, "He was tempted in every way, yet was without sin."
In a wonderful passage from Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis helps us understand how it is that not only a person as good as Jesus knows temptation but how he actually knows it better than we do. Lewis writes, "A silly idea is current that good people do not know what temptation means. This is an obvious lie. Only those who try to resist temptation know how strong it is. After all, you find out the strength of the German army by fighting against it, not by giving in. You find out the strength of the wind by trying to walk against it, not by lying down. A man who gives in to temptation after five minutes simply does not know what it would have been like an hour later. We never find out the strength of the evil impulses inside us, until we try to fight it, and Christ, because he was the only man who never yielded to temptation, is also the only man who knows to the full what temptation means."
Jesus has fought more rounds than any boxer in human history. He knows the strength of temptation like no one else and therefore, the writer can tell us in 2:18 because Jesus himself has suffered when tempted. He knows the suffering, the agonizing pain of resisting temptation, longer and more deeply and more profoundly than any other person, and because of this, the writer says he's able to help us. But it's not just temptation to sin that Jesus identifies with, with you and me.
It's also just general weakness, or needs, or longings. Jesus knows what it means to be hungry and tired. He had to sleep. He knows what it means to be thirsty. He knows what it means to be astonished by beauty, heartbroken by betrayal, distraught because of pain. Jesus was overcome by the weight of future events. He had to live by faith, not by sight. He too had to learn how to use scripture to navigate life. Jesus prayed, he sighed, he cried out. Jesus worried about his mother when he was dying on the cross. He worried about his friends when he was preparing to depart. His heart ached at times. He missed home, he missed his father.
What does all this mean for us? Why does this make Jesus merciful? It's because mercy beneath it, has this emotion of a tender compassion of a knowing glance. It's the doctor who comes in with a diagnosis and not only has the book smarts but can look at you and say, "I've had this myself. I know what it's like. I'm sorry." You can get down on your knees any night, going through anything, and you can pray, "Lord, you know what you went through when you were here. I am going through this right now," and he will respond, "Yes, I do know. I perfectly understand. I understand how alone you feel. I understand how depressed you feel. I understand how scared you are. I understand what it feels like to have nothing but hope in God and feel like you're the only person on the planet who feels that way. I get that. I was here before you got here. I'm right beside you."
That's the first motivating emotion that gives rise to mercy. Mercy requires some type of compassionate understanding. There's a second emotion, however. This isn't the only movement of God's heart that makes him merciful. And the second, alongside compassionate understanding, is what you would maybe call a desire to keep you close. Now, the high priest in the Old Testament, the first one's name was Aaron. He's mentioned in our passage from Hebrew. The high priest had to wear a lot of clothes to do their job. If you come to our 9:00 AM, you'll see us clergy get in robes. Well, they wore a lot more than that, and the last thing the high priest put on, or one of the last things, was called a breastplate. It hung around his neck, it was a big square. It had 12 stones set in it, amid gold filigree, and on the stones were written the names of the sons of Jacob, the names of the 12 tribes of Israel. And so, the high priest, whenever he would walk into the Holy of Holies to stand before God, he would bear right on his heart, the names of God's people.
And so, it says in Exodus, "So Aaron shall bear the names of the sons of Israel in the breast piece of judgment," let's know what it says, "On his heart, when he goes into the Holy Place, to bring them to regular remembrance before the Lord." Now, this gives us an important insight into what's going on, really what's going on in the heart of God when the high priest is at work. You see, the high priest actually serves a double function. On the one hand, the high priest goes in and he's dealing in blood or sacrifices, or prayers to make atonement, to help you be clean. The high priest is trying to do something so that you, as an individual, as an Israelite, have a clean, moral report card.
But if we stop there, we miss the deeper point. The high priest is wearing the names of the people on his chest because the whole reason God has designed the high priesthood is so that he can stay in relationship with these people. The priest does relational work. Why? Why would God let all this unfold? Because he wants to dwell with his people. Look, we find the early books of the Old Testament kind of confusing, especially I'm reading Leviticus in my quiet time right now, and it talks all about the priesthood. But let me just give you a brief flyover, because I want you to see the relational heart of God in this institution.
In the Book of Exodus, Israel's brought out of slavery, right? They're brought into the wilderness. Why? Why does God say this? Because I, God says, "I want to have a relationship with you. I'm going to call it a covenant. I want to be your God, and you want to be my people. We're going to enter together like a marriage, but there's a problem. I'm holy, you're unholy. So here's a law, and here are priests so that you can work on becoming more holy, and when you sin, you can become clean, and that way, we can stay together and dwell together." So the priestly function is a relational function. He's like a counselor coming in between two parties, trying to keep them together, except he deals in blood and prayer. The priestly role of offering sacrifices for sin serves the purpose of making an unholy people relationally compatible with a holy God.
Now, what does this have to do with Jesus or mercy? Hebrews 5:1, "A high priest are appointed to act on behalf of men in relation to God, to offer gifts and sacrifices for sin." So what is Jesus doing in heaven right now, before God and the Holy of Holies? He's wearing a breastplate with his church's name on it. Maybe your name's on it if you're a Christian, and he stands before his father and he's appealing not to justice, he's going to deal with justice on the cross. He's appealing to his father's affection for you. "Father, you love them, but you love them." That's the other emotion behind mercy. Mercy doesn't come out of a vacuum of indifference. Mercy comes from a compassionate, understanding that becomes tender, even pities, and it comes from a burning desire, whereby the one longs to be with the other.
This unfolds beautifully in our reading from Hosea, which we heard read a moment ago. I'm going to read this for you. In Hosea, God is dealing with the fact that Israel keeps walking away, and his anger burns because they're so sinful, and rebellious, and awful, and on the one hand, they deserve to be abandoned, and all of a sudden, I want you to see it when I read it, I want you to see this pivot, and you try to see where the pivot happens. What changes in this scene? Does Israel become more lovable, or does God's heart change?
Hosea 11, verses seven through nine. God says, "My people are bent on turning away from me, and though they call out to the most high, he shall not raise them up at all." You feel the anger. Then verse eight, "How can I give you up, O Ephraim? How can I hand you over, O Israel? My heart recoils within me, my compassion grows warm and tender. I will not execute my burning anger. I will not again destroy Ephraim, for I am God and not a man, the Holy One in your midst, and I will not come in wrath." Our greatest hope, this is amazing, lies in the fact that God doesn't just understand us, he likes us. I hope you can see from this passage, his heart didn't turn on something that Israel had done morally for him. It just says, "My heart recoils within me." Like a mother with a child, he simply says, "How could I give you up?" That's where his mercy comes from.
Now, you may at this point look at your own life. You may look at how it's going, and you may wonder about God's mercy. Maybe you know misfortune or misunderstanding, or maybe you've been let down or abandoned by the very person who was supposed to not let you down and not abandon you, and you say, "My life is no testimony for God's mercy." Well, to you I would say, your life at this present moment is not the testimony of God's mercy. Jesus' life is the testimony of his mercy, and you need to fix your eyes on Jesus, and you need to see him entering into all the depths of your pain, the loneliness, the abandonment, being misunderstood, being mistreated, feeling the pangs of cold, and hunger, and fear.
And what you need to see is God coming down lower, and lower, and deeper, and deeper, so that he can find you right where you're at. You can't get deeper than the pain the son of God knows. And you need to see in that pain, a witness of how far God would go to rescue you, and how much he loves you. The suffering son of God, the high priest who took on our weaknesses, that is the eternal forever in heaven right now, testimony to the depths Of God's mercy. Put your trust in him.
On the other hand, though, you may say, "Look, I believe in God's mercy, but I've squandered it. If you knew my life and how many second chances I've had, and you've known the things I've done, or the huge sin, or the small sins, I just have squandered his mercy." And in some ways you have, but to you, I would say that God's mercy is inexhaustible. You cannot outrun it, you can't outmaneuver it. It's God's very nature. He doesn't run out of it. Your sin, and we saw this in our reading from Hosea, your sin does not ultimately move God to turn away from you. Because of Jesus Christ, your sin moves God to pity, and then to apply mercy, and to come and rescue. You can't out sin God's merciful heart.
God just doesn't do acts of mercy, but on a far more important level, he is merciful. He knows, and he desires you, and let that be your rock. I want to ask one final question in this sermon and that is, how does this merciful heart impact us? How does it shape us? How does it transform or heal our hearts, both individually, but also as a church? And I want to ask this question in a very specific way. How does the merciful heart of God shape the church's heart's motivation for engaging the world?
America is in a moment of tormented self-consciousness. We are wondering what to make of the sins of our past, and the pains of our present. There are forms of human suffering, instances of injustice that haunt us. How does your heart feel when you travel across an Indian reservation out west? Does it feel anything? Or how does your heart feel when you walk through a historic black neighborhood in a Southern city? Is it moved? Or what does your heart feel when it thinks of the tens of thousands of nameless children who won't have a chance at life this year, all in name of individual rights? How do you engage with wounds like this?
When I watch America right now, I fear that the engagements with the wounds around us, or the disengagements, are being driven potentially by unhealthy motivations. There's a form of engagement motivated by guilt and shame. Here, engagement seems driven by a panicked need to assuage for a pervasive, endless guilt. A need, even to atone for sin, and alongside this is a threat of being shamed if one is silent, which likewise then becomes a motivator to engage. My fear though, is that an engagement with the world's woes motivated by guilt and shame, leads to a completely burdened and sick heart because the world itself has no mechanism to atone for sin.
There is a place for Godly guilt, leading to repentance and change of life, and certainly, this is necessary in processes of healing. There's a place for strongly encouraging friends to move out in love, but the gospel is clear. There is only one thing bloody enough to atone for our sins, and that is the cross of Jesus Christ. There is only one wound deep enough to make up for all the wounds that we've done to each other, and that's the wound in the side of the son of God. The gospel does not teach guilt nor shame, as the ultimate motivations for engaging the world.
However, on the other hand, there's another danger. This takes the form of disengagement with The world's wounds, rooted in what I would call a pharisaical self-righteousness. Here, one has the superior knowledge about each situation, spots all the unhealthy worldviews or bad theories that lurk beneath social perceptions, and is convinced, based on logic, that they are no culprit when it comes to these wounds. Ironically, this view plays on the motivation of guilt just the same, it's just that the individual decides, "There's no issue by which I should be guilty and if there is, I'm not individually guilty, therefore, I don't have to act." In both cases, it's motivated by guilt. But in the case of pharisaical self-righteousness, I worry of a disengagement where a heart grows cold and indifferent.
There is a place for clarity about issues, clarity about social conditions, hard theological work to understand whether and how guilt may be passed across generations, or how sin operates in the individual human heart but also operates in larger systems. There is a place for the hard social and theological work to bring about the clarity and truth we need to see and act, but this can all too easily slip into a self-righteous pharisaicalism, whereby while we become perfect in the details we miss, as Jesus says, "The weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faithfulness."
I fear an impasse before the church because we're given two poor options for engagement, either guilted into it, or we're so self-righteous, we don't have to get our hands dirty. And into this, I simply say, is not the mercy of God motivation enough? Did our great high priest come to help us because he was guilty of something? Did our great high priest wait to come to help us until we had all the theories just right, so we could perfectly articulate our situation, we had all the theological algorithms perfect to balance guilt and innocence? He didn't wait for any of that, he just came. Why? Because mercy, I hope you've seen, is not motivated by these things. Mercy is motivated by compassion. Jesus came because he entered willingly into our pain, and he came because he liked us.
Whereby we too, filled with his mercy, are willing to feel pain around us enough that we're so pricked, that we become tender and soft, and then we look around at the issues in our neighborhoods or schools, or institutions, and we simply say, "God, where's your mercy moving?" Forget the political skirmishes. That's not our business. We have a gospel, and the gospel tells us that we follow a God who is merciful. We, of course, have much to learn, I have much to learn, but I want us to be a church that is motivated more than anything by the merciful heart of God, that it simply overwhelms us. We follow it as it spills over into the world around us, and perhaps we could become a church known by this command of Jesus. "Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful."
Let me pray for us.
Lord, we have a great opportunity to be relieved by your heart of mercy, and we just stand before it now. We pray, Lord, it would flow down by the Holy Spirit, like a river into our hearts, that it would heal us. But God, may it not stop in this church, may it overflow, and may we simply follow your mercy out into the world, wherever it leads. It is in the name of our great High Priest Jesus Christ that we pray. Amen.