What does the Bible say about mercy?

• Exodus 34:6, the Lord is slow to anger
• Deuteronomy 4:31, God will not forget the covenant
• Psalm 25:6, pleading for mercy
• Psalm 40:11, do not withhold your mercy from me, O Lord
• Psalm 51:1, have mercy, God, according to your steadfast love
• Matthew 5:7, blessed are the merciful
• Matthew 18:33, have mercy on others as God has had mercy on you
• Luke 1:50, 54, 72, 78, his mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation
• Romans 11:30-32, mercy for all
• 2 Corinthians 1:3, God is the Father of all mercies
• 2 Corinthians 4:1, do not lose heart because of God's mercy
• Ephesians 2:4-6, God is rich in mercy
• 1 Timothy 1:2, a greeting of grace, mercy, and peace
• Hebrews 4:16, we will find mercy and grace at the throne
• 1 Peter 2:8-10, you have received mercy

Sermon ideas about mercy

Technically, grace is God's address to human guilt; mercy is God's address to human misery. But grace and mercy imply each other. So grace is a mercy, and mercy is a grace.

God's motive for showing mercy is his steadfast love

People may appeal to God for mercy, but they cannot earn it.

In Eastern Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, and Anglicanism, the rites for worship include some variation of Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison ("Lordhave mercy; Christ have mercy; Lordhave mercy). Here the prayer is preserved in Greek, no matter what language people are worshiping in. The Kyrie is no doubt the origin of the "Jesus Prayer," especially popular in Eastern Christianity, but also praised by Pope John Paul II: "LordJesus Christ, have mercy on me, a sinner."

In Luke 1, Mary's Magnificatand Zechariah's prophecy describe the impending birth of Jesus as a mercy. God has remembered the covenant. God will rescue Israel from her enemies through Jesus. "By the tender mercy of our God, the dawn from on high will break upon us."

In hisspeeches, the late Dallas Willard used to comment on the tender mercy of God that has worked in the world through the church. He would say that if today you were to pass a magnet over the history of the world and draw up everything that has been influenced by Jesus and his gospel — all the billions of people whose broken hearts have been mended, all the art and music and literature, all the hospitals and orphanages and adoption agencies, all the social justice movements in housing and finance and hunger relief, the whole movement for women's rights and for setting slaves free, every Christian church, school, university, every mission movement and evangelistic crusade, all preaching, teaching, witnessing, and provision of pastoral care, all the groups of Christian businesspeople who band together to give an African village a well or a Haitian village a new clinic — draw a magnet over all this plus everything else in human history influenced by Jesus Christ and lift it all free. Let's say you'd need quite a magnet and that you'd leave quite a hole in history. And what's sticking to the magnet will so often be examples of tender mercy. There is much in Christian history to lament. But there is also much to celebrate. At the center of the celebration will be the Christian church's historic love for missions of mercy.