Luke 6:36 KJV Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.

Jesus has been giving advice to the multitudes, especially those who will hear His advice, overflowing with proverbs and parables for our daily life.

Will we choose blessing (‘Happy are you…’)? We call them the beatitudes. OR will we choose curse? Jesus gives the multitudes choices (including repentance) which we must make. In fact (as we just read in Luke 6:27-35) Jesus has told us how we must love even our enemies.

The Apostle John has emphasized so often the love of God through Christ Jesus, as “our Father” that we may have missed in the verse above this first reference of the Gospel of Luke to calling God our Father, as Christ Jesus has just said to the multitudes after giving out all the good advice of the sermon on the mount.

Therefore, you be merciful, as your Father God is also merciful.

Yes, the Beatitudes and parables are a call to blessings from God – a call to do good and not evil – a call to receive God’s blessing and not curse; but Jesus points out that His teaching is more than that. Christ Jesus, Son of God and Son of Man teaches with authority that WE have through Him a relationship of family – a relationship of familiarity (as a son or daughter has of their own father) – a relationship of love (capable of both discipline and mercy). What will you choose?

Before the Son of Man, the Prophets gave advice to God’s people – good advice AND warning. The people did not often listen (or perhaps they feared and listened for a time and then fell away from the Lord). What then, was the advice from God (through the Prophets)? REPENT! Turn back from your evil ways to the LORD your God. He is a God of mercy IF you will repent of your sin and turn back to His blessings.

Before the Kings and the Prophets, God led His chosen people, His chosen family, Holy to the Lord; the LORD God had a relationship with His faithful family members (though they were a stiff-necked people). The LORD led His chosen ones out of the slavery and evil of Egypt. The LORD led His family through the Sea of Reeds and through the barren wilderness. The LORD saved them and blessed them and gave His chosen family His Law – He IS a personal Father to His people.

Yet the people feared the Lord and could not stand in His Holy Presence; therefore the LORD appointed Moses as His Prophet and Aaron as His Priest to stand between His Almighty Holiness and the many sins of His people.

And though our Father God had shown great mercy to His people and great patience for the generations who opposed His righteous rule over His own family, the people fed by the hand of the Lord in the wilderness often chose curse and not blessing. His stiff-necked self-serving children refused to worship the Lord our God and Father.

My child, don’t reject the LORD’s discipline,
and don’t be upset when he corrects you. – Proverbs 3:11 NLT 

The call of God to His children through Moses, through the Proverbs of His Kings and through the personal teaching of our personal Savior Christ Jesus, the only Son of God is a call to the Perfect love of the Holy Father of all creation. Jesus calls us to relationship through His Authority and love.

So in concluding His Sermon on the Mount, Jesus in effect asks us (by referring to our Father’s mercy): will you listen to your Father?

It is with both the Authority and love of the Father that Jesus taught those on the hillsides and in the towns to REPENT.

An IF NOT, what therefore?

Certainly hell and damnation; but Jesus has more to say on our free choice of curse over blessing given through His mercy.

To be continued…