Matthew 5:7
Let’s hear from God’s Word. We’ll
read Matthew chapter 5 verses 1 through 12, but our passage
tonight is verse 7. So it’s speaking of Jesus and
says, seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when
he sat down, his disciples came to him. He opened his mouth and
he taught them saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn,
for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they
shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger
and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed
are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the
peacemakers, for they shall be called the sons of God. Blessed
are those who are persecuted for righteousness sake, for theirs
is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when others revile
you. persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you
falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad for your
reward in heaven is great. So they persecuted the prophets
who were before you. Amen. This is God’s holy word. There’s a story that I’ve heard
over and over and over. My wife has told it to me. I think she
may have told it to some of y’all, and I finally found it in a book.
Found it in a book on the Sermon on the Mount. Found it in a book
on blessed are the merciful. What’s the response? For they
shall be received mercy. This is on forgiveness. It says
the late Corrie Ten Boom, y’all know who she is, right? She was
a lady imprisoned by the Nazis during the World War II, the
late Coryton Boone recalled in her book, The Hiding Place, a
post-war meeting with a guard from the Ravensbruck concentration
camp where her sister had died and she herself had been subjected
to horrible indignities. And this is her telling the story.
It says, it was a church service in Munich that I saw him, the
former SS man who stood guard at the shower room door in the
processing center at Ravensbruck. He was the first of our actual
jailers that I had seen since that time. And suddenly it was
all there, the room full of mocking men, the heaps of clothing, Betsy’s
pain-blanched face. He came up to me at the church,
as the church was emptying, beaming and bowing. How grateful I am
for your message, for a line he said, to think that as you
say, he has washed my sins away. How about that? His hand was
thrust out to shake mine. And I, who had preached so often
to the people in Blomendal, the need to forgive, I kept my hand
at my side. Even as the angry, vengeful thoughts
boiled through me, I saw the sin of them. Jesus Christ had
died for this man. Was I going to ask for more?
Lord Jesus, I prayed, forgive me and help me to forgive him.
I tried to smile. I struggled to raise my hand.
I could not. I felt nothing, not the slightest spark of warmth
or charity. And we might even say it was
justified. And so again, I breathed a silent
prayer. Jesus, I cannot forgive him.
Give me your forgiveness. As I took his hand, the most
incredible thing happened. From my shoulder, along my arm,
and through my hand, a current seemed to pass from me to him,
while into my heart sprang a love for the stranger that almost
overwhelmed me. Pretty powerful words. Blessed
are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. So we make our
way through the Sermon on the Mount and make our way through
the Beatitudes. There’s a shift that we come
to tonight in the Beatitudes. And the shift is from the characteristics
of the children of the king. We move from the one who is poor
in spirit, who recognizes his spiritual poverty. We move along
to the poor mourning over his sin. I’m empty, I’m broken, I’m
weak and wounded, sick and sore, as we sing. So we go from being
poor to mourning, to being meek, to being submissive to the king
and being willing to bow low and let him load us with the
burden of following him and being submissive to that. So last week’s
lesson on blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness. And so we’ve made the progression,
God has filled us full. And so now it’s time in the Beatitudes
to go to work. So you go to a little weekend
conference, say you go to a Ligonier conference, you go hear some
good preaching, you go up on the mountain. Jesus’ disciples
came and sat at his feet at the mountain. You go to that and
you get filled full of all kinds of good things. You’re excited
about theology, you’re ready to explode because you’ve been
filled full of the Bible, but then it’s time to go home. and
it’s time to go home and put it into practice. You know, the
prepared meals are over, staying in a hotel is behind you. You’ve
got to go home back to reality. And that’s what takes place tonight
as we come to the beatitude, blessed are the merciful. Jesus
has filled you full, he has changed your heart, he’s given you the
new birth, he’s put a new character in you, you’re a new creation
in Christ Jesus. The old is gone, the new has
come, and now it’s time to go to work and to be the person
that God has called you and redeemed you in Christ to be. And so the
mountaintop experience is over, so to speak. It’s time to go
home and go to work. We see this in other places.
You do it in your personal life when you go to a little conference,
you hear good preaching. It happens here in the Sermon
on the Mount. The disciples are gonna have to leave the mountain
and they’re gonna have to go to work in the cities. Moses eventually
had to come down off the 10 mountain and deliver the 10 commandments.
And not only deliver them, he had to personally Obey them.
So we have to go down. We have to go back to real life.
So tonight, we learn about being merciful. The next time, about
being pure in heart. And then the next, peacemakers.
So the one who is poor, who mourns, who is meek, and who hungers
and thirsts for righteousness, somehow, someway has to go into
the real world and be merciful, and be pure in heart, and be
a peacemaker. And this follows the typical
pattern we find in the Bible. There’s doctrine and there’s
duty. There’s doctrine, there’s duty. There’s theology, and then
there’s practical theology. We find this all over the Bible.
Think, for example, about Napoleon Epistles. What does Ephesians,
for example, Ephesians speak of? It speaks about how we were
dead in our sins and trespasses. We’ve been made alive in Christ.
We get some of the richest and most wonderful of our theology
from the book of Ephesians. But what happens about the time
you get over to chapter four? Husbands, love your wives. Children, obey your parents. And on and on it goes. Based
on the rich theology of the first three chapters, we get a couple
chapters on therefore because of that duty, or that doctrine,
you have duty. There’s a big turning point in
the book of Romans. You might know what chapter it comes in.
Comes in chapter 12, verse 1. 11 chapters of glorious, rich
theology that the world for centuries has recognized as the greatest
theological tome the world has ever seen. And God says, therefore,
in light of God’s mercy, offer yourselves as living sacrifices,
holy and pleasing. So that’s what’s taking place
here in the Beatitudes. We’ve been empty. and now filled
up. We’ve come to the market day
of the soul. We’ve been charged to live for the king and now
we have to go into the world and serve our neighbor. So a
couple questions. First of all, what is mercy?
What is mercy? If the merciful are blessed and
they receive mercy, what is mercy? It’s a good question. Well, one
thing to think of is it is not grace. Mercy and grace are two
different things. Grace is given to those who do
not deserve it, but mercy is being generous, being tender,
being kind, being compassionate, putting into action to meet the
needs of those who need it. Bump into all kinds of places
in the Bible where it speaks of us needing to be compassionate,
kind, merciful to others, not only in our relationships, but
in just simple needs. Remember, Jesus found the, teachers asking, who is my neighbor?
And so what did he do? He told them the story of the
Good Samaritan. There was a man walking along the road, fell
into the hands of thieves. Priest passed by one side, the Levite
passed the other side, but who helped? It was the outcast. It
was the man of another skin color, the Samaritan. He stopped and
helped. He bound the man in wounds. He put him on his beast. He took
him to a hotel. He took care of him there. When
he left, he paid the bill. He sought for his, needs to be
met during that interim time when he was gone and came back
and he made sure the bill was paid. That man showed compassion, that
man was merciful. So it’s being generous, it’s
being tender, it’s being kind, it’s being compassionate, it’s
putting the necessary action into place towards those who
are in need. All kinds of people around us
are poor, they’re needy, they’re lost, they’re hopeless, they’re
miserable. So what is mercy? It’s seeking to meet those needs. Second question, who has mercy?
Well, first of all, none of us, apart from Christ, do. Apart
from Christ, we’re self-centered. Apart from Christ, we’re self-absorbed. Apart from Christ, we cannot
be merciful. But you know, we have this little
saying in our theology, we’re made in God’s image, and he has
these attributes. Some of them are communicable,
some are not. Some are incommunicable. So,
can any of us be holy? Like, perfectly holy? Can any
of us be all powerful, omnipotent? Nope. Can any of us be everywhere
all at once? Nope. There’s things about God
we cannot be. But are there things about God that we can reflect
in small ways? Yes, mercy is one of them. So
the Bible tells us God is a God of mercy. Exodus 34, we read
earlier. Yahweh, the Lord God, he’s a
God of mercy. All through the scriptures we
read of his mercy, that God is the God who saves. And so how
can we show mercy to those who are in need? It can only be the
fruit of a changed life. It can only be the fruit of a
transformed life. Only a Christian can truly show Christian mercy. Oh, we can show worldly mercy.
We can be the one who changes the most tires. So much so that
our nickname is Triple A. But for the Christian, there’s
a serious mercy, a deeper mercy, a richer mercy, a heavenly mercy. And so God takes self-absorbed
people, he changes them into other-centered people, but he
makes us a new creation. He changes us in order to serve
others and so that we can reflect his image well. And so that’s
what God does in our lives so that we can serve. Now we have
a little saying around here that saved people sing. If you’re
saved, you’re going to sing. If you’re saved, you’re going
to tell out your soul the greatness of God, the wonders he’s done.
But also, saved people are merciful. That is the bottom line meaning
of this passage. Saved people are merciful. Saved
people serve others in ways. What are some examples? Third
question. What is mercy? Who has mercy? Last question,
what are some lessons in the Bible about mercy? Well, one
is the parable of the unmerciful servant. Remember the servant
who owed money? Didn’t have it. Gonna get thrown in debtor’s
prison. He said, oh, but be merciful to me. And he owed the man years
worth of salary. And then what does that man do?
He goes and finds somebody that owes him like 10 bucks. and he
has him thrown in jail. Well, the other guy hears about
it, and what does he do? He has the other guy taken back and
thrown into jail. And so the moral of the story,
the meaning of the story, the gist of the story is, if we have
been shown mercy, we too must show others mercy. So there’s
that. How about the woman caught in
adultery? Remember the group of teachers, they brought the
lady to Jesus, said this lady’s been caught in adultery. What
kind of crime is that in Israel? It’s a capital crime. And so Jesus is in a little bit
of a bind. If he says we’re not gonna kill
her, who’s gonna be upset? The Jews. This guy breaks the
law. He lets people off. He pardons
sheriffs from Arizona. I mean, he’s breaking the law,
right? Some of y’all caught that. So
what does Jesus do? He says, all right, we’re going
to put her to death. But the executioners will be
the ones who are without sin. And in a sense, what does he
say to her? Where are your executioners? They’re nowhere to be seen. There’s
that occasion where he writes their sins in the dust and one
by one, they start to drop off. But Jesus forgives her of her
sins. And these are all conversion
stories. These are all He didn’t just let her off because Jesus
is a nice guy. He heals the sick. He restores the blind. Often
we see acts of conversion in these stories. What’s another
lesson of mercy? How about the cross? God comes to us who are weak
and helpless, bruised and broken, sick and wounded by the fall.
And he comes and he pays the penalty for our
sin. He satisfies divine wrath. He does everything necessary
to make the payment for our sins. And so we see the greatest act
of mercy in the person and in the work of the Lord Jesus Christ.
And so when we read this passage, blessed are the merciful for
they will receive mercy. One way you could read that is
this, if I am merciful to others, I will then receive mercy. But
what would that be? That would be works. righteousness. That’s not what he’s speaking
of here. God has already shown us through this passage, through
this little section, that this is the act of the converted person.
The one who’s poor recognizes he’s a sinner. The one who is
mournful of a sin, he hates it, he turns from it, he knows the
stench of sin and the wrath of God to come. He’s meek, he’s
submissive, he is teachable, he hungers and thirsts for righteous.
And so the result is that the changed man is a man or a woman
of mercy. And so let us not forget all
that God in Christ has done for us, and let us then be godlike
to others. Let’s pray together. Our Lord
and God, we thank you so much for being merciful to us, for
coming to us in our sin, our misery, for coming to us in our
rebellion against you. And we pray that in your mercy
to us, we would be merciful to others. We pray that we’d be
compassionate, kind, full of great grace and mercy to those
who are in need. For we are children of the king
and we want to live according to the king’s principles. So
give us grace, we ask and pray in the name of Christ, amen. Amen let’s pray for our meal
Lord be We thank you that you are gracious
to us and you feed us. We pray now that you would feed
our bodies, but also feed our souls through fellowship. May
the words of our mouth and the meditations of our heart be pleasing
in your sight. We pray in the name of Christ.
Amen.