Episode Transcript
WEBVTT
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Matthew, Chapter Five, beginning in
the first verse. This is the word
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of the Lord and, seeing the
multitudes, he went up on a mountain
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and when he was seated, his
disciples came to him. Then he opened
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his mouth and taught them, saying
blessed are the poor in spirit, for
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theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they
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shall be comforted. Blessed are the
meek, for they shall inherit the earth.
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Blessed are those who hunger and thirst
for righteousness, for they shall be
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filled. Blessed are the Merciful,
for they shall obtain mercy. Blessed are
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the pure in heart, for they
shall see God. Blessed are the Peacemakers,
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for they shall be called Sons of
God. Blessed are those who are
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persecuted for Righteousness Sake, for theirs
is the Kingdom of Heaven. Blessed are
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you when they revile and persecute you
and say all kinds of evil against you
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falsely? For my sake, rejoice
and be exceedingly glad, for great is
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your reward in heaven, for so
they persecuted the prophets who are before you.
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Thus far, this reading of God's
holy word. The grass withers in
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the flower fades, but the word
of our Lord endeures forever. Please be
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seated. Well, this morning we're
going to pick up on my somewhat irregular
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and from time to time series on
the beatitudes. It's nice because each one
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can be set aside on its own, but when you read them together you
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find that they actually build toward a
common idea, and the common idea that
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we see in these a beatitudes is
Jesus is describing for us the characteristics of
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those who will be citizens of his
kingdom, the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus
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is showing us what those who will
respond to his Gospel message will look like.
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And what we find here, is
we look at the beatitudes, is
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that they form the introduction to Jesus's
longest recorded sermon, that's the sermon on
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the Mount and as we've been considering
this introduction to the sermon on the mount
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through the beatitudes, we've noted that
Jesus opens this sermon up with some very
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unusual assertions. In the first four
beattitudes, Jesus tells us that the Happy
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People, and that's what the word
blessed means, if you recall, means
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happy or even supremely happy. Jesus
is telling us that the happiest people,
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the blessed people, are people who, first and foremost, are spiritual beggars.
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The happy people, he goes on
to say, are not only the
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sad, but they are the meek, even the starving. All of the
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beatitudes that we've looked at so far
seemed to us, if you think about
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it, to be rather odd.
They are counterintuitive. They are what we
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would think of as being the characteristics
of happy or blessed people. What Jesus
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describes here is supremely happy. Really
are people we tend to think of as
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down and outers. Or if you
had these characteristics, you might think to
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yourself, well, perhaps I need
to go see someone about antidepressants. That,
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the spiritually destitute, the miserable,
the meet the starving, these are
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the people that he describes in the
first four beatitudes, and they really don't
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sound like spiritual giants. They sound
like a pack of sad sacks. Then
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we turn our attention to the fifth
through eighth beatitudes, and these do look
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a little bit more like what we
would expect blessed people to look like Jesus
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says that they are merciful, that
they're Pure, that their peacemakers, and
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so on. Now this does seem
to be a bit more what we would
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think of is blessed spiritual people.
But before we start to think that in
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the latter half of the beatitudes that
were arriving at some more comfortable territory,
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I want to remind us that Jesus
is disc bribing here not a system of
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morality. He's not saying be merciful, be pure, be a peacemaker.
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Rather, what he's describing in these
last four beatitudes really are some of the
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key characteristics of God's very nature,
key characteristics of God's very nature that,
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importantly, Jesus says, will come
to characterize those people who accept his call
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to become citizens of his kingdom.
And again, I think that as we
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peruse these will find ourselves surprised by
what Jesus says here as well. So,
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for our time this morning, I'd
like us to take a look at
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what Jesus means and verse seven when
he says blessed are the Merciful, for
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they shall obtain mercy, and I'd
like us to do this in two parts.
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First, I'd like us to see
that what he is describing here is
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a divine characteristic, divine characteristic,
and second, I'd like us to see
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that what he wants from us is
mercy, not sacrifice. Divine characteristic and
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mercy, not sacrifice. Now,
because we're all familiar with the idea of
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mercy, I think that we may
tend to water down the impact of what
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this concept had to Jesus first hears
that day. When we think of mercy,
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most of US probably think of it
in terms of the law courts or
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something, and we think of mercy
as clemency for a criminal, perhaps,
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somebody who has been judged and sent
to prison but then has his sentence commuted,
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or someone who, though convicted,
is just let go right out the
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door. Or maybe you may think
of it in terms of debt forgiveness.
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You know, a loan agency or
something like that waves a debt that you
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have, and that's mercy. But
in the Greek language the word is a
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bit more robust than what we tend
to think of. I think the idea
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of mercy in the Greek of the
New Testament is more significant and perhaps a
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little more startling than our everyday English
idea. Now, in the Greek the
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word for mercy is lass elos L
us, and to understand that word we
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need to understand that it has both
a positive and a negative connotation at one
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time. Has a positive and a
negative connotation at the same time. Negatively,
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and I think this is what we
tend to think of it as being,
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mercy has the idea of not giving
something someone, something that they do
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deserve, not giving someone something that
they do deserve. For instance, it
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might be not foreclosing on the house
of a couple who failed to pay their
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mortgage. Right you don't give them
the bad thing that they do deserve.
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They deserve eviction. You don't evict
them. That's mercy. But it also
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has a positive connotation, and the
positive connotation of mercy means to go beyond
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not giving them something they do deserve
to actually giving them something they do not
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deserve. So, to continue that
example, mercy and a biblical sense means
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that not only you don't foreclothes on
someone's house, but then you go beyond
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that. You say, well,
you haven't paid your mortgage in six months,
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but we're not going to foreclothes.
In fact, not only are we
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not going to kick you out,
we're going to waive the rest of your
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mortgage and we're going to build you
a gazebo in your backyard. That's mercy
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and both senses. You don't give
someone the negative thing they do deserve and
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you do give them a positive thing
they do not deserve. And as we
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read through the Gospels, of course
we see Jesus doing this very thing all
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the time, don't we? In
Matthew Chapter Nine, beginning in the twenty
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seventh verse, we read this.
Jesus to parted from there and two men
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followed him, crying out saying,
son of David, have mercy upon us.
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And when he had come into the
house, the blind men came to
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him and Jesus said to them,
do you believe that I am able to
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do this? They said to him, yes, Lord. Then he touched
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their eyes, saying, according to
your faith, let it be to you,
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and their eyes were opened. These
guys cry out to Jesus and he
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has mercy on them. He removes
their blindness and gives them sight. In
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Matthew Chapter Fifteen, we read this
behold, a Canaanitish woman came out from
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that region and began to cry out, saying have mercy on me, O
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Lord, son of David, my
daughter is cruelly demon possessed, and her
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daughter was healed from that very hour
we read. These are just two examples.
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People were all the time coming to
Jesus to Beg mercy from him.
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Each and every one of them comes
and ask Jesus, a perfect stranger to
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most of them. In all likelihood, they asked him for something that they
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do not deserve. And in addition
to this, though they may not have
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been aware of it, they may
not have consciously thought of this, by
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asking him for something that they don't
deserve, they're also asking am not to
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give them something they do deserve.
In the shorter catechism, the Westmans to
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shorter catechism question nineteen. It asks
this, what is the misery of that
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estate whereinto man fell? And the
answers this. All mankind, by their
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fall, lost communion with God,
are under his wrath and curse and so
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made liable to all the miseries of
this life, to death itself and to
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the pains of hell forever, all
miseries in this life, death itself and
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the pains of hell forever. Now
this is important. The answer in the
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catechism to that question. That is
a truth that is so important to our
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lives that if we truly get a
grasp on what it's saying they're that truth
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will transform the way that we think
about our lives and it will really,
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really improve our walk with the Lord. And that's because what the Westminster shorter
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catechism is reminding us of is that, because of the fall and because of
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even the smallest and least significant sin
that you or I have ever committed,
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each and every one of us here
this morning deserves all miseries in this life,
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death itself and the pains of Hell
forever. Now we may acknowledge that
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intellectually, we may know that to
be true when I say, well,
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yeah, that's a part of the
Gospel, surely, but in our daily
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lives, when we have awful things
happened to us, how do we respond?
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We say why did this happen to
me? Or we say I don't
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deserve that. Why I what did
I ever do to be treated like this?
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And we become angry. We become
angry at life, other people,
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God, we shake our fist at
the universe, perhaps, who know.
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I whatever it is, we get
angry, and what we do is we
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compare ourselves to other people. This
is part of our problem. We compare
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ourselves to other people, particularly people
we see as being less than we are
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right and we say why me and
not her? Well, look at how
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terrible she is. I don't do
those things. Why me and not her
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or him? See, we think
on a practical level that we don't deserve
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the bad stuff in our lives,
but the fact of the matter is that,
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because we live in a fallen world
and because we ourselves are fallen,
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we do deserve it. Each of
US truly deserves all miseries in this life,
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death itself and the pains of hell
forever. And so do every one
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of these people who cry out to
Jesus for Mercy in the Gospels. But
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see, in spite of that fact, what is Jesus do? He extends
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His mercy to the people who ask
for it every single time, though they
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deserve all manner of misery and woe, and though there's no sense in which
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any of them can say that they're
really getting a raw deal in life.
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Nevertheless, Jesus responds to them and
he lifts their burdens. They cry out
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for the righteousness that flows from his
cross, the righteousness of his kingdom that
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we see him talking about in the
preceding be attitude. And Jesus brings them
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his love, His mercy, His
grace. They cry out to him,
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saying, in essence, oh Jesus, take from me the misery that I
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deserve and give me the mercy I
do not deserve. And he does,
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he does. But why? Why
does he do it? There is no
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apparent reason for him to do that, really, is there? These people
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cannot deserve his mercy, they can't
earn His grace, they have nothing to
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offer him in exchange for his lifting
of their burdens. In fact, because
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he is the king of creation and
because they, like us, are sinners.
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They are in fact rebels against the
king and thus are his enemies.
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And yet when they cry out to
him, he loves them and lavishes them
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with his mercy. Why? Well, to answer that, it might be
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helpful to understand something of the sense
of the Hebrew word that the New Testament
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authors rendered as ella us, as
mercy. Now, the Hebrew word for
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mercy is cussid. I think I've
mentioned this before. Perhaps you have to
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kind of clear your throat it's Hassid
and he said is rendered in your English
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Bible as love or loving kindness,
sometimes mercy. It's different ways in different
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places for various reasons. But if
we were to try to render that in
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English in the most literal, exact
way that we can chess, it would
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be defined like this steadfast, covenant, Faithful Love that never fails. Steadfast
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Covenant, Faithful Love that never fails. Now this is perhaps the most important
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Hebrew word for you to learn.
You want to do a by a word,
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study and use your strongs concordance.
Use that word. It's amazing.
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If you can get a grip on
what Hess had means, you will come,
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I think, a long way in
your understanding of the Lord in Hebrew.
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God's mercy is steadfast. It's like
the rock of Gibraltar. It's a
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love that weathers all storms. Nothing
moves it, nothing alters it, nothing
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can change in his love for me, not even my sin, not even
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my sin. His mercy is stead
fast. It's also covenant faithful. His
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mercy is a mercy that God extends
to us because he has promised to,
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not because we deserve it. God
gives us mercy not according to my deserts,
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but at couror and not according to
my obedience, not according to my
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disobedience. It has nothing to do
with my performance. God gives me His
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mercy because, way back in the
mists of eternity past, the father and
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the son, not God and Man. Get that out of your head.
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The covenant is not between God and
Man. The covenant is between the Father
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and the son. They made a
covenant together and in that Covenant between the
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Father and the son, the son
asked for you and me to be his
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own. and Jesus told his father. He said that in the day that
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they sin, in the day that
they lose fellowship with us, he said,
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I will take the full weight of
their sin and they're guilt so that
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they might be rest. Sword to
me is my covenant, people. His
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Covenant Faithful. Mercy is covenant faithful
because the father does not give us what
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we deserve, rather, because we
stand in the Covenant which Christ has made
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with his father, the Covenant in
which we are beneficiaries, not participants.
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Because of that, the father gives
us what Christ deserves, because Christ is
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taken upon his own shoulders that which
we deserve. It is steadfast, it
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is covenant, Faithful Love which never
fails. And so in his earthly ministry
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it was this which motivated Christ to
give those people mercy. He sees them
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in light of the Cross. He
sees them, he sees us in light
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of who we will be in glory, not who we are now in this
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mire. This means that when we
see Jesus ministering to people, he takes
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from them what they do deserve and
he gives them the healing and love and
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ministry that they do not deserve,
because their father in heaven sees them in
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the shadow of the Cross. And
so in his earthly ministry, Jesus gave
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His mercy liberally to everybody who asked, regardless of whether or not they would
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later turn to him or turn on
him. And he did that in order
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that he might show them the kind
of steadfast, covenant, Faithful Love that
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the citizens of his kingdom receive.
And that that's pretty awesome, isn't it?
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That the that the news doesn't get
any better than that. But we
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can't stop there, because if that's
the what, we always have to come
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round to the soul what. There's
always a soul what to a what,
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just like there's got to be bad
news too good news, otherwise it's just
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news. So here's the question.
What does all of this have to do
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with you and me in our daily
lives? Well, it has to do
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with us, because this is the
same kind of mercy that God is calling
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on us to live out. That's
why he's talking. He's talking about us
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in the beattitudes. This is what
the citizens of my kingdom will look like.
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In Matthew, Chapter Nine, verse, starting in the ten first we
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read this. Now it happened is
Jesus sat at the table in the house
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the behold, many tax collectors and
sinners came and sat down with him in
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his disciples, and when the Pharisees
saw it, they said to his disciples,
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why does your teacher eat with tax
collectors and sinners? When Jesus heard
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that, he said to them those
who are well have no need of a
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physician, but those who are sick
go and learn what this means. I
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desire mercy and not sacrifice, for
I did not call come to call the
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righteous, but sinners to repentance.
Now, in this passage, Jesus is
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reaching out to people who deserve nothing
but woe and misery. Matthew makes a
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point to tell us these are notorious
sinners. These are the Ne'er do wells
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around town that everybody knows are guiltiest
sin. These are people, in other
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words, who clearly deserve whatever bad
end befalls them. But instead of giving
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them what they deserve, which is
ultimately rejection by God and eternity separated from
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him in hell, rather than giving
them that rejection, Jesus does the very
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opposite and he sits down to eat
with them and to have fellowship with them
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and when he's asked about it by
these selfrighteous Pharisees, he pretty much jumps
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down their throats. Don't, don't
read whatever Jesus says in the gospels like
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we kind of picture it, you
know, like he's some sort of kind
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of dirty hippie who's just sitting around
like, oh, man, go figure
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out what this means. He's not
like that. We tend to read it
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like that. But Jesus is a
passionate man and he says to them,
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go learn what this means. I
desire mercy and not sacrifice. That's an
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angry sort of comment, it's a
sarcastic sort of comment, it's abiding sort
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of comment what he's saying in essences. You look here. Why don't you
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go figure out what this means?
You conceated sons of Billil. I desire
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mercy, not sacrifice, and Jesus
jumps on these guys like this because he
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wants us to understand that it was
for this very purpose that he came into
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the world, to show undeserving people
the steadfast, covenantful love of the father
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that never fails. He wants to
teach us that what he wants for us
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is for us to act toward others
according to what Jesus deserves for them as
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their covenant Lord. And when he's
saying this, he's quoting from Jose has
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six. Josea six says this.
I desire mercy and not sacrifice, and
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the knowledge of God more than bird
offerings. Let me ask you this.
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Have you ever had someone just ride
you, you know, just just rail
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on you with complaints and criticisms and
an endless laundry list of all your failures?
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And then, when you just can't
take it anymore, when you're faced
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with the fact that you're not doing, and you probably cannot do, whatever
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it is these people want from you, that you just get so frustrated,
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you get so hungry that you just
say what do you want from me?
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Anybody ever been there? You know
that all of those pesky details aren't the
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real point. The endless list of
failures on your part is actually being by
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used by that person to point you
to something greater that they want from you.
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Oftentimes it's not done in a good
way. It's bad. But whether
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it's being done in a good way, for constructive purpose, or a sinful
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way for a sinful purpose, you
get to the end of your rope and
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you say what do you want from
me? Well, here in Joseah chapter
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six, that's what God is saying, that he does to his people.
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This is the purpose of the law, to ride US and crush US under
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the weight of his demands until we
cry out to him in despair. That's
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basically the summation of the John the
Baptist Ministry. He came to show people
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how sinful they were so that they
would cry out to God and ask what
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he really wants from them. And
then Jesus tells us give your heart to
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me. In Matthew Chapter Nine,
in Verse Thirteen, Jesus tells us what
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he wants from us. He wants
mercy. What God wants from us is
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that we would allow his mercy,
we would allow his steadfast, covenant,
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Faithful Love to go out from you
and me to people around us who don't
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deserve it. If you want examples
of what his this mercy looks like,
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all you have to do is look
at how Jesus ministered to people and then
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ask yourself, how can I do
what Jesus did in Matthew Nine? We've
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seen already that Jesus shares his friendship, he shares his time, his fellowship
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with people who deserve to be rejected
by him. And in our lives,
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Jesus's mercy is found similarly, whenever
we are lifting others burdens from them and
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showing them the steadfast, undeserved love
that they long for. Of the making
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of lists, there is no end, Solomon tells us, but or books
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in his case. But just to
reel off a few ideas. God's mercy
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on the poor is when we lift
their burden of poverty by helping them out
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of our abundance to be lifted out
of their poverty. God's mercy on the
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lonely is when we lift the burden
of their loneliness by befriending unlikable people.
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It's one thing to love someone,
it's quite another thing to like someone.
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Hopefully they go together, but befriending
unlikable people in spending time with the lonely
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until they are no longer alone.
His mercy on the hungry as when we
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lift the burden of their hunger by
opening our pantries until their stomachs are full.
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His mercy on the ignorant is when
we lift their burden of ignorance by
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teaching them how to read and by
helping them to understand God's word, and
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so on and so on. God's
mercy is new every morning, and so
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should ours be. God is calling
on us, in this be attitude,
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to be merciful. He's calling upon
us to love others with a love that
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does not treat them as they deserve
to be treated. Rather, we are
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called to ease or remove the misery
in their lives, the misery that scripture
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tells us that we all deserve,
and to give them that which they do
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not deserve, to give them the
love that Christ deserves for them. Remember,
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because of the son's covenant with the
Father, the father has treated Christ
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as we deserve to be treated,
so that now he might love us as
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Jesus deserves to be loved, and
as the Covenant people of Our Lord,
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we then are called to treat others
as though Christ has taken the misery and
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punishment they deserve and to love them
with a love that Christ has earned for
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them. But we've said that mercy
is a divine characteristic. So how,
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then, can we learn to show
this divine characteristic of mercy to others?
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Well, it's right there in Joseah, chapter six, right after God says
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that he desires mercy. He says
this, then, I desire mercy and
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not sacrifice and the knowledge of God. More than burnt offerings, we get
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the ability to show God's mercy to
others as we see and believe more and
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more that we have first received mercy
from him. So I want to ask
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else a couple of things as we
bring this in for a landing. Do
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you really believe? Do you really
believe that whatever bad stuff happens to you
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is deserved? Do you accept the
hard teaching of scripture that the shorter catechism
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summarizes? Do you see that really
you are a spiritual beggar who deserves nothing?
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Do you lament and mourn and weep, as James says, over the
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fact that you have brought all of
this on yourself through your own wickedness?
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Do you see that you long for
Eden but deserve the fire of Hell?
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And do you believe that, whatever
it is that you have, whether it
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is life or health or shelter,
whether it is money or children or food,
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even if it's just the simple experience
of peace, you get to watch
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a desert sunrise, do you believe
that every bit of it is nothing but
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the simple mercy of the Lord and
not anything that you deserve apart from Christ?
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And do you, as a consequence, thank God, the because of
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the Covenant that Christ has made for
you before the Throne of Almighty grace,
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that now all good things are yours
in Christ Jesus? Do you believe that?
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Because if you believe these things,
if you really really believe these things,
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then I will guarantee you that,
is you ponder on the wonder of
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that wonderful mercy, that that same
divine mercy will start to Herculate up in
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you like a spring until it becomes
a river of living water that brings life
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and health and peace to those who
are around you. For you see,
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when you really accept this good news, then you will begin to see the
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magnitude of God's mercy upon you.
When you believe these things, you will
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begin more and more to appreciate this
Wonderful Covenant Making, Covenant Keeping God who
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so loves you and me. You
will look around at the world differently every
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day, in every breath, with
every song or sunrise, with this song
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of every bird, with a every
good and pleasant thing that comes your way.
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In all these things, you will
start to rejoice in the mercy of
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your Lord, and then, as
you do, you will start to want
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more and more to show his mercy
unto others, so that they too can
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experience the joy of the mercy of
Christ through you. You will see that
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you have become a citizen of the
Kingdom of Heaven and, moreover, you
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will be a citizen that helps make
citizens of others, and that that is
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good news. Amen.
