The Merciful Series

Intro

Our text today is Matthew 5:7: “Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.”i Do you need mercy from God? Do you need a lot of mercy from the Lord? Do you need contined mercy from the Lord? Our answer to those questions alerts us to the importance of this text. Jesus is giving us a key that unlocks the flow of God’s mercy in our lives. I need mercy from God. When I open my heart in mercy toward others, I am open to receive God’s flow of mercy in my own life. “Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.” The NIV says, “They will be shown mercy.”

To understand this promise we must keep two things in mind.

First, the Beatitudes are not telling us how to get saved. God reached out to us in mercy when we are not merciful at all. When the Holy Spirit convicted us of sin, that was an expression of God’s mercy and grace. When the Holy Spirit drew us to the Lord and brought us into his kingdom, that is an act of mercy. It was not anything we earned. It was not anything we deserved. In the introduction to his first epistle, Peter wrote, “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to His abundant mercy has begotten us again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Peter 1:3). Your salvation did not come because you earned it through merciful behavior.ii You were born again because God reached out to you out of his heart of mercy. It was his mercy that motivated him to send his only begotten Son into this sin-cursed world to lay down his life for your salvation. It was his mercy that awakened you to the need for this great salvation. “According to His abundant mercy” he saved us. You did not earn it by your good works of mercy. You received it as a gift of grace from God.

Paul teaches the same thing in Ephesians 2. There he reminds Christians of their hopeless, helpless condition prior to salvation. We were “dead in trespasses and sins.” We were not earning mercy by being merciful. We were self-absorbed, uncaring, and under Satan’s influence. So, in verses 4-5 Paul credits our salvation, not to our acts of mercy, but to God’s outpouring of mercy to us. “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, 5 even when we were dead in trespasses, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you have been saved).” The New Testament as a whole makes it abundantly clear that our salvation is initiated by God, not because we were merciful, but because he is merciful. So what Jesus is teaching in the Beatitudes is not how to get saved. He is teaching his followers how to operate in his kingdom. We are to be merciful even as our Heavenly Father is merciful. Our mercy toward other people is evidence that we have received mercy from God and are operating according to his ways. As Christians, we learn from this beatitude that our exercise of mercy toward others positions us to receive the flow of God’s mercy in our own lives.

Secondly, the mercy we receive in this verse is primarily and reliably from God.

He may give it through people. But even if we are merciful, people will not always be merciful to us. Our confidence in receiving the promise in this text must be that God will be merciful to us. It is a mistake to think that if I will be merciful to someone, that person will be merciful to me. The person might respond in like kind. He should do so. But people don’t always show mercy to those who have been merciful to them.iii In 1 Samuel 25 David graciously protected Nabal’s property. But when David was in need, Nabal showed no mercy toward him. Look at Israel’s response to Jesus. His incarnation was an act of mercy. His offer of salvation was an act of mercy. He healed their sick and delivered the oppressed out of a heart of mercy. Did they treat him with mercy at his trial. No, they cried out for his crucifixion. They showed him no mercy at all. If you think you can get other people to show you mercy by being merciful to them, you will be disappointed. Some may do so. But you won’t be able to count on that. What you can count on is this: If you will extend mercy to other people, God will be merciful to you. You will not lose your reward. God will see to that.

The reward in the latter part of our text is something we all need. It is something God will do. “Blessed are the merciful, For they shall obtain mercy.