The Pilgrim’s Path Part-5, Mathew 5:1-12
Written on their Hearts
Introduction
There are few things of human engineer which are more beautiful to watch than the marching of the Marine Corps Silent Drill Team. To see them move in perfect sink is astounding as they pivot on a dime, all in unison or in perfect order, as they loft their hand-polished, 10 and one-half pound, M-1 Garand rifles with fixed bayonets, through the air and catch them; often throwing them to one another.
With every step that is taken there is the smooth swooshing of their uniforms and the quick snap of their shoe heals as they come back together in seamless unison and the tight rap of their hands slapping the stock of their rifles. As a Marine Corps photographer stationed at the Marine Corps Air Station in Yuma, Arizona, I had the privilege of documenting photographically their winter dessert training.
I and the other photographers whom I worked with knew the sounds of the silent drill team very well. Our fathers, in their theology, expressed the sounds of the precision and snap of God’s actions; they have passed down to us a great legacy of the stirring sounds of the wrath of God. Many Modern ears, however, have heard only the soft swooshing of God’s favor, but have not listened for the rifle and the sharp click of the heel.
The beauty of the sovereign God of creation, though, is understood most full in the light of all who He is. He is just, but He also loves. He is strong, but He is also slow to anger and abundant in mercy. Kindness without justice is mere sentiment. Justice without mercy has no power to move or change the stubborn heart. The cross is the only place where the picture is in focus. God’s justice and mercy come together in His love for us sinners.
Transition
We speak often of grace as we gather here in the house of God but what of mercy. Are they exchangeable ideals? Are they but perhaps two sides of the same coin? Grace is how God has dealt with our sin. Mercy is how God deals with us. Grace is the act of God in granting sinful humanity a pardon from the penalty for sin.
Mercy is God’s love expressed to us even as we deal with the consequences of our own sin. In other words, Grace is the means by which Christ died for provide for us atonement and forgiveness for sins; mercy is Christ present with me, carrying me, holding me, assuring me, while I walk through the storms of this life.
Exposition
This morning we will follow along the Pilgrim’s Path one step further, examining the fifth principal along the way of the Master. In Matthew 5:7 Jesus says, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” Today, we will open our ears to the sounds of mercy marching alongside us as we travail the roads of life.
If we are to walk full in the knowledge of His strength, His holiness, and His justice; then we also must learn to reside in and rest in His grace, His forgiveness, and His mercy. Mercy is something to be experienced because mercy is grace’s practical counterpart. Often we confuse the two as though they were the same.
Grace is the means of His presence with me; mercy is His gift of His presence with me in the here and now circumstances of my day to day experience in this life. Grace is how God dealt with sin; mercy is how He deals with me.
Grace is defined as unmerited favor or unwarranted goodwill. Grace is the way that God relates to us in regard to our sin problem while mercy is the way God relates to me in the everyday problems of this life. It is according to God’s abundant grace that our sins have been forgiven. It is according to His abundant mercy that I find the peace, hope, and strength to face the challenges of every day.
In Romans 5:17 the Apostles Paul writes, “For if, by the trespass of the one man, death reigned through that one man, how much more will those who receive God’s abundant provision of grace and of the gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.”
According to grace sins are forgiven through faith in Jesus Christ. According to mercy God deals with each one of us even in our imperfection, inadequacy, and insufficiency. Where we are weak, He is strong. Where there is a need, He provides it. Were we are crooked, He gently straightens us out.
The story is told of a nursery worker about to plant a number of young saplings, some straight and some crooked, thus reasoned with himself – “These straight saplings will no doubt grow up to be fine trees without much attention on my part; but I will see if, by proper training, I cannot make something of the crooked ones also. There will be more trouble with them; no doubt, than with the others; but for that very reason I shall be the better satisfied should I succeed.”
In Nehemiah 13:22 the servant of God records his prayer to the Lord, “Remember me for this also, O my God, and show mercy to me according to your great love.”
In today’s passage, Christ commands that citizens of His Kingdom, citizens of the Kingdom of Heaven are to show mercy just as they have been shown mercy from God. In fact, at first glance it would appear as though Jesus is actually implying that only those who show mercy will receive it.
To be sure, there is a principal that runs throughout the Scriptures in regard to sewing and reaping. If we plant seeds of mercy in the lives of those around us we will be incredibly more likely to harvest mercy from others. Indeed, what Jesus is telling us relates not only to our relationship with God but with other people.
Perhaps you, like me have known someone in your life that was so unmerciful to others that no one in their lives, if given the chance, would likely show any mercy to them. What of the person who because of pain and disappointment, selfishness, or some other force driving them, is unmerciful all the days of their lives.
What of this person should they come to a place in their lives when they are no longer able to stand in their own strength and finding themselves in the place of needing mercy, help, love from those around them find that their lack of compassion on others has rendered them alone and without the very mercy that they so rarely shared with others, even as they are now in desperate need of mercy.
Here, in this passage, Jesus is telling us that if we are to experience mercy from God, we must be every willing to share mercy with others. He is calling us into a way of life which is characterized by reciprocal mercy. He is saying that if we want to elicit mercy from others then we must show it to them and even more that if are to fully experience the mercy of God then we must be willing to be not only vessels who receive mercy but conduits who share mercy with others.
St. John Chrysostom wrote that “Mercy imitates God and disappoints Satan.” But how do we in our limited ability imitate God? Is it not vanity of vanities to even suggest that we might imitate God who shows mercy to the prideful? Is not pure folly to suggest that we might be like God who even in knowing all of the thoughts of the hearts of every man still pours out mercy overflowing to all people?
The means by which we are able to imitate God is not in our own strength but in His very strength. The paradoxical nature of the imitation of God is that the very thing we seek – to extend mercy unto others as God has done for us – is not only difficult but impossible for us to do; that is, in our strength.
If we are to be enabled to extend the kind of radical mercy to others that God extends to us, this command can’t be simply something that we do; it has to be a part of who and what we are. “Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.” We are not called to acts of mercy. We are called to be merciful. We are called to act mercifully out of the abundance of the mercy which resides within us!
We are not called by God to do merciful things but to experience a life of cyclic mercy. As God is merciful to us in spire of our imperfections, we extend mercy to others in spite of their imperfections. As God moves in us, He moves through us.
Christina and I have had a painter in the house this week creating a very colorful and fun bedroom for Sebastian and Ephram. The painter is a man who cares deeply about his craft. In conversation with him this week I have learned a great deal more about the nature of painting than I had previously every considered. In painting an older home there is a lot of preparation work involved. Indeed, if the job is to look its best at the end then it is important to fill all of the cracks between the trim wood and the walls. It is equally important to fill in the gaps between the wall and the door frames and the walls. If the job is to be done properly so that it has lasting results the window frames have to be roughed up a little bit with sandpaper and then they have to be painted first with a primer and then the actual paint. If you don’t do all of the preparation work then the results are far less likely to last under difficult conditions; like the conditions of having my active boys and their Saint Bernard playing in their bedroom! The primer is so important that if you do not use it or apply it properly it is possible for the paint to just slide off as you apply it. When applied, the paint has to be able to stick to the wall to get proper coverage. In this case we were using some very high pigment Disney colors and because of the saturation of the colorant in the paint, when it is applied to a smooth wall or window frame without the proper preparation work the paint would just slip, drip, and slide all over the place. All the effort available in this case does little more than to spread the pigment around in streaks and blotches but never causes it to adhere. Though you would work for days on end, without the proper preparation work the paint would never cover the way it should have.
In Jeremiah 31:31-34 the prophet foretells the days in which we now live. “The time is coming," declares the LORD, "when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and with the house of Judah. It will not be like the covenant I made with their forefathers when I took them by the hand to lead them out of Egypt, because they broke my covenant, though I was a husband to them,” declares the LORD. "This is the covenant I will make with the house of Israel after that time,” declares the LORD. "I will put my law in their minds and write it on their hearts.
I will be their God, and they will be my people. No longer will a man teach his neighbor, or a man his brother, saying, ‘Know the LORD,’ because they will all know me, from the least of them to the greatest," declares the LORD. "For I will forgive their wickedness and will remember their sins no more.”
Without the proper preparation work of allowing God to write His law on our hearts, we will never be able to fulfill the command of Christ to be merciful unto others even as God is merciful to us. Later in record of Matthew 22:37-40, the Gospel writer records the words of Jesus where He says, “Jesus replied: ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. And the second is like it: ’Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the Law and the Prophets hang on these two commandments.”
In early centuries Christians did not refer to themselves as Christians but as “Followers of the Way.” They identified with Christ as followers of the way of the Master of Mercy. Early believers understood the value of strapping on their sandals and picking up their walking stick and following simply after Christ as they sojourned through this life on a pilgrimage of faith.
Fellow Pilgrim, thought the roads be dusty and our hands be callused from traversing the canyons, roads, and byways of our journey, I want to encourage you today to follow after Him with simplicity of heart.
Though scholars complicate matters of faith with robust rhetoric and graduated theological terminology, it is in fact a rather simple matter to follow Christ. First, point your heart toward God as we find Him revealed here in the pages of His Holy Word, and then reach out your hands toward the world as you mimic the very compassion of Christ on the Cross; loving even the unlovely; showing mercy even unto the merciless.
Conclusion
Hear the sounds today, dear saints of God, of the swooshing of His grace, the clicking of His justice, the beauty of His mercy in our lives. Allow the greatest commandment to be written on our very hearts; that command of Jesus to love God completely and to love one another as our selves, for upon these two all of the rest do surely hang.
Amen.
