This is really one of the big issues in the world today. There are many merciful people who are not Christians, and many unforgiving people who claim to be Christians. There are many meek non-Christians and many pride filled Christians. The point is that you will never be able to always distinguish a true Christian from a non-Christian solely based on outward appearance or even behavior. Lots of people can be good, but not necessarily be saved souls.
If you could, we might look at zealous Muslims who pray to Mecca several times a day and say they are zealous, maybe they know the real God. Or the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons who are constantly going door to door, wow those are committed Christians.
Then we look at the reformed alcoholic biker who’s heart has been utterly transformed by Christ, even though he still rides a Harley and hangs out with less than desirable looking people to minister and witness to them, and we say there’s no way that person could be a Christian.
These qualities in a Christian come from a vital, intimate relationship with Christ and that is often unseen. It’s very easy then for a person who doesn’t know Jesus to say, “I’m poor in spirit (I don’t think too highly of myself), I grieve over the state of the world, I am gentle, I am compassionate, I do my best to be good”. These qualities are not a map for salvation though, but a mirror of a transformed Christian heart.
We can read these beatitudes and with strong personal discipline pull them off fairly consistently. But that’s not what they are about. The things that you will see missing in the non-Christian person or even the Christian who is attempting to gain salvation or God’s approval through doing these things, will be the blessings and the fruit. They will not inherit the Kingdom of heaven, they will not be satisfied, they will not be comforted, they will not see God, they will not be children of God and so on.
Because what’s missing? A relationship with Christ which transforms our hearts, and the hunger and thirst for him that we saw last week. These are not instructions, but they are descriptions of true Christians who have a saving relationship with Jesus, and are being sanctified by the indwelling Holy Spirit. They are not sanctifying themselves.
The absence of these qualities is more telling than their presence. Those who profess to be Christians should all manifest all these qualities. So, many unbelieving people can certainly be good merciful people. But Jesus is saying that if you are a Christian and you don’t have these qualities than clearly you are not being sanctified. In a sense these are defaults for a Christian. You can’t not display these characteristics and still be a growing believer. Something has stopped the process in you.
A.W. Pink calls these qualities the birthmarks of the Christian. If someone looks at your skin and doesn’t see them, there is a problem. They are snapshots into the heart of a true Christian, and Jesus always puts the heart, character, before conduct.
So to put it as simply as I can, this paradox shows that even though it is possible for a non-Christian to display many of these character traits and attitudes through their own effort, it is impossible for a growing disciple of Christ not to display them. Jesus is telling us flat out, if this is not you, professing Christian person, you need to go back to the beginning, back to the drawing board, and see what you missed along the way.
Anyone can be good, but they’ll probably also believe they are good and are going to whatever they believe heaven is, and Jesus is saying if you haven’t become poor in spirit and repented, I don’t care how good you are, you are still vile to my Father because you in your sinful nature have not been saved through my blood. A good person who has not repented is still a dead good person.
This is about a process that God takes you through starting at the first beatitude, and He will not skip over any of them. I realize my true nature before God, it grieves me deep in my heart, I become meek because of this knowledge, but I don’t shrink away from life, it develops a desperate hunger and thirst for God and His righteousness and salvation that no non-Christian or counterfeit Christian will ever have.
And this will inevitably lead to our beatitude today. We are finally filled, satisfied by the righteousness of God, and as we continue to hunger and thirst, we continue to be filled until we what – overflow. If we are filled with God’s righteousness and the core of it is His mercy toward sinners, than we will be merciful.
What does merciful mean in the Bible? There are basically three Greek words in the New Testament used for compassion or mercy, but the one used here is not about feelings, though it comes from feelings of pity that literally wrench our guts, this one here is about taking action to relieve other’s misery. It is mercy as provision. Again, exactly as Jesus did when he healed people, fed people, and changed water into wine.
This is not a command, but it makes us aware that the lack of mercy in a professing believer is a bad sign. Listen to John in 1 John 3 and 4, “Let us not love one another with words or tongue but with actions and in truth… If anyone sees his brother in need but has no pity on him, how can the love of God be in him?... For anyone who does not love his brother, whom he has seen cannot love God, whom he has not seen.” What perfect logic.
We can talk mercy all we want but if we still walk past the robbed and beaten person bleeding on the side of the road, do we actually have mercy? Not in the sense Jesus is speaking of here.
Nowhere is it put better than in the book of James chapter 2:14-17, “What good is it, my brothers, if someone says he has faith but does not have works? Can that faith save him?
15 If a brother or sister is poorly clothed and lacking in daily food, 16 and one of you says to them, "Go in peace, be warmed and filled," without giving them the things needed for the body, what good is that? 17So also faith by itself, if it does not have works, is dead.”
Here we see a relationship between faith and mercy, and of course elsewhere we hear that if we don’t forgive we are not forgiven, and here in Matthew Jesus again equates receiving mercy with giving mercy. It goes back to all the other beatitudes. By this time we should be so amazed by God’s mercy that there is no way we can hold it back, it’s overflowing from us.
Those words of James also reflect something common in the church. Where we pray for people, rather than acting on their behalf when we have the capacity to do so. Prayer is important, but we can’t use prayer as an excuse not to act when we’re able.
So far we have just talked about mercy in the sense of meeting physical, material, or emotional needs. Most people do this to some degree especially when there’s some kind of crisis or disaster. But what will be missing in non-Christians and unconverted Christians is mercy for the souls of people. Mercy as Forgiveness and Salvation. Our mercy should always include mercy for the hell destined soul of a person. Sure it’s great to meet a need, but that will be short term.
Again we see that for Jesus every miracle he did was to ultimately get people to believe. He showed mercy so that people would come to him. How often did he say, “Your faith has made you well?” So we’re talking not just of humanitarian aid here, but of spiritual mercy.
A wonderful atheist doctor who saves many people’s lives will not be spiritually saved by his actions. If that were so, anybody could do some good things and be saved by a God they didn’t believe in. That’s nonsense according to the Bible, but doesn’t the world and many modern churches want it to be true. Be good, God loves you, he would never send a good person to hell. Even my rational mind wants to believe that, but it’s clearly not what God himself teaches.
Just in the gospels of Matthew and Luke we are giving insight into the idea of Christians giving mercy to the whole person. Six times preaching the Word and healing are mentioned in the same phrase, and in every case preaching is mentioned first. Why? Because without belief the healing couldn’t take place, that is why it’s called “faith healing”. Jesus often equated healing with sins being forgiven, so we see that the spiritual healing is by far more important to Him than the physical. That’s why he didn’t and doesn’t heal everyone.
As one of my favorite teachers John Stott observes, “Naturally if we have to choose between evangelism and compassionate service, we would have to agree that the spiritual and eternal have a higher priority than the material and temporal. But we don’t have to choose, or very seldom at least”.
Mercy is one of the most visible characteristics of God’s nature. Existence of the universe itself depends on God’s mercy. Every breath we breathe is God’s mercy, and it is this that should motivate the Christian’s mercy. Not that we will receive mercy if we are merciful, we already have, but that because of God’s outrageous mercy we can’t help being merciful.
Again, if we weren’t poor in spirit and if we were not meek we wouldn’t see it this way, we would think we deserved everything we have. That’s the key here, we don’t deserve mercy, by definition mercy is undeserved, so we in turn have to give it to everybody whether we think they deserve it or not. It brings joy to be merciful to those who don’t deserve it. If it doesn’t your heart is not right.
The greatest test of mercy is the one Jesus went through. The majority of people were his enemies just as the majority of people in the world today are enemies of God. Yet in his pity for them, he came and died and showed mercy most of all to his enemies, which at one time were you and I.
It’s easy to be merciful to the starving child, but can you be merciful to the person who offends you, who cheats you, who beats his wife? That is the true test, to see other people’s offensive behaviour and words as something coming from a wounded soul that desperately needs Jesus. Someone who is a slave of Satan as we once were. Or do we assert our rights and look for an opportunity to punish the person, or do we disown the person and have nothing to do with them when God may want to use us to save them?
Think of Hebrews 12:2 where it says, “Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame and sitting down at the right hand of God.” This act of incredible mercy ultimately brought him great joy amidst the incredible pain.
The other night coming home from Winnipeg we got to pull someone out of the ditch. We couldn’t have done it before with our van, but now with the truck and a tow strap we easily pulled him out, and it was exciting. Even though my hands were frozen, it felt so good to be able to help like that. And one of the reasons there was no hesitation is because we have had the same courtesy done to us on two occasions. There’s no way we would pass by without helping.
We must not misunderstand this mercy either. It is not a laissez faire sit back and be tolerant of everything attitude. No, God hates sin and one of the ways he shows mercy is to take disciplinary action. He will at times in his mercy make us physically and emotionally uncomfortable so that we can be recipients of spiritual mercy. As a church we can’t sit back and allow sin and dissension to reign free, that’s not mercy, it’s usually fear or laziness.
With this beatitude and all of them for that matter, they could be written backwards. This one could read better as “those who have received mercy, are the merciful”.
Or “those who have the Kingdom of Heaven, are poor in spirit”, or “those who have been filled, hunger and thirst for righteousness”. Get it, they could all read that way, and possibly that’s how the Greek speaking people understood them. Just like everything in French seems backwards to us.
Let’s put it this way, if you’re praying for mercy and you haven’t forgiven someone else, you will have little confidence in your prayer and will be convicted of your lack of mercy when you ask for God’s. These beatitudes cause us to search ourselves. These are pictures of saved people. And practically, our purpose on this earth as members of Christ’s body is to do what we are commanded to do, to be messengers of God’s saving mercy through our generosity and proclaiming of the Gospel.
We can’t leave here today without talking about mercy as Christian giving in the church. Let’s face it, in our world today money and mercy are very closely related. We are told in 2 Corinthians to be cheerful givers, that God will make all grace abound to us so we can have all sufficiency in all things at all times. In Romans 12, that we should show mercy cheerfully. I think this excerpt may say it best about the state of Christian mercy today (p178-179 of Blanchard’s commentary).
I have been in mourning over the state of many of our brothers and sisters, and children around the world. Is it right that a Christian, or for that matter a would be Christian, which includes all people, is sleeping outside next to a little sewage creek, seeking fresh water miles away, eating every few days, with no bible? And look at us this morning.
We don’t seem too excited about or effective being in our community spreading the gospel. We don’t seem to like putting ourselves in uncomfortable situations for God, but we expect others to be uncomfortable by coming to our church. No wonder they think we just want their money. Are we willing to make ourselves even a little bit uncomfortable financially by giving in secret, trusting the Lord to provide as he promises?
People if we aren’t willing to test our faith, (which is different than testing God) by acting on his promises in obedience, be willing to face discomfort and watch Jesus come through, what are we doing as a church? A church that has no fruit outside its walls is a religious country club.
I am not talking about giving out of guilt but overflowing out of mercy and grace, and gratitude.
Here’s the deal. We are giving a good chunk of money to TMBC and many of us can see the fruit of that money. It’s nice to see the tangible results of our giving, so I am proposing we start giving more to projects that have a real tangible impact.
I’m all for supporting missionaries and we have increased our budget to reflect that, but I think we would sense and see more of God working if we for instance got a fresh water well for a village, something we could see video or pictures of, or maybe even visit one day. Or this Vietnam church building, very tangible. Or something more local. (Talk about what we are doing with the food bank)
Not just throwing money at things but also attaching the Gospel to it. People are much more receptive to the Gospel when it’s preceded by a miracle or visible expression of God’s love. Let’s face it, for a tiny remote village in Africa to get an endless fresh water supply would be a miracle.
To start this ball rolling I am suggesting we all tithe our income tax refunds to a specific project. I have researched several that are Gospel centered, fiscally responsible organizations. Now I can’t dictate to you where your money should go, but to have the kind of impact we want to have, we need to be somewhat single-minded.
I have put a survey in your mailboxes with some choices on it, and I would like you to check off what project you would like to do with your tax money. Not only will we see tangible results, but we can also be amazed at how God will provide for his work to take place. For instance just this past week we got an unexpected $2000 from Ted`s estate.
For instance there is the Water project started years ago by a group of Canadian teens, where we could get a fresh water well for an entire village for $6500 dollars. These guys also maintain the wells and repair non-functioning wells, because many organizations just put them in and leave them with no one to maintain them.
Other good projects can be done through places like World Vision. We can give people food and an opportunity to make an income. We could give a village a stable full of producing animals for only $1200 dollars. We could stock a mobile medical clinic with medicine and supplies, supply solar energy, build a home for a family. These to me are over and above just sponsoring individual children, and we can see the results. And we will feel more a part of what God is doing through our giving.
Let’s not just be a comfortable church that has pleasant Sunday morning worship times. Church health is not just good Services and lack of conflict. Let’s be a church that lives out Christ’s love and mercy in this world, a spirit powered church acting in faith and having a God-sized impact in the world. Let’s simply let him work in His way through our obedience and mercy.
