Living it Out - Matthew 5:7 - August 21, 2011
Series: Kingdom Life – A World Turned Upside Down #5
As we get started together this morning I’ll ask you to take your Bibles and turn with me, please, to the Gospel of Matthew. We’ll be reading Matthew 5:7 as we continue our study of the Beatitudes. And this morning we reach something of a transition in our series. To this point we have examined the first four of the Beatitudes - Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Each of these deals primarily with our response to, and our relationship with, God. We are broken in spirit as the depths of our spiritual need is made evident to us, we mourn our sin and find comfort in the forgiveness and grace of God, accepting that God’s ways are better than our ways we surrender everything we are, and have, and ever hope to be, and we turn it over to Him, and we seek after His righteousness – His Word, His Ways, His Will, in each day. The focus is on the work of God within us drawing us to Himself.
But the focus of the next four Beatitudes is different. They are not primarily focused on our relationship with God, but rather our relationship with one another. They are evidence of the work of God within us drawing us, not just to Himself, but turning our hearts to one another that He might be glorified as we do life together, that the hurting might find healing, that the lost might be found, that we might be, as His hands and feet, to everyone we meet.
Let’s read Matthew 5:7 together, out loud. “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.” (Matthew 5:7)
What exactly is mercy? First of all, we could say that mercy, is a characteristic, or a quality, of God. It is something that is evidenced in, and lived out through, God Himself. Ephesians 2:4 reads like this: “But because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions.” (Ephesians 2:4–5, NIV) We who have been saved from the wrath of God, which will be poured out against all unrighteousness, are recipients of God’s great mercy, for in Titus 3:5 we read that God “saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of His mercy.” (Titus 3:5) If you are here today and you have been born again, not of the flesh but of the Spirit of God, then it is not because you are a good person, a moral person, a righteous person – or any other type of person that you might be tempted to name. You are here, we are here, because of the mercy of God. God is merciful! He is full of mercy, He is rich in mercy, He abounds in mercy.
But mercy is also what God requires of those who are His. Our society has it backwards. It is often tempted to view mercy as a weakness, or a character flaw. God takes the values of this world and turns them upside down. In God’s economy, mercy, becomes an essential characteristic of His people. It’s not a weakness, it’s a strength, because it is living out the heart of God Himself.
People often want to know what God requires of them – what’s God looking for from us? How is it that God wants us to be living? In the book of Micah we read of another people who asked those same questions of God. They said, “With what shall I come before the LORD and bow down before the exalted God? Shall I come before him with burnt offerings, with calves a year old? Will the LORD be pleased with thousands of rams, with ten thousand rivers of olive oil? Shall I offer my firstborn for my transgression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my soul?” (Micah 6:6–7, NIV) Now we don’t use the same language today but we are asking the same questions. And the answer that is given to them is this: “He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” (Micah 6:8, NIV)
What does God require of us? The same things – to act justly – to love mercy – and to walk humbly, with Him. To act justly simply means to do what is right and good in the eyes of God. Isaiah 1:17 - “Learn to do right; seek justice. Defend the oppressed. Take up the cause of the fatherless; plead the case of the widow.” (Isaiah 1:17, NIV) Jeremiah 22:3 - “This is what the LORD says: Do what is just and right. Rescue from the hand of the oppressor the one who has been robbed. Do no wrong or violence to the foreigner, the fatherless or the widow, and do not shed innocent blood in this place.” (Jeremiah 22:3, NIV) Those are examples of what God means when He asks us to walk justly.
To walk humbly means to put God’s ways above our ways, to put His will above our own. 2 Kings 22:19 “Because your heart was responsive and you humbled yourself before the LORD when you heard what I have spoken … and because you tore your robes and wept in my presence, I also have heard you, declares the LORD.” (2 Kings 22:19, NIV) To walk humbly is to respond to the Word of God that He is speaking to you – speaking to you through the Bible, through your times of prayer, through messages like these.
So that’s what it means to act justly, and to walk humbly, but we’re still left wondering what it means to love mercy and we need to answer that question because this is what God requires of us; this is what He’s looking for and it’s the merciful who are blessed for they are the ones who will receive mercy. Hosea 6.6 – God declares: “I desire mercy, not sacrifice.” (Hosea 6:6) Mercy is what God requires, what God desires, of those who are called by His name. And mercy is what the Christian Church is often lacking.
And you can see that truth in the story of the Good Samaritan that was read for us earlier, can’t you? It’s a story that revolves around four men. The one man is robbed and beaten and left for dead. Along comes a priest, supposedly a man of God. He sees the man but at the same time he doesn’t see him. He seems him as an object to be despised, for to tend to him might make the priest himself unclean, and so he passes by on the other side of the road and leaves the man to suffer.
Next comes a Levite. If anyone was going to help it ought to have been one of these two men. This is one of their own country-men who has been so poorly treated. But this Levite, like the priest, could not be bothered.
It’s the Samaritan – a man who would have had no love for the Jews for they had no love for him – it takes the Samaritan to be moved to pity by the man’s needs. And it’s not a pity, not a compassion, that could look and sorrow and move on. No! It’s a compassion that’s moved to action. He gets his own hands dirty as he cleans the man’s wounds, and bandages him, and gives him refreshment to drink. He inconveniences himself by placing the beaten man on his own donkey, brings him to an inn and at his own expense pays for the man’s room and board.
At the end of the parable Jesus asks, “Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The answer? “The one who had mercy on him.” That story gives us an example of what it means to love mercy. Mercy is compassion moved to action. It’s what we see in the way in which the Samaritan tends to the wounded man. All three of the men saw the need - but only the Samaritan responded to it. Mercy is not simply being moved by a need. We’re moved by the needs we see all around us. You see pictures of starving children, with their sad eyes and bellies distended from hunger, and the hearts of most are moved to pity them, to feel compassion for them. You’re walking in downtown Winnipeg and you see the homeless man on the street and your heart sorrows for him. That’s compassion, that’s pity, but that’s not mercy. Mercy requires you to put that sorrow, that pity, that compassion, into action. Mercy is to act on the need that you’ve seen. It’s to feed the hungry, to care for the homeless, to defend the needy, to provide for the poor.
In the book of James we read these words, “Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it?” (James 2:15–16, NIV) What good indeed? That might be compassion but it’s not mercy and it’s mercy that God is looking for from us. Why? Because it’s mercy that we’ve received from Him! God might have looked down upon man, lost in sin and condemned, and He might have sorrowed and grieved for the relationship between Himself and His creation that was sundered by our sin but that would not have been mercy. But God did not leave it there. His love moved Him to action. Romans 5:8 says this: “But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8, NIV) His compassion moved Him to action and compassion + action = mercy. Mercy is compassion demonstrated – lived out – by us.
Here’s another example of mercy. “A young boy was sent to the corner store by his mother to buy a loaf of bread. He was gone much longer than it should have taken him. When he finally returned, his mother asked, “Where have you been? I’ve been worried sick about you.”
“Well,” he answered, “there was a little boy with a broken bike who was crying. So I stopped to help him.”
“I didn’t know you knew anything about fixing bikes,” his mother said.
“I don’t,” he replied. “I just stayed there and cried with him.”” (Rich Young, Blessed Are The Merciful, www.sermoncentral.com) Folks, that’s mercy. In some small way it’s entering into another’s pain and sorrow and suffering and sharing it with them.
The Greek word translated in Matthew 5.7 as “mercy,” emphasizes the wretchedness of human misery but it also conveys alongside of that the desire to do what one can to relieve that same misery. Blessed are the merciful – friends, to be merciful is to be actively compassionate – to withhold punishment from those who deserve it (as God has done for us) and it’s to help others in need (as the Samaritan did for the man who had been left for dead). Mercy is how God has touched our lives and it’s one of the ways in which our lives are meant to be touching others. Many are moved by the needs they see around them – few are moved to do anything about it – those who do so, are the merciful – those who do so, are living out what God desires of them.
Some of you are holding in bondage those who have hurt you. You’re refusing to forgive. You’re hanging on to all the pain and the hurt and the bitterness and the resentment and the humiliation. And in your own suffering you are withholding mercy and in doing so you are transgressing the very heart of God.
Some of us are so wrapped up in our own little worlds that we don’t see the need around us, we pretend not to recognize it, and like the Priest and the Levite we walk right by it on the other side of the street when the heart of God is crying out for us to see, not the problem, nor the issue, but to see the person underneath it all – to see them through God’s eyes as wounded and hurting and in need.
I want to share with you a story that Pastor Jim Cymbala tells of one of his own experiences. “It was Easter Sunday and I was so tired at the end of the day that I just went to the edge of the platform, pulled down my tie and sat down and draped my feet over the edge. It was a wonderful service with many people coming forward. The counselors were talking with these people.
As I was sitting there I looked up the middle aisle, and there in about the third row was a man who looked about fifty, disheveled, filthy. He looked up at me rather sheepishly, as if saying, “Could I talk to you?”
We have homeless people coming in all the time, asking for money or whatever. So as I sat there, I said to myself, though I am ashamed of it, “What a way to end a Sunday. I’ve had such a good time, preaching and ministering, and here’s a fellow probably wanting some money for more wine.”
He walked up. When he got within about five feet of me, I smelled a horrible smell like I’d never smelled in my life. It was so awful that when he got close, I would inhale by looking away, and then I’d talk to him, and then look away to inhale, because I couldn’t inhale facing him. I asked him, “What’s your name?”
“David.”
“How long have you been on the street?”
“Six years.”
“How old are you?”
“Thirty-two.” He looked fifty--hair matted; front teeth missing; wino; eyes slightly glazed.
“Where did you sleep last night, David?”
“Abandoned truck.”
I keep in my back pocket a money clip that also holds some credit cards. I fumbled to pick one out thinking; I’ll give him some money. I won’t even get a volunteer. They are all busy talking with others. Usually we don’t give money to people. We take them to get something to eat.
I took the money out. David pushed his finger in front of me. He said, “I don’t want your money. I want this Jesus, the One you were talking about, because I’m not going to make it. I’m going to die on the street.”
I completely forgot about David, and I started to weep for myself. I was going to give a couple of dollars to someone God had sent to me. See how easy it is? I could make the excuse I was tired. There is no excuse. I was not seeing him the way God sees him. I was not feeling what God feels.
But oh, did that change! David just stood there. He didn’t know what was happening. I pleaded with God, “God, forgive me! Forgive me! Please forgive me. I am so sorry to represent You this way. I’m so sorry. Here I am with my message and my points, and You send somebody and I am not ready for it. Oh, God!”
Something came over me. Suddenly I started to weep deeper, and David began to weep. He fell against my chest as I was sitting there. He fell against my white shirt and tie, and I put my arms around him, and there we wept on each other. The smell of His person became a beautiful aroma. Here is what I thought the Lord made real to me: If you don’t love this smell, I can’t use you, because this is why I called you where you are. This is what you are about. You are about this smell.
Christ changed David’s life. He started memorizing portions of Scripture that were incredible. We got him a place to live. We hired him in the church to do maintenance, and we got his teeth fixed. He was a handsome man when he came out of the hospital. They detoxed him in 6 days. He spent that Thanksgiving at my house. He also spent Christmas at my house. When we were exchanging presents, he pulled out a little thing and he said, “This is for you.” It was a little white hanky. It was the only thing he could afford.
A year later David got up and talked about his conversion to Christ. The minute he took the mic and began to speak, I said, “The man is a preacher.” This past Easter we ordained David. He is an associate minister of a church over in New Jersey. And I was so close to saying, “Here, take this; I’m a busy preacher.” (David Huss, Share Your Life, www.sermoncentral.com)
Folks, we can get so full of ourselves that we miss the very people that Jesus would have reached out to, that He died for. You’ve missed them, and I’ve missed them – that’s not the question. The question we should be asking is, “What about next time?” Because there will be a next time – there will be a next time when God brings into your life someone who is hurting, and needy and suffering, in some way, shape or form, and you are going to be the instrument that God is calling for to bring forth the music of His love in this person’s life.
What are we to do when that day comes – and it’ll come sooner than you think – what are we to do? Jesus tells the parable of the Good Samaritan and asks ““Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?” The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.” [And] Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.”” (Luke 10:36–37, NIV) Go and do likewise. Go and show mercy. Go and live out compassion.
How can we grow in mercy? Well this is something of an outflow of the reality of those first four Beatitudes in a person’s life. When those first four are tender and real and alive in our lives then mercy towards others tends to flow from within us. When our focus in on God He’ll take and use that but when our focus is on ourselves we’ll miss the opportunities that are all around us. If you want some practical advice in how to grow in mercy here are a few thoughts.
First, remember the mercy you’ve received from God. What could God possibly ask of you that would be greater than the mercy He has already shown us? Jesus says that he who has been forgiven little loves only a little but he who has been forgiven much, loves much. (Luke 7:47) The same applies to mercy because mercy is really love in action. When we consider the tremendous mercy we’ve received at the hand of God we are far more willing to show
mercy to others.
Secondly, see the person behind the need. It doesn’t matter so much what the need is. Behind it there is a living breathing human being made in the image of God. Look past the label – drunk, drug addict, prostitute, homeless, or whatever it may be – and ask God to help you see the person that Jesus died for.
Thirdly, understand that this is what God is calling us to. Scripture calls us “ambassadors of Christ.” Jesus has shown us how. You might be tempted to cry out, “But this person doesn’t deserve mercy. You don’t know how they hurt me! Or Don’t you know they got themselves into this mess?” Aren’t you glad that God didn’t say those things about you? Because He could have, couldn’t He?
Finally, allow yourself to be moved to action. Remember that compassion doesn’t become mercy until it is moved to act on behalf of the needy. If your compassion isn’t resulting in action than you’re not living out mercy. It might be as simple as sitting and crying with someone whose lost a loved one. It might be as deep and as difficult as forgiving someone and setting them free from your anger. It could go as far as taking someone into your life and helping them get back onto their feet. The possibilities are endless – but they all require something of you.
Pastor Adrian Rogers, in one of his sermons, described the three types of people that you will find in any church or community. (Brian Bill, The Benefits of Showing Mercy, www.sermoncentral.com as taken from Adrian Rogers, The Magnificence of Mercy, Bellevue Baptist Church, Houston, TX) Listen closely and consider which one best describes you.
There are the “Beater-Uppers” – Those who steal, kill and destroy. These people say, “What’s yours is min, and I’m going to get it.” They would be the robbers in the parable of the Good Samaritan.
Next, there are the “Passer-Uppers” – Those who see the need but walk on by. These people say, “What’s mine is mine and I’m going to keep it.” They would be like the priest and the Levite.
And finally there are the “Picker-Uppers” – Those in who compassion is moved to action. These people say, “What’s mine is yours and I’m going to help you.” This would be those, like the Samaritan, who are living out the word of God and putting love into action. These are the merciful.
We know which one we are called to be – but which are you?
Let’s pray.
