Blessed Are The Merciful
TEXT: Matthew 5:7
INTRODUCTION
D. 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.”
E. Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy.”
F. Continuing down thru Beatitudes looking at ingredients of Christian character
I. DEFINITION OF MERCY
A. Word that is full of meaning
1. Gr – eleos – kindness or good will toward the hurting & needy,
joined with a desire to help them
B. Charles Swindoll – It does not mean only to sympathize with a person in the
popular sense of the term; it does not mean simply to feel sorry for someone
in trouble. It means the ability to get right inside the other person’s skin.
Clearly this is much more than an emotional wave of pity; this demands a
deliberate effort of the mind & of the will. It denotes a sympathy which is not
given, as it were, from the outside, but which comes from a deliberate
identification with the other person, until we see things as he sees them, &
feel things as he feels them.
1. What the little boy did in the opening story – he didn’t know anything
about fixing bikes, but he could sense the disappointment and hurt of
having a broken bike. So he just sat down & cried with him
C. Mercy shows itself in different ways in our lives
II. MERCY SHOWS ITSELF THROUGH FORGIVING OTHERS
A. As we are able to get into the skin of another, to feel what they’re feeling, &
to see things from their point of view, forgiving them will become much easier.
B. Problem is that when we’ve been hurt or wronged, being merciful & forgiving
isn’t the first thing that comes to our minds. We want to get back.
(IL) Like the man who went to the doctor & the doctor told him he had rabies. The man immediately took out a piece of paper and a pen and started writing feverishly. The doctor thought he was writing his will so he said, “Wait a minute. No need to write your will. You’re not going to die.” The man replied, “Doc, I’m not writing my will. I’m making a list of people I want to go bite.”
1. Hurt people hurt people
2. We try to forgive – we sometimes bury the hatchet but leave the
handle sticking out of the ground
C. Struggle is that we want justice not mercy
1. To forgive means giving up our sense of justice
a. Jerry Bridges in The Practice of Godliness, writes, “Forgiveness
cost God his Son on the cross, but what does it cost us to
forgive one another? Forgiving costs us our sense of justice.
We want to see ‘justice’ done, but the justice we envision
satisfies our own interests. We must realize that justice has
been done. God is the only rightful administrator of justice in all
of creation, & his justice has been satisfied. In order to forgive
our brother, we must be satisfied with God’s justice & forgo the
satisfaction of our own.”
b. Justice already served when Jesus died on the cross
(1) Where He died not only for your sin, but also for the sin
of the one who wronged you
D. Mercy shows itself thru forgiving others
III. MERCY SHOWS ITSELF THRU HELPING THOSE IN NEED
A. Scripture full of exhortations and examples of caring for the needy
1. Prov 14:21. He who despises his neighbor sins, but blessed is he who
is kind to the needy.
2. Prov 14:31. He who oppresses the poor shows contempt for their
Maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.
3. Acts 4:34-35. There were no needy persons among them. For from
time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.
(IL) Tony Campolo story – a friend of his, we’ll call Anne, was a divorced,
middle-aged lady who was rather well off. She wanted very much to go to Calcutta to work with Mother Theresa. She wrote to Mother Theresa & told her how much she wanted to come & do this. She waited for a response and finally got a letter from Mother Theresa. It simply said, “I received your letter wanting to come to India. Thank you for wanting to come, but go and find your own Calcutta.”
B. I’ve personally become aware of the following in the last week or so
1. Mother who is unable to help her children with their homework because she has dyslexia and can’t read past a 4th grade level
2. 18 yr old gets a phone call from the mainland saying her father has been in an accident & is paralyzed from the neck down. He’ll probably never walk again.
3. Parent’s walk into the bedroom of their 6 month old & find that he’s not breathing
4. Promotion list comes out and a particular name is not on it
5. Husband comes home from work to hear his wife say that she wants to leave him & go back to the mainland with their son. They’ve been married less than a year & been here for two months.
C. There are needy people all around us
1. We’ve got our own Calcutta right here.
2. None of these people work with me. None of them live on my street.
3. They work with you. They live on your street.
D. Mercifully reach out & touch them – be the hand of God extended & meet their needs
III. WE DO THAT BE BEING APPROPRIATELY PERSONALLY INVOLVED IN THEIR
LIVES
A. We have to get involved – being merciful isn’t a spectator sport
1. Too busy, too many commitments, too much responsibility, ‘to do’
list is too long
2. We hurry & rush to get things accomplished so we can hurry & rush
to accomplish more.
3. Don’t have time to be merciful
B. Archibald Hart - Healing Life’s Hidden Addictions - test to see if we’re even
addicted to hurry (True or False) – KEEP SCORE
1. Even though I have never done it, I think I would enjoy riding a
motorcycle
2. I get restless whenever I have nothing to do
3. I frequently look @ my watch or a clock nearby
4. In conversations, I prefer to get right to the point rather than beat
around the bush
5. People who talk slowly irritate me
6. I cannot sit still for very long
7. I often find myself finishing other people’s sentences for them
8. When I go on vacation, I prefer a place with lots of activity, not a quiet
place
9. I prefer to use the express line in a supermarket
10. Long delays @ traffic signals irritate me
11. I hate standing in line for anything
12. I often have more tasks to do in a day than time to do them
13. When I try to go to sleep, my mind often rehearses all the things I
haven’t been able to accomplish that day
14. When I am delayed & arrive late at an engagement, I am irrationally
upset because I can’t stand being late for anything
15. I have difficulty finding time for a haircut or even for a regular physical
checkup
C. Grading
0-3 True: Normal hurriedness
4-7 True: Moderate tendency to be hurried; you could benefit from
slowing down
8-15 True: You are clearly addicted to hurry & urgently need to slow down
D. Need the prayer of Orin Crain
"Slow Me Down, Lord"
Slow me down, Lord.
Ease the pounding of my heart by the quieting of my mind.
Steady my hurried pace with a vision of the eternal reach of time.
Give me, amid the confusions of the day, the calmness of the everlasting hills.
Break the tensions of my nerves & muscles w/ the soothing of the singing
streams that live in my memory.
Teach me the art of taking minute vacations - of slowing down to look at a flower,
or chat w/ a friend, to pat a dog, to smile at a child, to read a few lines from a
good book.
Slow me down, Lord, and inspire me to send my roots deep into the soil of life’s
enduring values, that I may grow toward my greater destiny.
Remind me each day that the race is not always to the swift; that there is more to
life than increasing its speed.
Let me look upward to the towering oak and know that it grew great and strong
because it grew slowly and well.
E. Slow down, find your Calcutta, get involved, and be merciful
IV. BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL, FOR THEY SHALL OBTAIN MERCY
A. Do you want to receive mercy?
1. Then you need to show it
B. There are certain areas where God has seemingly set up a law of
proportionality
1. Mat 18 - God won’t forgive us if we don’t forgive others
2. Mat 7 - God will judge us in proportion to the way we judge others
3. Here – God will show us mercy in proportion to the mercy we show to
others
CONCLUSION
After you leave today, look for a little boy with a broke bike, a little girl with a broken doll.
Look for a mother who can’t read or another one who had a miscarriage
A dad who is facing the loss of his wife & infant son & doesn’t want to see them go
A family who just their entire lives and future turned upside down because of an accident
Ask God to enlarge you vision – to show you people you can show mercy to
Remembering that Jesus said, “Blessed are those who are merciful, for their shall receive mercy.
