Title: Happy are the Merciful
Text: Matthew 5:7
Truth: People who experience the fullness of life are merciful. They receive the mercy of God and are filled with healthy emotions.
Aim: Encourage others to be merciful.
INTRODUCTION
There is something enticing about a movie plot dealing with revenge. From The Godfather to Hamlet to one of my favorite westerns Nevada Smith, the characters change, but we are drawn to stories of where people get even.
Revenge is so natural; it is like a reflex action. But when a story breaks the cycle of bloodshed and an eye for an eye, we stop. We sit up. We pay attention.
Such was the response to a movie made about five missionaries who received their crowns at the end of a spear. It’s the story about Nate Saint, Jim Elliot, Roger Youderian, Pete Fleming and Ed McCulley being brutally killed in the jungle of Ecuador by a tribe that anthropologist said was once the most violent society ever documented.
The movie doesn’t tell us the story from the perspective of one of the missionaries. We learn what happened from the son of one of the missionaries. Our heart is in our throat as we watch the plane take this young Christian man to his death and his little boy looks after him until he is out of sight. We know the sense of foreboding the wife and child had would be proven true.
Here is where the story diverges. The boy grows to manhood, and what will he do? He goes back to the tribe. He doesn’t go back to find his father’s murderer and get even. No, he goes back to introduce them to the One his father served that was speared but did not spear back.
As amazing as that act of mercy is, the real miracle was what happened to the Auca Indians upon receiving these acts of mercy. They broke the cycle of revenge.
Five young men at the beginning of their lives are not supposed to die so pointlessly, nor so violently. Revenge is our human way of fixing what seems broken, of restoring the precarious balance of justice, of peace, to the universe. But the problem is that revenge doesn’t restore peace. Revenge moves a victim to the place of perpetrator and begins a whole new chapter of life not the way it is suppose to be. The Auca’s prove this. Maybe your life proves this. But mercy caused these people to break their spears and lay them down. When they did that it blessed their lives. (Catherine Claire, Prison Fellowship)
Jesus is at the beginning of his ministry. Great crowds follow Him at this time. His message is repent and receive the good news for the kingdom of God is at hand. What does a Christ-follower look like? Jesus tells us in this Sermon on the Mount. First, he has the character that is described in the Beatitudes.
The first four beatitudes are inwardly directed. A Christian recognizes his spiritual poverty to earn God’s favor. This leads to brokenness over his total unacceptableness to God. As a result he yields his life to the control and power of God. This creates an intense desire to be full of God and to know Him.
The second four beatitudes are outwardly directed. Once you have received God’s rich mercy for your poor spiritual condition and experienced his amazing comfort for your sin and known his conquering power so that you are filled with God, it changes the way you deal with people. You are compassionate, pure and peaceful.
These are not natural to us. We tend to respond aggressively or passively or with revenge, not mercy. Knowing that Jesus repeats the condition his disciples will experience when they live this way. “Live this way,” Jesus says, “and you will be blessed.”
Every message I’ve taken time to give a little more description of what it means to be blessed. If you want to get a broader understanding of what “blessing” means then listen to the messages online or look it up on the website mentioned in the bulletin.
What does it mean to be blessed? It speaks to a deep satisfaction and total approval of God. In the Old Testament one of the Hebrew words for “blessed” refers to someone that others are extremely envious of. I saw an interview of Tom Brady this week. He is the quarterback of the New England Patriots. He was drafted in the sixth round and in his second year in the league led them to the Super Bowl. Little boys, and some big boys, wear his jersey number. They fantasize being him when they play football in the front yard.
Really what they want is the approval that flows out that achievement. It feels good to have your parents or colleages or companions approve of you.
Jesus is telling us with emphasis that this is the way to satisfy the deepest desire of our life. I think one reason He repeats it is because it is so contradictory to what we think is the way to blessing. We think what will bring peace to our soul is when we make them feel the hurt like they hurt us. Jesus says, “Wrong.”
People who experience the fullness of life are merciful. They receive the mercy of God and are filled with healthy emotions.
Let’s look at the principle and the promise made to the merciful.
I. THE PRINCIPLE OF MERCY AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO BLESSEDNESS.
Frankly, this was a subject that required more digging than other subjects. You can find books to teach a family how to manage its finances or how to parent children, but I know of no book that teaches parents how to encourage family members to treat each other with mercy. Parents teach their kids to say thank you and not to smoke pot, but forget to teach them about the importance of showing mercy. I would imagine that many of you would welcome a bigger dose of mercy being practiced in your home. I suspect our homes would be healthier if we practiced more mercy than if we had a budget.
What did Jesus mean when He said, “Blessed are the merciful?” One definition said it is giving help to relieve the suffering or pain of another even when it involves giving of yourself in a way that may not be fair to you (Judson Swihart). We show mercy when we don’t exploit someone at a time when they are helpless to meet their needs. We are merciful when we don’t inflict pain at a person’s point of weakness. In our families we know one another’s weaknesses. When it intrudes in our life we naturally want to strike back. The merciful person shows patience or grace by not causing harm to the other person.
Erma Bombeck tells about an occasion when she reluctantly showed mercy:
It was one of those days when I wanted my own apartment—unlisted.
My son was telling me, in complete detail, about a movie he had just seen, punctuated by 3,000 “you knows?” My teeth were falling asleep. There were three phone calls—strike that—three monologues that could have been answered by a recording. I fought the urge to say, “It’s been nice listening to you.” And later, in the cab from home to the airport, I got another assault on my ear, this time by a cabdriver rambling on about his son in college.
At least there were thirty whole beautiful minutes before my plane took off—time for me to be alone with my thoughts, to open a book and let my mind wander.
A voice next to me belonging to an elderly woman said, “I’ll bet it’s cold in Chicago.”
Stone-faced, I replied, “It’s likely.”
“I haven’t been to Chicago in nearly three years,” she persisted. “My son lives there.”
“That’s nice,” I said, my eyes intent on my book.
“My husband’s body is on this plane. We’ve been married 53 years. I don’t drive, you know, and when he died a nun drove me home from the hospital. We aren’t even Catholic. The funeral director let me come to the airport with him.”
I don’t think I have ever detested myself more than I did at that moment. Another human being was screaming to be heard and, in desperation, had turned to a cold stranger who was more interested in a novel than in the real-life drama at her elbow. She needed no advice, money, assistance, expertise or even compassion—all she needed was someone to listen.
She talked numbly and steadily until we boarded the plane, then found her seat in another section. As I hung up my coat, I heard her plaintive voice say to her seat companion, “I’ll bet it’s cold in Chicago.”
I prayed, “Please, God, let her listen.” (“Please, Listen!” Chicago Sun Times, 2/26/77)
One of Jesus’ most famous stories is The Good Samaritan found in Luke 10. A man is beaten and robbed and left for dead. A preacher passes by but refuses to help. A deacon passes by but refuses to help. But a Hezbollah terrorist sees this Jewish man beaten, robbed and near death and he stops to help. He cares for his physical wounds, puts him on his donkey, takes him to the hospital to be treated, and pays all the health care bills into the thousands. Then Jesus said we were to go and do likewise.
The Samaritan teaches us about mercy. The merciful see someone in distress. They are moved with compassion for that person and they act to relieve the distress, even if it is your enemy.
Jesus is not saying if we will be good to people, they will be good to us. Jesus was the most merciful person who ever lived. He gave sight to the blind, legs to the crippled, food to the hungry and love to the lonely and despised. But the religious people screamed for his blood.
Jesus is not talking about someone who is trying to establish a relationship God but someone who already has a relationship with God. The reason why his disciples are merciful is because they have received God’s amazing mercy. In knowing and experiencing God’s mercy in their own lives, it has made them merciful with others.
Some of you have a soft spot for the poor. Maybe you grew up poor like Jesus. When I talk about kids going to school hungry or needing a warm coat for winter, you know exactly what that feels like. You’ve been there. It’s not difficult for you. It’s easy for you to be merciful and generous with people like that.
I grew up shy. I know what it is like to be lonely and left out in a crowd of people. In a Bible study on the fullness of the Holy Spirit, I learned that shyness quenches the work of the Holy Spirit in our life. I asked the Holy Spirit to remove that from my life. I can spot and am drawn to help people who are timid or uncomfortable in a new crowd. When new pastors are introduced at Associational events, I make an effort to meet them and bring them into the group. All the churchs I’ve pastored have been known to be friendly to visitors. Why is your heart more sensitive and responsive to certain kinds of people? You know what it feels like and how good it feels when someone shows you mercy.
Jesus is saying my people are blessed because they are merciful. They are merciful because they have received the great mercy of God. God saw us in our hopeless, pitiful condition, and He hurt for us. He did more than hurt inwardly. He came to earth and died on a cross for our sin and hurt outwardly. God in Christ did this while we were still His enemy. We are merciful because God has dealt with us with grace and compassion.
Briefly, let me speak about a false mercy. Jesus is not teaching that mercy means we cancel or modify a just and fully merited sentence that has been passed upon some flagrant offender. King Saul spared the life of king Agag. God’s will was for Agag to be executed. He was a cancer on humanity.
Mercy tempers justice and keeps it from becoming revenge, but justice prevents mercy from becoming foolish sentimentality that bases decisions on feelings and ignores reason. It is right to punish criminals, and in some cases, to throw away the key or take their life.
How does mercy contribute to blessing? In the movie End of the Spear the Auca Indians are called the Waodani’s. The name Auca means naked savage. The tribes around them gave them this disparaging name. “Waodani” means “true people.” They had no way to settle conflict peaceful. That all changed when they meet the mercy of God through the relatives of the five men they killed.
Anthropologist and tribesmen themselves say that the merciful efforts of the missionary families to reach the Waodani tribe ultimately prevented the extinction of the tribe. In fact one tribesmen said that they “were almost down to two people…If [Rachel and Elisabeth] had not come, there would have been no one left.” Steve Saint’s sister, Rachel, was baptized by two of the men that killed her dad at the place in the river where the missionaries were murdered. When asked about this she said, “All I knew was that I really loved these two guys.” Steve Saint’s children eventually called grandfather the man who killed their grandfather.
What’s the blessing of mercy? It replaces revenge with forgiveness. It replaces hatred with love. It replaces good intentions with acts of mercy. It will make you into the kind of person you long to be. Blessed are the merciful.
That leads me to the promise of merciful and its contribution to blessedness.
II. THE PROMISE OF MERCY AND ITS CONTRIBUTION TO BLESSEDNESS.
The reason Jesus’ disciples are blessed is because they receive mercy from God. He loves us and helps us despite our sinful condition.
One way to understand this promise is to state it negatively. If we are not merciful with others we will not be shown mercy.
In Luke 18 Jesus tells about a Pharisee that went to church. He prayed. Jesus said actually what he did was to talk to himself. He recited all the good that was in his life: he fasted and tithed. On the other hand, there was a tax collector that was so convicted over his sin that he wouldn’t look up to pray. Jesus said the tax collector was the only one that went home forgiven. Why? Because he recognized how desperate he was to receive mercy. The Pharisee didn’t receive mercy because he didn’t see his need for God’s mercy.
A Christian is strongly convicted of his sin. He asks and receives God’s forgiveness. Then someone does something that offends him. He can carry a grudge or he can forgive. The Holy Spirit reminds him how much God just forgave him. The believer sees that person’s offense in a different light, and he forgives the offense. That encounter reminds the Christian how much he needs more of God’s forgiveness. He seeks it and receives it.
Every believer has had some experience like that with forgiveness or giving someone the benefit of the doubt or being impatient with a backslidden Christian. Jesus promises that when we practice mercy it results in us experiencing more of the love and helpfulness of God.
How does this contribute to us being blessed? I’ll need a helper to illustrate this.
[Select a big, strong, younger man. Invite him to the platform and challenge him to an arm wrestling contest. As he is coming up tell him that I’ve never lost an arm wrestling contest. Get a little aggressive and arrogant. You want to steel his resolve to beat me.
Then ask someone on the front row if they’ll fund this operation so that if I win I get a dime, and if he wins he gets a dime. Ask another member of the congregation if they will keep track of the contest and time us for 30 seconds. Then grab the guy’s arm and wait for the signal.
At the signal let my arm go limp. Have him let you up and go again. Do again. Then say, “Look, why don’t we both win?” Then go back and forth effortlessly.
Then look at the person in the congregation to ask how much does the other person owe.]
Husbands, you win when you apologize and seek to understand your wife. Parents, you win when you listen to your kids and intentionally speak to them lovingly and kindly. Kids, you win when you don’t sulk after your mom or dad bites your head off over some little annoyance. Sow mercy and you will reap mercy.
CONCLUSION
A group of U.S. soldiers living in their own rented house in S. Korea after the fierce conflict hired a houseboy to clean and cook for them. They played terrible practical jokes on him. They’d put a bucket of water on top of a slightly ajar door. He would open it and the cold water would dose him. Of course, he had to clean up the mess afterwards. They put grease on the knobs on the stove to make them slippery. They would dump dirt on the floor or track in mud on their boots. It just went on and on and this young man never complained. He just smiled and nodded and kept on going on about his work whistling a happy tune.
One day these GI’s could stand it no longer and got to feeling convicted over their bad behavior. No matter what they did he took it and did not get angry. It finally got to them. They decided to apologize.
The soldiers admitted to not treating him well and they were never going to do it again. They meant business. He said, “No more water on top of door?” They said, “No more.” He said, “No more grease on knobs?” They said, “No more grease.” He said, “No more dirt on floor?” “No, no more,” they answered.
The young Korean man smiled big and said, “OK, then no more spit in soup!”
Yes, we get back often what we give. Jesus promises blessings to those who are merciful with others. Give it a try.
PRAYER
INVITATION
Father Greg Boyle is in the business of erasing the past. He is a Jesuit priest who is the founder and president of “Homeboy Industries” in East Los Angeles. He put together a team of physicians trained in laser technology to remove tattoos. They remove the tattoos of ex-gang members. It is an act of mercy that not only wipes the slate clean but also improves their future.
Gang-related tattoos prevent many former members from getting jobs or advancing in work. For others, the tattoos put them in danger on the street and this is an act of mercy to save their lives. There is no fee. It is strictly a gift. There is a waiting list of over a thousand names.
The gang tattoo is a mark of identity and ownership. That gang has a claim on you. Like gang members when a person repents of sin and yields control of their life to Christ cleanses you of your past, present and future sins. You get not just a new life but eternal life. Your sins are remembered no longer.
Christian, there’s something here for you too. The curious thing about this growing list interested in laser tattoo removal is that Father Boyle tells them up front it is painful. Some describe it as having hot grease on their skin. The list keeps growing. Is there anything in your life that you so long to be free of it that you would be willing to endure pain to be set free?
It is the mercy of God that seeks to uproot sin in our lives. It is often a painful process. He wants to bless us. It might pain you to act merciful to someone who’s hurt you, but trust the Great Physician. All He wants to do is bless you. I invite you to begin the surgery on your knees at the altar.
