How Character Bears Fruit: Walking in Righteousness

Introduction

Read Matthew 5:1-12

Matthew 5:1–12 (ESV)

Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him.

And he opened his mouth and taught them, saying:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

“Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

“Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.

“Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness’ sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

“Blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you.

How can you tell what kind of a tree something is? By it’s fruit.

If a tree isn’t producing a certain kind of fruit, it means one of two things:

It’s dead

It’s not the kind you thought it was

If we are the kind of people Jesus has describe in the first four beatitudes, people who are broken over our sin, who mourn and hate our sin, who seek God’s will above our own, and who desperately desire Christ’s righteousness, then we will be people who bear the fruit of righteousness.

Jesus continues on to the next four beatitudes to show what kind of fruit is being produced, the next three of which we will look at this morning.

Christ’s Righteousness Produces Mercy

If we see and recognize our spiritual poverty and brokenness, we know that we are completely dependent upon the mercy of God to save us!

Look at the correlation between the first beatitude and the fifth beatitude.

True acknowledgement of our spiritual poverty before God will lead us to seek the mercy of God.

We recognize we cannot earn anything from God, but that He has freely given us all we have in Christ alone simply because of His compassionate mercy towards us.

What is Mercy?

We often talk about mercy and grace as if they are the same thing. They are very similar and closely related, but there is a difference between the two. James Montgomery Boice gives this definition for both grace and mercy, and I believe it is helpful as we look at what Jesus is talking about here.

The Sermon on the Mount: (Matthew 5–7): An Expositional Commentary (The Quality of Mercy)

Grace is love when love is undeserved. Mercy is grace in action. Mercy is love reaching out to help those who are helpless and who need salvation. Mercy identifies with the miserable in their misery

Blessed are those who act out their love and compassion for others even when and especially when they do not deserve it. Blessed are those who seek to meet the needs of those who are helpless and in misery.

The Greatest Act of Mercy Ever

We cannot help but acknowledge the greatest act of mercy ever shown, that upon the cross. We know that God is a gracious God, choosing to love sinners in spite of themselves. But the cross was God’s grace in action, His mercy for lost sinners to redeem and rescue them from their hopelessness and death.

On the cross, God has poured out His mercy on all of mankind because He saw our need, and even in spite of the fact that none of us deserved His love, He demonstrated love towards us anyway.

Now we can sing:

Mercy there was great and grace was free, Pardon there was multiplied to me. There my burdened soul found liberty at Calvary.

Mercy leads us to show compassion to those who are hurting

The fruit of our own spiritual poverty and knowing that God has showed us His mercy by giving us the righteousness of Christ will lead us to show mercy and compassion towards others.

This begins by how we see the hurt and needs of others, whether or not they’ve done anything to deserve our compassion.

The heart of compassion will seek to alleviate and eliminate the needs and heartaches of others we come into contact with, just as Jesus came to us to meet our needs, both physical and spiritual, to the point of dying upon the cross to meet those needs.

Are you opening your eyes to those who are hurting and in need around you? How does God want to use you to show compassion and mercy to others as He seeks to alleviate and eliminate the pain and hurt of others.

I heard a story about my youngest daughter this week that just fills my father’s heart with joy as she demonstrated this kind of mercy towards someone else.

Hannah, during recess earlier this week, noticed one of her fellow classmates sitting alone because her friends and cousins did not want to play with her. Hannah saw a girl who was hurting and alone. Now this girl did not reach out to her first. She did nothing to earn Hannah’s notice. Hannah simply noticed a need and went to go be with her, to be a friend to her, and to provide some comfort from the pain of loneliness. This might be a simple example of compassion, but it is the kind of compassion Christ is calling us to. Hannah was able to give a glimpse of God’s merciful and compassionate love to this other girl because she saw a need and was willing to meet that need.

As God has met our needs in Christ, we are also being called to be His hands and feet to meet the needs of others. May we experience the blessing, the happiness, and the flourishing that comes when we seek to pass on the compassion that we received from Christ to give to others around us.

Mercy leads us to forgive those who hurt us

Not only is mercy showing love to those in pain, it is also seeking to absorb the pain others have caused us by seeking to forgive them.

Mercy leads us to forgive those who hurt us rather than to strike back and to seek justice for the wrong done to us.

Mercy calls us to see them as we would see ourselves, as sinners in need of forgiveness and grace. It doesn’t mean that we gloss over what was done, but it does call us to demonstrate the compassion and forgiveness of Christ as we seek to forgive others.

The pain others cause us cannot be compared to the pain we have caused Christ.

Jesus tells a parable in the 18th chapter of this same gospel of Matthew of a servant who owed a king an exorbitant amount of money, 10,000 talents. There was no way this servant would ever be able to pay back the king all that he owed. It would have taken several lifetimes to payback. The King had every right to throw him into prison for the rest of his life. However, as the man pleaded for mercy from the King, the king had compassion upon the servant and forgave him.

But when this servant went out, he found someone else who owed him a hundred denarii, a minuscule sum compared to what he had owed and became angry with him for not paying his debt. He threw his fellow servant into prison until he could pay the debt. When the king found out about this, he was enraged. The man, who was forgiven such a large amount, should have been able to forgive such a small amount.

The man showed that he still did not understand the mercy the king had showed to him. He also did not understand the great debt he had owed to the king and how much was forgiven him. Otherwise he would have forgiven his fellow servant.

But here’s the point, the fellow servant did not owe him nearly as much as he owed the king. And it is always like that. No matter what someone does to you, they can never sin against you the way you have sinned against God. If God has shown His compassion upon you, how much more should you show compassion and mercy to those who will never sin against you like you have against God?

Christ’s Righteousness Produces Purity of Heart and Life

If we hate and mourn over sin, Christ will begin to produce a purity of heart

Just as there was a connection between the first and the fifth beatitudes, there is also a connection between the second and the sixth beatitudes.

If we have seen how much Christ has saved us from, recognized the sin and rebellion we have committed against an infinitely holy God, it should cause us to hate and mourn over our sin. We should begin to view our sin with disgust to the point of desiring to be free of such a filthy heart of rebellion. As that mourning and hatred over sin takes root in our hearts, Christ will produce in us a purity that was purchased for us at Calvary. Jesus’ blood washes us clean from all our sin.

It is essential that Christ begins with purity of heart and not purity of behavior.

Again, Christ wants us to see that He is calling us to BE pure, not simply do pure things. There are going to be things that He calls us to do. But our actions can never be pure simply by trying to do good. We must receive a new heart from Christ that is clean and pure.

Christ became sin, took upon our rebellion, and paid the penalty of that sin so that we might become the righteousness of God.

2 Corinthians 5:21 (ESV)

For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God.

We have been given a righteousness and a purity that is not our own. It does not mean that we are sinless, but that we have been made pure by the sinless blood of Christ.

So if purity of heart does not mean sinless, how can we tell if we have a pure heart.

This heart of purity will lead us to hate our sin and to love Christ and His righteousness.

Our sinful and impure hearts have sought to love and worship things other than God Himself. Our hearts are exactly that, they are impure as there are things that blur the image of God within us and that distort the love we are meant to have for Him.

But as we place our faith in Christ, as we mourn over and hate our sin, Christ will give us a pure heart.

As Christ purifies our hearts, we will be more cognizant of our sin and areas of impurity.

Dross -

as gold or any precious metal is refined in the furnace by fire, the impurities within the metal begin to rise to the surface, creating a layer of scum on top of the molten metal. The more the gold is purified, the more you will see the mineral wastes.

A sign of a pure heart is the recognition of what is still impure in your heart and life. As Christ purifies us, we will see and recognize the sin that still remains. Christ illuminates our lives so we can fight against the sin that is there.

If you have sin in your life and you do not hate it or even care if it is there or not, it is a sign that your heart is in trouble.

But the more you feel convicted over your sin, the more you hate your sin and the ways you love things other than Christ and desire for those things to change, it is a sign that Christ really has given you a pure heart, because only purity will make the impurity more noticeable and all the more intolerable.

As Christ purifies us, He will lead us to fight and kill sin in our lives

So the fruit of mourning over sin is purity. We are made pure in Christ, but Christ will also make us pure in how we live and act.

As His purity reveals the impurities in our lives, the ways that we continue to worship things other than God, the more we will fight to put those things to death.

Romans 8:13 (ESV)

For if you live according to the flesh you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the deeds of the body, you will live.

We will not be satisfied with living however we please, regardless of how much people around us tell us to do whatever makes us happy. As we are made pure, we will realize that sin makes us miserable and does not deliver on the promises it makes.

We will no longer be satisfied with the pleasures of lust and sexual immorality, with greed and covetousness, gossip and slander, idolatry, drunkenness.

Paul shows us the fruit of purity in Galatians 5:18-24

Galatians 5:18–24 (ESV)

But if you are led by the Spirit, you are not under the law. Now the works of the flesh are evident: sexual immorality, impurity, sensuality, idolatry, sorcery, enmity, strife, jealousy, fits of anger, rivalries, dissensions, divisions, envy, drunkenness, orgies, and things like these. I warn you, as I warned you before, that those who do such things will not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against such things there is no law. And those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.

Notice that it is the Spirit who does the work within us, but He leads us to crucify the flesh and its sinful desires.

Jesus did not die for us simply so we could continue to live in sin, but so that He could provide the means to free us from our sin so we can walk in righteousness.

Being pure in heart involves a passionate pursuit of righteousness and obedience.

Be fully aware of the sinfulness of your heart Jeremiah 17:9

Jeremiah 17:9 (ESV)

The heart is deceitful above all things,

and desperately sick;

who can understand it?

Draw near to God

James 4:8 (ESV)

Draw near to God, and he will draw near to you. Cleanse your hands, you sinners, and purify your hearts, you double-minded.

C. Fill yourself with God’s Word

John 15:3 (ESV)

Already you are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you.

listening and immersing ourselves with God’s word is part of how Christ is making us pure

Conclusion

As Christ purifies our hearts and frees us from the sin that has infected our hearts and lives, the promise is that we will get to see God.

The promise of seeing God and receiving His mercy will fill our hearts with such joy and pleasure that will make the fleeting pleasures of sin pale in comparison. We will quickly see that letting go of our sin is really no sacrifice at all as we receive something infinitely greater than anything our sin promises us here and now.