Blessed are the Merciful

What did Spartacus say when the lion ate his wife? NOthing. He was gladiator

I bought a new pet newt… called him tiny because hes my newt…

A lot of scholars actually say that the sermon on the mount is for the next life… because its so crazy… but we don’t believe that… we believe it is for us here and now…. we believe there is a reality of the future that is living out in the here and now… its what scholars call inaugurated eschatology… its the idea that things are going to happen at the end will happen in the present… remember the jews believed there was this end time to come when God would make right everything this time when he would rule and reign… in Matthew its famously talked about as the Kingdom of Heaven… other gospels change it to the kingdom of God… and one of the things that Jesus will teach is the Kingdom of Heaven is here and now… and we can take a part in it… but its the idea that the church will stand out and say this is what the world is going to look like… that’s why we live the way we do as the church of Jesus…

and its like we are time travelers, we are living what the future will be like in the here and now…and this is what we tell new christians all the time don’t do this, and dont do that… and they ask why why why why why… and we tell them because the bible says so… isn’t that a really weird answer… I mean to you and I who were raised in the church it may not be as weird, but this idea is really strange to some people, and thats why its best that we explain it not just as the bible says so, but why does the bible say that… and this isn’t making up our own ideas… for most of the things we don’t want people to do we can look at the great commandment of Jesus, and figure it from there, right… Jesus told us to love one another, and for most things we can get at how unloving that is and explain it from there… but I digress…

So we are the people that are showing the world what the world will look like when Jesus returns… this is why we don’t gossip, this is why we don’t cheat/… we are representing heaven to the world…

SO let’s get through the first three pretty quickly

5:3 I need you for all

5:4 My sin is awful, the sin of the world is awful

5:5 I want to open myself up and my problems to free up other people

5:6 Do you know what it means to be hungry and thirsty and go after God every day of their lives… they shall be satisfied… Which means we were discontent… unsatisfied… until God came in and made us satisfied in him… we pined after money.. a spouse to fulfill us… but in Christ we are fulfilled in him… let me illustrate this… look at how Paul talks about it in Romans 7

Romans 7:14–25 ESV

14 For we know that the law is spiritual, but I am of the flesh, sold under sin. 15 For I do not understand my own actions. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate. 16 Now if I do what I do not want, I agree with the law, that it is good. 17 So now it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 18 For I know that nothing good dwells in me, that is, in my flesh. For I have the desire to do what is right, but not the ability to carry it out. 19 For I do not do the good I want, but the evil I do not want is what I keep on doing. 20 Now if I do what I do not want, it is no longer I who do it, but sin that dwells within me. 21 So I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand. 22 For I delight in the law of God, in my inner being, 23 but I see in my members another law waging war against the law of my mind and making me captive to the law of sin that dwells in my members. 24 Wretched man that I am! Who will deliver me from this body of death? 25 Thanks be to God through Jesus Christ our Lord! So then, I myself serve the law of God with my mind, but with my flesh I serve the law of sin.

People think this is my life… this is my struggle of this christian life… I try and try…and this isn’t what Paul is saying… he is saying this was life under law….. praise be to God that he saved me… he was an israelite under the law and trying to do Good and he couldn’t but now God saved me… so if you find yourself there every day are you actually fulfilled in Jesus? He was saying it was crushing him… and he said how did he get free? With Jesus… so back to chapter 5

And as we look at the beatitudes what we see is that all of them are vertical with our identity to God… that is it has to do with our relationship with him… the vertical relationship between us and god…but most of us define ourselves horizontally… our job… our history… and thats how we define ourselves… but what we must do is define ourselves vertically with how we know God first…. and we define ourselves by what is going on in these horizontal relationships around us.. let me give you an example… in marriages what happens is after a time people will start comparing… why aren’t they better why doesn’t he make more why doesn’t he clean more why doesn’t he take out the trash why isn’t he home more… and we become addicted to this horizontal comparison.. and Jesus comes out and says stop getting your identity from the world around you and what you have and what you do define yourself based on vertical do you know God or do you not know him?

I have set in the hospital and talked to some people as they were dying, and I remember talking with one lady before she passed away at her kitchen table when she called me over to plan her funeral, and I asked her if she was scared about dying, and she assured me she was not, but she worried about her husband and her children… but she wasn’t scared because her identity had been tied up in Jesus, of course she was in tons of pain and dealing with it all, but she wasn’t scared because her identity wasn’t in this world and the circumstances that she found herself in, but it was tied up in Jesus and who he said she was…and when we talk about how there are those people who are going through stuff and we see them and know there is something different about them, this is what it all comes down to… yes they are feeling the pain and the sadness of their situation, but they aren’t scared because they are not looking at the situation of this world, but instead looking at Jesus…

Matthew 5:7 ESV

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

…. it sounds weak but its huge… but the word Jesus uses here is the greek word EL e AHS… and it is opposite of wrath orgay… and justice… and the reason this is crazy is because you and I tend to operate in a way that brings justice in the earth…we like karma… give things it comes back to us….we put out and it comes back… mercy throws a wrench in that… when you are showing mercy you are not letting happen in someones life what is supposed to happen…. so grace is giving someone something they don’t deserve…mercy is not giving someone something the totally deserve… grace is hey let me give you something even though you dont deserve it… mercy is hey I am not going to give you this even though you totally deserve it… the wrath of God that should be put on us… we tend to function… we want justice… if you did this you deserve that.. and mercy throws a wrench in it…

What we tend to do as modern christians is exclude and we foam at the mouth and get judgmental about the things we see and Jesus says my people are not the people who bring down the wrath, but they are the people who show the mercy… and all of a sudden inside of you that judgmental side rises up and you say HERESY…

you cannot just allow people to live and change your views and change your theology and to that I would say you’re right, but its how we carry it out that is different…they may deserve judgment and wrath.. but as a follower Jesus I am not going to give it to them… think about that family member who did something to you years ago and they deserve your silence… think about that person you work with who deserves something… and Jesus would say 100% I agree they are the worst… you should do all kinds… but… you’re not going to do what they deserve…because you are defined by mercy….

Paul in Romans 1 he gives a list of sins… and he talks bout idolatry…. and he talks about it and when we read it it gets us all excited at first… yeah get em Paul… and he says gossip…disobeying your parents… liars… greedy… you know what the climactic sin is… you are unmerciful… we are just hopped up on making sure people get what they deserve… and its wrong… and my people dont do it…

Jesus tells multiple stories of this in his parables… good samaritan…. who is really neighborly to him… not the religious elite that had responsibilites and places to go…the person who stopped was a Samaritan… nasty to a jew… good to us… and the samaritan had margin in his time to be merciful… most of us dont have that…we are so self absorbed that we have to keep going and can’t stop…. None of us have any time… we are so busy…

Another story Matthew 18… a person owes a king millions of dollars… dont have it can you give me mercy…….

Blessed are the merciful… for they will receive….

So guy goes out and sees a guy that needs mercy… give it up… owed him 1000… king hears… says what…

Kingdom people are so blown away that we deserve the wrath of God and we truly understand that so much that we turn and treat people with mercy…… So when we should bring down justice we bring mercy…. not just merciful acts once in a while but our hearts reflected in mercy it will shift the way we view people…the natural heart is to view people as ones we like or dislike, or geeks or nerds…they connect or they don’t… we do this in our social world… these people are in these are out… but when we see the gospel it changes how we view this world… We have to look at people not as we like and don’t like… just look at people as those who do or dont know Jesus… we have a mission… we have to reach them with Jesus its not about whether we like or dont like them…

blessed are the merciful for they receive mercy

if you and I are merciful to people… when we stand before God on the last day we will receive mercy from him….Now here is the beautiful thing Jesus does…he puts it in the future… and in this life we may look weak… and the sermon on the mount puts things in weird perspective… he says there is a heavenly reward you are going to get and that may be all you get… but its worth it…

Sometimes the only reward we are going to get is heavenly.. we will keep doing the right thing and all we get is our heavenly reward and that shouldn’t sound so negative.. its a good thing…its a positive thing… and we may have a spouse that constantly is giving you nothing good back and you keep serving… and it doesnt preach well to say, hey that may be all you ever get….

Its life for us.. its on the last day…. and here is how he turns it upside down he says you cant trust your eyes… because what you see isn’t all you are going to get… he says we are really blessed when we give it up.. and the world would look and call us foolish and weak..

we cant trust our eyes… guys with tats… come to worship…. and what our eyes see is people who deserve the wrath of God should get it now and from my mouth, and through our twitter account… and here is your takeaway…. there is someone that has hurt you.. and my people are the ones that bring mercy… and we will flow out to other people one day… and if we are merciless… we are in trouble… and Jesus is speaking into a culture and empire…. the father had a full rule…. and if woman had baby… thumbs up or down…. a culture defined by brutality….and its really not much different than our culture we just go about it differently…teh wya we treat people… talk about them.. and destroy… christians are merciful… not quick to anger or even speak…. those people are different… they dont lapse into the same thing we do.. they are different