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Blessed are the Merciful
Jesus Christ came into the world and was the most merciful human being that ever lived.
Jesus Christ came into the world and never did anything to harm anybody.
Never.
Jesus Christ came into the world, He reached out to the sick and He healed them.
And He reached out to the crippled and He gave them legs to walk.
And He reached to the eyes of the blind and they saw and to the ears of the deaf and they heard and to the mouths of the mute and they spoke.
And He found the sinners and the tax collectors and He drew them into the circle of His love and He redeemed them and He set them on their feet.
He picked up the sorrowing, He wept with them, and He took the lonely and He made them feel like they were loved.
And He took little children and He gathered them into His arms and He loved them.
Never was there a human being who ever lived in the face of the earth who exhibited mercy like Jesus did
But Mercy given doesn’t mean mercy returned.
He was the most merciful human being that ever lived and they screamed for His blood and they slammed Him to a cross and they nailed Him there.
So when Jesus instructed His hearers that day with this idea of mercy I can imagine that maybe their eyes rolled back a little, or the hair on their arms stood up a little bit
The hearers who were there to hear this message from Jesus lived in a society of two merciless systems of authority.
The Roman system and the Judaistic system, and both came together to kill Jesus.
These first four Beatitudes were entirely inner principles for those who will follow Christ.
They deal entirely with an inner attitude.
Each step leads to the next and presupposes the one that has gone before
They deal entirely with what you see of yourself before God.
So, in the first 4 beatitudes we see an attitude or posture that we’re to have towards God as citizens of His Kingdom
In the first 4 beatitudes we see an attitude or posture that we’re to have towards God as citizens of His Kingdom
Poor in Spirit = A humbled dependence on God based on our condition; Without God we are nothing; complete and utter spiritual bankruptcy before God.
Mournful = It’s our sinful condition that has alienated us from Him and we should grieve over that fact; the corruption of our fallen nature, and the reign of sin and death in the world
Meek = Based on the first two, our attitude is to be one of meekness; we don’t rely on our strength and power, we rely on God working through us.
Which means that we’re to be humble and gentle towards others, allowing our spiritual poverty to condition our behavior to them as well as to God.
Which means that we’re to be humble and gentle towards others, allowing our spiritual poverty to condition our behavior to them as well as to God.
Thirst for Hunger & Righteousness = When we can finally humble ourselves and recognize God’s mercy and grace in our lives, we can begin to hunger for a conformity to God’s will in our life.
For what is the use of confessing and lamenting our sin, of acknowledging the truth about ourselves to both God and men, if we leave it there?
Confession of sin must lead to hunger for righteousness.
In the second half of the beatitudes (the last four) we seem to turn even more from our inner attitude to God to our attitude to our fellow human beings.
Certainly the ‘merciful’ show mercy to men, and ‘peacemakers’ seek to reconcile men to each other, and those who are ‘persecuted’ are persecuted by men.
It seems likely then that the sincerity we show by being ‘pure in heart’ also concerns our attitude and relation to our fellow human beings
But what is mercy?
It’s often confused with grace but what is the difference between the two
Well the simple definition that we can use to understand both is this:
Grace is receiving what we do not deserve or what we haven’t earned
Mercy is not receiving what we do deserve
So what is Jesus saying to us about mercy here?
AS we have done with these others, we need to see what this beatitude is not, is and the result
What mercy is not:
Sometimes it helps get something clear if we can see it over against its opposite.
And again I want us to go to Scripture to help us define these attributes that Jesus is teaching us - His followers
So I have tried to find where mercy is contrasted with its opposite.
Matthew gives us a very helpful illustration.
Look at
In this illustration, the opposite of mercy is sacrifice.
Verse 13: "I desire mercy and not sacrifice."
This is a quote from where God accuses the people that their love is like the dew on the grass.
It is there for a brief time in the morning and then is gone,
And all that is left is the empty form of burnt offerings.
The point is that God wants his people to be alive in their hearts.
He wants them to have feelings of affection toward him and mercy toward each other.
He does not want people who just do their religious duties out of obligation or merely formal way.
Here in Jesus saw sinners as sick and miserable people in need of a physician, even though they were the rich money makers of the day, the tax collectors.
They were sick.
He had medicine.
But all that the Pharisees saw was a ceremonial problem with becoming contaminated by eating with sinners.
Their life seemed to be a mechanical system of rules.
Something huge was at stake here.
They were enslaved to their traditions when eternal sickness was about to be healed.
The opposite of mercy for them was a bondage to tradition or obligation
Religious formalism
So what does the opposite of mercy look like for us?
When we give out of guilt - whether it be of our time, money, resources
When we follow the law because it’s required not because we desire to - man’s or God’s
When we fail to show compassion to those who deserve it or don’t
When we’re so caught up in ourselves, in our goodness, and we respond out of duty and not that heart we are not being merciful we’re being religious and that’s always a dangerous thing
That is the opposite of the kind of mercy that Christ has in mind here
So what does Jesus mean when he says : Blessed are the merciful?
What mercy is :
What is mercy?
How does it differ from grace?
The two terms are frequently used in the same breath
With one you have the other
But there is a distinction between the two,
Grace is a loving response towards others without strings attached
it appears that grace is a loving response when love is undeserved, and mercy is a loving response prompted by the misery and helplessness of the one on whom the love is to be showered.
Grace answers to the undeserving; mercy answers to the miserable.
Illustration: Jesus grace towards us
Mercy is a loving response prompted by the misery and helplessness of the one on whom the love is to be shown.
Illustration: God’s mercy towards us -deserving wrath and adopted as sons and daughters
Grace answers to the undeserving; mercy answers to the miserable.
Jesus says in this beatitude that we are to be merciful.
We are to be compassionate and gentle, especially toward the miserable and helpless.
If we are not merciful, we will not be shown mercy.
Again, let’s go to Scripture to see an example of this kind of mercy
Luke 10:
We can see what Jesus means by being merciful by looking at this parable that he gave the Pharisees and Scribes
This parable is often overlooked not because we don’t think that it’s not relevant but maybe because we feel like we don’t identify with the principle behind it
Honestly, how many of us would pass by someone who is legitimately in need of medical attention?
But how many of us are willing to go out of our way to help our enemy.
The person who has bad-mouthed us, stabbed us in the back, cursed us or used us?
That’s whose in this account
The Jews hated the Samaritans because they were half-Jewish/half-pagan people who had no regard for the Jews or their customs and beliefs
And the feeling was mutual
And Jesus used this teaching illustration because it would impact the Pharisees and Scribes where He knew it would affect them most - the heart
By using this illustration, He’s giving them an opportunity to repent of their hard-heartedness and to become merciful towards others
And this parable illustrates for us 4 ways how we can be merciful from this example of how the Samaritan responds
See the Distress (pain, suffering, problem ) - vs.33a
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