Sermon Tone Analysis
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"Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”
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Scripture affirms to us that the one who will not forgive will not be forgiven by our Heavenly Father.
Here those that are merciful people will be shown mercy.
God will measure to us with our own reaped harvest, and those who have been hard masters and hard creditors, will find that the Lord will deal hardly with them.
"For judgment is without mercy to the one who has not shown mercy.
Mercy triumphs over judgment.”
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Let us not put harsh constructions upon people’s conduct, nor
o drive hard bargains, nor
o pick foolish quarrels, nor
o be difficult to please.
Surely we wish to be blessed, and we also want to obtain mercy: let us be merciful, that we may have mercy.
Isn’t it a pleasant task to be kind?
Is there NOT much more sweetness in it than in being angry and ungenerous?
Also, the obtaining of mercy is a rich reward.
What but sovereign grace could suggest such a promise as this?
We are merciful to our fellow-mortal in pennies, and the Lord forgives, us “all that debt.”
In the brief time that we have for such an important subject, I would like to answer two questions.
1.
First, how does a heart become merciful?
Or: where does mercy come from?
2. Second, what is mercy?
Or: what is a merciful person like?
You can see that this is a very practical and immensely important question.
Why is it that we need to be made merciful?
God’s description of us is entirely different than we think of ourselves.
We’re more like a thorn bush rather than a peach yielding tree baring its sweet fruit.
For example in the catalog of sins describing the person who is under God’s wrath because they suppress the truth in unrighteousness, it’s said of that man that he is: "senseless, untrustworthy, unloving, and unmerciful.”
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Zechariah describes the ancient people of Israel as having hearts like rock.
"They made their hearts like a rock so as not to obey the law or the words that the Lord of Armies had sent by his Spirit through the earlier prophets.
Therefore intense anger came from the Lord of Armies.”
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Man is even like a viper with its venom."They
make their tongues as sharp as a snake’s bite; viper’s venom is under their lips.
Selah” ()
By nature we do not send forth the oil of gladness, but poison;
not the oil of mercifulness, but the poison of maliciousness.
Besides the heart issues of the natural man.
Besides the heart issues of the natural man.
The inbred unmercifulness in us has something to do with satan’s work in us.
"in which you previously lived according to the ways of this world, according to the ruler of the power of the air, the spirit now working in the disobedient.”
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What mercy can we expect from hell?
So if sitting here this morning as a merciful person is soley because of God’s grace.
When the sun shine, then the ice melts, when the Sun of Righteousness once shines with beams of grace upon the soul, now it melts in mercy and tenderness.
A person must be man a new creation (by God’s grace) before one emerges a merciful person.
To answer the first question let’s look at the immediate context.
1.
How Does a Heart Become Merciful?
Because you’ll notice that the text says that these blessed ones are ‘merciful’.
Recall how we saw the first three beatitudes in verses 3–5 describing the emptiness of the blessed person:
· verse 3: poverty-stricken in spirit,
· verse 4: grieving over the sin and misery of his condition, and
· verse 5: accepting the hardships and accusations of life in humility without defensiveness.
This condition of blessed emptiness is followed in verse 6 by a hunger and thirst for the fullness of righteousness.
Then come three descriptions of how righteousness abounds in the heart of the hungry and thirsty.
· Mercy in verse 7,
· purity in verse 8, and
· peacemaking in verse 9.
So the answer to the first question is that mercy comes from a heart that has
o first felt its spiritual bankruptcy, and
o has come to grief over its sin, and
o has learned to wait humbly for the timing of the Lord, and
o to cry out in hunger for the work of His mercy to satisfy us with the righteousness we need.
The mercy that God blesses (is itself) the blessing of God.
It grows up like fruit in a broken heart and a meek spirit and a soul that hungers and thirsts for God to be merciful.
Mercy comes from mercy.
Our mercy to each other comes from God’s mercy to us.
The key to becoming a merciful person is to become a broken person.
You get the power to show mercy from the real feeling in your heart
that you owe everything you are
and have to sheer divine mercy.
Therefore, if we want to become merciful people,
it is imperative that we cultivate a view of God and ourselves
that helps us to say with all our heart that
every joy and virtue and distress
of our lives is owing to the free and undeserved mercy of God.
The second question is,
2. What Is Mercy?
Or: what is a merciful person like?
Sometimes it helps get something clear if we can see it over against its opposite.
So I have tried to find where mercy is contrasted with its opposite.
Matthew and Luke give some very helpful illustrations.
First let’s look at ."While he was reclining at the table in the house, many tax collectors and sinners came to eat with Jesus and his disciples.
"When the Pharisees saw this, they asked his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” "Now when he heard this, he said, “It is not those who are well who need a doctor, but those who are sick.
"Go and learn what this means: I desire mercy and not sacrifice.
For I didn’t come to call the righteous, but sinners.””
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Mercy Contrasted to Sacrifice
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 morning hour, 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 a people who do their religious duties in a mechanical 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 movers 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 application of rules.
(Like how some treat church bi-laws)
Something huge was at stake here.
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