The Spiritual Appetite, Blessed are the Merciful

Sermon: FCC Marianna 1-23-2022 The Beatitudes - "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness; the merciful" Scripture: Matthew 5:6-7 Today we continue our survey through Matthew 5-7, the Sermon on the Mount. Remember, surveying the Scriptures is the idea of digging into the Word, examining what ends up in our hands, then sifting through it to find the nuggets of truth and wisdom that the Holy Spirit is sharing, and storing those things away for further examination later on. The Sermon on the Mount is divided into distinct parts: * the Beatitudes * the Believers' impact on the world * the Believers rejection of old teaching and practices * Jesus' calling to the Listener. Last week, we began our survey into the Beatitudes, this first section of the Sermon on the Mount, and what it means to be a Beatitude man and what it looks like to live out these characteristics that Jesus prescribes as belonging to those who would be His disciples. Jesus gives us this list of what a Disciple should look like and sets a pretty clear standard for us: people should be able to see these characteristics in you if you are to be His disciple; they should be able to see Him in you if you are really His disciple. Last week we examined the first three of the Beatitudes: poor in spirit, those who mourn, and the meek. We discussed how being poor in spirit is really the culmination of Christ's instruction for those who claim discipleship and desire citizenship in the Kingdom of Heaven, because being poor in spirit entails living with the attitude of surrender that acknowledges that we are nothing and that we have nothing apart from God's grace and apart from Christ's sacrifice on our behalf. We discussed the two aspects of authentic mourning: the first aspect being not making it a spectacle and allowing yourself to rest in God's mercy and comfort; the second aspect being the recognition of your own part in the sins that separated you from God and that wounded God's heart- and using that sorrow to keep you from ever returning to that place. And we discussed being meek- not being weak and easy to push around, but being powerful and having authority, and yet always being under control. Never abusing or misusing the power and authority God's has allowed you to have but using it correctly. In other words, being a good reflection of Christ's example. Today, we move on to the next two Beatitudes: hungering and thirsting for God's righteousness and being merciful. Read Matthew 5:6-7 here: Pray here! The idea that we're going to be looking at today is one of focus: are you focused on developing and pursuing God's righteousness in your life? Are you focused on being merciful? Main point: This Beatitude man, the one who is poor in spirit, who mourns authentically, and who is power under control, will be focused on the righteousness of the Father- and the fruit of that focus will include an outpouring of mercy on those around us. Last week, the characteristics of the Beatitude man were mostly passive characteristics: a surrendering spirit, a mourning of our sins, and control over our inherent power and strength. But now we shift into active characteristics. Last week was the idea of becoming more like Jesus, resulting in the development of those characteristics; today, the idea is that we strive to accomplish these characteristics, resulting in us becoming more like Jesus. Striving to pursue God's righteousness and going out of your way to show mercy will take effort on your part. If you are committed to being a disciple of Jesus, then you must also be committed to a lifestyle that includes these Beatitudes. Quote: "The more we live and try to practice the Sermon on the Mount, the more shall we experience blessing. Look at the blessings that are promised to those who do practice it. The trouble with much holiness teaching is that it leaves out the Sermon on the Mount and then asks us to experience sanctification [progressively becoming holier]. This is not the Biblical method. If you want to have power in your life and to be blessed, go straight to the Sermon on the Mount. Live and practice it and give yourself to it, and as you do the promised blessings will come. 'Blessed is he who hungers and thirsts after righteousness, for he will be filled.' If you want to be filled, don't seek after some mystic blessing; don't rush to church hoping that God will pour it out on you. Face the Sermon on the Mount and its implications and demands, see your utter need, and then you will get it. It is the direct road to blessing." (Martyn Lloyd-Jones) Don't come to Jesus hoping for blessings. Work to deserve His blessing by living out this standard of attitude and action that He has given us to live out! Point #1 "Blessed are those who hunger and thirst after righteousness. They will be filled." Some of you might have in your mind that this hunger and thirst that Jesus is talking about is the simple recognition that a person gets when they realize that they get hungry and they decide to go get some food. Almost like Jesus was saying, 'Blessed are those who go to a righteousness restaurant and dine on some righteousness.' But this idea is completely wrong. In the western world, we struggle with the idea of what it means to starve. Even the homeless and the worse off in our society still have a pretty strong welfare network to fall back on; they can find food somewhere. We don't have much of an idea of what it means to die of thirst or to be completely isolated from clean drinking water. [Go visit the squatter's villages in Mexico and South America that spring up without infrastructure like electricity, plumbing, or running water. Go ask Cliff about the people of India using the bathroom in their water supply.] It's said that you can go 40 days without food before your body will cannibalize itself or 4 days without water before your body will shut down. But it is worse that that; your body can begin shutting down long before that, especially if you have gotten dehydrated before- your brain will begin to shut things down to prevent it from happening again. So, the actual better translation here should be: blessed are those who are starving, who are dying of thirst, for God's righteousness- whose bodies will literally begin to shut down because they don't have the thing that they most need. Blessed are those who are suffering because they are seeking for the only thing that will sustain them. Blessed is he who is unwilling to partake of the world because he is waiting on the righteousness of God to fulfill him. -We come now the process of sanctification for the life of the Follower of Jesus- that is, the expectation that a Disciple of Jesus, after accepting the free gift of salvation, after adopting a spirit of surrender, will then begin a pursuit after God's righteousness with the same determination that the starving man will seek after physical sustenance. We are called to seek after God's righteousness will the same urgency as the one without food or water, who knows he will soon die, begins to seek after food and water will a singular focus. -The world looks at righteousness as being decent and moral- better than others. "Well, at least I'm better than those sinners over there! I'm a good person; I'm not as bad as that guy over there!" We see this reflected in Luke 18:10-12 "Two men went up to the temple to pray, one a Pharisee and the other a tax collector. The Pharisee stood by himself and prayed: 'God, I thank you that I am not like other people-robbers, evildoers, adulterers-or even like this tax collector. I fast twice a week and give a tenth of all I get.'" We know that righteousness ultimately means being a copy of Jesus, it means being a reflection of the good God that we serve. For us to stand in the presence of God, to live beside Him in eternity, we need to match His holiness, His goodness. Obviously, this is not something we can do on our own, which is Jesus and His sacrifice for us comes in- but even while we cannot achieve it on our own, we are called in our daily lives to try as hard as we can to get there- even though God is very aware that we cannot achieve it on our own, we still demonstrate our thanks for His sacrifice for us by striving for the righteousness that He desires from us. -This is the idea of developing a focus and a passion for the same honesty, integrity, and justice that is found in the heart of God. It is developing the practical holiness within the Church that outsiders can observe, see Jesus in, and desire to build for their own lives. Blessed are those, Gamaliel Bradford wrote, "who have a thirst no earthly stream can satisfy, a hunger that must consume Christ in order to fulfill" and to find life. The Beatitude man, then, will strive for God's righteousness, experiencing God's blessings as he does so and will find satisfaction for his great hunger in the coming Kingdom of God. Point #2 "Blessed are those who are merciful. They will be given mercy." -It is easy for us to look at this verse and read it as saying "You will not be shown mercy if you are not merciful to others first." But that's incorrect. God has already poured out His mercy on us. So we are not referring to the mercy that God has shown to us by making a way for us to find salvation and to come back into right relationship with Him, but rather the mercy that we will be equipped with in order to go out into the world and make disciples for Christ. Showing mercy means actively showing and having compassion. In one sense, it is the idea of withholding punishment from someone who deserves it (Consider the judge who pays the fine of the father who is caught stealing food for his starving children). In a wider sense, it is actively helping those who cannot help themselves. This one Beatitude paints a significant picture of the standard that Jesus set for those who would call themselves His disciples: a Follower of Jesus is one who will serve everyone, even those unworthy of service, and will care for those who cannot help themselves. We see this Beatitude reflected in James 1:27 "Pure and undefiled religion before our God and Father is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress." There is a reason why the Christian Church established the first hospitals, orphanages, and asylums. We've not everything right, by any means, but historically we have followed through on this Beatitude well. Christians served in the midst of the plague. They went into the cities when everyone else fled. It was Christian nations who stood against Communism and then peacefully returned power the nation's people rather than seeking land and riches. It was Christians who developed the concepts of life being precious and having inherent value. It is because of Christians that women and children are considered more than property. It is Christians who maintain overseas missions and charities that are open and available to anyone, not just other Christians. [Share: Time in Mexico- working with kids who had families but were abandoned anyways.] We do the saving work of Jesus, showing mercy to others because He first showed mercy to us. In the same way that there is no situation where we should be unwilling to show forgiveness to others because of the forgiveness that God has shown us, so also it is true of mercy. We should always be ready to serve others and be merciful because of the mercy that God has already poured out on us. The part of this Beatitude that most intrigues me is that this is the first with an immediate reward. Having already received mercy from God, we are in no need of more mercy from God. So, the reception of mercy is not for us to build up some kind of bank for future use, but for us to use now. So, what is the reward? It is not more mercy that we cannot use, but rather more and more mercy for us to then pour out on others. The more mercy that you show, the more you receive to continue giving out to others. Question: What does this mean for you? As we dig through this list of Beatitudes, this standard that Jesus has set for His followers, we are confronted with these things that we have to compare to our own attitudes and behaviors. Can the world see Jesus in me? Can the world see these Beatitudes in my attitude and my behaviors? We have to ask ourselves, then, am I starving for God's righteousness? Am I pursuing God's righteousness the same way that I would pursue food if I was starving? Am I being merciful? Am I serving others even when they don't deserve mercy? Am I caring for those who can't care for themselves? Make a concerted effort this week to be able to answer yes to those questions. Invitation: