I began this series five sermons ago, by telling you about the Wright brothers Wilbur and

Transcription

1 November 5, 2017 Matthew 5:7 VFR Rules: Being Merciful I began this series five sermons ago, by telling you about the Wright brothers Wilbur and Orville. At the time I reminded you that these two brothers literally changed the world which they certainly did the day in December of 1903 when they flew that flimsy airplane. But to make that happen to get that first plane off the ground these two siblings had two requirements. First, there were lots of things they needed to KNOW. They had to learn about lift, and thrust, and drag stuff like that. They had to figure out the math of how a wing works and they did. By using their wind tunnel invention, they learned that the wing of a plane divides the air that flows over it. When this happens the pressure beneath the wing is increased and the pressure above is reduced. That s why if you can pull or push the wing forward fast enough you get the lift necessary for the plane to fly. Thanks to Mr. Google I found the exact formula they discovered: lift equals coefficient times density times velocity squared divided by two multiplied by the wing area. This leads me to the Wright brothers second flight requirement. You see, learning knowing all these aerodynamic principles was not enough. To soar to fly these siblings also had to DO things. They had to ACT on their knowledge. They had to build the plane using the right materials. They had to design an engine because none of the automobile 1

2 manufacturers could build one that was both powerful enough and light enough. Then they had to equip their plane with all the necessary controls controls they had to learn to use. I bring this up because living by visual flight rules requires the same two things. If a Christian is to become more and more like Jesus, there is information we need to know and things we need to do. In fact, Jesus arranged His spiritual flight lessons in this way. The first four beatitudes are things that GROWING Christians have to KNOW. And the next four deal with things that Christians have to do. Think of it like this. So far, we ve looked at KNOWTUDES. From now on we are studying DOTUDES. And speaking of being and doing like Jesus I need to point out that spiritual growth or soaring is exactly that it s striving to become more like our Lord. That brings us to this morning s DO-attitude because our Lord is MERCIFUL. As Psalm 145:8 says, God is kind and merciful, slow to anger and full of love. So part of spiritual growth is imitating our Lord in this way. Growing Christians are merciful Christians. I like how Chrysostom, an early church leader, put it. He said, Mercy imitates God and disappoints the devil. By the way, the writer of Lamentations reminds us that God is always showing us mercy. Do you remember the words? His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning. (Lamentations 3:22-23) Now the English word new is the Hebrew word hadas and it means never before experienced. This tells us that the mercy God gives us today is different from the mercy He gave yesterday or the day before or the day before the day before. In the same, way the seasonal flu vaccine changes from year to year, God s mercy changes from day 2

3 to day. Every morning we get a new strain of mercy. Why? Because you don t always sin in the exact same way. I might be selfish over one thing today and selfish over an entirely different thing tomorrow. I might covet one thing tomorrow and something else next week. Try this little exercise: Figure out how old you are not in years but in days. That calculation will give you the sum total of different kinds of mercy you ve received in life the mercies that are NEW every morning. Today I m 61 years and 21 days old. If you add in leap year days this means God has blessed me with AT LEAST, 22,302 unique mercies because of course I don t just sin once a day. Doesn t that make you want to be merciful? The words of Micha 6:8 come to mind. It says, He has showed you, O man, what is good. He has shown me 22,302 times! That knowledge compels me to want to obey the command in this verse. Do you remember it? And what does the LORD require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God. Okay let s get going with our study. Take your Bibles and follow along. Our text is verse 7 but so we can get a feel of this moving from KNOWING to DOING let s get a running start in verse 1. 1 Now when [Jesus] saw the crowds, He went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to Him, 2 and He began to teach them, saying: 3 Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven. 3

4 4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted. 5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth. 6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for RIGHTEOUSNESS, for they will be filled. 7 Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. The question I want us to deal with this morning is: How does this particular DOtude unfold in the life of growing Christian? Or to put it another way, what does mercy look like? A great place to find the answers to these questions is in Luke 10 verse where Jesus told the parable of The Good Samaritan. This familiar story gives us a picture of mercy. It provides us with a great example of mercy in action. I m sure you know it, but take your Bibles and turn to Luke 10 anyway, and follow along as we review. In verse 30 and following, Jesus said that a Jewish man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and he fell among robbers who stripped him and beat him and departed leaving him lying on the roadside half dead. A priest came by but crossed to the other side of the road and kept on walking. A Levite came by and did the same so two religious leaders two people who supposedly knew God well, ignored this man in need. But then a very surprising thing happened. A Samaritan, a sworn enemy of the Jews, came by. And with his response with his actions this Samaritan shows us the four dimensions of this particular flight lesson. Do you remember Jesus question at the end of His parable? He said to His listeners, Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the 4

5 hands of robbers? The expert in the law replied, The one who had mercy on him. And in essence, Jesus said, Correct! Right answer. Go and do likewise! We can see the first dimension of mercy in verse 33 where it says, A Samaritan, as he journeyed, came to where the wounded man was and HE SAW HIM. At this point in this familiar story Jesus teaches us that mercy begins with what I would call a God-empowered PERCEPTION. This is always the first step in the unfolding of this BE-attitude. First, Mercy sees. Remember? In this familiar parable, the priest, the Levite, and the Samaritan, all three men saw this wounded man but only one perceived him as a person he had the responsibility to help. Only one began the process of mercy. The priest and the Levite only saw just another of the countless poor and downtrodden. Well to embrace this flight lesson we need better eyesight. We need to be able to see the masterpiece that is in every person. We need to be able to see beyond their sin beyond the consequences to their sin and see a person made in the image of God Himself because that kind of vision that caliber of sight prompts us to turn aside and help. Here s a second thing about mercy. Mercy FEELS. Remember? Jesus tells us in His parable that all three men SAW the need but only the Samaritan FELT the need. Look at verse 33 where it says, He (the Samaritan) TOOK PITY on him. Now, this word that we translate as pity literally means, to have intensity in the intestines. This sounds odd to us but the people of Jesus day believed the seat of the emotions was not in the heart but in the digestive area of the body. The idea is also captured in Matthew 14:14 where it says, When Jesus landed 5

6 and saw a large crowd, He had compassion on them and healed their sick. The word compassion means that Jesus was so moved that His stomach churned or literally, His bowels yearned for the crowd. We still talk this way at times. When we are nervous we say we have, butterflies in the stomach. We say things like, She hates my guts or, I ve got a gut feeling about this. (Las Vegas this week) By the way, the Hebrew word for mercy is chesedh and it means much more than to just sympathize with a person. It s not simply feeling sorry for someone in trouble. No, chesedh mercy means the ability to get inside the other person s skin until we can see things with his or her eyes, think things with his or her mind and FEEL things with his or her feelings. We can t say we embrace this beatitude we can t claim to be MERCIFUL unless we do. But, we re not done yet. Mercy doesn t stop there. It sees.it feels and then it does this. Mercy ACTS. This is where we see the division in the beatitudes because a merciful person does more than feel: they act practically in an effort to relieve the distress. In verse 34 Jesus said that the Samaritan, went to him and bound up his wounds, pouring oil and wine; then he set him on his own beast and brought him to an inn, and took care of him. So, Biblical mercy is more than an attitude. It is an attitude that prompts us to do something. John MacArthur writes, Mercy is not the silent, passive pity that never seems to help in a tangible way. It is genuine compassion with a pure, unselfish attitude that reaches out to help. When I was in High School we did a portion of the Broadway play, My Fair Lady and I remember the part of that play when Eliza Dolittle is courted by a man named Freddy. Freddy writes her love letters every day. Eliza s response to all of his love letters was to cry out in 6

7 frustration, Words! Words! I m so sick of words! Don t talk to me of stars burning above! If you re in love, show me! Don t talk of love lasting through time! Make no undying vow. If you love me show me now! Mercy is a visible thing. Genuine mercy involves interrupting our schedule, expending our time and money. Mercy is seeing a man without food and giving him food. Mercy is seeing a person begging for love and giving him love. Mercy is seeing someone lonely and giving him company. Mercy is meeting the need, not just feeling it. Let s put it this way: mercy is not a spectator sport. According to Vine s Expository Dictionary of New Testament Words, mercy is, the outward manifestation of pity; it assumes need on the part of him who receives it and resources adequate to meet the need on the part of him who shows it. Well, let me ask you, do you embrace this beatitude? Do you act mercifully to people in need? Remember mercy is more than noticing and feeling: it s doing. And then a fourth aspect of this beatitude we see in this parable is this. Mercy EMBRACES. I use the word embrace to say that mercy does not exclude. No matter who it is who needs mercy no matter what their sin we show them mercy. Remember, in Jesus parable, the man helping was a Samaritan. The man needing the help was his sworn enemy, a Jew. Jews hated their half-breed neighbors the Samaritans, and history shows that the feeling was mutual. Most Samaritans would have excluded this Jewish enemy. They wouldn t have 7

8 FELT for his pain much less ACTED to help him. Most would have mimicked the Priest and the Levite by passing by on the other side. Many times, we are just as bad. I mean, we tend to limit the people to whom we want to show mercy. When we are hurt or wronged, being merciful and forgiving isn t the first thing that comes into our minds. No, instead our first response is to try and get back at those who hurt us or those we disagree with. Patrick Greene of San Antonio, Texas, has had a long history of disliking and combating believers. An outspoken atheist he filed complaints and lawsuits for 30-plus years accusing government officials of unconstitutionally endorsing Christianity. At one point Greene threatened to sue Henderson County about the yearly manger display at the courthouse. In an interview for a local newspaper, Greene said, My wife and I had never had a Christian do anything nice for us. But all of that changed in March of 2012 when the 63-year-old Greene learned that he needed surgery for a detached retina. Greene didn t have money to pay for the surgery, and he had to give up his cab driving job in order to have the procedure. Well, when Jessica Crye, a member of Sand Springs Baptist Church, heard about Greene s situation, she told her pastor, Eric Graham, who then called Greene. Greene said, If you really want to contribute something, we need groceries. Greene thought that if anything, he d see $50, or at most $100. But a few days later, the church sent him a check for $400. More checks soon followed. The total grew to over $3000. The flabbergasted Greene said, I thought I was in the Twilight Zone. These people are acting like what the Bible says a 8

9 Christian should. I will be forever grateful because we were in a hole and needed help. After that happened, rather than try to remove the manger display, Greene said he would like to add his contribution a star for the top of the Nativity scene. However, Greene added, You people can figure out how to plug it in. I love this story! Most of the time we want to FIGHT BACK against the atheists of the world the people who are our enemies in this morality war. But these Texas believers embraced their enemy. They literally SHOWED him mercy. That s the way it is with mercy. The more you give the more you get. The more you understand how merciful God has been to you, the more merciful you are to others and then the more opportunities God gives you to share His mercy with others. It s a cycle of sorts. Jesus refers to it in our text when He declares that those who are merciful will receive mercy. The fact is mercy comes from mercy. Our mercy for others comes from our experience of God s mercy to us. Do you remember the words from Shakespeare s Merchant of Venice, where Portia, says, The quality of mercy is not strained. It drops as the gentle rain from Heaven upon the Earth below, and is twice blessed. It blesses him that gives and him that takes. Sounds like Shakespeare had been reading the beatitudes! Let me ask you. Who in your world needs mercy this morning? Your spouse? A rebellious child? A co-worker? Someone in this church? I want to challenge you to ask God to help you answer that question right now, and then pray asking Him to help you extend mercy. 9