Annual Sermons Text: Matthew 5:7 Vol. 9 No. 23 Bob Marcaurelle BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL The first Sunday in December, in Baptist churches, is a combination service. We look at Christmas and at world missions. And this is appropriate because Christmas tells us God sent His Son on a mission from heaven to hearth, to identify with the human race and die to pay for our sins. And our mission is to go to this world with the message of God s mission accomplished. Because He came, we go! One word that binds this together is mercy. Mercy is love in action toward those who hurt, either in their sorrow or in their sin. Mercy gives help to those who are hurting and forgives those who are hurting us. This is what God did for you and me in Christ. Deep in the heart of the Old Testament sacrificial system, in the holy of holies, was the mercy seat where God met man (Lev. 16). Using that same word, from the Greek Old Testament, Paul said Jesus cross is our mercy seat (Rom. 3:25). Grace comes to man as GUILTY in sin, and mercy comes to man as HURTING in sin (Trench). And when we go into our world we go to relieve pain and hurts, the worst of which is the hurt of being lost and separated from God. Yes, we feed the hungry, clothe and poor, care for the orphan and heal the sick but our main mission is to the soul. Our primary goal in life is to win people to faith in Christ so they can go from earth to heaven saved by Him who came from heaven to earth. I. THE MEANING OF MERCY 1. Help For the Hurting. People hurt for two reasons, either they are in the grip of some sorrow or some sin. To the first mercy GIVES, and to the second, mercy FORGIVES. Mercy GIVES - time to the lonely, money to the destitute, health to the sick and salvation to the lost. Remember our Lord s great parable of the Good Samaritan. A man going down the
winding mountain road from Jerusalem to Jericho was robbed, beaten and left for dead beside the road. A priest (fulltime religious worker) and a Levite (church worker) looked at him and passed by on the other side. A Samaritan (despised halfbreed Jew) came along, stopped, tended his wounds, took him to an inn and promised to pay for his care. Jesus asked the man he told the parable to, which of the three was a neighbor. His answer, The one who showed MERCY (Lk. 10:30ff). This required... SEEING This is the best picture of memrcy in the Bible. It binds wounds. It meets needs. It does what needs doing. And the first step is SEEING. The priest and Levite looked at the man but they didn t see with the eyes of the heart. We do this all the time. Sin blinds us by making us see labels instead of human beings. The priest and Levite probably saw a fool who should never have made the journey alone. We see hitchhikers as fools who shouldn t leave home without enough money for a bus. We see drunks...bums...addicts...aids people who deserve death...etc. We look and label and do not really see human beings. I read the amazing account of how the Jews captured the arch Nazi - Adolph Eichmann, a man who actually enjoyed putting men, women and children to death. He would often go to the gas chambers to watch the naked victims scream, cling to each other and die. They found him in South America (I think) and to get him out of the country smoothly, they watched him for months to plan a quick capture and escape. As they watched him they saw a family man with a little child he loved and who loved him. He was kind to and well liked by the neighborhood children. When he was snatched off the sidewalk and captured, the Jewish man who caught him, guarded him for several days. He refused to talk with Eichmann because he was, to him, evil personified. But once, he did ask him a question. He told him he appeared to be a man who liked children, and Eichmann said he did. The man then asked, How could you kill so many little
boys and girls? Eichmann shrugged his shoulders and said, Oh, they were JEWS. We do the same - they are NIGGERS...RED NECKS...SPICKS...GREASERS...INDIANS...WHITE TRASH...WHITEYS...HONKEYS...SLANT EYES, etc. I m so glad God doesn t think like this. I m glad He didn t look at me and say, That s a boy who s hurting, who needs My love, who needs My help, and sent His Son to die for me. SHARING Mercy not only sees, it shares. The Good Samaritan paid the money and Jesus Christ, when he saw you and me broken on the highway of life, and passed over by people who labeled us, gave his life for us. We read, For God so loved the world that He GAVE His only begotten Son... (Jn. 3:16). And we, in ministry and missions, are to give whatever it takes, if we show mercy. 2. A Hand For the Hating (Lk. 6:35-36). Mercy not only gives, it FORGIVES. In the Bible it is used for the refusal to execute judgment or retaliation on those who hurt us. When God allowed His just judgment to fall upon Israel for her sins, He told Hosea to name his child No mercy for I will no longer show mercy to the house of Judah (Hos. 1:7). Luke gives mercy this meaning in his account of the Sermon on the Mount. He tells us Jesus said, Love your enemies and do good...be ye therefore merciful as your Father is merciful (Lk. 6:35-36). Mercy means to love in the face of hatred and is far more than the mere refusal to retaliate. It is the attitude of heart that wishes the other person well even when his fist is raised against us. II. THE MOTIVATION FOR MERCY 1. To Receive Mercy. To lie a life of giving and forgiving is hard and Jesus gives us two strong motivations. The first one is so we can receive mercy. Jesus said much the same thing in the Lord s Prayer where He taught us to pray Forgive us our sins! and then added, If you do not forgive those who sin against you, your Father in heaven will not forgive you (Mt. 6:14-15). This sounds strange to Protestants for it seems to teach that God s mercy and forgiveness is conditional on our love and forgiveness
of others. What does Jesus mean here? Well, some say, He is not talking about divine mercy but HUMAN MERCY. If we are kind and loving and helpful, people will be kind and loving and helpful to us. It is true that life goes better for nice people but most of the time, people we help will turn on us in anger when the help stops. The most merciful Man who ever lived was Jesus and He was nailed to a cross by those He came to help. Liberal Christianity sees mercy, forgiveness, love, Christlike living as THE WAY OF SALVATION. Just be like Jesus, they say, and you will go to heaven. There are two things wrong with this - it isn t Biblical and it isn t possible. It isn t Biblical! The Bible says, It is by grace that you have been saved, through faith, it is the gift of God, so no one can boast (Eph. 2:8-9). And again, No one will be declared righteous by observing the Law (which Jesus said was summed up in the word LOVE in Matthew 22:37), for it is through the law that we become conscious of sin (Rom. 3:20). It isn t Biblical and it isn t possible! My soul! My soul! Tell me I have to be like Jesus to be saved and I am doomed to be damned and so are you. For I fail every day and so do you. What we have here and in the Lord s Prayer is THE PROOF OF SALVATION. There are eight Christian virtues in the Beatitudes (Matt. 5:1-12) and the first four are the virtues of CONVERSION which God gives us to make us want and receive salvation. We humbly acknowledge our sins and inability to live for God (poverty of spirit). We say, Oh, God, I am not like Jesus. I don t live by love and most of the time I don t want to. We are sorry for our sins (Mourning) and meekly submit to Jesus as Savior and Lord. Then we hunger and thirst to live for Him who died for us. The first thing God gives us to satisfy hunger and thirst is mercy - the desire for love in action. The first four virtues carry over into our Christian life and join the last four, but the pivotal
virtue, the proof of the genuineness of his conversion is love, the first post conversion beatitude. First John says, Whoever has this world s goods and sees his brother in need and shuts his heart toward him, how can the love of God live in him?...he who does not love his brother, whom he has seen, how can such a one love God, whom he has not seen? (1 Jn. 3:17, 4:20). And all of this flows from Christmas and from Calvary, where God saw our need and came to us. First John says, By this we know love, because He laid down His life for us. And we also ought to lay down our lives for our brothers (1 Jn. 3:16). Mercy, the first conversion fruit, is treating others like the Lord treats us. That s why Christmas (His coming) leads to world ministry (Our going). It is proof of salvation. 2. To Receive Joy. All the virtues in Christ s list are preceded by the words, Blessed are you who are. They are all signposts pointing to a happy, joyful person, blessed by God and being a blessing to others. Mercy is doubly so, because it comes right after RIGHTEOUSNESS. Righteousness can be cold and rigid and heartless. We can serve God and man dutifully AND HATE EVERY MINUTE OF IT. That s why First Corinthians 13 says if we are so obedient as to give all our goods to feed the poor and give our lives in God s service - if we don t do it in love, it profits us nothing. When Sir Launfal set out for the Holy Grail, he met a beggar and tossed him a coin in the dirt. The beggar did not pick it up. Why? Because it was given in arrogance and contempt. Then came these lines, from Christ, speaking through the beggar, Who gives himself with his alms feeds three - himself, his hungry neighbor and Me! Proverbs 11:17 says, The merciful man does good to his own soul. He who is cruel troubles his own flesh. The way to true joy is to give and to forgive. Dr. Clovis Chappel told of a lady in one of his early churches. She had righteousness without mercy. When she learned that her daughter ha made a terrible and irrevocable mistake, she vowed that the girl and her baby would never be welcome under her roof. This girl went to a rescue home to have her baby, but when
the child was three weeks old, she was driven by need for a mother s love, to go and knock on the door of her home. The mother let her know she was not welcome. She turned and walked across the field and found shelter for herself and her baby. Dr. Chappel heard of this and vowed that he would go and talk to the grandmother. Someone advised him not to do so because the mere mention of the girl s name might kill her, for she had a bad heart. Chappel went to his study and dropped to his knees. He rose up resolved to speak to the woman if it killed her. They talked, and all the lady could say was that she would ask God to help her forgive. Soon after that Chappel passed by that house and heard the sweetest music this side of heaven. It was the squeak of an old fashioned rocking chair and the sound of that grandmother singing a lullaby to a baby in her arms. And Chappel said, And the most wonderful part of it all was the change that had taken place in the face of that grandmother. The hate had been replaced by the peace and joy of heaven.