Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] We're continuing the Beatitudes this morning, and.
[00:00:12] It has been, as we've been going through these, that I have been covering one verse fairly well and the other verse not very well, that I. As I preach this time, as I was preparing, I finally gave up and said I can only cover merciful. Blessed are the merciful. So we're going to do one verse this time.
[00:00:39] What I want you to realize is part of the reason that this one verse in particular was taking up so much time is that there is a transition that takes place at this point in the Beatitudes.
[00:00:56] This is not simply a random list.
[00:00:59] I think I've said in some of the earlier sermons.
[00:01:04] It's not as though Jesus was starting to talk and then just kind of thinking of things like, oh yeah, merciful, you know, blessed are the.
[00:01:17] You know, you could fill in all kinds of things if you just wanted to start thinking of a list.
[00:01:26] This is not just a list.
[00:01:28] It is a list, but it is a list that has a progression to it.
[00:01:34] And so the transition that happens in the earlier verses, they are mostly about yourself and your relationship to God.
[00:01:48] In the latter verses, they are mostly about your relationship to others.
[00:01:57] So you can. We're going to read the passage again, Matthew 5:1 12, and pay attention and notice the transition. I'll just give you one little clue that may help and clarify some confusion.
[00:02:17] Verse 5 in the NAS 95, which is what I'll be reading from, says, blessed are the gentle. And if you think of gentle, you might think most of all of your relations to other people.
[00:02:35] Just think the word meek instead and it will help you to see the the transition that takes place at our verse. Blessed are the merciful. Would you please stand for the reading of God's Word?
[00:02:51] When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on the mountain. And after he sat down, his disciples came to him.
[00:02:57] He opened his mouth and began to teach them, saying, blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
[00:03:06] Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.
[00:03:11] Blessed are the gentle, for they shall inherit the earth.
[00:03:16] Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.
[00:03:23] Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
[00:03:30] Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
[00:03:35] Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
[00:03:40] Blessed are those who have been persecuted for the sake of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are you when people insult you and persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me, Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great.
[00:03:59] For in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. This is the word of the Lord.
[00:04:07] You may be seated.
[00:04:18] So in this passage, there is a transition, as I've said, a progression from one verse to the next.
[00:04:31] But before we even get to that progression, I want you to look at these verses, and I'm going to try to cover more than just one for a split second. Okay?
[00:04:49] What does this list have in common as you go through the whole thing?
[00:04:58] You've got poor in spirit, Morn, gentle hunger and thirst for righteousness.
[00:05:08] Merciful, pure in heart.
[00:05:12] Peacemakers.
[00:05:16] What I want you to see is that these. Oh, and persecuted. Right, I skipped the scariest one. We'll come to that eventually.
[00:05:29] What I want you to see is that these are primarily character traits, not things you do.
[00:05:45] Now, peacemakers make peace, the merciful show mercy.
[00:05:55] All of them are going to lead directly into the way you act, into what you do.
[00:06:04] But first, they are what you are.
[00:06:09] What you are is what causes you to do what you do.
[00:06:18] What you are is what causes you to do what you do. And many people think that doing the right things is what makes a man a Christian.
[00:06:32] Go to church, be baptized, take communion, give to the poor.
[00:06:41] These are things that are commanded. These are good things.
[00:06:47] These things do not make you a Christian.
[00:06:56] Now, I want to acknowledge that doing out of obedience can lead to being.
[00:07:11] There is a sense in which our behavior, that we intentionally choose, though it feels antithetical to our desires right, can educate our very hearts.
[00:07:30] We can learn in our hearts to feel correctly by practicing doing the correct thing.
[00:07:42] But that's a very limited kind of effect.
[00:07:49] Whereas the constant effect is that what you do flows out of your heart.
[00:08:01] Now, you know, because you just experienced it, that we kneel during our prayer of confession.
[00:08:11] Now, why do we kneel during our prayer of confession?
[00:08:17] After all, we could just as easily kneel during the pastoral prayer.
[00:08:23] Or we could.
[00:08:28] Kneel through the entire service.
[00:08:31] Or, as the ancient church did, we could stand through the entire service.
[00:08:38] I also ask you to stand for the reading of God's word.
[00:08:46] Why do we do those things?
[00:08:51] Well, the man who is poor in spirit humbles himself before his Heavenly Father.
[00:08:59] That's why we do these things.
[00:09:04] But it's entirely possible to kneel with pride in your heart.
[00:09:13] Part of the point of asking you to kneel is that it gives you the opportunity to examine your heart, because it doesn't work very well for us. To put our bodies in opposition to our hearts, it causes conflict within ourselves.
[00:09:36] So if your heart is proud, it is difficult to make your body humble.
[00:09:45] Does this make sense?
[00:09:47] There are many people who are very practiced, very good at being hypocrites. We're going to come to the pure in heart next week, Lord willing, the single hearted, that is the not hypocrites. But although it's possible to kneel with pride in your hearts, we don't kneel as a congregation during our prayer of confession, primarily to teach our hearts to be humble.
[00:10:27] We kneel to put our bodies into the same position our hearts are already in.
[00:10:35] Does this make sense? I want you to see that it goes both directions. But I want you to see that humility actually has to flow out of the heart. It cannot be created simply in the body.
[00:10:53] It is a beautiful thing when the body educates the heart. When you go to get down on your knees and you realize, oh, my heart is proud. And it causes you to therefore repent, to begin to be something that you are about to do.
[00:11:17] But if you simply do without first being, it is of no benefit to you.
[00:11:31] We must be merciful people who have mercy in us.
[00:11:43] Out of that will flow merciful actions.
[00:11:48] Out of that will flow us, pouring mercy onto others.
[00:11:54] But it is not enough to do mercy while you sit in condescending judgment on your brother.
[00:12:13] While we are merciful in our hearts, it will come out of us naturally.
[00:12:21] It will be a constant characteristic, a character trait that others see because of our behavior.
[00:12:32] While we are not merciful, our actions will reveal that.
[00:12:44] Even in our very mercy, while we are not merciful and trying to do merciful acts, it will be visible, it will be experienced by others. As he is not very merciful, though he has shown mercy to me.
[00:13:07] Because what you are generates what you do.
[00:13:21] So think about this again.
[00:13:25] It is not enough to do mercy, but sit in judgment on your brother to whom you are showing mercy.
[00:13:35] You are not merciful in that case.
[00:13:42] This beatitude is about the merciful.
[00:13:51] Blessed are the merciful.
[00:13:56] If it's possible for you to sit in judgment, to be condescending in the judgmental sense, right on the very person that you are being merciful to, you have not gone through the progression of these beatitudes.
[00:14:14] The progression of these verses is a whole process.
[00:14:21] One leads to the next leads to the next.
[00:14:26] Think about the first one, poor in spirit.
[00:14:32] Those who have not realized their spiritual poverty, their great need, can't ever be merciful.
[00:14:49] But if you have realized your spiritual Poverty and have mourned over your own sin.
[00:15:03] And have therefore had a low, meek view of yourself.
[00:15:12] And begun to greatly desire to be more holy.
[00:15:19] Then when it comes to interacting with others, other people who are sinners, you can't help but take the next step in this process.
[00:15:34] Being merciful in your reactions, in your attitude towards others.
[00:15:45] All of those first things show a knowledge of self that is essential to being merciful for us.
[00:15:56] Now, I want to be careful here because God, our Heavenly Father, is merciful and he is not spiritually impoverished.
[00:16:12] Right?
[00:16:18] But these are not about.
[00:16:21] These Beatitudes are not about your Heavenly Father.
[00:16:27] They're about who you are.
[00:16:31] Yes. Knowledge of self and knowledge of God are the two things that Calvin says consist of the entirety of the Christian faith.
[00:16:44] Knowledge of self and knowledge of God.
[00:16:48] In this case, the poor in spirit know themselves and know God's holiness, know their own lack of holiness and know God's perfect holiness.
[00:17:02] But it's about knowing yourself first.
[00:17:11] So this process of describing those who are blessed, those who are happy, those who have received something truly worthwhile, that can be celebrated, you can be joyful about this.
[00:17:33] You can count yourself fortunate if you have seen how needy you truly are.
[00:17:39] Self knowledge.
[00:17:47] So what does it mean with all of that knowledge of who we are and all of those that progress that has been made, Poor in spirit, mourning over sin, being meek, hungering and thirsting for righteousness in ourselves.
[00:18:14] Now suddenly you hit other people.
[00:18:19] And the moment that you run into other people, you run into the temptation to forget everything that you've learned about yourself.
[00:18:30] The Bible talks about the kind of man that looks at himself in the mirror and then goes away and immediately forgets what he has seen.
[00:18:42] Right?
[00:18:45] What have you seen in the mirror when you have examined your poverty, when you have mourned, what have you seen about yourself?
[00:19:05] We cannot be the kind of person that having mourned over our own sin, having become meek, at least for a moment, then begins to interact with our brother or our sister with pride, With no mercy.
[00:19:37] I was reading Martyn Lloyd Jones on this verse, and he quoted somebody else, I don't know who he was quoting, saying grace. He wanted us to understand what mercy is, and he brought up grace as a distinct thing from mercy. Okay.
[00:19:58] And he gave this definition to help understand the difference. Grace is especially associated with men in their sins.
[00:20:10] So what do our sins deserve?
[00:20:12] Judgment. Right. Grace is being given something other than what you deserve, something other than judgment.
[00:20:21] Grace is especially associated with men in their sins.
[00:20:24] Mercy is especially associated with Men in their misery.
[00:20:35] It's not so much about what you are giving to others who are caught in their sin, but about how you feel towards them when you see that they are stuck.
[00:21:00] Lloyd Jones continues. He says, in other words, while grace looks down upon sin as a whole, mercy looks especially upon the miserable consequences of sin.
[00:21:12] So that mercy really means a sense of pity.
[00:21:17] The feeling plus a desire to relieve the suffering.
[00:21:25] That is the essential meaning of being merciful. It is pity plus the action.
[00:21:32] Because all of these are going to lead into action. They flow out of your heart. When you have mercy in your heart, it leads to the way you treat others, being merciful.
[00:21:45] So he continues, so the Christian has a feeling of pity.
[00:21:50] His concern about the misery of men and women leads to an anxiety to relieve it.
[00:22:00] Now that anxiety to relieve it, relieve the misery, the suffering of others, right, can be led astray easily.
[00:22:18] There are many ways that we seek supposedly to help others, but in reality what we are seeking to do is relieve our own anxiety.
[00:22:35] Does this make sense?
[00:22:37] That's not about being merciful.
[00:22:40] It won't actually be helpful.
[00:22:44] This feeling of pity and anxiety to relieve the misery and suffering of others that you see must be controlled by being merciful.
[00:23:02] Okay, Merciful is about caring for the other person. It is not about yourself. It is not about making yourself feel better.
[00:23:18] And it is very easy for us to conflate those two things because we have this feeling of pity, desire to relieve others. But there's also a desire for us to be done with the anxiety.
[00:23:39] There is also a desire for us to be done with feeling this hurt for others.
[00:23:47] And that can go astray in many ways.
[00:23:56] One of the ways that it can go astray is by being done with being merciful. It's too painful to be merciful because you're constantly seeing the pain of others and feeling it with them.
[00:24:12] You're constantly pitying.
[00:24:17] And so you say, eh, being merciful is too painful. I'm just going to, I'm going to focus on saying what they should do.
[00:24:35] And so you forget all of the process, all of the progress you've made in correctly seeing yourself as somebody who also needs mercy.
[00:24:48] No, no, no.
[00:24:50] What they need to do is fix themselves so that I don't have to feel any duty to help them.
[00:24:59] I'm done being merciful. And suddenly what are you? You're no longer poor in spirit, you're no longer meek, you're proud.
[00:25:08] You can't ever be merciful because you've lost the chain.
[00:25:17] You're no Longer anchored to having a right view of yourself.
[00:25:24] And so your interactions with others will corrupt, will be corrupted.
[00:25:29] You will no longer be driven by your merciful heart.
[00:25:36] You'll be driven by your selfishness and your pride.
[00:25:42] Another way that this can go wrong though this, as Martyn Lloyd Jones put it, concern about the misery of men and women leading to an anxiety to relieve it.
[00:26:02] The other way that it can, one other way that it can go wrong is that you can forget that you are not God.
[00:26:16] And so you begin not necessarily to judge them, but that is one of the ways that you forget you're not God, but instead to feel as though you're responsible for everything else that everyone else is going through.
[00:26:42] Well, being merciful generally doesn't have anything to do with the pain that you have caused.
[00:26:55] I grant that discipline is painful. And there are times when we discipline others and we still feel merciful even as we're doing that.
[00:27:14] But much of the time.
[00:27:19] When we forget that we are not God, what we end up doing is we end up sitting in judgment on God for allowing other people to suffer.
[00:27:34] We see the misery that other people are in, and we may throw ourselves wholly into attempting to solve it for them at first. And when we realize, if we have our eyes opened, there is no end to the needs, and I have a finite life and finite resources. I can't stay up 24,7. And even if I could, how many people could I help?
[00:28:07] What's wrong with God?
[00:28:11] And we've forgotten who we are.
[00:28:24] And there's no longer mercy in us, even as we are attempting to relieve the suffering of others.
[00:28:38] It's about serving ourselves and about judging God.
[00:28:53] Those who are merciful have this concern for others, concern for their misery.
[00:29:05] And yes, that leads to an anxiety to relieve it.
[00:29:15] But here is the only solution.
[00:29:23] For the pain and misery that needs to be relieved.
[00:29:29] For them to become poor of spirit, for them to mourn, for them to become meek.
[00:29:53] Now remember, the Beatitudes are a sweeping away of all of our expectations of what blessed is, what happy is, what fortune it is, and throwing into the place of. Of all the things that we would expect.
[00:30:11] Rich, aggressive, proud, competent. All of that stuff just gets thrown away. And in its place we're given poor in spirit. Those who mourn, those who are gentle or meek, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.
[00:30:27] It's a crazy sermon.
[00:30:30] Unexpected.
[00:30:32] Completely right.
[00:30:34] But if you think about this, What do these people get?
[00:30:48] The kingdom of heaven?
[00:30:51] Comfort.
[00:30:56] They shall be satisfied.
[00:30:59] They shall receive mercy.
[00:31:03] What am I getting at?
[00:31:09] When you are merciful like your heavenly Father is merciful, you will desire for people to have the same things that you have.
[00:31:25] Now we're talking about the gospel here.
[00:31:29] You will desire that they will receive mercy from God. That is what you have received, mercy from God.
[00:31:40] You will desire that they will become poor in spirit.
[00:31:46] Because unless they become poor in spirit, they will not have the kingdom of heaven. This is the ultimate mercy.
[00:31:57] When we are stuck only on the earthly, when we look at others and see their suffering and see their misery, oh, well, they're poor. Oh, well, you know, they're suffering the ravages of sickness from alcohol or from birth or from.
[00:32:19] You just go down line and you think only of the physical, the earthly.
[00:32:25] What ends up happening is you can't truly have the mercy that your heavenly Father has.
[00:32:35] What is the mercy that he has for us? It doesn't ignore our earthly, physical suffering.
[00:32:43] He knows it. In fact, Jesus is described as our great high priest who has become one of us.
[00:32:52] So he knows what you're going through.
[00:32:57] He became man and suffered in the flesh.
[00:33:06] So he can sympathize with us.
[00:33:18] What does it mean when we look at our brothers and sisters in the flesh and we are merciful?
[00:33:30] It means we want them to be blessed the way that we have been blessed.
[00:33:36] And the way we have been blessed is right here.
[00:33:45] We've been blessed by having poverty of spirit.
[00:33:52] We've been blessed by being able to mourn.
[00:33:58] We've been blessed because we've become meek.
[00:34:06] We've been blessed ultimately because we see ourselves as we truly are.
[00:34:11] And that is the first step to salvation.
[00:34:19] Knowing your need, knowing the impossibility of doing anything for yourself to save yourself.
[00:34:29] No, you are poor in spirit, broke.
[00:34:35] You've got nothing.
[00:34:39] This is the blessing that you know that.
[00:34:48] What will happen when you look at others at that point is your eyes will be open and suddenly you will see in three dimensions instead of just two.
[00:35:00] Yes, the physical suffering and so forth will still be there. But you will begin to see people's spiritual needs.
[00:35:08] You'll see through their bodies into their hearts, and it'll be a bit disturbing. And you'll be tempted to begin to sit in judgment on them, to forget what you've seen in yourself.
[00:35:23] You'll be tempted to be overwhelmed and to say, forget it. It's too much work.
[00:35:35] But if you're merciful, your heart will go out to them.
[00:35:45] Just as the heart of Jesus Christ goes out to us.
[00:35:52] He looks and he says, the crowds, look at them.
[00:35:58] They're like sheep without a shepherd.
[00:36:02] How sad, how pathetic, how great the need.
[00:36:08] Or he'll look at the city of Jerusalem and he'll mourn.
[00:36:13] Jerusalem, Jerusalem.
[00:36:17] How often I have wanted to gather you as a mother hen gathers her chicks.
[00:36:26] But you would not.
[00:36:29] Do you see the mercy flowing out of his heart?
[00:36:34] He is merciful.
[00:36:38] You can feel it in his words.
[00:36:47] Those who are merciful shall receive mercy. Remember, the petition forgive us our debts as we forgive our debtors comes later on in this very sermon.
[00:36:56] Remember the story of the wicked servant that was forgiven a great debt and then would not forgive his fellow servant's smaller debt, with the result that when the master is told, his forgiveness of debt is revoked.
[00:37:19] Right?
[00:37:27] It's true forgiveness is necessary if we are going to be forgiven. It's true that mercy is necessary if we will receive mercy.
[00:37:41] But the point is not that we can earn God's mercy to us by being merciful to others.
[00:37:47] Right?
[00:37:49] Now that could be your take hearing.
[00:37:54] Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
[00:38:03] The point is that only those who grasped their own great need for forgiveness and mercy can receive it.
[00:38:17] Anybody who can look at his brother with disgust rather than at the sin with disgust.
[00:38:32] Doesn't know his own heart and therefore he cannot be merciful.
[00:38:41] But more to the point, he cannot ask forgiveness.
[00:38:55] Martyn lloyd jones.
[00:39:01] Puts it like if I am not merciful, there is only one explanation.
[00:39:08] I have never understood the grace and the mercy of God.
[00:39:13] I am outside Christ.
[00:39:16] I am yet in my sins and I am unforgiven.
[00:39:23] This is why only those who are merciful will receive mercy.
[00:39:30] Not because being merciful earns God's mercy to us. This is, by the way, the Muslim view of God making everything right with others, getting forgiveness, being merciful, that is how you earn God's blessings, God's forgiveness. They acknowledge that sin exists in their lives.
[00:40:03] They simply have only one way to fix things up, and that is to earn it.
[00:40:15] And so there's no mercy in Islam.
[00:40:22] Is there mercy in you?
[00:40:28] If you have received mercy, you will flood it out on your brothers and sisters in Christ and on unbelievers and on your enemies.
