Matthew 5:7: "Blessed Are the Merciful"

INTRODUCTION

Last year we started a series on the Beatitudes, the eight short statements that begin Jesus’s “Sermon on the Mount.”

The first four—those we have talked about—are:

“Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven.”

“Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted.”

“Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.”

And, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied.”

The word translated “blessed” is the word for happy, but it is usually translated “blessed” or “fortunate,” because the happiness Jesus is talking about is more than just a feeling.

Jesus is saying, “How fortunate are the poor in spirit…those who mourn…the meek…and those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.”

Today we come to the fifth beatitude: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”

The surest sign that we have experienced the mercy of God is that we want to pass it on to others.

And the surest sign that a supposedly-religious person has not really experienced God’s mercy is that he or she is unwilling to extend mercy to others.

I read a startling statement in a book recently. It said, “To get into heaven, we will need a letter of recommendation from the poor!”

That might be taken to mean that we earn our salvation by generosity to the poor. But that’s not what the author intended.

She is referring to what Jesus told his followers in this fifth Beatitude in the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”

People say, “God is love.” That’s the only verse they think they need to know. They say, “If God is love, of course he will forgive me.”

Heinrich Heine was a famous poet. He was also an irreligious man. When on his deathbed, someone reproved him for his life of sin, he said, “Of course, God will forgive me—that’s his business!”

Some people say, “When I was a child I gave my heart to Jesus.” But since that little prayer they said once upon a time, they may have done nothing to show that they really belong to Jesus.

Salvation is by grace; we can’t earn it, and we can’t deserve it. But Jesus tells us over and over that knowing Christ means a changed life.

He once challenged some would-be disciples with these words, “Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter the kingdom of heaven, but only the one who does the will of my Father in heaven” (Matthew 7:21).

Jesus also said, “By their fruits you shall know them” (Matthew 7:16 and 20). In this beatitude Jesus is telling us that mercy is one of the fruits by which we can know that we truly belong to God.

I. So let’s look at this saying, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” The mercy Jesus is talking about expresses itself in two main ways—compassion and forgiveness.

A. Let me tell you a story about compassion that I found on the news a few years ago.

This story appeared in the newspaper of Rock Hill, South Carolina. A man named Ed Peirce, who lives in that city owns rental houses. The fathers of two families he rented to, lost their jobs.

Mr. Peirce would have been perfectly within his rights to evict the two families, with their small children, especially since he needed the money from their rent for his own living expenses.

But Mr. Peirce didn’t do that. He went back to work full-time at the photo counter in a Walgreens drug store so that those two families could get back on their feet.

The newspaper quoted Mr. Peirce: “I sat with them and prayed for better times. These are stand-up guys. Family men. Proud. They paid me before when they were working. You don’t show your faith, your Christianity, in words. You do it in deeds” (Huffington Post September 24, 2009).

I used to think that compassion meant only feeling sorry…having sympathy. In the Bible, compassion means feeling sorry enough to do something.

The priest and the Levite in Jesus’s story of the Good Samaritan may have felt sorry for the poor man dying on the Jericho road.

But the Samaritan who came by, not only felt sorry, he showed compassion. He risked his life by stopping. He treated the man’s wounds, put him on his donkey, and took him to the inn. He left him with the innkeeper and offered to pay his expenses until he got on his feet. That is compassion—and compassion costs.

Sometimes compassion means only taking time to sympathize, to pray, to help in whatever way we can.

Sometimes it costs more—as it did the Samaritan—and as it cost Ed Pierce.

B. Compassion can also mean forgiveness—and forgiveness also costs. If you have ever been really hurt by another person’s cruelty, you know that it costs to forgive.

This story came from The New York Times, August 2005

Ryan Cushing, a 19-year-old was one of six teenagers out for a night of joyriding and crime.

Ryan’s companions were charged with stealing credit cards and forgery, but Cushing was charged with assault for tossing a frozen turkey through the windshield of a car and nearly killing a woman named Victoria Ruvolo.

Ms. Ruvolo needed many hours of surgery to rebuild her shattered facial bones.

Convicted, Ryan was facing 25 years in prison.

Upon leaving the courtroom the boy came face-to-face with his victim, Ms. Ruvolo.

He said he was sorry and begged her to forgive him.

Ms. Ruvolo did. She cradled his head as he sobbed. She stroked his face and patted his back. “It’s O.K., It’s O.K.,” she said. “I just want you to make your life the best it can be.”

The prosecutor wanted to impose harsh punishment on a crime he denounced as heedless and brutal, but Ms. Ruvolo’s resolute compassion, changed his mind.

The story ends with this observation: “Given the opportunity for retribution, Ms. Ruvolo gave and got something better: the dissipation of anger and the restoration of hope, in a gesture as cleansing as the tears washing down her damaged face, and the face of the foolish, miserable boy whose life she single-handedly restored.”

The story doesn’t say that Ms. Ruvolo is a Christian believer, but I am sure that her generous act of mercy came from her love for God.

II. To be merciful is to be like God.

A. We read in Psalm 145:9:

The Lord is gracious and merciful,

slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love.

The Lord is good to all

and his compassion is over all that he has made.

B. God’s compassion shines out most clearly in his giving his Son, our Lord Jesus, for us to the terrible death on the cross, so that we might be forgiven and granted salvation. That’s mercy!

And if we have truly experienced God’s mercy, we will reflect it in our lives. We will be merciful people.

That’s why Jesus says, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”

It’s true that God loves even the worst of us. Nothing that we ever do can make God stop caring for us, to stop seeking to draw us to himself and make us his children.

But experiencing God’s mercy has to transform our lives. If we are unmerciful, we are proving that we have not really experienced the mercy of God.

C. In the story of judgment in Matthew 25 Jesus, as judge, tells those who were unmerciful, that because they have not fed the hungry, clothed the naked, welcomed the stranger, taken care of the sick, and visited those in prison, they have rejected not only those suffering people—but Jesus himself.

They have rejected God’s mercy. For them, God can only weep as judgment takes its course.

D. The gift of mercy is especially precious because it comes, not only from one human being to another, but it also comes from God’s heart and God’s hand through his servant—and that servant may be you or me.

A Christian, grieving about all the suffering in the world, cried out to God, “Why don’t you do something? Why don’t you do something?”

And then he heard God say, “I did do something. I made you.”

APPLICATION

When we read about the sorrows of the world—or watch the stories on TV—we may feel that we are helpless to do anything at all.

But there are things that even we, who are old and limited, can do.

We can pray. Every day I include in my prayers the homeless, the refugees, the immigrants, those who are sick, those who are dying, the lonely, the blind and lame and mentally afflicted—and others I can think of who are suffering in our trouble-filled world.

We should pray for those we know—and those we don’t know. And God tells us to pray not only for our loved ones, but for others too.

Jesus said, “If you love only those who love you, what credit is that to you. Even sinners love those who love them. And if you do good to those who do good to you, what credit is that to you? For even sinners do the same. …But love your enemies…and your reward will be great, and you will be children of the Most High; for he is kind to the ungrateful and the selfish. Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful” (Luke 6:32-36).

So let’s widen our prayers even to include people on the other side of the earth—people we will never see.

And we can give as we are able. Jesus insisted that his followers be generous people.

There are many good causes. There is some good work that is calling to you. The best work is not necessarily the one that sends you the most fund-raising letters. But all of you know of those who are doing good work in the world in the name of Christ. They need help. They need your help.

Jesus said, “Lay up for yourselves treasure in heaven. …For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also” (Matthew 6.20-21).

I know, you worry that maybe your money will run out before you die. I think about that too.

But giving generously is an opportunity to trust God for our future needs—a venture of faith. If faith risks nothing, it is not really faith.

CONCLUSION

One more story about mercy. This one includes both meanings of mercy—compassion and forgiveness.

An American soldier tells this story about an experience in Viet Nam. He writes,

“We had just searched a small village that had been suspected of harboring Viet Cong. We really tore the place up—it wasn’t hard to do—but we had found nothing. Then just up the trail from the village, we were ambushed.

“I got hit and don’t remember anything more until I woke up. A very old Vietnamese woman was leaning over me. Before I passed out again, I remembered having seen her in the village we had just destroyed. I knew I was going to die.

“When I woke again, the hole in my left side had been cleaned and bandaged, and the woman was leaning over me again offering me a warm cup of tea. As I was drinking the tea and wondering why I was still alive, a helicopter landed nearby to take me back. The woman quietly got up and disappeared down the hill” (Random Acts of Kindness, p37)

Let me close with one of my favorite scriptures. It is from Paul’s letter to the Colossians. It doesn’t contain the word “mercy,” but it all about mercy, and it sums up much of what we have found in the Beatitudes so far:

“As God’s chosen ones, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, lowliness, meekness, patience.

“Forbearing one another, and if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

“And above all these, clothe yourselves with love, which binds everything together in perfect harmony” (Colossians 3:12-14).