Study inMatthew’s

Gospel

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Sermon On The MountThe Merciful

Chap 5 v1-12

Presentation 13

Presentation 13

IntroductionA Puritan writer describes the experience of a man who dreamed that he was out in the wilds during a storm. The lightening flashed and the thunder seemed to shake the earth beneath him. He looked for shelter. The first house he ran to denied him entry. The owner was called Justice who said, 'Go away I cannot shelter a traitor to his king and God’. The owner of the next house was called Truth who said, ‘You are full of falsehood you cannot stay here’. He then fled to the home of Peace who said, 'Go away, there is no peace, says my God, to the wicked’. He didn't know what to do. The storm increased in intensity but then he saw a door over which was written ‘Mercy'. 'Yes' he said, 'this is the place for me’. And the door was open and he was welcome there.

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What Is Mercy?But what is mercy? It can be helpful to define things negatively as well as positively. Two boys were playing a game called ‘mercies’. They interlocked their fingers and squeezed until one or other shouted 'mercies'. In the context of the game to call for mercy was really saying, 'stop hurting me!' But mercy is not restraining the application of pain!

Nor is mercy to be thought of as an easy going attitude to wards wrong-doing, like the child who defined mercy as, `When mum and dad let me off with murder'. Being merciful does not mean developing a couldn't-care-less-attitude, which is really saying, “other people do not matter”.

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What Is Mercy?Others narrow down the meaning of the term to a relaxation of a demand which might otherwise have been enforced- letting people off! Mercy involves that but it also involves much more than that.

The theme of mercy has been explored in literature down the centuries. Almost every British school-child has become familiar with Shakespeare’s words in ‘The Merchant of Venice’:

“The quality of mercy is not strained,It drops as the gentle rain from heavenupon the place beneath. It is twice blessedIt blesses him that gives and him that takes …

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What Is Mercy?Jesus said, “blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy”. Like all of the beatitudes, the characteristic of mercy is not natural but spiritual. It is an attribute of God. Whenever ‘mercy’ is used in the O.T. it is almost always in the context of God's character. In Isa. 62v12 we read, 'Mercy belongs to God'. Indeed, it is a quality that God prizes highly in himself. He tells us he ‘delights in mercy’ Mic.7v18. The mercy of God is not something which has a best before date stamped upon it, nor does it have a limited time span. Unlike coal and oil reserves it cannot be exhausted and so we read repeatedly in God's word that 'his mercy endures forever’. cf. Ps 136.

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What Is Mercy?What exactly do we mean when we say that God is merciful? The word ‘mercy’ in the O.T. describes the way in which God views misery in general, and the miserable consequences of sin in particular. First, it involves a sense of pity and secondly, a longing to relieve the suffering that sin has produced.

It has been pointed out that mercy was the last of God's attributes to be revealed. Before the fall, man was aware of God's goodness, and power, his love and his kindness but he did not know God as merciful until after sin had marred God's perfect creation. Only then was this door into the character of God opened.

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What Is Mercy?God’s mercy causes some to ask, “Does the mercy of God not contradict the fact that God is just”. Any view of God that pictures him as someone torn between his justice and his mercy is a distortion. It describes a God who is unsure of himself; frustrated and emotionally unstable.

This grotesque caricature of the true God does not reflect the biblical revelation of his character. For the testimony of scripture makes it quite clear that there is a focal point for God's mercy.

There is a place where mercy and justice meet together. A place where a God of justice can fully responded to the sinful plight of man.

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What Is Mercy?And that focal point is the cross of Calvary. Only there can the mercy of God be fully appreciated. Because it was there that Mercy and Justice met together. It was there that God stooped down to relieve the suffering which sin produced. It was there that a fountain of mercy was opened, or to use the earlier analogy of the storm, it was there that a door of shelter was opened up, providing men with unrestricted access to it.

And so God's mercy is bill-boarded before the world in Christ's sacrificial death.

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Who Are The Merciful?But what is the relationship between mercy as we have attempted to outline it, an attribute of God, which comes into sharpest focus upon the cross, and the merciful individuals who are the subject of the fifth beatitude?

We begin by recognising that man is not by nature merciful. He revels in revenge. He demands his pound of flesh. To many even to show another mercy and forgiveness is seen as a sign of weakness.

In addition, the natural man often attempts to insulate himself against all the pain and heartache that surrounds him.

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Who Are The Merciful?Sir Henry Holland a medical missionary working in Quetta describes a day when a blind man, whose condition was quite hopeless, was brought to him. Bystanders roared with laughter when he told his patient there was no hope for his condition. Does this lack of concern shock you? But our professed concern for overseas need can often disguise a real failure closer to home. We can take an immense amount of pleasure in scoring points at the expense of others or in planning our petty revenge on those who have harmed us and failed to meet their obligations towards us. Mercy is a reversal of this self-centredness and self-preoccupation. The man who concentrates upon himself will never display mercy.

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Incentive For MercyWhere does the incentive to be merciful come from? It certainly does not come from the world's values, or from fallen human nature. And how does mercy fit into Jesus' portrait of the Christian? We need to follow the logical development of the beatitudes. Once I have seen myself to be a spiritual pauper, and recognised and mourned over the enormity of my sin against God and seen that he has not demanded that I satisfy the rights of his justice. When I have tasted the mercy and forgiveness of God, and the chains that have bound be are broken, can I then demand my rights, when I am confronted with someone who has wronged me?

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Incentive For MercyIf I have truly experienced the mercy of God and knelt at the foot of the cross and marvelled at the great transaction which took place there; Jesus bearing the punishment of my unrighteousness that I might wear the blessing of his righteousness, then I will sing with meaning; Mercy there was great and grace was freePardon there was multiplied to meThere my burdened soul found libertyAt Calvary.And I will turn from the cross and meet those in need, and those I consider to be in my debt, with mercy. My motivation for being merciful to others will always be the mercy that God has shown me.

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Incentive For MercyBut God has given the Christian more than an incentive for being merciful he has empowered him to be merciful. If Jesus dwells in our hearts by faith then so too does his mercy. God's mercy is what the theologians describe as a communicable attribute. Some of God’s attributes are not communicable like his sovereignty and his omniscience. But others, including his mercy, he intends to build into our lives. We cannot have Jesus without his mercy. If he indwells us, his mercy also indwells us and it should become increasingly evident in our lives.

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Merciful To Whom?This immediately raises a further question, 'merciful to whom?' This passage does not answer that question but Jesus does so elsewhere in the parable of the good Samaritan Lk. 10v30-37. The parable describes a Jew who was attacked, robbed, and left for dead. Then three men passed by, a priest, a Levite, and a Samaritan.

Now it was the Samaritan, the despised foreigner who provided help. Jesus then asked who had behaved as a true neighbour to the man in need. And the answer his question extracted was, 'The one who had mercy on him'. There was no boundary or discrimination attached to his care!

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Merciful To Whom?There are a couple of startlingly simple lessons to take from the life of this Samaritan. First, his behaviour was need-centred and not self-centred. Some one has described mercy as getting down on your hands and knees and doing what you can to restore dignity to someone whose life has been broken by sin [whether his own sin or the sin of someone else].

With that picture in mind can you understand why the early church often identifies Jesus himself as ‘The Good Samaritan’?

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Merciful To Whom?The second thing mercy does not attempt to do is to protect itself from costly service. The priest and the Levites passed by the wounded man, not because they were thoughtless. Quite the opposite! They thought long and hard about their response and decided not to interrupt their daily routine. Touching a dead body would have made them ceremonially unclean! It was no sin to be ceremonially unclean but it is always sinful to refuse to show mercy. The priest and the Levite were not prepared to pay the cost of being inconvenienced and have their legitimate plans frustrated.

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Merciful To Whom?Were the priest and Levite unfamiliar with God's word? In Hos. 6v6. we read, 'I desire mercy not sacrifice', and again in Mic. 6v8. ‘what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly before your God’.Mercy should control all our personal relationships; taking back into friendship those who have hurt you and put themselves in the wrong with you.

Mercy is compassionate , creative [renewing the spoiled relationship] and inevitably costly. The cross of Christ makes that abundantly clear!

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The Mercy TestThis beatitude does not contain an exception clause. It makes no provision for the extenuating circumstances allowing us to excuse ourselves from being merciful. Peter once asked Jesus a question that was intended to establish limits upon the mercy which we should show to others. It is found in Matt.18v21.

In response, Jesus told the parable of the unmerciful servant. The parable in a sense provides us with a practical mercy test. The point of the parable is that a person cannot be forgiven a debt of a million pounds and then demand that someone who owes him a few pounds hand it over.

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The Mercy TestOf course people can act just like the unmerciful servant in the parable. But if they do, they make it clear that have not begun to grasp the sheer wonder of the mercy of God which is extended to them in Christ Jesus. If they have not grasped it then they have not tasted it. Indeed, we can go further and say that unless I forgive others then I have no evidence that I myself have been forgiven.

“He that demands mercy, and shows none, ruins the bridge over which he himself is to pass”. THOMAS ADAMS.

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The Mercy TestIn his teaching on prayer, Jesus makes it very clear that it is those who forgive the sins of others whose sins are forgiven Matt 6.15. Jesus is not teaching that we, in some way, earn God's forgiveness and mercy as a result of being merciful. We must not ask the wrong question, 'Am I fit for mercy?' when we should be asking, 'Is mercy fit for me?'

Scripture teaches that is those who have truly experienced God’s forgiveness and mercy, who will in turn display mercy, thus demonstrating the genuineness of their Christian profession and strengthening their assurance that they will meet with God's mercy in the future.

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ConclusionAre you ‘merciful’ as Jesus defines the term? Are you bitter and vindictive towards those who have wronged you? Would you dearly love to see them pay? Perhaps, like Shylock in the Merchant of Venice you have justice on your side and so legitimately demand your pound of flesh!

Or, do you treat those who have wronged you with tender mercy? That is a test of our conversion to Christ. If we are without mercy we are without Christ. When God looks at the unfinished portrait of our lives, he delights to find mercy there. It is a quality that the world so badly needs to be exposed to.