The Ingredients of Happiness
Part 5: Matt 5:7 Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy
Pastor Charles Price
Now let me read to you the first seven verses of Matthew Chapter 5. This marks the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount that occupies Chapters 5, 6 and 7. And it says,
“Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them, saying:
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.’”
I am going to stop at that point and for those of you who have been with us in recent weeks you will know of course that we began looking at these statements of Jesus that we call the Beatitudes. There are eight of them altogether and we just read the first five. These are not random statements – blessed are these over here and blessed are those over there and blessed are the others up there – but there is a progression through these eight beatitudes.
Without being laborious, I want to just put them into context by repeating very briefly that the first step to real happiness is facing our poverty of spirit, realizing that in myself I do not have what it takes to be what I am supposed to be. And when you face that poverty of spirit - usually you discover that through experience rather than through a theory, where you find your back against the wall and your resources are inadequate - when you face that poverty, you can either cover it up and pretend it’s not like that, or you can face it honestly and mourn that poverty, which is the second stage. Blessed are those who mourn; they will be comforted. They will be comforted by the Comforter who is the Holy Spirit, whose job is to replace all that I am with what Jesus is - my poverty with His riches.
And having faced my poverty, we then naturally become meek, which is to be humble. And those who are meek, who humbly submit themselves to Christ as their Lord, will inherit the earth. That is: life on earth will make sense and have purpose and meaning.
And how you know that somebody has come this far is that they discover they have appetites that are not natural to them. The next one says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” The evidence of life is appetite, the evidence of health is appetite, and this is an appetite for righteousness, which we defined last week as being the character of God.
But how is that expressed? Well, we come to Verse 7 this morning:
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
And to be merciful is of course to be compassionate. And this is where the rubber of the Christian life, if I might put it this way, hits the road of day-to-day living – that we cannot separate our relationship with God from our relationship with people. The work God does in us is designed to express itself through us, not least, in compassion and mercy and kindness. In fact, to love God is to love our neighbour, Scripture tells us. So much so in I John 4: 20 John writes:
“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.”
Any Tom, Dick, Harry or Mary can say, “I love God”, but you know the reality of that statement by how they love their brother, says the Scripture. And the evidence of our love for God is our love, our compassion, our attitude of mercy towards others. That’s why we are a world missions church. Not because this is our ‘thing’ or because this is, you know, something we ought to do. A natural expression of loving God is that we love the world and we minister to the world. That can be expressed in all kinds of ways of course. But that we reach out to the needs of our world simply because in loving God we can do nothing else but love the world, and the people of the world, and seek to meet that need.
Now before I talk about this statement specifically, let me point out that these beatitudes are primarily about our disposition. By disposition I mean our attitudes of heart. These are not rules of behaviour that are here in these beatitudes, but they are about the disposition of heart that inevitably governs our behaviour. To be poor in spirit for instance is not something that you do; it is a disposition towards ourselves. To mourn our condition is an attitude of heart that we adopt. To be meek and submit ourselves meekly and humbly before God may involve choices we have to make along the way but essentially it is a disposition of submission and surrender to Him. To have a hunger and a thirst for righteousness again is a consequence of an attitude of heart, of a disposition that God puts in us.
You see there’s a great danger of approaching the Christian life from a perspective of “what am I supposed to do?” Now that is a valid thing to be asking of course, but the real issue of the New Testament concerns what I’m intended to be. And when I am what I am intended to be, what I’m intended to do becomes an almost logical expression of that.
I am often asked the question: What am I supposed to do as a Christian? And it’s not always the right question. It’s: What am I supposed to be; what kind of person am I supposed to be? And as a result of being what we’re supposed to be, which is what these beatitudes address, our doing becomes an outworking of that. They are about the disposition of heart, and out of that comes our behaviour. We’re not driven by the imposition of external rules; we are driven by the outworking of a changed heart. That’s why when God spoke to Ezekiel in the Old Testament about the New Covenant He was going to make with His people, He described it this way - I’ll read it to you: Ezekiel 36:26. He said,
“I will give you a new heart and a new spirit. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”
This was going to be the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. The Old Covenant gave us the law of God, but the New Covenant is: “I will put my Spirit in you and this is the result: I will move you to follow my decrees, because it’s your heart, it’s your disposition that’s going to change, and as a result, your behaviour.”
You see the Old Covenant was designed to change people’s behaviour through rules. And that’s why the laws that God gave Moses are prefaced by statements like “You shall” or “You shall not” and basically, the people of God, when they heard these laws, they stood to attention, they clicked their heels, they said, “Yes sir, we’ll do it.” If you’re not sure about that, I’ll read you what it says when Moses came down the mountain with those tablets of stone. It says in Exodus 24:3,
“When Moses went and told the people all the Lord’s words and laws, they responded with one voice, ‘Everything the Lord has said we will do.”
“Thank you Moses; yes God, we’ll do it.” Well of course they didn’t, simply because they couldn’t. And one of the purposes of the law was to reveal to humanity their inability to live the way they were supposed to live by themselves. But now the Gospel of Jesus Christ, having been taught that lesson through the Law, now changes what we are, changes our disposition and it brings with it a change of heart. And when God changes our disposition He inevitably changes our behaviour. And these beatitudes are all about our disposition, about our attitudes. That’s why I almost called this series, “The Beatitude Attitudes” because that’s really what they are about. We are the sum of our attitudes; that’s the most important thing about us, and our disposition.
And when you and I have problems in our behaviour and we don’t treat our wives well or we don’t treat our kids well, you don’t treat your husband well or you don’t talk nicely about your neighbours, or the way you drive your car as a nuisance on the road, or the way we spend our money is bad, the problem can be traced back to our disposition. This is what God changes; this is God’s workshop.
Now it’s important for me at this point just to point out there’s a difference between our disposition and our temperament. Now we all have a temperament, which is natural to us, and our temperaments are different. Some people are naturally placid and calm and relaxed and easygoing and don’t get worked up very much. Other people are more naturally uptight and easily anxious. These are temperamental issues over which we don’t have a lot of responsibility. When our three children were young, it didn’t take very long for my wife and I to identify their temperaments, and they were different. These are hereditary factors; you get them from your parents. So sometimes my wife would say, “I know where he gets that from, or where she gets that from” – usually when it’s something bad.
You see your temperament is a product of your parents. One of them is temper and one is mental – that’s why we call them temperamental.
But our disposition is not a natural, inherited, dependent on your DNA, factor. It derives from your perspective on God, on yourself, on the world. And the disposition of these beatitudes derive from a work of God in our hearts that changes our thinking about these things. If you’re not sure what your disposition is, by the way, it’s what comes out when you’re under pressure. What comes out when you are frustrated, it’s what comes out when your back’s against the wall, what comes out when you’re not feeling very well. Because we can, as we see in a moment, put up a façade very easily that looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in our mouths, until the pressure’s on. And then we find it’s quite different.
Now let me take this beatitude then and see it as an attitude, as a disposition: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
And I want to talk about mercy in three ways. First of all I want to talk about mercy as a disposition. Then I want to talk about mercy as a discipline. Then thirdly: mercy as a dynamic. And by that I mean mercy as a means by which God is released in our lives, as we’ll see is taught here.
First of all then, let me talk about mercy as a disposition. It is relatively easy, you know, to do the right things and to act the right part in certain circumstances without any change to our disposition, our attitude of heart. Later in the Sermon on the Mount – and it’s always important to interpret Scripture in its context, and these opening statements in the Sermon on the Mount are fleshed out in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount in Chapters 5, 6 and 7. But Jesus talks about those, for instance, who do not do the wrong thing (which is absolutely fine- they don’t do the wrong thing), but their disposition – their hearts – have not been changed. And then He talks about people who do do the right thing (which is perfectly fine of course) but their attitude - their disposition - has not been changed. Let me read it to you. In Chapter 5:21 Jesus said for instance,” You have heard it said, ‘you shall not murder’”.
And they probably said to themselves, “Yeah, we don’t murder.”
There’s good reason why you don’t murder; you might get hung if you murder, you might get sent to jail for life if you murder. There are all kinds of incentives that society puts on us to stop us doing some of these things. “But,” said Jesus, “if you are angry at your brother, you are already guilty of murder.” Why? Because although you don’t engage in the act, you have the attitude that if you could get away with it, if there was freedom to do it, if you could, you would. So don’t smartly pat yourself on the back and say, “We never murder”, when there is anger in your heart,” said Jesus. Then He said this: “Have you heard it said, ‘You must not commit adultery?’”
And they probably said, “No, we don’t commit adultery.”
“I say to you,” said Jesus, “If you look at a woman and lust after her, you’re already guilty of adultery.” You don’t commit adultery because if you got found out, it would wreck your marriage, wreck their marriage, get you into trouble. So there are restraints that society puts on you that maybe keeps you back, but, in your heart, if you are lusting after her – that doesn’t mean having sexual desire; that is natural and normal – but it means that in your heart you’re saying, ‘I want to get her if I could’. Your disposition leaves you guilty without ever committing the act.
Then in Chapter 6 when He talks more positively about doing things that are right, but from a wrong disposition. And forgive me, I mentioned this last week, if not in an earlier week as well, but it’s here in the text of the Sermon on the Mount so I refer to it again, when he talks about those who give to the needy in the early part of Chapter 6. And He says that they go onto the street corners and they give to the needy. “But”, He says, “they do it to be seen by men.” Now the recipient of the money they throw in the box is very grateful for their good work of giving money, but their disposition is: “I want to be seen by men.” So they only do it, of course, when there’s an audience who they think will congratulate them on their generosity. “But,” said Jesus, “they have no reward from My Father in heaven because although the act in itself was right, the disposition behind it was wrong. And I’m not concerned with the act by which I measure the value of what you do; I am concerned with the disposition.”
He talked about those who pray on the street corners to be seen by men - nothing wrong with praying, but they pray to be seen by men.
Then He talked about those who fast and they disfigure their faces to fast, it says in Matthew Chapter 6, to be seen by men. Now giving, praying and fasting may be good things, but the attitude behind them which caused you to do it is not that I am doing these things to God, for God; I am doing these things for my reputation’s sake – to be seen by men.
It’s easy to not engage in the wrong things, but with a heart that is unchanged – and to engage in the right things with a heart that is unchanged. And the whole purpose of the work of Jesus Christ in your life and mine, as Christians, is not just to change our behaviour but to change our hearts and our disposition and as a result, your behaviour will look after itself.
You know it’s possible to give all our outward display of mercy but to be seething inside. Like a couple of brothers I heard about who had been fighting all day, and their mother got very frustrated. At the end of the day when they were about to go to bed, she went to the eldest of the two boys and said, “Why don’t you make up with your brother – you’ve been fighting him all day today?”
And he said, “I’m not going to make up with him. It’s his fault; he hit me first.”
So the mother tried to appeal to his sentiment a little bit and she said, “Just suppose your brother died during the night; wouldn’t you be sorry in the morning if you hadn’t forgiven him?”
And the boy thought for a while and then he said, “Alright, alright, I’ll forgive him. But if he’s alive in the morning….”
It’s possible you see to do all the right things without a changed attitude. And to be merciful is to be compassionate. I spent a little bit of time this week in preparing for this morning just reading through the four Gospels and seeing the compassion of Jesus. And you know, when you look for it, it’s everywhere. I recommend you read through those four chapters and you look for statements like – and I quote a few – “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them.” When He saw the hungry five thousand: “I have compassion on these people,” He said. “Jesus had compassion on them and touched them,” another verse says. “Filled with compassion Jesus”(dot, dot, dot…) whatever it was…. but that was His motivation. “I have compassion on these people.”
Look at the way Jesus treated the woman at the well. Do you remember that story in John Chapter 4? The Samaritan woman – she had been married five times. She was now living with a man to whom she was not married. Whether he was number six or number sixteen, we don’t know. Jesus said to her, “Go call your husband and come here.” He knew fine well she hadn’t got a husband. This was a little difficult for her. She said, “I don’t have a husband.”
“No you have had five,” said Jesus. “The one you now have is not your husband.” Did He expose her to then condemn her? No, he recognized what that said about her heart – that she was searching for satisfaction. She had tried it, we know, in love and relationships and was not finding it. We know she tried it in religion because she said, “We worship on this mountain. You say Jerusalem is the place we should worship.”
And Jesus said, “You worship what you do not know. I mean you worship but you don’t know what you’re worshipping. But you’re looking; you’re trying.” And He said to her this: “If you ask Me for living water – that’s what you are looking for; you’ve got a thirst that’s never been quenched – if you ask Me for living water, you will never thirst again.”
And that woman went back into the city and told the people, it says, “everything she had ever done”. My, that would have been a lot of gossip because she had done a lot; we know that. But did she say, “He told me everything I’ve ever done and I’m crushed by it”? No. She said, “He told me everything I’ve ever done and I’m liberated by it.”
I love the compassion of Jesus. That woman caught in adultery – another occasion. And all the prejudices of the day, which were against women, come to the fore. They said, “We caught her in the act of adultery.” Where was the man? They didn’t bring the man. They probably gave him a nudge – wink, wink, “Hey boy, you got her hey? But let’s take the woman. Let’s bring her to Jesus. Let’s say, ‘Stone her’”, because that’s what the law said.
And it says Jesus knelt down and wrote in the sand. I’d love to know what He wrote in the sand – the Bible doesn’t tell us; it’s one of these mysteries. I don’t know why it mentions it except to tantalize us. What did He write? I have speculated but I won’t tell you my speculation. But as the crowd also speculated, looking around, He looked up and said, “Fine, you want to stone her? Go ahead. Who doesn’t have any sin in their own life; would you throw the first stone? We’re waiting for you.” And the crowd began to disintegrate. Do you know what Jesus said to her? I’ll read it to you:
“I do not condemn you.”
“But Jesus, I thought You didn’t like adultery.”
“I do not condemn you. Go and sin no more. Be liberated.”
And all the instincts of Jesus, if I can put it that way, - and the instincts of Jesus are the instincts of the Spirit of God that He plants in you and me – all the instincts of Jesus are on the side of failures, on the side of sinners, on the side of the broken, on the side of the disappointed, on the side of the hurting, on the side of the defeated, on the side of the lonely, on the side of the sad. He was actually a friend of sinners.
The only time Jesus was harsh was with the religious leaders, who should have known better, and in their attempt to understand the law, had totally misunderstood God’s purpose. For them He reserved His harshness. But His reputation was: He’s a friend of sinners. I hope that’s the reputation of the church of Jesus Christ.
In John 12 Jesus said, “I did not come to judge the world, but to save it.” Where the Christian church has gained its reputation from pointing the finger from, I don’t know, but it does not come from Jesus.
All relationships need the gentleness of a merciful disposition. In your family life you need to be merciful: wives to your husbands, husbands to your wives, parents to your children. Ruth Graham has said that a marriage is made up of two good forgivers. If you are not a good forgiver, you probably have a strained marriage, because in our marriages, of all places, it’s that we walk humbly with each other in forgiveness and mercy. The marriage is a place where you are allowed to fail and be forgiven. That’s the closest of human relationships. I hope your kids are allowed to fail and be forgiven. Because this disposition of mercy is not a checklist you follow through; it’s a spirit, an attitude of heart.
But having said that, it would be incomplete to just say that. The second thing I wanted to say is about mercy as a discipline. You see the very practical expression of mercy is in the discipline of forgiveness. And once again, this is brought out in the Sermon on the Mount. A little later in Chapter 5 - I’ll read you Verse 23. Having talked about not hating your brother, or being angry with your brother and being guilty through that, He says in Chapter 5:23,
“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the alter and there remember your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the alter. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”
Now notice this. He says, “If you are on your way to offer your gift at the alter in the temple there in Jerusalem and you remember your brother has something against you… And by the way, that is deliberately ambiguous, I suggest. He may have something against you because he is wrong and he has something against you. He may have something against you because you are wrong and he has reason to have something against you. It’s deliberately ambiguous – whether he’s wrong or you’re wrong is beside the point. If your brother has something against you – what does he say? First pray about it. No, he doesn’t say that. He says, “Leave your gift at the alter.” You are coming to engage with God, but before you engage with God, you’d better engage with your brother and you’d better put that right because that (if I say vertical, you understand – not that God’s up there somewhere – but the vertical and the horizontal interconnect so vitally that if you, on the horizontal level are not in right relationships with your brother, it will impact and impede your relationship with God.) So first: “Leave your gift, go to your brother, be reconciled, then offer your gift,” He says.
And this is where being merciful becomes a discipline – not just a nice feeling about other people and a generous feeling towards other people – but it works as a discipline of keeping our relationships right.
You say, “Well, how do I do that? If I go to my brother, how do I do that?”
Let me read you something Jesus said in Luke 17:3. He said,
“If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
Now notice, He says, “If your brother sins, rebuke him”. That is: go to him and expose the issue between you. And if he repents – the word repent is to change the mind; that’s the literal meaning of the word repent. The Greek word is the word “mĕtanŏia” – “meta” is to change, “nŏia, “nŏus” is the mind. If when you go to talk to him about this issue, he changes his mind, or she changes her mind, forgive them. And it’s dealt with.
But being merciful is not just glossing over the problems and hoping they’ll go away and “Oh, I’ll just forgive him anyway”. If there is no repentance, no change of mind in the forgiveness process, then it’s just papering over the cracks. And you can be sure the problem will erupt again and keep on coming back.
Later in Matthew 18, Jesus gave four stages as to how to do this, and I’m not going to talk about this with the amount of time that this passage deserves, but just refer it to you for now. Because in Matthew 18 Verse 15 Jesus said,
“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.”
Now that normally is sufficient – just the two of you; you talk about the issue and then that normally might resolve it. But if it doesn’t, He goes on to say,
“But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’”
And the benefit of this is not to take folks to gang up on the poor person, but you take somebody who is objective, and they will help you both to see it more objectively. They may actually say to you, “Hey, you’re making a mountain out of a mole hill here. This is not what you are seeing it to be.” And that will help. But the point is, you bring somebody else in, He says, and that will help to clarify it and that should resolve it. And normally it will.
But if it doesn’t He says, thirdly,
“If he refuses to listen to them tell it to the church.”
Now this is getting serious. Bring it in now to a more public domain. I don’t think this means tell everybody in the church, but certainly you bring it; you recognize this is a spiritual issue and you bring it to those in the church – maybe to leadership in the church – that they together with you can help to resolve this. And if it hasn’t been resolved by the first two, this probably should help resolve it. But just supposing it doesn’t? The fourth thing Jesus says is,
“If he refuses to listen to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
Which doesn’t mean, have nothing to do with him; it means treat him as someone who needs to be brought into repentance, to be brought back into fellowship with God and with yourself.
Now you can use this as a checklist if you want to, but the principle here is: pursue it to the end. And the end goal is not reconciliation; the goal is resolution. Resolution as reconciliation is ideal but in the end of this sequence in Matthew 18, the resolution is actually separation; treat him as a pagan or a tax collector. Sometimes that’s the resolution, that’s the solution. Treat them as those outside of the fellowship of God.
Now as I said, there are all kinds of issues – big issues – that arise from this that we’re not going to address this morning. The point is that mercy is a discipline, that we need to put things right, not just gloss over things and hope that that’s okay. Because forgiveness is only possible when there is repentance. We need to be forgiving, otherwise we get all churned up inside. We need to be forgiving, as God is forgiving. But we’re not forgiven in our walk with God until we have repented and confessed. Then we receive forgiveness. And so it is in our relationships.
But it’s always good to err on the side of being merciful, because we’re not always right and we think that somebody else is wrong. But I point these out to you because of the seriousness with which this issue of being right in your relationships is put within Scripture and in the teaching of Jesus.
So mercy is a disposition first of all - mercy as a discipline, secondly. But the third thing, just for a few moments is mercy as a dynamic. And by dynamic I mean as a force that opens the door to the working of God. Let me read you again this verse, Verse 7:
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”
There is a key spiritual principle in this beatitude. He does not say, “Blessed are those who are shown mercy, for they will become merciful” (in other words, the recipient becomes merciful), but He says, “Blessed are the merciful” (those who show mercy); they will receive mercy.”
The condition to giving is receiving, according to this statement. Now again, let me point out to you its context. These verses were addressed to those who were disciples of Jesus. In Verse 1 and 2, let me read this again. It says,
“When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside. He sat down and His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them saying:”
And then you have the beatitudes. Now the crowds were present, the crowds listened. At the end of His Sermon on the Mount, the crowds talked about it and they didn’t understand it and they said, “This is amazing, you know, what’s he talking about?”
But He wasn’t addressing Himself to the crowds. He called His disciples to him; He began to teach them saying…. In other words, this is not an evangelistic sermon designed to cause people to become disciples; this is addressed to His disciples to teach them how to be the disciples they have already become.
That’s why there are statements in the Sermon on the Mount that do not apply to those who are outside of Christ. For instance, He says later, “You are the salt of the earth.” That doesn’t apply to the crowd; that applies to those disciples who have already aligned themselves with Christ. “You are the light of the world” – that applies to those who are already aligned with Christ. And here, when He says, “Blessed are the merciful, they will receive mercy”, he is saying those of you who are already disciples, in order to be the disciple you have become, understand this: looking after me first has nothing to do with being a disciple. It is the merciful, those who are giving, who receive mercy.
This principle is in other parts of the Sermon on the Mount as well. If you go to Chapter 6 and Verse 12, Jesus gave His disciples what we call the Lord’s Prayer and I’ll read one clause out of that. In Verse 12, it says,
“Forgive us our debts” (or transgressions as some translations have it)… “Forgive us our debts (our transgressions) as we also have forgiven our debtors, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
So this prayer says, “Lord, would You please forgive me exactly the same way I forgive others.” Is that a prayer you would dare pray? That’s the Lord’s Prayer. And then when He finished teaching the Lord’s Prayer, He added a little postscript in Verse 14 to make sure they understood one aspect, and it’s this – Verse 14:
“If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
Now that’s pretty frightening don’t you think? “If you forgive men their sins, your Father will forgive yours, but if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” And this is Jesus speaking. This is nobody else’s opinion. He is saying to these who are disciples, who in that Lord’s Prayer address God as Father, which is the right and privilege of those who are in Christ. Saying, “I understand that if Your will is to be done and Your kingdom is to come, I am to be forgiving and You will forgive me, as I am forgiving.”
Later in Matthew 16, Jesus said, “If you lose your life you will find it. If you hold your life, you’ll lose it.” Now the condition to receiving is giving. You give your life away to God; He’ll give His life away to you. You’ll live in the power of His life. But the condition to receiving is giving.
Let me read to you what Jesus said in Luke 6 and Verse 36 to 38. He said,
“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
And then He fleshes out what that will mean.
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give and it will be given to you.”
Now notice in each case there where He says, “Be merciful as your Father is merciful,” the condition to receiving is giving. If you judge you will be judged; that’s the negative side. If you condemn, you’ll be condemned; that’s the negative side.
Here’s the positive side: If you forgive, you will be forgiven; if you give, it’ll be given to you. Now of course we are first of all recipients of God’s grace and forgiveness. As John wrote in his letter, “We love Him because he first loved us”. And my receptivity to His love enables me to love Him back. That is the starting point but we’re talking now about those who are already disciples. They’ve gone through that starting point, they’ve recognized God’s grace and mercy and love that’s initiated by God alone; they’ve been recipients of it.
But now in order to be the disciple they’ve become, to live the Christian life, you start to give. And the condition to receiving is: giving. And therefore if the Christian is not merciful, we close the channel of receiving God’s mercy. If we’re not forgiving, we close the channel of God’s forgiveness. And I suggest to you that this is one of the biggest causes of our spiritual lives drying up. We’ve not allowed a free flow of God’s grace to us and then through us to other people.
Jesus told a story about this in Matthew Chapter 18. He was asked the question, “How many times should I forgive my brother?”
In answer to that question He told this story, and again it’s a story, which we need more than the time I have this morning, but I’m going to tell it to you because it’s relevant here. It’s about a king who wanted to settle his accounts with different people. And he called a servant in who owed him ten thousand talents. The margin in my Bible says that’s several million dollars. He said, “You owe me ten thousand talents; when are you going to pay this?”
And the man said, “I can’t pay it. I don’t have the resources to pay it.”
And the king said, “Then I will put you and your family into jail until you’ve raised the last cent.”
And the man said, “Please don’t do that. We could never raise that money. Please forgive me of the debt.”
And it says the king forgave him of the debt. When the servant left the king’s presence out in the courtyard, the king’s palace, he met a fellow servant who owed him one hundred denarii. The margin in my Bible says that’s just a few dollars. So I guess talents we can say equal dollars; danarii equal cents. And the man said, “You owe me one hundred denarii.”
“Yes, I know.”
“When are you going to pay it back?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have any money at all.”
And the servant said, “If you’re not going to pay it back, I’m going to throw you into jail until your family have raised the last denarii.” And he threw him into jail.
Then word came back to the king. “Remember that man you forgave ten thousand talents? Do you know that when he left your presence, he met a fellow servant who owed him just one hundred denarii and do you know that he’s thrown him into prison until he can pay back the last denarii?
And the king said, “He did? After I had forgiven him ten thousand talents? Bring that servant back here.”
And they brought the servant back and the king said, “Did I forgive you ten thousand talents that you pled and asked me to forgive you of?”
The man said, “Yes, I’m very grateful to you.” He probably said, “I’ve told my wife and she says to say thank you. I mean we are relieved. What a tremendous relief.”
“Did I hear that you went out of my presence and met a fellow servant who owed you a hundred denarii and you have demanded he pay it back?”
“Well, that’s my right. He owes it to me.”
“And did I hear you have thrown him into prison until he can pay it back?”
“Well, that’s the way we do things.”
Let me read to you what the king said. He said, “You wicked servant. I cancelled all of that debt of yours and shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had on you? You now owe me ten thousand talents.”
And it says, “In anger his master turned him over to the jailers until he paid back all he owed.”
Now here’s the frightening thing. When Jesus finished that story, He said in the next verse (Verse 35 of Matthew 18):
“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
You see this man had had his debt forgiven, but the forgiveness of that debt did not change the disposition of his heart. And so the grace that flowed to him did not flow through him.
And Jesus said, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive.” Now what does that mean? Well, people debated this statement frequently. But let’s not go into that debate; let’s assume it means what it sounds like – take it at its face value. If you are not forgiving to others, you will close off the forgiveness of God to you.
You know as I examine my own heart, this could be the source of blockage of our spiritual life for many of us. We want to be recipients of all that God wants to give to me and do for me, but we are not willing to then be that and do that and give that to others in our relationships with them.
Like many of you I’m sure, I long for spiritual revival - I long for it in my own heart first, I long for it in this church; I long for it in this city. I long to get beyond doing what we do just because we do it and to really be encountering God, to know and experience the flow of His life in us and through us that this city and the workplace and our homes will see something of His presence.
And if you read the history of spiritual revivals, you’ll find that a feature almost invariably, if not in every case – I can’t say that because I don’t know every case, but almost invariably a feature of revival is people confessing their sins to one another and getting right. Not confessing sins that don’t concern other people, but confessing sins that concern other people and apologizing.
A few years ago I wrote the history of an event in Britain called the Keswick Convention, which has been running for 130 years, a big event that takes place every year. There have been several times in that history when the Keswick Convention, drawing many thousands of people, came very close to revival, or experienced a touch of revival. And every time it involved this.
Back before the days of electronic transfer of money, God met with that crowd of folks and many, many people realized there were things that they had to get right with other people. And the local post offices in the town of Keswick in England sold out of postal orders of people buying postal orders (equivalent of cheques) to send debts that they believed they owed, or make restitution for things they had stolen. In those days you had to telephone through the operator; you couldn’t direct dial, and the lines in Keswick were blocked for hours as people tried to call people, to put things right. And God came down in a very real way - not because you earn it; you simply clear the blockages.
And when you face your poverty of spirit and you mourn that poverty and you meekly submit to Christ as Lord, you find an appetite for righteousness. That does not put your heads in the cloud; it puts your feet on the ground. It means you start to live in relationship well and properly and disciplinedly, because mercy is a disposition; it’s also a discipline; it’s also a dynamic. As we are forgiving, God flows.
And maybe some of us here this morning need to go home and make some phone calls. Maybe it’s one phone call. Maybe you need to go home and write a letter. Maybe not go home; drive somewhere else or take the bus or the underground to somebody else’s home, and put right things which will block the flow of the Spirit of God in and through you, but which, when unblocked, those who are merciful will receive mercy. You will receive the working of God in a fresh, powerful, deep way. It’s not cheap; it’s costly. But it’s worth it.
Let’s pray. Father God, I pray that in this congregation of men and women and young people who are here this morning because we want to know God more fully in our lives, we want to understand Your Word and Your ways, want to understand the working of Your Spirit within our lives. And Lord, we face this important, crucial issue that it’s the merciful who receive mercy. And when we stopped being merciful, we closed the door to Your work in our lives. We become dry, we become stale, we become stagnant in our spiritual lives. And so I pray Lord Jesus that in our hearts this morning, You will do such a work that will drive us into greater dependency on You and a greater fullness of Your Holy Spirit as we act in obedience to You. Give us the courage - where You have spoken to people this morning – give us the courage to obey. We pray it in Jesus’ Name, Amen.
Part 5: Matt 5:7 Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy
Pastor Charles Price
Now let me read to you the first seven verses of Matthew Chapter 5. This marks the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount that occupies Chapters 5, 6 and 7. And it says,
“Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them, saying:
‘Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.’”
I am going to stop at that point and for those of you who have been with us in recent weeks you will know of course that we began looking at these statements of Jesus that we call the Beatitudes. There are eight of them altogether and we just read the first five. These are not random statements – blessed are these over here and blessed are those over there and blessed are the others up there – but there is a progression through these eight beatitudes.
Without being laborious, I want to just put them into context by repeating very briefly that the first step to real happiness is facing our poverty of spirit, realizing that in myself I do not have what it takes to be what I am supposed to be. And when you face that poverty of spirit - usually you discover that through experience rather than through a theory, where you find your back against the wall and your resources are inadequate - when you face that poverty, you can either cover it up and pretend it’s not like that, or you can face it honestly and mourn that poverty, which is the second stage. Blessed are those who mourn; they will be comforted. They will be comforted by the Comforter who is the Holy Spirit, whose job is to replace all that I am with what Jesus is - my poverty with His riches.
And having faced my poverty, we then naturally become meek, which is to be humble. And those who are meek, who humbly submit themselves to Christ as their Lord, will inherit the earth. That is: life on earth will make sense and have purpose and meaning.
And how you know that somebody has come this far is that they discover they have appetites that are not natural to them. The next one says, “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” The evidence of life is appetite, the evidence of health is appetite, and this is an appetite for righteousness, which we defined last week as being the character of God.
But how is that expressed? Well, we come to Verse 7 this morning:
“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
And to be merciful is of course to be compassionate. And this is where the rubber of the Christian life, if I might put it this way, hits the road of day-to-day living – that we cannot separate our relationship with God from our relationship with people. The work God does in us is designed to express itself through us, not least, in compassion and mercy and kindness. In fact, to love God is to love our neighbour, Scripture tells us. So much so in I John 4: 20 John writes:
“If anyone says, ‘I love God,’ yet hates his brother, he is a liar. For anyone who does not love his brother whom he has seen, cannot love God, whom he has not seen.”
Any Tom, Dick, Harry or Mary can say, “I love God”, but you know the reality of that statement by how they love their brother, says the Scripture. And the evidence of our love for God is our love, our compassion, our attitude of mercy towards others. That’s why we are a world missions church. Not because this is our ‘thing’ or because this is, you know, something we ought to do. A natural expression of loving God is that we love the world and we minister to the world. That can be expressed in all kinds of ways of course. But that we reach out to the needs of our world simply because in loving God we can do nothing else but love the world, and the people of the world, and seek to meet that need.
Now before I talk about this statement specifically, let me point out that these beatitudes are primarily about our disposition. By disposition I mean our attitudes of heart. These are not rules of behaviour that are here in these beatitudes, but they are about the disposition of heart that inevitably governs our behaviour. To be poor in spirit for instance is not something that you do; it is a disposition towards ourselves. To mourn our condition is an attitude of heart that we adopt. To be meek and submit ourselves meekly and humbly before God may involve choices we have to make along the way but essentially it is a disposition of submission and surrender to Him. To have a hunger and a thirst for righteousness again is a consequence of an attitude of heart, of a disposition that God puts in us.
You see there’s a great danger of approaching the Christian life from a perspective of “what am I supposed to do?” Now that is a valid thing to be asking of course, but the real issue of the New Testament concerns what I’m intended to be. And when I am what I am intended to be, what I’m intended to do becomes an almost logical expression of that.
I am often asked the question: What am I supposed to do as a Christian? And it’s not always the right question. It’s: What am I supposed to be; what kind of person am I supposed to be? And as a result of being what we’re supposed to be, which is what these beatitudes address, our doing becomes an outworking of that. They are about the disposition of heart, and out of that comes our behaviour. We’re not driven by the imposition of external rules; we are driven by the outworking of a changed heart. That’s why when God spoke to Ezekiel in the Old Testament about the New Covenant He was going to make with His people, He described it this way - I’ll read it to you: Ezekiel 36:26. He said,
“I will give you a new heart and a new spirit. I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh. And I will put my Spirit in you and move you to follow my decrees and be careful to keep my laws.”
This was going to be the difference between the Old Covenant and the New Covenant. The Old Covenant gave us the law of God, but the New Covenant is: “I will put my Spirit in you and this is the result: I will move you to follow my decrees, because it’s your heart, it’s your disposition that’s going to change, and as a result, your behaviour.”
You see the Old Covenant was designed to change people’s behaviour through rules. And that’s why the laws that God gave Moses are prefaced by statements like “You shall” or “You shall not” and basically, the people of God, when they heard these laws, they stood to attention, they clicked their heels, they said, “Yes sir, we’ll do it.” If you’re not sure about that, I’ll read you what it says when Moses came down the mountain with those tablets of stone. It says in Exodus 24:3,
“When Moses went and told the people all the Lord’s words and laws, they responded with one voice, ‘Everything the Lord has said we will do.”
“Thank you Moses; yes God, we’ll do it.” Well of course they didn’t, simply because they couldn’t. And one of the purposes of the law was to reveal to humanity their inability to live the way they were supposed to live by themselves. But now the Gospel of Jesus Christ, having been taught that lesson through the Law, now changes what we are, changes our disposition and it brings with it a change of heart. And when God changes our disposition He inevitably changes our behaviour. And these beatitudes are all about our disposition, about our attitudes. That’s why I almost called this series, “The Beatitude Attitudes” because that’s really what they are about. We are the sum of our attitudes; that’s the most important thing about us, and our disposition.
And when you and I have problems in our behaviour and we don’t treat our wives well or we don’t treat our kids well, you don’t treat your husband well or you don’t talk nicely about your neighbours, or the way you drive your car as a nuisance on the road, or the way we spend our money is bad, the problem can be traced back to our disposition. This is what God changes; this is God’s workshop.
Now it’s important for me at this point just to point out there’s a difference between our disposition and our temperament. Now we all have a temperament, which is natural to us, and our temperaments are different. Some people are naturally placid and calm and relaxed and easygoing and don’t get worked up very much. Other people are more naturally uptight and easily anxious. These are temperamental issues over which we don’t have a lot of responsibility. When our three children were young, it didn’t take very long for my wife and I to identify their temperaments, and they were different. These are hereditary factors; you get them from your parents. So sometimes my wife would say, “I know where he gets that from, or where she gets that from” – usually when it’s something bad.
You see your temperament is a product of your parents. One of them is temper and one is mental – that’s why we call them temperamental.
But our disposition is not a natural, inherited, dependent on your DNA, factor. It derives from your perspective on God, on yourself, on the world. And the disposition of these beatitudes derive from a work of God in our hearts that changes our thinking about these things. If you’re not sure what your disposition is, by the way, it’s what comes out when you’re under pressure. What comes out when you are frustrated, it’s what comes out when your back’s against the wall, what comes out when you’re not feeling very well. Because we can, as we see in a moment, put up a façade very easily that looks as though butter wouldn’t melt in our mouths, until the pressure’s on. And then we find it’s quite different.
Now let me take this beatitude then and see it as an attitude, as a disposition: “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.”
And I want to talk about mercy in three ways. First of all I want to talk about mercy as a disposition. Then I want to talk about mercy as a discipline. Then thirdly: mercy as a dynamic. And by that I mean mercy as a means by which God is released in our lives, as we’ll see is taught here.
First of all then, let me talk about mercy as a disposition. It is relatively easy, you know, to do the right things and to act the right part in certain circumstances without any change to our disposition, our attitude of heart. Later in the Sermon on the Mount – and it’s always important to interpret Scripture in its context, and these opening statements in the Sermon on the Mount are fleshed out in the rest of the Sermon on the Mount in Chapters 5, 6 and 7. But Jesus talks about those, for instance, who do not do the wrong thing (which is absolutely fine- they don’t do the wrong thing), but their disposition – their hearts – have not been changed. And then He talks about people who do do the right thing (which is perfectly fine of course) but their attitude - their disposition - has not been changed. Let me read it to you. In Chapter 5:21 Jesus said for instance,” You have heard it said, ‘you shall not murder’”.
And they probably said to themselves, “Yeah, we don’t murder.”
There’s good reason why you don’t murder; you might get hung if you murder, you might get sent to jail for life if you murder. There are all kinds of incentives that society puts on us to stop us doing some of these things. “But,” said Jesus, “if you are angry at your brother, you are already guilty of murder.” Why? Because although you don’t engage in the act, you have the attitude that if you could get away with it, if there was freedom to do it, if you could, you would. So don’t smartly pat yourself on the back and say, “We never murder”, when there is anger in your heart,” said Jesus. Then He said this: “Have you heard it said, ‘You must not commit adultery?’”
And they probably said, “No, we don’t commit adultery.”
“I say to you,” said Jesus, “If you look at a woman and lust after her, you’re already guilty of adultery.” You don’t commit adultery because if you got found out, it would wreck your marriage, wreck their marriage, get you into trouble. So there are restraints that society puts on you that maybe keeps you back, but, in your heart, if you are lusting after her – that doesn’t mean having sexual desire; that is natural and normal – but it means that in your heart you’re saying, ‘I want to get her if I could’. Your disposition leaves you guilty without ever committing the act.
Then in Chapter 6 when He talks more positively about doing things that are right, but from a wrong disposition. And forgive me, I mentioned this last week, if not in an earlier week as well, but it’s here in the text of the Sermon on the Mount so I refer to it again, when he talks about those who give to the needy in the early part of Chapter 6. And He says that they go onto the street corners and they give to the needy. “But”, He says, “they do it to be seen by men.” Now the recipient of the money they throw in the box is very grateful for their good work of giving money, but their disposition is: “I want to be seen by men.” So they only do it, of course, when there’s an audience who they think will congratulate them on their generosity. “But,” said Jesus, “they have no reward from My Father in heaven because although the act in itself was right, the disposition behind it was wrong. And I’m not concerned with the act by which I measure the value of what you do; I am concerned with the disposition.”
He talked about those who pray on the street corners to be seen by men - nothing wrong with praying, but they pray to be seen by men.
Then He talked about those who fast and they disfigure their faces to fast, it says in Matthew Chapter 6, to be seen by men. Now giving, praying and fasting may be good things, but the attitude behind them which caused you to do it is not that I am doing these things to God, for God; I am doing these things for my reputation’s sake – to be seen by men.
It’s easy to not engage in the wrong things, but with a heart that is unchanged – and to engage in the right things with a heart that is unchanged. And the whole purpose of the work of Jesus Christ in your life and mine, as Christians, is not just to change our behaviour but to change our hearts and our disposition and as a result, your behaviour will look after itself.
You know it’s possible to give all our outward display of mercy but to be seething inside. Like a couple of brothers I heard about who had been fighting all day, and their mother got very frustrated. At the end of the day when they were about to go to bed, she went to the eldest of the two boys and said, “Why don’t you make up with your brother – you’ve been fighting him all day today?”
And he said, “I’m not going to make up with him. It’s his fault; he hit me first.”
So the mother tried to appeal to his sentiment a little bit and she said, “Just suppose your brother died during the night; wouldn’t you be sorry in the morning if you hadn’t forgiven him?”
And the boy thought for a while and then he said, “Alright, alright, I’ll forgive him. But if he’s alive in the morning….”
It’s possible you see to do all the right things without a changed attitude. And to be merciful is to be compassionate. I spent a little bit of time this week in preparing for this morning just reading through the four Gospels and seeing the compassion of Jesus. And you know, when you look for it, it’s everywhere. I recommend you read through those four chapters and you look for statements like – and I quote a few – “When he saw the crowds, he had compassion on them.” When He saw the hungry five thousand: “I have compassion on these people,” He said. “Jesus had compassion on them and touched them,” another verse says. “Filled with compassion Jesus”(dot, dot, dot…) whatever it was…. but that was His motivation. “I have compassion on these people.”
Look at the way Jesus treated the woman at the well. Do you remember that story in John Chapter 4? The Samaritan woman – she had been married five times. She was now living with a man to whom she was not married. Whether he was number six or number sixteen, we don’t know. Jesus said to her, “Go call your husband and come here.” He knew fine well she hadn’t got a husband. This was a little difficult for her. She said, “I don’t have a husband.”
“No you have had five,” said Jesus. “The one you now have is not your husband.” Did He expose her to then condemn her? No, he recognized what that said about her heart – that she was searching for satisfaction. She had tried it, we know, in love and relationships and was not finding it. We know she tried it in religion because she said, “We worship on this mountain. You say Jerusalem is the place we should worship.”
And Jesus said, “You worship what you do not know. I mean you worship but you don’t know what you’re worshipping. But you’re looking; you’re trying.” And He said to her this: “If you ask Me for living water – that’s what you are looking for; you’ve got a thirst that’s never been quenched – if you ask Me for living water, you will never thirst again.”
And that woman went back into the city and told the people, it says, “everything she had ever done”. My, that would have been a lot of gossip because she had done a lot; we know that. But did she say, “He told me everything I’ve ever done and I’m crushed by it”? No. She said, “He told me everything I’ve ever done and I’m liberated by it.”
I love the compassion of Jesus. That woman caught in adultery – another occasion. And all the prejudices of the day, which were against women, come to the fore. They said, “We caught her in the act of adultery.” Where was the man? They didn’t bring the man. They probably gave him a nudge – wink, wink, “Hey boy, you got her hey? But let’s take the woman. Let’s bring her to Jesus. Let’s say, ‘Stone her’”, because that’s what the law said.
And it says Jesus knelt down and wrote in the sand. I’d love to know what He wrote in the sand – the Bible doesn’t tell us; it’s one of these mysteries. I don’t know why it mentions it except to tantalize us. What did He write? I have speculated but I won’t tell you my speculation. But as the crowd also speculated, looking around, He looked up and said, “Fine, you want to stone her? Go ahead. Who doesn’t have any sin in their own life; would you throw the first stone? We’re waiting for you.” And the crowd began to disintegrate. Do you know what Jesus said to her? I’ll read it to you:
“I do not condemn you.”
“But Jesus, I thought You didn’t like adultery.”
“I do not condemn you. Go and sin no more. Be liberated.”
And all the instincts of Jesus, if I can put it that way, - and the instincts of Jesus are the instincts of the Spirit of God that He plants in you and me – all the instincts of Jesus are on the side of failures, on the side of sinners, on the side of the broken, on the side of the disappointed, on the side of the hurting, on the side of the defeated, on the side of the lonely, on the side of the sad. He was actually a friend of sinners.
The only time Jesus was harsh was with the religious leaders, who should have known better, and in their attempt to understand the law, had totally misunderstood God’s purpose. For them He reserved His harshness. But His reputation was: He’s a friend of sinners. I hope that’s the reputation of the church of Jesus Christ.
In John 12 Jesus said, “I did not come to judge the world, but to save it.” Where the Christian church has gained its reputation from pointing the finger from, I don’t know, but it does not come from Jesus.
All relationships need the gentleness of a merciful disposition. In your family life you need to be merciful: wives to your husbands, husbands to your wives, parents to your children. Ruth Graham has said that a marriage is made up of two good forgivers. If you are not a good forgiver, you probably have a strained marriage, because in our marriages, of all places, it’s that we walk humbly with each other in forgiveness and mercy. The marriage is a place where you are allowed to fail and be forgiven. That’s the closest of human relationships. I hope your kids are allowed to fail and be forgiven. Because this disposition of mercy is not a checklist you follow through; it’s a spirit, an attitude of heart.
But having said that, it would be incomplete to just say that. The second thing I wanted to say is about mercy as a discipline. You see the very practical expression of mercy is in the discipline of forgiveness. And once again, this is brought out in the Sermon on the Mount. A little later in Chapter 5 - I’ll read you Verse 23. Having talked about not hating your brother, or being angry with your brother and being guilty through that, He says in Chapter 5:23,
“Therefore, if you are offering your gift at the alter and there remember your brother has something against you, leave your gift there in front of the alter. First go and be reconciled to your brother; then come and offer your gift.”
Now notice this. He says, “If you are on your way to offer your gift at the alter in the temple there in Jerusalem and you remember your brother has something against you… And by the way, that is deliberately ambiguous, I suggest. He may have something against you because he is wrong and he has something against you. He may have something against you because you are wrong and he has reason to have something against you. It’s deliberately ambiguous – whether he’s wrong or you’re wrong is beside the point. If your brother has something against you – what does he say? First pray about it. No, he doesn’t say that. He says, “Leave your gift at the alter.” You are coming to engage with God, but before you engage with God, you’d better engage with your brother and you’d better put that right because that (if I say vertical, you understand – not that God’s up there somewhere – but the vertical and the horizontal interconnect so vitally that if you, on the horizontal level are not in right relationships with your brother, it will impact and impede your relationship with God.) So first: “Leave your gift, go to your brother, be reconciled, then offer your gift,” He says.
And this is where being merciful becomes a discipline – not just a nice feeling about other people and a generous feeling towards other people – but it works as a discipline of keeping our relationships right.
You say, “Well, how do I do that? If I go to my brother, how do I do that?”
Let me read you something Jesus said in Luke 17:3. He said,
“If your brother sins, rebuke him, and if he repents, forgive him. If he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times comes back to you and says, ‘I repent,’ forgive him.”
Now notice, He says, “If your brother sins, rebuke him”. That is: go to him and expose the issue between you. And if he repents – the word repent is to change the mind; that’s the literal meaning of the word repent. The Greek word is the word “mĕtanŏia” – “meta” is to change, “nŏia, “nŏus” is the mind. If when you go to talk to him about this issue, he changes his mind, or she changes her mind, forgive them. And it’s dealt with.
But being merciful is not just glossing over the problems and hoping they’ll go away and “Oh, I’ll just forgive him anyway”. If there is no repentance, no change of mind in the forgiveness process, then it’s just papering over the cracks. And you can be sure the problem will erupt again and keep on coming back.
Later in Matthew 18, Jesus gave four stages as to how to do this, and I’m not going to talk about this with the amount of time that this passage deserves, but just refer it to you for now. Because in Matthew 18 Verse 15 Jesus said,
“If your brother sins against you, go and show him his fault, just between the two of you. If he listens to you, you have won your brother over.”
Now that normally is sufficient – just the two of you; you talk about the issue and then that normally might resolve it. But if it doesn’t, He goes on to say,
“But if he will not listen, take one or two others along, so that ‘every matter may be established by the testimony of two or three witnesses.’”
And the benefit of this is not to take folks to gang up on the poor person, but you take somebody who is objective, and they will help you both to see it more objectively. They may actually say to you, “Hey, you’re making a mountain out of a mole hill here. This is not what you are seeing it to be.” And that will help. But the point is, you bring somebody else in, He says, and that will help to clarify it and that should resolve it. And normally it will.
But if it doesn’t He says, thirdly,
“If he refuses to listen to them tell it to the church.”
Now this is getting serious. Bring it in now to a more public domain. I don’t think this means tell everybody in the church, but certainly you bring it; you recognize this is a spiritual issue and you bring it to those in the church – maybe to leadership in the church – that they together with you can help to resolve this. And if it hasn’t been resolved by the first two, this probably should help resolve it. But just supposing it doesn’t? The fourth thing Jesus says is,
“If he refuses to listen to the church, treat him as you would a pagan or a tax collector.”
Which doesn’t mean, have nothing to do with him; it means treat him as someone who needs to be brought into repentance, to be brought back into fellowship with God and with yourself.
Now you can use this as a checklist if you want to, but the principle here is: pursue it to the end. And the end goal is not reconciliation; the goal is resolution. Resolution as reconciliation is ideal but in the end of this sequence in Matthew 18, the resolution is actually separation; treat him as a pagan or a tax collector. Sometimes that’s the resolution, that’s the solution. Treat them as those outside of the fellowship of God.
Now as I said, there are all kinds of issues – big issues – that arise from this that we’re not going to address this morning. The point is that mercy is a discipline, that we need to put things right, not just gloss over things and hope that that’s okay. Because forgiveness is only possible when there is repentance. We need to be forgiving, otherwise we get all churned up inside. We need to be forgiving, as God is forgiving. But we’re not forgiven in our walk with God until we have repented and confessed. Then we receive forgiveness. And so it is in our relationships.
But it’s always good to err on the side of being merciful, because we’re not always right and we think that somebody else is wrong. But I point these out to you because of the seriousness with which this issue of being right in your relationships is put within Scripture and in the teaching of Jesus.
So mercy is a disposition first of all - mercy as a discipline, secondly. But the third thing, just for a few moments is mercy as a dynamic. And by dynamic I mean as a force that opens the door to the working of God. Let me read you again this verse, Verse 7:
“Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”
There is a key spiritual principle in this beatitude. He does not say, “Blessed are those who are shown mercy, for they will become merciful” (in other words, the recipient becomes merciful), but He says, “Blessed are the merciful” (those who show mercy); they will receive mercy.”
The condition to giving is receiving, according to this statement. Now again, let me point out to you its context. These verses were addressed to those who were disciples of Jesus. In Verse 1 and 2, let me read this again. It says,
“When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside. He sat down and His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them saying:”
And then you have the beatitudes. Now the crowds were present, the crowds listened. At the end of His Sermon on the Mount, the crowds talked about it and they didn’t understand it and they said, “This is amazing, you know, what’s he talking about?”
But He wasn’t addressing Himself to the crowds. He called His disciples to him; He began to teach them saying…. In other words, this is not an evangelistic sermon designed to cause people to become disciples; this is addressed to His disciples to teach them how to be the disciples they have already become.
That’s why there are statements in the Sermon on the Mount that do not apply to those who are outside of Christ. For instance, He says later, “You are the salt of the earth.” That doesn’t apply to the crowd; that applies to those disciples who have already aligned themselves with Christ. “You are the light of the world” – that applies to those who are already aligned with Christ. And here, when He says, “Blessed are the merciful, they will receive mercy”, he is saying those of you who are already disciples, in order to be the disciple you have become, understand this: looking after me first has nothing to do with being a disciple. It is the merciful, those who are giving, who receive mercy.
This principle is in other parts of the Sermon on the Mount as well. If you go to Chapter 6 and Verse 12, Jesus gave His disciples what we call the Lord’s Prayer and I’ll read one clause out of that. In Verse 12, it says,
“Forgive us our debts” (or transgressions as some translations have it)… “Forgive us our debts (our transgressions) as we also have forgiven our debtors, as we forgive those who trespass against us.”
So this prayer says, “Lord, would You please forgive me exactly the same way I forgive others.” Is that a prayer you would dare pray? That’s the Lord’s Prayer. And then when He finished teaching the Lord’s Prayer, He added a little postscript in Verse 14 to make sure they understood one aspect, and it’s this – Verse 14:
“If you forgive men when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.”
Now that’s pretty frightening don’t you think? “If you forgive men their sins, your Father will forgive yours, but if you do not forgive men their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.” And this is Jesus speaking. This is nobody else’s opinion. He is saying to these who are disciples, who in that Lord’s Prayer address God as Father, which is the right and privilege of those who are in Christ. Saying, “I understand that if Your will is to be done and Your kingdom is to come, I am to be forgiving and You will forgive me, as I am forgiving.”
Later in Matthew 16, Jesus said, “If you lose your life you will find it. If you hold your life, you’ll lose it.” Now the condition to receiving is giving. You give your life away to God; He’ll give His life away to you. You’ll live in the power of His life. But the condition to receiving is giving.
Let me read to you what Jesus said in Luke 6 and Verse 36 to 38. He said,
“Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
And then He fleshes out what that will mean.
“Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. Give and it will be given to you.”
Now notice in each case there where He says, “Be merciful as your Father is merciful,” the condition to receiving is giving. If you judge you will be judged; that’s the negative side. If you condemn, you’ll be condemned; that’s the negative side.
Here’s the positive side: If you forgive, you will be forgiven; if you give, it’ll be given to you. Now of course we are first of all recipients of God’s grace and forgiveness. As John wrote in his letter, “We love Him because he first loved us”. And my receptivity to His love enables me to love Him back. That is the starting point but we’re talking now about those who are already disciples. They’ve gone through that starting point, they’ve recognized God’s grace and mercy and love that’s initiated by God alone; they’ve been recipients of it.
But now in order to be the disciple they’ve become, to live the Christian life, you start to give. And the condition to receiving is: giving. And therefore if the Christian is not merciful, we close the channel of receiving God’s mercy. If we’re not forgiving, we close the channel of God’s forgiveness. And I suggest to you that this is one of the biggest causes of our spiritual lives drying up. We’ve not allowed a free flow of God’s grace to us and then through us to other people.
Jesus told a story about this in Matthew Chapter 18. He was asked the question, “How many times should I forgive my brother?”
In answer to that question He told this story, and again it’s a story, which we need more than the time I have this morning, but I’m going to tell it to you because it’s relevant here. It’s about a king who wanted to settle his accounts with different people. And he called a servant in who owed him ten thousand talents. The margin in my Bible says that’s several million dollars. He said, “You owe me ten thousand talents; when are you going to pay this?”
And the man said, “I can’t pay it. I don’t have the resources to pay it.”
And the king said, “Then I will put you and your family into jail until you’ve raised the last cent.”
And the man said, “Please don’t do that. We could never raise that money. Please forgive me of the debt.”
And it says the king forgave him of the debt. When the servant left the king’s presence out in the courtyard, the king’s palace, he met a fellow servant who owed him one hundred denarii. The margin in my Bible says that’s just a few dollars. So I guess talents we can say equal dollars; danarii equal cents. And the man said, “You owe me one hundred denarii.”
“Yes, I know.”
“When are you going to pay it back?”
“I don’t know. I don’t have any money at all.”
And the servant said, “If you’re not going to pay it back, I’m going to throw you into jail until your family have raised the last denarii.” And he threw him into jail.
Then word came back to the king. “Remember that man you forgave ten thousand talents? Do you know that when he left your presence, he met a fellow servant who owed him just one hundred denarii and do you know that he’s thrown him into prison until he can pay back the last denarii?
And the king said, “He did? After I had forgiven him ten thousand talents? Bring that servant back here.”
And they brought the servant back and the king said, “Did I forgive you ten thousand talents that you pled and asked me to forgive you of?”
The man said, “Yes, I’m very grateful to you.” He probably said, “I’ve told my wife and she says to say thank you. I mean we are relieved. What a tremendous relief.”
“Did I hear that you went out of my presence and met a fellow servant who owed you a hundred denarii and you have demanded he pay it back?”
“Well, that’s my right. He owes it to me.”
“And did I hear you have thrown him into prison until he can pay it back?”
“Well, that’s the way we do things.”
Let me read to you what the king said. He said, “You wicked servant. I cancelled all of that debt of yours and shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant as I had on you? You now owe me ten thousand talents.”
And it says, “In anger his master turned him over to the jailers until he paid back all he owed.”
Now here’s the frightening thing. When Jesus finished that story, He said in the next verse (Verse 35 of Matthew 18):
“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.”
You see this man had had his debt forgiven, but the forgiveness of that debt did not change the disposition of his heart. And so the grace that flowed to him did not flow through him.
And Jesus said, “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive.” Now what does that mean? Well, people debated this statement frequently. But let’s not go into that debate; let’s assume it means what it sounds like – take it at its face value. If you are not forgiving to others, you will close off the forgiveness of God to you.
You know as I examine my own heart, this could be the source of blockage of our spiritual life for many of us. We want to be recipients of all that God wants to give to me and do for me, but we are not willing to then be that and do that and give that to others in our relationships with them.
Like many of you I’m sure, I long for spiritual revival - I long for it in my own heart first, I long for it in this church; I long for it in this city. I long to get beyond doing what we do just because we do it and to really be encountering God, to know and experience the flow of His life in us and through us that this city and the workplace and our homes will see something of His presence.
And if you read the history of spiritual revivals, you’ll find that a feature almost invariably, if not in every case – I can’t say that because I don’t know every case, but almost invariably a feature of revival is people confessing their sins to one another and getting right. Not confessing sins that don’t concern other people, but confessing sins that concern other people and apologizing.
A few years ago I wrote the history of an event in Britain called the Keswick Convention, which has been running for 130 years, a big event that takes place every year. There have been several times in that history when the Keswick Convention, drawing many thousands of people, came very close to revival, or experienced a touch of revival. And every time it involved this.
Back before the days of electronic transfer of money, God met with that crowd of folks and many, many people realized there were things that they had to get right with other people. And the local post offices in the town of Keswick in England sold out of postal orders of people buying postal orders (equivalent of cheques) to send debts that they believed they owed, or make restitution for things they had stolen. In those days you had to telephone through the operator; you couldn’t direct dial, and the lines in Keswick were blocked for hours as people tried to call people, to put things right. And God came down in a very real way - not because you earn it; you simply clear the blockages.
And when you face your poverty of spirit and you mourn that poverty and you meekly submit to Christ as Lord, you find an appetite for righteousness. That does not put your heads in the cloud; it puts your feet on the ground. It means you start to live in relationship well and properly and disciplinedly, because mercy is a disposition; it’s also a discipline; it’s also a dynamic. As we are forgiving, God flows.
And maybe some of us here this morning need to go home and make some phone calls. Maybe it’s one phone call. Maybe you need to go home and write a letter. Maybe not go home; drive somewhere else or take the bus or the underground to somebody else’s home, and put right things which will block the flow of the Spirit of God in and through you, but which, when unblocked, those who are merciful will receive mercy. You will receive the working of God in a fresh, powerful, deep way. It’s not cheap; it’s costly. But it’s worth it.
Let’s pray. Father God, I pray that in this congregation of men and women and young people who are here this morning because we want to know God more fully in our lives, we want to understand Your Word and Your ways, want to understand the working of Your Spirit within our lives. And Lord, we face this important, crucial issue that it’s the merciful who receive mercy. And when we stopped being merciful, we closed the door to Your work in our lives. We become dry, we become stale, we become stagnant in our spiritual lives. And so I pray Lord Jesus that in our hearts this morning, You will do such a work that will drive us into greater dependency on You and a greater fullness of Your Holy Spirit as we act in obedience to You. Give us the courage - where You have spoken to people this morning – give us the courage to obey. We pray it in Jesus’ Name, Amen.