As we have said, the first four beatitudes deal with our relationship to God in one way or another. “Blessed are they who recognize their spiritual bankruptcy: for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are they whose hearts are broken over that bankruptcy: for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the humble, repentant and meek: for they shall inherit the earth. Then blessed are they which are not satisfied with their spiritual poverty, but who hunger and thirst after righteousness: for they, by the grace of God, shall be filled.”
The four remaining beatitudes, although still rooted in God’s gracious enabling, relate more to our dealings with our fellow man. And the first is mercy – humanly speaking, one of the great needs in this world. But, implies the next beatitude, it is difficult to be merciful when we are self-seeking hypocrites. Blessed are those who are peace-makers in a warlike world, and blessed are those suffer in that war-like world, because they take a stand for righteousness and practice these beatitudes.
As I have said these beatitudes parallel the Ten Commandments in their dual application – first towards God and then towards man. And this is as it should be, because this is, in a sense, the Lord Jesus’ implementation of that original law, but in the context of His kingdom. These things describe the character of the children of God.
Tonight we first think about the principle of MERCY.
“Blessed are the merciful; for they shall obtain mercy.” It needs to be understood that, when God deals in mercy, it is different than when we do it. The reason for this is that He is holy, and no matter what we might think of ourselves – we are not. When God acts in mercy towards us, it is from the greater to the lesser; from the perfect to the imperfect. But when we act in mercy, we are doing so toward someone who is no less than we are. This changes the dynamics of this mercy and so many other things as well.
Of course, in regard to our salvation, mercy and grace are critical. As we have often pointed out, grace is “God’s unmerited favor.” And as many have said, the Lord does something wonderful for the sinner which he does not, nor ever could or will, deserve. In addition to that grace, the Lord acts in mercy toward us, not judging us as our sins deserve. Lamentations 3:22 states it plainly, “It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed…” That verse actually expresses both the mercy and grace of God, because it goes on – “It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.”
When mercy and grace are found in the world of men, it involves a recognition of some sort of need. But even though the sinner is in need of salvation, it is not that need which prompts the Lord’s mercy. He is gracious and merciful out of His own heart, not because we are in desperate need. Even though “mercy” is a perfectly good word to describe that part of God’s salvation, He is not merciful simply because He sees that without His help we would all be cast into Hell.
But as I have often said, the Lord Jesus in this verse is not discussing salvation. He is essentially saying that those who have received divine mercy in salvation, and who constantly experience God’s mercy in other ways, will be merciful themselves. No unmerciful man has any right to consider himself a recipient of God’s mercy. And how should we define human mercy? It is a concern for people in need, but it’s not just sympathy. These merciful souls, care and act in ways to meet the sufferings of the people in need.
Was the penman of the Epistle of James one of the disciples present here in Matthew 5? If he wasn’t, he certainly had heard the lesson repeated by others. James 2:14-16 – “What doth it profit, my brethren, though a man say he hath faith, and have not works? can faith save him? If a brother or sister be naked, and destitute of daily food, And one of you say unto them, Depart in peace, be ye warmed and filled; notwithstanding ye give them not those things which are needful to the body; what doth it profit?” In essence he was saying, “Don’t talk to me about your faith in Christ, if it hasn’t made you in some way merciful like Christ.” We know that the Apostle John was there with Christ that day. In his first Epistle he said, ”We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren. He that loveth not his brother abideth in death. Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him. Hereby perceive we the love of God, because he laid down his life for us: and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren. But whoso hath this world’s good, and seeth his brother have need, and shutteth up his bowels of compassion from him, how dwelleth the love of God in him? My little children, let us not love in word, neither in tongue; but in deed and in truth. And hereby we know that we are of the truth, and shall assure our hearts before him.” Remember the Saviour’s parable of the Good Samaritan. The lesson was about indiscriminate mercy. There was no thought by the Samaritan about who it was in need, nor whether or not he was worthy. There was no thought about whether or not it would be repaid by the man. It was mercy given freely, much like the Lord’s mercy towards us. The Good Samaritan was not the only time that Christ Jesus addressed this question. Matthew 18:22-35 gives us His parable of the unmerciful servant. – the antithesis of the Samaritan. His master forgave him, but he refused to forgive some others. “And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors…”
The confusing part of this beatitude is found in the second clause: “For they shall obtain mercy.” Many people think that if we are merciful then God will be merciful to us and save our souls. It is much like the statement in the next chapter which says, “If we forgive others, then God will forgive us.” But if these verses mean that we can earn salvation from sin, then they contradict other scriptures. Scriptures like: “Not by works of righteousness which we have done but by his mercy he saved. Scriptures like: “For all our righteousnesseses are as filthy rags.” No sir, we are not cleansed from the filth of our sin, by our washing the filth off someone else. We are save by God’s grace – His unmerited favor. And remember that the Lord Jesus was speaking to people already in the Kingdom of Heaven when he gave us this beatitude.
When was the last time that the Lord was merciful to you? I don’t know that I can specifically answer that question in my case, because mercy is different from grace, which may often be more obvious. Probably, the answer is – the Lord has been merciful to me at least a dozen times already today. With every sin, every sinful thought, every hint of jealousy, every minor act of selfishness, the holy God had every right to smash me like an invading roach in His kitchen. But instead of that He was merciful towards me. Along with His unending grace, to which I referred last Wednesday, there is an ever-flowing flood of mercy towards us as well. I should thank and praise God for the mercy which he has bestowed upon me today, even though I can’t specifically point to exact incidents. and I should pray that He will continue to be merciful towards me tomorrow. And I know that because I am His child, I will always have that mercy. It will not be because I am merciful, but because He has claimed me as His child. And because he has redeemed me, and regenerated me, I find within me a desire to be like Christ and the Good Samaritan. I have a desire to be merciful towards the people around me. I don’t claim that it is perfect; I don’t claim that I can’t be more merciful. But it is there nevertheless, by the gift of God’s grace.
So……. are you sure that you are a citizen of Heaven, a child of God? If you are not forgiving and merciful, you may not have much of an argument or any physical proof.?
In that light can we say that your mercy is a true representation of your heart?
“Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.” The Lord Jesus doesn’t want us to miss the fact that the things we are talking about begin with the spiritual before they extend into the physical. Even in discussing our relationships with other sinners, we are talking about purity in the heart, much like poverty of the spirit before God. The words may be easy enough to understand, but what exactly is the meaning? There are two interlocking interpretations.
The most obvious one is that purity of heart means inward purity – holiness. There are plenty of church-going people, who have learned well enough how to appear in public. They have learned a list of sins, and carefully selected their favorites – to avoid. They brush their teeth, and spritz on a little perfume whenever they go out of the house. So they look good and smell good from the skin out. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that the inside matches the outside.
That God demands purity of heart is abundantly clear in both testaments. “Who shall ascend into the hill of the LORD? or who shall stand in his holy place? He that hath clean hands, and a pure heart; who hath not lifted up his soul unto vanity, nor sworn deceitfully. He shall receive the blessing from the LORD, and righteousness from the God of his salvation. This is the generation of them that seek him, that seek thy face, O Jacob. Selah.” “Create in me a clean heart, O God; and renew a right spirit within me.” A man might be a chimney sweep, as filthy and black with soot as a lump of coal, or he could be like that man on the Discovery channel who does all those dirty jobs, but if his heart is pure, he is well received by the Lord.
The other plausible way of understanding this beatitude, at first sounds a little forced. Some people call this purity of heart – “freedom from a divided heart.” More precisely, some people equate this to “sincerity.” The man who puts on the great front, fills his mouth with nice words, and restrains his wicked deeds in order to impress or manipulate people, does not have a pure heart. He is an hypocrite. The hypocrite, the masked man, has an impure heart.
What lengthy scripture more than any other exposes the nature of the hypocrite? Matthew 23. Almost every breath exposes a impure heart. I won’t read everything that the saviour says there, but a few will be sufficient. “But woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye shut up the kingdom of heaven against men: for ye neither go in yourselves, neither suffer ye them that are entering to go in. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye pay tithe of mint and anise and cummin, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith: these ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone. Ye blind guides, which strain at a gnat, and swallow a camel. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye make clean the outside of the cup and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Thou blind Pharisee, cleanse first that which is within the cup and platter, that the outside of them may be clean also. Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men’s bones, and of all uncleanness. Even so ye also outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity. Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell?”
What is the proper interpretation of this pure heart? Is it speaking of inward righteousness, or is it an honest declaration of the condition of the heart? I’m not sure that you can separate the two. And certainly either one expresses the demands of the Lord in other scriptures. Basically, the Lord is saying that the hypocrite is not a citizen of the Kingdom of Heaven.
So the two questions with which to go home tonight are: Are you a merciful person, reflecting the mercy which you have received from God? And, is your heart as pure as your outward life suggests? Purity and mercy are characteristics of the children of God. Without them, we have no business trying to convince ourselves that we are Christians.