Matthew 5:7 - June 30, 2024

Mount Zion Community Church

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And today, we are into our fifth beatitude. So we are in Matthew chapter five and verse seven.

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So that beatitude says this. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

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And this week, we're looking at yet another shift in focus with regard to the beatitudes.

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So up to this point, we've had something of an inward focus. We were looking at beatitudes that directly addressed us.

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And they directly addressed the condition of our heart. And even as we look to God to consider righteousness, that was even still something internal to us that we were seeking after.

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But now, now we start to see the outworking, the effects of these first four beatitudes, the effects of the other beatitudes that we've seen.

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And this one is really important. And one thing we need to highlight, actually a couple things that we need to highlight as we get started today is there are some very easy misunderstandings that you can make with this beatitude.

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So I wanna just highlight a couple of things that we'll talk about now, but we'll talk about more as we go along.

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And the first one is that despite how this beatitude sounds, blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.

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You have to understand that mercy is not a work that contributes to your salvation.

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So this beatitude has been used and is probably still used by certain types of churches to suggest that this is something that you must do in order to be saved.

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And that's not the case as we'll look at just a little bit later. And second, closely related to this is we have to understand that mercy and the mercy that we're asked to show is ultimately the result of a changed heart.

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It's ultimately a result of the heart that the Holy Spirit has completely transformed through the work of salvation.

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So mercifulness is not a personality trait. It's not something that comes naturally to you that's easy to do.

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It's not even necessarily a decision that you make to be this way.

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So those are just two things to keep in mind as we get started. And I know that this is a point that I've been harping on for the last several weeks as we go through this, but it's because it's important.

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And that point is this. The beatitudes were presented by Jesus in a very specific order.

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And they're presented in a very specific order because they build on each other.

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I know I've said this a bunch of times and I'm gonna say it again as we keep on going. But the reason, this is like, the beatitudes are a perfect, or the

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Sermon on the Mount is a perfect sermon, perfectly organized, perfectly designed. And again, all these things, the first one is a foundation for the second one, for the third one, for the fourth one, and now we're here at the fifth one.

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And one thing that's related to this idea is because they build on each other, something that we can't do as we're reading through Scripture, considering what

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Jesus is teaching here, is that we can't just pick these beatitudes individually and we can't take them out of order because that means that you can't just open up your

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Bible one day and skip, you know, five, three through five, six, and say, well,

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I'm gonna be merciful today because ultimately this mercy is the outworking of the other beatitudes.

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So we don't wanna take any piece of Scripture and just look at it because we like it or try to live it out today because that's what we feel like doing.

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So what this means practically is that we're following a process and it's a process that begins with the

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Holy Spirit opening our eyes to our need for a Savior and the Holy Spirit opening our eyes to the fact that Jesus is that Savior.

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Now, the Holy Spirit also grants us the faith to believe in Jesus. The Holy Spirit grants us the faith to trust in what

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He did on the cross and this is what leads us, this is salvation. This leads us into the process of sanctification, which is how we live our new lives as Christians and this is what we're describing in the beatitudes as well and that's where we pick up now.

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So let's review the process that we've seen so far just to make sure that you guys are all with me.

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So the process begins with the recognition that I am a sinner, that you are a sinner.

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Like Paul says in Romans 7 24, wretched man that I am, who will deliver me from this body of death?

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And this state of pure wretchedness and unworthiness before God, which is the state of all of us prior to our salvation and accepting the work of Jesus on the cross, this is where we become poor in spirit.

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This is also humility. And with this poverty of spirit, realizing the wretchedness and realizing that it's the result of our sin, it's the result of the things that we've done, we mourn over that.

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And we mourn not because something bad has happened to us because of our sin, not because we've lost something or we've had a negative experience, but we mourn what our sin is before God and we mourn what our sin means to God and it's an offense to God.

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And we mourn that the fact that we continue to sin even after we know it is even more offensive in light of the fact that Jesus died for that sin.

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Jesus died to forgive it and we still continue on. Paul said in Romans 7, 19, for the good that I want,

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I do not do, but I practice the very evil that I do not want. And this causes us to mourn or it causes us to despair.

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And as we despair, this turns us into a meek person.

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This turns us into a person who realizes that apart from Christ, nothing good dwells inside us.

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And this is humbling as well. This whole process is humbling. We realize that we have no defense of our actions before God.

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And indeed, we don't deserve anybody to stand up for us and defend us. And we realize that the only thing that's worth standing up for is

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God and his holiness and the holiness that we have violated. And when we realize that, the recognition of that simple fact drives us to try to figure out a solution and it drives us to hunger and thirst for righteousness.

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Righteousness, which means to be completely conformed to the mind and to the will of God. And like we talked about last week, this hunger and thirst for righteousness is an overwhelming desire.

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This is a desire that must be met or else we'll die. And in fact, without this righteousness, without being conformed to the will of God, the mercy that we talk about today and the mercy that we show would not really be mercy.

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And in fact, some forms of mercy would not be possible at all. Because mercy, as we've said already, true mercy is the result of a transformed life.

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It's the result of a transformed heart. And it's the outworking of the process that we find from these first four beatitudes that have led us to this point.

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Arthur Pink describes the concept of mercifulness this way. He says, it is a gracious disposition toward my fellow creatures and fellow

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Christians. It is that kindness and benevolence that feels the miseries of others.

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It is a spirit that regards with compassion the sufferings of the afflicted. It is that grace that causes one to deal leniently with an offender and to scorn the taking of revenge.

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And J .C. Ryle says this about mercifulness. The Lord Jesus calls those blessed who are merciful.

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He means those who are full of compassion towards others. They pity all who are suffering either from sin or sorrow and are tenderously desirous to make their sufferings less.

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They are full of good works and endeavors to do good. So there's a few commonalities in these definitions.

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And I think they're definitely worth looking into. But I also wanna give some more concrete examples from scripture to show you what mercifulness looks like in practice.

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And I'm just gonna kind of summarize several because there's tons of them. But some notable examples include, for example, the mercy that Abraham showed to his nephew,

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Lot. Abraham saved his nephew from the kings of the valley when they wanted to capture him. Joseph showed mercy toward his brothers in Egypt.

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And this is one that we're gonna talk about in a little bit more detail later. Moses showed mercy when he interceded for his sister

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Miriam when she was suffering from leprosy. God struck her with leprosy because she was rebelling against him.

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Moses interceded on her behalf. David showed mercy when he chose not to kill

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Saul, even when he had a couple of really good chances. And Saul was trying to kill him, so don't forget that.

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Saul was after him, but David showed mercy. And obviously, as is so often the case,

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Jesus himself served as the foremost example of mercy. Jesus served as the perfect example of mercy.

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But one other example that I wanna look at a little more deeply is a parable that Jesus told.

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And this is one that I'm pretty sure everybody is familiar with.

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This is the parable of the Good Samaritan. I don't think you ever even had to have gone to church to be familiar with the parable of the

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Good Samaritan. So this is in Luke, it's Luke chapter 10, and we're gonna read verses 25 through 37.

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It says this. And behold, a scholar of the law stood up and was putting him to the test saying, teacher, what shall

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I do to inherit eternal life? And he said to him, what is written in the law? How do you read it?

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And he answered and said, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself.

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And he said to him, you have answered correctly. Do this and you will live. But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor?

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Jesus replied and said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers.

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And they stripped him and beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. And a priest happened to be going down on that road.

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And when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise, a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side.

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But a Samaritan who was on a journey came upon him. And when he saw him, he felt compassion.

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And he came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. And he put him on his own animal and brought him to an inn and took care of him.

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And on the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, take care of him.

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And whatever more you spend, when I return, I will repay you. Which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robber's hands?

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And he said, the one who showed mercy toward him. Then Jesus said to him, go and do the same.

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And while this parable is not inclusive of all the aspects of mercifulness that we wanna consider, it's still a perfect example of some of these concepts.

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Now, as we think back to those couple of definitions of mercy that we looked at just a minute ago, in light of these, what

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I wanna share today is three ways that we can show mercy. So the first one of these is that we show mercy through sacrificial acts of kindness and compassion.

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In the Good Samaritan, in the parable is a perfect example of this. So he saw this man by the side of the road, this man who had been robbed and beaten and just left for dead there.

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And he saw him and verse 33 even says that he felt compassion. Now, we already saw that a priest and a

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Levite, two religious leaders who could have stopped to help, opted to avoid this man.

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They went to the other side of the road so that they wouldn't have to help him. And while he could have done the same thing, because it would have been even less expected of this

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Samaritan to help this person, he didn't do that. So what he did instead was that he patched him up, he treated his wounds, he loaded him up on his animal and then he took him to an inn and then he paid for it.

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And this is significant because he had no part in this circumstance.

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He had nothing to do with this situation other than the fact that he just happened upon this person lying in the road.

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He wasn't the one that beat him. He didn't have anything to do with beating or robbing him. And outside of this random set of circumstances, he still went beyond what the priest and the

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Levite did. He went on to the point of expending his own resources to take care of this person.

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So this is a sacrificial act of compassion because he had to stop what he was doing.

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He had to give of his own resources. He gave of his own money. He gave of his time to take care of this individual person.

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And this is one of the very definitions of what it is to be merciful.

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And you can apply this to your own life in any number of ways as you see people who need this.

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And mercifulness, it shows kindness and compassion to people who are suffering from sin.

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In this example, the person on the side of the road was suffering due to the sins of other people. He was suffering because other people sinned in the form of beating him.

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But our mercy doesn't stop there. We'll talk about this a little bit later too, but we're to show mercy to people who are suffering on account of their own sin as well.

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We're not to just say that they did it to themselves and move to the other side of the road and pass on by.

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So we show mercy through sacrificial acts of kindness and compassion.

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The second one is we show mercy through sacrificial acts of forgiveness.

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And you could think of this as just another form of grace or another form of humility. And we've already covered humility quite a bit in this discussion of the

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Beatitudes. And it reminds us a lot of the idea of meekness as well. The idea of not jumping to our own defense or just clamoring after what it is that we think we deserve from other people or what they should do for us or how they should treat us just because.

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So mercifulness knows nothing of revenge. Instead, mercifulness allows for the opportunity for future repentance.

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And even if it doesn't result in future repentance, mercy allows for future judgment.

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Which as we discussed in the last couple of weeks, it's not our role. God will ultimately judge.

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Scripture gives us a couple of examples of this kind of forgiveness, this kind of mercifulness that are just absolutely, they're absolutely radical and almost unbelievable.

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And in fact, the first one was part of our scripture reading today, what we read in Acts chapter seven. So I kinda cut that, the scripture reading up over the last two or three weeks, but that was really a large sermon basically that Stephen was preaching.

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And he preached through the whole history, from Abraham all the way through the present and told the people how they were sinners and told the people he was preaching to how they were responsible for the killing of Jesus.

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And they did not like that. They were very offended and ultimately they stoned him.

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So that's where we were. They got so angry, they chased him out and beat him to death with stones.

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But what did Stephen say while this was happening? The last verse we read,

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Acts 7 .60 says this, then falling on his knees, he cried out in a loud voice,

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Lord, do not hold this sin against them. And then he died. Now, he had likely seen a very good example of this kind of forgiveness prior to all this occurring.

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And that's our second example. It comes from the life of Jesus. And what Stephen said as he was being murdered is very reminiscent of what

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Jesus said when he was on the cross, as he was being crucified. Luke 23 .34,

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but Jesus was saying, Father, forgive them for they do not know what they're doing.

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So these are our models of what it means to be merciful through forgiveness.

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These are people defending their own murderers. And, you know, we've mentioned other examples that could fall into this category.

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But one more example we have is the example of Joseph forgiving his brothers. Maybe this one isn't quite so extreme, but honestly, maybe it is.

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So if you recall what happened with Joseph and his brothers, it says, out of jealousy, his brothers sold him into slavery in Egypt.

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And then they went back home and they lied to their father and said that he was killed by an animal. So they set up this elaborate plot to pretend that he had been murdered when really they sold him off to Egypt as a slave.

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And he suffered during that time. He was a slave. He was in prison on multiple occasions, actually.

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But ultimately, God elevated him to the point where he was second in command only to Pharaoh in Egypt.

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He was in charge of everything. And long story short, a famine happened over the entire world.

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And Joseph's brothers came to Egypt to buy food or to beg for food, just like everyone else in the world.

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And who's in charge of the food? Joseph is in charge of the food. So the whole world is coming to him, including his brothers, the brothers that sacrificed him out of sheer jealousy.

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And Joseph could have done whatever he wanted. He could have sent them home empty -handed if he was feeling what we would consider to be particularly merciful that day.

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Or he could have killed them. He could have thrown them in prison. He could have done just about anything. He had the power. But instead, what we see that he did in Genesis chapter 50, verses 18 through 20 is this.

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Then his brothers also came and fell down before him and said, behold, we are your slaves. This is once they realized that this is

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Joseph. But Joseph said to them, do not be afraid, for am I in God's place?

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As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good in order to do what has happened on this day, to keep many people alive.

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So Joseph shows a tremendous amount of forgiveness. And we might say that it's easy for him to show forgiveness now because he's second in command over the entire world, basically.

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But don't forget that over a period of years, he spent time as a slave. He spent time as a prisoner.

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Even when he was serving in the Pharaoh's house, if you recall, his wife tried to seduce him.

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And when he declined to participate, she said that he did anyway and he got thrown in prison again.

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So he spent a considerable amount of time suffering. And I don't know about you, but I would probably be bitter.

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I would probably want the people that did that to me to get what was coming to them. And I'm not proud of that.

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And this is why I tell you all, maybe I tell you all that these beatitudes are gonna challenge you because as I look over this stuff, these beatitudes challenge me.

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These make me rethink a lot of the things that I think and do on a daily basis. And this forgiveness idea, this one just kills us, right?

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This is one of the hardest ones. It's so hard to handle because forgiveness, it's just such a huge challenge, particularly when we've been wronged.

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And it's gonna happen to you. It's probably already happened to you. What am I talking about? Somebody is gonna treat you poorly.

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Somebody is gonna hurt you. Somebody is gonna insult you. Somebody is gonna sin in a way that causes you extreme pain in your heart.

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And it gets even harder when it's the people that are closest to you, like when it's your family, the people that are supposed to love you, right?

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And they do things that are sinful and they hurt you. And I hesitate to use the term sin against you because ultimately all sin is against God.

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But at the same time, the sin still hurts you. So it is against you in that way. So your own family, they might do that.

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And they might not realize they're doing it or they might know what they're doing, but not recognize it as sin.

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And you have to face that every day. And then now here we are, and Jesus is telling us that we have to be merciful and forgiveness is part of that mercy.

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And it's so hard. And it seems impossible. And you struggle and I struggle and we struggle, but that's part of what's at the heart of mercifulness.

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Now, one thing I wanna be clear about is that this kind of thing that I'm talking about, because there's so many different situations out there in the world.

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I'm not referring in this case to something that truly rises to the level of abuse, physical abuse, sexual abuse, real emotional abuse, because we don't have time to dive into that today.

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But what I will say about that is the concept of mercifulness and the concept of forgiveness still applies, but it doesn't mean that you keep yourself in that situation.

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If it's a truly abusive situation, you're not to hold that grudge, but nobody's telling you that you should stay in that situation, if that makes sense.

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So again, that's probably a whole additional topic, but I just wanted to make sure that we're clear about that.

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Because for this specific point where we're talking more about hurt feelings, we're talking about offense, we're talking about just not getting what it is that you believe you deserve.

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And there's a verse for that too. We have a verse for those times when a friend or a family member or a fellow church member or whoever is not giving you what you think you deserve.

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They're not giving you the respect. They're not giving you whatever it is. Maybe it's because we decided to skip over the beatitude on meekness.

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I don't know. But Galatians 6 .3 is a reminder for a lot of us, when we have those entitled feelings.

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Galatians 6 .3 says, for if anyone thinks he is something when he is nothing, he deceives himself.

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So cross -stitch that one and hang it on your wall. That's not one of the popular ones that they have at the

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Christian bookstore for you to buy and put up in your kitchen. And number three, we show mercy when we share

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Christ with others. And this goes back to the discussion of evangelism we had several weeks ago.

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And I know that this is difficult too, because this is actually a sacrificial act in some cases.

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You could be sacrificing your reputation, or you could be sacrificing a relationship. Because our society is just so hostile to anything that could be called

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Christian. Our society is so hostile to anything that would confront someone's behavior.

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And I kind of get it, because there's a lot of stuff out there in the Christian world that is not

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Christian. There's stuff that's fake, that's pretending to be Christian, and it gives Christians and it gives

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God a bad name. Legalistic churches, fringe, extreme kind of churches.

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Those people make it hard for those of us who are just trying to do our best to live the way

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Jesus is telling us and share the gospel with other people, because they have biased those secular folks against that kind of thing.

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And again, when we talk about this, I'm not talking about people who take the

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Bible seriously. This is probably another little rant. But legalism is the idea, as I've said before, that by, legalism is what the

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Pharisees did. They say by keeping the law perfectly, you will go to heaven. And like the example that I always give, because it's the one that immediately pops into my mind is churches that say that women can't wear pants, because of something that's in Leviticus, right?

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Wear pants, you're going to hell. That's sort of a legalistic interpretation of that, because that in itself is not gonna send anybody to hell or to heaven for that matter.

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But then we have fundamentalists. And fundamentalism is a little bit of a different thing.

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Fundamentalists, that was used several decades ago as an insult, because it referred to people who believe what the

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Bible said. But now we think of fundamentalists as legalists. We think of it as the church that, you know, only uses the

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King James Version and has a lot of weird rules that we don't care for. But fundamentalism originally just wanted to take

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Scripture seriously. And as an aside, I've had it vaguely suggested to me that I might be headed down the road to legalism because I took the theology of worship music and I took the theology of ministries that produce popular worship music seriously.

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And I questioned the foundation of some of those things. And that was by a church leader.

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So if the church can be hostile to certain aspects of Christianity, what hope do we have in trying to bring

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Christianity to the world that doesn't even pretend to be part of a church? But I digress.

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That's something else altogether. I know that I'm repeating a lot of concepts here, and it's because they're just, they're so intricately woven together that you can't even really separate them.

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And I think we all know that our country, our world, our society, it all needs

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Christ. They all need Christ. But they need all of Christ, not just the soft, cuddly parts, not just the part that tells you that Jesus loves you the way you are, which is a half -truth, but a half -truth that will send you to hell.

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Because one thing that we want to make sure that we're clear is that mercifulness shares

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Christ for an important reason. Mercifulness shares Christ because it doesn't want to see people perish.

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Mercifulness shares Christ because it doesn't want people condemned to hell because of their sin.

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But what that means is mercifulness does not excuse sin. Mercifulness does not ignore sin because that's the easy way to handle it.

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And at the same time, mercifulness doesn't mean, or that idea doesn't mean that we have the right to pronounce ultimate judgment on sinners.

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We don't have that right. Again, mercifulness forgives and shares

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Christ because we're merciful because we want someone else to experience that forgiveness and then ultimately to experience the salvation that we've experienced.

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So what mercifulness does is it doesn't excuse sin and it doesn't ignore sin. It lovingly confronts sin for that reason.

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And I say lovingly, I almost didn't even want to say that because we like to go out there with guns blazing when people sin in ways that we are very confident that we are not sinning because we can tell them about it.

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But if it gets a little close to the way that we like to sin, we sort of step back from that. But mercifulness pities sin and it pities sin from the place of sympathy because the merciful person who's truly been changed by the

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Holy Spirit understands that you and that person were in the same place. But for the grace of God, you would be headed to the same destination, just maybe in different vehicles.

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And grace, the grace of God is what we want. Even the most desperate and even the most hardened sinners to experience in their lives because we know, we know that there's no other way out besides the transformation of the

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Holy Spirit through God's grace. And for that reason, we have to share the gospel with people.

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We can't save them. I can't save them. You can't save them. But God's word can save them and the

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Holy Spirit can save them. Now, up to this point, we've really just been kind of talking about what it means to be merciful or how it is that we show mercy.

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But we haven't really taken in the totality of this verse because there is more to it than just that because this verse can get confusing when it says, blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy or they shall be shown mercy.

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So now I wanna emphasize a point that I think we've already made, but thinking that I made it is insufficient.

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So it's too important. I wanna make sure that we really get this because it's natural to hear that verse and to hear the details of the ways that we show mercy to others and break out into a little bit of a cold sweat or even get mad because as a matter of our human nature or as a matter of our temperament, this forgiveness or these sacrificial acts in certain ways, they just don't come naturally to us.

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And going back to Arthur Pink again, he says, mercifulness is one of the attributes of the spiritual nature that one receives at the new birth.

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And that means that mercifulness may not come naturally to us, but it's something that the

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Holy Spirit gives us when we're saved. And again, if you're hearing this for like the seventh time,

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I'm sorry, but that's also probably a good thing. And this is important to note because we have to emphasize the fact that this is important because it's not a character trait.

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It's not a thing where we can say, well, my wife is the merciful one of us, so she can be merciful and I'll be something else.

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Let me be a different beatitude because that one's just hard for me. So that's not exactly the way that works.

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But there's something even more dangerous here. And that's confusing the idea that showing mercy is a work that contributes to our salvation rather than something that comes from our salvation.

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So Sinclair Ferguson says this as we consider the whole verse itself. He says, this presents us with something of a problem.

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Does Jesus mean that we will receive mercy only if we ourselves are merciful? Certainly that is his meaning, but this does not imply that the cause of our receiving mercy will be the fact that we were merciful as though we had earned

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God's mercy. Being merciful is the natural result of receiving Christ and experiencing the grace of God.

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If we are not merciful, we cannot have received Christ's mercy and therefore cannot look forward to receiving his mercy in the last judgment.

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I hope I didn't lose everybody there. Because again, as I was looking at this and reading about it and considering it, the concept is clear, but it winds up being a little bit hard to explain.

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Because again, it's really complicated if we're not careful. Essentially what we're saying is that God will be merciful to us when we show mercy.

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However, we can only show this mercy to others when we have fully received and understood the mercy that has been granted to us in our salvation.

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So the ability to show this mercy to others, it only comes to us through the Holy Spirit. And it only comes to us because we understand the mercy that's been shown.

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So that's either clearer to you at this point, or it's even more confusing. But if it's confusing still, let me just say that the thing the verse is not saying is that you can earn the mercy of salvation by performing acts of mercy.

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That's salvation by works. Earning salvation through what you've done is completely unbiblical.

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Now I found a couple of statements that Martin Lloyd -Jones made that I thought were helpful too. And one of them was this.

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He said, if I am truly repentant or truly saved and realize my position before God and realize that I am only forgiven in that way, then of necessity,

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I shall forgive those who trespass against me. So it's that realization that we've been forgiven, that we've been shown mercy that allows us to show mercy that would be impossible otherwise.

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I mean, what reason would we have to show mercy or forgiveness to someone else if we didn't understand this on our own?

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We might do it because we get something from it, but we wouldn't do it just because.

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And if we're settled on the fact that showing mercy doesn't earn us salvation, or if you're at least willing to take my word for it at this point before you go home and read about it more on your own, what does it mean to say that we will receive mercy if we are merciful?

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So we know now that it's not earning us our salvation, but what is Jesus saying that we'll receive mercy if we show other people mercy?

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Are we saying that there's a chance that God might withhold mercy from us if we don't show that same mercy to other people?

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I think this might be surprising to say, but if you read your Bible, based on what you see in scripture, the only real answer we can have is yes.

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So let's just consider a few verses. One such verse is from David's Song of Deliverance.

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This is in 2 Samuel chapter 22, 26. David says, with the kind, you show yourself kind.

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And he's talking to God in this verse. And that one is echoed in Psalm 18, 25, exact same words.

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James 2, 13 tells us this, for judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy.

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Mercy triumphs over judgment. And then Jesus says in Matthew 6, 14 through 15, for if you forgive others for their transgressions, your heavenly

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Father will forgive you. But if you do not forgive others, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.

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So it's pretty clear to see from just these verses that we are to show mercy to other people if we expect

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God to continue to show mercy for us. But here's the thing.

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So this is a cycle. Think about it as a cycle. But this cycle has already been kicked off by God.

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You don't start this cycle. You don't have to. God has shown you mercy himself by sending

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Jesus, by sending Jesus to die in our place. So you are in no way expected to show mercy or to show some kind of forgiveness or whatever we're considering this as that you have not already been shown yourself.

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And that you have not already been the recipient of in a dramatic way in your life, in such a way that it's more than you could ever do for anyone else.

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It doesn't matter what they did to you. It doesn't matter. And Jesus has a parable that perfectly illustrates this cycle.

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And this parable has a lot of different names. I'm calling it the parable of the unmerciful slave.

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And this is in Matthew 18. We're gonna look at verses 21 through 35. So it says this.

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Then Peter came to him and said, Lord, how often shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him?

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Up to seven times? Jesus said to him, I do not say to you up to seven times, but up to 70 times seven.

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For this reason, the kingdom of heaven may be compared to a king who wished to settle accounts with his slaves.

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When he had begun to settle them, one who owed him 10 ,000 talents was brought to him.

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But since he did not have the means to repay, his Lord commanded him to be sold along with his wife and children and all that he had and repayment to be made.

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Therefore, the slave fell to the ground and was prostrating himself before him saying, have patience with me and I will repay you everything.

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And feeling compassion, there's that word again, the Lord of that slave released him and forgave him that debt.

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But that slave went out and found one of his fellow slaves who owed him 100 denarii and he seized him and began to choke him saying, pay back what you owe.

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So his fellow slave fell to the ground and was pleading with him saying, have patience with me and I will repay you.

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But he was unwilling and went and threw him in prison until he should pay back what was owed. So when his fellow slaves saw what had happened, they were deeply grieved and came and reported to their

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Lord all that had happened. Then summoning him, his Lord said to him, you wicked slave,

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I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave in the same way that I had mercy on you?

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And his Lord moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him.

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My heavenly Father will also do the same to you if each of you does not forgive his brother from your hearts.

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So it's easy to read that parable, but harder to read it and understand what it truly means to face judgment if you are unable to show mercy to other people.

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So what we see in this parable is exactly the condition that we're in before God.

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We have this unpayable debt, this crushing obligation to God that has come from the sin that we've committed.

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And it's a debt that we'll never be able to satisfy. It's something that we can never make right on our own.

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So we plead with God and out of his compassion and out of his perfect love and mercifulness,

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God looks at us. He looks at our pitiful state and he forgives the debt completely.

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So if we look at the parable again, in monetary terms, this slave owed what probably amounted to millions of dollars and it was forgiven.

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But then the unmerciful slave called in the debt of someone who he loaned money to.

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And what he is insisting that he be repaid is probably a couple thousand dollars.

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And it's not nothing, but it's nowhere near the amount that he had just been forgiven.

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So as we jump back and forth into how this metaphor goes into our lives, you can think of this as someone wronging you, insulting you, hurting you.

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It's not insignificant. It's important. But for you to offer mercifulness in the form of forgiveness in this case is what

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God expects because this pales, this insult, this hurt, it pales in comparison to the mercy that you've been shown by God.

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But back to the point that we were making about showing mercy to receive mercy. So this slave basically threw the book at the person who owed him a little bit of money.

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He had him sent to prison and everything. And the merciful master, he heard about it.

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And he said in verse 33, should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave? In the same way

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I had mercy on you. And the consequence we see in verse 34, and his

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Lord moved with anger, handed him over to the torturers until he should repay all that was owed him. And then

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Jesus drives the point home in verse 35. My heavenly father will also do the same to you if each of you does not forgive his brother from his heart.

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Once again, the mercy that you show is going to be the fruit of your new heart.

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It's gonna be a fruit of the heart that was given to you by the Holy Spirit through salvation. And you will be able to show mercy because of this.

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Because really, it's simply a matter of doing one thing. And I've noticed that a lot of things in life that are actually meaningful, a lot of things that will contribute in a positive way to your life are simple, but they're not easy, right?

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It's simple, simple, simple, one simple step, but it's not easy to take that one simple step.

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But it's just a matter of bringing to mind the mercy that God has shown you. And think about this from a practical standpoint.

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Can you really feel good and confident about yourself when you are going to God for forgiveness?

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If there are people out there that you are holding a grudge against at that very moment? David says this in Psalm 66, 18, if I see wickedness in my heart, the

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Lord will not hear. One more quick example.

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This is from Paul, 2 Timothy 1, verses 16 through 18. And again, this is one that's really easy to look over.

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The Lord give mercy to the house of Onesephorus, for he often refreshed me and was not ashamed of my chains.

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But when he was in Rome, he eagerly searched for me and found me, the Lord grant to him to find mercy from the

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Lord on that day. And you know very well what services he rendered at Ephesus. So what we see here is a person who went out of his way to show compassion for Paul when he was in prison.

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He didn't dissociate himself because of his bad reputation that he had. He didn't wanna be seen with a prisoner.

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He went to him. He showed him mercy. He took care of him. He showed him compassion. That's the kind of mercy that we also need to be showing.

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So how can we sum this up? What is the practical application of the fifth beatitude?

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Hopefully it's obvious by this point, but we'll say it anyway. And it's this. You need to show mercy to others because you have been shown the greatest possible mercy already.

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And then add to it the fact that the scripture says not to expect

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God's mercy if you're not showing that mercy to other people. If you're not showing the mercy that you've been given, you could be cut off.

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So how do you do this? Four words. One, care. Care for the needs of others the way the

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Good Samaritan did. Just think about the Good Samaritan and what his story means. Number two, forgive.

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You knew that one was coming. Forgive others. Ephesians 4 .32 says, instead, be kind to one another, tenderhearted, graciously forgiving each other, just as God in Christ has graciously forgiven you.

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And you'll notice that we're using forgiveness and mercy kind of interchangeably here because they're so tied into each other.

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Three, pray for others. Pray. Whether you like them or not, pray for their salvation.

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Pray that they'll come to know God. Pray that the Holy Spirit will enter into their life. Not that the Holy Spirit will enter into their life so that they'll do what you want them to do, but that they'll do what

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God wants them to do. Because that's what we need to pray for ourselves and for everyone else. Again, don't ever get wrapped up in the idea that you should be praying for people to do what you want them to do.

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You might not have the right interpretation of what's going on. And then four, share.

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Share the gospel with other people. The world needs Christ. They need to hear his message.

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Everyone needs it. Everyone needs to hear it and to understand it. Romans 10, 14 says, how will they believe in him whom they have not heard?

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And scripture is clear on this. So I wanna close with these familiar words that we have from Micah 6, 8.

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It says this. He has told you, oh man, what is good. And what does

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Yahweh require of you, but to do justice, to love, loving kindness, and to walk humbly with your

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God. There's a picture of mercy for you. Will you pray with me? Heavenly Father, thank you again for what you're showing us through your word.

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It's not natural for us to show mercy to others. It's not always natural for us to forgive, especially in those times when we feel truly hurt, when we feel truly taken advantage of, when we feel truly that we're not being given what we deserve.

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But you show us that it's true that we're not being given what we deserve. And we thank you for that.

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We're not being given the condemnation. We're not being given the ultimate punishment that we deserve because you are merciful.

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And you have shown us perfect mercy that is so much bigger than anything we could ever be required to show another person.

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God, we thank you for sending your son. We thank you for the work that Jesus did on the cross.

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And we thank you for the ultimate example of mercifulness that you've given us. God, I pray that the words of the

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Beatitudes, the words of the Sermon on the Mount, and all the scripture supporting it helps to allow the

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Holy Spirit in, helps to allow the Holy Spirit to revive dying hearts, to warm cold hearts, to open closed hearts, and to turn hearts of stone into hearts of flesh,

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God. I pray for the power of the Holy Spirit in the life of each and every person here who hears this message.

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Once again, thank you for who you are. Thank you for love and grace and mercy that we absolutely do not deserve, but you gave to us anyway.

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And it's for this and so many other things, God, that we love you and we lift up all these things in your son's holy and precious name,