“Blessed Are the Merciful”

The Beatitudes as Two Tables: Inner Disposition and Mercy Toward Others

Well, this morning we begin the fifth beatitude in verse 7 of Matthew 5, and with that we're beginning really the second half of the eight beatitudes. As we said, there's debate about how to number them, but I think the strongest argument is to see eight beatitudes, and then the ninth where there is a pronouncement of blessing is actually a bridge to the following section in chapter 5.

And so we've come to the halfway point of our look at the beatitudes here in Matthew 5, and we're reminded that week by week, each beatitude is building toward the next. And so we began with those who are poor in spirit, and those who are poor in spirit, being so helpless, so empty, are mourning, mourning over their helplessness, mourning over their sins, and for that reason they've been brought low and humbled and they're meek and because they're meek and helpless and poor in spirit, they're also hungry and thirsty, not for bread, not for water, but for the righteousness of God.

The first four beatitudes really speak to our inner disposition toward God. It speaks of that inner quality, the nature of our relationship and posture toward the Lord as well as toward ourselves, how we view ourselves in light of the Lord, how we view ourselves in light of our lives in this fallen world.

And if the first four beatitudes address our relationship and our disposition toward God, then as we'll see, the following four, beginning here with the fifth in verse 7, in some ways turn toward our neighbor.

In some ways, each of these following beatitudes, the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth beatitude, has something more to say about our relationship to those around us, the way that we view and regard them, the way we treat them, as well as the way that they treat us as we get toward the eighth beatitude.

And so in some ways, we see not only were there two tables in the law of God, the first table addressing man's relationship to God, the second table addressing man's relationship with his neighbor, but in some ways there's two tables to these beatitudes here in the.

Sermon on the Mount.

We also recall that Isaiah has been pivotal to our understanding and approach to the Sermon.

On the Mount.

Indeed, the whole Gospel of Matthew is culling and drawing from the prophecies that Isaiah puts forth. And we saw that not only for the Gospel of Matthew, but indeed all of the Gospels, Isaiah 49, the great messianic announcement of the one that God had appointed, the king that he would send to reign in righteousness, this one who would cause the blind to have sight and for the deaf to hear and for the lame to run, that this one had now come.

And we began to look at that last week in relation to those who hunger and thirst for the righteousness of this king, for the righteousness of his kingdom. They shall feed along the roads, we read. Their pastures will be on the desolate heights.

There's no place that doesn't become a pasture. The rocky mountaintop becomes a pasture when this king has his reign. Neither shall they hunger nor thirst. So we looked at that last week. Neither shall the heat nor the sun strike them, for he will have mercy on them and lead them.

So here we go from the fourth to the fifth beatitude. Verse 13, in the same chapter, sing, O heavens, be joyful, O earth, break out in singing, O mountains.

Why?

The Lord has comforted his people. Remember, it's the mourners that are comforted. And he will have mercy on the afflicted. And so we're still in this soil of Isaiah, still in the soil of many Psalms, as we'll see when we come to the fifth beatitude.

The mourners are comforted, those who are afflicted, those who are meek, those who are hungry and thirsty, they are the ones that are shown mercy. All of the previous beatitudes come to this crown. Now mercy, what is mercy?

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Well what is mercy? In an attempt to answer that question, maybe we should begin with what mercy is not. Mercy is not a tolerance of sin. Now I think there's a lot of ways in the world that mercy must be a tolerance of sin.

In fact, to not tolerate sin is to be horrifically unmerciful. But mercy is not a tolerance of sin. In other words, God is patient with sin. He's not aloof. God is long-suffering towards sin. He's not blind.

God is a holy God. In His very nature as a God of mercy, there is patience. There is long-suffering, as we'll see. He is slow to anger, but He still angers. His wrath is kindled in but a moment, we read in Psalm 2.

And so however we conceive of mercy, it cannot be a tolerance, a flattering, a winking at sin. Otherwise, God is no longer God. God is not the holy God, the God that stops all mouths in silence, the God that His presence melts the mountains.

His patience is profound, but it's not unreasonable. Patience is a virtue, but unreasonable patience becomes a vice. John Chrysostom, an old ancient church father, called the Golden Mouth, John Chrysostom.

And he said, unreasonable patience is the hotbed of many vices. It fosters negligence. It incites not only the wicked, but even the good-to-do ones. They do what is wrong. In other words, this attitude of tolerance, of being easy, of being slight with sin, not only does it give license to the wicked, but it even begins to corrupt the good.

Even the righteous, even the saints, begin to be leavened, as it were, by this impurity. That's the same concern that Paul has in 1 Corinthians 5. Purge out the old leaven, he says, in relation to this scandalous sin that had broken out in the congregation.

And what are they doing as a congregation? He says, you're puffed up. Your glory is not good. You ought to have mourned. So they were thinking, we're showing mercy, just like Jesus shows mercy. And Paul says, Jesus doesn't show that kind of mercy.

Not only should you mourn, but you must purge the leaven from your midst.

Why?

Because you truly are unleavened.

A little leaven leavens the whole lump. And he says, you're truly unleavened. And so purge out that old leaven, that corrupting influence that will incite even the good to do what is wrong. And he says toward the end, in verse 12 and 13, don't you judge those who are inside?

This is a rhetorical question. The expected answer is, of course you do. This is what the Lord Jesus expects in his church. Do you not judge those who are inside? This is why there is such a thing as church membership.

This is why we have a church covenant. This is why there's the true mark of a church being church discipline. Do you not judge those who are inside? But those who are outside, God judges. Therefore, put away from you the evil person.

You see the understanding of Paul here. And if you hold 1 Corinthians 5 with 1 Corinthians 6, we haven't left this topic at all. Do you not know, Paul says, that the unrighteous will not inherit the kingdom of God.

What does that language sound like? It sounds a lot like the Beatitudes, doesn't it? Those who belong to the kingdom, those who inherit the earth. And he says, don't you know, the unrighteous don't inherit the kingdom of God.

So don't be deceived. There's a lot of deception that comes with certain pleas or misconstruals of what mercy is. Aren't we called to be merciful? I know that God has shown me a lot of mercy. Shouldn't I show mercy in this way at this time?

Paul says, don't be deceived. Mercy is not a tolerance of sin. Fornicators, idolaters, adulterers, homosexuals, sodomites, thieves, covetous, drunkards, revilers, extortioners will not inherit the kingdom of God.

And such were some of you. But you were washed. You were sanctified. What is Paul saying? It's what he said in 1 Corinthians 5. You truly are unleavened. You truly are unleavened. The kingdom belongs to those who are poor in spirit.

The meek shall inherit the earth. Paul is describing exactly what Jesus is describing. Those who understood the nature of their offense. Those who recognized their own helplessness. Their sort of hideous rebellion against God.

And therefore they recognized, I'm so helpless, I can only cry out to the God of mercy that He would in some way show grace to me. And therefore they were washed. Therefore they're sanctified. Therefore they're justified in the Lord Jesus.

That's why he can say, such were some of you. You truly become unleavened. But to those who have not been washed, they don't inherit. These beatitudes are not for them. Martin Lloyd-Jones in his own exposition on this verse describes this easygoing attitude that characterized even apparently the 50's and 60's in the UK as far as we can tell from his writing.

And what he had grown to see as a young boy coming off the heels of the Welsh revivals. The famous 1905, 1906 revivals in Wales. And seeing just this great movement and outpouring of the spirit of God.

And the zeal and the fire that transformed towns dotted throughout the coastlines of Wales. And then seeing 30, 40 years later that slide, that decay where there was a complete disregard toward not only the spirit of God but the most fundamental aspects of our faith.

And he describes this easygoing attitude toward the law. And he says, an easygoing attitude that doesn't care about breaking the law is unthinkable if we're talking about God. God is merciful. We're going to dive deeply into this, right?

We're just defining what mercy is not. Listen, God is merciful. Hallelujah. But God is holy. God is just.

God is righteous.

And Lloyd-Jones says whatever our interpretation of merciful may be, it must include all of that. Mercy is never at the expense of His holiness. His holiness, in fact, shines through His mercy. It's what makes Him so completely other.

And if we, as Lloyd-Jones says, can only think of mercy at the expense of truth or God's law, it's not true mercy. It's a false understanding. So that's what mercy is not. Well, what is mercy? Here's my sort of ham-handed attempt at a definition, and I'll say it a couple times.

I would define mercy in this way. God's mercy is the undeserved pity and kindness He shows to sinners. God's mercy is the undeserved pity and kindness He shows to sinners arising from the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and long-suffering.

God's mercy is the undeserved pity and kindness He shows to sinners arising from the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and long-suffering. That's my attempt at a definition. Let me walk you through it.

First, God's mercy is undeserved pity. Mercy is undoubtedly pity. Lloyd-Jones, I was listening to this excellent sermon from 1 Timothy 1 where he was speaking on this, and he says, mercy is undoubtedly pity.

It grows into forgiveness, but the first quality of mercy is pity. If there's not, if we could put it this way, the nest egg of pity, then it's not mercy. Mercy has this warmth, this core of pity within it.

And that's where we always must begin. And that pity, as we say, is an undeserved pity. Mercy, by definition, is undeserved. If it's deserved, it's no longer mercy. And we see this so clearly in Psalm 51 when David begins in the very first verse, this great psalm of repentance, with what?

Have mercy upon me, O Lord.

And you have the sort of three basic synonyms for mercy, or for grace, or for loving kindness, all contained within that first verse, in the second verse. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your loving kindness, which is often translated mercy as well, chesed.

Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your mercy, according to Your loving kindness, according to the multitude of Your tender mercies. Blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from my iniquity.

David, like the Corinthian church, you were washed. He recognizes that's all a result of the mercy of God. So God's mercy is undeserved pity. Secondly, God's mercy is kindness. The pity is born out of this kindness.

The kindness is born out of this pity. We read in Psalm 86 5, You, Lord, are good, ready to forgive, abundant in mercy to whoever calls on You. Do you love that image that he's ready to forgive? Don't you see that with the prodigal father?

We've been seeing Luke 15 almost every week. Isn't he ready to forgive? He's more ready to forgive than the son is ready to repent. The son's half-hearted. He's not even sure if he's going to go all the way.

So the father runs to him to make sure he never turns back. That's God in His mercy, ready to forgive. We're so reluctant.

He's so ready.

That's what it means for Him to be the God of mercy. Psalm 25, again, pointing to His goodness. Good and upright is the Lord. Therefore, He teaches sinners in the way. The humble He guides in justice.

The humble He teaches His way. Listen, all the paths of the Lord are mercy. Isn't that incredible? All the paths, every way of the Lord is mercy. The most difficult way He's dealt with you in your life has been merciful.

You have to walk with the Lord a long time to confess that from your heart, to know it to be true. You have to, like David, have been through a lot of valleys to recognize, Lord, all Your paths are mercy.

All Your paths are mercy. There's that beautiful hymn by George Matheson where he begins, O love that will not let me go. That's someone who recognizes every path of the Lord is mercy. God's mercy is undeserved pity.

God's mercy is kindness. Next we see God's mercy is shown to sinners, and I really emphasize that word show. God's mercy is, and if we define mercy, it cannot just be a posture or an inner quality. It must be also an activity.

It must be an action. God's mercy isn't just something that's true of Him in an interior sense. It's also something that is shown. We see this very clearly in Romans 9. He says to Moses, I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion.

And Paul's conclusion in light of that is it's not of him who wills, it's not of him who runs. It's of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says this to Pharaoh. For this very purpose, I have raised you up that I may show My power in you.

My name would be declared in all the earth. Therefore, He has mercy on whom He wills. But do you recognize what Paul says about that mercy? So then, it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy.

So mercy is something that is shown. It's not just the pity that says I feel bad for you as I keep walking. It's the pity that says I'm going to stop and scoop you up and bind your wounds and heal your diseases.

I'm going to show the mercy that I have to you. God is not obligated. As we said, it's an undeserved pity, an undeserved kindness, yet He shows it. He's not obligated to show it. He loses nothing of His essential glory and perfections if He does not show mercy toward fallen men.

We could live in a fallen world completely devoid of His mercy. He would still be right, just, holy, and true. Consider these things. Eden could have been closed off forever. We could have been like the angels where there is no redemption for those who had fallen.

And yet in the mystery of salvation, He chose His own peerless Son to take our place and bear our shame because He wanted to show His mercy. And this mercy then becomes our hope. It's because of mercy we have hope, and our hope is in the mercy of God.

That's what Peter tells us. According to His abundant mercy, He's begotten us again to a living hope. What's a living hope look like? A complete trust and infatuation with the mercy of God. As we'll see in a moment, it becomes a thrill in the life of a Christian.

And the last part of our definition,.

So it's undeserved pity, it's kindness, it's shown to sinners, and it's also arising from the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering. Now that's just Romans 2, verse 4. Do you despise the riches of His goodness, forbearance, and longsuffering?

Not knowing that the goodness of God leads you to repentance? And so Paul uses this language of riches. The riches of His mercy. Elsewhere, the riches of His grace. But there's something abundant about mercy.

It's not scant. It's not scraps. It's not splinters. There's something overflowing about the nature of God's mercy. It's rich. It's Scrooge McDuck in all those golden coins, and he's sort of sliding down.

It's just excessive, beyond contemplation. Spurgeon says, God's mercy is so great, you may sooner drain the oceans of water, you may sooner deprive the sun of its light, than diminish the mercy of God.

That's rich mercy. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. Let's look through this Beatitude in three parts. Really, three ways I want us to consider the mercy of God, and what that mercy is, and what that mercy means for us.

And the three ways we'll look at that is first, loving, and then secondly, looking, and then thirdly, learning. When it comes to mercy, there's something to say about love, something to say about looking, something to say about learning.

So first, loving.

If we have received the mercy of God, it goes without saying, we are those who love the mercy of God. In fact, we are those who are ever after called to love mercy. Micah 6, will the Lord be pleased with thousands of rams, 10 ,000 rivers of oil?

He's shown you what's good, oh man. And what does the Lord require of you? But to do justly, to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God. So those who walk humbly with God are those who love mercy.

We ought to love mercy like the desert loves the rain. We see God's mercy as that rare element, that pearl of great price, that the whole world cannot compare to. If we have this, whatever else we lack, we have everything.

And if we love mercy, first, some things follow. Two things really follow. The first is, if we love mercy, we will hate the perversion of God's mercy. If we truly love mercy, we will hate false mercy.

We will hate a perversion of mercy. Coming off the heels of Romans 5, where sin abounds, grace abounds much more, and Paul brings up that question. Well, if God loves abounding grace over sin, what shall we say?

Let's continue in sin, so that His grace can keep abounding. Paul says, God forbid. How could we who die to sin live any longer in it? He hates the perversion of God's mercy. He says earlier in chapter 3, why not say, let's do evil so that good can come from it.

Those who think this way, their condemnation is just.

So Paul hates these false ways.

It's Jude.

In Jude 4, he warns of ungodly men who turn the grace of God into lewdness and deny the Lord. You see? They've perverted, they've turned, they've mutilated God's mercy. They've made it a license. They've turned it into lewdness.

How so? Verse 18, in this way, they walk according to their own ungodly lust. They're not walking by the Spirit. They're not bearing the fruit of the Spirit. They're not walking with tears streaming their face, feeling their offense, walking in humility, empty-handed, crying out to God.

No, in fact, they're boastful. There's a sense of not only a calcified conscience, but a pride welling up within them. They can't help but think the best of them and view themselves in contrast to everyone else.

Everyone's out to get me. No one really sees. This victimization, pity, goes hand in hand with walking according to ungodly lust. Sensual persons, Jude says, who end up causing division because they don't have the Spirit of God.

So not only do we hate the perversion of God's mercy when we love God's mercy, but if we love God's mercy, we celebrate God's mercy. God's mercy is shown in a way that it's meant to call forth praise.

We see this so clearly in Psalm 136. In Psalm 136, we essentially walk through a sort of 10 ,000 foot snapshot of the redemptive history of Israel. Of God's mighty acts to save His people. And in between every line is that refrain, His mercy endures forever.

And that's repeated not twice, not five times, not seven times. Every line, 26 lines, this refrain is repeated. And if those like David, those like the Corinthian church, those who had been washed, who had been sanctified, who had been justified by the Lord Jesus Christ, they could not enter into the courts of this kind of worship and go, His mercy endures forever.

His mercy endures forever. It couldn't happen. Those who have actually received this mercy. We were talking about this yesterday morning. Some of the men in our discussion about repentance in Watson. The cross never loses its power.

You sing the same hymn a hundred times and you come across a line that you've maybe sung a hundred times over and that hundredth time it's still fresh,.

It's still new, it's still glorious.

His mercy endures forever.

It's your heart song, it's celebratory. You can't help but celebrate the mercy that you've received. And so you come across, for instance, the second commandment. And you love that even God celebrates.

God proclaims His mercy.

I, the Lord your God, am a jealous God. I visit the iniquity of the fathers upon the children to the third and fourth generations.

Of those who hate me.

But I show mercy to thousands to those who love me and keep my commandments. So you have threes and fours,.

Literally in Hebrew.

Visits iniquity on threes and fours. Shows mercy to thousands. What is God celebrating? What is He highlighting? His mercy. I'm a jealous God, but I'm a God of mercy. And He celebrates His mercy.

He highlights His mercy.

His mercy is excessive, abundant, fierce,.

Long-suffering, patience towards sinners. He loves His mercy. Should we not love His mercy? He celebrates His mercy. Shouldn't we celebrate His mercy? That's the point. John Trapp, an old Puritan. This is just, you know, read the Puritans.

Why? You come across one line that's worth a whole book. John Trapp, speaking of the fall of Jericho, he says, this is the mercy of God. God spent six days in making the entire world, and yet took seven days to destroy a single city.

That's the mercy of God. Six days to make the world, but He takes an extra day to bring a city to its knees. That's the long-suffering of God. Who is a God like you, Micah asks, who pardons iniquity, passes over transgression, does not retain His anger forever because, why?

He delights in His mercy.

So because God celebrates His mercy,.

He retains His anger.

He is long-suffering. He pardons iniquity. Let me tell you something, brothers and sisters, if we are the kind of church that celebrates the mercy of God, we will be the kind of church that covers in love a multitude of sins.

The gifts of the Spirit are used toward the body in this way. Romans 12 makes this very clear. He who exhorts in exhortation, he who gives with liberality,.

He who leads with diligence,.

He who shows mercy with cheerfulness. There's not this sense in the body as far as Romans 12 is concerned where mercy is something that's given in a sort of harsh way. Well, I guess we'll show you mercy.

Get out of my sight.

Those who give mercy with cheerfulness. We're amazed that we're able to give mercy because we are those who have received profound mercy. And again, what Paul says here in Romans 12 in no way contradicts what we began with in 1 Corinthians 5 and 6.

Something else about this celebration of God's mercy, for this reason that the heart of true spiritual worship is a celebration of God's mercy. You may have everything else that the Bible holds forth.

You may have every aspect of what is biblically regulated both in form, in substance, and in format,.

But let me tell you,.

If at the heart of your worship there is not a celebration of the mercy that is so undeserved, the mercy that is rich and free in Christ, then you have missed entirely true and spiritual worship. Worship is not worship if it doesn't celebrate the God of mercy.

And when we celebrate mercy, we celebrate with humility, we celebrate with thanksgiving, we celebrate with adoration. That's why the cross is always fresh.

And new.

That's why our tear ducts never dry over and ossify, because true worship celebrates the mercy of God.

Peter says,.

You're a chosen generation,.

A royal priesthood,.

A holy nation,.

His own special people.

Why?

Why are we this kind of people? Why have we become a chosen generation,.

A royal priesthood,.

A holy nation,.

A special people?

Why?

Peter tells us, so that you will proclaim His praises. And so he saved us in this way to proclaim His praise, to celebrate what He's done. And what has He done?

Peter goes on, He called you out of darkness.

Into His marvelous light. You were once not a people, now you are the people of God. How did this happen? Well, he tells us, you had not obtained mercy, but now you have obtained mercy from God. So you see here that a Christian is one who has obtained mercy, and therefore in light of obtaining mercy, in light of becoming a child of God, recognizes this very thing has happened in my life so that my life will evermore be given over to praising, to celebrating, to proclaiming the One who saved me.

That's the heart that pleases God. That's the worship that pleases God.

A Christian,.

This is a great insight from Martin Lloyd-Jones, and he's just looking at the Beatitudes. And he's saying there's a reason the Beatitudes begin with our inner posture, our inner disposition, our inner view of ourselves in relation to God.

And then it goes on to the actions we may show to our neighbors, the things that our neighbors do to us. And he says this, a Christian is something before a Christian does something. That's very helpful.

A Christian is something before a Christian does something. He doesn't say, proclaim the praises of the One who will, if you praise good enough, consistently enough, in an impactful way, will eventually give you mercy.

It's always the fact that you've obtained mercy that leads to this heart of worship. In the same way that you cannot be comforted unless you first mourn, you cannot be filled unless you're first hungry and thirsty, you cannot rightly worship God unless you've truly obtained mercy.

And that brings us to looking.

If that's loving,.

We're also called not only to love mercy, to hate its perversion, to celebrate it, but we're also called to look for mercy. That's the first point, looking for mercy. Those who love mercy cannot rest, cannot be satisfied with the daily provision.

Mercy renews every morning like the manna renewed every morning outside the tents of the Israelites. And the Christian is not content.

To eat a day's portion.

And then starve the rest of the week. A Christian is one who, because they've obtained mercy, is hungry and thirsty for more. They're looking for mercy.

Jude says,.

But you, beloved, building yourselves up upon your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Spirit, keep yourselves in the love of God.

How?

Looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life. So how does a Christian build himself up.

Or herself up? Jude tells us,.

Praying in the Holy Spirit, keeping ourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of Jesus. That's how you're built up in the Christian walk. Well, your Christian walk begins in this way, doesn't it?

Looking for mercy. This is how you became a Christian. Maybe you didn't understand it or see it as clearly as you now understand it, but the Christian life, the life of faith, begins with a look for mercy, a desperate looking for mercy.

Matthew, in fact, holds this out to us in several ways. I'll just take a couple vignettes from later in his Gospel. Matthew 9, beginning in verse 27. When Jesus was departing, we read, two blind men followed him.

So you have two blind men following Jesus. And they were crying out, saying,.

Son of David, have mercy on us.

And when He had come into the house, the blind men came to Him. I want you to notice something about what Matthew reports. Listen. Jesus departed from there. Two blind men are following Him.

And as they're following Him,.

They're crying out to Him, Son of David,.

Have mercy on us.

And Jesus doesn't stop. And Jesus doesn't turn around. Jesus keeps going. And He goes all the way into a house.

And the whole time they're walking,.

Perhaps stumbling in their blindness,.

Crying, have mercy.

And it's only when Jesus comes into the house that we read, then they came into the house. I want you to see what's so significant about this. They're following Him. Matthew wouldn't want us to miss this.

They're following Him, but they're blind.

They're looking for Him,.

But they're blind. And even though they're blind, even though they're stumbling, even though they're crying out for mercy, they don't stop looking until they find Him. They don't stop crying out for mercy until they've come to Him.

And Jesus, in some ways, is allowing them to follow, allowing them to cry, allowing them to look,.

To search,.

To hunger,.

To thirst,.

To pine, to beg. And when they finally come into the house, He says, what do you want Me to do for you? This is not how we often think about Jesus. Some of you in this room have this great testimony, right, that the Lord was convicting you of the ruin in your life, of the decay, the fallenness, the sinful actions and intents of your evil heart that all came crashing in.

You recognized who you really were inside of who God really is, and you prayed that God would save you, and you know what?

He saved you.

And if we could map that onto Matthew 9, it was like, Son of David, have mercy, and then instantly you were saved. And then there's others in this room that have this testimony of.

It wasn't a moment,.

It was a process. And there was a lot of times I cried, and I sort of dried my eyes, and things got a little better, but then I fell again, and there was this whole back and forth. You ever read John Bunyan's autobiography?