No other gods in our life but Jesus.
We used to bow down to our own
ways and live our own lives and be
our own authority and call the shots.
And boy, what a mess that got us
into, right?
But when we turn the control of our
life over to our maker and our creator,
God's actually doing something good in us and
through us and making our life count for
Him and for His kingdom.
That's what's exciting about being a Christian.
It's worthwhile to be a Christian.
There's worth in being a Christian.
There's fulfillment in being a Christian.
It's what God designed you to be, was
to be a lover and worshipper of Him.
When you find Jesus, it all comes together.
It all fits.
It all makes sense, right?
Didn't make sense before, but it all makes
sense now.
We know why we're here.
We know where we're going.
We know who we are.
We have all these questions answered in Jesus
Christ.
Our search is over.
We found the one that our heart has
been longing for.
And that's awesome.
What can we say?
I'd like you to turn your Bibles to
Matthew chapter 5.
We'll be looking at verses 1 through 7,
focusing on verse 7 today, but let's read
verses 1 through 5 of Matthew.
1 through 7 of Matthew chapter 5.
And seeing the multitudes, Jesus went up on
a mountain, and when He was seated, His
disciples came to Him.
Then He opened His mouth and taught them,
saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for
theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall
be comforted.
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit
the earth.
Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for
righteousness, for they shall be filled.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain
mercy.
Let's pray.
We again consider it a privilege, Lord, to
open up your powerful word this morning, God.
Your words are truth.
Your words are life.
Our manual to live by, Lord, we thank
you for the instruction that you give us
in your word.
How you reveal yourself to us in your
word.
Lord, help us to look at your word
more and more as something precious in our
lives, Lord.
Something, Lord, that is our very bread and
our food, Lord.
We thank you that your word is sweeter
than honey in the honeycomb, Lord, as King
David said.
And now, Lord, guide us and direct us
in this meeting, Lord.
We meet you this morning in your word,
in Jesus' name, amen.
Okay, Jesus is talking here.
And He's saying, Let's go higher, disciples, right?
He wants to take them up into a
mountain, into a higher place.
Let's go higher, disciples.
Come on up, boys.
Come on in, men, and let me show
you the view.
Let me show you God's perspective on how
the people who belong to the kingdom of
God should be acting, should be behaving.
I should give you a clue in that
word, behaving.
This is called the Beatitudes, right?
How are we behaving when it comes to
following Him?
The same way 2,000 years later as
disciples of Jesus, just like these disciples, the
Lord is calling us to come away.
He's calling us to come up.
He's calling us up to a higher place
to see what it's like to live and
be a part of the kingdom of God.
Get away from the crowds.
Get away from the hustle.
Get away from the bustle.
You know, they had been involved in some
ministry at this point, but now he's got
them alone and kind of cloistered there, and
he's going to teach them the ways, again,
of the kingdom, important principles of the kingdom.
And we need to search our hearts this
morning and ask as well, what are our
attitudes when it comes to the Beatitudes?
And he starts off by saying, blessed are
the poor in spirit.
And that word blessed simply means happy.
Happy, holy is the Christian who recognizes his
utter spiritual bankruptcy apart from God's grace.
That's what that means.
He's basically saying, do we have a humble
and correct estimation of ourselves, or do we
think more highly of ourselves than we ought?
Jesus says that the kingdom of heaven belongs
to those who sense their own poverty of
spirit.
As Paul said, I am what I am
by the grace of God.
That's poverty of spirit, that's poor in spirit,
where you recognize that everything you have is
from the Lord, and everything you are is
because of God.
It's humility.
That's a part of the Beatitudes.
Are you walking in humility today?
Secondly, Jesus said, blessed are those who mourn.
Happy and holy are those who don't take
sin lightly in their lives, but grieve and
break over their sin, who mourn over it
and despise it and seek true change through
repentance.
God's comfort is for them.
It's talking about not our attitude toward grief,
per se, but toward sin in our life.
Do we grieve over sin in our life?
Do we mourn over that because we've broken
God's law and God's heart?
We've hurt the Lord, and we mourn over
that.
We weep over that.
We grieve over that, and that should lead
us to repentance, godly sorrow leading us to
repentance.
And the Lord says, you will be comforted
in that when you're broken, and you confess,
and you yield to me.
I'll comfort you.
The Holy Spirit is our comforter.
He went on to say, blessed are the
meek.
What be our attitude when it comes to
self-control?
It's basically what he's saying there.
Self-control, blessed are the meek.
Are we under the control of God?
Are we under the government of God?
Are we out of control?
We know where that comes from, by being
self-willed.
Whenever we put our will in opposition to
God's will, then at that point, we're no
longer meek, are we?
We're prideful, and we're stubborn.
But blessed are the meek, those who are
under the control and government of God.
Actually, the word meek was used by the
Greeks to describe a horse that had been
broken.
So have you been broken, or have you
come under his control, the master's control?
Or are you bucking the rider, per se?
He wants the reins.
He wants to rule over us.
And that's a daily decision that we make,
to give him our will, right?
It's a daily thing.
We're not getting born again, again.
We're not getting saved again.
We're simply saying, Lord, be the Lord of
my thoughts, my words, my actions, and my
attitudes.
Be the Lord over all of me today.
Have control over every area of my life.
I don't wanna be in control, Lord.
I want you to control all of those
areas.
Live through me, love through me, speak through
me.
And he will.
That's the cool thing about Jesus.
He does.
He lives his life through us.
I can't live the Christian life, but Jesus
can live it through me.
But that takes a willing, humble heart, doesn't
it?
And then he said, blessed are those who
hunger and thirst after righteousness.
Are we seeking God's righteousness rather than attempting
a righteousness of our own, which we do
on occasion, right?
Maybe every now and then.
We often become self-righteous, don't we?
In our decisions or, well, I'm right and
you're wrong and so forth, or esteeming ourselves
higher than we ought.
But seeking his righteousness and not our own,
Jesus says, will satisfy our hunger and thirst
for a right relationship with God.
When you're seeking his righteousness, you'll be filled
with more of him.
Now in verse seven, we come to the
verse that I really want to focus on
this morning, and that is blessed are the
merciful.
Happy, truly joyful, contented, properly fitted and functioning
in the body of Christ is the believer
who not only has received God's mercy in
his life, but who's also extending that same
mercy to others around him as well.
Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain
mercy.
To those who show mercy, mercy will be
given to him in return, right?
That's a law of God's kingdom.
But the hard and plackable man who deals
in stern justice alone will be dealt with
in the same way when failure comes in
his life.
If you want to be judgmental and stern
and all of that, that's going to come
back your way.
We reap what we sow, right?
The Bible says.
But if you sow seeds of mercy, you'll
reap the fruit of mercy.
James 2.13 says that mercy triumphs over
judgment.
Mercy is a fruit of the Holy Spirit.
In Galatians 5, what is mercy?
We're going to find out this morning.
Mercy is really compassion.
Mercy is that compassion which causes one to
help the weak, to help the sick, or
to help the poor.
It's God's love and action in our lives.
It's our faith put to action.
It's putting really feet to our faith, if
you will.
It's a tender concern for others reflected in
a desire to treat others gently as the
Lord treats us.
That's what mercy is.
You know, mercy comes from a very interesting
Latin word called misericordia, misericordia.
It's composed of two words, miserans, meaning pitting
and cor, C-O-R, meaning the heart,
or miseria cordis, pain of heart.
That's what it means in the Latin, pain
of heart.
So a merciful man or woman enters into
the miseries of his neighbor and feels for
and mourns for him and then does something
about it.
You just don't empathize with them.
Well, sympathy is one thing.
You move from sympathy, where you're kind of
distant looking at them, then that moves to
empathy, where you start feeling for them.
And then you take the next step by
doing something about it because faith without works
is dead, right?
And that's what Jesus is talking about here.
Another definition could be active kindness, not an
act of kindness, but active kindness.
Kindness in action, kindness that's active, that's not
stagnant.
Mercy is one of God's important and necessary
and critical beatitudes found in those who belong
to his kingdom.
I wanna give you some scriptures about what
God says about mercy.
Exodus 34, five, the Lord descended in the
cloud and stood with Moses and proclaimed the
name of the Lord.
And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed,
the Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious,
long-suffering and abounding in goodness and truth,
keeping mercy for thousands.
When the Lord appeared to Moses, what was
the very first thing he declared about himself
to Moses that he would declare to the
nation of Israel?
I am merciful, I'm a merciful God.
Proverbs 3.3, let not mercy and truth
forsake you, bind them around your neck and
write them on the tablet of your heart.
Proverbs 14.21, he who despises his neighbor's
sins, but he who has mercy on the
poor, happy as he.
Proverbs 14.31, he who oppresses the poor
reproaches his maker, but he who honors him
has mercy on the needy.
Proverbs 21.21, he who follows righteousness and
mercy finds life, righteousness and honor.
Hosea 6.6, I desire mercy and not
sacrifice and the knowledge of God more than
burnt offerings.
Micah 6.8, he has shown you, O
man, what is good and what does the
Lord require of you?
Three things, to do justly and to what?
To love mercy and to walk humbly with
your God.
We're to love mercy, not just look at
it, not just have good feelings about it,
we're to love it and we're to do
something about it.
Now, of course, Jesus Christ was the very
embodiment of mercy, right?
All that the Father showed and shared about
mercy and shared about compassion and kindness was
fully and clearly seen in who?
In Jesus.
Jesus said, he that has seen me has
seen the Father.
Wanna know what the Father's like?
Just look at me, Jesus said.
So, Jesus not only taught about mercy, he
lived mercy.
He was the Messiah of mercy.
He was the master of mercy.
Matter of fact, for three years, Jesus had
the biggest mercy ministry ever seen by man
up until that time.
He modeled the Beatitudes for us, didn't he?
And then he told us to follow in
his footsteps as his church.
Again, we are the visible representation of the
invisible Christ.
How does the world see Jesus?
In us, as we follow in his footsteps,
they're drawn to the kingdom, they're drawn to
salvation, they're drawn to the Lord.
Two such instances of mercy shown by Jesus
in the Gospel of Matthew, which we'll be
studying shortly with Pastor Patter found in Matthew
9, 27.
When Jesus departed from there, two blind men
followed him, crying out and saying, son of
David, have mercy on us.
And when he had come into the house,
the blind men came to him and Jesus
said to them, do you believe that I'm
able to do this?
And they said to him, yes, Lord.
Then he touched their eyes saying, according to
your faith, let it be to you.
And their eyes were opened.
Another time Jesus showed mercy was in Matthew
15, 22, where it says, and behold, a
woman, and let me add a very concerned
mother as well, of Canaan came from that
region and cried out to him saying, have
mercy on me, O Lord, son of David.
My daughter is severely demon possessed.
But he answered her not a word.
And his disciples came and urged him saying,
send her away for she cries out after
us.
But he answered and said, I was not
sent except to the lost sheep of the
house of Israel.
Then she came and worshiped him saying, Lord,
help me.
Lord, help me.
But he answered and said, it is not
good to take the children's bread and throw
it to the little dogs.
And she said, yes, Lord, yet even the
little dogs eat the crumbs which fall from
their master's table.
Then Jesus answered and said to her, O
woman, great is your faith.
Let it be to you as you desire.
And her daughter was healed from that very
hour.
So before we had the movie, The Passion
of Christ, we have the script before us
here in Matthew, the compassion of Christ, right?
Matthew 14, 14 says, when Jesus went out,
he saw a great multitude, he was moved
with compassion for them and healed their sick.
In Matthew chapter 20, another two pair of
blind men came from Jericho saying, Lord, have
mercy on us.
Jesus had compassion and touched their eyes.
Immediately they received their sight and followed him.
In Mark 141, a leper came to Jesus,
knelt down before him.
And it says, Jesus moved with compassion, put
out his hand and touched him.
And the leprosy left.
And then in Mark 5, remember the fellow
who had the legion, who had hundreds or
thousands of demons within him and was living
in the tombs and was cutting himself day
and night and screaming out and terrified the
people all around him.
Well, Jesus just didn't pass by that guy.
Jesus showed up when that guy ran out
and he healed him.
It says, after that, after he healed him,
go home to your friends and tell them
what great things the Lord has done for
you and how he has had compassion on
you.
The Lord was moved with compassion when he
saw that man demon possessed.
I wonder if we have compassion in those
who are demon possessed today.
And they're around, folks.
Nothing's changed in 2,000 years.
But it's become very evident to me in
my study in this teaching that three different
things came when Jesus was around, help, healing,
and hope.
When he showed up on the scene, help,
healing, and hope, he reached out to the
needy.
Compassion is what made Jesus Christ stand out
from so many of the religious rulers of
the day.
You know, many of the religious rulers of
that day had come to scorn the lowly,
the poor, and the infirmed and to disdain
the widows and the fatherless and the orphans.
That's what had happened by this time.
That's why Jesus had to show up and
straighten things out.
But God had warned the people all the
way back in Exodus 22, 22 that you
shall not afflict any widow or fatherless child
because God says in Psalm 146, nine that
the Lord watches over the strangers.
He relieves the fatherless and the widow, but
the way of the wicked, he turns upside
down.
In Isaiah 47, six, God spoke through Isaiah
to Israel and said that I was angry
with my people.
I have profaned my inheritance and given them
into your hand.
You showed them no mercy.
On the elderly, you laid your yoke very
heavily.
Sad.
Ezekiel 22, six, and speaking of the sins
of Jerusalem, look, the princes of Israel, each
one has used his power to shed blood
in you.
In you, they have made light of father
and mother.
In your midst, they oppressed the stranger.
In you, they have mistreated the fatherless and
the widow.
But Psalm 68, five says that God is
a father of the fatherless, a defender of
widows, is God in his holy habitation.
Yet sadly again, by the time Jesus had
arrived on the scene, mistreatment of the elderly
and the widows and the less fortunate had
degraded to all time lows, even to the
point where Jesus publicly rebuked the religious leaders
in Matthew 23, 14, where he said, woe
to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, for you
devour widows' houses and for pretense you make
long prayers.
You will receive the greater condemnation.
Why?
They were devouring widows' houses.
What does that mean?
Scribes back then often served as estate planners
for widows, unfortunately, which gave them the opportunity
to convince distraught widows that they would be
serving God by supporting the temple or the
scribe's own holy work.
In either case, the scribe benefited monetarily and
effectively robbed the widow of her husband's legacy
to her.
That's pretty low.
That's why Jesus said woe to you for
doing something as despicable as ripping off a
widow's legacy that her husband has left her.
And again, sadly, not much has changed in
2,000 years.
Widows, orphans, and the fatherless are still some
of the main victims of physical and emotional
abuse and of financial scams and rip-off
artists today.
Who will defend them?
That's the question I wanna ask you today.
Who will defend them?
Guess what?
Jesus said that the church is to help
defend them.
We have that mandate from God, but are
we responding?
13 years ago, and coming back from Guam
as a missionary to work on staff here,
the Lord gave me a vision one day
while sitting in my office of something that
gripped my very soul and has changed my
very life.
He gave me a vision of elderly people,
of disabled and disfigured people, a vision of
those bound in wheelchairs, bedridden, demented, diseased, many
full of fear, failing in faith, lonely, depressed,
discouraged, many just existing for the moment, but
still, like back in Jesus' time, crying out
and saying, and I could see this clearly
in this vision.
I could see this.
They were saying, Lord, have mercy on us.
I could hear them saying, help me, Lord,
help me.
Someone come and help me.
And I said to the Lord, what do
you mean by this?
And he told me to open the blinds
to my office, which just happened to look
directly at a nursing home on top of
the hill near the church there at the
vineyard.
And he said to me, you go and
be my loving arms and hands and feet
in loving the unlovable.
You go and touch the untouchables that now
call the nursing home their permanent home.
Go and give, the Lord told me.
Go and show my mercy.