Blessed are those that are Merciful

Well, good morning and welcome to Church of the Grove Online.

We're so thankful that you're joining us today.

My name is Nathan.

I'm one of the pastors here, and you're coming into the middle of a sermon series that we've been doing on the Sermon on the Mount, and we've been looking at the be attitudes.

And today we're looking at this idea of mercy.

Now, mercy is when we simply don't get what we do deserve.

Two years ago, a friend of mine and I we went to the Braves Game back when you could go to stadiums and go to baseball games.

And we went to a Braves Game, Braves won.

We came home, it was late getting back into Covington where I was meeting my friend, and I had to drop him off at his car.

And so it's 12, 12:30 at night.

I come in to 278, and I realized I made the wrong turn to go to where the guy's car was at.

And so I pull into the turn lane and I just decide that no one else is on the road, and I'm just gonna do a U-turn in the middle of 278.

And so I do that to head back to my friend's car, and as soon as I do that, the police lights come on, sirens happen, and I'm pulled over on the side of the road.

Now I deserved a ticket.

I deserved to get a fine because I had definitely broken the law.

But the guy pulled me over, got my license, got my insurance, took it back to his car, called it in, and it just so happened that another friend of mine who was an old neighbor and who goes to our church works for the city of Covington as a police officer.

And so he heard my name be reported in and he asked the police officer not to give me a ticket.

And so I was very, very thankful for this friend at this moment.

But it was mercy.

I deserved to get a ticket.

I deserved to get a fine, but yet I did not get what I did deserve.

And that's really what mercy is all about.

Now we live in a world that is in desperate need of mercy.

We live in a cutthroat world where it's just everybody's like piranhas and they want to attack one another.

You look on social media, you look at just our news and our world and our culture and the politicians that are ruling over our country, and you realize that there's just a bunch of piranhas that really don't have any mercy or any love or compassion towards one another.

We build people up and put them on pedestals only to attack them and watch them and almost do it with a gleeful joy to see them be torn down.

We live in a cancel culture where if you don't like someone or their their views or their thoughts or something that they even did years or decades before, you just cancel them.

You just ghost them, you just turn it off, you just stop being around them and they are no more to you.

This is the world that we live in.

And we live in a society and in a culture that is in so desperate need, in such a desperate need for mercy in the world that we live in today.

And what we're gonna see is that ultimately when we are merciful people, when we are people that are full of mercy and compassion, that ultimately happiness comes into our lives.

There's more joy and fulfillment and contentment in our lives.

But when we're people that live without mercy, when we're people that live with a lack of forgiveness, when we have bitterness and anger and hatred towards others, then we really put ourselves in our own personal prison.

And so what we're gonna see this morning, really what this whole morning is about, is that merciful people are happy people.

And that people who lack mercy ultimately lack happiness.

People that lack mercy lack happiness.

And Jesus made this very clear in the Sermon on the Mount.

In Matthew chapter 5, verse 7, we read these words Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

Matthew 5:7

Now Jesus is preaching this incredible sermon.

The most important and best sermon that was ever communicated, ever preached, was Jesus.

And in these words, in these opening lines, he tells his followers, this new kingdom that he's establishing, that they should be men and women that are full of mercy, and as a result of having mercy, they will receive mercy as well.

Now the word mercy here is this word that means compassion, pity, it's it's empathy, but it's not from just a heart uh mind level, but it's from a heart level.

It's from our guts, it's from the deepest part of our core.

It's this idea of God's compassion on people.

That's kind of the definition we can work with this morning is that mercy is ultimately God's compassion on people.

And we see God's mercy in our lives all throughout.

If you're a follower of Jesus, man, we deserve death, but we got life.

We deserved hell, but we got heaven.

When we deserved the consequences of our actions, but instead we received the consequences of Christ's action.

And so for us as followers of Jesus, we are people that know great, great mercy.

And as a result, we need to be people that show mercy to others.

And as a result, happiness is what will occur in our life.

Blessing is what will come when we show mercy to others.

And so it shows us that being a merciful person means loving God by loving people you are not supposed to love.

And this is the story of Jesus.

This is who Jesus was.

Jesus was someone that showed love to people that he was not supposed to love.

As a religious leader, he was someone that was supposed to be hanging out with the righteous, the holy people, the other religious leaders.

But instead, Jesus associated with the sinners.

He associated with the tax collectors and the lepers and the prostitutes and the Samaritans and the Gentiles.

I mean, he associated himself with the people that the other religious leaders would have nothing to do with.

And so Jesus was someone that showed what mercy ultimately was all about by loving the people that you were not supposed to love.

So Jesus does this all throughout his life, and he does this in many of his teachings.

He talks about this type of mercy and compassion towards others.

But one of the greatest stories that Jesus tells that is a story that is true in our culture, that many people know, even if you're not a church person, we know the story of the good Samaritan.

And in this story, Jesus shows us ultimately what mercy and compassion is all about.

This is what it says in Luke chapter 10, verse 25.

Luke 10:25

It says, one day an expert in the religious law stood up to test Jesus by asking him this question, Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?

So there's this religious leader, this guy that was an expert in the law that interpreted the Old Testament and tried to apply it to his life.

And so here was someone that was trying to test Jesus, trying to trick him in this question.

And Jesus replied, What does the law of Moses say?

How do you read it?

The man answered, You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind, and love your neighbor as yourself.

Right, Jesus told him.

Verse 29, it says, The man wanted to justify his actions, so he asked Jesus, and who is my neighbor?

So here's this religious leader, this expert in the law, who's trying to test Jesus, trying to prove his wisdom to Jesus, but he's also someone that's trying to justify his actions.

He's trying to prove not only that he knew the law, but that he was someone that had kept the law.

And so here he says, Who is my neighbor?

And so Jesus is going to come back at this person.

He's going to come back at this religious teacher, and he's going to tell a story that will shock the audience, that will blow them away.

If you understand the cultural context of how and where Jesus is telling the story, it would blow the original audience away by what he's about to say.

So here's the background that you need to know.

The Jewish people were God's chosen people.

Back at the time of Abraham, God chose a group of people that he was going to pour his blessing out upon.

And really, when he chose that group of people, the Jewish nation, they faced many, many hardships.

They were taken to Egypt, and there they were imprisoned, and they were enslaved for 400 years, and they were forced into labor, hard labor at that.

Then they were eventually rescued, they wandered in the desert for 40 years, and eventually God brings them to the promised land.

The promised land was a land that had been promised many, many, many decades before.

And here they are, promised this land, and they walk into it, and they're having to fight off these pagan Gentile nations, these nations that caused so much pro so many problems for them.

Not to mention that sometime later you had the Babylonians, which were another pagan Gentile people, come in and they overtook and they took over Israel and Jerusalem and they exiled Jewish people to the nation of Babylon.

Then it was the Persians and the Greeks, and at the time of Jesus, the Romans were occupying Israel.

They were an oppressed people.

The Jewish people were oppressed by another Gentile pagan nation.

And the Romans were brutal.

I mean, they would crucify people for fun.

I mean, it was not a pleasant, pleasant place to be.

And so for the Jewish people, they looked with disdain and hatred towards the Gentiles.

And the Samaritans, which we're going to read about in a second, the Samaritans were people that hundred years prior had intermarried with these pagan Gentile nations.

And so when the Jewish people, the people that were pure-blooded Jewish individuals, when they looked at Samaritans, they had a disdain and a hatred towards these individuals because they were seen as traitors.

They were seen as people that had bonded and intermarried with these pagan nations that had plagued the Jewish people for so many years.

And Jesus is going to change their whole perspective on what someone that shows mercy looks like.

And this is how the story goes.

In Luke chapter 10 and verse 30, it says, Jesus replied with a story.

Luke 10 · chapter mention

So this is a long winding road.

I've been there.

I was fortunate enough to go a few years back.

And it's this journey, it's about a 20-mile journey from Jerusalem to Jericho, and it's just through the desert.

It's this long, winding road.

It's only 20 miles, but it drops some 3,000 feet in elevation.

I mean, it's just a huge drop.

One's down by the Dead Sea and the other one's way up on the mountains and in the hills.

And so this is a long, treacherous journey.

Many times people that had to make this journey did so in groups.

They would not do it individually.

They would not go by themselves because they knew they ran the risk of being attacked.

And so this makes perfect sense.

The people would have understood that this guy was attacked by bandits on this road.

But we see that being a merciful person means that every human being is your neighbor.

And this is how Jesus shows this.

In verse 31, by chance a priest came along, and when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by.

So there was a priest, a religious leader, another person that would have been respected in the community, and he was someone that was coming down from Jerusalem.

He had already done his religious sacrifices and duty, and here he is seeing the dead, the body as if it was dead, the person that was beaten and abused, and he passes by on the other side.

Then there's another man that comes.

A temple assistant walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side.

So you have two guys that you would think if anybody would have been the ones to stop, these would have been the guys, but they instead passed by on the other side.

This was the religious leader.

This was the guy that was asking the question.

He would have fallen into one of these categories of the people that passed by the body that was laying there.

And then it comes to verse 33.

And Jesus says, Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion on him.

Now you can almost hear and see the hairs of hatred standing up on the back of the Jewish men and women that are hearing this story in this moment.

They hated the Samaritans, but yet the Samaritan is going to be the hero of the story.

It's going to be the one that's actually stops and has compassion, or the word there is mercy on the person that is in need.

This was unthinkable.

This was shocking to the original audience.

They would have worshiped differently, they would have believed differently, they were seen as traitors, and yet this is the person that had compassion and mercy on the man.

And so we see ultimately that every human being is our neighbor, but we also are seeing that you cross ethnic, cultural, and religious barriers to help hurting people.

That's what it means to be a merciful person, that you're crossing ethnic, cultural, and religious barriers to help hurting people.

And as followers of Jesus, this is what we should be about.

As followers of Jesus, we should be people that love all people.

We love the people that have different political beliefs than us.

We love the people that have different religious beliefs than us.

We love the people that even hate us.

But somewhere along the line, followers of Jesus have not been signified and designated and spelled out and defined by their compassion and their mercy for others.

But rather, followers of Jesus have been known more for their hatred and rather what they're against rather than what they're for.

If you look at social media, you see it's very easy to see the hatred that is spewed from the mouths or from the words or from the keyboards of people's minds as they talk about a certain political party and how they disagree or a certain political opponent.

It's nasty, it's vile.

And one of the signs of following Jesus is not being hateful, but it's being someone that's full of compassion and mercy towards others.

In modern day, if we see our enemy, our enemy is our responsibility not to harm them, it's not to cancel them, but instead it's to take care of them.

It's to show mercy to them.

Jesus says that we should pray for those that persecute us, that we should bless those who curse us.

Doing these things shows mercy to one another.

Loving someone doesn't mean that we agree with them.

It doesn't mean that we are always on the same page as them, but it does mean that they are created in the image of God and therefore they are worthy of the mercy and the love and the compassion that God has ultimately seen us.

And so before we move any farther, let me just ask you a question.

Who are you loving that you're not supposed to love?

Who are you praying for right now that you are not supposed to love?

I think in our world today where there is such a deep political divide and there's such hatred towards the other side, I think it's important for us to think about how we can love the people that don't look like us, how do we love the people that don't agree with us?

How do we love the people that are even against us as followers of Jesus?

This is the commission that we are given.

The Samaritan man stops and helps the Jewish man that was beaten and left for dead.

He helps his enemy, he helps the person that hated him, and he shows the mercy of God to this man.

And ultimately, being a merciful person means that you're willing to count the cost of loving your neighbor.

Listen to what the Samaritan does.

In verse 34, it says, Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them.

Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn where he took care of him.

The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins, telling him, Take care of this man.

If his bill runs higher than this, I'll pay you the next time I'm here.

See, in order for the Samaritan to help this man, he it was going to cost him.

When we show mercy to others, it's going to cost us something.

For the Samaritan, it cost him his time.

We don't know where he was going.

We don't know what schedule he had to keep.

We don't know if there were appointments that he was supposed to be at.

But he had to stop.

He had to get off of his donkey and he had to help the man.

It cost him his time.

It blew up his schedule.

It cost him his provisions.

He had the olive oil.

He had the wine.

He had the bandages which he might have needed for later on in his journey.

But instead, he pours them out and he gives them to the man that is in need.

It cost him his convenience.

He has to load the man up on the back of his donkey, which means that he was going to have to walk the rest of the way and the man was going to ride on the donkey for him.

It cost him his convenience.

It also cost him money.

He goes to the inn and he lets the guy, he pays for a room for the guy, but then he also pays for the innkeeper to take care of him, which would have been the equivalent of 14 days of wages for this man as he pours it out and loves and shows mercy on the man that is in need.

And so if we're ever going to be the people that God has called us to be that are merciful people, that show mercy to others, we've got to recognize that it costs us something.

It's easy when you think about it in your personal life, in my personal life, I'm very generous with the things that don't cost me anything or the things that I have a lot of.

Like that's just how it is.

Like if I have a lot of something, then I tend to be generous with it.

And if I if it didn't cost me anything, if somebody gave it to me, then I tend to be generous with that as well.

It's the things that have costed me a lot or the things that I don't have a whole lot of that I tend to be less generous with.

I heard a story not too long ago of a man who moved to a golf course.

He retired to a golf course, although he was never someone that played golf himself.

And so he was someone that would go and he would walk his dog every single morning, and so he would go on these long walks, and as he went on these walks, he noticed that there were golf balls everywhere along where he was walking.

And so he would always just carry a bag with him and he would pick up golf balls as he saw them and he would put them in this bag.

And then when he got home, he had these huge five-gallon buckets and he would just dump the balls that he collected that day into the buckets.

And so after a couple of weeks, after a couple of months, he had filled several five-gallon buckets full of golf balls.

And they weren't the cheap golf balls, they weren't the practice golf balls or the driving range balls.

These were, you know, the titleist Pro V's and the Nike golf balls.

These were expensive golf balls.

But yet he didn't play golf.

So he really had no need for them.

So he had some friends of his that did play golf, and so what did he do?

He was generous with the balls that he had collected.

Why?

Because they didn't cost him anything.

He got them for free, and he had tons of them.

See, here's what we have to understand as followers of Jesus.

We can't be merciful to others until we recognize that we have buckets of mercy that have been given to us.

We have received incredible mercy and it cost us nothing.

It wasn't free.

It cost Jesus everything, but it cost us nothing.

This is the in this story, we are not the hero of the story.

We are not the Samaritan, but instead, we are the man that has been left for dead on the side of the road.

And Jesus is the good Samaritan that stops what he's doing, and it cost him everything to pick the man up, bandage his wounds, and take him to the inn.

He picks us up, but he doesn't put us on a donkey.

Instead, he picks us up by his death on the cross.

Instead of him putting us on an animal, he becomes the Lamb of God to be the ultimate sacrifice and to die the death that we were destined to die.

We have been given so much mercy.

And until we recognize that the mercy that we have been given, and until we recognize the buckets of mercy and compassion and love that God has shown us, we'll never be able to be the merciful people that God has called us to be.

The mercy you show comes from the mercy you know.

The mercy you show comes from the mercy you know.

If you find somebody that knows Jesus deeply, that knows Jesus intimately, that is blown away by the sacrifice and the love and the mercy that they have been shown, typically those are the people that are going to be merciful to others because they know mercy and what it's like to experience that.

They show mercy to the people around them.

But you meet somebody that claims to know Jesus, but really deep down they don't recognize the mercy that they have been shown.

They tend to be people that don't show mercy to others as well.

If we're going to be the people that God has called us to be, we have to first recognize the mercy we have experienced so that then we can show the mercy to other people in our lives.

Three, would you say is the neighbor of the man who was attacked by bandits?

Jesus asked.

Verse 37, the man replied, the one who showed him mercy.

And Jesus said, Yes, now go and do the same.

And so just as Jesus was talking to this man and the crowd of people that were standing there that day, Jesus is telling us the same thing as well.

He's telling us to be people that should go and do the same, where we generously give to those that are in need, where we forgive others of their sin.

And even though they might deserve something, we don't give them what they deserve.

Instead, we show compassion and love towards them.

And here's the incredible promise that we read in Scripture from the words of Jesus Himself that blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.

It's this incredible promise that you reap what you sow.

If you're someone that sows mercy, you will reap more mercy in your life.

And so the question for us as followers of Jesus, if you put your faith and your trust in him, are you someone right now that is actively showing mercy to the people around you?

Not just the people that you like, not just the people in your family, not just the people you get along with or that think the same way that you do, but who are you actively showing mercy and compassion towards that doesn't look like you, act like you, believe like you, or maybe even hate you?

This is the call for the followers of Jesus to be merciful people that show mercy to others.

And so this morning, maybe you have some next steps.

For some of us, the very first step that we need to take is we need to put our faith and our trust in Jesus.

And when we we when we recognize the incredible mercy that was shown to us, that we deserve to die, but Jesus brought life.

We deserve to go to hell, but instead Jesus brought us heaven.

When we understand those truths in that reality, then as a result, we naturally want to come and to give Jesus everything that we have.

And so maybe that's the first step that you need to take.

And we say here at Church of the Grove, it's ABC.

We admit that we're sinful.

We believe that Jesus is who he says he is, that he died on a cross for our sins, rose again on the third day.

And if we put our faith and our trust in him, that we can walk in everlasting life.

And then we can finally confess him as our Lord and our Savior, where we trust in him for our salvation, but we also trust in him enough to say that he is our king, that he's the one that is now calling the shots in our lives.

And so if that's the step that you need to take, man, we would love to be able to connect with you this week and give you some resources on how to best take your first steps with Jesus.

And you can do that easily by just texting start to follow to 9700.

Start to follow 9700, and we would love to connect with you this week.

But for those of us that are followers of Christ, we put our faith and our trust in him.

Let me just ask you: who is it that you need to love and show mercy to this week?

Who is the person that maybe in your family, or maybe somebody that you just don't get along with, or maybe someone that you have a disagreement, or there's just a lack of forgiveness or bitterness, or there's anger towards another individual?

What is it that you need to do this week to make a difference and to show mercy to someone where maybe you've harbored a lack of unforgiveness towards?

Or maybe you need to go out of your way and you need to be someone this week that loves someone that is just different from you.

If you're a you know conservative Republican, what can you do this week to love someone that's a liberal Democrat and vice versa?

What can you do this week?

Um if you're someone that is looking to love people and show mercy to people that don't look like you, man, is there a friendship?

Is there something you can do that maybe loves and serves someone of a different race or a different ethnic background?

I mean, we are commanded to show mercy.

And so how can you show mercy this week to the people you're around?

We challenge you to talk about this in your in your family with your friends this week.

And if you're part of one of our community groups, man, this is where we're going as a community group this week as we talk about how to apply this truth to our lives and live out showing mercy to others.

Let me pray for us.

Lord Jesus, I thank you so much for who you are.

And we thank you that ultimately you are a God that has shown mercy to us, that we have been given buckets of mercy, and we have tons of it, and it cost us nothing, but yet it cost you everything.

We didn't deserve it, but yet you gave it to us anyway.

And so, Lord, we're overwhelmed and we're so grateful for the mercy that we have been shown.

But as a result, Lord, I pray that we would be men and women that don't just receive mercy, but we are people that give mercy as well.

That we would follow the commands that you give us all throughout Scripture, and that we would love and show compassion and mercy and grace towards the people that we come in contact with and that we are around on a regular basis.

I pray that you would bring to mind people that we have issues with.

We pray that you would, if we are harboring bitterness or resentment towards others, Lord, that you would bring that to our minds this morning.

And Lord, that you would give us the boldness and the courage to show mercy to those individuals this week.

Give us practical steps that we can take in order to show mercy to others.

And Lord, we rest in the promise of knowing that when we are merciful to others, we will receive more mercy in our lives as well.

Lord, we love you, we thank you again for who you are, for your word, and for your kingdom.

And it's in your name we pray.

Amen.