Blessed Are The Merciful, For They Will Receive Mercy

 

 

Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. What is this mercy? It is critical for us to know what it is since Jesus desires us to have mercy (Matthew 9:13 (Jesus was quoting from Hosea 6:6)). It is forgiving one another (and yourself), i.e., not seeking retaliation for the harm done to you by another. It also refers to compassion we feel for others who are weak, poor, ill, anxious, and in other ways disadvantaged. Also would include the “outcasts” of society who, either through fault or no fault of their own are “disconnected” to the greater community. In some versions of the Bible, mercy is also translated as lovingkindness, an apt description. While the Bible is replete with examples of God’s mercy to the nation of Israel and surrounding nations, among others, our greatest example of mercy extended to others is that of God’s mercy in Christ, even though we cannot fully comprehend this mercy of God. The reason is because we cannot comprehend how God views sin: to Him, sin is abominable, He hates sin because of what it does to those He created in His image; He knows that in addition to separating us from Him, sin has the effects of destroying our bodies with each succeeding generation, making us weak and helpless against its ravages; He knows that sin always results in death. We are born with death already in us because of sin. We are sinners – no matter how “nice” we may seem. Even in the face of such inborn rejection, even though we are sinners, God still loves us so much as to send His own Son to live as a human and to become the only option for removing the penalty of sin. Jesus’ single sacrifice for all sin, the basis for restoration with God, is an undeserved mercy and forgiveness. God’s example lets us know that we, too, are responsible and accountable to God for the mercy we show or do not show to others. Do we forgive others who violate us or otherwise hurt us? Forgiveness is not easy, as our own inborn sin rebels against forgiving and forgiveness because we want to get even and make the offenders suffer. We sometimes even feel that foregiveness of one's sins against us leaves us damaged and scarred, vulnerable and humiliated. Actually, not forgiving does more harm to us; the bitterness against that person can produce murderous thoughts - ask me how I know - and can bring a stress that wears on your body and emotions. Our bitterness makes us vulnerable to more bitterness because we a duped into thinking that our bitterness is control over our circumstances. Bitterness exacerbates the wound inflicted upon us so that it scars us emotionally; the more we feed into it, the deeper and wider the scar becomes; the scar cannot heal over because the bitterness continues to ooze into it. We are duped to think that being a person who forgives is humiliating - that it weakens our stance before others. If and when we understand that forgiveness means to surrender our desire to get even and make payback happen, we begin to understand the power of God that enables us to forgive. That God will gladly make His Spirit abound in us so that we will have the forward-facing will and desire to forgive. Our forgiveness takes us out of bitterness' imprisonment, frees us to thrive knowing that our Heavenly Father will even more freely forgive us for our messing up. 

Mercy is a high bar; the opposite of mercy is unforgiveness and wrath. We cannot receive mercy if we choose not to forgive. Jesus actually commands us to be merciful as recorded in Luke 6:35-36, that we may look like children of our Heavenly Father. God is so willing to pour out mercies on us; in fact, His mercies to us are fresh each morning! (Lamentations 3:22-23) Because Jesus is Light, He tells us that we must be light also. We show this light when we are merciful to others. (John 8:12; Matthew 5:14; Ephesians 5:8

Explore

1.  Can you name a mercy that God has recently extended to you? How did it make you feel?

2.  Can you remember a time when it was very difficult to extend mercy to a particular person or persons? What made it difficult for you?

3.  Given all you have read about mercy and the One who extends it, what do you think it means to “walk in the light”?


Bonus: "Mercy" - Elevation Worship and Maverick City

Blessed Are Those Who Hunger and Thirst For Righteousness, For They Will Be Filled

 

Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. Sometimes preachers may use this phrase to support their prosperity gospel, a false teaching that promises material riches once you become a Christian. Or, you may have heard people quote only a portion of it – Blessed are those who hunger and thirst…for they will be filled. They distort Jesus’ words to mean that all poor people will be blessed with an abundance of food and drink because they are poor. Such teaching has misled thousands![i]  I am going to safely assume that the majority of those who read this write-up have known true, deep physical hunger – a kind of physical hunger and thirst that has long hoped for any food and water, and will desperately eat dirt and non-potable water to satisfy the pain of hunger and thirst. Some of the people Jesus spoke to on the Mount were physically hungry and thirsty so, no doubt, their ears perked up when Jesus made that statement. Some of them may have been present when Jesus fed the 5,000. 

As a single mother early into my wage-earning season, I knew a physical hunger that I had never experienced before: my earnings did not go far, and no matter how frugal I was, it was very difficult financially to put nutritious meals on the table everyday after paying rent, and transportation to work. So I chose to not eat dinner many nights so that my children would have leftovers to eat the rest of the week. I would sometimes walk the 3 or 4 miles to get to the city where I could get on the bus to work without paying the additional toll for riding into the city from out of state. It would be more than a year or so before I could get financially steady enough to be able to afford a continued stock pantry and refrigerator. 

But was this the hunger and thirst Jesus was speaking about? No, for Jesus says: “who hunger and thirst for righteousness.” Have you ever wanted to go somewhere or do something so much that you could “taste” it? That’s the level of hunger and thirst Jesus is figuratively talking about. What does hungering and thirsting for righteousness mean? In the Bible righteousness refers to God’s justice and His supreme knowledge, standard, and character of what is right; God’s Righteousness is also called Jesus Christ! Jesus’ primary concern for His listeners was spiritual; He was focused on the heart, mind, and soul of His hearers. They had been so oppressed for so long by the legal demands of the teachers of the Old Law that God’s righteousness was muted. And then the Roman authorities were even more oppressive, discriminatory, grossly unfair, and considered the Jewish people to be of less value. The people needed Jesus to tell them about God and His righteousness and justice – His goodness, His love, and so revive in them the stories of their forefathers who were faithful to that God. Having that hunger and thirst stirred up in them would give them a strong desire to know the God Jesus preached, the one King David sang about all the time. 

In the Bible there is a story about a person who had that happen to her: Do you know the story of the Samaritan woman at the well? You’ve got to read it! It is in John 4, verses 1-30, and 39-42. The dialogue is priceless! Jesus intentionally happens to be there when she came to the well to draw water. She was not with the ‘cool group’ – many of the women of the town would not associate with her because of her lifestyle. After Jesus speaks to her and tells her about her life to her face, instead of being insulted, she felt amazed to be in the presence of a prophet like Him! Jesus turned her daily trek to fetch water into an epiphany of sorts for her, for she, along with others in the Samaritan town, were eagerly awaiting the arrival of the foretold Messiah – The One Who is to Come. When Jesus reveals Himself to her, her hunger and thirst for an encounter with the long foretold Messiah is sated; she is in awe that such as He would reveal Himself to such as her! So much so that she runs back to town, leaving her water jar – a valuable piece of property, to tell her friends that she has met The Messiah. Have you ever been that excited to hear Jesus' words? Have you ever been that excited about something that you stopped everything you were doing in order to tell someone what just happened?  She hungered and thirst to see and know God’s righteousness both in the flesh and in deliverance. She got both. She was more than sated, she was filled to overflowing. She would now never need to “thirst” again.


Explore

1.     Asking the question again: Have you ever been as excited as the Samaritan woman about something amazing that caused you to stop everything you were doing in order to tell someone what just happened? What was it and who did you tell?

2.     Do we know what it feels like to deeply hunger and thirst for God and His justice or righteousness (in the Bible the words 'justice' and 'righteousness' are used interchangeably)? Why do you answer that way?

3.     Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that He is the well of Living Water; in the book of Revelation, He provides saving waters (see Revelation 21:6 and Revelation 22:17). Have you ever heard before about Jesus being Living Water and/or providing saving waters? What do you think about that?

4.     Have you ever personally experienced Jesus as Living Water or Water of Life? If so, were you “filled to overflowing”?  

[i] [i]One of the Church's duties is to help others in distress when and where it can. Compare James 1:27.
 

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Bonus - "Jireh" - by Maverick City; "O Come to the Altar," Trey McLaughlin and SOZ