Blessed are the Merciful for they will be shown mercy.
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Now when Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down. His disciples came to him, 2 and he began to teach them.
The Beatitudes
He said:
3 “Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
4 Blessed are those who mourn, for they will be comforted.
5 Blessed are the meek, for they will inherit the earth.
6 Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled.
7 Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.
8 Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God.
9 Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called children of God. 10 Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
11 “Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.
12 Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. -
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1 Blessed are the Poor
2 Blessed are those who Mourn
3 Blessed are the Meek
4 Blessed are those who Hunger and Thirst for Righteousness
5 Blessed are the Merciful
6 Blessed are the Pure in Heart
7 Blessed are the Peacemakers
8 Blessed are those who are persecuted for Righteousness sake -
Parable of the unmerciful person
21 Then Peter came to Jesus and asked, ‘Lord, how many times shall I forgive my brother or sister who sins against me? Up to seven times?’
22 Jesus answered, ‘I tell you, not seven times, but seventy-seven times.
23 ‘Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt.
26 ‘At this the servant fell on his knees before him. “Be patient with me,” he begged, “and I will pay back everything.” 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, cancelled the debt and let him go.
28 ‘But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins.[c] He grabbed him and began to choke him. “Pay back what you owe me!” he demanded.
29 ‘His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, “Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.”
30 ‘But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.
32 ‘Then the master called the servant in. “You wicked servant,” he said, “I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?” 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.
35 ‘This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.’
The Beatitudes in Matthew 5 begins:
‘When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up on a mountainside and sat down, His disciples came to him, and he began to teach them.….’
Matthew 5:7 speaks of being ‘Merciful’ - Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.
There is a saying in the world of sport, ‘show no mercy', there are not many champions of sport who win by showing mercy. Today we are looking at what it means to be merciful.
This is the fifth in our series on the Beatitudes. The introduction to our study guides which we're going through says “we can see that the first four beatitudes reveal a spiritual progression. To begin with, we are poor in spirit acknowledging our utter spiritual bankruptcy before God. Next, we mourn over the cause of our sin.” Third, we are to be meek, humbly receiving our salvation and forgiveness, our redemption changes our behaviour towards others. Fourth, we are to hunger and thirst for righteousness as we long for more of the living God. That is my paraphrasing of our new series. Today we come to the second half of the series which relates to our attitude to others…… We begin with the merciful.
I would like to unpack this Beatitude in this way, giving an explanation, a warning and a promise.
An Explanation
A Warning
A Promise
1. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven.
2. Blessed are those who mourn – for they will be comforted.
3. Blessed are the meek - for they will inherit the earth.
4. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness – for they will be filled
5. Blessed are the merciful – for they will be shown mercy
6. Blessed are the pure in heart – for they will see God
7. Blessed are the peacemakers – for they will be called the children of God
8. Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness
An Explanation
Firstly, an explanation.
Christian writer Rebekah Domer in her book on the Beatitudes (Published in 2018). In her fifth chapter ‘The Merciful’ chose to use hospital chaplaincy as an illustration of mercy. She writes,
‘Mercy means showing compassion to someone who is suffering even when we could avoid it. It means pardoning when retaliation might be justified.’
Rebekah Dormer is herself a hospice chaplain and I think she rightly describes it as a mercy ministry. Let me explain with a bit of Greek.
The explanation in our study books says ‘mercy is compassion for people in need. Jesus does not specify the categories of people he has in mind to whom his disciples are to show mercy. It could be those overcome by disaster or the hungry, the sick and the outcast or those who wrong us [and] mercy [means] forgiveness.’
The Greek word for mercy in this beatitude means ‘compassion for people in need’ - Eleos, but the Aramaic root of this word goes further (remember Jesus was speaking in Aramaic) – Eleos, is our reaction when we see pain and distress and the misery sin can cause. To be ‘merciful,’ Eleemon is even more challenging: ‘to get inside a person and see things with their eyes, think with their mind, feel their feelings – in a word ‘empathy.’
To be merciful is more than sympathy or pity, empathy leads us to identify with the other person and see and feel the trauma from where they are. Sadly we are often so concerned about our own feelings and concerns that we fail to ask about or be concerned about or be merciful towards others. As senior hospital chaplain at St Marys Hospital– time and time again - I saw chaplains drawing alongside a person, going the extra mile, sitting with, hand holding, tender-hearted, tending and caring for people. I think that’s what Rebeka Dormer was connecting with, it is a right understanding of this fifth Beatitude. Do you remember in the story of the Good Samaritan, when Jesus asks the question, ‘who was the good neighbour of the mugged man?’ The correct answer given was ‘the one who was merciful’ (Luke 10:37). What were the marks of mercy the Samaritan showed (v34) firstly, he was tender-hearted, he had compassion and secondly, he tended and cared for him v35 - ‘tender and tending.’
Blessed are the merciful could be amplified in this way - Blessed is the Christian who is tender-hearted and tends and cares, who draws alongside others, showing empathy to their pain and trauma.
The challenge for us as individuals and as a church is this, are we superficial in our concerns and relationships or are we merciful in this deeper way?
A Warning
Our second reading dealt with a huge debt being cleared and that person who received mercy is then unmerciful to someone who owes a small amount to him. We are shocked at the reaction of this merciless man who had been freed from a debt of £ 500 million but is himself owed £500.
He throttled the man who owed him £500!
We are shocked yet again by the way that the king reacts to the unmerciful man.
The warning is this, the king, when he heard about the unforgiving person said,
‘Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all he owed.’ 35“This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.”
Matthew 5:7, ‘Blessed are the merciful’, is like the positive to Matthew 18:35 is the negative – being unmerciful. If we are unforgiving, we will be handed over to the tormentors. We will lose the joy of our Salvation, and gain hell on earth.
This is a warning about being unforgiving. The Lord's prayer says Matthew 6:12 ‘forgive us… as we forgive,’ Matthew 6:15 ‘But if you do not forgive others their sins your Father will not forgive your sins.’
It is not that we can earn our Salvation or merit heaven by forgiving others, but that holding onto an unforgiving spirit proves that we do not fully rely on Christ's forgiveness of our great debt – our sin. Even the blandest of sins can separate you from your God (Isaiah 59:2).
A forgiven person is a forgiving person. An unforgiving person is a tortured person in this life and in eternity.
‘To forgive is to set a prisoner free and discover the prisoner is you.’ Lewis Smedes
Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy.
I have rolled all these words in to one - no mercy, merciless, unmerciful, to create a word, unmercy. So, what does “unmercy” look like….
What about the needs of a person whose house was destroyed in an earthquake or people caught up in famine and short of food and water or the needs of innocent victims of war? There is a challenge for us if we have a house and food on our table and financial stability and see the scenes of people standing in rubble in Afghanistan and Gaza starving and queuing up for a loaf of bread. Are we merciful or unmerciful? How much empathy do we show to the needs around us here in the UK and further afield? I ask again, what does ‘unmercy’ look like?
After the Easter Rising in Dublin in 1916 we (the British) showed no mercy and executed sixteen leaders of the uprising. Un-mercy. The after-effects of unmercy were still felt in Northern Ireland in the 1970s when I was growing up. I wonder what history would have been like if we had shown mercy.
Michael Mallin, a devout Roman Catholic, was second-in-command of the Irish Citizen Army. He wrote to his wife shortly before he was executed, “My heartstrings are torn to pieces when I think of you, of our manly James, happy go lucky John, shy warm Una – daddy’s Girl and oh little Joseph, my little man, my little man. My dear Wife, I cannot keep the tears back when I think of them, all your dear faces arise before me. God bless you, my darlings.” He was executed by firing squad on 8th May 1916 - Unmercy. I wondered what became of his family, especially, Joseph, his ‘little man’ who was two years old. In God’s mercy, his youngest son Joseph became a Jesuit priest and missionary in China and Hong Kong. He died, Easter 2018 at the age of 104 .
Many of us have been hurt and will struggle to hear this beatitude or this warning about being unmerciful unless we remember the great pardon and mercy we have been shown, through Jesus' death on the cross. Which leads us to our final section – a promise, and what a promise it is!
Fruit of the Spirit people are loving, joyful, peace-loving. Patient people who are kind, good, faithful, gentle and show.
A Promise
Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. You will be shown mercy, I will be shown mercy.
Remember how we started, Jesus is talking to his disciples and if you are one of those, this promise is for you.
There is a future aspect to this promise which I will mention briefly.
God has promised there will be a day of judgment when the evil will be no more and when the devil and his hoard of demons and those whose names are not in the ‘Book of life’ will be condemned for all eternity (Revelation 20:12, Luke 10:20).
2 Peter 3:13 says, ‘According to his promise,e there will be a new heaven and a new earth in which righteousness dwells’. At the end of our days, or at the end of this age, we will be shown mercy as (at the name of Jesus) we kneel and confess Jesus Christ is Lord (Philipians 2:10).
The present aspect of this promise should spur us on to be merciful people, forgiving people, fruit of the Spirit people (love, joy, peace, patience kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control) – it is part of our DNA of being merciful and therefore receiving mercy.
The promise is made and kept by the one who does mercy. God deals with us according to his character and one of the key attributes of our God is Mercy.. God does mercy, it is not what we deserve.
You may be familiar with the Mercy Ships of OM, and YWAM. YWAM ships became the Mercy Ships charity. The ships pulled into port and gave relief from pain and misery and distress with operations and treatment that healed and cured those who could not afford the service. OM ships (eg, Dulos) pulled into port and gave relief from pain and misery and distress by listening, prayer and giving books and bibles in a café setting, giving spiritual healing and salvation that only Jesus can give. God is like one big Mercy Ship, a ship of mercy that we can all climb on board. The only way to enter is through Jesus who said I am the door. If anyone enters by Me, he will be saved John 10:9
God does mercy, it is an aspect of the goodness of God (Grudem pg 200 Systematic Theology)
I want to emphasise this because this promise maker (Jesus) cant help but keep it day by day as you walk with him.
Mercy, grace and patience are three aspects of God’s goodness. God’s mercy is goodness to those in distress and misery.
Grace, mercy and patience, aspects of God’s nature, are often mentioned together in the bible.
When God spoke to Moses in Exodus 34:6, he described himself as “YHWH, the Lord, merciful, and gracious God, slow to anger, abounding in love and faithfulness.” This is repeated six more times in the Old Testament, Nehemiah 9:7, Psalm 86:15, Psalm 103:8, Psalm 145:8, Joel 2:3 and Jonah 4:2
Paul called God the father of mercies and God of all comfort (2 Cor 1:3).
In Hebrews 4:16, in times of need, we are to draw near to God’s throne, and what will we receive there? ‘We will receive mercy and grace.’
The reason I am labouring the point here is this, when we hear, ‘Blessed are the merciful for they will receive mercy,’ we need to recognise that this is a promise and know that Jesus is a promise keeper. When he says ‘You will receive mercy,’ he keeps it day by day as you walk with the Lord. When Peter messed up big time (and the cock crowed three times) the Lord was merciful as Peter cried ‘Lord you know I love you.’ This merciful, gracious, patient, loving faithful friend, is a friend and saviour can follow, I can trust, who I can cry ‘Lord you know I Love you,’ after I have messed it all up again. And in turn, when we are merciful we are passing on what Christ is doing for us, once a day every day, all day long.
If this doesn’t spur you on to be merciful, then be warned, maybe you trivialising the mercy and pardon you have received, like the man who was freed from a huge debt. I hope this encourages you (it does me). It is good to consider the mercy of God. “The steadfast love of the Lord never changes, his mercies never come to an end, they are new every morning – great is your faithfulness O Lord (Lamentations 3:22). Song written by Edith McNeill (1920-2014).
Let us be a merciful people (a merciful person), blessed are the merciful says Jesus in this fifth Beatitude, for they will receive mercy.
What patience would wait as we constantly roam
What Father, so tender, is calling us home
He welcomes the weakest, the vilest, the poor
Our sins, they are many, His mercy is more
Praise the Lord, His mercy is more
Stronger than darkness, new every morn
Our sins they are many, His mercy is more
©Matt Boswell and Matt Papa
