Word of Salvation – Vol.13 No.04 – January 1967

 

Blessed The Merciful

 

Sermon by Rev. A. I. De Graaf on Math.5:7

Scripture Reading: O.T. Hosea 6:1-6; N.T. Math.18:21-35

Psalter Hymnal: 26, 430, 380, 394

 

Brothers and sisters beloved in Jesus Christ, our Lord,

“Blessed the merciful, for they shall get mercy……!”

Is that the Gospel?

Does that not sound too much like a business deal?
That you’ll get in accordance with what you have given?

In our studies in The Beatitudes we now seem to have struck a strange word really….!

Yes, that’s what it would be if it were to stand all by itself.  But you cannot read one Bible text by itself.

The Bible is ONE, and these words of the Lord Jesus are ONE.  You cannot just be merciful.

Nor can I.

You can only hate God and your neighbour, if you are left just to your own resources.

The world is chock-a-block full of evidence that being merciful is not the strongest point of man.

But you know, the Lord Jesus tells this, AFTER having told us about being poor in spirit that is: going to God with empty hands and saying: “Lord be merciful to me, a sinner.  And AFTER having told us that it’s those that mourn who shall be comforted, and AFTER having told us that THEN as HIS GIFT to people who DO mourn, He can give it to be meek and humble,

The Lord speaks about being merciful but only after He told you how blessed you are when you hunger and thirst after righteousness….!

BECAUSE, you are to move on!  You are to GET what you asked for, you may be and will be renewed after God’s Image if you come and claim that promise of God as yours!

There is a progress, an upward line in these words of our Lord, and that progress can very well be there because – and I repeat it again – He preaches FIRST HIMSELF in this, too.

0, every child of God, as soon as he thinks of mercy may first think and wonder about the mercy he’s GOT.

For in what a wonderful way did MERCY get into our lives!  You know, mercy, and “being merci-ful” is not just the same as “meekness” and being meek.

This is a different thing altogether.

Meek is what you are, just yourself.  You can be alone in the world, and still be meek.  Meek that is: just feeling small, just no more standing on your own importance, but throwing yourself away.  Meekness and humility are very close together.

They are twins, so to say.

The Lord Jesus was meek, in that He did not think Himself too great and too glorious, just to take upon Himself the form of a servant……!

But for mercy you need other people as well.  Mercy is what you feel and do to others.  Mercy is so to say, the twin sister of pity.  It is what I feel and – consequently – what I give to others.  Meekness I still can have in the desert, in a monastery, all by myself.  But with mercy, being merciful, I’m right amongst people, and feel like giving to these people NOT WHAT THEY DESERVE, but, in pity for their hard lot, WHAT THEY DO NOT DESERVE, NEW JOY, A NEW BEGINNING, LOVE.

And how did that mercy, that word and the things it describes, get into your and my life?  Where did I ever find out what mercy was?

The Bible tells me that.

Jesus tells me that.

The Lord’s Supper Table next week in our church tells us that.

Our Bible on every page tells you of that MERCY: that is what we got from God, from Jesus, HE HAS SHOWN US WHAT THIS WORD MEANS.  The Bible, in Col.3:12, uses the term “bowels of mercies” (KJV).  Thereby hinting at the feeling in the pit of your stomach when you see someone in trouble and really you have compassion on him.  We find it described in the beautiful words of Matt.9:36, “But Jesus, as He saw the multitudes was moved with compassion on them…!”

And these words are repeated in chap.14:14 and 15:32!
He looked at all these people, He looked at you, at me, straying like sheep having no shepherd, and IS MOVED WITH COMPASSION ON THEM.  There we hear what is in the heart of God,

For MERCY is more than COMPASSION.

Mercy is: Compassion-put-to-work.

God MOVED with COMPASSION, about rebellious, ugly, small, cheeky, selfish and not-caring people like us!

And then He had MERCY and showed it by coming right down to us!  And taking that miserable and bleak sin-ridden life of ours upon Himself!

That’s how we learned about mercy.  That is how we got to know that word and what it means.  The One speaking here is the One showing it as well.  The One having mercy, so great, so wonderful, that we never fully can describe it with these halting, stammering words of ours; HE HAD MERCY, and therefore there is life for whoever believed!  HE HAD MERCY, and therefore He went on, through the blood and sweat of Gethsemane right to the bitterness of the cross….!

He had mercy, and DID something about it, He did not stand on His rights to say: “FIRST I WANT THOSE PEOPLE TO MAKE A BETTER STAND FOR GOD” or “FIRST I WANT THESE PEOPLE TO BECOME BETTER…!” But He wept at Lazarus’ grave AND CALLED HIM OUT.

He was moved with compassion about the multitudes, that is: about people, and for people went into the darkness of the grave that they might come into the glorious sunshine of life!

That is what your Lord’s Supper tells you of: THAT MERCY is what you get:
‘Tis mercy all, immense and free!
For o my God, it found out me!

Mercy… that’s the sort of thing you have when among people.  AND, BECAUSE HE HAD IT, WE NOW MAY LIVE:

And therefore, because we could have learned that so clearly from the Word, Therefore He tells of us – in His steps – doing the same: having compassion AND GIVING MERCY…. to people.

You know, many have time for the Christian church as long as it is things it deals with.  Nice services, debatable sermons, committees, functions, card indexes, meetings….!

But sometimes there is trouble brewing quick smart as soon as we find out that it’s people we find everywhere.

But now there is where the Lord says: blessed the merciful.

Look brother…
ONCE YOU SEE THAT ACT OF PURE LOVE AND MERCY
EVEN BEFORE YOU COULD SEE GOD AND SERVE HIM
EVEN WHEN YOU WERE STILL DEAD IN TRESPASSES
AND UGLY SINS, HE TURNED TO YOU
AND WAS MOVED WITH COMPASSION ABOUT YOU
AND CALLED YOU OUT OF DARKNESS INTO HIS LIGHT
ONCE YOU SEE THAT JESUS CAME TO YOU
RIGHT TO YOUR WORLD
AND RIGHT INTO YOUR MISERABLE LIFE
TO BRING IT TO GLORY
AND THAT WHILE IT COST HIM
THE BITTERNESS OF THE CROSS
Once you really see that, you will be merciful.
You will be filled with that mercy like a vessel which overflows, so full is it.

For to dip into that eternal and marvellous mercy of God, is to be stained by it, so to say, and nobody can wash that off you any more:
Marked by the Blood…
the Blood of Him Who died for you,
you will be
what you found and evermore find Him to be
MERCIFUL.

Do you know that, brother, sister?  Or rather: Do you know Him like that?  O the mercy of the Holiest and Highest for a worm like me!

Now with that mercy shown to you, you stand among people.  As I said: within the Church and outside it you find them.  Many people are afraid of these people, because of their sharp tongues, or their position as your boss, your elders even, sometimes.  And if we are afraid of people we push them away.

Some others are angry with people.  They blame other people that they are unhappy or that at home and in the church things don’t go smoothly, and when angry they “sling off” at them, and when afraid they push them away…..!

But how in the world can we then be merciful?

Others think that they are better than many other people.  They have no pity because they only kick others down a bit more, in order to feel better themselves.

We do strange things to one another, sometimes even within the Church.  But Jesus said: Blessed the merciful.  Not blessed the one who can make a hard statement, a sharp judgment, BUT the MERCIFUL.

No gift of the Spirit of God, we read in the last verse of 1Cor.12, is as high as LOVE, the one also mentioned as the very first in Gal.5:22.

The ones full of the wonderful mercy of God so that it flows out to the other one, even though weak and helpless, even though unsympathetic and not giving anything in return.

BLESSED THE MERCIFUL, that is: the ones whose hearts flow over in concern, in pity, in real sympathy.

It is the ones who dive under into other people’s troubles if need be, who say, AND ACT:
Here, Jesus lifted my burdens, so let me help share yours.

And there we see these two servants get into sight.  One was almost a prisoner and a slave.  He could not pay his debts but, upon his cry for help, got the door opened: Go, you are free, I will forget about the debt.

But then there is HIS servant, owing him only a very TINY FRACTION of what he’d once owed HIS master.  But he says: “Come here, you pay or else….!”

Look now, the Lord says: He’ll get his own debt back again, and is thrown in jail, because he said he’d received mercy but FAILED TO BE MERCIFUL HIMSELF.

Failed to open his heart for his brother’s trouble.
Just on his “rights” he stood.
But what were these rights, anyway?

The Lord did not do to us according to OUR RIGHTS.  He had Christ pay them all, these debts.

Now just what does all that mean to you?  God asks.  Have YOU got mercy from God?  Are YOU glad about it?  Then may not YOUR lesser brother share in it?

BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL FOR THEY SHALL GET MERCY….!  That is: if you judge your neighbour only in what Jesus can do for him because He did so much for you, you shall have no doubt that you belong to Jesus, and that once you will see Him in glory and will hear that, while He was hungry you gave Him to eat, and while He was thirsty, you gave Him to drink.

While He was in prison, on the way, a stranger, you visited Him, refreshed Him and gave Him a clean bed to sleep on plus the best steak in the fridge to eat.

YOU SHALL GET MERCY,

Your mercy in Jesus shall become more real, more sure to you that way.  Indeed: Jesus’ mercy would not be MERCY if you have to buy His mercy with yours.

But at the same time this mercy of His, where you believe, is BOUND to bear fruit.  Big… or small!

And so real Christian mercy, compassion, is an affair right among people, and it’s a noticeable thing, too.  This mercy shows in the cup of cold water.  Or in the smile to the brother who grieved you, in the invitation of people to your place who are not exactly “just friends”.

And in the way in which a Christian can say, “forget it please,” when it regards a wrong done, or a debt owed.

It also shows in the burning desire to get more of these poor, poor people, still in the dark, into the light of Jesus.

As you move about to get them in, you will come to see more glories of what compelled Jesus to get YOU in.

There is, in having mercy upon others, the strange reward of clearly seeing the mercy of Jesus in a new light.

All this does not make us sissies, mind you!

It was the compassion and mercy of the Lord Jesus, which drove Him to FULMINATE against the false teachers: the Scribes and Pharisees driving the people away from their Shepherd.

And still today the really merciful can also be known in that they can get worked up about what harms other people on their way to Jesus:

It grieves his soul to see Jesus’ sheep or just the multitudes in danger.  These merciful can weep over Jerusalem which does not repent.  These merciful are great in the Kingdom of heaven because in the discussions of the Church they do NOT forget that it really is PEOPLE who are at stake.

People and their eternal joy and grief.  Because whenever a brother knocks on his door, even the least brother, the merciful hears the Voice of the Master:

“It is really Me, may I come in?”

Blessed is the servant, who then opens the door, and find that nasty Other Fellow on his doorstep, but remembers all the mercy he got, and so GIVES mercy and forgets about grudges and peeves, and just loves, and shows that love, too.

Truly, the Lord Jesus says, that if such love and mercy is not in us, we have not HIS mercy.

Then, if we cannot do this, forgive others and open up our hearts for them, we cannot expect to find God’s heart open for us.  Then we never have seen with marvel and trembling delight the mercy of Jesus given us.

He Who wept over Jerusalem and looked on the multitudes with compassion, and – mind you – that multitude was to crucify Him – and well He knew it! – says it now to you, as His Word, to take home with you:

BLESSED ARE THE MERCIFUL FOR THEY SHALL OBTAIN MERCY

Yes, with God and men, mercy they shall get.

Till all their life become one song of redeeming grace and love.  Still the brother is within the Church, and the stranger, and the multitudes are teeming outside:

They wait for you… to see the mercy of Jesus Christ.

For MERCY HE HAS, STILL TODAY, Praised be His Name!

Amen.