The Beatitudes #6

So this morning we're going to be returning to Jesus' Sermon on the Mount. Last week we studied verse 6, where we learned what it was to hunger and to thirst for righteousness. After that sermon, I thought, you know, I left a hanging question that I didn't answer. It was a question in my mind that we drove by really quickly at the end of the sermon, but I thought, if I was listening to this, I'd really want the answer to that question. The question is, how is a believer satisfied by seeking righteousness? Because that's what that verse told us. He says, those who hunger and thirst for righteousness will be satisfied. And I never really got to sufficiently deal with that. So we're actually going to start our sermon this morning by finishing up verse 6, answering that question. And then we're going to move on to verse 7, where Jesus focuses on the necessity of Christians to be merciful. And my hope is that God will use our time this morning to show us what mercy is and where you and I need to grow in it. Would you please stand as we read the word of the Lord?

From Matthew 5, verses 1-12. This is the word of the Lord, and it is eternally true. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward in heaven is great, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you. This is the word of the Lord. You may be seated. So a quick recap of last week's sermon. The righteousness that we are to seek after, to hunger and thirst for, is not the righteousness of justification. It's not Jesus' righteousness. That's not what Jesus is commanding us to search after here. He's not saying, what you need to do is look and seek after Jesus' righteousness. You don't need to be overly concerned with your standing before God.

For a number of reasons, but probably the biggest one is you can't change that yourself. You can't change your standing before God. God has to do that and does do that. And so what righteousness are we supposed to be hungering and thirsting for? Well, it's the righteousness of sanctification. It's the righteousness of personal holiness that we would be growing and seeking to live more righteous lives. That we would grow in obedience to our Lord Jesus Christ and to all that he commands. I think one of the ways we can judge whether we're doing this or where we're at in this or where we could grow in this would be to look at our lives and compare it to the life of an unbeliever. Not so that we can be justified and think, oh, I'm so glad I'm not like those people. What I'm afraid is that if we looked with a humble eye, what we would find many times is that our life in many ways looks very similar to the life of an unbeliever. That our thoughts are very similar to the thoughts of unbelievers. That our desires are very similar.

We want the same things. We go about doing things the same way. We spend our money the same way and our time and our energy. We have similar priorities. Last week, if you were here, I focused quite a bit on marriage. That's just one area where our lives should be distinct from the life of an unbeliever. First, if you're a Christian, you should get married, right? That's a difference. And then what should your marriage look like? It should look quite different from the marriage of an unbeliever. This is what it would mean for you to be hungry and thirsting for righteousness in the arena or the context of marriage. But it applies in other areas of our life as well. And it's worth noting that our lives shouldn't simply look different to the onlooker, but they should actually be different. There should be a substantive difference in the way that our lives work as opposed to those around us. And so is your life marked by hungering and thirsting for righteousness? And if it is, how does that...

lead to satisfaction. You'll remember last week I said that to hunger and thirst for something is not to be a little hungry or a little thirsty, but to be starving or dying of thirst. That you have a need that must be met. It's not the sort of desire, you know, to be hungry is not the sort of thing that goes away if you don't eat. You wake up in the morning, you think, oh, I skipped breakfast. Oh, well, you know, about 10 o'clock, you think, you know, I'm feeling a little hungry. and then lunch comes and you go, yeah, it'll be okay if I don't eat lunch, the intensity of your hunger will grow and grow and mount and grow and grow. It doesn't just go away and say, oh, we didn't need to eat today. We didn't need to drink today. It's a need that demands satisfaction. And many of us might talk about being hangry. Some of you, I was introduced to this word years ago, this idea that we get angry when we're hungry. So if you don't eat for a while, then that feeling goes away, right?

No, it gets worse. It gets more intense. And so you're faced with hunger. You're faced with your constant needs that will not relent until you satisfy them. So how does seeing our lack or feeling our needs lead us to satisfaction? Because this is what Jesus tells us. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Well, the first is, you will actually grow in holiness if you seek it. I think so much of our lives, we have a defeatist mentality. We think, it doesn't matter whether I try. Seeking God or not seeking God, there's no difference. And that is a lie straight from the pit of hell. It's not true. If you seek after God and you seek to become more righteous and you ask God to help you do that, you will in turn become more righteous because God is faithful and will answer your prayers.

Now, will he answer them as quickly and in exactly the way that we would like him to? Probably not, actually. Because his thoughts and his ways are not our thoughts and our ways. Which is not to say that ours are better, but worse. If your child came up to you and says, Can I have gummy bears for breakfast? You'd appreciate the desire to eat breakfast, and you'd appreciate them asking you for it, right? But the answer would be, By any reasonable parent on any normal given day, the answer is a resounding no. You may not. You may have breakfast. Well, I don't want oatmeal or bananas or whatever. But that parent has met the child's request and met it with more knowledge and with love. And yet the child goes, my parents never give me what I want. I want sugar cereal.

You guys who have kids, give your kids sugar cereal. I can tell you two things will happen. One, they will be hungry about an hour and a half later because it doesn't stay with you. And for that hour and a half where they're not hungry, they will be crazy. So a wise parent realizes that sugar cereals or donuts or whatever are a nice treat. And yes, you can have, you know, it's not that we never give them, but we say that's not normal and that's not what we're going to do here. We're going to answer, we're going to meet your needs in another way. And this is often God's way with us to do this very same thing. We're reflecting God's way with us as parents when we do that sort of thing with our children. We see their needs, we see their requests, and we meet them with wisdom and with love. And so sometimes our wisdom and love, even in answering our children's needs, is to say no to the thing they ask for and yes to the thing they really need. So hunger and thirsting for righteousness leads to satisfaction first.

In that God will answer your prayers. Even if it's not in exactly the way you want it to be answered, he will answer your prayer. Now, who's sitting here thinking, no, he doesn't? Be careful. That's the exclamation of a hard heart and one that's in danger. God does answer our prayers. Not always in the way that we want and not always in the time that we want. But he is faithful and he does answer our prayers. And if we seek righteousness and holiness, we should have it in our mind, realize that it's not an easy pursuit. If you confess your sins, you say, I'm angry, I'm bitter, I'm lazy, whatever it is. Do you expect God to answer that prayer tomorrow completely? Are those the terms of your request? If they are, then what you're going to get is disappointment on the other end.

I remember reading years ago in John Owen's book, Mortification of Sin and Believers, he speaks to this very point where he's talking about believers being allowed to struggle with sin. And he says, it's God's love for you that he allows you to continue to struggle. And he says, here's why. If God answered all of your prayers and took away all of your burdens, that would be the quickest path for you to walking away from him because you would lose, you become unaware of your need of him. You would think, I don't need God anymore. All of my needs, all of my infirmities, all of my weaknesses have been dealt with. And so God's way of keeping us close to us is to keep us hungering and thirsting and yet growing. And so we have to get rid of this idea that hungering and thirsting is somehow an all-or-nothing proposition and that it happens all at once. I don't want to be angry anymore. Lord, help me not to be angry. Poof, gone. That is a child's way of thinking.

We should be mature in our understanding. So this is one way that hungering and thirsting for righteousness leads us to satisfaction. God does, over time, actually grow us in the things that we ask him to grow us in. How else does hungering and thirsting for righteousness lead us to satisfaction? Well, you and I, our hearts, Calvin calls them idol factories that just churn out new things to lust after and to want constantly. Which is to say that our hearts are not by nature ever going to decide, I'm content and I'm satisfied. Our hearts are like, I don't know if you guys have ever watched Labradors eat. But I used to work in a dog kennel, and when you watched them eat, they would just shove their face into the bowl in just a big mouthful, and then they'd go, and just swallow it. And they would eat everything that was there, and they would eat until they got sick. They had no ability to moderate or control their...

How much food they needed. And so they just dig in and they just, gimme, gimme, gimme, gimme. So how are we supposed to, how are we like Labrador retrievers is the question, right? How are we like that? One of the things you have to do with that dog is to teach it moderation. Because you don't want it puking all over the house. So you have to control what it has access to and say, no, you can't have all of that. Because the dog doesn't have the ability to sense when it's full. And so satisfaction is a learned grace. It's something that you learn. It's not something that shows up on your doorstep delivered by the Holy Spirit. It's something that is cultivated that you learn over time. You learn to be content, to be satisfied when things are not done. Our lives are never done, okay? And there are different seasons in our lives where they get more undone, okay? Our family, we just moved.

Our whole life is undone right now. Everything. Where are the socks at? I don't know. You know, everything is undone. So can we be satisfied? Can you be satisfied when things are undone? If your answer is no, I can't, then you will never be satisfied. And you'll use it as a reason not to seek after righteousness. Because you won't learn to be satisfied and to be content in the midst of things being built, being worked on, being cultivated. And so in the same way that hunger and thirst are things that have to be daily attended to, our cultivation of satisfaction with what God has done, with the prayers he has answered, and the measures of the grace that he has given, we have to cultivate satisfaction for that. Not because there's nothing more to be done.

Many of us think, well, if I do that, then I'll lose all my steam for pressing on. That's why Jesus said, blessed are those who hunger and thirst. You may be tempted to lose all of your steam, and yet you'll need to continue to press on. Some of you may have heard the phrase, do the next thing. It's like a thing that people say now. It's a mantra, a life mantra, do the next thing. It's a way of not getting stuck in the mud. than the mire of life. And I'd say to you, when it comes to obeying God and to seeking after righteousness, do the next righteous thing. Do it. Just do it. And you think, well, I can't do it. I don't do it. I haven't done it. I had a pastor one time say to me when I was lamenting to him my inability to do it. He says, don't be the man you are. Be the man you're supposed to be. And I was like, okay. It was an interesting way to put it.

He's like, you just need to get out of your head. You need to stop churning about all this stuff. Do the next obedient thing. Seek after righteousness. Do that thing. Don't sit and think and wonder and argue and grumble and all this stuff back and forth. Seek after the next righteous thing. Do the next righteous thing. The things that you just got done doing, you probably didn't do perfectly. That's okay. It's okay. Do the next righteous thing. Continue to hunger and thirst after righteousness, and you will become satisfied with God's provision. Ask him to give you grace to pursue the next righteous thing, and then to be content with his answers to your prayers, and to accept your efforts, your love. I want to move on now to verse 7. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. There are two aspects of mercy that I want us to focus on this morning. The first, What is mercy is the question. First, mercy is looking to others' needs and concerning yourself with them. I think many times we go through our lives with blinders on. You know how horses, sometimes you see that they have these blinders on? And the reason they have blinders is so that their peripheral vision doesn't pick up all of the distractions and all the stuff going on. It keeps their eyes and their minds and their bodies focused on.

what's right in front of them. It also keeps them from getting scared or spooked. I think many times we put blinders on and the only thing that we keep in front of us is our life, our needs, our family, ourselves. Now that can be true with we only think about our family and we don't think about others or it can be true within your home where you think I only think about myself and not my spouse or my children or my roommates or whoever. Mercy is looking. and seeing other people's needs and then concerning yourself with them. This sort of mercy is very similar to compassion. In Psalm 103, it says, And so what you have here is the strength of a child and the strength of a father being compared.

which obviously there's a disparity. The father is much stronger than the child, capable of doing more, carrying more, bearing more. And so the psalmist says that a father has compassion on his child. What does it mean except for him to recognize that his son is not strong like him, capable of what he's capable of? And so he has compassion. Other translations would translate this as pitying. He pities his son, and it's not meant to be a pejorative word or derogatory. It's that he sees the nature of his son, and he takes it into account. Father has compassion on his children. Why? Because he knows their frame. Our Lord knows our frame, and he has compassion on us. He's mindful that we are but dust. So the Lord sees our weaknesses.

our vulnerabilities, and he acts mercifully toward us. So do we look at other people that way? Are we merciful toward the weaknesses, toward the vulnerabilities of others? Or do we cultivate ignorance regarding their needs? Do you think in your own mind they should take care of that themselves? And if they don't, that's not my problem. You remember after Judas betrayed Jesus? He felt remorse. And do you remember what he did? He took the money that they had given to him, and he went back to the chief priest, and he says, take this back. I've betrayed innocent blood. And it's as close as Judas gets to repenting. And what did the chief priest say to him at that time? Yeah, yeah. Judas came to them, and he says, I have sinned by betraying innocent blood. But they, the chief priest, said, what is that to us? See to that yourself.

That is the exact opposite of mercy. See to that yourself. Notice how callous their hearts are, how myopic their vision is. Now, it's no surprise. These are the men who are set to kill Jesus, and so the idea of betraying people and acting unjustly is their native tongue. But it ought not be so with you and me. We ought not to be like them. See to that yourself. And yet it's very tempting to put blinders on and to not see because you don't want to be bothered with other people's troubles. And so we brush them off like the chief priests did to Judas. You remember the account where the man was attacked by robbers and was left naked, beaten, and half dead on the road. And you have an account of two groups of people walking by. One is a Pharisee, and what's the Pharisee do? He walks by and he says, it's not my problem.

That's not my problem. That's his problem. That's somebody else's problem. But the Samaritan walks by, and he sees him, and he has mercy. And he goes over to the man, and he cleans him up, and he takes him and puts him on his donkey, and he takes him to the inn, and he pays for him to be cared for. And he tells the innkeeper, take care of him and see to his needs, and if you incur any more expense, I'll pay that too. That's mercy. That's seeing a need and not walking by it, but attending to it. Not long after King David ascended to the throne in Israel, Saul is gone. David's best friend Jonathan is gone. And David wants to honor Jonathan. And so he says, is there not yet anyone of the house of Saul to whom I may show the kindness of God? Is there not somebody that I can be merciful to? You know, and he's talking to a man named Ziba.

who is one of Saul's servants. He calls him in and he says, Is there not anybody left in your master's home that I can be merciful to? Saul's dead. Jonathan's dead. Is there anyone left? And Ziba says, Well, there is. Jonathan had a son. His name is Mephibosheth. And so David calls Mephibosheth into his court. Now, Mephibosheth is lame. His feet don't work. So he's the only one left. He's the grandson of the first king of Israel, and yet he can't walk. He can't. care for himself. He's an invalid. And there's tension between David and Saul, right? Saul tried numerous times to kill David. David didn't kill Saul, though he had the opportunity. But there is this residual leftover of the tension between Saul and David. You see it worked out with Abner and Joab and the commanders of their armies. But you can understand if you were one of Saul's descendants and the new king rises to power, what would likely happen to you if you were a descendant of the former king?

you are going to get killed. And so David calls Mephibosheth. He says, bring him to me. And here comes Mephibosheth going, it's all over. It's all going to be over now. And so he comes into the presence of David, and he prostrates himself down on the ground. And David says to him, do not fear, for I will surely show you kindness to you for the sake of your father Jonathan, and will restore to you all the land of your grandfather Saul, and you shall eat at my table regularly. Now, why do I bring up David and Mephibosheth? Well, I bring it up to say there's something about mercy in this that we need to learn. David proactively sought out a place, looked for someone weaker, looked for someone that he could be kind to, and then acted on it. My point in saying it to you is, if you're sitting here thinking, well, I would be merciful, I just don't know where I'm supposed to be merciful. I don't seem to have opportunity to do it. That's because you're not looking for opportunities to do it.

David looked for an opportunity to do it. The Samaritan man walked by the road. He saw a need. He took initiative to meet it. If you want to find opportunity to be merciful, you have to look for it. You have to cultivate it. Now, the thing that undercuts our initiative is the thing that the Pharisees or the scribes did with Judas. See to that yourselves. We can either cultivate initiative and looking for Or we can cultivate the opposite, which is, I'm perpetually washing my hands of all of the responsibilities of other people. I think one place you see this in our society, I certainly see it in myself and in you, is with social class, with poor and rich, or black and white. The rich don't have concern for the poor. And you and I, we're rich.

You might think I'm not rich, and I'm like, yeah, you're richer than the poor. You may not be rich enough for your taste, but that's only said to your shame. You and I, we all have more than enough, more than a lot of people. And we look on those who are less fortunate or have less, and we think to ourselves, that's your fault. That's your fault. You should do something about that. I don't know all the details of how all of you guys grew up, but I can tell you myself. I grew up poor, okay? I grew up in a home where there was one parent, no dad. I grew up in a home where there were two full-time jobs worked from the time that I was in kindergarten through the time I could get a job and start contributing money to the home. I grew up in a two-bedroom, one-bathroom house that before we put an addition on it was about 600 square feet, okay? Very small, very poor place.

By the time I was in probably fourth grade, I was staying home at night in the ghetto while my mom went and worked a night shift job at a gas station. Now, some of you may have lived that way. You may have lived worse than that. But my suspicion is the vast majority of you look at that and are like, oh, when you hear gunshots and you're home alone and what you have is a Rottweiler because that's what I grew up with. First a pit bull and then a Rottweiler. And everyone knew we had the dog because that was what was to keep the bad guys away. So that's how I grew up. That was poor. There are things about growing up that way that education and common sense don't fix. Okay? There's a way of life. And to the people who looked at me and said, see to that yourself. You'll have to fix that. You shouldn't do those things. And by the Lord's kindness, I was protected from a lot of the cultural

go-withs. Drugs, largely. Never done drugs. But the type of lifestyle that that breeds, many of those who are rich look at that and say, yeah, you'll have to see to that yourself. You need to pick yourself up by your bootstraps. You need to get out of there. I'll tell you, it's very, very hard to do when you don't know anything else. When there's no one who looks at your report card, ever. When you get asked a few weeks before your senior, you know, your graduation, are you going to graduate? By people who love you. But that's the level of involvement there's been in your upbringing. To look at that person and say, just figure it out. I can tell you, they don't just figure it out. So do we look at that person, who is me, your pastor, and do we say, that's your problem? Or do we have mercy? Do we see that sort of a circumstance? And this is just a foil. This is just an example.

Can we look at that and say, you know what? There's an opportunity to be merciful to someone, to see their needs and to care for them. There were people in my life who were merciful to me. I didn't have a dad, so my mom put me in Big Brothers and Big Sisters. And the man who cared for me for a few years was merciful to me. And he was a liberal Christian who went to a liberal church. But he loved me. And his wife loved me. And they had me into their home, in their nice neighborhood, and they cared for me. I hope you're getting a sense of this mercy I'm talking about. I remember asking my big brother, how'd you get into Big Brothers Big Sisters? He's like, oh, my church just put on a, they just had someone from the organization come in and give a talk. And he was an engineer and his wife was a social counselor in a school. And they went home and they talked about it and said, well, we think we could do something like that. So they ended up with me.

They chose to be merciful. And I don't know that they have any idea what they actually gave to me. So the first sort of mercy that we should be involving ourselves in is this sort of mercy. The mercy that sees those who are less fortunate than us and doesn't wash our hands of them. And say, that's their problem and they will have to see to that themselves. I will tell you, politics has demonstrated it's incapable of dealing with this. With poverty. It's incapable of dealing with. Their only answer is education. We just need more education. It turns out that education, apart from love and morality, doesn't fix the problem. And we could get angry about the politicians and all of their failures to do their job. But have we been merciful? Have we done our job? Or is it our place to neglect the mercy that is ours to do and then point the finger at them and say, you didn't do your job? That'd be a shame.

That is a shame. You remember the account in the Bible where the guy that had wanted to throw a feast and all the people said, I can't come, I can't come. And he sends his servants out and he says, go out into the highways and go out and bring them in. Bring them in. Bring in all of the poor. Bring in all of the lame. Bring in all of the people who can't pay you back. Bring them in. We ought to be doing the same sort of thing. The Bible tells us in another place that we should show hospitality to those explicitly who cannot repay us.

So if we're going to be hospitable people as Christians, we should have this idea in our heads, who do I have in my house that is unable to repay me? Who do I feed who's not going to in turn feed me? And if there's none of that, then we're not being merciful. There's another type of mercy that we ought to be pursuing as well, and this one is similarly difficult. This is the mercy that's needed when someone sins against us. Jesus told a story in Matthew 18 about a slave who was married and who had children who owed a great debt to his master. And the master called him in and wanted to settle accounts with him and says, you need to pay me all that you owe me. And the slave says, I can't pay you all that I owe you. And the king says, then what I'm going to do is I'm going to take you and your wife and your children and I'm going to sell you so that I can recoup some of my cost.

And the slave begs him and he says, please, please, please don't do that. I'll repay. Just give me enough time. And the king is moved. And not only does he not sell him, he forgives his debt. He shows mercy. And then that slave walks out the door and goes to a man who owes him a tiny little bit of money and starts haranguing him. Give me what's mine. Give me what's mine. Consider this master for a minute and tell me. Would he have been right to sell that slave and his wife and his children to recoup some of his cost? Yes. That master had justice on his side. He had fairness on his side. The slave was delinquent in paying. Yeah. But the Bible says that that Lord, that master, felt compassion and released him and forgave his debt. But that slave didn't do the same thing.

That master chose mercy instead of justice. Chose inequality as opposed to fairness. Do we do that? Or are we searching with all of our eyes and our hearts looking for where is the justice? What is mine? What are my rights? What am I entitled to? And I'll have what's mine. It's an interesting thing. I think often we're just like this slave. We want, seek after, and expect mercy from others. But we soak it up like a sponge and we never extend it to others. You have to have grace and patience and mercy and kindness and all these things for me. But when someone comes and requires those things from me, nope, you didn't do what you were supposed to do. Nope, you did say that thing and it was wrong for you to say it. Nope, you did do that thing I told you not to do. The best way to avoid becoming like that slave who in the end got justice.

When the king heard of what he did, the king says, if that's how you are, then I'm going to do what's right. And he sold him. The best way to avoid becoming like that slave and having your life torn apart is by showing mercy toward those who sin against you. It's the last thing you'll want to do. Nothing inside of you is going to want to be merciful to your spouse or to your children or to your siblings or to your parents when they sin against you. But you remember that these beatitudes are not natural to us. A natural man, an unbeliever, is not capable of these things. But these things are true of Christians. A Christian life should be marked by mercy, particularly the mercy of forgiveness and kindness when you're sinned against. Instead of keeping track of the offenses, instead of being cynical or hopeless, instead of being unwilling to forgive, be merciful.

And let love cover a multitude of sins. You will be sinned against, but the fact is you sin against other people just as much as they sin against you. And only a fool thinks that they're better than their fellow man. Covering over sins with love is a sign of a merciful heart. If you're kind to people who are kind to you, it's of no benefit to you. It's of no credit. It doesn't matter. It doesn't begin to count until you're merciful and kind to people who aren't. kind, and merciful to you. You remember Jesus on the cross? What was his exclamation as they were nailing him to the cross? What did he say about the men? Father, judge them, for look what they're doing to your son. No, mercy. Mercy is what came out of his mouth. Father, forgive them, for they know not what they're doing. Forgive them as they drove the nails through his hands and feet.

If we hope that God will be merciful toward us and toward our sins, then it only follows that we ought to do the same with others. In the same way that John told us, if you say you love God but hate your brother, you're a liar. The same is true here. If you expect mercy from God but will not extend it to the people around you, you're a fool. This statement is a positive statement. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. But if we turned it into a negative statement, it would say this. Cursed are the unmerciful, for they shall not receive mercy. And so if the positive statement is true, then it follows that the negative statement is true too. And so we ought to be on guard not to think that we can receive mercy without giving mercy. If you know that you need mercy, God's mercy, and the mercy of your fellow man, then giving mercy is an attribute, a characteristic, a grace that you should work hard to develop.

Every time someone sins against you, you have an opportunity to be merciful. Which is to say, there are a lot of opportunities. What are you doing with them? I think part of the reason we are not merciful with each other is that we realize being merciful is a vulnerable thing and it opens us up to being hurt again. If someone sins against you and then you're kind to them, there's this unspoken thing that goes on in your head which is, if I'm kind to them, they won't do what they just did again. That's not true. And yet, you still should be merciful. But if I'm merciful, then they're just going to keep taking advantage of me. Yes, that does happen. And God is a righteous judge who will settle all of those accounts in his time and in his way. You're not supposed to be concerned with all of that. You're to concern yourself with being merciful. It does require a vulnerability. You will be taken advantage of. But if Jesus was merciful to those that sinned against him, shouldn't we be as well?

We should do away with this thought that I don't have to be merciful to people who are sinning against me. Because the end of that equation is I never have to be merciful to anybody. Because everybody sins. I've said before, I've asked the question, would you rather live in a world that's perfectly fair and just, or would you rather live in a world that's filled with grace and mercy? Which would you prefer? Do you think in terms of, what is mine? And what am I entitled to? If you do, you will not be merciful. If you think in terms of how would I like to be treated, then you'll be merciful. You see, and I'll end with this. Mercy is not the sort of thing that, it's not a bargaining chip. Our relationships with other people are not these contractual obligations. If I do this, then you will do that. And then I, it's, that's not how it works. That's not how Christians should think.

Too often in our day, we think in terms of, what will I get out of it? The kids will obey the parents if I can get what I want. The wife will submit to the husband if he'll do what I want. We have to do away with this sort of thinking, this give to get. I will give this if I get that. That we have to do away with and replace it with, what does my God, who sent his son to save me, require of me? And if he requires you to die, then he's not requiring anything more of you than he did of his own son. And so I don't know how to say to us that you're precious in God's sight, he does love you, and you will suffer and be sinned against in your service to him. And he's no man's debtor, and you at the end of it all will not say, this was a mess and I never should have done it. If you persevere, if you quit in the middle, then you won't receive your reward. Why should you be merciful?

Because God is merciful. That's why. Will you get sinned against? Yes. Expect it. Don't even flinch when it happens. Yes, you will be. Yes. Love your enemies. We'll come to that. Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you. Jesus said, you've heard that it was said, an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but I say to you, that's the contractual part of it, right? An eye for an eye and a tooth for the tooth. You've heard that it was said, but I say to you, love your enemies. and pray for them. Well, if I do, they're going to continue to oppress me. That may be. They may still be mean to you. They may still sin against you. That's okay. It really is okay. If you want to be a recipient of the mercy of God, if you want him to look on you with mercy, then you have to look on the people around you with mercy, both those who are weak and poor and unable to provide for themselves and to those who sin against you. Look on them with mercy.

As a father has compassion on his children, so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him. He knows our frame. He is mindful that we're but dust. So be merciful to others the way your Heavenly Father has been merciful to you. Let's pray.