Christ Methodist Church Memphis
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Christ Methodist Church Memphis
Blessed Are the Merciful | Daniel Baldwin
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Daniel Baldwin, Director of Middle School Ministry, steps into the pulpit for the first time in a Christ Methodist Church worship service with a message on Jesus’ words, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.”
What does mercy look like when someone has genuinely hurt us? Through Matthew 5:7, Daniel explores the relationship between mercy and forgiveness, why Jesus calls us to love our enemies, and how the mercy we receive at the cross gives us the grace to extend mercy to others.
When forgiveness feels impossible, the cross reminds us both how deeply we have been forgiven and where we can find the strength to forgive.
Welcome to the podcast of Christ Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. Join us as we dive into this week's sermon that challenges our hearts and minds to grow closer to Christ. We pray that your heart is inspired and transformed by God's Word.
SPEAKER_01In reverence for the gospel of our Lord, please stand as we read from the Gospel according to Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 through
Mercy in the Kingdom
SPEAKER_017. Hear now the word of the Lord. Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain, and when he sat down, his disciples came to him, and he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. This is the word of God for the people of God. Thanks be to God.
SPEAKER_02Amen, amen. Friends, you may be seated. For those of you who are new worshiping with us this morning, welcome. It is good to be with you. If you are worshiping with us online, a warm welcome to you as well. For those of you who have been with us before, I'd like to congratulate you. Maybe you invested in prescription contact lenses, prescription glasses, maybe ELASIC surgery, or maybe you can your eyes just work. However it is you are seeing me this morning, I am not Paul Lawler, nor am I Hal Hall, nor am I Brad Bogue, William Merriman, or any of our fine distinguished teaching pastors on staff at Christ Church. My name is Daniel Baldwin, and I have the honor of serving as the director of Middle School Ministries, and it is an honor to be with you all. As you heard read, we are continuing our series on the Beatitudes. And this morning we will be diving into the Beatitude of Mercy. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. And we are going to dive into that. But before we do that, I would ask that you all invite me, not invite me, but please attend with me to the throne of mercy and pray. Holy Spirit, you are welcome in this place. We ask now that you would fall like fire. God, I am aware of the word that you want to say, but I am unaware of the heart that you want to speak it to. And so, God, over the whole room, I just pray that you would soften our hearts, turn the hearts of stone into hearts of flesh. Living God, would your living word now speak to us? Holy Spirit, would you teach us this morning? Would your people hear your voice and be freed for joyful obedience? We pray these things in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.
A Forgiven Debtor
SPEAKER_02There was once a king who wanted to settle an account within his kingdom. And so one of his servants came in to settle his account. This servant owed the king ten thousand bags of gold. This was more than all of the gold that would have been had in the king's treasury. Friends, this is more gold than likely would have been in circulation at this time. And so coming into this situation with the king, he knows where he stands. But regardless of it, he comes in. So he looks before the king, and the king says, Pay me back what is owed. And the the the servant he empties his pockets and says, I I can't. And so he gets down on his knees and he starts begging for mercy. And rather than execute him, cast him out, put him in prison, the king has mercy on him, cancels his debt, and sends him on his way. So then that servant goes out into the village, having been forgiven this massive debt more than any money that he would ever make in a lifetime. And he sees one of the servants who owes him a hundred silver coins. And rather than show him mercy, he gets angry. He sees this servant and says, Pay me back what you owe me. And the servant he empties his pockets and says, I I can't. And rather than show him the mercy that was shown to him, the the servant he grabs him by the neck and says, He gets angry. He says, Pay me back what you owe me. And he has him thrown in prison until he can pay back his debt. Friends, those of you who are familiar with this story know that this is not how the story ends. But for our conversation for right now, I'm just going to put a pin in this story and we will return to it. But as we're wading through this story, I'm reminded of something that C.S. Lewis once said about forgiveness and mercy. He called it the most unpopular of virtues. He even went as far to say that mercy is a great idea. Forgiveness is a great idea. That is, until you have someone to forgive, which I think is interesting because of something actually that John Wesley said once when he preached on this beatitude as well. And he said that mercy is the epitome of true religion. Friends, mercy and forgiveness, they tend to be unpopular virtues in our culture because it's unnatural to our sin nature. And because of this, this beatitude, like some of the other beatitudes that have come before it, can sound a little backwards. Because when we remember that the word here for blessed is macarous, which means to be happy. It sounds backwards when we say, happy are those who mourn. Happy are those who show mercy to those who hurt us. We realize this can sound backwards.
Mercy Beyond Forgiveness
SPEAKER_02And so I think before we get too far into these conversations, I do just want to parse out. We tend to talk about forgiveness and we tend to talk about mercy kind of interchangeably, but there is actually some distinction that I think would be helpful for us to look at. And so a quick search from Merriam-Webster's defines forgiveness like this. It says, forgiveness is defined as to cease to feel resentment against an offender. Pardon is pardoning of an offense. This is letting go of something that was done to you. Mercy is defined like this compassion, leniency, or restraint, as in opposing punishment and imposing punishment, shown especially to an offender or to one subject to the power of another. And so when we look at these two words, we actually see that mercy is a little bit deeper than forgiveness. It's forgiveness plus a little bit. The merciful beatitude, friends, is one of the beatitudes that actually gets a corresponding elongated section later in the Gospel of Matthew, chapter five. And so I think it's helpful for us to read through those verses. And so this is Matthew 5, 38 through 42. This is Jesus. He says, You have heard it said, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, but I tell you, do not resist an evil person. If anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to them the other cheek also. And if anyone wants to sue you and take your shirt, hand over your coat as well. If anyone forces you to go one mile with them, go two miles. Give to the one who asks you, and do not turn away from the one who wants to borrow from you. Jesus says, Do not resist an evil person. Friends, this word comes from the word anthisday me, and a standard Oxford Greek English lexicon would transl this translate this as to oppose. And the imagery with this world, with this word is kind of to oppose as in battle. This is how two cowboys would stand off in a duel, ready to duel, kind of oppose one another. This is how two knights in a joust would be opposing from one another, or two boxing people in the ring. They're opposed. Jesus calls kingdom people not to put up your dukes, not to reach for your sixth shooter, not to ready your blade, but to lay down your arms and open them wide. When we think about mercy, compassion, and forgiveness, these are things that are inherently difficult for us to grant in our sin nature. It's hard to look at an offender and have the in and fight the instinct to fight back, especially when they struck us first. We see this in our culture all around us. We see an endless and overwhelming amount of TV shows, books, movies, songs where the whole purpose of some characters to seek out revenge, get back for what was done to them, songs where the whole purpose is to get them back and get them back good. We have, if we examine the human heart, we see that we have a desire rather to show mercy, it's to get back, get them good, get even, get what was done to us. And I'm in this, I'm reminded of a story of when I was a boy, I would be messing around with my friends in between soccer games on the playground, and we would be wrestling, just doing boy things. And it was always inevitable that someone would get slapped a little bit harder than that was what was kind of socially acceptable for what was going on. And we would all usually clock it and be like, and we'd all like he would get it. And so he'd be like, oh, and they try to get out of there, and we'd chase him down, and he'd eventually he'd be like, okay, okay. And then he'd be like, here, just hit me back, but hit me as hard as I hit you. And then the process would begin where we're just going back and forth. Oh, I hit you this hard. No, you hit me way harder than I hit you. And by the end of this inner interaction, we leave looking like pink striped zebras because we've just been back and forth, back and forth, trying to get even for what was done to us. And so, friends, rather than sit around slapping each other, Jesus says, if someone strikes you, turn to them the other cheek. Let it go. If they want your shirt, give them your coat also. If they make you walk one mile with them, go two miles with them. This is where the expression comes from: go the extra mile. I said earlier that mercy was a lair deeper than forgiveness, because this is not only that we pardon this person of an offense, but we also respond with generosity, a genera, a generous spirit. Verse 42 says, give to the one who asks of you. One commentator said that mercy is forgiveness paired with generosity.
Love Your Enemies
SPEAKER_02If we keep reading in Matthew chapter 5, verse 43 reads like this: it says, You have heard it said, love your neighbor and hate your enemy. But I tell you, love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your Father in heaven. Jesus is building on this call to generosity in the face of wrongdoing because he recognizes something. We can be generous while having bitterness in our hearts. He name drops the Pharisees in Matthew chapter 5, verses 20. And they represent this. They are evidence that you can keep the law while having your hearts very far from God. I remember when I was a kid, again, in Boy Scouts and in 4-H group, I would go and do these service projects, not because my heart was in it, but because I was trying to get a marriage badge or I needed to get service hours. I would go and do these things. But friends, my heart was far from the cause I was serving. I had selfish ambitions. It was not because I was there to be there, it was because I was after my own personal gains. Friends, you can keep the law of God while your heart is far from God. But you cannot love your neighbor if your heart is far from God. And so he calls us to love our enemies. What does it mean to love? A simple definition of love that theologians have clung to for decades. Wesley used it, Luther used it, Aquinas used it, Augustine used it, but he's actually the one who said it first. He said, love is fundamentally about willing the good of another person. He emphasized that true love involves desiring the well-being of others for their own sake rather than personal gain. Jesus says that the person who's done you wrong in word or in deed, the person who pulled the rug out from under you and left you flat on your back, love that person. Pray for that person. Why? John 13, 35 says, All men will know that you are my disciples if you keep the law, if you come to church on Sundays, if you tithe, if you love one another. Friends, this is evidence that you are following a king, you are serving a king of a different kingdom that is not of this earth, when you have the ability to look at someone who's done you wrong and will their good despite the wrong done to you. Like who? Jesus says, as your Father in heaven
Rich in Mercy
SPEAKER_02is perfect. This brings us to two points that I think we need to name before we go too much further into this conversation. And it's these two points. God is rich in mercy, he is the one rich in mercy, and humans are poor in spirit. R. C. Sprolls famously said that Christians have nothing to be smug about. We're not righteous people trying to correct the unrighteous, just one beggar trying to find, just one beggar trying to tell another beggar where to find bread. In God's mercy, he calls us in, he offers us bread. God is not the God who says, somebody get these beggars out of here. He is the God that says, give them some bread, let's cancel their debt. One scholar points out that the only time God is mentioned as being rich in something is in his regard to mercy. Ephesians 2, 4 through 5 says that because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ when we were dead in our transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved. Because of his great love, friends, in a culture of dues and debts and payments and bills, it's I think we have to be reminded that God doesn't owe us anything. But because of his great love, that is overwhelming, he made the gap. He cancels our debt because he loves us. Friends, in the currency of mercy, God is a billionaire and humans are severely in debt because of our sin nature. The story I told earlier about the king and the two servants, this is represented. The two servants both are in need of mercy, and it's only the king who grants mercy. The thing is, if we are citizens of the kingdom of heaven, there should be some evidences that we serve the King of Heaven. Shouldn't there be? 1 John 3 1 says, See what great love the Father has lavished on us that we should be called children of God, and that we are. Something I think that we know to be true is that you take the traits of your parents. Sometimes you end up saying things they they say, that you end up doing things they do, and sometimes, despite our best efforts, we still end up saying things they say. And this is true of our spiritual life as well. Dane Ortland wrote a book called Gentle and Lowly, where he says something similar. He says, He is the Father of mercies. Just as the Father begets children who reflect who he is, the divine father begets mercies that reflect him. There is a family resemblance between the Father and mercy. He goes on to speak of God the Father, as the Father of mercies is to say that he is the one who multiplies compassionate mercies to his needy, wayward, messy, fallen, wandering people. Our Heavenly Father is a billionaire of mercy, and he grants his children an allowance of mercy that we then can give to the people around us in our lives. And so I think we have to pump the brakes here and just ask When you look in your life, do you see the resemblance? Do you see the deposit of mercy? Is there any mercy coming out at all?
Mercy Must Come In
SPEAKER_02I asked this because of an observation that John Piper made when he preached this sermon on the Beatitude Mercy as well. He made an observation that when mercy is not coming out, it's because mercy has not come in. Friends, we can't be given, we can't give away something that we ourselves have not received. Mercy is a stream that comes from the God of mercies into our hearts and out into our lives. And so, friends, you can't make a withdrawal of mercy unless it's first been deposited. And so I've got to ask again, when was the last time you sat at the feet of the mercy seat and let him deposit mercy, his mercy, into our needy state? And friends, I do just from a pastoral standpoint, I do just want to address the hearts in the room. I understand that in a room this size, there are probably people carrying major wounds, deep wounds. And even just this talk of mercy is already salt in a wound that might be gaping wide open. And it's just salt right in it as we're trying to heal. And you're thinking, in this moment, you're thinking, Daniel, I hear you, but I just can't let that go right now. And we we have this death grip on the debt that someone else owes us, something they did to us, said to us, took from us. And you might be saying, Daniel, you don't know what they did to me. You don't know what they took from me. You don't know the way I was betrayed, denied, you don't know the way I was rejected, you don't know the way they beat me down, the way they mocked me. You're right. I don't. I don't know that. I don't claim to know that, friends, and I do just actually I want to validate that those wounds are deep and that they are fresh. But friends, can I can I give you this truth? And please don't tune me out when I say this because it's powerful.
Christ’s Wounded Mercy
SPEAKER_02Jesus can wipe away those tears. Don't tune me out. Jesus can heal those wounds. Why? Because he himself has cried them. Was it not Jesus who was betrayed by Judas, one of his followers? Was it not Jesus who was denied by Peter, one of his closest friends? Was it not Jesus who stood before the crowd and heard their cries shout, crucify him? Friends, remember the words of John 1, 11, and 12. He came to that which was his own, but his own did not receive him. And friends, as Jesus hung on the cross, be and beyond recognition, bleeding, those nearby mocked him. And he cried out, My God, my God, why have you abandoned me? Friends, in your life, the tears you cried, Jesus cried for you. And in your life, when you cried those tears, he cried them with you. But friends, Jesus' wounds were gaping wide, and his hurt was never greater. But yet his wounds didn't make him curse or cast judgment. What did he say? He cried out, Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do. Hear the echoing of love your enemy, pray for those who persecute you. On the cross, Jesus demonstrates the very thing that he's asking of his original audience of the Beatitude, and He's demonstrating the very thing that He asks of us today. Love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you. So I don't know what you're walking through, I don't know what you're going through, what wound you hold, what scar is healing over. But friends, can I comfort you with this truth? Nothing is wasted. God used the wounds of the cross. Was it not, and friends, I wish I could say that God waits until the wounds are healed to use them, but it is while the blood on the cross is fresh and dripping that the centurion nearby looks on the cross and says, Surely this was a righteous man. Surely this was the Son of God. And then if we also fast forward, we see after the resurrection, was it not Jesus' scars that he used to convince Thomas that it truly was him risen from the dead? Friends, if you are carrying a scar or a wound, may I comfort you and say that God didn't intend that to happen. God didn't cause that to happen, but he is so rich in mercy that he can hijack what someone used to hurt you and transform it to be used for his ultimate purpose. Charles Spurgeon once said, Let us go to Calvary to learn how we may be forgiven. And let us linger there to learn how we are to forgive.
The Cross and Mercy
SPEAKER_02Friends, one of my favorite places in the world to go is the Grand Canyon because I love being reminded of how small I am. Often we we know in our head that we serve an all-powerful God that is just outside of time and space. But sometimes when we see something so big like the Grand Canyon, it's hard for us to comprehend all that it is. And so I love just sitting there and just taking it in because you kind of forget yourself. Friends, the cross is similar. Oftentimes we can be guilty of reading John 3.16 and driving by it 100 miles an hour because we've read it before. But friends, I must caution us in doing this because we've got to step out of the car. We've got to stop, put it in part, get out, and take in all that it is. Otherwise, we're gonna be guilty of doing what the first servant did, who was forgiven his debt of 10,000 bags of gold, and then he just goes about his day like nothing happens, sees someone who's wronged him, and casts judgment. When we forget ourselves at the cross, we can be transformed. And if we remember, excuse me, the Beatitudes are building blocks. They're not individual things that are standalone, they build off of one another. And if we look backwards at Matthew 5, 6, blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, they will be filled. Friends, this filling happens at the throne of grace. Hebrews 4 16 says, Let us then approach God's throne of grace with confidence. Excuse me, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need. So friends. Let me ask you, are you in need of mercy this morning? Do you need grace? Are you in a time of need? Because I have good news for you. The king sits enthroned on the mercy seat and he looks on us with compassion. He's empathetic to the human need, ready to fill your cup with righteousness. But, friends, we must first get out of our seat and approach the throne of grace and sit at his feet so that we might be filled, so that it would overflow and spill into our lives. Otherwise, we will be quick to cast judgment. We'll be quick fused in our heart. Your tongue will be quick to curse, your thoughts will be prone to wander, and in our flesh we won't seize those thoughts and take them captive, but we'll let them wander. Friends, we must approach the throne if we are to be filled. If it is in you, it will come out of you. And if it comes out of you, it too will be shown to
Mercy Over Judgment
SPEAKER_02you. Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy. Friends, the story I told you at the beginning of the two servants and the king comes from Matthew chapter 18, but I didn't finish the story, so now I'm going to unpin it and we're going to pick it back up. This is the conclusion of this of the story. But so after the forgiven servant goes and casts judgment on his servant, has him throws in prison, the king hears of the way that this all went down. And this is how it concludes. Then the master called the servant in. You wicked servant, he said, I canceled all of your debt. I canceled all of your debt of yours because you begged me to. Shouldn't you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you? In anger, his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back what he owed. Friends, the standard that we use to judge others will be used to judge us. And Jesus adds to this. This isn't a one-off thing. Jesus adds to this later in Matthew 6, 14 through 15. He says, For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your heaven your father will not forgive your sins. Friends, Jesus said this so much it's fitting that his half-brother James, in his epistle, he wrote something similar in James 2, 13 through 14. It says, Speak and act as those who are going to be judged by the law that gives freedom. Because judgment without mercy will be shown to anyone who has not been merciful. Mercy triumphs over judgment. I know someone in the room must be thinking, why is unforgiveness such a big deal? Friends, sin is the biggest deal. I can't over overstate that. This is the highest of offenses. But often we think about sin as outward things. We think about things we do, like adultery, lust, swearing, stealing, murder, things we outwardly do. But there's also sins that we think. Jesus talks about this in the Gospels where he says, if you even look on a woman with love, with lust, you have committed adultery with her in your mind. This is something John Wesley would have called an inside sin. There's another type of sin that John Wesley writes about called a sin of omission. This is a sin that we're guilty of by not doing something. And so there are sins that we commit by doing something, but also there's a sin that we commit by not doing. And so, friends, when we commit a sin of omission, such as unforgiveness, we still are guilty of sin and therefore are subject to the punishment for sin, which is distributed through judgment. Friends, and I understand this is sobering to hear. And in that, can we return to something that Matt that Jesus said in Matthew 9? He says this, Matthew 9, 13, he says, but go and learn what this means. I desire mercy, not sacrifice. For I have not come to call the righteous but the sinners. Jesus is quoting the prophet Hosea, but still the words speak. God's heart, friends, is not to dish out punishment, it's to withhold it. That's why Jesus went to the cross. But this does ask that we too be forgiving, be merciful in our lives when we consider all that we have been forgiven. Shouldn't we be? Shouldn't we be? I can't help but consider Jesus on the cross. He says, go and learn what this means. I think he demonstrated it. I think he demonstrated it.
Release the Debt
SPEAKER_02So friends, let me ask you. Who in your life do you need to settle an account with? Is it a sister? A brother? A parent? A child, co-worker, an old romantic interest, some other family member? Maybe it's your best friend. Maybe it's your spouse. Maybe it's your best friend and your spouse. Friends, can I just caution us against revenge here? Revenge is the most empty promise there is. No get back, no revenge will undo what someone did to you, said to you, took from you.
Mercy Heals the Heart
SPEAKER_02Friends, a lot in life is about perspective. To illustrate this, there was once two songwriters who dated. They broke up, and the girl wrote a song about the guy titled The One That Got Away. Well, the guy wrote a song about the girl titled I Dodged a Bullet. Life is about how you look at things and it's about where you're looking at it from. And oftentimes, mercy can kind of be viewed as this dirty laundry of Christianity that we have to do. And friends, I want to caution us against thinking about mercy like this because rather than think about it as this spiritual chore that we have to do, the reality is that mercy is the medicine that will heal your heart. I actually know someone who can testify to this, but per their request, they're going to remain anonymous. But for the sake of clarity, we're going to name the three characters involved, Jack, Jill, and Fred. Jack and Jill dated longtime boyfriend and girlfriend dated for multiple years, and they decided they wanted to get married. And so Jack started preparing for this. He bought a ring, asked the dad for the hand in marriage, and started to play in the proposal. And in this process, Jack wanted it to be big, so it took a little bit of time, and Fred entered the picture. And just because of life circumstances at the time, Fred and Jill had to spend time in proximity with one another. And before long, it came out that Jill had been unfaithful to Jack. The relationship would come to an end, and Jill would end up dating Fred. They would eventually go and get married. And so there Jack was, with an engagement ring and a massive part of what he thought would be a component of his future, gone. But the thing is, friends, Jack mourned, he went through all the the ugliness of this and he he took it on the chin, but he knew this text. And so rather than cast judgment as the whole world was telling him to do, he incorporated praying for these two people in his closet on his knees. And to be frank, he said it tasted like poison for a little bit. But little by little it got easier. And friends later, Jack would actually come to see Jill and Fred. And when he saw them, something shocked him. He wasn't angry, he wasn't mad, he wasn't resentful, he wasn't bitter. But what shocked him is that he felt nothing. Felt nothing. And in that moment, he learned that all those times he was praying for them on his knees in his closet, God was setting him free from what had happened to him. Can I tell you that nothing in your life that's happened to you is wasted? God will repurpose everything that has been done to you for his reasons. Mercy is not the dirty laundry of Christianity, friends. It is the medicine that'll take that'll make you better. And some of you are sitting, as I was when I was a boy, looking at your medicine, knowing it's gonna make you better, but you just won't take it. And so, friends, hear me this morning say taking that medicine is the best thing you can do for your heart. That's why God gave it to you.
Living the Beatitude
SPEAKER_02Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy, friends. This is not us trying to earn or merit our salvation, but this looks more like something C.S. Lewis says. He says, this is not hoping to get into heaven as a reward for your actions, but inevitably wanting to act a certain way because of a first faint gleam of heaven already inside you. Friends, if you are in the room today and you need to settle an account, the first step for you might look like praying for that enemy. These altars are always open. And I want to invite you, if you are in the room and you can feel the Holy Spirit convicting your heart this morning, and when you look in your life, you see an offense, you hear the words of an offender, and you can see the person who done you wrong, come to these altars. Take that first step with God. You don't have to come to these altars, you can do it in your seat, but take a moment to pray for them this morning. If you have business to do with God, friends, don't leave it unsettled. He is the king that wants to settle an account. He settles it with us, and so too shall we set it with those who are in our lives. Friends, in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Amen.
SPEAKER_00Thanks for tuning in to another episode of the podcast for Christ Methodist Church in Memphis, Tennessee. We pray that today's message has inspired and encouraged you in your walk with Christ. To stay connected with our church community, visit us online at ChristchurchMemphis.org. We hope to see you this upcoming Sunday for worship as we seek to glorify God and make disciples of Jesus Christ among all peoples.