The Golden Rule of Happiness
Sermon Transcript
0:00:14.0
Well, good morning everyone. Let's take our Bibles and turn to Matthew 5. We've been on this highway to happiness as we're studying the beatitudes of Jesus, and we've come to the fifth of eight beatitudes. This one says, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy." Shortly after the Civil War when the Confederate Army clearly had lost, a reporter came to President Lincoln and asked him a pointed question. He said, “Mr. President, what will you do with all the rebellious southerners who come back to the Union?” And, of course, the reporter’s question was meant to provoke the president. He wanted him to say, “They will be punished severely.” But the president surprised the reporter and everybody who was within earshot of him when he said, “I will treat them as if they had never gone away.” Now, that was a pretty powerful statement and a powerful day in the life our young country at that time. We might say that on that day in history mercy triumphed over justice. Now, think about that in light of what Jesus says in Matthew 5:7, “Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy.”
0:01:44.9
We take a sharp turn on the highway to happiness as we come to this fifth beatitude because, well, the first four beatitudes, if you've been with us in our study you may remember, that they kind of focus on our vertical relationship with God. We start in the first one with “poor in spirit.” We recognize our spiritual bankruptcy before God. We said, “Nothing in my hands I bring, simply to thy cross I cling,” was the idea that produces in us a contrition of heart. Not just a confession of our true spiritual condition, but a contrition that mourns over our sin. We talked about having a godly, not a worldly sorrow when it comes to how we've broken God’s commands. This yields in us a meekness of spirit. A humility before God. An honest assessment of who we are before him. And this, in turn, then produces a hunger and thirst for righteousness. When we see just how unrighteous we are before God, we begin hungering and thirsting for a righteousness that is not our own.
0:02:48.1
That describes our vertical relationship with God through faith in Jesus Christ. But as we turn the sharp corner on the highway to happiness and go to beatitudes number five through eight, they focus more on our horizontal relationship with others. “Blessed are the merciful.” Certainly, one who is rightly related to God through faith in Jesus Christ, vertically related to God, the natural overflow of that is, those who have received such mercy should be mercy givers. So blessed are those who show mercy to others, for mercy will come back to them.
0:03:23.8
I call this fifth beatitude the Golden Rule of Happiness because it sounds kind of like the Golden Rule. Blessed are the merciful, mercy will come back to you. Sounds like something else that Jesus said in his Sermon on the Mount just a few chapters later, “Do unto others as you would have those do unto you.” And it speaks to this thing that I like to call the “law of reciprocity” in the Scriptures. There's several places where this principle finds itself. One is in Luke 6:38 where Jesus says, “Give and it shall be given unto you.” Elsewhere in the book of Galatians the Apostle Paul writes, “Whatever a man sows, that shall he also reap.” I like this one from the book of Ecclesiastes 11:1, “Cast your bread upon the waters, for after many days you will find it again.” And then a couple of other places in the Sermon on the Mount. Matthew 6:15, this is kind of the reverse of it, “But if you do not forgive men, then your Father will not forgive your transgressions.” Think about that for a moment. Or in Matthew 7:1 where Jesus says, “Do not judge, lest you be judged.” This law of reciprocity.
0:04:40.1
Think about when you go to the doctor and the doctor takes that little rubber hammer and he says, “Put your knee up here.” And he taps it on the knee, and your knee kind of has a reflex to it. Well, what's true in the physical realm is also true in the spiritual realm. God has built a sort of moral reflex in the universe. He says, “If you show generosity to others, generosity will come back to you. Give, and it shall be given unto you. If you sow pure and holy thoughts, then you will reap a pure and holy lifestyle,” is the idea. “Whatever a man sows, this will he also reap.” If you forgive others, God will forgive you. “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” If we judge others with harshness and cruelness, then the same measure of judgment will come back to us, Jesus says. Very interesting kind of law of reciprocity. God’s moral laws and the reflex in the universe there is as certain as the physical laws that we find in the universe as well.
0:05:44.4
James says in 2:12 and 13 of his book, “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.” And that's true as James writes about it. It's true at the end of the Civil War when President Lincoln chose mercy over judgment and justice. And it's true in our personal lives as well.
0:06:17.5
Well, what is mercy? Let's try to define this a bit and get our minds around it and our hearts around it. In his book titled, Rich in Mercy, Pope John Paul II says, “Mercy is manifested in its true and proper aspect when it restores to value, promotes and draws good from all forms of evil existing in the world and in man.” He goes on to describe mercy as, “A broad, transformational virtue that resembles reconciliation.” And I like that idea. I like that thought. Because, “Blessed are the merciful,” has something to do with you and I building bridges of reconciliation, merciful bridges of reconciliation to people who have wronged us. And the reverse of that happening as well.
0:07:18.1
By the way, how many of you in all the years of your life have ever been wronged by another person, or have ever wronged somebody? Works both ways, doesn't it? All of us have done that. All of us have experienced both sides of that. And so, “Blessed are the merciful,” I mean, it really gets down to where the rubber meets the road in our relationships. Because this particular beatitude demands that I have a right spirit toward a person who has wronged me. And, “Blessed are the merciful,” leaves no room for resentment and bitterness and anger, jealousy and all those things that kind of get stuffed down inside of our spirit over the course of time as we are wronged and we wrong other people. And I know right now you're probably thinking of somebody where you've got just a little twinge of resentment toward them. And this is your beatitude. This is my beatitude. How can we who have received such mercy and forgiveness from our heavenly Father, the first four beatitudes, how could we not be mercy-givers as well, is the idea here.
0:08:38.1
Somebody once said that mercy, or the merciful are people who can get inside the skin of other people to feel their pain and to experience their deep needs. That's what a merciful person is certainly able to do. And we see this even in the incarnation. This is why in John 1:14 it says, “The word became flesh and dwelt among us.” That's a great Christmas passage. The incarnation. The idea that God became man. The word became flesh. God put on human skin. And because he was able to put on human skin, he was able to show mercy and act mercifully towards us in ways that perhaps he wasn't able if he'd chose not to move from heaven to Bethlehem. And I get this idea when I read the writer of Hebrews, in Hebrews 2:17, describing the Lord Jesus Christ, the writer says, “For this reason, he”—that is, Jesus—“had to be made like his brothers in every way.” That's the incarnation. God putting on human skin. Why did he have to be made like his brothers in every way? Well, “In order that he might become”—listen to this—“a merciful and faithful high priest in service to God”—I love that description of Jesus—“and that he might make atonement for the sins of the people.” And so here's Jesus, here's God putting on human skin so he can understand our deepest needs, so that he can relate to us, and so that he can move toward us in mercy and become that merciful and faithful high priest.
0:10:23.5
And there's one sense in which as we act mercifully toward other people, we repeat that process of getting inside their skin and understanding their pain and understanding their deepest needs. But mercy isn’t just about feeling something toward another person. Mercy, involuntarily and voluntarily, springs into action. Maybe this is what Shakespeare had in mind when he said, “The quality of mercy is not strained. It droppeth”—that's Shakespearian language, isn’t it—“it droppeth as the gentle rain from heaven.” Shakespeare said and kind of viewed mercy as something that was effortless in those people who were really merciful. It just kind of drops like the gentle rain from the heavens, he says, mercy does.
0:11:12.1
And when I think about that, I think about those of you who may, in fact, have the spiritual gift of mercy. Romans 12:8 lists mercy as one of the spiritual gifts. That means that some people in the body of Christ are given by the Holy Spirit a unique capacity to be merciful to others. That tends to show up in a number of ways. Those who are gifted with mercy tend to show up at the hospital earlier than others do when somebody's ill and needs attention. Mercy-gifted people are the ones who show up on your doorstep at a time of a family crisis, and they say, “Hey, is there anything that we can do?" Mercy-gifted people minster to others. They minster to us just by their presence. They don’t even have to say anything. Mercy just exudes from their being. I've met some people here who, I can say, they are mercy-gifted people and mercy just drops like gentle rain every time you're around them. I get the sense, too, that mercy-gifted people are also people who have an easier time of forgiving. They're kind of bent toward mercy, and God has gifted them that way.
0:12:34.4
Now, you may say, “Well, that's not me. I don't think that one of my spiritual gifts is mercy.” And I would put myself in that category. But that does not excuse the rest of us from embracing this fifth beatitude, “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.” It may just mean that we're more dependent upon the Lord to allow mercy to flow through us. It may not be as natural or as supernatural for us as somebody who may have that spiritual gift of mercy. But those of you who might have the spiritual gift of mercy, I beg you, come forward. Come forward and be a part of the body of Christ and exercise your spiritual gift. Just as a Sunday School teacher might, or somebody in the choir might, you have a spiritual gift, too, to exercise in the body of Christ, and we need you. I had this crazy thought this week, this picture in my mind of an Immanuel soldiers of mercy being scattered into every community, every geographic area in which Immanuel Bible Church reaches into northern Virginia. And can you imagine mercy-gifted people who are intentional about extending the merciful hands of Jesus Christ in a hurting world like ours? I mean, that would be a powerful, powerful expression of the body of Christ. So those who are mercy-gifted, we need you. And we need you to model for us what it means to extend mercy to others, and even to extend forgiveness when we’d rather harbor resentment and bitterness and anger toward those who have down wrong to us.
0:14:13.3
All that said, let's go to Matthew 18. Matthew 18 contains one of the parables of Jesus. Everybody loves a story. Jesus peppered his teaching ministry with stories, and one of the great ones is found in Matthew 18 beginning in verse 21. It's called The Parable of the Unmerciful Servant. And what's interesting about this particular story, this parable that Jesus told, it was preceded by a question that Peter had. Peter comes to Jesus and he says, “Jesus,” he says, “Lord how many times should I forgive my brother who has sinned against me?” And then, Peter, as you might expect, he answers his own question. He says, “Up to seven times, Lord?” And Jesus responds in verse 22, “I tell you not seven, but 77 times.” Some of your translations might say, “70 times 7.” All right? Whether it's 77 or 490, you do the math there, Jesus’s point to Peter was, “Peter, there ain't no limits to forgiveness or to mercy.”
0:15:25.4
Now, Peter might’ve thought he was kind of super spiritual saying, you know, “Up to seven times,” because the rabbis taught that you were only obligated to forgive somebody up to three times. So Peter comes along and says, “Lord, you know, up to seven? You know, at lest more than two times more, Lord?” But, no, the rabbis taught, kind of, three strikes and you're out, and you're no longer to forgive that person. And Jesus in his answer blows that out of the water. He sets no limits on forgiveness and the extension of mercy. And then he goes on to tell this story. He says, “Peter, let me illustrate for you. There was this king, this master, and he had a lot of people who owed him a lot money. And it was time to call in his debts. And so he brought them in one by one, and the first man was brought to him, and this man owed this king 10,000 talents.” Now, a talent was a kind of money in the 1st Century. And 10,000 talents was a debt you couldn't even fathom how much. Just call it $10,000,000, okay, that this guy owed his master. And the master was calling in his debt. And the man said, “I need more time. I don't have 10,000 talents. I need more time.” And the master did what he had the right to do. And that was to administer justice. He told the man to sell his wife and his children and to enter debtor’s prison until he could pay it back. And the man fell down on his knees and he begged for time. And you know what this king did, you know what this master did? He didn't even give him more time. Oh, no. He wiped out the debt entirely and said, “You're free to go.”
0:17:05.9
That's a merciful man, isn’t it? I wish my banker would come to me and just kind of wipe out my mortgage debt. I don’t want more time. I just want you to wipe it out. Show me mercy, Bank of America. But, you know, they're not gonna do that. It's called a bailout. That's what I'd like. I'd like, you know, a merciful bailout. All right?
0:17:26.6
So this guy who receives, you know, freedom from his debt, he goes out the next day and he bumps into a fellow-servant friend of his who owed him 100 denarii. Let's just call it $100. Okay? $10,000,000 versus $100. And what does this guy do? He grabs him by the neck, shakes him around and he says, “Pay me what you owe me.” And likewise, the guy begs for mercy. But the forgiven servant doesn't give him mercy. He throws him in to debtor’s prison. And their master finds out about this. Word gets back. And so he calls back the forgiven servant and he says, “What have you done?” In fact, let's pick it up in verse 32 here. It says, “Then the master called the servant in, he says, ‘You wicked servant. I canceled all that 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 turned him over to the jailers to be tortured until he should pay back all that he owed.” And then Jesus says this in verse 35. “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother from your heart.” Wow. Makes you want to be merciful, doesn't it?
0:18:50.6
Sinclair Ferguson, a pretty well-known pastor in our day and time, he comes to this point in the story and he asks a question. He says, (0:19:00.0) “How can we claim to be Christians, yet show so little mercy?” He says, “Is it because we have felt our own need of mercy far too little?" And that brings us back to these beatitudes, and to Foster’s understanding of the beatitudes a stairway that ascends toward heaven. It's not isolated understandings of it, but we take step one and step two and step three. Maybe the reason you and I still harbor that twinge of resentment and bitterness and anger is because we have forgotten how much we have been forgiven, and how much mercy has been extended to us. And if that is the case, friends, we need to go back and retrace our steps in the first four beatitudes. Acknowledging our bankruptcy before God. That's poor in spirit. Allowing God to work us over (0:20:00.0) to where godly sorrow, not the worldly sorrow of regret and remorse, but the godly sorrow of repentance gets ahold of us and it produces in us a meekness and humility before God, and a hunger and a thirst for a righteousness that we now see does not exist in our life. And when we begin to understand just how we have been recipients of mercy, then we come to this fifth beatitude, oh, yeah, in our horizontal relationships with others. You want to really be happy? Supremely blessed, exalted in happiness is the person who extends mercy to someone who has wronged him. Why? Because you stuff bitterness and anger and resentment and unforgiveness down in your spirit, and it's like a cancer that will eat away at you. Somebody once said bitterness is like drinking a bottle of poison and expecting it to hurt somebody else. Oh, no, it doesn't hurt anybody else. It hurts you. And it hurts me. And mercy is the antidote to that. But it flows out of the heart that says, “I have been the recipient of such incredible mercy, how can I even begin to hold another person hostage in my unforgiveness.”
0:21:23.4
There's kind of a thorny theological question we have to wrestle with here. And that is, does receiving God’s mercy depend on us showing mercy to others? You read this beatitude, and you read some other places…when you have time, go to Matthew 6:14 and 15, and Jesus talked about forgiveness. And it kind of sounds like, “If we don’t forgive others, God won't forgive us. If we don’t show mercy to others, mercy won't flow our direction.” I went to a trusted source this week, to John Stott, to resolve some of that theological tension. And here's what Stott says. “This certainly does not mean that our forgiveness of others earns us the right to be forgiven. It is rather that God forgives only the penitent, and that one of the chief evidences of true penitence is a forgiving spirit.” Did you hear that? One of the evidences that I really have been sorrowful for my sin is a forgiving spirit. He says, “Once our eyes have been opened to see the enormity of our offense against God, the injuries which others have done to us appear by comparison extremely trifling.” Wow. Maybe the reason it doesn't appear trifling what that person did to wrong you is because you don’t see the enormity of your wrongs against a righteous God and a righteous Father. And so we have to go back and retrace our steps up this ladder, up this highway to happiness.
0:23:11.2
Now, in the balance of our time remaining, I want to explore the interplay of justice and mercy. Because here's a question I had this week. Does this beatitude demand that I always, under every circumstance, choose mercy? What about justice? Isn’t God in the Bible both a God of justice and a God of mercy? And how do we balance that even in our relationships? A couple of Scriptures to set this up. Micah 6:8, “What does the Lord require of you?”—this is a great verse—“To act justly and to love mercy and to walk humbly with your God.” So there we have justice and mercy in the same sentence. How about Zechariah 7:9, “This is what the Lord Almighty says, ‘Administer true justice, show mercy and compassion to one another.’”
0:24:09.0
Are there ever times when it is the will of God to administer justice? Are there ever times when it is the will of God to show mercy? And how do you balance the two of those? And when it is the will of God to administer justice, is there a way to do that in a merciful way? Those are the questions that I wrestled with this week.
0:24:32.8
Let's think of it in a couple of categories. First, in the courtroom down at the Justice Department. I was living in Houston, Texas in 1998 when Carla Faye Tucker was executed for the brutal pickaxe murder of Deborah Thornton. She killed somebody and it was brutal. She was the first woman to be executed in the United States since 1984, and she was the first woman in Texas to be executed since 1863. 100 years before I was born. It was back during the Civil War time. Her case got international attention for two reasons: number one, her gender; and number two, because of her widely publicized conversion to Christianity. Carla Faye Tucker served on death row in the State of Texas for 14 years, and by all accounts, from the people who were close to her, including the chaplain and the pastor who would go in to visit with her, by all accounts, hers was a genuine faith conversion to Christianity. She knew Jesus Christ as her Savior. And so she asked, made a request to the State of Texas for clemency based on the fact that she committed the murder while under the influence of drugs. And there were a number of people, a number of voices that came to support her, including televangelist Pat Robertson, Pope John Paul II, then-Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich, the Italian Prime Minister, believe it or not, and even the brother of her victim supported her request for clemency. Carla was a changed person. For all the discussions about reform in our prison system, it happened with her by all accounts.
0:26:45.2
Interestingly enough, George W. Bush was the Governor of Texas at the time. A believer in Jesus Christ. What would he do? His justice, or his mercy? Well, then-Governor Bush did not commute her sentencing. And many people believe that Carla Faye Tucker received justice from the State at 6:45 p.m. on February 2nd, 1998. However, before she entered the merciful arms of her Savior, these were among her last words. “I love you all very much. I am going to be face-to-face with Jesus now. I will see you all when I get there, and I will wait for you.”
0:27:29.4
I tell you that story only to illustrate that when we exercise and administer justice it's always controversial. And even when we show mercy it's controversial. Gerald Ford figured that out when he pardoned Richard Nixon. Very controversial at the time, still controversial today. The President of the United States has the constitutional right to pardon if so chooses, and Gerald Ford at that time believed it was the best for the country to move beyond the Watergate scandal, but some people were calling for the criminal indictment of President Nixon. Justice, mercy? When we exercise justice, when we show mercy, it's always controversial. That's why it requires wisdom. A Micah 6:8 kind of wisdom. “What does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy as you walk humbly before our God.” And even when it is proper to administer justice, we must do so with a view toward mercy and in a merciful way. There's a way to do that.
0:28:48.4
What about at the cross? At the cross we find mercy and justice and grace coming together beautifully. Yes, the God of the Bible…you read the Bible and tell me if he is not both a God of justice and a God of mercy at this time. He is. But at the cross, his justice and his mercy and his grace and his righteousness were all satisfied. God would’ve been perfectly just to bring down the gavel and say, “Guilty as charged,” and send every one of us off to a place called hell. He would've been perfectly just in doing so. But rather, he chose to administer his justice and to bring the just penalty of our sins against his son, Jesus Christ, who died in our place. And in doing so, we were the recipients of mercy. See, justice is getting what you deserve. Mercy is not receiving what you surely deserve. But then, you add in grace at the cross as well. Grace is getting better than you deserve. You follow me there? And so at the cross of Jesus Christ, he says, “One option here is to receive Christ as your Savior, and you will not receive hell.” That's mercy. But God goes a step further and he says, “And as you receive my son, Jesus Christ, you'll receive heaven and eternal life. Better than you deserve.” That's grace. And grace and mercy and justice were beautifully satisfied, all three of them, at the cross of Jesus Christ.
0:30:24.9
Paul brings it all together this way in Titus 3:5, “He saved us not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to his mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit whom he poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, that being justified by his grace, we might be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life.” That's a great verse of Scripture. Commit it to memory this week. All right? Ephesians 2:4, Paul brings it together again. “But God, being rich in mercy, because of his great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ.” And then, he says, parenthetically, “For by grace you have been saved.” Okay?
0:31:16.9
How about one more realm of discovery here as we think about justice and mercy. What about in the home? In your personal relationships starting in the home? I found that in my parenting, in Cathryn and my parenting, we have to wrestle with two verses of Scripture. One in Proverbs that says, “Spare the rod, spoil the child.” Another one in Ephesians that says, “Fathers, don’t provoke your children to anger.” Okay? And think about the interplay of justice and mercy in the home and in your parenting. An unmerciful parent who’s all about justice and punishment and is legalistic with his kids and trifling about the matters of obedience and all of that, that heavy-handed, harsh justice in the home will produce an angry child. That's why I believe Paul said, “Fathers, don’t provoke your children to anger.”
0:32:21.6
But likewise, if you tip the scales too far in the mercy direction and you never discipline your kids, and a child grows up not understanding that there are consequences to bad behavior, then you produce an undisciplined child. And who wants that? And likewise, you may have one parent that kind of leans in the he direction of justice, and another parent that leans in the direction of mercy. Does that describe anybody's home here? All right? And when the kids find out which way you lean, oh, my. They play that age-old game called “Divide and Conquer,” don’t they? Maybe you need to balance that by coming together as parents and blending your natural parental tendencies, and say, “We need to act justly and love mercy.”
0:33:13.7
There may be times that that child needs to receive a just penalty. And when you do so, parents, make sure you punish that child and administer that justice out of a mercy flowing heart. There's a way to do that, okay, so you don’t provoke the child to anger. But there may be times that this child needs to be punished, and you choose mercy. And you sit down with that child and you say, “You know what? I want you to experience what it's like to be on the receiving end of your heavenly Father’s mercy. And I want you to know that what you did was wrong, but I'm gonna take the punishment for you, and you're not gonna get what you deserve at this time.”
0:33:57.6
What I'm saying, parents, is you need a big-picture view of discipline in the home so that you balance justice and mercy and raise up those kids in the nurture and instruction of the Lord. Legalism is a mercy killer. A harsh, cruel, unbending kind of discipline that trifles over little matters. This is why Jesus sent off a firebomb to the Pharisees in Matthew 23:23 and called them hypocrites. He said, “Woe to you because you've missed the bigger picture of justice and mercy and faithfulness as you minister people.
0:34:48.4
Well, that's a hard turn on the highway to happiness, isn’t it? But we are talking about what it means to live the blessed life. And why does Jesus include mercy in all of this? Well, because happiness is not your experience, fulfillment, that exalted happiness and supreme blessedness that is a beatitude is not ours if bitterness and anger and resentment is stuffed down inside of us. The antidote to that is, “Blessed are the merciful.” Who have been recipients of such mercy from God, how can we not forgive and extend mercy to others? This is how we live the Christian life. Let's pray together.
0:35:36.2
Father, thank you so much for your word, and thank you for this beatitude. Each one of them, boy, just challenges us to the core. Father, if there's anyone here today who has not been on the receiving end of your mercy, they’ve not trusted Jesus Christ as their Savior, oh, I pray that today would be a day of salvation for them. They would embrace the merciful hand of God. A God who acted both justly and mercifully at the cross, and then went over and above to give us better than we deserve by giving us eternal life. Thank you for that, Father.
0:36:15.3
I pray that in our personal relationships we would apply this beatitude as well. I know you've brought to attention all across this room persons who have wronged us for whom we still harbor that twinge of resentment and bitterness. Father, we're drinking that bottle of poison, thinking that it hurts another person, when we're the ones hurt by it. So would you release us from that? In our natural being we want to harbor resentment, but, Father, we need a supernatural response. Whether we're gifted this way or not, Lord, we just need your Holy Spirit to help us release that other person from the enslavement of our unforgiveness. And so help us to go out this week and be the extensions of the merciful hands of Jesus, our merciful and faithful High Priest who died on the cross for our sins. Clothed himself in human skin and moved toward us in mercy. We thank you for this in the name of Jesus, amen.
Total Time 0:37:49.8