Kingdom Life: The Truly Blessed Life - Part 2 (Mt 5:7-9)
Introduction
I’m so thankful for this teaching of Jesus. I mentioned that these words have consistently had a reorienting effect on my Christian life. I’ve consistently needed to repent of my incorrect thinking or heart posture when I’ve come to these words, and this text is no exception.
The Lord provided me with a few interactions this week that really brought some conviction particularly around the fifth beatitude, blessed are the merciful.
I was seeing particularly how times like these in our city can stir a lot of emotion for us. There are a lot of perceived enemies on both sides of this political war and the Lord has been showing me that the need for mercy, even more, purity of heart, and for a peacemaking heart posture is more needed than ever in these moments. The need for Christ’s character to show up through us as salt and light in this moment is so important.
Our flesh wants to rage against our enemies, but the work of the Holy Spirit does the profound work of manifesting the kingdom of heaven, even the merciful character of God, in his people even in interaction with enemies.
But their are spiritual traps in moments like these that we need to be aware of. People’s ideas of mercy and peacemaking can move beyond the heart of God and beyond the Gospel of Jesus. The mercy of God led him to come into the world calling for repentance of sin and belief in a Savior who came to rescue us from our sin through his own death.
So, we must pay careful attention that we exercise incredible mercy while also holding the line of truth and justice. This is a tension we’ll need to wrestle with today.
The first few beatitudes capture internal character descriptions or heart postures, which I summarized last week as a humble recognition of our position as needy beggars before God who alone can save. But there is an external relational dimension to the fifth, sixth, and seventh beatitudes.
They have an outward facing expression. Like every action, our heart towards others, our actions towards others comes from our inner heart posture or beliefs about God and the world. So even these outward expressions can only come as an outflow of a healthy heart posture described in the first several beatitudes. So these are all connected.
One more word before we dive in. Because we have so little to work with in this text, it is important that we draw on other teaches of Jesus to capture the meaning behind these words. The beatitudes are foundational for the entire message of the sermon on the mount, even Jesus’s entire teaching.
God’s Merciful Character On Display
English Standard Version Chapter 5
7 “Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
The truly blessed life, Jesus says, is a life defined by mercy towards others. Those who secure God’s favor, who should feel happy in this life, are those who are merciful.
What is mercy? This word is defined as “being concerned about people in their need, merciful, sympathetic, compassionate” (BDAG).
Mercy sees others condition, but not only sees, but their soul is moved by what they see. They feel in the depth of their being some of the other person’s pain. Compassion is a very similar but different word, which we see Jesus express when he saw the crowds in Mt 9:36.
English Standard Version Chapter 9
he had compassion for them, because they were harassed and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.
This word compassion expresses, likewise, a deep inner experience, feel it in your gut, makes your heart hurt, kind of experience. His heart was moved by what he saw.
Mercy, then, can’t allow you to be unmoved or unaffected by another’s sorrow or pain or condition, which is why we see Jesus so actively ministering healing and deliverance and Gospel teaching to the people he sees.
Jesus shows us clearly what kind of mercy he has in mind when he speaks to the Pharisees about his interactions with sinners. Turn to Matthew 9:10–13:
“And as Jesus reclined at table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were reclining with Jesus and his disciples. And when the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, “Why does your teacher eat with tax collectors and sinners?” But when he heard it, he said, “Those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice.’ For I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”
Jesus is with sinners because he is merciful. He is full of compassion for the spiritual sick, the spiritual orphan. He tells us, in fact, that this is why has come, “to call sinners.” Grieved by their plight, moved by compassion, Jesus came for those perishing in sin and calls them to repent and follow him.
This is mercy. And ultimately, it is a display of God’s mercy. It was the love of God for the dying world, were told, that drove the Father to send the Son. God’s heart was moved towards his dying creation, leading him at great cost to himself to send the Son to suffer for sins in the place of sinners. We’ve sung about this mercy all morning.
So, as Jesus teaches his new disciples, his apprentices who are going to be his hands and feet on earth, carrying out his teaching and mission, he shows us that he wants their hearts to be imprinted with God’s merciful nature. His desire for us is that we would be like the Father. Mercy that leads to compassion and movement towards the one in need.
Jesus is expressing what life in the kingdom ought to look like here and throughout this teaching, and he zeroes in on our heart posture towards others.
Jesus quotes this phrase “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice” from Hosea 6:6 many times in his teaching, showing us just how central mercy is to the heart of God. The word translated from the Hebrew here to mercy is steadfast love or hesed, a word constantly used to describe God’s covenantal love for his people and even all humanity. This is the same love that moved God to send his Son (Jn 3:16).
The second half of that verse from Hosea says: “[I desire] the knowledge of God rather than burnt offerings.”
Humans often miss God’s heart. They don’t know God, so they give their energy to things that don’t matter to him. Israel’s sacrifices were abundant but they didn’t have love for God or obedience to him or care for the people.
Jesus’s repetition, likewise, shows us that we often miss God’s heart. Humanity is very weak in this area. We are not prone towards mercy, but quick to condemn or self-justify. This is because we often do not understand the mercy of God towards us. We see ourselves as blessed and righteous as always perfectly righteous in our judgment of situations. But we often miss God’s heart even sometimes in our attempts to please God.
But Jesus shows us what truly pleases him. Merciful hearts please God. Even if you can highlight all the sin of a person or connect their suffering to their foolishness or sin perfectly, God invites us to look beyond that to that person whom God desires to show mercy to.
Don’t you know that God sees every sin, every flaw of our thinking and living? But that doesn’t hinder a heart of mercy. Think of the people of Ninevah. He knew their wickedness and was prepared to destroy them for it. But the heart of God is simply incredible. His heart is moved to compassion and mercy even by people who hate him and his people so that he sends a prophet to them to warn them with a relentless desire to save them.
Church, Jesus tells us that the truly blessed life is to have hearts formed and marked by God’s mercy torwards us, leading to merciful hearts towards others.
The promise here is that the merciful will receive mercy. From whom? From God! God desires to show mercy to all, but it is only those who know the mercy they’ve already received and thus respond towards others with that same heart that are shown the everlasting mercy of God, the mercy that casts our sin into a sea of forgetfulness, as far as the east is from the west, and treats us with such undeserved favor that we will feel utterly shocked by through all eternity.
But those who are proud, who do not know God’s mercy and thus respond in merciless ways, are not the blessed now, but instead are those who will not be shown mercy. Think of the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant, who after receiving the incredible mercy of his master for his astronomical debt of 10000 talents, turned to a fellow servant who owed him money and showed him no mercy. What was the outcome? The master said,
English Standard Version Chapter 18
‘You wicked servant! I forgave you all that debt because you pleaded with me. 33 And should not you have had mercy on your fellow servant, as I had mercy on you?’ 34 And in anger his master delivered him to the jailers, until he should pay all his debt. [Then Jesus said,] 35 So also my heavenly Father will do to every one of you, if you do not forgive your brother from your heart.”
God is unfathomably merciful to us and he wants us to be merciful like him out of an overflow of our gratitude for his mercy. When we are not, we have not yet grasped our true spiritual poverty, we have not grasped how great the forgiveness of God is if we fail to forgive from our heart.
A word here for our cultural moment.
Church, if your heart is not moved to compassion for the protester, for your neighbors who are angry about fellow Minnesotans getting shot and killed, for those who are perishing in sin and who direct all of their hope in political change rather than God, then you need a fresh look at your own poverty. If you are unable to sympathize with the pain of the immigrant in this moment, you need a fresh view of God’s mercy towards you, an alien in this world.
Church, we can analyze these situations to death, and form all of our judgments about the moment we are in, but I believe the call to each of us today is a heart posture bent towards mercy. See these people and move towards them in their suffering.
This does not mean we have to agree or join in everyone’s efforts or rhetoric in the same ways. In fact I would seriously caution you there.
Essential Warning:
Mercy is not Jesus’s call to all of us accept people’s actions and because we somehow care so much for their condition. No, mercy is moved by compassion but holds the line of righteousness. This has been called differentiation. Knowing where another’s thoughts and feelings stop and where yours begin. This is essential when it comes to societal pressures or strong emotional cultural moments, like the one’s we live in now.
You may remember that at Trump’s inaugural prayer service, Episcopal Bishop Mariann Budde pleaded with the Republican president to "have mercy" on immigrants and LGBTQ+ people. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/politics/is-empathy-a-sin-some-conservative-christians-argue-it-can-be
This is not Christ’s heart for mercy or peacemaking, which we’ll discuss shortly. This is where Jesus’s teaching about being persecuted and reviled for righteousness sake comes in verse 10. We will be persecuted for saying things like this in society. But it is evil to use mercy as a cover up for accepting a lifestyle of sin or a coverup for lack of wisdom in border laws.
Still show mercy
I do believe it is also evil to not show Christ’s mercy to the immigrant and LGBTQ+ people. We need to see the people, be full of mercy for them first, leading to speaking truth in love second. We are called to mercy, but that mercy will lead us to action in calling them to repentance or in seeking wisdom in political policies that may ultimately hurt immigrant communities.
But in your effort to hold the line of truth or wisdom or justice, do not lose God’s heart of compassion and mercy for your neighbor. If you do, you will only view them as an enemy and you will be guilty of great sin. You will not be reflecting the heart of your Father to the world, you will not be representing his Kingdom on earth, but in ways be defaming Jesus’s name.
When we see the hurting, mercy calls us to act in prayer, in ministry. When we see the lost, mercy calls us to move towards them with caring questions and hospitality and Gospel hope. When we see the foreigner, scared for themselves or their family, mercy calls us to learn about their needs and try to meet them as far as we are able, to offer comfort and support as far as we are able. God’s tender mercy and kindness drove him all the way to the cross to die for those who rejected him and wanted him dead. His mercy led him to stay on the cross and suffer to the end rather than curse and destroy his murderers. This is our God. May we be like him.
As we increasingly walk in merciful ways towards others, we can be assured that we are living the truly happy life in union with our Father and that he will show us the mercy we desperately need for our sins.
Let’s look now to verse 8, where Jesus keeps pressing into the heart of man.
Pure In Heart
English Standard Version Chapter 5
8 “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.
This beatitude is situated between two very outward facing postures, mercy and peacemaking. But even as it speaks of inner purity, I believe it, likewise, has an outward expression of imaging God to the world, of full obedience from the heart to God.
Matthew 1–7: A Commentary on Matthew 1–7 Interpretation
According to Jewish usage, “heart” designates not an area inside a person but the center of human wanting, thinking, and feeling.
So purity of heart is not about removing oneself from the world and its impurities, it’s not about a private devotional experience, but rather a heart surrendered and increasingly shaped by God and his Word even in the midst of a crooked and twisted cultural. It’s about consistently repenting of wants and desires not aligned with God’s, and consistently being conformed to the pure and holy character of our God.
When I was struggling with vanity in my early twenties, a mentor challenged me, “You’re not going to stop being vain by never looking in the mirror, Daniel.” Likewise, we don’t stop being vain by never going shopping for clothes. Rather, it’s allowing God to shape the inner desires of our hearts in the midst of those situations. It’s about a heart being formed by the Holy Spirit.
Likewise, we’re not going to start being merciful unless our hearts are marked by God’s unfathomable grace and mercy towards us.
In Matthew 23, Jesus doesn’t pronounce the blessing and favor of God on the Pharisees and scribes, but the woeful condition they were in. Why? Listen. Verse 25:
English Standard Version Chapter 23
25 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you clean the outside of the cup and the plate, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. 26 You blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and the plate, that the outside also may be clean. 27 “Woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! For you are like whitewashed tombs, which outwardly appear beautiful, but within are full of dead people’s bones and all uncleanness. 28 So you also outwardly appear righteous to others, but within you are full of hypocrisy and lawlessness.
The Pharisees and Scribes loved to appear before others as pure, but their hearts were full of hypocrisy and lawlessness, which unsurprisingly led them to lack mercy and compassion for others. Their pride kept them from seeing others and showing mercy. They just saw what was wrong with another but never themselves.
Life in the kingdom, the truly blessed life is not one that outwardly looks good before man, but one that has encountered the character of God in his Word and is shaped from the heart to respond to the world in obedience to him, imaging God’s character to the world.
Notice that the promise to the pure in heart is the hope of seeing the pure God. This reminds me of Psalm 24:3, which declares: “Who shall ascend the hill of the Lord? And who shall stand in his holy place? He who has clean hands and a pure heart, who does not lift up his soul to what is false and does not swear deceitfully. He will receive blessing from the Lord and righteousness from the God of his salvation. Such is the generation of those who seek him, who seek the face of the God of Jacob.”
What a beautiful promise. The one who seeks the face of the God of Jacob will stand in his holy place. Implied here, they will see his face. Only those with clean hands and a pure heart will receive this blessing from the Lord.
God is holy, which means he is completely pure and righteous. Jesus wants us to be pure like him.
That is not accomplished through mustering our strength, but by recognizing our spiritual lack, mourning our sinful condition, by hungering and thirsting for righteousness, and beholding our God in the face of Jesus Christ. As we behold the purity and holiness of our God, our hearts will have his Law written on it, we will get his heart and mind as the Holy Spirit transforms us day by day.
Church, blessed are you, when your heart is increasingly being purified by God as you behold him. You will soon behold him face to face and all of your sin will be finally cleansed away.
Let’s look at one more beatitude in verse 9.
Peacemakers called sons of God
9 “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God.
The truly blessed from heaven’s perspective are the peacemakers. This word is only used once in the New Testament. It’s a beautiful word that again reflects the heart and action of God. Colossians 1:19 has a very similar word describing what God did in Christ for humanity:
English Standard Version Chapter 1
19 For in [Jesus] all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, 20 and through him to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, making peace by the blood of his cross.
Sin wrecked relationship with God, with man, with animals, and the earth. But the kingdom of God in Christ brings reconciliation of the same – all things.
But notice the effort and sacrifice made in reconciling the world to himself. He made peace by the blood of his cross.
God worked to make peace with the world. He came, he died, he sent his Spirit to transform us into merciful and pure people, but also into peacemaking people, people who foster the heart of God, who model his character as sons of God.
This is bigger than intervention or mediation between two unreconciled parties, this is exercising efforts to see God’s shalom brought on earth in every circumstance so far as it depends on you. A peacemaker seeks order, harmony, and well-being in terms of relationships and interaction with the world around you. If sin brought an ever-increasing disorder in the world, the kingdom of God is meant to bring an ever-increasing peace to the world through God’s people.
This is not, of course, a worldly peace, but rather a godly peace. Worldly peace expects toleration and no confrontation. But Jesus said in Matthew 10:34 “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I have not come to bring peace, but a sword. 36 And a person's enemies will be those of his own household… Whoever finds his life will lose it, and whoever loses his life for my sake will find it.
Godly peace recognizes that peace with the world’s systems and lies, peace with sin, and the seeking of peace above love for God will not bring God’s peace. We must speak the truth in love.
Seeking peace is pursuing God’s righteousness on earth. This will lead to persecution, not everyone happy doing whatever is right in their own eyes.
Even still God’s call for peacemaking stems from his merciful approach.
Application: The church of Jesus must embrace this merciful and peacemaking heart of God in times like these. Our interactions with the world can be destructive and create greater disorder, or they can be productive, bring greater peace, clarity in conversation, and solid declaration of our hope in Jesus for healing and peace for all of our brokenness. Peacemaking is expressed by Jesus in love for enemies, in dropping our gift at the altar and making it right with the offended brother or sister. It is expressed even in Jesus’s ministry of healing, bringing about the well-being of all, a picture of heaven on earth.
But It is even expressed in turning tables in the temple. In calling out injustice and evil.
Happy are those who are peacemakers, blessed are the peacemakers, because they will be identified as sons of God. They will be identified as God’s people.
The one who is making peace with others through his son promises intimate relationship with the ones who enter into his peacemaking in the world.
What an amazing promise, what amazing promises.
Jesus is speaking to his disciples who have left all to follow him. they are repenting of their faulty thinking and aligning with the heart of God via King Jesus.
The Truly Blessed Life Is To Become Like Our God
We are learning in these beatitudes not only what pleases him and secures God’s favor and blessing, but also what he is like. The truly blessed life is to enter into relationship with our Father. It is to be united to him through Jesus and thus to be renewed into his image as we follow Christ. The truly blessed life is to know God’s heart and to have your heart and actions formed after his.
Kingdom life looks like responding to the others and the world with a heart like God’s. A heart of mercy, of purity, and making efforts towards God’s peace.
The promise for walking as God walks, though it will be costly for us, is mercy, seeing God, called sons of God.
Seeking God’s face, seeking peace with him, and a deeper knowledge of his mercy towards us provides for you and I true blessing and happiness because we are being united to the source of our life.
Conclusion:
God longs to give the world this blessing. But only those who recognize that they are sinners in need of God’s mercy, utterly unworthy to enter God’s presence because of impurity and uncleanness, and desperate for peace and reconciliation with God will get these things.
Mankind cannot create a utopia as hard as they try, whether by enforcing a culture of toleration or even by enforcing God’s Law on the world. We needed a Savior, the Lord Jesus Christ to make peace with the blood of his cross, to cause us to be born again, to make us alive in Christ and filled with his Spirit so that we may have the mind of Christ in all things. He must change our hearts.
Our need is Jesus. He is the king we are desperate for. Trump can’t bring us true blessing and happiness. Neither can another President or Governor or leader. Only Jesus. Until he comes again, let us live the happy life of watching our God interact with the world through his Word and the person of Jesus and follow in his footsteps.
He is full of mercy, of purity, and works to make peace in the world. May we do the same.
Application and discussion:
This is a call to action.
Mercy moves towards need in loving action. Move towards the needy as God moved towards you.
Purity of heart moves towards obedience to God in everything. Don’t just pretend, but seek God’s heart, repent of your erring ways, and let him shape your heart after his.
Peacemaking moves towards others in pursuit of God’s reconciling effort. Seek peace and pursue it (Psalm 34:14). This is not passive. This is actively seeking peace and righteousness on earth, God’s kingdom on earth.
What is Jesus saying to you in this text and teaching? In what ways is the Holy Spirit convicting you?
What is Jesus calling you to do?