Matt. 5:7; John 8:1-10-“Mercy is the Medicine”-2/22/15

“Blessed are the merciful, for they will obtain mercy.” Seems simple does it not? Yet these words, like the others we have been studying in the beatitudes are profound.

Often the violence and hatred that plague our world today, can be compared to a mighty train, that does not seem to be easily stopped, yet, often it start with one act of mercy that can flip that switch and divert the train of strife away from disaster.

One flip, one act of kindness, can make all the difference. Blessed are the merciful, so what is mercy you may ask?

It is love with legs on it, love that grows hands and works. It is love expressed in action.

God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through Him.

Divine mercy writes in the sand.

Yet this is not enough for the mob, so they keep questioning him, “what do we do Jesus, what do we do?”

Divine mercy answers.

Jesus says to them, “Let any one of you who has never sinned be the first stone-thrower.”

See, the law said that any time someone was to face this capital penalty, it was to be carried out by someone who had a clear conscience before God.

None of them did, none of them could claim to be perfect, so they now found themselves accused and guilty, and the oldest and wisest all the way down to the young and restless, began to move out, one by one, until all was left except Jesus, and here we find some more irony.

The ones who want to judge and have no right to, are all dispersed and gone, and the One who has the right to judge and does not want to remains.

Jesus wants to show them and us, that none of us are perfect, and none of us have the right to look down our noses at anyone. This is different from God’s holy justice. We talked about this a bit last week.

We can and should desire justice on God’s terms while realizing it is He who judges not we. God’s role is to judge, our role as His followers is to show forgiveness and compassion where we can.

If view of God’s love, and the fact that He was merciful to us, we too ought to show mercy to one another.

Those who know the mercy of God, give mercy. Those who don’t know the mercy of God, cannot give for they don’t know what it really is.

We don’t show mercy in order to earn mercy from God. We show mercy because we have been given mercy by God.

The more we give mercy, the greater we experience God’s mercy, and the more we can give to others, and the more we experience, and it is a beautiful circle

Mercy comes with an attitude of thankfulness. Because you have received God’s mercy, use the gratitude to leave your sin behind and never to repeat it.

God offers us all mercy. So that we can both show mercy to others, and also strive to go and sin no more.

It is hard to live a life that God calls us to live. Temptation hunts us at every turn, but one of the best ways I have found to fight against it, is to be thankful to God for the gift of mercy and love. When we let that attitude of thanksgiving be our motivation to not sin, it gets easier not to.

Being thankful to God is the key to striving to be more like Jesus in ever way.

And it is this divine mercy switches the tracks and deters the train of never-ending violence that hurts our world today.

To be a part of God’s kingdom, you must follow in the example of the King, showing mercy in a world obsessed with vengeance.

Mercy is love set in motion. God has shown us mercy, and therefore calls us to show mercy to others.

No deep pondering, no confusion, it is just that simple. Blessed are the merciful for they will be shown mercy. AMEN

Matt. 5:6; Luke 10; 25-37-Hungry Enough? Thirsty Enough?-2/8/15

We look here as we are peering into our Lord’s greatest sermon: The Sermon on the Mount.

He is giving us as His disciples today a set of new commands to live by. We are now hungering and thirsting for righteousness, and looking at the story many of us know: the Good Samaritan. Now, why do we hunger?

Because our flesh needs nourishment. Why do we thirst? Because our bodies need water…To have a healthy appetite is seen as a good thing.

On the other hand, if your body is hungry but it knows it’s not getting anything to eat, it shuts off your appetite. It is the same thing for our spiritual lives as Christians.

If we seek to do God’s will, if we hunger and thirst to be more like Jesus in every way, if we would desire that which God desires, then not only will we grown and mature, but we will also find ourselves with increased appetites, wanting more and more to be shaped and molded and sculpted by God into what we were meant to be.

Sometimes we starve our spirits by not taking time to feed on God’s Word, sometimes our souls become parched because we do not drink in the gift of prayer and communion with God…and sometimes we begin to suffocate because we don’t breathe in the joy of community and fellowship with other believers.

And so our spiritual lives begin to deteriorate and die rather than grown and thrive.

Just like our bodies need to hunger and be fed and then grown so they can hunger again, likewise our souls need to hunger and be fed and mature Likewise we ourselves cannot fill ourselves up spiritually.

We must turn to God for that. Our souls hunger, desiring to be fed by God. How can we have this increasing hunger? The Good Samaritan has the key to the answer.

I heard one commentator put it in this way, “The priest looked at the wounded man as a problem to avoid. The Levite as an object of curiosity. It is only the Samaritan who treated him as a person to be loved, as a human being to be cared for, as a fellow man to be looked after.”

The robbers beat him up, the priest and Levite passed him up, but it was the Samaritan who picked him up. The thief said, “what’s yours is mine, I’ll take it.” The priest and Levite said, “What’s mine is mine, I’ll keep it”. But the Samaritan said, “What’s mine is yours, we’ll share it”

The Samaritan hungers and thirsts, for right-living before God, and justice for his neighbor.

We find ourselves at the crossroads, asking that same question, “Who is my neighbor?” Friends, remember who you are in Jesus, remember your new lives in Him, remember that we are to see our enemies not as needing to be destroyed, but rather needing to be redeemed.

See when Jesus says “blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness”, that word “righteousness” could also be translated justice.

Righteousness means personal holiness to God. Justice means love toward neighbor.

Caring for neighbor goes hand in hand with loving God. We don’t have to choose between feeding on Scripture and feeding the hungry, between reaching out to God and reaching out to those in need. Who is our neighbor?

Our neighbor is anyone who needs our help, not just those already part of our group, our church, or local community, but everyone who needs it, the hungry, the injured, the hurting.

How can we do this though? How can we love all men as our neighbors? friends be encouraged. When the Lord saved you, the Holy Spirit came within you as part of the package deal.

When we as believers let Him take full command, God’s Holy Spirit fills us with dynamic power, power to love our neighbors all over. That is what God wants from us, to be filled with power to do the godly thing in this world.

Where brokenness is found in the world, the church mends, where hunger, it heals, where suffering, it assuages. Even when the problem seems bigger than just one Christian or one church, and it requires official persons and large governments, it is still up to the church to call forth justice and righteousness from those groups so that they will act justly and love mercy.

We the people of God are called to do whatever is at hand to do, act with all our might to hear our neighbor’s cry and answer it lovingly. A Spirit-filled, Spirit-led believer in a spirit-filled, spirit-led church will constantly hunger and thirst for more of God’s righteousness and justice.

Friends, when we have that hunger, God satisfies. AMEN

Matt 5:5; Luke 19:1-10-Little Man, Big Faith-2/1/15

We are continuing looking at Jesus’ sayings in the Beatitudes, and after seeing what it means to be poor in Spirit is to be rich in God, and to those who mourn they will find comfort, we now turn to the third, which seem to be just as unique to our ears as the first two.

The meek? Really? This value is not a trait we hold high in society today, and what’s more Jesus uses an odd figure to summarize it. Yet, we must not forget God often works the opposite of what we would expect.

I have to give a point here though. When the Bible here uses the word “meek” it does not mean “passive” or “weak”.

Rather it means “Gentle, disciplined strength, grace under fire, allowing God to take control so you can have more self-control” It means giving the Holy Spirit the steering wheel. It means acting like Jesus, who was not passive or weak but rather gentle in heart.

Jesus is saying, that to be righteous in His kingdom, you have to be gentle, humble, trusting God-And He uses Zaccahaeus to make this very point!

He may have been short in so many ways, but that does not stop him. NO! This meek man with his shortcomings, is determined to see Jesus, and so he takes the initiative, climbing a tree like a child.

See, the crowd thinks (right or wrong) that Zacchaeus is a sinner, and is offended by Jesus’ interaction with him.

So Jesus invites himself over, and Zacchaeus in his meekness and joy gladly accepts, but then something interesting happens.

Zacchaeus, almost sensing the glares and scorn from the crowd gets up and say this.

“Look, Lord! Here and now I give half of my possessions to the poor, and if I have cheated anybody out of anything, I will pay back four times the amount.”

This teaches us something more about Zacchaeus and Jesus and what it means to be meek. Jesus too was meek. He was gentle. He was gentle with the sinners, not judging them but rather offering them grace.

He was gentle and patient with the disciples, when they did not seem to get it. He was gentle even his enemies, even after he rebuked them.

If Zachaeus promises that he will do this after having been a tax cheat, then he is showing his meekness by saying, “I will give half my goods to the poor and restore 4x over anyone I cheated”

You want to talk about a good tax refund!

He’s basically saying“God, I want to be a radical disciple for you, so half of my stuff, I give it away”

Now watch, Zacchaeus is not doing this giving away to be saved, rather he is doing this in response to being saved, which Jesus Christ confirms when He says that salvation has been brought to this house, all because of Zacchaeus’ meekness.

He does not let his salvation lie away hidden and dormant, instead he lets his light shine before men so they may see his good deeds.

He let his faith grow and bloom and produce ripe fruit from which others could feed.

Zacchaeus may have been meek, but in giving up what he had held onto (in this case his wealth), he inherited the earth. He found the Kingdom of God.

But on the other hand, if Zachaeus is already doing this, then it teaches the crowd to be meek, and humble, and not to judge.

He shows up and gives salvation to those we think are not worthy, or untouchable. It shows God’s mercy runs deeper than our expectations.

Remember the words of our Lord Jesus, “any who loses his life for my sake will find true life”.

Maybe for Zachaeus he wanted to own part of the world. Yet in giving up “the worldly stuff” Jesus promises him salvation, and eternal life. The world can have all the stuff that will pass away.

Remember, fellow servants in Jesus, blessed are you when you are gentle, meek, and humble, for you will inherit the earth.