Matthew 5 verse 7 and Luke 10 25 through 37. Matthew 5 verse 7. Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. And Luke 10 beginning in verse 25. And a lawyer stood up and put him to the test. Teacher, what shall I do to inherit eternal life? And he said to him, what is written in the law? What is it? How does it read to you? And he answered, you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your strength, and with all your mind and your neighbor as yourself. And he said to him, you have answered correctly, do this and you will live. But wishing to justify himself, he said to Jesus, and who is my neighbor? Jesus replied and said, a man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho and fell among robbers and they stripped him and beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. And by chance a priest was going down on that road and when he saw him, he passed by on the other side. Likewise, a Levite also, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan who was on a journey came upon him. And when he saw him, he felt compassion. He came to him and bandaged up his wounds, pouring oil and wine on them. And he put him on his own beast, brought him to an end and took care of him. On the next day, he took out two denarii and gave them to the innkeeper and said, take care of him. Whatever more you spend, I will return and repay you. Now, which of these three do you think proved to be a neighbor to the man who fell into the robbers' hands? And he said, the one who showed mercy toward him. Then Jesus said to him, go and do the same. The one who showed mercy, blessed are those who are merciful for they shall receive mercy. Now, as we've said before, it's important to understand that in the Beatitudes, we understand how they're related. There are seven and there's kind of a symmetry to them. They describe the Christian man or woman and they sort of serve as a barometer to see if we are blessed as well. The first three describe the spiritual condition of a man or a woman who is blessed. Blessed are the poor in spirit, for there is the kingdom of heaven. Now, this is a person who's come to the end of himself or herself, he or she realizes, I have nothing to offer God. He is the one who is in need of God. That he is the one who is destitute spiritually. That he's the one spiritually speaking who's on the side of the road, unable to help himself. It's that person who is blessed only because only such a person can see the kingdom of heaven. Somebody who thinks they have it all together or even half together is not able to see the kingdom of heaven. One preacher put it this way, and he said if you think that your tank is half full and you just need Jesus to sort of fill it up, whether that's a half or a quarter or a third of a tank, that you've sort of gotten yourself that far and now Jesus can do the rest, then you're missing it all together because you aren't poor in spirit. Then he goes on to say, blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. This person has recognized their spiritual poverty. They see their sin for what it is and a fence in the side of a holy God. And they deserve punishment for it. See, when a person rightly sees himself or herself as a sinner, they know that they deserve consequences. They deserve punishment. They deserve punishment. And as a result, he will mourn for his sin. And God's response to such repentance is comfort. Then we come to blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Anyone who's poor in spirit and who's mourned for his own sin is going to be gentle and humble and meek with others because your pride is crushed. I mean, think about it. If you have recognized your spiritual poverty, if you've mourned over your sin, then it's very difficult to be offended by somebody else's sin, or it's very difficult to judge somebody else because of their sin, because you know you're a sinner as well. There's an understanding that you cannot commend yourself to God that all your own efforts, all of your own righteousness, are as Isaiah says, are counted as filthy rags in the sight of God. Now, when a person is poor in spirit, when they mourn and when they're meek, they hunger and thirst for righteousness and will be satisfied. We saw last week that the hungering and thirsting for righteousness is really hungering and thirsting for Jesus because the righteousness given to us by God is the righteousness of Christ. This hunger and thirst for righteousness is the pivotal verse of the seven. It is the issue. And now the remaining three Beatitudes are concerned with what we do. Up till now, it's been what we are, now it's what we do. Because in the Bible, being always precedes doing. A Christian does things because of who he is or what he is. Because he is not what he is or she is because of the things they do. And the first of these Beatitudes is blessed are the merciful. And we read the story of the Good Samaritan and the Gospel is represented in the story of the Good Samaritan. The man who's on the side of the road is us. If we believe, he's destitute, he's poor, he's mourning, he's meek, he's humble. He's left for dead. The Lord is represented by the Samaritan, strong and gracious and merciful. Not owing and yet giving. Unless we see ourselves as the man on the side of the road having been rescued by God, having received mercy ourselves, we will never be merciful. Truly merciful. Now that's not to say we can't do things that emulate the mercy of God. We are made in his image. Nor does it mean that only Christians can do merciful things. But unless you see yourself as having been merciful, mercifully rescued by God, you cannot be full of mercy. Because if you think that doing merciful things earns you God's mercy, then you're not really doing merciful things. You're doing them with another goal in mind. This is not the only place in the Scripture where we see the Gospel represented in this way. Maybe you remember the account of Jacob in Genesis 28 after he had deceived his brother Esau out of his birthright and out of his blessing from his father. Esau said that he was going to kill him when his father died and his mother Rebecca heard this and so she planned for Jacob to leave and go back to her homeland. In Huron. In verse 10 says Jacob left Beersheba and set out for Huron and when he reached a certain place, he stopped for the night because the sun had set. Taking one of the stones there, he put it under his head and lay down to sleep. Jacob felt like anything but the father of Israel. He's so miserable he uses a rock for a pillow. He's every bit the man on the side of the road. And God comes to him. He had a dream in which he saw a stairway resting on earth with its top reaching to the heavens and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it. Now we learn in the Gospel of John that that ladder is Jesus. God comes to him. God came down. The merry message of Easter is that, is that of a merciful God extending to us the ones on the side of the road, the omnipotent hand of mercy. Maybe you remember from Ezekiel 16 how the Lord became the God of Israel. God of Israel. Listen to what it says. This is what the sovereign Lord says to Jerusalem. Your ancestry and birth were in the land of the Canaanites. Your father was an Amorite and your mother was a Hittite. These are not compliments. On the day you were born, your cord was not cut. You were not, you were, nor were you washed with water to make you clean, nor were you rubbed with salt or wrapped in cloths. No one was able to clean your body. No one took pity on you or had compassion enough to do any of those things for you. Rather, you were thrown out into the open field for on the day you were born, you were despised. What he's describing here is an abortion of the day. The baby's born, nobody wants it. They don't bother to cut the cord to clean it off or anything, they just toss it out in the field, presumably to die from exposure or for one of the wild animals to eat it. But it says, then I passed by and saw you kicking about in your blood. And as you lay there in your blood, I said to you, live and I made you grow like a plant in the field. This is God's description of coming into relationship with Israel. Israel was no bigger, no more important, no more prosperous, no more talented than any other nation. And God, because of his grace and mercy toward them, chose them out of every other nation. And it says, caused them to grow like a plant of the field. The nation of Israel, God's own people, were worse off than the man on the side of the road in the parable of the Good Samaritan. No one looked on Israel with pity or compassion until the Lord came and said, live. The Lord is the one who showed mercy. We were the man on the side of the road. Ephesians two describes it very well. You were dead in your trespasses and sins in which you walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of air, of the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience. Among them, we too, all formerly lived in the lust of our flesh, indulging in the desires of the flesh and mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest. What Paul is describing here is someone who's spiritually the man on the side of the road, completely helpless, unable to help himself in any way. And again, who's the rescuer? Because Paul says we too, he's an apostle. He says me too, I was this person. I was the man on the side of the road. But verse four goes on to say, but God, being rich in mercy with the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ by grace, you have been saved. See, that's what the resurrection weekend is about that we're coming up on. It's not about lint chocolate bunnies that you see advertised. It's not about Easter baskets. I don't have anything against Easter baskets, but it's not what it's about. And for those of you who with children, I think you need to make that clear. The truth of Easter and what it's about. I remember after Tracy and I got married, we were having Easter, I don't remember if it was dinner or lunch at my parents' house. We'd been married less than a year. Tracy, my sister, Linda was there with her three kids. And up until that time in our family, if we didn't say grace with the prayer, God is great, God is good, let us thank him for his food, amen. That's how we always said grace. And for the longest time, I couldn't figure out why we were thanking God for let us. Let us thank him for our food. Anyway, some of you are chuckling. It's okay to chuckle out loud. But then it was time to pray for Easter breakfast. And my sister and I had had a discussion, I wouldn't call it an argument, but it was getting close, that she was telling her kids too much about the Easter bunny. So it came time to pray. And again, at our house, the adults were embarrassed to pray. So they always threw it to a kid. And Katie was gonna pray, Katie was the youngest. And she started with dear Easter bunny hopping down the trail. And I said, all right, that's enough of that. And I prayed. I didn't exactly, wasn't being diplomatic, but it sort of made the point that you have to teach your kids what the truth is. So Paul's describing somebody spiritually dead and Easter's about the rescue of Christ dying on the cross for our sins in our place that we deserved. And then on the third day, raising again from the dead. So among them we too formerly lived. Then it goes on in verse four and says, but God being rich in mercy because of the grace, the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead on our transgressions, even when we were the man on the side of the road, made us alive together with Christ by grace, you have been saved. Now who proved to be the neighbor of the man on the side of the road? It was the one who showed him mercy. Blessed are the merciful for they shall receive mercy. Now, why do you think Jesus in telling the parable chose a priest and a Levite to pass by on the other side? And then chose a Samaritan to be the one who was the merciful neighbor. Why do you think he did that? Well, Samaritans were despised by Jews and especially by priests and Levites. They were half breeds. They had mixed the religion of Judaism with some of the pagan religions. You see, they were the ones that when the exile took place out of Jerusalem in Israel, when Israel was captured, they were the ones that stayed behind. And so they had picked up some of the practices of the native people, not the native people, the captors. And that's not uncommon, that's what we do. We're Christians and we live in a culture that's basically free. But unfortunately, we picked up some of the habits, some of the sins of the culture around us. Before we go any further, I wanna address what seems to be a contradiction taken apart from the context in this passage and apart from the whole of scripture, it would seem that we are to earn mercy, the mercy of God by ourselves being merciful toward others. But that's not the case. The passage is describing what is true of the blessed. Blessed are, not blessed will be. Secondly, to take the verse in this way, would to be ignore the clear teaching of the rest of the scripture, we would have to do away with grace altogether, which frankly, a lot of people would like to do. A lot of people would like for it to be not by grace. Because you see, if it's not by grace, if you earn your salvation in any way, whether in part or in whole, if it's not by grace, then God owes you. He owes you. But he doesn't. We owe him. And if it is by grace, as one woman said when meeting with her pastor, she said, it really bothers me, this grace thing. The pastor said, why is that? She said, because if I have something to do with it, if I've earned my way in any way, then I can reasonably expect God to repay me. But if I'm saved by grace and grace alone, then whatever God asked me to do, the only reasonable thing is to say yes. And people oftentimes will say, yeah, but what if God asked me to do something that I hate? Well, I think if God asks you to do something, the likelihood is at some point you will love it, even if you hate it at the beginning. You might say I've never been destitute. But even the rich and the powerful have come to this same conclusion. Some of you may remember a man named Chuck Colson. This is from one of a biographical account. 67-year-old Chuck Colson, he's since gone to be with the Lord. Looks almost spry as he threads his way through the New Jersey State Prison, a maximum security facility in Trenton, New Jersey. The barbed wire, the watchtowers, the 15-foot walls suggest a pretty exclusive club. Only men who've committed crimes earning 25 years to life are admitted there. But it's Easter morning and Colson is there to preach to over 200 inmates and khakis and t-shirts. He says Jesus turned the value of the world upside down because he came not for the victors, but for the losers. So while other religious celebrities are exchanging pleasantries with well-groomed congregants, Colson is mixing it up with violent felons. He shakes hands, embraces them, prays with them. Several slip notes into his pocket, thanking him for coming. He said I'd rather preach in prison than anywhere else. You're meeting people at the point of incredible need. You don't have to explain that they're sinners. They know it and they're hungry. You see, we have a similar situation here. Granted, it's not prison, far from it. But there are immigrants that have come here and they are in great need. They're coming from all over the world because Canada is one of the desired destinations for people from oppressed places. And they're here, which is why we've started the English as another language ministry. But that's not all. Some of you know them, some of you have met them, some of you rub shoulders with them. They need to hear the gospel. ISMC is in the business of ministering to those who are students and immigrants, but there are a lot of immigrants who aren't students. A lot of people who were born someplace else and live here now who should be befriended and witness to with the gospel. The other thing is we have children. Children are very open to the things of the gospel. And Jesus said suffer not the little children that come to me for such as the kingdom of heaven. And we wanna do a vacation Bible school at the end of the summer. I don't know how many volunteers we have. I don't know if we have, I know we have one because I volunteered. But we need five at least for Laura to agree to do it. She doesn't wanna do it all by herself and I don't blame her. We need five at least and we hope to get 10. This is our opportunity to see the children in our neighborhood and minister to them. Back to the Colson story as the founder of Prison Fellowship, the world's largest prison ministry operating now in 83 countries. Colson has repeated the scene hundreds of times. Most every ward in America knows who he is. Thousands of inmates have read his book Born Again where he recounts his jolting journey to the Christian faith from serving in President Nixon's inner circle to sorting laundry during his stint at a federal prison for Watergate crimes. The reason that a man like Chuck Colson can have mercy toward these inmates is precisely because of the mercy he has received. So why then do so many of us professing Christians find it difficult to extend mercy? Imagine the innkeeper after receiving the wounded man along with the money and the promise to pay all the costs associated with the well-being of the afflicted one thinking that he may have to pay with his own money. What if the guy doesn't come back? That's exactly how we're prone to think. I want you to imagine, some of you won't have to imagine, but I want you to imagine your $80,000 in debt. And you decide you have to get a second job in order to pay the bank. The bank president calls and says the debt has been paid. This is how most Christians live. The debt is paid, but I have to earn the rest. The debt is paid, but I'm going to keep the second job anyway. The president says, look at the bank statement. There's a billion dollars on deposit for you. He says it must be a mistake. No, the benefactor gave the money. I'm gonna keep the job anyway. How would the man who gave the money, the billion dollars respond? He'd say, no. Why would you keep those jobs? The only thing you have to do now for the rest of your life with a billion dollars is decide how you're going to give it away. And that's us. We've been given mercy. We've been given grace. Our spiritual bank accounts are full to overflowing. The only thing we need to do is decide how we're going to give it away. But the reason we find it so hard to be merciful is we're trying to be merciful out of the mercy account created by our own minimum wage job rather than giving from the endless reservoir of mercy provided for us in Christ. The surpassing riches of his grace and kindness. That's why the priests and the Levites pass by. They only have the law and condemnation to offer. When Tracy and I lived in Indianapolis, there was a young couple that attended the church while I was pastor. And they'd been married maybe six months and they had an opportunity to foster a little 10-year-old, 10-year-old boy named Jeff. He'd been removed from his home because of neglect. He had two older brothers in trouble with the law. He was with them for 18 months. And during those 18 months, he professed faith in Christ and he completely changed. Now because they were newlyweds, the wife's parents who lived in Oregon and her father was a minister, they adopted Jeff. It's a beautiful picture of the Gospel. Jesus saving us from the side of the road, healing our wounds, bringing us to his father, becoming our brother. There's another ministry that we'll be taking part in soon. That's Open Door. That ministry seeks to minister to those who are considering ending the life of their unborn children. And also those who are in danger of being trafficked for the sex trade. We have the opportunity to give to Open Door starting on Mother's Day, which isn't too far away. But I'm sure they would take no donations before that. Jesus is saving us from the side of the road, healing our wounds, bringing us to his father, becoming our brother. Matthew chapter nine, Jesus went from there. The man called Matthew sitting in the tax collector's booth. And he said, follow me. He got up and followed him. Then it happened as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house. Behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and his disciples. That's the way it should be. That's the way it should be for a lot of us. When the Pharisees saw this, they said to his disciples, why is your teacher eating with tax collectors and sinners? Too often that's our response. But when Jesus heard this, he said, it's not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. Go and learn what this means. I desire compassion and not sacrifice. I do not come to call the righteous, but sinners. Close with this, first Peter one, three and four says, blessed be the God and father of our Lord Jesus Christ, who has brought his great mercy, who according to his great mercy, has caused us to be born again to a living hope, to the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled, it will not fade away reserved in heaven for you, who are protected by the power of God through faith for salvation ready to be revealed in the last time. Give thanks to the Lord for his good, his loving kindness, his everlasting. Let's pray. Father, as we consider your grace toward us, your mercy toward us, we pray that it would so affect the depths of our heart that we would be merciful to others and we would seek out opportunities to do the same in Jesus name, amen. Please stand.