By
Rev. Juliet Schimpf
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Broadcast
Notes
|
LINK to CFRA broadcast of
Sunday, July 31st, 2016)
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'Blessed are the merciful'
(Matthew 5:7)
- MERCY IS SALVATION EXTENDED
- MERCY IS SYMPATHY EXPRESSED
- MERCY IS SUFFERING EXPERIENCED
1. MERCY IS SALVATION
EXTENDED
·
WARREN WIERSBE: “Mercy is not a quality natural to man; it
must be received as a gift from God.”
·
WARREN WIERSBE: “You cannot _(extend)_______ mercy until you
have __(received)_____ it.”
·
1 JOHN 4:19 “WE LOVE BECAUSE CHRIST FIRST LOVED US.”
·
“Grace
is getting what you don’t deserve; mercy is not getting what you do deserve.”
·
Mercy and grace are two sides of the
same coin.
·
RICHARD LENSKI: “charis
(grace) always deals with the sin and guilt itself…The noun eleos (mercy)…always deals with what we
see of pain, misery and distress, these results of sin; the one [grace]
cleanses and reinstates, the other [mercy] extends relief, the other pardon;
the one cures, heals, helps,.”
·
Grace says, “I pardon you; Mercy says,
“I pity you.”
·
MERCY IS A DIVINE QUALITY! IT IS A CHARACTERISTIC OF GOD HIMSELF!
·
TITUS 3:5 “He saved us…according to His mercy.”
·
EPHESIANS 2:4-5 “But because of his great love for us, God,
who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in
transgressions”
·
WARREN WIERSBE: “But the receiving of mercy cannot be a mere
commercial transaction between me and God; I must experience it in my heart.”
·
“The longest journey a man must take is
the eighteen inches from his _(head)______ to his __(heart)_____.”
·
BEATITUTIDES ARE ALL ABOUT EMULATING
GOD
·
Ephesians 5:1 “be imitators of god”
·
LUKE 6:36 ‘BE MERCIFUL, JUST AS YOUR FATHER IS
MERCIFUL.”
·
WARREN WIERSBE: “The problem with the unmerciful servant in
Christ’s parable was that he looked upon the king’s mercy as something that
could have been earned if only there had been time enough to work. “Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay
thee all!” The man was never really
broken by the debt of his sins, and therefore, his attitude was that of a
prankster who had been let off the hook and not of a rebel who had been
delivered from death. He received mercy
in a commercial way; he did not experience mercy in a spiritual way. For this reason he was unable to extend mercy
to his fellow worker, who owed him a paltry sum when compared with his own
debt.”
2. MERCY IS SYMPATHY EXPRESSED
·
BILLY GRAHAM: “Christianity is, first, a coming to
Christ—an _(in-flowing)_of the Living Water; second, it is a reaching toward
others—an _(out-flowing)__…A body of water which has an inlet but no outlet
becomes a stagnant pond.”
· Matthew 9:36 (New Living Translation) 36 “When he saw the crowds, he had [mercy]compassion on them because they were confused and helpless, like sheep without a shepherd.”
·
MATTHEW 5:7 THE MESSAGE:
“You’re blessed when you care. At
the moment of being ‘care-full,’ you find yourselves cared for.”
·
WILLIAM BARCLAY:
“The Hebrew word for mercy is chesedh. It does not mean only to sympathize with a
person in the popular sense of the term; it does not mean simply to feel sorry
for someone in trouble. Chesedh, mercy, means the ability to get
right inside the other person’s skin until we can see things with his eyes,
think things with his mind, and fell things with his feelings.”
·
MATTHEW 5:7 [WILLIAM BARCLAY] “O the bliss of the man who gets right inside
other people, until he can see with their eyes, think with their thoughts, feel
with their feelings, for he who does that will find others do the same for him,
and will know that that is what God in Jesus Christ has done!”
·
The word itself, “merciful”, is from
the Greek eliamosuna, from which we
get the word eleemosynary, which
means benefactory. The word is used in
this form only one other time in the New Testament. The other is in Hebrews 2:17, “Therefore, He
had to be made like His brethren in all things, so that He might become a
merciful and faithful high priest.”
Christ is the great illustration of mercy. He is the High Priest who intercedes for us,
and it is from Him that mercy comes.
·
JOHN REDHEAD: “But the kind of mercy which will fulfill the
Golden Rule needs to be more than compassion for the unfortunate: it involves an imaginative understanding. If you wish to do for some other person what
you would like him to do for you, then you must be able to put yourself in his
place and see what life looks like through his eyes…[we must see] men as one
sees stained glass in a cathedral window:
not from without in, but from within out.”
·
Queen Victoria was a close friend of Principal and
mrs. Tulloch of St. Andrews. Prince
Albert died and Victoria was left alone.
Just at the same time Principal Tulloch died and Mrs. Tulloch was left
alone. All unannounced Queen Victoria
came to call on Mrs. Tulloch when she was resting on a couch in her room. When the Queen was announced Mrs. Tulloch
struggled to rise quickly from the couch and to curtsey. The Queen stepped forward: “my dear,” she said, “Don’t rise. I am not coming to you today as the queen to
a subject, but as one woman who has lost her husband to another.”
3. MERCY IS SUFFERING
EXPERIENCED
·
“Blessed are the merciful, for they
shall obtain mercy.” Jesus does not mean
that if you care for the needy, then others will care for you. At least it did not work out that way for him.
·
EXTENDING MERCY RESULTS IN SUFFERING--1 PETER 4:12
“Dear friends, do not be surprised at the painful trial you
are suffering, as though something strange were happening to you. 13But rejoice that you
participate in the sufferings of Christ, so that you may be overjoyed when his
glory is revealed.”
·
WILLIAM BARCLAY:
Sympathy is derived from two
Greek words, syn which means together
with, and paschein which means to
experience or to suffer. Sympathy means experiencing things
together with the other person, literally going through what he is going
through.”
·
WILLIAM BARCLAY:
“This is much more than an emotional wave of pity; clearly this demands
a quite deliberate effort of the mind and of the will. It denotes a sympathy which is not given, as
it were, from outside, but which comes from a deliberate identification with
the other person, until we see things as he sees them, and feel things as he
feels them. This is sympathy in the
literal sense of the word.
·
NICKY GUMBLE: “First, we are to be merciful to those who
are in need, like the victim in the parable of the Good Samaritan. We are to look out for those who are hungry,
sick, outcast, unpopular or lonely, and we are to have mercy ont hem—our mercy
will lead naturally to practical help.”
·
NICKY GUMBLE: “Secondly, we are to be merciful to those who
have wronged us, even where justice cries out for punishment. This is the opposite to what we see happening
all around us in the world, where ‘tit for tat’ and revenge are the order of
the day.”
·
LOVING THE UNLOVEABLE--DICTIONARY
DEFINITION OF MERCY: “A COMPASSIONATE OR
KINDLY FORBEARANCE TOWARD AN OFFENDER, AN ENEMY, OR OTHER PERSON IN ONE’S
POWER” [DICTIONARY GIVES A SYNONYM FOR
MERCY: FORGIVENESS]
·
A servant had broken open and drunk
several bottles of the Governor Oglethorpe’s (of the Georgia colony) rare
wine. Wesley interceded for the offender
and tried to calm the enraged Oglethorpe. ‘Sir,’ shouted the irate governor, ‘I
never forgive.’ ‘Then,’ replied Wesley,
‘I hope you never offend.’
·
LOOK WHAT PRECEDES THE PARABLE OF THE
UNMERCIFUL SERVANT: MATTHEW 18:21: “Lord, if another member of the church sins
against me, how often should I forgive?
As many as seven times? Jesus
said to him, ‘Not seven times, but, I tell you, seventy-seven times.”
·
Who do you need to forgive?
·
Mercy means not only kindness to the
unfortunate but grace to the guilty. It
is the Good Samaritan helping the poor traveler, but it is more. It is Jesus on the cross, praying for those
who put him there, with a prayer for forgiveness.
Our Heavenly Father, we thank you that
you are rich in mercy. You are rich in mercy towards us, and we desire today,
to be rich in mercy towards others.
I pray, right now, that you will fill
every listener with your mercy.
I pray, Father, that they will receive
your mercy gladly, that they will recognize that they are in need of your
mercy; and then, that they would extend it to those in need and also those who
have offended.
Help us to expressly forgive those who
have wounded us, and I’m praying for the listener, right now, who is holding
onto bitterness and pain.
I pray that they would release their
offender to their highest good. And would you then bless them with inner peace,
as a result?
We thank you Father, that you are good,
and always faithful.
We love you and adore you, and we say
all this in Jesus’ name. AMEN.
Rev. Juliet Schimpf
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To
listen to the above broadcast, click on the following link:
http://proxy.autopod.ca/podcasts/chum/6/44719/good_news_220_jul31.mp3
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