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"Happy are the merciful. Happy are the peacemakers." Matthew 5:7, Matthew 5:9 (Step 8, Step 9)
“I think sometimes we think of mercy as God withholding judgment, and it is.
But the reason He withholds judgment in mercy is because He has forgiven our sin. So mercy is linked to forgiveness.
But that's only one aspect. There are many more mercies than just forgiveness”...
“Mercy is also linked, secondly, to love. As I read for you earlier Ephesians 2:4, ‘According to His great love wherewith He loved us, He was therefore mercy...merciful.’ So mercy flows
into forgiveness but out of love. It starts with love, becomes mercy, becomes forgiveness. Love is more broad,
more extensive than just mercy.”...
“The term eleeos and its derivatives always
deal with what we see of pain and misery and distress which are the results of sin, while grace deals with the sin itself.
Mercy looks at the misery sin produces, grace looks at the sin itself. God gives grace for our sin and mercy for our
misery as a result of sin. Grace is charis, grace offers pardon for the crime, mercy offers relief from the punishment.
Grace comes first and renders us no longer guilty, mercy comes second and delivers us from the punishment. Again, mercy
and grace are different, they're different concepts but inseparable. Mercy eliminates the pain and grace grants
a better condition.”
“And then there's mercy and justice. They go
together. They have to as far as God is concerned, He cannot be merciful if in some way it violates His justice.
Mercy, remember when it comes from God, is a holy attitude like all His other attitudes. It doesn't negate His justice,
or His holiness. It is not some shallow sentimentality which disregards iniquity and ignores justice. That's
a false and unholy mercy which wants to conceal justice. But God in order to be mercy...merciful and show mercy had
to express His justice, as we all know, and He poured out His justice on Christ on the cross satisfying the requirement of
a just and holy God and a just and holy law which had been violated in order that He might be merciful to the miserable sinners
who had fallen under judgment for the violation of that law.”
“So, mercy fits together with
forgiveness though it’s different. It fits together with grace though it’s different. It fits together
with love though it’s different. It fits together with justice perfectly though it is also distinct. The
truth of the matter is, if we got what we deserved we would get judgment without mercy. That's what we would get.
We would get judgment without mercy and we would deserve it. In fact in James 2:13 it says, ‘Judgment will be merciless to one who has shown no mercy. Mercy triumphs over judgment.’
If you're a merciful person you won't be judged.”
“Thirdly, the substance of
being merciful. Now we know that we have received mercy, but what is it about being merciful? I believe that this
springs out of the mercy of God toward us. I think that's pretty obvious. We don't need to say a lot about
that. God has demonstrated mercy to us and we have had a clear and marvelous transforming understanding of mercy and
we have been called to the same mercy. We who have received mercy have been called to give it. ‘Blessed
are the merciful for they shall receive mercy.’ There's kind of a cycle here. You receive mercy when
you cry out, hungering and thirsting for righteousness, you then become the givers of mercy who from God receive more mercy.”...
...”that's the essence of mercy and that's what God does for us undeserving
sinners, and that's what God asked us to grant to others.”
“It means there's no retaliation.
There's no vengeance. There's no holding the grudge. There's no slandering someone else. There's
no gossiping against someone else. There's no flaunting someone else's weakness, someone else's failure,
someone else's sin. There's no relishing someone else's deprivation and your wealth or prosperity.”
John MacArthur Copyright
1998 Grace to You. All rights reserved. Used by permission
[As we realize the truth from this teaching we need to understand the importance
of extending mercy to those who have hurt us and to how we react to them and talk about them in our group.]
The Only Way to Happiness: Be Merciful | Matthew 5:7
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Copyright 1998 Grace to You. All rights reserved. Used by permission
Happy are the merciful. Happy are the peacemakers
“So if we are to be peacemakers we have to draw that peace from God. And it
comes to us in Christ by the power of the Holy Spirit. Beloved, what this incredible statement is saying here in verse
9, this beatitude, is that there's only one group of peacemakers on the face of the earth and that is those who know the
true and living God and have made peace in their hearts with Him through the blood ...of Jesus Christ. We are the only
peacemakers the world knows. Everything else, all their efforts to produce tranquility of life, whether you're talking
about on a political level or on a psychological level, I guess we would like to think, and ...probably they would like to
think also this is true...psychologists, psychiatrists would like to see themselves as peacemakers, wouldn't they?
But all of the peace that they produce is artificial, superficial, and manipulative because they cannot bring the message
that changes the heart. We are the true peacemakers because we preach the gospel of peace about the God of peace who
sent the Prince of peace and who through His Spirit granted peace to repentant sinners...”
“First Corinthians 7:15 says ‘God has called us to peace.’ But it doesn't end there. Look back with me for a moment at
2 Corinthians chapter 5... this is a great text of Scripture and it identifies believers as God's peace
corps. I kind of chuckle when I see that term, The Peace Corps, it's a nice idea and they do some good things
on the level of human kindness. But the church is the true peace corps, isn't it? And it says in 2 Corinthians 5:18 ‘that God who reconciled us to Himself through Christ gave us the ministry of reconciliation.’ In other
words, we have been given the responsibility to tell the world they can be reconciled to God. That's peace.
The war can end. 'God', verse 19, 'was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself.' 'Therefore' verse 20 says, ‘We are ambassadors for Christ, we have been given the responsibility to beg people to be reconciled to God.’
That's what peacemakers do. They evangelize the lost, the people who have no peace. There's no
peace to the wicked, no peace.”... “So we are the ambassadors. We are the spiritual peace corps.
We are the only peacemakers on the face of the earth. We're it. Nobody else, just us.”
...” we are peacemakers because we help others make peace with God. This
is evangelism. At peace with God we are therefore filled with what Lenski called ‘sweet peace.’ We
live in peace. We demonstrate that peace. And we become the proclaimers of that peace. And we call on sinners
to meet the Prince of peace, to turn from their sin and embrace the only one who can bring peace to the troubled heart...”
“You
see a son and you say, ‘Ah, I know whose son that is, I can tell because he bears resemblance to his father.’
That's what it's saying here. When you are a peacemaker you bear a resemblance to God your Father. You
can say, ‘Now there's a peacemaker because he's like his Father, the God of peace.’ He's a peacemaker
because he preaches the gospel of peace, because he seeks to bring peace to the relationships around him.”
John MacArthur Copyright 1998 Grace to You. All rights reserved. Used by permission
The Only Way to Happiness: Be a Peacemaker | Matthew 5:9
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Grace to You. All rights reserved. Used by permission
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Blessed Are the Merciful
Why will only merciful people find mercy from God in the judgment day, if salvation is
by grace through faith? Is this a salvation by works? Do we earn his mercy by our mercy? No, because an
"earned mercy" would be a contradiction in terms. If mercy is earned, it is not mercy; it's a wage. Be assured,
if we get anything good at the judgment, it will be mercy, 100% mercy!
Blessed
Are the Merciful Matthew 5:7
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By John Piper. February 23, 1986 © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org
Used
by permission
Blessed
Are the Peacemakers Matthew 5:9
“...from beginning to end the Sermon on the Mount
cries out, ‘Get yourself a new heart!’ ... When Jesus says, ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall
be called the sons of God,’ he does not tell us how to become a son of God. He simply says that sons of God are in fact
peacemakers. People who are peacemakers will be recognized as the sons of God at the judgment and they will be called what
they are and welcomed into the Father's house.”
“To
see how to become sons of God we can look, for example, at John 1:12 and Galatians 3:26. John 1:12 says, "To all who received him (Jesus), who believed in his name, he gave power
to become children of God." And Galatians 3:26 says, "For in Christ we are all sons of God through faith." In other words,
we become sons of God by trusting in Christ for our forgiveness and hope.”...
"’God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not counting their trespasses against them’
(2 Corinthians 5:19). He made peace by the blood of the cross (Colossians 1:20). In other words, even though by nature we are rebels against God and have committed high
treason and are worthy to be eternally court-marshaled and hanged by the neck until dead, nevertheless God has sacrificed
his own Son and now declares amnesty free and clear to any who will lay down their arms of independence and come home to faith.’”
...
“God is a peace-loving God, and a peacemaking God. The whole history
of redemption, climaxing in the death and resurrection of Jesus, is God's strategy to bring about a just and lasting peace
between rebel man and himself, and then between man and man. Therefore, God's children are that way, too. They have the
character of their Father. What he loves they love. What he pursues they pursue. You can know his children by whether they
are willing to make sacrifices for peace the way God did.” ...
Blessed Are the Peacemakers Matthew 5:9
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By John Piper. March
9, 1986 © Desiring God. Website: desiringGod.org
Used
by permission
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