The Beatitudes Part 3: Mercy and a Pure Heart

We walk through Matthew 5 to show how mercy and purity of heart shape a distinct, hopeful way to live. Mercy does not erase standards; purity is an inside-out work of the Spirit that steadies a faithful witness and stirs our deepest desire to see God.

• mercy as God’s gift that withholds judgment we deserve
• receiving mercy as the source of forgiving others
• standards held without contempt or legalism
• purity of heart as undivided loyalty to God
• inside-out transformation by the Holy Spirit
• holiness as missional distinctness, not isolation
• practical guardrails for habits, media, and motives
• longing to see God as the ultimate reward
• prayerful reset and accountability as next steps

“Let us be people of mercy and make us people with a pure heart.”

Chapters

• 0:00 Setting The Stage: The Beatitudes
• 1:23 Mercy, Grace, And Not Going Alone
• 3:56 Reading Matthew 5:1–12 Aloud
• 6:40 Mercy Defined And Deserved Judgment
• 11:00 Law, Standards, And Misused Rigidity
• 15:40 Extending Mercy Without Abandoning Truth
• 21:50 Pure In Heart: The Inside Comes First
• 27:00 Seeing God: The Ultimate Reward

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:25

Again, we are in Matthew chapter 5. This is week three of the Beatitudes, week three of the Sermon on the Mount. I hope you're enjoying this. I like walking through this because it's very practical, very straightforward. It's laid out at your feet so that you can uh, I don't know, easily understand this. Now, where the challenge comes in is whenever we take this stuff, take the scripture, take uh what I'm preaching about, and we try to apply it to our lives, and we realize that hold on a second, this is hard. It's hard to recognize that we're poor. It's hard to recognize that when we are mourning, we're only gonna find a solution to our mourning in somebody else. It's it's diff, these are difficult things. It's difficult to want righteousness for your life. It's difficult, it's difficult, it's hard, and we'll keep going on. It's gonna be difficult to be salt and light to the world. It's gonna be difficult to talk about prayer, it's gonna be difficult to talk about fasting. It's gonna be difficult to talk about some other things that we find in a sermon on the mount, but I hope you understand and know you're not alone. Number one, you're not alone because we're doing it all together. But number two, and most importantly, you're you're not alone because you've been given grace and mercy to apply this to your life. So I don't care if you walk out of here and you fell immediately at something we talk about. You have mercy for your life to try better next time, okay? Mercy and grace for your life. And then, of course, we have the presence of the Holy Spirit in your life, which will empower you to do legitimately anything that you need to do, okay? You're not alone. You can do this. This is this is hard, it is difficult, but you're not designed to do it on your own. And thankfully, we've we've been given the tools necessary to accomplish what is laid out before us in Matthew chapter 5, verses 1 through 12. I'm going to read it all again. Uh, you will have this memorized. You'll have this memorized by the time we are done. Seeing the crowds, he went up on the mountain. And when he sat down, his disciples came to him, and he opened his mouth and taught them, saying, Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. Blessed are those who mourn, for they shall be comforted. Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God. Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called sons of God. Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven. And blessed are you when others revile you and persecute you and utter all kinds of evil against you falsely on my account. Rejoice and be glad, for your reward is great in heaven, for so they persecuted the prophets who were before you. We've walked our way through the first four lines of the Beatitudes. Hopefully, you're seeing connections, you're seeing themes. Hopefully, uh once again you understand that this is an invitation to being in the kingdom of heaven. And once you are in the kingdom of heaven, there is a new way to do life. You're not doing life like you used to do life without God. Okay? You're not doing life like you did whenever you were a kid, and you really didn't understand what this Christianity thing was about just because your parents drove you to church. Okay? Once you actually connect with Jesus, there's a brand new way to do life. And it's going to look different. It's going to sound different, it's going to feel different. The world wants to do things this way. You want to do things this way. You feel this way. But all of that takes a backseat to what's described to us here in the Beatitudes of what kingdom life is actually like. Okay? Hmm. We've got two more really important lines today. Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy. Mercy is a central biblical theme. Old Testament, New Testament. It is central in the gospel that Jesus presents. Mercy. In God's great mercy, he doesn't give humans what they deserve. Instead, he gives them what they do not deserve. Right? He doesn't give us what we deserve. We deserve something because of who we are, but we he doesn't give us that. He gives us something different. Two verses to sort of highlight this. Romans chapter 3, verse 23. For all, everybody say all. Oh, let's do better. Everybody say all. Oh. All for all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God. Not some, not a few, not Nazis, not Judaizers, not communists, not dirty capitalists, whatever. All every single human who has ever existed, who will ever exist, has fallen short of the glory of God. They've all sinned. All sinned. All the little ones in here. Guess what? They're dealing with sin in their life right now. Right now. Early on. So we see it. We see it at work all over creation. We see it in our own lives. And sin is this disorder. It is this state. It is this thing that cannot be in the presence of a totally and holy, awesome, and amazing, perfect God. Right? We have sin, which we are full of, and we have perfection, and they don't mix. Oil and water, they don't mix. Romans chapter 6, verse 23. For the wages of sin, okay, so what sin earns you is death. That's what sin creates. Death. Big and small. Doesn't matter if you're sinning big or sinning small. Doesn't matter if you're struggling with gossip or you're struggling with homosexuality. It all leads to death. Death. That is the wages of sin. That's what we deserve. And maybe that seems harsh. I would probably say that that's more of a modern uh feeling towards that attitude, I guess, uh a couple of generations ago. They would have no problem understanding that what sin produces and what they deserve is death. But we have good news. We have good news. The scripture doesn't stop at the wages of sin is death. It goes on. There's a conjunction that says, but I love a conjunction in scripture, but the free gift, the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. In other words, mercy. Mercy. You deserve this, but instead you are given this. Mercy is embedded into who God is and his plan for your life. Not just anybody's life, your life right where you are. His plan since the beginning was mercy for your life. And if God is merciful towards you, then there's a strong chance you ought to be merciful towards others. If you've been given this gift, who are you to deny it to others in your own life? The merciful are those who demonstrate forgiveness towards the guilty. That's what merciful means. It means you are demonstrating forgiveness towards those who don't deserve forgiveness. The religious leaders in Jesus' day tended towards being merciless because of their rigorous observance of the law and the regulations of cleanliness that they had. Now, their motive, their motive for doing all the right things was not bad. It's not bad to want to do all the right things. It's not bad to want to be morally good, to make ethical choices and decisions in your life. That's not bad. Matter of fact, it was it was a pure desire for Israel to be secured in God that they were working from. But it became excusable because their unbending demands meant that they placed harsh judgments and condemnation towards those that were their neighbors and others who did not meet their standards. In my notes, I underlined there because you have to understand that God gave them the Ten Commandments, and then they took those Ten Commandments and they made more and more and more complex laws and regulations. So it wasn't just God's law they were following. They expanded it. And so if people didn't meet their standards, their sort of knee-jerk reaction over time was that person's not worthy. That person's broken. That person is gross. That person doesn't belong. They're unclean. And as a church, I hope you understand that we can end up making the same mistakes. Right? This is not a new problem. It's a universal problem. You know exactly what I'm talking about. As Christians, we're called to try to live a life pleasing to God. We're trying to do the right thing. We're trying to live the right way. We have standards. We have standards. Everybody say standards. We got standards. We are living a certain way to please God. Okay? We're not living a certain way to get salvation, but we are living a certain way to please God. And here's what happens if we're not careful. Because we are on this journey and our standards are one way, it becomes real easy to look at others who are not at the same area or plane of existence in their life as we are at the moment. In other words, maybe they're baby Christians. Maybe they're not saved at all. And we look at them and we look at them without mercy. We look at them and think they're disqualified. We look at them and we think that they can't be used, that they're dirty, they're unclean, and that we've got to be standoffish from them to protect our own holiness and righteousness. The reality is we've got to look at them with mercy and grace because it's only through mercy and grace that we are able to live the way that we are able to live. Somebody offered you grace at some point by explaining the gospel. Somebody offered you grace at some point through the Holy Spirit showing up in your life. That's a mercy. And if that mercy didn't exist in your life, you wouldn't have the ability to live a pleasing life to God. And so if you are who you are because of mercy, then you ought to have mercy extended towards others as well because you don't know what that mercy will do for their life. For they will be shown mercy. Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Without sacrificing God's standard of holiness, because there is a standard. Jesus commends those who demonstrate mercy towards the needy and the hurting, because that mercy that they show others will undoubtedly have been shown to them and will continue to be shown to them. You want mercy in your life? You want to not feel bad about every mistake you ever make and every mess up. How about you have a little mercy in your life for other people who make mistakes around your life? Quick note here, two quick notes. Mercy is not an abandonment of standards. Mercy is not an abandonment of standards. Mercy is not looking at somebody who made a mistake and saying what you did was wrong, but now I'm thinking maybe it wasn't so wrong. That's not mercy, that's stupidity. Okay? That's not mercy. And let me make something else very clear. Showing mercy towards others is not the path for you to earn your way into the kingdom of heaven. That's not your entrance ticket, right? In other words, you being merciful does not guarantee you're going to heaven. It just means that your attitude, your heart, your mind are aligned with God in such a way that you are aware that Jesus has mercy for you so that you can change. Those two things, you gotta understand that. You gotta understand those two things. Mercy is not something that earns you a spot, a ticket to heaven. And mercy is not a way for you to absolve people and to hold people accountable for the things they've done wrong. That's not what mercy is. When God offers you mercy and grace, there is an expectation that you will attempt not to do the thing that you needed mercy for to begin with. The religious leaders of Jesus' time, they can't receive God's mercy because they've been so self-satisfied with their own religious attainments that they don't believe they need mercy. In other words, they've done such a good job of taking off the to-do list spiritually in their mind. Well, I don't need mercy. I didn't make a mistake. I'm doing all the right stuff, I'm doing all the right things. And so they reach a point in their life where they don't think they need mercy, which means they are less likely to extend mercy to others. Do you see the pattern there? Do you see the loop there? It's connected to all of our beatitudes, really. Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs of the kingdom of heaven. Well, if you don't think you're poor, chances are you probably don't think you need help. If you don't think that you need mercy, chances are you're probably not going to extend mercy to others. Don't grow hard in your hearts towards other people. Extend mercy. Extend mercy. Jesus' disciples learn from this beatitude that God's requirements has always included being merciful. If we go back to the Old Testament and we read uh uh Micah chapter 6, verse 8, he says, This He has showed you, oh man, what is good and what does the Lord require of you to act justly and to love mercy. Love mercy. God to love mercy in your life. If you're not loving mercy in your life, you need to check yourself. Love mercy. Those who receive mercy will demonstrate mercy. And because they should feel, I don't know, joyful because of that experience, chances are that those feelings that mercy produced in your life should encourage you to do the same for others. You see how that works? He's a merciful God. He's full of mercy, he's full of grace. Aren't you glad he's merciful? Aren't you glad that your failure, that your failure yesterday, your failure this morning as a human, as a Christian, doesn't have to be the end of your story in the kingdom of heaven? Aren't you glad that your failures yesterday in your past don't have to define your future because of mercy? I'm glad because of that because I know how imperfect I have been. I know I'm gonna keep making mistakes. So I am beyond thankful and grateful for the mercy that Jesus provides. And I'm gonna be merciful towards others as well. Doesn't mean I'm gonna let them do whatever they want to do. Doesn't mean I'm gonna expose myself to being being harmed and abused and taken advantage of, but I am going to be a merciful person because without mercy, I would not be here. Amen. Without mercy, you would not be in this seat right now. Right? Even if you're in this room and you don't really have a relationship with Jesus, somehow you you've you've you've escaped that in this process. Even if you don't recognize God in your life, he has still granted you mercy every day to be walking, living, moving, and breathing. It's mercy. It's mercy. From top to bottom, the kingdom of heaven is about mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart. Blessed and the pure in heart. In the sixth beatitude, Jesus goes to the very core of human life, the heart. Not the organ, right? We know we know what I'm talking about. It's the heart, it's the inside stuff. Purity and cleanliness, they were incredibly important to Judaism back in the day and still today. And there's other religions that are also incredibly connected to things, acts, actions that produce some sort of external cleanliness. But here's the kicker about observing all of these rituals and laws, in particular for Judaism. They can follow every law in Judaism, they can get everything correct, and yet still somehow bypass the most important purity of all. That's the purity of the heart. We'll see this later on in the Sermon on the Mount. Whenever we talk about prayer, when we talk about giving, when we talk about fasting, when we talk about anger, when we talk about all of these things, you can do a check mark and get it right, but in your heart you can get it wrong. You can do the right thing for the wrong reasons. You can show up the church for the wrong reasons. You can say you love God for the wrong reasons. That's scary. Right? Scripture tells us that people will do all sorts of things in the name of God, and at the end, when they're being judged, they'll meet Jesus, and Jesus will say to them, Depart from me, I never even knew you, because their heart was wrong. Doing all the right stuff. They dressed it all, they dressed their life up to look just like a Christian should look. And yet they still somehow missed the point. Jesus declares here that the pure heart is what produces external purity, not vice versa. Right? Washing your hands can't make you not addicted to pornography. You see what I'm saying? Right? It's a different type of work. It's a different thing. You can get all the laws right in practicality, but still miss the point. Still miss the point. In the Beatitudes, Jesus continues an important Old Testament theme in which a pure heart describes a person whose single-minded loyalty to God affects every area of their life. It starts on the inside. You understand? It's the inside that truly matters. It's the true inside.

unknown: 18:10

Right?

SPEAKER_00: 18:11

Your life might be falling apart on the outside, but if you get purity on the inside, then chances are over time the things on the outside will start moving and changing. He who loves a pure heart and whose speech is gracious will have the king for his friend. It is internal stuff that produces external stuff. And while the people of the Old Testament clearly knew that the human heart was evil, read Proverbs, read read the Psalms, read Jeremiah. They understood that humans were evil. They also equally well knew that God could work in an evil heart to produce purification and produce new motivation for following Him. Create in me a pure heart, O God. Renew in me a steadfast spirit. Create. Renew in me. And it all extends from somebody else doing the work first. We have external help to produce internal results, which will then produce external change. Okay? Do you see that? Once again, you're not doing this on your own. Right? Having a pure heart is not a you, a you alone thing. It's a decision to say, God, I need help, and He will offer you the help, and life will transform for you. The pure in heart of those who have not necessarily attended to all the ritual and religious purification ceremonies that the Pharisees or the Sadducees did, but nonetheless have given their undivided loyalty to God in a brand new way. And here's the thing it doesn't mean that it doesn't mean that those religious rituals don't have some sort of significance or meaning. It just means that it's starting from the right place. In light of all this, just understand and know you're not doing this on your own. You're not. Purity is not an alone thing. You gotta have help. You gotta have mercy. You gotta have mercy. Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see God. Believe it or not, I've only got four paragraphs left. But these are incredibly important paragraphs. Please pay attention just for this last 10 minutes or so. Maybe not even 10 minutes. I don't know. They will see God. They will see God. Do you understand? Do you understand? Their undivided devotion of the pure heart will be rewarded by their greatest hope. They will see God. This is powerful to me. This is meaningful to me. Moses didn't see God. Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, they didn't see God. You understand that? David didn't see God, Solomon didn't see God, Elijah, uh Elisha, Isaiah, Jeremiah, Micah, all of these champions of the Old Testament, these righteous people, they didn't see God. They didn't get to see him. They didn't. They didn't get to see God. But when your heart is pure, your heart is pure, your reward is to see your creator. For the first time since Adam and Eve sinned, humans haven't chanced to be connected to the person who made them. A couple of different ways to think about why this is significant. If you've ever known somebody who was maybe an orphan or in foster care, or maybe they were adopted, one way to view this and its significance is to understand what it must be like one day to see their parents, to be connected to their parents in a healthy way. Because I know a lot of times it's not going to be a healthy situation, but it's just an example. They're going to see God. You can see your creator. You can see your maker. You can see the person who knows you intimately, inside and out. He he he gets you. He knows you better than you know yourself. And you can be connected to him when your heart is pure. And I said this earlier, I'll say it again because it means something. It's significant. C.S. Lewis said this: only the pure in heart will see God because only the pure in heart want to see God. Who else wants to see God? Right? Other people don't care.

unknown: 22:18

Right?

SPEAKER_00: 22:19

If your heart's not pure, why would you care to see God? Why would you care about that? Why would you even give any time to wanting to see God, to see Jesus? Why would you care? But when your heart's pure, you know the only thing that matters is seeing God. That's it. That's it. That's what it all boils down to. Matter of fact, you get to Revel Revelation chapter 22, and at the end of the age, what we are all looking forward to is that we will see his face, it says. We'll see his face. That's where we're headed. We're gonna see his face. And the scripture records that as sort of the ultimate goal. We're gonna see his face. Now, here's a cool thing for those who were living in Jesus' time. They got to see their Creator face to face. It's a very, very special thing. And here's the good news for us. Well, there is a future hope of seeing his face, Jesus' face, God's face. We have the Holy Spirit, who is God with us living inside of us right now. But you only get that through purity of heart. Purity of heart. For those who have set their heart on God, and it's not just simply some sort of religious ritualism and you respond to Jesus' message of the gospel, the kingdom, you are invited to enter into a very real relationship and fellowship with him that people in the Old Testament would have radically thought impossible. Moses could only dream of having the connection to God that we have. Abraham could only dream of dream of having the connection to God that we that we have. They will see God. We experience God and see God through the Holy Spirit working through our lives, but it only comes through purity, which then only comes through God. You cannot do it on your own. We live in a world and listen, I I get it. I grew up in a holiness tradition, right? And and by the time I was a kid, they had sort of walked away from this, but it is real easy to get into a mindset in your life that Christianity is a list of things you cannot do. Right? And for my mom, when she was five, six, seven, eight, nine years old, it was no makeup, no lipstick, no pants, no shorts, no haircuts, no movies, no music, no nothing. Right? And that was Christianity to her for a while until an evangelist came into their church and told them, hey, you guys are missing the point a little bit, and God transformed their life. But without going to that extreme, we got to understand and know there purity matters. Purity matters. What you look like look at on your phone matters. What you listen to matters. What you spend time doing matters. What you struggle with, you better take care of it because it matters. It matters. Purity matters. It simply does. Holiness matters. And listen, you doing a bunch of things that are good is not going to earn you a ticket into heaven. But whenever you got your ticket to heaven, you better start working on some stuff in your life so that you don't look just the same as Joe Schmo down the road, who is Muslim. Okay? Your life is supposed to look different, be different, sound different. People are supposed to experience you in a different way. I'm not saying you go lock yourself up like a hermit out in the desert and separate yourself totally from the world because that's counterintuitive, because you're called to be out in the world getting work done. But your effectiveness in the kingdom of God is not going to be as effective if you look just like everybody else. That's why it's so hurtful whenever I see pastors bend morality in order to be better connected to the people they're supposed to rescue. It's like jumping into a lake to rescue somebody without a life vest on yourself. Do you understand? You're called to rescue people. How can you rescue people if you don't have the tools necessary to rescue yourselves? If you have the same problem they have, you're not gonna be able to drag them to the boat. You've got to be different, look different, sound different. Purity is not about a ticket to heaven, it's about a tool of evangelism in your life. It's about respecting mercy in your life, it's about respecting grace in your life. Trust me, I know how hard it is. I love all sorts of different forms of entertainment, but sometimes I've got to challenge myself and say, hold on, Zach, this ain't fitting in your life. Okay? Hold on, this doesn't fit. And what are you got your own stuff, okay? You've got your own things in your life. Scripture says, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling. So it's gonna be a little bit different for for everybody, all right? I tell this example, my favorite bands are all from the 70s and late 60s and nirvana. And I can listen to them sometimes, and I don't think it's a sin to listen to them, okay? I don't. What is a sin is if I let those things start impacting the internals, okay? Which sometimes they do. And when that happens, I gotta know, okay, Zach, work out my own salvation with fear and trembling. I can I need a season where where I'm not filling my life with that music, which is okay, neutral at best sometimes, right? I'm not filling my life with that. I've got to take a season where I'm filling my life with good things. I'm filling my life with Christian worship music, okay?

unknown: 27:53

Right?

SPEAKER_00: 27:53

That's a personal example. It will be different for you. It will be different for you. You will have your own things, and you need to consider seriously in this moment in the service, and as you walk out the door, God, is there some areas in my life that I am not pure in? I'm not giving this stuff up. Do you need a reset? Is it social media? You got to take a break from social media, you got to take a break from video games, you got to take a break from from from uh eating out, you gotta take a break from this or from that, right? Do you got to find a buddy and say, hey, listen, I'm struggling with this. Can you help me keep me accountable so I'm not falling back into this mess again? Okay, holiness, righteousness, purity. And again, once again, the beautiful news about all of this is that you're not doing it by yourself. You have mercy. You have mercy. So even in the seasons of your life when you're not getting it right, you're still standing on mercy and security of the blood of Jesus, that he died for your sins, even though you're not gonna always live up to that beautiful thing. You understand it? You get it? Blessed are the pure in heart, for they will see. God, let's pray. Let's pray. Heaven Father, we love you, we thank you. And God, I pray right now, in the mighty name and beautiful name of Jesus, that through your Holy Spirit, you would challenge us this morning. Challenge us in two ways. And as everybody prays together and has their own thoughts with God in this moment, I pray that you would challenge us to be people of mercy. Number one, that we would receive your mercy and be transformed. And if we're in a place in our life where we are living from failure to failure and mistake to mistake, that we would pick up your mercy and be changed and transformed. Then to extend that mercy to others in our life, whether we think they deserve it or not. I get it. People mistreat us. I get it. People hurt us, I get it. People are can be dangerous to be around and dangerous to connect with, but Lord, they ought to have some mercy in their life from somebody, and it might as well be us. Let us be people of mercy and make us people with a pure heart. Let that mercy change us. That mercy enables us to look at our lives in a brand new way and to put away sinful things, to put away unhealthy things, to take seasons where we refocus, to take seasons where we reflect and we uh maneuver our lives to be more aligned with your goodness and your mercy and your grace. And right now I pray, Holy Spirit, that you would bring into our minds things that need some work, things that we need to get rid of. Let us work out our own salvation with fear and trembling. I don't want to tell anybody exactly what they don't need to have in their life or do need to have because there's some flexibility there. But there's some non-negotiable stuff. Let us be righteous people, holy people, Lord. Let our language be edifying. Lord, let what we ingest be edifying. Let what we see be edifying, Lord. And God, let us all point our lives towards you. In Jesus' name we pray all these things. And we all said, Amen.