This transcript was generated by whisper.ai.

I want to welcome you to day three of our look through the book of Matthew, week
four, this wonderful week of beginning to look at the Sermon on the Mount. We've
been looking together at what Jesus taught us about attitudes for life, the
attitude of being poor in spirit, the attitude of meekness, of gentleness. And
today as we hit verse six, we hit another of those attitudes.

What does Jesus want us to be in our attitudes? Verse six, "Blessed are those
who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they will be filled. " Jesus wants
us to be hungry.

In fact, the next few days as we look at these final Beatitudes, we're going to
see some principles for life. We're going to see that Jesus is teaching us about
how life works. And when he teaches us about hungering, thirsting for
righteousness so that we will be filled, he's teaching us that what you want
determines who you are.

What you want determines who you are. Now you don't always get what you want,
you don't always get what you desire, but you'll always chase after what you
want. You always chase after what you desire.

And so that determines who you are. Now physically, if you hunger for the wrong
thing physically, and you eat that wrong thing because you're hungering for it,
you won't be healthy physically. Well Jesus is teaching us that the same thing
is true personally.

The same thing is true spiritually. So the question behind this for me is, what
is it that I most desire? What is it that you most desire?

Because that's going to become who you are. And I think if we're honest, too
often in our lives we'd say, "It's not the things of God. It's not what it
should be.

I most desire my own success. I most desire my sin. I most desire my
satisfaction.

" So what we need, what I need, what you need, is a change of appetite. We need
a change of spiritual appetite. And the place to begin is to ask God to say,
"God, change my hunger, change my thirst.

" I mean you can change an appetite. Change my hunger, change my thirst. And let
the thing that is most important to me be you.

Be righteousness, be living in right relationship with you and others, and doing
the right things you've made me to live for. Because when you hunger for that,
Jesus' promise is you're going to be filled with that. You will be filled.

There's many things in life, if you hunger for those things, you may chase after
those things all your life, and at the end of life, you're empty. You're empty.
In fact, that's what happens with the things of this world.

There are many people, many, many people, who have chased all their lives after
the thing they most want. Some of them have gotten it, some of them haven't, but
they're all empty. Sometimes, sometimes the people who get the thing they most
want earlier in life are lucky in many ways.

Not because they got that thing, but because when they got that thing, they
realized that's not the thing that makes me happy. I got the house, I got the
job, I got the money, I got the whatever, but I'm still unhappy. And they
realize there's a deeper need.

Don't spend your whole life chasing after something that will leave you empty.
Jesus said, "When you hunger, when you thirst for righteousness, you're going to
be filled in this life and into all eternity. So be hungry for the right things.

" And then in verse 7, Jesus goes on and he says, "Here's the next attitude.
Blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy. Be merciful.

" Now be hungry. What you want determines who you are. Be merciful.

He's teaching us here that what you give determines what you receive. God wants
to show us mercy, but he also wants to show us how to be merciful. "Blessed are
the merciful, for they're the ones who are going to be shown mercy.

" Now first, before talking about what that means, what is mercy? What are we
talking about here? Well, mercy is a gift.

And it is forgiveness, but it's more than that. It's being able to see life from
another person's perspective. And it's not something that you can earn.

Even with salvation, what you give determines what you receive. You give your
life to him to receive salvation from him because he gave his life for you in
order to be able to give salvation to you. It's not what you earn.

You can't earn your salvation that determines what you receive. It's what you
give. It's what you give.

And mercy is giving someone what they need instead of what they deserve. It's
giving someone what they need instead of what they deserve. You deserve, I
deserve to be rejected because of what I did to a friend.

But in mercy, you give them a second chance. We deserve to be separated from God
because of our sin. But in mercy, he gives us forgiveness.

Sometimes we pray for mercy with a single word. You're heading down a hill and
you're going 10, 15 miles an hour over the speed limit and you see a police car
off to your right. And you pray this one word prayer, "Please, please, please,
please, please, please.

" You're wanting not what you deserve. You know you're speeding. You're wanting
what you need, what you think you need in that—now, what you need may be a
ticket.

I don't know. You might need to learn a lesson. That's between you and God.

But you're wanting what you think you need in that moment. So you pray for
mercy. Now, how does this work in my life?

As you start to unpack this verse, how do I practice radical mercy? I got to
tell you, I'm going to be working all my life on this one. As a teacher of God's
Word, I tend to be able to see God's truth, sometimes in black and white,
sometimes too black and white, and not give the mercy to myself or to others
that I should give.

I want God to teach me this one the rest of my life. So how does it work? Well,
he teaches us here, "First, I must know mercy.

First I must know mercy. " You can't give what you don't have. And the great
news is mercy is a gift.

You don't have to earn it. You can't earn it. So how do I get this gift of
mercy?

You simply admit that you need it. Knowing mercy starts with a honest moment
where you say, "Jesus, I need your mercy. I need you to give me what I need, not
what I deserve.

I need you to give forgiveness in my life, because without it, I can't have a
relationship with you. I need you to give new life, a kind of life only you can
give. And thank you that you're willing to give that gift.

" That's where it starts. Now, knowing mercy, it starts there, but it's not a
one-time event. It's a daily commitment.

Every day you remind yourself that without God's mercy, where would I be? So
first you must know mercy, and then I will show mercy. That's what this
Beatitude teaches.

Then I will show mercy. If you say you know mercy, but you can't show mercy,
something is radically wrong, according to the teaching of Jesus here. Jesus
says, in fact, you're fooling yourself.

Now, it's not that mercy buys you mercy. The truth is, if you've really
experienced mercy, you cannot help but give it away to somebody else. If you
can't give it away, if you can't forgive, if you can't understand, if you can't
have compassion, if you can't give it away, it's a pretty strong indication that
you don't think you need it, or somehow you think you deserve it.

I deserve God's mercy more than that person. God's mercy towards you inevitably
motivates your mercy towards others. Now, think about this with me for a moment.

Mercy is a gift, so that means that forgiveness is a gift. And the truth is, you
cannot earn a gift. What I'm about to say could radically change some of your
lives, because there's an unforgiveness in your life that has been a barrier, a
hurt for so long.

I'm not saying that the hurt, the memory will go away, but I am saying that you
can forgive. Forgiveness doesn't mean you say, "They can hurt me again. "
Forgiveness doesn't mean you open up the relationship and totally trust them
again.

Forgiveness just means you hand it over to God, you hand the judgment over to
God. But I know many, many people, you can't earn a gift. I know many, many
people who are caught in the trap of waiting for someone to earn the gift of
forgiveness.

So you're looking at them all the time, hoping that they'll earn it, hoping that
they'll say the right thing or do the right thing or give you the right
indication. Listen, you could not earn forgiveness from God, and they can't earn
forgiveness from you. Nothing they do could earn forgiveness.

It's a gift that comes from you. Now, as I talk about this, the truth is, mercy,
mercy is messy. It's messy.

God's mercy towards you is messy. It meant being born in a stable in Bethlehem.
It meant going to a cross and dying for you.

It means that some people still ignore his mercy and reject him even today with
all that he did. If God's mercy towards us is messy, then our mercy towards
others will be messy. It doesn't always work out the way that you want it to
work out.

Mercy is risky. They might reject your mercy. C.

S. Lewis once said, "Pilot was merciful until it became risky. " He was willing
to be merciful towards Jesus until it risked his political future.

But true mercy is risky because they may reject. God's mercy is risky. But that
messy, risky mercy is the only way to real life.

That's what Jesus teaches us in this life management seminar. Now, one final
thing about mercy. First I've got to be shown mercy, and then I will show mercy.

But the final truth is, as I show mercy, I will better know mercy. I get to
understand God's mercy better and better as I show mercy to others. As you show
mercy to others, you will better experience, understand God's mercy in your own
life.

You'll have a fuller understanding of it. You experience all of God's mercy the
moment you're saved. He pours out all of His forgiveness on you, but then you
spend the rest of your life as a believer, a follower in Christ, understanding
all that he did in that moment, how merciful he really is.

So you know mercy to show mercy, but you also show mercy to know mercy. That's
how God works in our lives. Let's take a few minutes to talk to him.

Our Father, you are a merciful Father, and we want to learn from you. Thank you
that you have shown us mercy. Teach us how.

Give us strength to be merciful, beginning with the people that are closest to
us, our own family, our own friends, our own church. But then Lord also, people
maybe from way in the past or people that are on the peripheral of our lives,
show us how to show mercy. Let your mercy in our lives motivate a mercy out of
us that's not our own.

And Lord, we don't want to end this prayer without saying we want the hunger and
thirst for what you want in our lives. We want to live for what you want. We
want that to be most important to us.

And so Lord, let that which is most important to you be most important to us
today we pray. In Jesus' name, amen. Tomorrow we're going to talk about what it
means to be a peacemaker, to be joyful in persecution.