Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Matthew 5:7.
What a simple little statement! Mercy does not cost anything, but neither can you buy it. Mercy doesn’t seem to be very valuable until you need it. Then it is one of the most precious things in all the world. It is something you can desire for, but you can’t demand it because it is given completely undeserved and unmerited. You know that you don’t deserve it, but when it comes your way you are grateful.
Yet, to give it is something else. When Jesus said, “Blessed are the merciful for they shall obtain mercy,” He was speaking about one of the highest principles and one of the greatest attributes of God.
This is one Beatitude which can refer to the end-time walk with God. God is reaching down in His mercy and grace, and He is taking people who do not deserve to walk in anything—the lame, the halt, and the blind—and he is saying to them, “Come to My supper, because it is prepared. It is ready. Come now” (Luke 14:16–24).
This is the day that the Lord will pass up theologians and choose young people who have been delivered from weird situations and habits to make them ministers of His Word.
The Lord also desires to renew the strength of those who are older who seek him with all of their hearts.
It will take those who have been forgiven much to love much. It will take those who know what grace really means to preach it. The people who have never had to be forgiven much, never intend to forgive anyone else much. They have a difficulty, for they never seem to reach the depth of the Spirit that is the grace of God. It is the anointing of the Lord that comes to minister mercy to us when we are undeserving.
It is a strange paradox that these are also the days of judgment, for we see two principles that represent attributes of God: With the merciful thou wilt shew thyself merciful…and with the forward (crooked) thou wilt shew thyself froward. Psalm 18:25, 26.
In other words, if you get tough with God, He will get tough with you. But if you are merciful, He will be merciful to you. He says, “Now I am going to set before you mercy. If you will not walk in mercy, then you will walk in judgment, and judgment will be without mercy to him who has shown no mercy. I will deal with you on any plane that you want to live.”
Another passage that tells how God will show mercy is James 2:12, 13. So speak ye, and so do, as men that are to be judged by a law of liberty. For judgment is without mercy to him that hath showed no mercy: mercy glorieth against judgment. If you say, “I just don’t have it in my heart to be forgiving,” then you have a stiff principle to stand on: give every man what he deserves—justice. And that is exactly what you are going to get—what you deserve.
The righteousness of God demands that things be governed in justice, that He judge men for their sins and not acquit the guilty. But there is an attribute of God that is greater than His justice, and that is His mercy. That is why you and I are not consumed. Because He loves us so much, we are not destroyed. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. It is extraordinary how mercy puts you in a place to show mercy and in a position where God shows you mercy.
Judgment will be without mercy to him who has shown no mercy, but mercy glories against judgment. Justice is a great quality of God, one of His holy attributes, and because He is just He brings every transgression unto judgment. The greatness of it demanded that His Son go to the cross to die for sin. God’s judgment demanded that, even though it broke His own heart, the heart of a father, it had to be. The justice of God cried out for the payment of the penalties of sin. But because He is the Heavenly Father with a greater attribute of mercy, He sent His Son to die for those who were His enemies and blasphemers.
God has laws that govern you, and the only way you can get free from one law is to appeal to a higher one. It is like coming up to successive floors in a building; at each level different rules apply. If you do not know God, and you do not know His mercy, you are under His law and justice. But if you walk in the Spirit, you are not under the law. If you do not walk in the Spirit, you are down in a low level, driven by the impulses and depravity of the flesh. If you are in Christ, you walk in the Spirit, and you will not fulfill the lust of the flesh (Galatians 5:16). You can move out of one level and into another.
You will never understand the ways of the Lord until you understand there are certain basic principles, and from there you work on up to the priority principles. The principle of walking in the Spirit exceeds every other principle. The instincts and drives in a human being can destroy him because of the fallen state of the body. These basic things—the law, the flesh, and all of its desires—govern your life until you reach up to a higher principle that eliminates the rest of them. That higher principle is walking in the Spirit.
The same thing is true of law and grace. If you are not under the grace of God and walking in the grace of God, you are under the law. Don’t fool yourself—you are under the law. The law applies to every man who is not walking in the grace of God, and with it come all the exacting demands that leave him continually condemned. Self-condemnation is a part of religion everywhere. People are condemned, condemned, condemned. Where did it come from? It came from the fact that the Spirit of God is convicting them of sin because they are living on that low plane of the law and justice. The conviction of the Lord turns to condemnation as it is filtered through the soul that is not renewed. When they move up out of that, they move out of the condemnation and into the glorious liberty that belongs to them.
Of all the attributes of God, one of the greatest is His mercifulness, and certainly it is above His justice, because mercy triumphs against judgment. It can erase judgment. When a man gives mercy, I believe it places him beyond consequences and the penalties. Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. To a great degree, at least, when you show mercy to a person, God puts you beyond the consequences and penalties that you deserve in your life.
Sometimes you see someone who seems like a devil on wheels, and you wonder, “Why didn’t God deal with him long ago?” It may be that he has another streak in him: he may weep before the Lord and have a mercifulness in his spirit. When God sees a little strain of that, He bypasses a carload of offenses. You wonder why God is so exact with some of the religious people who sit in church they are exacting on others. …with the froward, thou will show thyself froward.
Jesus blessed and helped the harlots and publicans who heard Him gladly. You never find one denunciation of them. Everyone who came to Him, He defended and loosed. He would free them because they were penitent in their hearts. Those who were ready to cry for mercy received mercy. But He never said anything good about those fine, religious people who were so hard and exacting on everyone, the Pharisees. He pointed out the fact that they tithed even the little herbs that they grew, such as the mint bush out by the side of the house. He said, “This you ought to do, but you have forgotten the weightier points of the law; you have forgotten mercy” (Matthew 23:23).
It may seem strange, but I think God deals this way with some who are on the outside of the Church who do not even have a Scripture, yet they have a philosophy: “Live and let live; be tolerant.” They are wrong in their tolerance of sin, but they do have a sympathy for people who become snared and caught in things. Moreover, it seems as if God is giving the religious the elbow all the time, because they are ready to go right down the line on everyone who does anything wrong. They don’t know why, but they are violating the principle of mercy. One little girl prayed, “Lord, make all the bad people good and all the good people nice,” because there was something about the good people that was not so nice.
When we stop to think how all of us have sinned and failed, we know what our walk with God is all about; it is about the grace of God. Because we are willing to open our heart and show grace, He shows us grace. When we give mercy, God shows us mercy. If we are not harsh with our brother, God is not harsh with us. It is what is in your spirit that counts. Here is what the Word of God tells about the man who knows how to show mercy in His life. The merciful man doeth good to his own soul; but he that is cruel troubleth his own flesh. Proverbs 11:17. Through the harshness and bitterness that people have in their spirits, they are hurting themselves. They do not realize what they are doing, but they are coming against their own health, against their own welfare. Most human beings are that way, rather vengeful. They want to carry grudges. It is hard for them to forgive. An unforgiving spirit is in them. They sometimes become quite bitter.
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. Justice reigns next to this attribute. If you do not want any part of mercy, then you will have to buy some justice. The Lord knew the importance of it when He prayed, “Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be Thy name. Thy Kingdom come, Thy will be done in earth as it is in heaven.” A little prayer for the sustenance of the day, but what did He say? “Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us.” The only comment Jesus made after this prayer was, “But if ye forgive not men their trespasses, neither will your Father forgive your trespasses.” You cannot escape it.
It is most human to be vengeful, to be unforgiving, to carry grudges in your heart and sometimes carry them in your spirit. Perhaps the most tragic thing is to see people walk with bitterness. It is tragic to find bitterness existing between parents and children, between husbands and wives, between relatives, and between business associates. Bitterness sometimes exists in your memories of people who did you injuries which you cannot recall, nor even remember what the people looked like, yet when you come to worship the Lord, you still don’t realize the effect on you. That is why Peter wrote, concerning husbands and wives, that husbands were not to be bitter toward their wives. They were to dwell as heirs together of the grace of life that their prayers be not hindered (I Peter 3:7). Why would the prayers of people be hindered over feelings existing between them? It all has to do with mercifulness. If you are going to be married, you had better be merciful. You need it. If you are going to have children, you had better be merciful. They need it.
There are those who grow up in families with bitterness. They can’t wait to be free from parental restraint, and many times they actually have revenge in their hearts. Many young people go bad, not because they are morally bad by inclination, but because they want to shock their parents and make them suffer. They will wreck their own lives to get even with their parents. Sometimes, in a situation where there is no forgiveness, a person can make one mistake and suffer for it the rest of his life. The one who doesn’t forgive the sin sins more every day then the one who committed the sin that God forgave.
Who can count the degree of sin, the state of heart? It is not the action. It goes deeper than that. It is the state of heart. Blessed are the merciful: for they will obtain mercy. When people rise up in indignation, it is pride and self-interest. Pulling out a strict little yardstick never helped any situation in the world. I wonder how many people have been broken in churches, in homes, and in businesses, when such exacting demands were placed upon them that they broke under them. If someone shows you mercy and ministers grace to you, you can rise up to do miracles.
An important word about mercy is given in the wisdom of Solomon. He that oppresseth the poor reproacheth his Maker; but he that hath mercy on the needy honoreth him. Proverbs 14:31. There are inequities, human frailties, and many situations which govern the things in this world. You can take a good look at them and say, “There’s an inequity there. That’s not right. One man is born in a rich home; another man is born in a poor home. One is born with opportunities; another is born with apparently no opportunities.” Why were we born in a country with such high standards of living? Why were we not born in a tribe in some faraway place where we would have bloated bellies from worms and be hungry and crying all the time, where we would never have a chance for an education, but grow up with only a beast instinct to survive and with very little human kindness left in us? Missionaries have told how in some tribes the men’s pleasure is beating their wives, hearing them hollering and crying all night long. What intolerable loads and inequities, and although situations are not fair in the world, yet in the greatness of God He made mercy as a principle.
Some people are caught in things that wouldn’t overtake you. Who are you to condemn them? God has set the world in this time of man’s day, so every man has opportunity to open his heart to God or not. Yet in spite of all that, lest the inequities of being born in certain situations and overtaken in certain problems be too great, God says, “If you don’t show mercy, you reproach your Maker. If you show mercy, you honor God.” If you see someone running into a real problem, a brother or not a brother, and you shut up your bowels of compassion against him (as the King James says), how dwells the love of God in you? (I John 3:17).
The love of God reaches out in mercy. The love of God is synonymous with mercy. Do you say, “I have God’s love,” and yet you are not moved? Something is wrong. The love of God is not there, for it reaches out in mercy. Oh, we believe in grace when it is for ourselves, but we must believe it for everyone. We are to have faith for every man who stands in the house of God to worship. We are not to give up on any of the young people when they come in, whether they are hung up on drugs or anything else. We are to stay with them, love them, and become involved. When the Lord comes there will be one basis of judgment (Matthew 25:32–40). He will gather the sheep and the goats together before Him, the sheep on one side and the goats on the other. He will say to the sheep, “Enter into all the blessing, because I was hungry and you fed Me; I was naked and you clothed Me; I was in prison and you visited Me.”
“How can that be? Lord, when were You in those situations?”
“Inasmuch as you did it to the least of these My brethren, you have done it unto Me.” How He identifies Himself with them (Matthew 25:31–45). We do not yet know the meaning of this Scripture: “Sell what you have and give alms. Lay your treasures up in heaven where moth and rust cannot corrupt and thieves cannot break through” (Luke 12:33). We do not realize how true it is.
Strive for a mercifulness to come forth in your spirit, not sympathy. Never look back at the mistakes people have made when they come for help. Everyone has made mistakes. Everyone has floundered around. Do not judge and say, “Well, he failed along the way two or three times. I don’t know whether he should have our blessing or not.” Be eager for him to make it. Show him grace and mercy in your heart. At the same time you do that, God does the same thing for you. He shows you mercy and grace. Do not give up on anyone, nor turn aside from anyone. Do not be bitter over a wrong. Who cares? You have to get over it and be merciful, filled with lovingkindness toward each other. An unforgiving spirit is the only thing that will stop your walking with God, because it stops the flow of grace, and that is what walking with God is all about—the grace of God. You cannot be bitter, nor unforgiving, nor vengeful. You have to be merciful.
If we do not have mercifulness, God will never commit judgment into our hands. He is not going to put end-time judgments in our hands so we can be vengeful, full of revenge, bitterness, and vindictiveness. He will do it for one reason, so He will be honored. It is the day of the vengeance of our God. It is not the day of our vengeance; we are to comfort all that mourn. This is a day that the judgments of the Lord will fill the earth, because those who have not accepted His mercy are going to accept His justice. But as the prophet has said, “In the midst of His wrath He remembers mercy” (Habakkuk 3:2).
Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. And yet, how many Christians come to God’s house without mercy in their hearts! All you have to do is provoke a memory, a thought of some wrong done them, some offense, and immediately out of their spirit comes bitterness. They never forget. Talk to them years later, and they have embellished the story a little to make themselves look a bit better than what they were at the time. They are still very bitter about it, never realizing their bitterness is what made them lose out in the first place. They have nurtured it and destroyed themselves because they were unforgiving—no mercy.
In Micah 6:8, we read, He hath showed thee, O man, what is good; and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, and to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God? Prophet, you are right. God requires us to show mercy. And that is the way we are going to receive mercy. Who of us has not sinned or failed? Our walk with God was never to be an endurance contest. It is an exhibition of grace. Habakkuk cried, “In the midst of wrath, remember mercy,” sensing that God would bring wrath upon the earth, but one overriding fact would be greater—whoever would call upon the name of the Lord would be saved because in Mount Zion there would be deliverance and in the remnant whom the Lord God should call (Joel 2:32).
In the midst of the wrath of God falling upon this world, in catastrophe and tribulation greater than the world has ever seen, there will be people saved. They will call on the name of the Lord and be saved because mercy will override even in that hour. Multitudes will be in the valley of decision, but there will be so many who will never call on the Lord. Right now we must start showing the mercy of God, being merciful in our very spirit.
When God sees a little strain of mercifulness in your heart, He will give you mercy. Even if you have a carload of offenses, stumblings, and faults, God will bring you through. The man who makes it is not the man known for the accuracy of his decisions and judgment, who has never made a mistake nor stumbled. For a righteous man falleth seven times and riseth up again… Proverbs 24:16. Though he fall, he shall not utterly be cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand. Psalms 37:24. Oh, what mercifulness is there! We must readjust our thinking because we still tend to be harsh when it comes to walking with God, not knowing that the sin of being unmerciful is greater than all other offenses put together. In it we violate the greatest law and principle, and we sin and blaspheme the greatest attribute of God. In all His dealings with man His mercy triumphs over judgment.
But I say unto you that hear, Love your enemies, do good to them that hate you, bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you. To him that smiteth thee on the one cheek offer also the other; and from him that taketh away thy cloak withhold not thy coat also. Give to every one that asketh thee; and of him that taketh away thy goods ask them not again. And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise.
And if ye love them that love you, what thank have ye? for even sinners love those that love them. And if ye do good to them that do good to you, what thank have ye? for even sinners do the same. And if ye lend to them of whom ye hope to receive, what thank have ye? even sinners lend to sinners, to receive again as much. But love your enemies, and do them good, and lend, never despairing; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be sons of the Most High: for he is kind toward the unthankful and evil.
Be ye merciful, even as your Father is merciful. And judge not, and ye shall not be judged: and condemn not, and ye shall not be condemned: release, and ye shall be released: give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, running over, shall they give unto your bosom. For with what measure ye mete it shall be measured to you again. Luke 6:27–38.
Now, let’s talk about that unforgiving spirit, the times that you have been vengeful. You may pray all day, but it is bad if something is wrong in your spirit. We had a favorite procedure at our home if someone in the family were a little upset; when he came to the table he knew what would happen. Fuming when he sat down, he was the one who was asked to lead the family in prayer and blessing. What a discipline! It would break him, and he would sense what kind of spirit he had. Then things had to be made right, because our prayers are hindered when that kind of thing is in our hearts. We have to forgive men their trespasses if we want to be forgiven.
“But what about the situations with the people at work, etc.—how do I live with that when I’m being hurt by it? How do I get around it?”
If you keep a right spirit and are merciful, you aren’t going to lose, because God will show you mercy. He will not let evil triumph over you when you are open to Him. Your openness to God will supercede every other openness you have, and He will help you. But one thing you must remember: Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord. Romans 12:19. There is a way that you can come up to the forces of evil and yet refuse to let a viciousness get in your spirit. God will take care of the situation and fight your battle for you. You have to count on Him to do it. I work on my spirit, bringing it before God more than anything else as far as the duties of the ministry are concerned—more than study, counseling, or preparation in any one phase—because I do not want to respond to my environment on a human level to any situation, any person, or any circumstance in a wrong way. I want my spirit to respond to God. I want to be a God-fearing man, a man after His own heart.
When God wanted a king to replace Saul, Samuel took the horn of anointing oil and went over the hill to Bethlehem. There he sought out the family of Jesse, and looked over the tall sons that might be beautiful as kings, but God whispered in the ear of Samuel, “Man looks on the outward appearance, but God looks on the heart” (I Samuel 16:7). “There must be another boy.” He was way out in the pasture with the sheep, with one eye cocked for the lion or the bear that would come against the flock. He was a brave boy, but mostly he was focused on the Lord. His heart was fixed; he was steadfast on the Lord. He tried to maintain a good and a right spirit. Some of the psalms or lamentations on what David had tried to do for his enemies are vindictive songs, penned by the Holy Spirit. They are cries, beautiful types of God’s judgment on end-time Babylon. Don’t worry about them, the Bible is not contradictory. God will send judgments.
You say, “What about those people out there who are evil?” Pray for them. Try to do good to them, but remember, unless they open their heart to the mercy of God, unless God intervenes, it is justice they will receive. But in your heart you are to be merciful, as much as lies within you.
David loved the Lord, became the king, and he dealt graciously with the children of Saul, though Saul had sought his life for years. There was mercifulness in his heart and God was merciful to him. He had reason to need that mercifulness on many occasions, but God was with him.
Whatever you need, in this problem or that, one thing you need is mercy. A lot of the things you are is because of various situations. God may have led you into them, but He led you into them to reveal what is in your own spirit, what is in your own life. A walk with God has revelation of the Lord. But very close in importance to revelation of the Lord is a revelation of yourself, of your own spirit, and what is in you. You don’t catch a glimpse of Him without having it mirror back. Then you catch a glimpse of yourself and say, “Lord, renew a right spirit within me. Purify my spirit; make it holy before You.” If you feel that you haven’t been merciful, what should you do? The first step is to repent.
Unmercifulness is the most ungodlike quality of all. If you looked at the epitome of being without mercy, you would be looking at Satan. Think of the people who die under tortures, out of their minds. When you see the misery Satan brings in the way of drugs and other bondages, and you see a person driven by sin and Satan out of his mind, drooling, senseless, you know there is hardly a trace of that which God put in a human being. The ultimate objective of Satan, without mercy, is to get back at God and destroy everything and everyone that God has brought forth.
The devil is the epitome of unmercifulness. God is the epitome of mercy and love. So repent and say, “God, forgive me.” You will never face anything in your spirit more difficult than to get rid of a grudge against someone and get down and forgive them. There is nothing in your spirit that Satan will hold onto more than to keep you unforgiving. To get rid of it, just say, “God forgive me.” Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy. As long as we are living on this human level, though we strive to walk after the Spirit, we are in need of mercy much more than justice.
You had better love those who have offended you, those who have despitefully used you, and those of whom you could easily say, “They’re being punished for their sin. They’re getting what they deserve.” Don’t say that. The measure that you mete will be measured to you again; you will get what you deserve. It is not a time to condemn. It is a time to open your heart in love. Read I Corinthians again, and read how love does not account an offense. One translation says, “It is not keeping records.”
We say with all of our heart, “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us” (Matthew 6:12). “For if I regard iniquity in my heart, the Lord will not hear me” (Psalm 66:18). It cannot be that I look upon my heart, or look upon the heart of my brother, and not believe for grace to cover us all. Grace is not a single blanket on a double bed for just one person to have. Grace is the blanket to cover us all.
If you repent in your heart of grudges, an unforgiving spirit, and vengefulness, look to the Lord and say, “Lord, help me to be merciful!” We are shattered when we see something wrong in our spirit, but this is the path of life, and we are instructed to walk therein, and so we will do it. It is with a merciful spirit that we are going to be able to pray and see the powers of hell judged. The devil can always invoke God’s laws. You may say, “Oh, I’m praying for God to judge that situation! God judge those who are coming against the house of God!” But it can be turned about: “Look what you’re doing! You’re being vindictive because there are things wrong in your own life.” However, if you are merciful and you are filled with the grace of God, you can call upon the Lord. And because of the purity of your own spirit, God will intervene to deliver. God will show you mercy, rather than judge a situation until He is meting out justice. We are not looking for God to mete out justice. I am not concerned about the degrees of right or wrong, but I am concerned about the mercifulness of God that will loose the flow of the Kingdom to us, and for that reason I must be merciful in my spirit.
It is written in the Word, The merciful man doeth good to his own soul, and he that is cruel troubleth his own flesh. Proverbs 11:17.
Does not the Lord declare that this is His Word? If you will show mercy, are you not bringing blessing upon yourself? Are you not doing good to your own soul when your heart goes out in love and mercy? Let there be longsuffering; let there be not vengeance in your heart. For vengeance belongs to the Lord and He will repay. But you shall love your enemy. You shall not return in kind to him who mistreats you; you shall show mercy for the Lord is with you. Do not put your hand to it, for if your hand shall be offensive, if you shall be given to vengeance and retaliation, then mercy is not on your spirit. Commit your cause unto the Lord and be merciful, for the Lord shall bless you and you shall be doing good to your own soul. You shall be blessing your own life. Do not be cruel, for you will be troubling your own flesh and bringing upon your own head days of calamity and disaster.
Let the anointing of the Lord be upon you that you shall be filled with the lovingkindness of the Lord. His mercies endure forever. His mercy is renewed every morning. So you shall look to the Lord and say, “Bless the name of the Lord, so shall I reflect His love: I shall show mercy even as He shows mercy; I shall be perfect even as my Heavenly Father is perfect; I shall be merciful even as the Heavenly Father is merciful.” So shall the Lord establish His house, and who shall destroy, who shall take away, and who shall pull down that upon which the Lord rains His mercy? Amen.