Good morning, brothers and sisters.
There comes a time in every conference for me when I feel sorry for all the people who have had to listen to so much. I hope that you are not becoming too tired with the teaching. In that case, I think we have the right message for you this morning.
Blessed are the merciful,
For they shall receive mercy.
As our brother has prayed and crowned the Lord as the Lord of this time, we will go directly to the next beatitude in Matthew 5.
Blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy.
—Matthew 5:7
Now, this is one of the spiritual laws about sowing and reaping. There are quite a few such laws in the Sermon on the Mount. I could use another little illustration. I call this a boomerang law. You know what a boomerang is?
I saw, some time ago, a television program about Australian hunters and how they were able to handle a boomerang. It was amazing. When they threw this thing up in the air, they were able to do it with such precision that it came back; and if they did not bow their heads, they would be hit right in the head.
Now, the boomerang that God is handling is even more precise. It does not matter whether you bow or run away; it will find you and hit you.
We have such a law connected with the beatitude that we are considering this morning in Matthew 7:1-2:
Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged:
and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you.
Now, you can use different standards if you want to judge your brother or your sister. One is to use the standard of righteousness. Another is to use the standard of grace.
And you will get back exactly what you are giving. It will come back in the same nature. God will find you somehow, somewhere, sometime, and you will get paid for whatever you sow, whatever you do, whatever you say, to your brothers and sisters and to your fellow men.
If you really want to ruin your life, I can find out a way for you this morning. Maybe you will be amazed. But if you look in that little strange book of Ecclesiastes, chapter 7 and verse 16:
Be not righteous over much;
neither make thyself over wise:
why shouldest thou destroy thyself?
—Ecclesiastes 7:16
Isn’t that strange? Be not too righteous. Be not too wise. Why would you want to ruin yourself?
There is such a standard of righteousness, of perfection, where we are claiming the uttermost from one another in the company of God’s believers. We will not be satisfied with anything less than the perfect thing.
But this can be a dangerous way. If we have that kind of attitude in our fellowship, requiring that our group of believers should be absolutely perfect—our brothers and sisters should be perfect, with no fault and no weakness among us—it can become destructive.
I know of a brother in Copenhagen who had that kind of attitude. We called him a perfectionist. He would not be satisfied unless we had the perfect church, and everything had to be perfect, right down to the letter of the Word of God. He could tolerate nothing.
And this attitude of perfection turned into a critical spirit. He could hurt his brothers and sisters very much. But the one he hurt more than the brothers and sisters was himself. He broke down one day and was brought to a mental hospital. He was sick for two years. What a tragedy.
He required so much of his brothers and sisters that someday the same measure, the same standard, was, so to speak, put upon his own life, and he broke down. He could not live up to that standard.
How important it is for us to have this attitude of heart:
Blessed are the merciful,
For they shall receive mercy.
I remember reading in one of Brother Nee’s books about a certain brother in China who had a habit: whenever something went wrong among the believers, he would always come along and say, “It is the hand of God.”
In one particular case, there was a young couple who lost one of their children. This brother came to see them, stepped into the house, and proclaimed, “This is the hand of God.” He meant that it was a kind of punishment—that there was something wrong in these dear people’s lives.
The sad thing happened that a year later, he lost his own son. And, if I remember correctly, when Brother Nee heard about that, he sat down and wrote a letter. He pointed out in that letter how what had happened to that brother was exactly what he had been doing to other people of the Lord.
But as he wrote that letter, the Spirit spoke to him and said, “Now, Brother Nee, you are doing exactly the same thing this brother did.”
Oh, how careful we ought to be not to judge one another. It will come back upon our own lives; it will hit us. The boomerangs of God never fail. He will find us somewhere, sometime—maybe later in our lives.
Blessed are the merciful,
For they shall receive mercy.
James has another Scripture that I would like to read to you this morning:
So speak ye, and so do, as they that shall be judged by the law of liberty.
For judgment shall be without mercy to him that hath showed no mercy:
mercy glorieth against judgment.
—James 2:12-13
Oh, I wish that the Lord somehow would impress these words in our hearts so that we would never forget them. Let us ask the Lord to give us such an attitude of heart.
Not only does this apply to the time down here. If you are merciful, if you forgive, if you are forbearing toward your brothers and sisters, you will get mercy back. I have seen that again and again.
There have been times when some brother or sister came into a real mess. It was so easy to criticize. It was so easy to do away with that brother. We could even have pushed him outside the fellowship. It was so easy.
But the Lord gave us mercy to forgive and to be forbearing. Then, perhaps later, we came ourselves into the very same situation. What happened? We received mercy from the brothers and sisters.
But not only in this life. If you really want not to ruin yourself, but, on the contrary, to build yourself up, then even at the day of judgment you will receive mercy if you have been merciful yourself. It is a law: what you sow, you shall reap.
Why is it that it is difficult to be merciful? Well, if you look in Matthew 7 again, you will see something interesting:
Judge not, that ye be not judged.
For with what judgment ye judge, ye shall be judged:
and with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured unto you.
And why beholdest thou the mote that is in thy brother’s eye,
but considerest not the beam that is in thine own eye?
Or how wilt thou say to thy brother, Let me pull out the mote out of thine eye;
and, behold, the beam is in thine own eye?
Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye;
and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother’s eye.
—Matthew 7:1-5
Why is it so clear to us to see the fault, the speck, in our brother’s eye, and yet not notice the log—the big log—in our own eyes? Well, it is because it is written that love covers a multitude of sins. And there is no person on this earth that I love so much as myself.
Oh, how I love myself. I care for myself. I cannot help it, brothers. Maybe I have shocked you now. You thought I was kind of spiritual. But I do love myself. I might as well admit it right now, so you know what kind of person I am.
I love myself, and that love covers a multitude of things. It is impossible for me to see any fault in myself. I am perfectly sure that if I were the only one here, there would never be any problem around—any problem! If I were the only member in the body of Christ, what a body of Christ! What a church!
Or if all the others were just like me—my wife—what a church! What a glorious church! What an amount of love there would be: brotherly love.
Love covers a multitude of sins. Because we love ourselves, we are extremely, excessively tolerant. The things that you are critical about in your brother, you will not mind doing yourself. You may not even notice that you are doing something wrong.
But as soon as someone else is doing the same thing, you become critical. You cannot see the log in your own eye, but only the speck in your brother’s eye.
I find so very often that a criticism or a tendency to judge my brother comes as a reflection of my own problem. The problems I see in my brothers and sisters are, in fact, often problems that I have in my own life.
When you look into another person’s eye, you get a beautiful picture of yourself. A minor picture, but a very clear picture of yourself. What you see in your brother is your own thing being reflected.
You cannot see into your own eyes, but you see your own nature. I have found that the things I have been troubled about in my own life are the things to which I am most sensitive in my brothers’ and sisters’ lives. I can be so hard when I see a brother or sister doing something that I know I am battling over myself.
It is strange, but it is very true. The speck you see in your brother’s eye is only a reflection of the big, big log coming out of your own eye.
That is why it is so difficult to be merciful. Only by the Spirit of God can we be exposed to ourselves and really see how we are—see our own faults and our own sinful lives. If we can get into that position and know certainly how we are, how difficult we are, then somehow it will enable us to be merciful toward our brothers and sisters.
This matter of seeing the speck in the brother’s eye and not seeing the log in our own has to do with Phariseeism. If you look in Matthew 23:
Then spake Jesus to the multitudes, and to his disciples,
Saying, The scribes and the Pharisees sit on Moses’ seat:
all things therefore whatsoever they bid you, these do and observe:
but do not ye after their works; for they say, and do not.
Yea, they bind heavy burdens and grievous to be borne,
and lay them on men’s shoulders;
but they themselves will not move them with their finger.
—Matthew 23:1-4
The things they are requiring other people to do, they do not do themselves. This is a problem with us. We are requiring much more of other people than we would require from ourselves.
We are much more tolerant with ourselves than we are with other people. The margin is much wider for us than it is for others. That can create a real Phariseeism among the Lord’s people.
May God give us this loving attitude:
Blessed are the merciful,
For they shall receive mercy.
I think the only way we can really become merciful is not only by seeing, in God’s light, our own lives, our own imperfections, our own faults and weaknesses. We need to see them. We need to ask the Lord to show us.
But far more, we need to see the Lord Himself and behold the Lamb of God. Above all, we need to be reminded again and again how God has poured down upon our lives all His mercy, how He has forgiven us.
It is because we forget all of that that we can be hard and critical toward one another. It has been too long since we have really been before the Lord and understood how much He has loved us, still loves us, and how He has showered our lives with mercy.
You know the story told by the Lord Jesus in Matthew 18 about the slave who was forgiven an enormous amount of money. I think we ought to read it together, to be reminded once again how the Lord has shown us mercy.
Then came Peter and said to Him, Lord, how oft shall my brother sin against me, and I forgive him? until seven times?
—Matthew 18:21
Peter was really interested to know how far he had to go. Seven times, I believe, was mentioned somewhere in the Old Testament law. So he wanted to know whether that rule was still to be followed by the people of the New Testament dispensation.
Maybe he thought the Lord would cut it down. But, on the contrary, the Lord said to him:
I say not unto thee, Until seven times;
but, Until seventy times seven.
—Matthew 18:22
That is 490. I used my calculator before I went down to the meeting. If you read in the Gospel of Luke, you can have the impression that perhaps the Lord meant every day. Now, if you take your calculator and take one year, it becomes an almost impossible number of times that you have to forgive your brother—more than a hundred thousand in a year.
How are we ever going to have such an overflow of mercy, such a spirit of forgiveness, such an attitude of mercy that can go on and on and on? There is only one way to get it: to behold the Lamb of God, to be reminded of the mercy that the Lord Jesus has shown unto us.
And it is even more. It says in Ephesians that the Lord needs all eternity to show unto us all His goodness, kindness, and mercy. It is so vast. It is endless.
In one of the Psalms, it says that the Lord is ready to forgive. Do you know what it says in the Danish Bible? It is a very strange word: the Lord is round to forgive, like a circle. A circle has no end. You cannot tell me where the circle begins and where it ends. It is endless, absolutely eternal.
In all the ages to come, we are to be filled with the goodness, kindness, and mercy of the Lord, and it will never end. After the first ten thousand years, we will still have the same amount left of His mercy, goodness, and love that He is going to show in Christ Jesus unto us.
Oh, how wonderful He is. Praise the Lord. We need to be reminded of all His mercy.
Therefore is the kingdom of heaven likened unto a certain king,
who would make a reckoning with his servants.
And when he had begun to reckon, one was brought unto him,
that owed him ten thousand talents.
—Matthew 18:23-24
That is equal to ten million dollars—a lot of money, a hopeless debt. But since he did not have the means to repay, the lord commanded him to be sold, along with his wife and children and all that he had, and repayment to be made.
That is what happens to you and me. We were sold, with all that we are and have, into the hand of the evil one, because our guilt, our debt to the Lord, was so great. If our lives were measured by the standard of righteousness, we would have to surrender all of our lives and end up in that wicked and horrible place of eternal condemnation—eternal fire.
This is the standard of righteousness. Our debt is so immense that we would have to pay with our lives, our families, everything. More than this, we would have to pay with our eternity if it were not for the mercy of the Lord. I will sing of the mercies of the Lord forever. How great this is.
The servant therefore fell down and worshipped him, saying,
Lord, have patience with me, and I will pay thee all.
And the lord of that servant, being moved with compassion,
released him, and forgave him the debt.
—Matthew 18:26-27
Praise the Lord. He did not say, “All right, get on your feet and start working for Me and start repaying.” That would not have been good, would it? No, He forgave me ten million dollars. Oh, what mercy.
But that servant went out, and found one of his fellow-servants,
who owed him a hundred shillings:
and he laid hold on him, and took him by the throat, saying,
Pay what thou owest.
—Matthew 18:28
That is equal to about one hundred and eighty dollars. What a ridiculous sum compared to the other one.
So his fellow-servant fell down and besought him, saying,
Have patience with me, and I will pay thee.
And he would not: but went and cast him into prison,
till he should pay that which was due.
—Matthew 18:29-30
So when his fellow-servants saw what was done, they were exceeding sorry,
and came and told unto their lord all that was done.
Then his lord called him unto him, and saith to him,
Thou wicked servant, I forgave thee all that debt, because thou besoughtest me:
shouldest not thou also have had mercy on thy fellow-servant,
even as I had mercy on thee?
And his lord was wroth, and delivered him to the tormentors,
till he should pay all that was due.
So shall also My heavenly Father do unto you,
if ye forgive not every one his brother from your hearts.
—Matthew 18:31-35
And what happened? Oh, the boomerang, the boomerang, then hit. It never fails. The Lord will know about it. He does not even need someone to tell Him; He can think for Himself.
Blessed are the merciful.
I wonder what happened to that slave. It is incredible, isn’t it? Shortly after he was shown such tremendous mercy, he was able to be so hard with his fellow servant. It just reveals the kind of nature, the kind of heart, we have.
It also reveals the desperate need every one of us has to stay in the presence of the Lord, to be reminded and reminded and reminded again and again.
We are like the man spoken of in James 1, who saw himself in a mirror and then went away and forgot what manner of man he was. We can see all that the Lord has bought for us by His precious blood and hidden us in Christ, then go out the door and forget all about it. How we forget.
There was a brother in Sweden who was healed of a sick leg. One evening, at a prayer meeting for sick people, he went forward and they prayed for him. His leg was healed; he could bend it, and he jumped around, like the lame man in the temple who was healed.
But the next Sunday, when he came to church, people saw him walking with a limp. They went to him and said, “We saw you. We thought you were healed.” And he said, “Oh yes, I was. But, you know, it is the old habit. I forgot.”
How incredible. But this is one of the most incredible things in our nature: how we forget everything that the Lord has taught us, so easily and so fast. It is gone.
So we need to be reminded. We need to do what is written in this key word of the New Testament, certainly a key word in connection with these beatitudes: 2 Corinthians 3:18.
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord,
are transformed into the same image from glory to glory,
even as from the Lord the Spirit.
—2 Corinthians 3:18
Behold with unveiled face, as in a mirror, the glory of the Lord. This is the only way to be transformed into the same image. If you are dwelling in the presence of the Lord and beholding the Lamb of God, if you are aware of the mercy and grace that are in your God, then when you meet your brother and sister, what an attitude of mercy, what a tender spirit, will master you.
But if you are not beholding the Lord—and it means continually, not only once, but continually, again and again and again and again, beholding the glory of the Lord, the Lamb of God—then His likeness, His beauty, will take such a hold on you that you will be transformed into the same image.
Like it was with Moses: he went up on the mountain to be with the Lord for forty days. He saw the Lord face to face and spoke with Him. When he went down that mountain, his face was shining in such a way that he had to put something upon his head.
In the same way, when we dwell in the presence of the Lord and behold the Lamb of God, we will come to shine. There the Spirit will work the transforming work, molding us and impressing in our hearts the very same character which is in the Lamb of God.
This is the only way. It is very simple, but it is really the only way to be merciful: to be aware of that tremendous mercy that the Lord has shown unto all of us.
You know, in Genesis it speaks about the Lord putting two great lights in the firmament: the sun and the moon. But really, there is only one light. There is only one source of light: the sun. The moon is only a reflection of the sun. It has no light at all in itself.
By the way, you Americans have been up there and seen for yourselves: there is nothing there at all—just rock and sand. It is a very tasteless place. I wonder why you spent all those billions of dollars to get there. There is nothing there.
Well, that is me and you. There is nothing within us. Where is love going to come from? There is no love, no thought of loving You. Where is even the desire for God going to come from? Certainly, I cannot produce it. There is nothing in me that desires the Lord. The Lord says, “No man seeks Me.” No man.
Where is mercy going to come from? Compassion? Everything else? It can only be a reflection of the glory of the Lord. It can only come as shining upon us, as it shone from the face of Moses.
So, brothers and sisters, as we continually behold the glory of the Lord, this is the only way to get such a compassionate heart, filled with mercy.
Where the Lord is, there is the Spirit. If you are with the Lord and before the Lord, the Spirit comes down. The Spirit will impress the nature, the character, of the Lamb into your heart and fill you with all these virtues and wonderful attitudes that we so much desire.
This is why we read in Luke 6:
Be ye merciful, even as your Father is merciful.
—Luke 6:36
It comes from the Father. It is something that has to be born in our hearts. If we are His children, then it is possible. We are not merely His servants; we are His children. We are born by the Spirit.
And if the Spirit can master us and fill us while we behold that precious Lamb of God, we can be merciful as our Father is merciful.
Or, as it is put in 1 John 4:
Beloved, if God so loved us,
we also ought to love one another.
—1 John 4:11
Now, it originates in God. If God so loved us, then we ought to love one another because we have the possibility; we have the grace to do it. We really ought to do it. It is an obligation. Love one another.
As you know very well, in verse 19 of the same chapter:
We love, because He first loved us.
—1 John 4:19
Everything we have been speaking about from Matthew 5 is only a reflection of the glory of that precious Lamb of God. He is the only One who can touch us and move our hearts to be like that. But praise His name, He can do it, as long as we will be in His presence and look into His face.
Oh, may the Lord help us, brothers and sisters. How blessed are the merciful. They shall receive mercy. May God give us such an attitude in the church, among the believers, that we show mercy everywhere we are. We shall receive it back indeed.
Let us pray.
Lord Jesus, we thank You for Who You are and what You have done. Let me just ask, Lord, again: give us a fresh glimpse of Yourself this morning.
Lord, may we see the Son of God. Lord, we know that there is nothing else that can help us. Oh God, may we, with unveiled face, look into that glorious Christ and be transformed into the same image.
Thank You, God, for Your endless mercy. We thank You, God, for Your endless forgiveness. We thank You, God, for Your unlimited love.
Oh God, how thankful we are that we have found out, in Your presence, that we want to sing of the mercies of the Lord forever, because that mercy endures forever and ever and evermore.
Lord, we thank You that You are going to show that loving-kindness and mercy unto us throughout all the coming ages. And however much we receive of it, there will still be just as much left.
We thank You and praise You, Loving One. May it shine forth in our hearts, that the whole day and our fellowship together should be filled with the mercy of God, filled with the presence of God, filled with the Holy Spirit.
Oh God, thank You for hearing us. Thank You for being with us this morning. In Jesus’ name, amen.