MERCIED

The late Dan Cummings, beloved pastor of Five Points Community Church in Auburn Hills Michigan, which I first started to attend back in 2006, preached a sermon on the glory of God’s “transcendent mercy.”  In this sermon he asked this series of searching questions: “Do I feel the eternal weight and misery of my sin? Can you see all of us in our sin awaiting the judgement…can you see all of us – apart from Christ – clothed in our best attempts at righteousness, emptied of all of our possessions, sitting where titles and positions and status and health and looks and talents mean nothing…do we have any sense of our infinitely desperate need … Do I feel the infinite hopelessness and misery of my (sinful) soul?”

 Pastor Cumming’s point in asking these searching questions was to raise in us an acknowledgement of the immense and enduring misery caused by our sin to ourselves and others, misery which has its just consummation in our consignment to an eternal Hell.  In doing so he was highlighting our desperate need for God’s saving mercy (Titus 3:3-7) if we are to stand without fear, shame or guilt before a holy and righteous God on the day of our final judgment (Hebrews 9:27-28), and be welcomed into Heaven at that time.

Pastor Cummings defined mercy as God’s goodness shown to people in misery, who deserve that misery.  And according to the Bible, that is all of mankind (Romans 3:9-19).

Psalm 145, as well as numerous other passages in the Bible (Exodus 34:5-7, Ephesians 2:4, Micah 7:18, Psalm 136) tell us that mercy – translated in some Bibles as lovingkindness – is not something God has to summon up – something that is foreign to His nature as it is to ours, but that it is His very nature to be merciful.  In Psalm 145:8-9 we read, “The Lord is gracious, and full of compassion; slow to anger, and of great mercy.  The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works”.

The loving kindness and tender mercies that you and I receive from God each day are so numerous that we foolishly take them for granted as if God were obligated to forgive us and be good to us no matter how long we go on doing our own thing, with ourselves at the center of our lives rather than Him.  It is almost as if we dare God to respond directly and immediately with the judgment promised for our sin, and when He does not (and He rarely does) we become even more emboldened in it.  We either believe that God does not see our sin, finds it to be no big deal, or, as the devil proposed to Eve in the garden, He can’t do anything about it.  Ecclesiastes 8:11 states “because the sentence against sin is not executed speedily, the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil.”

Lamentations 3:21-26 tells us however, that it is only because of the Lord’s great mercy that we are not immediately consumed – not killed and dispatched to Hell after our 1st or 50^th or 50th million sin.  While we are in this world, God shows mercy to all, to various degrees, and His kindness in doing so is meant to lead men and women to acknowledge and turn from their sin (Romans 2:4), and receive by faith the saving mercy He offers through faith in the person and work of God the Son, Jesus Christ (1 Timothy 1:16).  For those who disdain this mercy, we are told it is only a matter of time before they receive the justice and judgement they deserve.

I would note that God’s saving mercy is not displayed toward you nor I because somehow Heaven would not be the same without us, but it speaks of the great character, the compassionate nature, the unfailing love of the God who displays mercy, grants pardon and is forgiving toward those who deserve only His judgement and wrath.

Mercy is not something we earn or merit from God.  It is not something we receive through law keeping or participation in religious rituals or ceremonies, nor by doing enough good works to outweigh our bad – that would be justice. No sinful man or woman can ever do enough to make up for our sins against a Holy God nor to earn or merit entrance into His Heaven. The saving mercies of God are received only by acknowledging from our heart our desperate need for them (Psalm 51:1-17).

God’s mercy does not signify a condoning of sin, an overlooking of our rebellion or a compromising of His Holy standards of how we are to relate to Him and our fellow man.  Rather, God, God the Son, on the cross, takes the penalty for sin upon Himself, so that He can justly forgive, and declare righteous, those who entrust their lives to Him (2 Corinthians 5:20-21).

 Christian author and Pastor, John Piper, summarizes how an understanding and embracing of the infinite value of the unending mercy we receive in our relationship with Jesus Christ should change us, filling our hearts with joy and gratitude.  He writes the following in his book, “Taste and See: Savoring the Supremacy of God in All of Life,”  Therefore, all you Christians – all you believers rescued by the blood of Christ, who has become a curse for us – add to the relief and happiness of your rescue bewildering wonder and brokenhearted joy that you deserve none of this, but are lavished with unceasing mercy…Ponder how you would react to things if you had lived hour by hour in the heartfelt awareness that you had been rescued from a horrible death and eternal suffering, and that in spite of deserving no help, you are lavished with mercy every day (even in hard things) and will be made perfectly happy in the age to come.  Then add one more thing to your thinking.  The one who rescued you had to die to do it, and he is the one person in the universe who did NOT deserve to die.  “Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, that He might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18).  Oh, Christian, know your condition, in the misery and the mercy.  And let the horror from which you have been rescued, and the mercy in which you live, and the price that Christ paid, make you humble and thankful and patient and kind and forgiving.  You have never been treated by God worse than you deserve, and in Christ you are treated ten million times better.  Feel this. Live this.

Grace and Peace ×