We want to read the first three verses of this portion.
Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, to the church of God which is at Corinth, with all the saints who are throughout Achaia:
Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ.
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort.
Then to the Ephesian letter, please, chapter 2. Ephesians chapter 2. We would like to read the first seven verses.
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved—
and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Then back to the Roman letter, chapter 11. Romans chapter 11. We want to begin to read in verse 33 and read through the first verse of chapter 12.
Oh, the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!
How unsearchable are His judgments and unfathomable His ways!
For who has known the mind of the Lord? Or who became His counselor?
Or who has first given to Him that it might be paid back to him again?
For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. To Him be the glory forever. Amen.
I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies a living and holy sacrifice, acceptable to God, which is your spiritual service of worship.
And then a couple of verses in the Gospel according to Luke, in chapter 6. Verses 35 and 36—our Lord Jesus is speaking.
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men.
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Can we join our hearts together and ask the Lord to help us in this time?
Father, we do want to thank You so very much for this great opportunity once again this morning to gather in the name of Your Son at His table, remember Him, and seek to share our appreciation, our love, our thanksgiving, and our praise to Him—remembering Who He is and the great work that He has accomplished on our behalf.
We rejoice this morning that we can be here in Your presence, enjoying this time. Now we want to turn our hearts to this time when we would look into Your Word. How we thank You so very much that You have placed in our hands a copy of Your written Word.
Lord, contained in this is this wonderful love story of how You have loved us with an everlasting love. Lord, You have revealed to us through Your Word the great work that our Lord Jesus has accomplished, which makes it possible for us to come before You today and to be able to call You our Father.
We look to You now that, by Your Holy Spirit, You will take the truth that is written in Your Word—these portions that we have read together, as well as others—and communicate it to each of our hearts.
Lord, we would ask for grace to set aside anything that may distract us, that would hinder us from hearing what You want to say to us today. For, Lord, we know that You alone have the words of eternal life.
So we would turn our hearts to You this day and trust, Lord, as we are here before You in Your presence, listening to Your Word, that a greater work and fuller work will be done in each of our lives as Your Holy Spirit takes Your Word and ministers to each one of us.
So we are here before You, and our declaration is, “Lord, speak, because Your servants are listening.” In Your name, amen.
This morning, our brother Alan shared with us this experience that Moses had in Exodus 33. I have always found that to be a very fascinating experience: that a man, a human being, would ask God to see His glory.
I do not know what it is that you request of God, but this was an amazing request by this man, because he understood what he was asking for. He wanted to see the face of God. He had already asked God to reveal His ways to him, that he might lead the people of God. But now he turns and asks God this great request: to be able to see the face of God.
Now, if you were able this morning to see the face of God, and after having seen it someone requested of you to paint a picture of what you had seen, what kind of a picture would you paint? That is, what understanding do we have this morning about the God Who has revealed Himself to us in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ? What kind of a God is He?
When I was a teenager, I remember very clearly my concept about God. I know I have probably mentioned this to some of you previously. But if someone had asked me, when I was thirteen or fourteen years old, to draw a picture of God—especially a picture of His face—I would have drawn a picture of an angry old man with a long beard and a big stick.
Now, I cannot explain to you where I got that idea, but that was my idea of God: that He was this kind of being Who was always angry. He delighted in imposing punishment upon people.
Well, I am so glad today to report that my concept has changed. Since I have come to know Him in a very personal way—not just know about Him—I have found out He is not like that at all. He is the most loving, patient, caring Father that we could ever dream of having.
So this morning, when we hear of Moses asking God that he might see His glory, to look at the face of God, I hope that something of that request is in our hearts as well. When we see the face of God, what we discover about Him is probably quite different from what we sometimes think about Him.
Because He is, as Paul says here in 2 Corinthians 1:3, the Father of mercies. That is what I would have us fellowship about this morning. It is the matter that is in my heart: that we would consider together that our God, the God Who revealed Himself in love in the person of the Lord Jesus Christ, is, according to the Word of God, the Father of mercies.
When we consider this matter of mercy, we find ourselves confronted with one of those words that defies definition. It is like, as our brother mentioned this morning, the word glory. How do you define glory? Have you ever attempted to do so?
It is almost beyond our ability to fathom what is behind certain words that we find in the Scriptures. We come to this word mercy, and we find ourselves again faced with almost an impossible task of trying to get a firm grasp on what the Scriptures mean when they talk about the mercy of God.
But I think that as we look in the Scriptures, what we find is that mercy is not just something about God; it is Who God Himself is. As I understand the teaching of the Word of God, mercy is a manifestation of God’s great love to us.
When you try, again, to find a word that fully describes Who God is, we have to fall back on the Scriptures. In 1 John 4:8 and 1 John 4:16, John tells us that God is love.
To me, this is the closest thing that we have to explain in a simple word this God we have come to know in the person of His Son: God, in His very nature, in His very being, is absolute, pure, unadulterated love.
It is a love that we as human beings do not know apart from Him. We may have certain dimensions of love, but we cannot know the love that makes up God’s character independently of Himself.
So when Paul refers to our God as the Father of mercies, he is helping us to understand that this God to Whom he is referring is a God Who manifests His character through the way that He conducts Himself—the way He relates Himself to us as fallen humanity.
In one sense, I think we can say that if man had not fallen away from the love of God, had not been drawn astray, then we may not know much about the mercy of God. But since that has been our history—not only the history of Adam and Eve, but the history of every one of us—that we have all gone astray, all have sinned and come short of God’s glory, then we need to know the mercy of God. We need to know Him as the Father of mercy.
When Paul refers to Him as the Father of mercy, I think there are a couple of things that we need to understand. The first is that He is the origin of mercy. The mercy that Paul has reference to here has its absolute origin in God Himself. He is the originator of this matter of mercy.
How true it is that in human relationships there can be a measure of mercy, but it is usually a very small measure of mercy. But the mercy that we discover in the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is a mercy beyond our ability to understand.
God Himself is the originator, the origin, of this mercy. It cannot be found anywhere else. It is absolutely located in Him. He is not only the originator of it, the source of it; He is the One Who displays this mercy.
God does not just say that He loves us. He demonstrates in very wonderful ways the great love that He has for all humanity. It is not enough for Him to say, “I love you.” He would rather declare His love to us by what He does.
His love is an active love. Certainly, it is something that He feels toward us, but God is not satisfied just to have a certain feeling. He wants to find practical ways to manifest this love for us.
So it is with God’s mercy. God’s mercy is not just something He talks about. It is not just something that describes Who He is in His character. God’s mercy is something that is practically displayed in very practical ways among the human race.
So we have to say that our God, as the Father of mercies, is the source, the origin, and the demonstrator of mercy. There is nowhere else that we can go to find this kind of mercy. It is absolutely located in Him.
In trying to understand this matter of mercy, there are a few things that we find in the Scriptures that can be of some help to us. Mercy, as it is found in the Scriptures—in the Old Testament in particular—is something described as being strong and steadfast.
So we can say that God’s mercy is manifested by a strong and steadfast love. That is the kind of love that cannot be pushed aside. It cannot be that which ultimately will not win out. It is a love that is strong, and it is a love that is steadfast.
As a matter of fact, some translations of the word mercy are “God’s steadfast love” or “His lovingkindness.” We hear this in the Psalms:
Thy lovingkindness is better than life.
When we come to this matter of mercy, we are trying to understand something that is located in God, that He is the originator of, and yet it is something that you and I can experience in very personal ways in our lives.
God’s mercy is located in Himself. It is strong and steadfast. It is irresistible in one sense, even though we can say no to it. If we resist God’s mercy, it does not mean that God withholds His mercy. He continues in a steadfast way, a persistent way, a patient way, keeping on manifesting His mercy.
Maybe another way—perhaps even a clearer way—for us to understand mercy is to see it as covenant love.
I do not know how much we have done in terms of thinking about God’s dealings with us, but do we understand this morning what kind of problems, if we could put it this way, God gets Himself into by having a covenant relationship with us?
He could have done without all of those problems. What in the world motivates God to enter into a covenant relationship with people like us? Or even when we look back to the Old Testament, to the Hebrew people, whatever motivated God to establish a covenant relationship with a man called Abram?
There was nothing special about Abram. Now, we need to be careful what we say, but there was nothing special about him. He was a pagan idol worshiper, and God, the God of glory, revealed Himself to Abram.
Then God initiated. Abraham did not go to God and say, “Now, how about You and I working out this contract? How about You and I entering into a covenant relationship with each other?” No, it was initiated by God Himself. It was God’s idea that He would have a covenant relationship with Abraham and with the descendants of Abraham.
This covenant idea was that God was going to link Himself to these people with whom He was in covenant in such a way that He would never, ever, under any circumstance, violate that covenant. It was a covenant of love. God’s love for these people was what He was actually establishing as He entered into this covenant relationship with the children of Israel.
We find later on in the history of the Hebrew people that after they had gone down to Egypt and had spent four hundred years there, God, in His mercy, raised up Moses and sent Moses down there to deliver the children of Israel out of Egyptian bondage.
You will recall that after they had been delivered out through the Exodus, they got out to the foot of Mount Sinai. God called Moses up into the mountain and began to explain to Moses, which He wanted Moses in turn to explain to the people, His reason for bringing them out of Egypt.
If you had been a reporter there that day and had gone around and asked all the people who had come out of Egypt, “Why do you suppose God brought you out of Egypt?” I can assure you they would have given self-centered answers to that question.
They would say, “Well, God saw the predicament we were in. He felt sorry for us, and so He went down and delivered us out of our slavery.” Well, that is part of the answer, but I do not believe it is the whole answer.
God had something in mind. He wanted these slaves, who were now ex-slaves, to become a kingdom of priests. He wanted them to be a special treasure to Himself, a special people in whom and through whom He could do a very special work.
On that basis, God entered into covenant relationship with them. He gave them the Ten Commandments, gave them the law, and entered into covenant with them. There was even the sprinkling of blood to seal the covenant.
Having made this covenant, God also instructed Moses to build a tabernacle. God had this great longing in His heart to be able to manifest His presence in the midst of His people.
I do not know what is in your heart when you gather together with other brothers and sisters at different times in the assembly. Do you have a longing and desire to be in God’s presence? I can assure us, brothers and sisters, that God has a deep, deep desire to be in the midst of His people.
This is one of the main reasons He had Moses construct His tabernacle. It was for God, so that God Himself could come and manifest His presence right in the center of His covenant people.
God instructed Moses to build this tabernacle, and He told him exactly how everything was to be constructed and where it was to be placed. One of the pieces of furniture that God told Moses to build was the ark of the covenant.
In this ark was to be placed the law, the Ten Commandments that God had given Moses up on Mount Sinai. But then He went on to instruct Moses to build a lid to put on top of that ark. Do we remember the name that was given to that lid? It was called the mercy seat.
Why would God establish this little piece of furniture, put a lid on it, and call it a mercy seat? You remember that there were the two cherubim that faced each other. Between the wings of the cherubim, God would manifest His presence.
God would manifest His presence right where the faces of those two cherubim faced each other, but it was over top of the mercy seat. I find that of great significance: that God would have His covenant people have a piece of furniture in the Holy of Holies with a lid on it entitled the mercy seat.
You will recall that God gave very detailed instructions, not only about the construction of this tabernacle, but instructions about how the priests were to carry out the sacrifices.
Here is God, Who is in covenant relationship with ex-slaves who are human beings like every other group of human beings. They are not perfect. They have their failings. When God gave Moses the law, and Moses in turn gave it to the people, they said, “We will do everything that God wants us to do. We will keep the law.”
Well, He knew full well they could not keep it. Well intentions—you know where good intentions get us: nowhere. They were not able to fulfill it, and God knew that.
But how was God going to maintain a covenant relationship with this group of people who said they were going to obey Him, but now were disobedient? God had to find a way, and it was through the mercy seat.
Once a year, the high priest took the blood of a spotless lamb, made his way into the Holy of Holies, and sprinkled that blood on the mercy seat—on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.
On that day, God accepted the payment for all the sins that all of the people had committed for that entire year. That was God’s mercy. He had every right to expect these people to fulfill their covenant with Him.
He is a just God, and He had every right, because He had fulfilled His end of the covenant, to expect them to fulfill their end of the covenant. But they never did. God wanted to maintain this covenant relationship, so He established the mercy seat.
Every year, He manifested His mercy in a very practical way. He atoned. In other words, that blood was a propitiation. It satisfied the righteous requirements of God.
God accepted that shed blood of the lamb as payment for all the failures of the people to fulfill their covenant promise.
When we come into the New Testament, look with me to 1 John 2. First John chapter 2. Look at verses 1 and 2.
My little children, I am writing these things to you that you may not sin.
And if anyone sins, we have an Advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous;
and He Himself is the propitiation for our sins; and not for ours only, but also for those of the whole world.
Notice that word propitiation. It is the same word that we have in the Old Testament for mercy. The Lord Jesus Christ Himself is our mercy seat.
When we were singing that hymn this morning, “Oh, How Can It Be?” I mean, how do we understand that God Himself could die for us? There is a dynamic involved that has to do with God doing something in His own heart, satisfying something in the depths of His being, that you and I may never fully understand.
But God was doing a work through the death of His Son on that cross so that God could continue, without hesitation and without reservation, to manifest His love in practical ways toward us, even as those who are a new-covenant people.
You remember the Lord Jesus said, “This is the new covenant in My blood.” Under this new covenant, God has made an absolute provision whereby you and I can know total, complete, full forgiveness for all of our sins.
We can experience propitiation. We can be the recipients of God’s mercy, even though we deserve nothing but His judgment, His severest wrath. We have broken the covenant over and over and over again.
Even though we are encouraged not to sin, you will notice John was quick to say, “And if anyone does.” He knows us quite well, does He not? He knows we are going to continue. No matter how many commitments we make, how many promises we offer, we always end up failing to fulfill them.
What is God to do? He has to provide a way whereby you and I can have unhindered fellowship with Him, and that is by the mercy of God.
When we look at God establishing covenant relationship with the Hebrew people, and now establishing covenant relationship for all who believe in His Son, it is a manifestation of God’s mercy. It is only by His mercy, brothers and sisters.
There is nothing that you and I can do that enables us to have an unhindered, open relationship with Him, to be able to call Him our Father. It is a manifestation of God’s mercy.
I want you to notice something, I think very wonderful, in those verses in Ephesians that we read. In verse 4, the apostle says:
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us.
When we think about the mercy of God, rather than just giving us justice, He has been merciful. He has established a way whereby He can righteously forgive us and wipe the slate clean without hiding anything.
God never functions as a corrupt judge. He never does things in an unrighteous way. Do you understand, if we can talk about it in human terms, the dilemma that God is faced with in having to take us as sinners—no question about it, sinners?
How is God going to righteously, without violating Himself or violating His laws, forgive us of our sin? It has to be an act of God’s mercy, for He does something that enables Him to say to you and me, “Your sins are forgiven. They are forgotten. They are cleansed. There is no more record of them.”
He has done it through the work of His Son on the cross. The blood of the Lord Jesus Christ cleanses us from all sin—all sin.
What that means, brothers and sisters, to me is that you and I ought to be living free of all guilt. If the price has been fully paid, then why do we continue to feel guilty?
But we find that many of God’s dear children are still under this load, this dark cloud of guilt. I believe it is because we have not clearly seen how, by God’s mercy, He has established a way whereby you and I can be fully, once for all, cleansed of our guilt.
What if we sin now after we have been initially cleansed? If we confess our sins:
He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
It means that we ought to be a people who are living free, liberated in terms of our guilt. It is a manifestation of God’s mercy.
Here Paul says, “But God, being rich in mercy.” Rich in mercy. You will find in the Old Testament, in Lamentations, for instance—the Book of Lamentations, right after the prophecy of Jeremiah—Lamentations chapter 3, verse 22:
The Lord’s lovingkindnesses indeed never cease,
for His compassions never fail.
They are new every morning;
great is Thy faithfulness.
Maybe a better translation there in verse 22 is the Lord’s mercies. The manifestation of His mercies indeed never ceases. The writer is helping us understand that God being rich in mercy means there is no limit to the amount of mercy that God has.
You will notice in our relationships as human beings that there is a tremendous limitation on our mercy. But with God, it is so hard for us to think in these terms because we normally compare God to ourselves.
We think that because our mercy is so limited, and we will only go so far in being merciful to people, God must be like that. But notice: there is no limit. His mercies never cease.
There is an unlimited supply of mercy because mercy is a manifestation of Who He is. He is the eternal God, so there is an eternal supply of mercy. If God is going to be true to Himself, if He is free simply to be Who He is, He is always going to manifest mercy.
There is an unlimited supply of mercy. It seems to me that as God reveals this, He is doing it at His own risk, at His own peril, because there may be those who take advantage of God’s mercy. Because He is so merciful, we may take greater liberties.
But God is willing to take that risk because of Who He is. He has not hidden the fact that He has an unlimited supply of mercy. There is never a time when God ever runs out of mercy.
No matter how many times we violate, do not keep our promises, fail, or sin, there is never a time when God runs short of mercy. Notice what the writer of Lamentations says: “They are new every morning.”
Oh, brothers and sisters, if that were so real in us, it would change us. We would be a different kind of people if we knew by experience—not just in our heads, but experientially—that God’s mercies are new every morning.
There is a new supply of mercy for that day.
In 1 Peter 1, verse 3:
Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, Who, according to His great mercy, has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,
to obtain an inheritance which is imperishable and undefiled and will not fade away, reserved in heaven for you,
who are protected by the power of God through faith for a salvation ready to be revealed in the last time.
Notice what adjective Peter uses to describe God’s mercy: great mercy. God, according to His great mercy.
We as human beings, I think, do ourselves a disservice when we begin to use words in inappropriate ways. When we use the word great, it is amazing: we use this wonderful word to describe things that are not so great, and in doing so we rob the word of its real meaning.
But when the Scripture says, “according to His great mercy,” or as we saw in Ephesians, “His great mercy,” when the Holy Spirit uses the word great to describe the mercy of God, guess what, brothers and sisters? It is great. It is great mercy.
We have to allow ourselves to be lifted up into a realm where we are free from the way we think, where we limit ourselves and limit our understanding of how great God’s mercy is.
Then let us look at the Book of Nehemiah. We could look at many, many Scriptures. There are over three hundred references to the word mercy just in the Old Testament.
Nehemiah chapter 9. Let us begin in verse 16:
But they, our fathers, acted arrogantly.
They became stubborn and would not listen to Thy commandments.
They refused to listen, and did not remember Thy wondrous deeds which Thou hast performed among them.
So they became stubborn and appointed a leader to return to their slavery in Egypt.
But Thou art a God of forgiveness, gracious and compassionate, slow to anger, and abounding in lovingkindness; and Thou didst not forsake them.
Notice this statement: “abounding in lovingkindness,” abounding in mercy. Not just measuring it out in small doses, but abounding.
You remember over in Ephesians 1, verse 7:
In Him we have redemption through His blood, the forgiveness of our trespasses, according to the riches of His grace which He lavished upon us.
Again, we have to be careful what we say, but I think, brothers and sisters, we can honestly and freely say that our God is an extravagant God. I know that when we talk about extravagance, we usually think of it in negative terms.
But I want you to bring it over and apply it to God’s actions. He is extravagant in His grace toward us. He has lavished it out upon us. He has not just very carefully distributed His grace. He has lavished it. He has poured the whole container out upon us.
The same thing is true with His mercy. He is abounding in lovingkindness. This is the kind of God that He is.
Let us notice here in this Ephesian letter, chapter 2, how God manifested this mercy toward us. Let us begin in verse 1.
And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.
Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh, indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, even as the rest.
In that context, Paul adds the word but in verse 4:
But God, being rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us,
even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ.
By grace you have been saved,
and raised us up with Him, and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus,
in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
The way God has manifested His richness of mercy is by taking hopeless, helpless sinners—those who were dead in their trespasses and sins, who were outside of covenant relationship with Him.
He has taken them in this hopeless condition and joined Himself to them in covenant relationship. They were sons of disobedience. They were children of wrath. But God, rich in mercy, with His great love, loved us.
Now I want us to notice the results Paul mentions here of God’s mercy in action. In verse 5, even when we were dead in our transgressions, He first of all made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved.
Verse 6: He raised us up with Him. He seated us with Him in heavenly places in Christ Jesus. Verse 7: in order that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
Brothers and sisters, it is hard for me to find an illustration that fully illustrates what our God has done. He has taken the dregs of humanity—maybe you do not like that title—but He has taken us up in a hopeless situation.
We could do nothing about our condition. We could do nothing to win God’s favor or His love. There is nothing you and I could do to somehow cause God to be merciful toward us, and yet He has chosen to do so.
Maybe we can illustrate it this way. Let us suppose a group of us here in Richmond got together and attempted a coup against the present administration in Washington, D.C. We were so fed up with things that we wanted to overthrow the government and kill the president.
But as we proceeded in our plans to overthrow the government, somehow a communication came through and got into our hearts that this man was not all that bad as we had thought. He won our hearts, and finding that we had responded in this way, he put us in his administration.
Here we were, rebels, wanting to overthrow the government. By his great love and patience with us, he won our hearts and then put us in his government, made us part of his administration, and put us in his cabinet.
Well, that is only a small illustration of what God has actually done. He has taken rebels who have shaken their fists in God’s face. He has taken those of us who have been ungrateful, who have taken liberties to sin and do our own thing. He has won our hearts.
Notice what He has done. He has caused us to be raised from the dead. He has forgiven us of all of our rebellious acts. He has placed His own uncreated, eternal life in us as a free gift. He has raised us up with Christ. He has seated us with Christ in heavenly places.
As our brothers and sisters were mentioning this morning at the table, the Lord has a place for us at His table. Do you know what a privilege it is for you and me to come, Sunday after Sunday, to that table and meet with the blessed Lord, the King of the universe?
Well, He has done that, and He has not stopped there. That is why we can say that God is abundant in lovingkindness. Notice in verse 7: “in the ages to come”—not the age to come, but the ages to come.
What is God looking to do? He might show the surpassing riches of His grace toward us. God’s plan is that out in the ages to come, He wants to find a way whereby He can give Himself fully and fully away to us. To give Himself—that is what His plan is.
It is only by the action of this mercy that He is able to penetrate the darkness and hardness of our hearts to where we are willing to receive what He is so willing to give.
Some of us are so self-sufficient, and we do not feel that we need Him, or that we can get along without Him—to our own demise.
Just a couple of things in Psalm 103. Look at the first five verses.
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and all that is within me, bless His holy name.
Bless the Lord, O my soul,
and forget none of His benefits;
Who pardons all your iniquities,
Who heals all your diseases;
Who redeems your life from the pit,
Who crowns you with lovingkindness and compassion;
Who satisfies your years with good things,
so that your youth is renewed like the eagle.
This is the lovingkindness of God. This is the manifestation of God’s mercy. These are the benefits that David could declare were the result of God causing His mercy to be applied.
Then you remember in Psalm 23:
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life,
and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.
When something of the truth of God’s mercy penetrates our hearts, what should be our response? How should we respond to this richness of mercy that God manifests for us?
You remember, as we read earlier in Romans 11 and 12, Paul says in Romans 12:1:
I urge you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God.
He is setting out before his readers a manifestation of God’s mercy—how God has been merciful. We do not have time this morning to go back through the Roman letter, or even take Romans 9, 10, and 11, where he really highlights the mercy of God, because he talks about us becoming vessels of mercy.
Here he is making an appeal. How do we appropriate? How do we rightly respond to the mercy that God is manifesting to us? His appeal is that we are to become worshipers.
He says, “which is your spiritual service of worship.” When we talk about being worshipers, brothers and sisters, it seems to me that what is involved in worship is a genuine heart response to the revelation of Who God really is.
Worship is an honest acknowledgement of what God reveals to us about Himself. When the truth about God being the Father of mercies penetrates our hearts, and something of this reality gets lodged there, there ought to be a response to that. That is called worship.
Paul’s appeal in Romans 12:1 is that we respond in worship by giving ourselves as living sacrifices, holy and acceptable unto Him. This is your reasonable service. This is a reasonable way to respond to God’s great mercy toward us.
It is a way of offering thanksgiving to Him: to take our lives—not our old lives, but who we are in Christ—and offer them to Him as a living sacrifice.
If it is going to be living, how often do we need to offer it? All the time. We need to take our lives as they are in Christ and offer them upon the altar daily, hourly, as a way of responding back to God’s great mercy to us.
Sometimes you and I get caught up in enjoying the blessings of being God’s children, and we lose sight of where we might have been had God not been merciful to us. I would hate to think, brothers and sisters, where I would be today if God in His mercy had not made His way into my life.
I just hate to think about it. What is a reasonable thing for us to do if we were headed down a dead-end street and God, in mercy, saved our lives and poured out His grace upon us—grace upon grace?
What is the legitimate way for us to respond? When someone is kind to you, just as a human being, do you not find some way of responding to that kindness?
Paul says the appropriate way for us to respond to God’s great mercy toward us is to give ourselves to Him in an act of worship as a living sacrifice.
You know the problem with living sacrifices: they keep crawling off the altar. You have to be put back on top of it.
So, brothers and sisters, this is the appropriate way for us to respond to this great mercy.
Then we saw there in Luke 6 the teaching of our Lord Jesus. We find the same thought given to us in Matthew 5, in what we traditionally call the Sermon on the Mount.
Our Lord Jesus is explaining the difference that ought to be part of our lives as we live in the kingdom of God. There ought to be something about our character that is totally different. To be able to live in the kingdom of God, you have to have a totally different type of character. You have to have the same character that God Himself has.
So in verse 35, He says:
But love your enemies, and do good, and lend, expecting nothing in return; and your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High; for He Himself is kind to ungrateful and evil men.
Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
Notice that thing: “You will be sons of the Most High.” He Himself is kind to the ungrateful and to evil men. “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.”
I think one of the objectives God has in mind as to why He manifests His mercy toward us is that we would become merciful.
Brothers and sisters, you may consider yourself to be quite merciful, but when you stand alongside the mercy of God, there is absolutely no comparison. I do not know if it even registers on the scale at all when you stand beside God’s mercy.
But here our Lord Jesus is saying that we, as sons of the Most High, ought to be merciful as our heavenly Father is merciful. The same standard that He uses to manifest mercy has to become our standard. We need to become sons and daughters, children of mercy.
Where can we go? How can we ever become people like that? Again, it is only the mercy of God. Can you change yourself? How many New Year’s resolutions have you made and broken?
How many times have you said, “I am never going to do that again,” and within an hour you have repeated the same thing? We are hopeless cases by ourselves unless we have the mercy of God.
Only God can change us. That change takes place as we are on the receiving end of what God is prepared to give us in His Son: a new life. When this new life comes in and becomes ours, and it begins to undergo discipline, then God produces in us the character He is looking for. He is going to produce in us merciful people.
You remember in Matthew 5, at the end of chapter 5, the Lord Jesus says:
Be ye perfect, even as your heavenly Father is perfect.
What is the difference between being perfect and being merciful? There is no difference. To be perfect—that is, to be mature and grown up and responsible—means that you are going to manifest mercy in your relationships with people.
We need to become a people who manifest God’s mercy. Our Lord Jesus gave us a very wonderful parable in Matthew 18.
The Lord was explaining to His disciples how they were to deal with a situation if a brother sins against you. First of all, go to that brother and try to be reconciled with him. If you do so, then you have won your brother.
If he refuses to be reconciled, then you go and get two or three other people and take them with you, so that in the presence of two or three witnesses a thing can be established. If he still insists on not being reconciled, you take him to the church. If he refuses to listen to the church, then you treat him like a Gentile.
After the Lord had said this, Peter came up to the Lord and said, “Lord, how many times do I have to go on forgiving my brother if he sins against me? Seven times?” Peter thought he was being very, very gracious.
Seven times? You remember our Lord’s response: “Not seven, but seventy times seven.”
Then our Lord went on to tell a parable about a master who called all the slaves in and said, “I want an account. I want an accounting to be made.” The first one who came in owed his master ten million dollars’ worth of silver money—actually worth more in terms of buying power, but ten million dollars.
He had nothing to pay the master. He got down on his knees and pleaded with his master that his master would forgive him. His master forgave him the whole debt. He was going to sell his wife and children to pay off the debt—that is, the master’s right—but he forgave him the whole thing.
He walked out from the master’s presence and ran into one of his fellow slaves who owed him one hundred dollars. He grabbed him by the throat and said, “I want you to pay me right now.” He did not have it to pay, and he had him thrown into prison.
The Lord says that afterward some of the other slaves went and told the master what happened. He called that man back in, the one who had been forgiven everything.
Maybe we can look at it in Matthew 18, verses 32 and 33:
Then summoning him, his lord said to him, “You wicked slave, I forgave you all that debt because you entreated me.
Should you not also have had mercy on your fellow slave, even as I had mercy on you?”
Our Lord Jesus is pointing out to us in very clear language that this matter of manifesting mercy toward other human beings is something that needs to be very real and very practical in the life of the child of God.
We are to be children, sons and daughters, of mercy. This is to characterize our lives. It means that we have to learn to forgive and to show forgiveness, patience, kindness, and generosity toward all people.
The Lord says, “You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say, love your enemies.” Those who want to harm you—do good to them. Heap coals of fire on their head. Be nice to them.
This is the thing that is to characterize us as the people of God.
Brothers and sisters, I do not think that we need to go very far to find out that this is a real challenge in our everyday living. What about in our home? How about in our relationship with each other in our home life? Are we manifesting mercy, or are we keeping records of the wrongs ever committed?
We ought to be a people who extend mercy because mercy has been extended to us. What about in the context of the body of Christ?
Have you found that the Lord has saved some people that you do not get along with very well? You do not particularly care for their personality. If the Lord had asked you whether they ought to be saved or not, you probably would have cast a no vote.
But He did not ask you. He was merciful to them as He has been merciful to you, and now He wants you to be merciful to each other.
We need to get our heads out of the sand at times. It is not easy to live with one another. Some of us have some real serious idiosyncrasies—that is being kind. Some of us are hard to get along with, but we are still God’s children.
You cannot put a limit on how many times you have to forgive me—not if you are going to be obedient to Him, not if you are going to manifest mercy. Hopefully, there will be some changes made, but if there are not any changes made, that does not excuse you from being merciful to me.
You have to keep on. How many times? Seventy times seven, every day. Our brother Christian Chen has worked it out mathematically: once every two minutes for the same crime against you, you have to forgive me.
It means there has to be immediate forgiveness. The person may not even know that they have done anything. You still need to forgive. They do not have to ask for forgiveness before you can forgive. You can forgive.
Look in Colossians 3. Colossians chapter 3, verses 12 and 13:
And so, as those who have been chosen of God, holy and beloved, put on a heart of compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience;
bearing with one another, and forgiving each other, whoever has a complaint against anyone; just as the Lord forgave you, so also should you.
Now that is our standard. That is the requirement that our Lord requires of us. The only way we can fulfill that, brothers and sisters, is for God to do a work in us whereby He plants and establishes in us the same kind of heart that He Himself has: one of mercy.
So I want to suggest to us, I want to appeal to us this morning: if somehow there are some things lodged in your heart against anybody, I do not care who it is, but particularly against your brothers and sisters in Christ, let the Holy Spirit unveil them.
Then, one by one, go through the process of what I call unilateral forgiveness. That is, they do not ask for your forgiveness; you can just forgive them. You can tear up the IOUs that you have been keeping. Throw them away, and they are free.
You are no longer to hold them responsible. They may have grievously sinned against you, but mercy says, “You are forgiven,” the same way that God has shown mercy to us.
Brothers and sisters, you can never bring it up again. Can you understand what it would be like if you and I had to face God every time we sinned and He brought all the previous sins into His presence? If He said, “Now, these are things you are guilty of,” we would not stand a chance.
We cannot do that with each other, brothers and sisters. That is why our Lord Jesus in John 13 says:
A new commandment I give unto you, that you love one another; even as I have loved you, that you also love one another.
This is the kind of love He is talking about: showing mercy. Not just mercy in terms of letting a few things slide, but mercy that goes all the way down to the depth, where we are able to forgive and to forget the deepest of grievances that we might have against our brothers.
The Lord said that this is the way the world will know that you are My disciples: because this kind of mercy, this kind of love, is being manifested in your corporate life.
Let us pray.
Loving Father, thank You so much that You, through Your Word and through the work of Your Holy Spirit, have made it very clear that You are the Father of mercies, that You are rich in mercy, and that You desire to make us to be a merciful people.
Lord, help us to know how to appropriately respond to the great mercy that You have shown us. Lord, may we grow in such a way that Your character, Your very heart, is formed in us.
So, Lord, that we can show mercy to our family members, to our brothers and sisters in Christ, to the people that we go to school with, that we work with, and that we encounter in our lives. Lord, no matter how deeply they may offend us, we ask that You will create in us a heart that is able to forgive and to go on having a very wonderful relationship with these people.
We bless You that You are the God Who has manifested Himself in terms of mercy, and we thank You for it in Jesus’ name.