24.04.08
Shorter Catechism on God (12) - God is Mercy
Read: Titus 3:1-8
Of all the attributes of God we have studied together so far, the least has been written on the Mercy of God. I’m not sure why that is because the mercy of God is beautifully, prominently and forcefully presented in the Bible. Indeed, the very first words Paul usually wrote to churches went something like “grace, mercy and peace to you from God the Father and the Lord Jesus Christ”. And yet, when we understand the mercy of God, our hearts are lifted up to think that the Gospel He offers us, the new life He gives to us, is all a gift of His mercy.
I want to see two things about the mercy of God tonight, first, elements in the Bible’s Teaching on the Mercy of God, and then secondly, applications of the Bible’s Teaching on the Mercy of God.
[A] Elements in the Bible’s Teaching on the Mercy of God
In this section, I want to see first of all, Biblical Ideas of Mercy, and then secondly, Biblical examples of mercy.
1. Biblical Ideas of Mercy –there are many different words, both in the Old Testament and New Testament, which carry with them the idea of mercy. But these words can be roughly divided into three root meanings:
(i) To Share – the most prominent song in the Old Testament is “Give thanks to the Lord, for he is good, for his steadfast love (or mercy) endures forever.” This song forms the chorus of many of the Psalms. The idea is that the Lord, called Yahweh in verses like these, is committed to a covenant relationship with His people. He is their Father and partner in a covenant. Steadfast love, or mercy, is that quality of God which ensures that when we fall short of the standard expected of a covenant partner, He gives us that which is lacking. Again, when we need something in order to keep our covenant with God, He supplies it. It is the Lord Yahweh sharing with us so that we may keep the covenant with Him. In the New Testament, this concept is carried over so that through the sacrifice of Christ, the forgiveness and righteousness we need in order to be in, and stay in, a relationship with God is provided to us.
(ii) To Spare – this meaning refers to when we hold back on a deserved judgement. It is when we spare. So for example, in Exodus 2:6, we have the example of Pharoah’s daughter, who found the baby Moses in a reed basket by the banks of the Nile. She was the daughter of the Pharoah who had ordered the death of all Jewish infant boys. She would have been expected to kill Moses, but she spared him. And so, God has mercy on us in that He does not punish us as our sins deserve. He spares us what we deserve.
(iii) To Care – one of the words for mercy in the Old Testament has, as its root meaning, the womb. One of the words for mercy in the New Testament has, as its root meaning, the organs of the human gut. Both words are used in the sense of deep emotion, affection and compassion. It is the compassion of a mother for her baby child; the butterflies of compassion when you see suffering. Mercy isn’t just a legal word – it is deeply emotional. For God to be merciful means that He is deeply compassionate towards us, having for us the same kind of compassionate mercy a mother has towards her baby.
So, in a nutshell, mercy in the Bible means sharing, sparing and caring, each of which, by calling God merciful, we attribute to Him – the sharing God, the sparing God, the caring God.
2. Biblical Examples of Mercy – there are literally hundreds of examples of mercy in the Bible, but I want to choose just three, each one because it contains an important principle about mercy:
1. God as the Father of Mercies – the principle here is that God does not just do merciful things, rather God is merciful. II Corinthians 1:3 calls God – ‘The father of mercies’. Mercy isn’t just something God does – like the mercy He shows on us by forgiving our sins – mercy is who He is. He does merciful things because He is merciful. When you come to God in prayer, you are coming to a God whose first instinct is towards mercy.
2. Jesus as the Show-er of Mercies – the principle here is that to show mercy is to alleviate suffering, or to put it in a more theological way, we must distinguish between sin and the misery of sin – sin and the havoc it causes. To show mercy is to deal with the misery of sin. And we find our example of how to show mercy and to alleviate suffering from Jesus Himself. Throughout the Gospels, Jesus is said to show mercy to people possessed by demons, blind men, epileptic children and lepers. Jesus had compassion and showed great mercy by dealing with the misery of sin, or the sufferings people have to deal with.
3. God as the Giver of Mercies – the principle here is two-fold: first that we do not deserve mercy. In Titus 3:3 we are reminded of the kind of people we used to be “we were once foolish, disobedient, led astray, slaves to various passions and pleasures, passing our days in malice and envy, hated by others and hating one another”. In vs. 5 we are then told that “he (God) saved us, not because of works done by us in righteousness, but according to his own mercy.” The point is that we did not deserve God’s mercy – by definition if we deserved to be saved then it wouldn’t be mercy. Rather mercy is being shown here to the undeserving. The second aspect of God being the giver of mercies is that mercy is God’s sovereign prerogative. In Romans 9:22-23, the apostle Paul has been talking about how God can choose Jacob and yet reject Esau; how He can use Moses and yet raise up Pharoah to be vessel of His wrath. In vs. 22 God uses that very phrase ‘vessels of wrath’ and by contrast in vs. 23 he uses the phrase ‘vessels of mercy’. Wrath and mercy contrast against each other here. But it is God who sovereignly makes one a vessel of wrath and the other a vessel of mercy. Mercy is undeserved and is a sovereign gift of God.
And so the Bible’s doctrine of the mercy of God is a beautiful thing, covering who He is, how He feels about us (if I can say that reverently) and why He acts in the way He does towards us.
[B] Applications in the Bible’s Teaching on the Mercy of God
The Bible’s teaching on the mercy of God, and also, God showing mercy to us also in forgiving our sins and making us righteous, is to have the most drastic influence upon us. We therefore apply the Bible’s Teaching on the Mercy of God in three ways:
1. Praise God for His Mercy! – the consistent chorus of praise in the Old Testament says, “O Praise the Lord for He is Good, His Steadfast love (or mercy) endures forever”. We first hear this song being sung when Solomon builds the temple in 2 Chronicles 5:13; we hear it being sung by the exiles as they returned from Babylon in Ezra 3:11; we hear it being sung in the Book of Psalms. Probably the most remarkable example of its usage is in Psalm 136, where the Psalm begins and ends with the full chorus, and each verse has an abbreviated form ‘His steadfast love (mercy) endures forever’. Psalm 136 traces the whole history of the universe, the history of mankind, the history and future of redemption, and attributes it all to the steadfast love and mercy of God. Therefore, the great mercy of God forms the basis for all of our oral singing of praise to God. Therefore the more we understand and experience the mercy of God, the more involved our heart will be in the singing of God’s praise – not necessarily the louder, but the more emotionally, the more intellectually, the more everything we will be.
2. Show Mercy! – God’s display of mercy to us forms the basis on which we should show mercy to others. In Matthew 5:7 Jesus says, ‘blessed are the merciful, for they will be shown mercy’. Having been shown mercy, we must ourselves be merciful to others. In what will that mercy consist? First, we must forgive others. The basis on which God forgave us was His mercy, not our deserving of it. To hold grudges and be unforgiving is to show that we have never properly understood, and perhaps never really experienced, God’s mercy towards us in Christ. Secondly, since mercy relates to our alleviation of suffering, we must be kind. We should be looking for ways to alleviate the suffering of our fellow believers – to visit the housebound, to pray for the sick, to give to the poor. Also, we are commanded to be kind to those who aren’t Christians. In Luke 6:35-36 Jesus commands us to love our enemies, to do good and to lend without expecting anything in return – for God is kind to the ungrateful and the evil – to be merciful even as your Father is merciful. Even Jesus healed the ear of a violent man who had come to arrest him.
3. Serve God for His Mercy! – according to Paul in 2 Corinthians 4:1, the mercy of God forms the basis upon which he ministers the Word of God. The mercy of God is the reason why we, as Christians, are to use the spiritual gifts God has given us. But more even than that – in Romans 12:1 Paul says, “therefore, I urge you, my brothers, in view of God’s mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God – this is your spiritual act of worship.” The mercy of God forms the basis not just for us using whatever spiritual gift God has given us, but also for us living holy lives, pleasing to God. The more we understand the mercy of God – how far He has stooped down to make us great – the more we will strive to be holy and pleasing to Him.
Without the mercy of God, we would be lost – blinded and doomed to a lost eternity. And so, understanding the depth of the mercy of God towards us in Christ, we hold our hands up to God and we offer every part of ourselves to Him. Do you need a wake up call to renewed commitment to God? Then study and meditate on His mercy towards you. AMEN