God Is Merciful

 How would you answer this question?  God is ______________.

Some might say God is love or that God is always with me.  Some people might see God differently and say God is judgmental or critical.  For the next few weeks we are going to fill in the blank with different attributes of God that we see in the Bible.  Today we are going to look at an attribute of God that is an encouragement for us all - but especially for those who might feel overwhelmed, burdened, and without hope.  If you are feeling worn out physically, emotionally and spiritually, you are not alone.  

In the Old Testament there is a book called Lamentations, which is a series of laments, or poems that express sorrow and grief.  It’s thought that these poems were written during the time that Israel was at war with the Babylonians leading to the fall of Jerusalem.  It could also be that these laments were written after the Temple was destroyed and the people were begin held in captivity and they thought all was lost.  The people believed that the Temple was where God lived on earth, it was where God visited His people, and with the Temple gone, and the city of Jerusalem in ruins, people struggled to see that God was still with them and that they could turn to God for strength and power.  

Part of one lament says:  I remember my affliction and my wandering,  the bitterness and the gall. I well remember them  and my soul is downcast within me. Lamentations 3:19-20

With the Temple destroyed and people taken from their homes and scattered all across Babylon, it was hard for anyone to have hope.  People were walking around with their heads and hearts downcast.  They were hopeless.  Things were bad and they didn’t see any way they would get better.  There are times we might feel the same way.  You might be feeling this way today.  God is just too far away for you to put your hope in Him.  You can’t turn to Him or trust Him again because things just can’t get better.  Your soul is downcast.  

The good news is that this is not where the lament ends, it goes on.  Lamentations 3:21-23

Yet I still dare to hope when I remember this: 

The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease.

Great is his faithfulness, his mercies begin afresh each morning.

Even in the midst of what appeared a hopeless situation, the author said, Yet I still have hope because God is merciful.  

God is MERCIFUL.  One attribute we can give to God is mercy.  But just what does mercy mean?  To help us understand what mercy is all about, let’s talk about three words we often hear in church: justice, grace and mercy.   Here is a great way to think about these 3 things.

Justice - getting what you deserve

Grace - getting what you don’t deserve

Mercy - not getting what you do deserve.  

Here is how these 3 things work in our relationship with God.  Because of our sin, God’s justice says that we deserve to die - a spiritual death.  The Bible says the wages of sin is death.  Paul says,

As for you, you were dead in your transgressions and sins, in which you used to live when you followed the ways of this world and of the ruler of the kingdom of the air, the spirit who is now at work in those who are disobedient. All of us also lived among them at one time, gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts. Like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath.  Ephesians 2:1-3

If God is only concerned about justice and nothing else - we are dead in our sin and deserving of God’s wrath, but God is more than justice.  Paul goes on and says, but because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy, made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions — it is by grace you have been saved.  Ephesians 2:4-5

On our own we are dead in our sin.  Period.  There is no hope.  But God is more than justice.  God is also grace and mercy.  God is rich in mercy which means He doesn’t give us what we deserve.  What we deserve is death and separation from God, but God doesn’t give us what we deserve and that is the definition of mercy.   We don’t get what we deserve, instead we get what we don’t deserve and that is the definition of grace.  By grace you have been saved.  We don’t deserve salvation.  We haven’t done anything worthy of salvation, but God gives it to us anyway.  God makes us alive with Christ.  Good is mercy.

One of the challenges of our faith is holding these attributes of God together.   God is just and always will be just, but at the same time God is merciful and will always be rich in mercy.  God is Holy, which means He cannot tolerate sin or sinful people, but God is also love which means God loves us regardless of our sin and draws us to Him.  We have to hold these things in tension and we have always had to.  

In the Old Testament, God placed Adam and Eve in the garden and said it was all theirs to enjoy - just don’t eat of this one tree or you will die.  Of course, Adam and Eve disobeyed God and ate from that tree.  God is just, therefore their disobedience and sin meant they should have died.  But God didn’t take their lives in that moment.  He made them clothes and sent them out to live in the world.  God didn’t simply destroy them, but gave them life.  

God’s justice and mercy were there at the beginning and they are still with us today.  Our sin deserves death and separation from God, but God makes a way for each of us to be with Him forever.  In God’s mercy, God doesn’t cut us off from Him forever.  God is just but God is merciful and that means we don’t get what we deserve.  Instead we get what we don’t deserve - we get salvation through Jesus and we are saved by grace.   

What is even more encouraging is that the word for mercy we find in Ephesians is eleos which is in the present tense, that means God’s mercy is continual and ongoing.  God was not only merciful before and is merciful today, but God will be merciful tomorrow and in all the days to come. This is what we heard in Lamentations.  Great is God’s faithfulness, his mercies begin afresh each morning.

Every morning God’s mercy is there for us.  Every morning we can have hope because we aren’t going to get what we deserve, we will get God’s grace.  Every morning we can experience hope and peace and joy because of God’s mercy.  Every morning there are gifts of God’s faithfulness and love that He offers to us.  Our situation might not change, things might not get better and we still might struggle with difficulties, hardship and pain, but we can have hope because God’s mercy begins afresh each morning.  

God is merciful, which means that as children created in the image of God, we need to be merciful as well.  Mercy was so important to God that He literally placed it at the center of His relationship with His people.  If we go back to how the people connected with God in the Old Testament, we see that God chose Jerusalem to be the holy city where He would live with His people.  In Jerusalem, God gave very detailed instructions about how to build a Temple where God would come to speak them.  In the center of the Temple was the Holy of Holies where they believed God actually came and was with them and in the center of the Holy of Holies was the Ark of the Covenant.

The Ark of the Covenant was a giant chest that held some of the most important artifacts from Israel’s history that were to remind the people that God was the one who saved them by His power and that He was the one who provided for them.  The lid of the ark had two giant cherubs at each end whose wings reached out to each other and the space in the middle, under those wings, was where God came to visit with His people.  This space was called the mercy seat.  It wasn’t a judgment seat where God came to judge and punish His people, it was a mercy seat, where God came to be with His people even though they were sinners.  God came to be with them which was something they did not deserve.  

At the very center of God’s relationship with His people was mercy.  In the incredibly detailed plans God gave for the building of Temple, God made room for mercy.  God makes it clear that mercy triumphs over judgment.  

This is how important mercy is to God and this is how important mercy needs to be for us. We need to always make room for mercy.  In all our relationships, mercy needs to triumph over judgment.  Not only do we celebrate that God is merciful and receive God’s mercy for ourselves but we need to show that mercy to others.    

Mercy needs to be at the center of our hearts as we relate to others.  Mercy needs to be at the center of our homes and in all our relationships with family, and mercy needs to be the center of the church as we interact with one another.  We always need to make room for mercy and not treat people as they deserve but give them what they don’t deserve which is forgiveness, acceptance and love.  It’s not always easy and we may not always get it right, but we need to strive for mercy.  

The first few years in my first church, there were people who didn’t like that I was holding up a vision of reaching out to new people in our community and a new generation.  One particular man made his feelings known by sending the church a check with a big fat 0 over it and included a note saying I was doing the work of the devil.  A year or so later when the same man was in hospice care, a friend of his asked if I would go visit him and take him communion.  What he deserved was for me to say - no way.  He thinks I’m doing the work of the devil - I’m not going.  

That’s what he deserved, but with the help of his friend and the Holy Spirit, I tried to make room for mercy.  I went to visit him with his friend and we all shared in communion.  It was a moment of reconciliation for all of us.  We each got a measure of God’s grace and understood more of God’s love.  

As we extend mercy to others, it changes us.  We not only see the power of mercy as it works in our world but we see the power of God’s mercy as it works in our own lives.  The more we experience God’s mercy, and the more we share God’s mercy with others, the more we find hope no matter what we are going through.   Knowing that God is merciful and that His mercy is new and fresh every day gives us hope.   

Whatever you need from God today, you can come with open arms because God is merciful.  When we feel beaten down by sin or the problems of life and feel like all hope is lost and nothing can or will get better, we can come to God and remember that He doesn’t give us what we deserve, He gives us life.  My soul may be downcast and things may not look for me, yet I will still have hope and can lift my head to the Lord because God is merciful and his mercy is new every morning.  

 

Next Steps

God Is Merciful

How would you respond to this:  God is _______________.

Which attributes of God bring you hope and which ones raise more questions?  What experiences and influences have shaped your view of God?

Define these three attributes of God (see Ephesians 2:1-10)

God is Justice:

God is Gracious:

God is Merciful:

God’s mercy is past, present and future.  

What examples of God’s mercy do we see in the Old Testament and New Testament?  

What examples of mercy have you experienced in your past?  Where is God’s mercy a blessing to you today?  

How can God’s mercy give you hope for tomorrow? 

If God is merciful to us, we should extend mercy to others.

Who in your life needs your mercy and grace?  

How can you extend mercy to them this week?

How could you regularly make room for mercy in your life?

Read Lamentations 3:22-23 every day this week:

The faithful love of the Lord never ends! His mercies never cease.  Great is his faithfulness, his mercies begin afresh each morning.

For deeper study:

Explore the idea of the mercy seat from both the Old and New Testament.  See Exodus 25:17-22 and Hebrews 4:16.  (The term “mercy seat” is also the term “sacrifice of atonement” Paul uses in Romans 3:25.)