Sermon: God Always Defaults in Mercy
#1712A
Clyde Finklea
Given 03-Jun-23; 24 minutes
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transcript:
I have mentioned this before in a sermonette (or sermon), a conversation with John [Ritenbaugh] that he made a statement that kind of impacted me a good bit. It is a simple thing. He just simply stated our God always defaults in mercy. So I thought it appropriate to kind of revisit the subject of mercy.
The word mercy is used literally hundreds of times in the Bible and most of us have read it over and over again. As a matter of fact, you could probably open your Bible randomly somewhere and you are probably going to see something in there about God's mercy. If you would start opening your Bibles to Psalm 116. I believe this is a psalm by David. I do not think it states it in my Bible but I think it probably was one of David's.
Psalm 116:1-5 I love the Lord, because He hears my voice and my supplications. Because He has inclined His ear to me, therefore I will call upon Him as long as I live. The pains of death surrounded me, and the pangs of the Sheol laid hold of me; I found trouble and sorrow. Then I called upon the name of the Lord: "O Lord, I implore You, deliver my soul!" Gracious is the Lord, and righteous; yes, our God is merciful.
He says here, our God is merciful. But what did he mean? What, then, is God's mercy?
Well, let us just take a look at this word mercy. The word most often translated mercy in the King James Version actually conveys a very strong feeling of pity, sympathy, compassion, and affection. The Old Testament word is sometimes translated as lovingkindness. And that is typically the word hesed, which the Jewish scholars say is the equivalent of the Greek word agape. It, too, is many times translated lovingkindness, but many times it is translated as just simply mercy in the King James. And that describes one of the important aspects of mercy.
You know, when God looks at suffering people, He feels compassion toward them and their needs. And compassion always precedes mercy. Now, the word compassion, let us get a little definition of this. It comes from a Latin word compassus. It means "to sympathize with," "to suffer a powerful, deep awareness of someone else's suffering, making it so that you want them not to suffer." There are some related words; we use the word sympathy. It is being sad about others sadness, pity leads you to want to help them if you could. And compassion actually goes one step further. It is more than a mere desire to help. It creates a determination in a decision to actually help, even if it is only in some small way.
Compassion, though, differs from mercy. Compassion is about an emotional connection that moves you toward an action, while mercy is about the action itself. Compassion, then, is the emotion that can lead us to mercy.
Now, the word mercy is comes from a medieval Latin merces. It means "compassionate action" and it is influenced by a Latin word miseri. It is probably where we get our word misery from. But it means "to have pity," "compassion to action or treatment." It is relief from distress, a tendency from personal character to act compassionately, to show forbearance or kindness. It is simply mercy in action.
We speak of God's love often. Did you know some of the aspects of that love is grace, or graciousness, and mercy? Although grace and mercy are similar, there is a difference, and that is why the Bible actually speaks of both.
Turn with me back to the New Testament to I John the third chapter. We will pick this up in verse 17. Everybody is real familiar with this scripture.
I John 3:17 But whoever has this world's goods, and sees his brother in need, and shuts up his heart [compassion] against him [now, notice this question], how can the love of God abide in him?
Well, the answer to that is you cannot because love, grace, and mercy are all intertwined. Grace and mercy are aspects of God's love and they cannot be separated. They are not going to have the love of God without mercy and grace.
Now flip back to Matthew the 18th chapter. We will see where this truth here is revealed in Jesus' Parable of the Unmerciful Servant. Beginning there in verse 26, we see where this guy owed his master the sum of—one place I looked said about the sum of $10 million. In other words, it was an enormous amount. I do not know if they could actually compare what it exactly was, but it was a huge amount of money he owed and he was in a miserable predicament, right? Yet foolish as it seems, he actually thought he could somehow pay back the debt. So he begged for an extension of time. "Have patience with me, and I will pay you all." Jesus went on to say, "Then the master of that servant was moved with compassion, released him, and forgave him the debt."
That was mercy. First, there was the intense feeling of compassion. Then, it was followed by an act of mercy in which the master held back the punishment he could have exacted and forgave the servant the entire debt, more than he ever really could have even expected. And that is a beautiful illustration of mercy.
Yet the poor servant never really seemed to grasp the significance of what had just happened to him. In fact, it seems as though he had forgotten that his debt was completely wiped out. He went out and found a fellow servant who owed him a little bit of money. It was just a mere amount in comparison to what he had owed. The other guy had owed his master somewhere around $20 but I think it might have been a little bit more than that. I do not really know what the equivalent is. But he took him by the throat and he demanded his payment. And when the fellow servant could not pay, he required the full extent of the law and had him thrown into jail! But when his master heard what his servant had done, he was incensed. He goes on to say, "Should you not also have had compassion on your fellow servant, just as I had pity on you?"
I think the lesson is clear here. We, as believers, have received an enormous measure of God's mercy. We have been forgiven a debt of sin that we could never repay to God. And God wants us to show the same kind of mercy to others, to have the same tender feelings of compassion toward them in their misery. The same eagerness to help them in their times of distress. The same willingness to forgive them when they wrong us or when someone is indebted to us. Are we willing to forgive them, forgive their debt? To do anything less reveals that we have forgotten the immense debt of sin from which we have been released.
I want to take a look again at some of the psalms with David. Let us go back to Psalm 51, beginning in verse 1. This is a psalm of David when Nathan the prophet came to him after he had gone into Bathsheba. Notice, the first thing David does when he cries out to God. He says,
Psalm 51:1 Have mercy upon me, O God, according to Your lovingkindness; according to the multitude of Your tender mercies, blot out my transgressions.
You know, God said of David that he was a man after His own heart. David probably, I would think, wrote more about the mercies of God than any other writer in the Bible. I do not know that for sure. I did not look it up, but just thinking about it and going through the Psalms, I am thinking that he probably did.
Psalm 51:15-17 [He says] O Lord, open my lips, and my mouth shall show forth Your praise. For you do not desire sacrifice, or else I would give it; You do not delight in burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit, a broken and contrite heart—these, O God, You will not despise.
Obviously, God is looking for repentance because our God simply defaults in mercy and His desire is to bring everyone to repentance. He says (I did not write the scripture down), He takes no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but wants everyone to come to repentance.
In Matthew 9, verse 13, Jesus makes this statement. He says,
Matthew 9:13 "But go and learn what this means, 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice.'"
Is that not what David just said? He said the same thing, that God did not want sacrifice. That is not what He desired. He said, "I did not come to call the righteous but sinners to repentance." And He repeats this over in Matthew the 12th chapter, verse 7. He says again, because He is speaking here probably to the same people, the Pharisees and some of His disciples around Him. He said,
Matthew 12:7 "But if you had known what this means [apparently they did not take Him at His word and go figure out what it meant], 'I desire mercy and not sacrifice,' you would not have condemned the guiltless."
They were accusing His disciples of breaking the Sabbath.
Well, David certainly, truly understood what this meant because when you look into the heart of God, at the very bottom of His heart lives mercy. You know, there are times that we may feel, "Lord, where are all Your mercies that You promised me?"—in our impatience, you see. Because all we can see sometimes are the problems and the suffering that we are going through. And when we feel like that though, and even speaking about John and people were saying, "Wonder why God did not heal him or at least put him to sleep? He has been a righteous servant for all this time." We kept wondering, what is God going to do with him. But God knew exactly what He was going to do with John. He knew exactly what to do. He never left him. He waited, and He put him to sleep on probably one of the greatest holy days of the year—on Pentecost. Just a very merciful thing to do so.
But when we begin to feel a little impatient like that, with God maybe seeming to be far away off and when we ask Him, where are His mercies, maybe we need to turn to a passage like Psalm 103. Let us look at that. Again, another psalm of David. And then it might help us to begin to count our blessings.
Psalm 103:1-7 Bless the Lord, O my soul; and all that is within me, bless His holy name! Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits: Who forgives all your iniquities, who heals all your diseases, who redeems your life from destruction, who crowns you with lovingkindness and tender mercies, who satisfies your mouth with good things, so your youth is renewed like the eagles. The Lord executes righteousness and justice for all those who are oppressed. He made known His ways to Moses, His acts to the children of Israel.
You see, all these benefits that are evidence here of God's lovingkindness we see that it is His mercy, really. If we cannot relate to anything else in the psalm, we can certainly appreciate the aspect of God's mercy which the psalm describes in the next few verses.
It has been said, I have read this somewhere (I guess, maybe, probably) is that God's grace gives us the favor that we do not deserve, while His mercy holds back the judgment that we do deserve. That may not be the major difference between these two terms but there does seem to be a little bit of an element of truth in it. Look at verse 8.
Psalm 103:8-10 The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abundant in mercy. [the subject here again is about God's superabundant supply of mercy; notice how it causes Him to act towards us] He will not always strive with us, nor will He keep His anger forever. He has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities.
So God's mercy restrains Him from giving us what our sins actually deserve. What an awesome God we serve.
This concept is found in other passages of scriptures. Jeremiah probably made it clearer than anyone else when he boldly declared, "It is because of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed." That is over in Lamentations 3.
Lamentations 3:22-23 Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They [this is beautiful] are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness.
He is so faithful. Every morning we awake God is ready with new mercies. He never runs out of mercy because He is a God of love. He is love. So if He is love, He is gracious and He is merciful because they are all intertwined. I always liked that verse there. "They are new every morning." Every day we can get up and approach Him and cry out to Him for His mercy and His forgiveness if we have done something wrong. It is an amazing thing about loving God, just how awesome He is.
One of my favorite, kind of go-to scriptures when I talk about God's mercy is Micah 6. This is a very familiar scripture to you.
Micah 6:8 He has shown you, O man. . .
Now, people might ask the question, what does God want of me? What does He expect of me? People in the world, they do not know God, but here He answers. He makes it very plain.
Micah 6:8 . . .O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you [this is all of mankind] but to do justly. . .
That word justly is rightly, righteously; all of God's commandments are righteousness. We are to keep His commandments, do His commandments. We could say it that way. Do justly, do the right thing, and always live righteously.
Micah 6:8 . . .to love mercy. . .
We have to love mercy. Without it, as we have already seen, do we have God's love in us? No. Because God requires it. We are growing in God's love, so if we are growing in His love, we should be growing in His mercy. He also says,
Micah 6:8 . . .and to walk humbly with our God.
Does it not it say somewhere He resists the proud but gives grace to the humble.
So the question we need to ask is, do we love mercy? Do the needs and sufferings of other people really move you to compassion? Can you really feel it inside? Do we allow that compassion to proceed to merciful actions? Do we do what we can to help even if it is to get on our knees to pray? Sometimes that is all we can do, asking for God to be merciful to whoever needs it at that time.
The first thing that most people will do when they find themselves in trouble, even those that do not really know God. The first thing they do when something happens to them is, "Oh Lord, have mercy on me!" Right? "Lord have mercy!" I think that is my sister's favorite saying. She could bump her elbows. "Oh Lord have mercy!" I have messed with her about that. But anyway, that is what people do. The first thing they do is they cry out, "Lord, have mercy." He does have mercy but not like that.
Turn to Matthew 5, verse 48. This is another interesting thing. I brought this out before too. Look at this. Here Jesus makes a statement, speaking to all His disciples.
Matthew 5:48 "Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect."
What is perfection? Because He says, we are commanded here to be perfect, even as God is perfect. Flip over to Luke's version. This is the same event, but Luke hears it this way, or writes it this way.
Luke 6:36 "Therefore be merciful, just as your Father also is merciful."
Again, a command. To be perfect is to be perfect in God's love. Obviously, we also have to be perfect in mercy.
So the command, then, to be perfect means to be perfect, means to be merciful. That is, we are perfect in God's eyes when we are merciful because that is what He is and we are to be like Him.
Well, I hope this has given us a little better, maybe, understanding of just what God's mercy is and what it is all about. Because our Savior commanded us to be merciful, even as our Father in heaven is merciful. So if we truly, truly, have the love of God in us, then we too will always, always default in mercy.
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