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Roundup 483 – Day Five – The Mercy Of God (1 Pet 1:3 NIV) Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy he has given us new birth into a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead,When we finally get to heaven, the mercy of the Lord will be one of the greatest memories of our lives. After all, what right do we really have to be in heaven in the presence of the one true and holy God? Didn't we all rebel and fight to put ourself on the throne? Ephesians chapter two summarises the situation quite simply and precisely. Ephesians 2:1-7 (NIV)
We who deserve to be banished from the presence of God have intimate communion with Him. We who deserve Hell find ourselves blissfully and undeservingly in heaven. It is God's infinite and inexhaustible mercy that allows Him to be continuously and actively compassionate. Both the old and the new testaments speak of the mercy of God. In fact despite popular misconceptions, the old testament has four times more to say about God's mercy than the new testament. With this in mind, we need to get rid of the idea that the God of the Old Testament is all justice and judgement and the God of the New Testament is the God of mercy and grace. The pinnacle of God's mercy was in sending His son Jesus Christ to take the punishment for our sins. In second Peter we see what God is like. He does not wish for anyone to perish but that all would repent and receive His mercy through faith in Christ Jesus. (2 Pet 3:9 NIV) The Lord is not slow in keeping his promise, as some understand slowness. He is patient with you, not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance. With this in mind, we could say that God would like all to see and experience His mercy and be spared of judgement. Because God is unchanging, He will always deal mercifully with the repentant. Because He is unchanging and equitable, He will always deal in justice when His mercy is rejected. As God's mercy is infinite and eternal, we can trust that it does not change nor can it ever cease to exist. As we know the nature of God to be forever merciful, we can always approach God in the confidence that He will always be as He always was. His mercy isn't dependent on the magnitude of our sin. If it were possible for God's mercy to be affected by anything that we do would suggest that God's attributes are dependent and limited by us. Just as judgement is God's justice confronting moral equity, so mercy is the goodness of God confronting human suffering and guilt. If there was no guilt, pain or tears in the world, God would still be infinitely merciful… we just wouldn't know it. Nobody would sing celebration of His mercy if they felt no need for it. It is human misery and sin that call upon the divine mercy. God's mercy goes way beyond our understanding, but as we receive it as truth it means so much to us and moves us to love Him more. God's mercy is never far from us. It is immediately available to the repentant. All that we receive from God comes in faith. To seek and receive mercy, we must first have faith that God is merciful. Anything we "know" of God is without worth if it is not received in faith. The same could be said of any of His attributes we've studied this summer. (Heb 4:2 NIV) For we also have had the gospel preached to us, just as they did; but the message they heard was of no value to them, because those who heard did not combine it with faith. It needs more than to know that God was once merciful to people like Noah, we must believe that God's mercy is without limit and is freely available in any situation to those who have placed their faith in Jesus Christ. There are some who plead for mercy all their lives in unbelief. They foolishly have no faith in God's mercy and live in the "hope" that maybe one day God will be merciful to them. That's like being hungry and sitting outside the banquet hall that we have been warmly invited into only to starve. Titus 3:4-8 (NIV)
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