The Mercy of God
“But I will sing of Your power, and in the morning I will praise Your mercy; for You have been my shelter and refuge in the day of my distress. My strength, to You I will sing; for You, O God, are my refuge, the God of my mercy” – Psalms 59:16-17
The mercies of God are many, great, firm, sure, and everlasting; they never fail, and they are new every morning (Psalms 119:156; Isaiah 54:7; 55:5; Psalms 25:6; Lamentations 3:22-23). They are manifested in His great salvation, when He caused us to be born again to a new and living hope. If we consider the words Jesed and eleéo from the Hebrew and Greek languages respectively, which in the Bible are translated as mercy , they are related to the words kindness, steadfast love, grace, covenant, compassion, benevolence, faithfulness, and devotion. We could, of course, mention actions that man has taken on behalf of others that might be defined as merciful and benevolent attitudes; however, if we were to examine their true intentions and motivations, we would have to conclude that they have been only attitudes, because mercy, per se, is an absolutely divine attribute, since the only One who can act with the purity, the strength, the constancy, the selflessness, the commitment, the faithfulness, and the love that such an action requires is God.
It is no wonder that this term is used 240 times in the Old Testament, most frequently in the book of Psalms. And it is impossible to know the mercies of God without being moved in spirit and declaring aloud, like the psalmist: “Give praise to the LORD, for He is good, for His mercy endures forever. […] Let them praise the mercy of the LORD, and His wonders toward the children of men. Let them exalt Him in the congregation of the people, and praise Him in the assembly of the elders. […]For great to the heavens is Your mercy, and to the clouds Your truth” (Psalms 136:1; 107:31-32; 57:10). But, “Who is wise and will keep these things, and will understand the mercies of the LORD?” (Psalms 107:43). His mercy does not depend on him who wills or him who runs, but on the One who said: “… I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will be compassionate to whom I will be compassionate” (Exod. 33:19). Nevertheless, God makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust (Matthew 5:45). While God’s mercy toward all humanity is limited to its present existence, and is therefore temporary (Exod. 34:7), for His elect it is eternal (Psalms 55:3).
Mercy is reflected only in a divine action.
For the merciful God, mercy is not merely a simple promise or kindness toward the one He loves, but a commitment, a covenant signed with blood and with the sacrifice of His own life. This great divine mercy reached the culmination of its manifestation in the sacrifice of His own Son, which is to say His very self, for “… God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself…” (2 Corinthians 5:19). In Christ,
God magnified His mercy toward those who fear Him (Psalms 103:11).
But let us not be mistaken; let us acknowledge that none of us deserved the mercy of God, because “There is none righteous, not even one; there is none who understands. There is none who seeks after God. All have turned aside, together they have become useless; there is none who does good, not even one” (Rom. 3:10-12). “But God, who is rich in mercy, because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, made us alive together with Christ (by grace you are saved)…”(Ephesians 2:4-5), and what is grace, if not the gift of God’s undeserved mercy? His mercy saved us, regenerated us, and renewed us in the Holy Spirit (Titus 3:5); it made us “vessels of mercy” (Romans 9:23), and now we are called children of the living God. What we once were not, we now are, and why? Because of His great mercy. Beloved, the mercy of God transcends beyond our existence, extends beyond our thoughts, and widens beyond our understanding. It is too sublime… too wonderful… Hard to comprehend… “O the depth of the riches of the wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His judgments, and His ways past finding out!” (Rom. 11:33). He is the Father of mercies and God of all comfort (2 Corinthians 1:3). Nevertheless, we understand that wrapped up in that mercy is a commitment, and it is to be faithful in our stewardship as Christians. That is why our congregation, in the month of September, led by the Holy Spirit, dedicates an offering of humiliation and fasting, on the 25th, in the presence of our God. We do not do this as a New Year’s resolution, for the Lord has taught us not to act as a result of resolutions, but by faith in the will of God made manifest to us, after He raised up a prophetic memorial with which He marked us as a ministry . For that reason, we submit to that holy will as a local church and allow ourselves to be led by the Holy Spirit, so that He may do whatever He wants with us.
Only God knows our hearts.
That is why we dedicate this time to rend them before the King of kings and Lord of lords, and if there is deceit, may He forgive us; if we are astray, confused, misdirected, or poorly taught, may He turn us back to the path; if there is unwillingness in our hearts to serve, to worship Him, or to honor Him, may He help us and impart to us what we need. We are His servants, and we do not want to lose our usefulness in the holy purpose of God. We acknowledge that we need to turn to our Lord with all our heart, with fasting, weeping, and mourning, so that the gospel may cease to be a theory, a summary of empty and pretty words in our lives, and be what it truly is: commitment to God. We long to live as Jesus, the Son of God, lived, as Saul of Tarsus lived, as the twelve disciples who gave their lives even unto death lived, as the church fathers and the martyrs lived, as the reformers lived, because we are the holy lineage of God in this world. That is what the Spirit teaches in the holy Word, and He exhorts and admonishes us so that we do not lose the Way. And even though our flesh refuses, resists, and feels sad, ashamed, affronted, and confronted, we do not want the Lord to lower His standards, but to give us the capacity to live them. We do not want the Lord to remove the cross from our shoulders, but to give us the strength to carry it, denying ourselves and following Him, lifting it up as a sign of victory in the Lord. That is why today we can say:
“By the mercy of the LORD we have not been consumed, because His mercies never failed. They are new every morning; great is Your faithfulness. […] We remember Your mercy, O God, in the midst of Your temple. According to Your name, O God, so is Your praise to the ends of the earth; Your right hand is full of righteousness. […] I will make mention of the mercies of the LORD, of the praises of the LORD, according to all that the LORD has given us, and the greatness of His benefits toward the house of Israel, which He has done for them according to His mercies, and according to the multitude of His kindnesses” (Lam. 3:22-23; Psalms 48:9-10; Isa. 63:7).
All the glory be to the Lord our God, our King. Hallelujah! Amen.
