PREACHING OF THE WORD OF GOD – ‘MERCY’
Andrew Burr
I would like to begin what I have to say this evening where our brother who spoke last week began. Those of us who were here will remember that he asked a few questions: would a father or mother give a child a task that they knew they would fail? Would a teacher do the same? That prompted a question in my mind, which I think was in the mind of the preacher – would God allow the sinner to reap the consequences of his sins and what he has done, when it lay in God’s power to do something to save him?
What a question that is! – Would God allow us to go on the way to eternal destruction if it lay in His power to save us? The message in the glad tidings is that God would do no such thing. I think any who have any knowledge of God would know that that is the answer to that question. I thought we could think a little about what God would have to do in order to rescue the sinner from his destiny in destruction? What would God need? The impression I have is that the answer to the whole question is found in God’s mercy. I seek to say a few words to fill our hearts with something of the glory of God’s mercy.
We sometimes speak about God’s mercy as if it could be defined in relation to our need. We say for example that mercy means that we do not receive what we deserve. I think we cannot understand God’s mercy in relation to the measure of our need, because that does not measure the mercy of God. The mercy of God is measured by God Himself, and by an understanding of the glory of the God whose mercy it is. Evidently, if God is going to show mercy He must have power: the work of salvation is not a work for weakness, God must have power. If we were to look anywhere for power we would look to God. Think of the evidences that there are of the power of God, and think especially of the power that raised Jesus from among the dead. Think of the circumstances in which Jesus died, His utter rejection and the power of both the empire and the religious system of the day agreeing and coming together to cast Him out and kill Him. All that was marked by the seal on His grave and the guard that was set. Then think of the power of God, the power that could choose His own time, His own moment, and could visit the realms of death for the Person of His choosing. There was no contest with the power of death in the presence of the power of God. God on His own, and by His own choice was able to raise Jesus from among the dead. What a wonderful thing that is! What a testimony that is to the power of God! As we shall see, that was for us. He was raised for our justification (see Rom 4: 25); but I simply dwell for a moment on the power that has been manifested in the exercise by God of His mercy.
What mercy needs more than power is authority. Authority is the right to exercise power: authority is the right to do anything. If you want to do something you must have authority to do it, you must be entitled to do it. This brings back a story about Queen Victoria. The rule of her day was that, if a court martial had sentenced a soldier to be executed, the warrant had to be signed by the Queen herself. The Duke of Wellington brought a warrant for a man who had deserted twice, for whom the Queen’s regulations prescribed the sentence of death. The Queen asked the Duke of Wellington if he knew anything about the man? He said, he may be a very good father, but he is a very bad soldier. That was the most that could be said about him. The Queen took the warrant and wrote on it, ‘Pardoned’. What a wonderful thing! That was the exercise of mercy. I just draw it in to show that it was the Queen’s right to exercise mercy. We know that, in the constitutional arrangements of this country, the Queen will normally exercise the rights she has on advice; but she does not have to. In that case she had the right to exercise mercy. That right and the circumstances in which it was exercised could not be questioned by anybody. As far as I know the Duke of Wellington accepted that. He did not say, Look what a precedent you are setting. This really will not do and we had better look into it a little more. The Queen had the right to exercise mercy and that right could not be questioned by anybody. There was nobody in the system of law who was above her, and so it is with God. God is supreme. When we speak of the exercise of mercy, let us not think of our poor condition only but let us remember that mercy is an expression of the supremacy of God. In very simple terms it tells us that He is above everybody. He uses that supremacy in order to act as He will (see Eph 1: 11). If He wills He may show mercy. We often feel very wretched about our sins and it is right to, but there is nothing wretched about God. There is something very majestic about someone in a position of supreme authority engaging that supremacy with the needs of the wretched and helpless. How it completely changes the whole situation. We are dealing not only with the power of God but with God’s authority.
Another thing which goes with His authority. There must not only be nobody who can question His authority, but there also can be nobody or anything that can change what He has decided. That is very important to the exercise of mercy. It would not do for mercy to be shown when at some later time some other reason would be discovered or some other person should come forward, that could overrule the exercise of mercy. If that situation existed, the expression of mercy would have no value whatever. The person to whom mercy was shown would be in constant fear that they would once again come under penalty.
That is why I started this passage where I did because it says, “the gifts and the calling of God are not subject to repentance”. The gift of mercy is, as the note says, irrevocable. That also depends on the power of God. Once God has made a decision then He is able to sustain what He has done forever. It is not only through the remainder of the period of time but for ever. There is no point or any juncture at which the decisions that God has made will come under review or will become liable to be changed. We not only have in relation to God’s mercy the power of God and the supremacy of God, but we have His unchangeability. Abraham relied on it, there were unchangeable things in which it was “impossible that God should lie”, Heb 6:18. What was one of those things? God swore by Himself (see Heb 6: 13). That is an unchangeable thing in which it was impossible that God should lie.
There must of course also be the will to show mercy. It is one thing to be able to do something, it is another thing to do it. The scripture says, “I will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy”, Exod 33: 19. In that sense the exercise of the authority and supremacy of which we have been speaking depends wholly upon the will of God. God is not passive in that sense, but in another sense He is also not subject to some kind of decree that will determine the circumstances in which this or that may be done. He does not promulgate a law and set out the conditions in which He has to act in a particular way. It is a matter of His will.
We often speak about the will of God. The will of God is the means by which He expresses to us the greatness of His authority, but it is also the means by which He expresses to us what He is. So we see in the mercy of God, His love. What a wonderful junction the mercy of God represents. On the one hand we have His power and His authority and His will, and we also have His love and His grace. Think of that, the grace of God. The thing about the grace of God is that He knows how to suit what He is and what He does to whatever need or situation He finds. He does not have to change Himself to do that. He does not have to transform Himself or modify what He is, or His right or claims. But the “God of all grace” (1 Peter 5:10) is able to apply Himself and what He is to whatever situation He may find including your situation, whatever it is. God is able to do that.
What a wonderful thing it is then for the sinner to look up and see all these wonderful beams of divine light criss-crossing over him, and finding in him and in the needs which his sin has created a meeting place – an opportunity – for them all to express themselves towards him or her and to do so perfectly and abidingly. How precious is the mercy of God! We sometimes sing about it: we have this evening:
How bright, there above, is the mercy of God! (Hymn 22)
‘There above’ – and so it is. You might say, I do not find these things in my heart. You find them in the heart of God. You find them expressed towards you in the Person of the Lord Jesus. We heard about that last week, God is not simply proposing that He has some better ‘ism’ for us to believe in than any of the other options which the world may offer. God is presenting all that He has in a glorious Person. We see in the coming, and in the Person, and in the form of Jesus, the embodiment of His mercy. All the things I have spoken about so far you will find in the fullest divine extent in the Person of Jesus. There they are without measure in the Person of Jesus. Put out your hand in your sense of need and it will be the hand of Jesus that reaches out to save you. That hand that clutches hold of yours holds the fulness beyond all telling of all the things of which I have already spoken, bundled together in an expression to you of the mercy of God.
Another thing that comes out and needs to be met in relation to God’s dealings with us, and conditions the exercise of God’s mercy, is righteousness. We sometimes maybe think that mercy and righteousness are alternatives, that is to say the decision by the person who exercises mercy is whether I should receive the due rewards of what I have done or not. The mercy of God is not like that because God is absolutely righteous. He can never set aside His righteousness, He can never say that sin should be allowed to pass. He can never excuse anything or pretend it did not happen. He cannot even forget it – that would be weakness. But, beloved, there is no shadow of unrighteousness over the exercise of God’s mercy. The question is, Has God allowed the sinner to go on to destruction when it was in His power to save him? God has made full provision in the exercise of that power for His righteousness. There can be no question about the righteousness of God. The cross of Jesus is a testimony that there is no question as to the righteousness of God. Beloved, the great wonder in the glad tidings is that the One who shows mercy takes my liabilities upon Himself and the One who shows mercy has Himself paid all that righteousness required that should be paid in relation to those liabilities. If I may just go back to Queen Victoria, the happy outcome of that story was that some poor, bad soldier out in a camp – who knows where – found that his sovereign had become the surety for his righteousness. What a precious thing! How it changed the status of that soldier! All the other men in the camp, like the ninety and nine who had not gone astray, soldiered on in their own righteousness. Their righteousness was measured by their compliance with the Queen’s regulations, but in their midst, and the worst of them all, from a soldiering point of view, a comrade whose Queen was surety for his righteousness. You can imagine the glow he would have had in his spirit as he thought of that. He was someone who had deserved nothing, someone who had let the Queen down, not just once but twice; but she herself was ready, without even knowing him or hardly anything about him, to undertake to be the surety for his righteousness. Think of the parallel in the gospel – you are not a stranger to God. He may be a stranger to you but you are not a stranger to God. He knows all about you. He knows just how bad I am. He knows all my evil thoughts as well as the things I have done. He knows the things I have done in secret as well as the things I have done in public. He knows how grossly He has been offended by the things I have done, but in His mercy He has undertaken to be surety for my righteousness. The righteousness of God is “towards all, and upon all those who believe”, Rom 3 :22. How wonderful these things are! God is free to do that. No one can question His right to do it. You might say the only Person who could question God’s right to do it is God Himself. But God must be right and He must do what is right. He must meet the claims of justice. God has done that. He did it before any of my sins had been committed. He has the means at His right hand to answer any question about the exercise of His mercy towards me. He can point to the Lord Jesus at His own right hand, the sin bearer glorified. He can look to Him as the answer for my righteousness, the price has been paid. As Paul says in this epistle, He “justifies the ungodly”, Rom 4: 5. Peter has it, “for Christ indeed has once suffered for sins, the just for the unjust, that he might bring us to God” (1 Peter 3: 18) and He brings us to a God who justifies the ungodly. What does justification mean? We speak a lot about that, but it means that I can stand before a God who could, if He wished, have all my history laid out before Him, and guilt would attach to none of it. It is not that He wipes the slate clean and leaves me nothing to remember and learn, but guilt no longer attaches to it. Another has borne the guilt as His own and has borne the penalty that was due to me. So God is free to proceed in the exercise of His grace, and the outpouring of His love, to show mercy.
Paul refers here to the children of Israel and he uses them to illustrate what the bounty of God’s mercy is. Another thing that belongs to mercy is riches. I do not mean money to pay, but Paul says, “God, being rich in mercy” (Eph 2: 4). It is not just a question of money to pay, but does God have the heart for this? On whom would He be willing to confer this wonderful gift? Should mercy be an exception or the rule? God is rich in mercy, his righteousness is towards all. The Lord Jesus has given Himself a “ransom for all” (1 Tim 2: 6). There is nobody who is outside the scope of what God is ready to do except those who place themselves outside the scope of it. They do that by simply not believing. What a terrible thing that is, what a door is closed by unbelief, what darkness falls, what shades fall where there is unbelief. God presents these things on the principle of faith. Do not say it is too good to be true, do not say it is not for me, do not say I do not need it. Beloved, God would not have acted in the way He has if there was any question but that you needed it. You certainly do. God has made this wonderful provision because He knows just exactly how great your need is, and that, however hard we may try we will never be able to meet that need ourselves.
The preacher last week referred to Jeremiah. He says you can get out the best soap you can find, and you can try and wash these kinds of stains out of your clothes and out of your skin, but you never will (see Jer 2: 22). You need a different kind of power from the power you have. God has the power and He is ready to exercise it. He has the love to do it and the righteousness to do it, and that is what His people Israel will have to come to. They thought that they could make themselves acceptable to God and they thought that they had succeeded. The history shows clearly that they could not possibly have done so but they thought they had. And then, when God said He was going to bring in others on the principle of mercy, they said, we do not believe it, it cannot be true: the God we claim to know could not possibly want other people besides us. And so they disbelieved the mercy of God. God says, you forfeit all your rights: you do not deserve them any more; you will have to come by mercy just the same as all the others. God is never at a loss. We may forfeit everything, we may disqualify ourselves, we may feel we are utter failures; but God is not a failure. God has the riches and the depths: “O depth of riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of God!”
I cannot say any more but let us just think about the word. Let us not think of mercy as simply an answer to a miserable condition. Let us from now on think about mercy as a glorious constellation, and meeting place of so many divine glories that have overabounded and triumphed in the presence of sin. As that hymn says:
But has found, in what sin had once made our part,
The domain of His love’s display. (Hymn 85)
May He bless the word.
WEST NORWOOD
6 November 2005