Mercy of God

Imagine a savvy organization that does a leveraged buyout and buys a company, and the company is losing money. It's awash in red ink. What does the company do? The takeover buyer knows that this company that it's bought is just full of incompetent management. Management stinks from top to bottom.

So, what do you do? Fire them all? Block them out? Put in new people? Is that illegal? No, the buyers have that right. Is that impractical? No, they have the power. It's smart.

In the biblical story God comes to us. Because he's powerful, he's got the right to blot us out. Why? Because look at the world. It's incompetent. Morally incompetent from top to bottom. He's got the power, so it's not impractical. He's got the holiness. He's got the right, but thank goodness he's also got the mercy, because if he was just powerful and holy, he would do what any good company would do who has just bought out another company that's incompetent. Every head rolls. Fire them all! They have the right; they have the power. It's the smart thing to do. But God's also merciful, so he will restore us. He will redeem us. He'll cut the head off of our sin instead of cutting the head off of our bodies and that's the reason…the hymnwriter said, “for his mercies endure, ever faithful, ever sure.”

Imagine an old European city with narrow cobbled streets and storefronts as old as the city itself. One of those weathered storefronts has a sign hanging over the door: The Mercy Shop. There's no lock on the door because it's never closed. There's no cash register because mercy is free.

When you ask for mercy, the Owner of the shop takes your measurements, then disap­pears into the back. Good news—he's got your size! Mercy is never out of stock, never out of style.

As you walk out the door, the Owner of the Mercy Shop smiles, “Thanks for coming!” With a wink, he says, “I’ll see you tomorrow!”

Possible Preaching Angle:

The writer of Lamentations said that God's mercies are "new every morning" (Lam. 3:23). The Hebrew word for "new" is hadas . It doesn't just mean "new" as in "again and again," which would be amazing in and of itself. It means "new" as in "different." It means "never experienced before." Today's mercy is different from yesterday's mercy! Like snowflakes, God's mercy never crystallizes the same way twice. Every act of mercy is unique.

In an issue of CT magazine Pastor Jeremy Treat writes:

My high-school basketball coach was a classic, old-school screamer who motivated with fear and shame. His voice was powerful, but I heard it only when I did something wrong. If I turned the ball over on offense or blew my assignment on defense, practice would stop, and the shaming would begin. Red in the cheeks and foaming at the mouth, he would scream until I had to wipe the spit off the side of my face. I never really knew him outside of basketball practice, but I know he was an angry man.

Many people have a similar view of God. They believe he’s a grumpy old man who has to get his way, and that when he doesn’t, he will shame, guilt, and scare people to get them in line. Although most wouldn’t say it out loud, deep down many believers think of God as “the God who is out to get me.” That God is waiting for us to mess up so he can meet his divine quota for punishing sin. Perhaps this comes from a particular teaching or from a bad experience with a church or a Christian, but either way, this is how many functionally view God.

When we open the Bible, we encounter a very different God. The God who delights. The God who sings. The God who saves. “The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves. He will take great delight in you; in his love he will no longer rebuke you, but will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zeph. 3:17). God’s rejoicing in us today gives us hope for tomorrow (Isa. 65:17-19).

Just outside Carlsbad, CA, a chaotic scene unfolded as several cars stopped in the middle of the I-5 freeway to grab money that spilled out. At 9:15 a.m., the back doors of an armored truck popped open and bags of $1 and $20 notes burst open across the Interstate. One patrol officer described the scene as “free-floating bills all over the freeway."

Some motorists thought it was "Free money" and were grabbing hand fulls of cash and celebrating their good fortune. Others posted stories on social media platforms, sharing with their followers their good luck.

While some returned their bounty, others drove away from the scene. The authorities warned that they would be watching the videos posted online and all the money had to be returned within 48 hours to avoid criminal charges. Imagine the disappointment of those who thought they had easy money.

Possible Preaching Angle:

It is easy to have our hope and affections set on the wrong things. The free grace that God offers us in salvation does not disappoint us. Once we receive it, it cannot be taken from us.

In an issue of CT magazine, David Nasser shares the story of his escape from Iranian religious zealotry and coming to faith in Christ:

I was nine Wyears old when I decided that I hated God. I hated him because I believed he hated me first. It was 1979, during the middle of the Iranian Revolution. Ayatollah Khomeini and his religious zealots had recently overthrown the existing government and seized political power. My father was a military officer in the previous regime. A couple of weeks into the revolution, I was at school when we were called outside. A soldier read off three names, including mine, and called us to the front. Removing a gun from his holster, he quoted from the Qur‘an and told me he would kill me to deliver a message to supporters of the old regime. Fortunately, the school principal intervened, and the soldier relented.

Traumatized, I rushed home to tell my father what had happened. Despite his usual sternness, he took me into his lap and pledged to keep us safe. He devised a plan to leverage my mother’s heart issues as a means of escape. We met with a few trusted doctors, offering everything we owned if they would risk helping us. One day my mother began faking chest pains. She was rushed to the hospital, where the doctors “assessed” her and recommended a trip to Switzerland for open-heart surgery.

One day my mother suggested praying to the “God of America” named Jesus. Maybe he would let us into “his” country. Her plan sounds silly in retrospect, but it worked: One week later we were flying to America.

A few months after graduation from high school, a friend asked why I seemed so down. I explained that all of my friends were moving away, and I was feeling isolated. He suggested coming with him to church the next morning. I conceded that I would go—but only with my parents’ permission. To my utter shock, they didn’t immediately shoot down the idea.

Unbeknownst to me, some people from this church had been dining at the restaurant my father owned. When they noticed he was shorthanded, they left their seats and began waiting and busing tables. For days, they kept returning and serving. Their kindness touched my father’s heart. And so I walked into that enormous Baptist church one Sunday morning as a youth rally was taking place. Within five minutes, everyone was dispersing—everyone except Larry Noh.

Everyone in our town knew Larry. He was a local legend—a linebacker from a rival football team who was outspoken about his faith. Throughout the Bible study, he made sure I felt included. One Sunday night, the preacher invited people forward to give their lives to God. Afraid, I slipped out quickly and drove home thinking I was finished with this “church stuff.”

Arriving home, I wanted to show God who was boss of my life, so I took one of the youth group’s Bibles, and doused it with lighter fluid, but I couldn’t find a match! Frustrated and curious all at once, I opened the Bible and began reading. When I came to the story of Peter walking on the water toward Jesus, it came alive! God was calling me to step out—out of myself, out of my excuses. That night, in my bedroom, I trusted Jesus.

My father immediately reproached me: “You can’t be a Christian,” he said. “We are Muslims.” But getting baptized sent them over the edge. When I arrived home, my father had a duffel bag packed. I was dead to him, he thundered, and I had to leave.

That night I called Larry Noh and told him I was homeless. He invited me to come live with him and six other interns in a house that belonged to the church. In the months to come, they helped me grow tremendously in my walk with the Lord. Meanwhile, one by one, God started saving my family. First my sister came to faith. Then my mother and brother were saved. We prayed relentlessly for my father, and eventually he too gave his life to Christ.

God, in his amazing grace, has turned my family’s tragedy into testimony. Though I hated him as a child, I can see now that he was holding us all along.

Editor’s Note: Today David Nasser is senior vice president for spiritual development at Liberty University

Thomas Tarrants shares his testimony of being a former hate-filled Klansman who was saved by God’s grace:

I came of age in the early 1960s in Mobile, Alabama, which had been segregated since its founding. In 1963, reacting to the federally mandated desegregation of Alabama’s public schools, Gov. George Wallace uttered his infamous pledge of “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.”

I read some white supremacist, anti-Semitic, anti-Communist literature that was circulating within my high school. Then I met the people who were advocating these ideas. The civil rights movement, they said, was part of a Communist plot, and the US government had been infiltrated by Communist agents.

All these warnings made me anxious about America’s survival, and my fears soon turned into hatred—toward those I perceived as America’s enemies. So it was only a short step to getting involved with Mississippi’s dreaded White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, the most violent right-wing terrorist organization in the United States at the time.

One summer night, as my accomplice and I attempted to plant a bomb at the home of a Jewish businessman, we were ambushed in a police stakeout. My partner was killed at the scene. Four blasts of shotgun fire at close range left me critically wounded. Doctors told me it would be a miracle if I lived another 45 minutes. Yet God spared my life—to the astonishment of the doctors and the dismay of the police. If anyone deserved to die, it was certainly me.

At the end of a two-day trial, I was convicted and sentenced to 30 years in the Mississippi State Penitentiary. About six months after arriving in prison, I escaped with two other inmates. But a couple of days later, we were apprehended after a blazing gun-battle with the authorities, during which one of the other inmates was killed. Had this man not relieved me from standing watch about half an hour early that day, I would have been the one killed. God had shown me mercy once more.

Back in prison, I was confined to a six-by-nine-foot cell in the maximum security unit. To keep from going crazy, I read continuously. This eventually led to the New Testament, specifically the Gospels. But as I read the Gospels in my prison cell, my eyes were opened in a way that went beyond simply understanding the words on the page.

My sins came to mind, one after another. Conviction grew, and with it tears of repentance. I needed God’s forgiveness. And I knew it came only through trusting Jesus, who had given his life to pay for my sins. One night I knelt on the concrete floor of my cell and prayed a simple prayer, confessing my sins and asking Jesus to forgive me, take over my life, and do whatever he wanted to with it.

As I read the Bible daily, a whole new world opened up to me, and I couldn’t get enough! Early on, God delivered me from hate, and I began to grow in love for others. Friendships developed with black inmates and others who were very di­fferent from me.

After serving eight years in prison, an extraordinary turn of events resulted in a parole grant to attend university. That set in motion a series of developments which, over the next 40 years, led me first into campus ministry, then pastoral ministry in a racially mixed church, and finally to a long ministry of teaching and writing at the C.S. Lewis Institute.

As I look back over the nearly 50 years since God saved me, I can only thank and praise him that he didn’t give me what I deserved. But because he is full of grace and mercy, he gave me exactly what I needed. He “is patient with [us], not wanting anyone to perish, but everyone to come to repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9).

What's it like to walk free again after years behind bars? Lee Horton and his brother Dennis know the feeling. They were convicted of robbery and murder and sentenced to life in prison without parole. They always maintained their innocence. Earlier this year, after being locked up for a quarter of a century, they were granted clemency and released.

Here's Lee Horton’s story:

I'm going to tell you honestly. The first thing that I was aware of when I walked out of the doors and sat in the car and realized that I wasn't handcuffed. And for all the time I've been in prison, every time I was transported anywhere, I always had handcuffs on. And that moment right there was … the most emotional moment that I had. Even when they told me that the governor had signed the papers … it didn't set in until I was in that car and I didn't have those handcuffs on.

And I don't think people understand that the punishment is being in prison. When you take away everything, everything becomes beautiful to you. ... When we got out … we went to the DMV to get our licenses back. My brother and I stood in line for two and a half hours. And we heard all the bad things about the DMV. We had the most beautiful time. And all the people were looking at us because we were smiling and we were laughing, and they couldn't understand why we were so happy. And it just was that - just being in that line was a beautiful thing.

I was in awe of everything around me. It's like my mind was just heightened to every small nuance. Just to be able to just look out of a window, just to walk down a street and just inhale the fresh air, just to see people interacting. ... It woke something up in me, something that I don't know if it died or if it went to sleep. I've been having epiphanies every single day since I've been released.

One of my morning rituals every morning is I send a message of ‘good morning, good morning, good morning, have a nice day’ to every one of my 42 contacts. And they're like, ‘how long can (he) keep doing this?’ But they don't understand that I was deprived. And now, it's like I have been released, and I've been reborn into a better day, into a new day. Like, the person I was no longer exists. I've stepped through the looking glass onto the other side, and everything is beautiful.

Possible Preaching Angle:

This enthusiastic testimony is an exact parallel to that of a person set free from a lifetime of captivity to Satan (2 Tim. 2:26). The experience of God’s glorious freedom and new life in Christ results in a joyful expression of gratitude and amazement (Acts 3:8).

Via their Twitter account, the St. John Fisher Catholic High School of Peterborough posted a picture of a book that was returned to its library. How long had this book been out of library circulation? At least 32 years, according to the anonymous scofflaw seeking amnesty. An attached note read, “Sorry, just 32 years overdue. Call it Catholic guilt.”

Chief of administration Rosie Roe was the one who opened the package with the long-lost book, and was disappointed that the guilty party remained anonymous. She said, "It was a real surprise when I opened it and saw what was inside, I thought it's a real shame they didn't leave a name because I was at the school at that time and wonder if I know them.”

It’s not clear whether the anonymous former student was motivated more by guilt or by the book’s subject matter. It’s title: Manners Make a Difference. The school will not return the book to library circulation, since its content is quite outdated, and after calculating that the fine would be approximately $1100 dollars, the school announced that “all is forgiven.”

Possible Preaching Angle:

It’s never too late to come to God with your long covered up sins and mistakes. He is always ready to forgive and release you from penalty through the work of Christ on the Cross.

Author Anne Bokma left her fundamentalist Christian church in her 20s. She recently spent a full year investigating and experimenting with numerous forms of popular New Age spirituality, from yoga to witchcraft, magic mushrooms to death cafés.

Bokma recalls the time in her early 30s when she prayed really hard. She was eight months pregnant and in the hospital experiencing premature labor pains. A nurse waved the ultrasound wand over her belly and after many minutes of trying, could not detect a heartbeat. A doctor was called as Bokma and her husband started to panic. The doctor also could not find a heartbeat. Bokma immediately began “bargaining, begging and beseeching” God. She didn’t really believe in a supernatural entity who personally intervenes, “but this did not stop me from crying out for mercy in my hour of need.”

Bokma tells the rest of the story, showing that her prayer was never really sincere:

When all hope seems lost, praying means you’re at least doing something. After searching in vain for another couple of minutes, the doctor … picked up the cord attached to the ultrasound machine and dangled it in front of our eyes. It hadn’t been plugged in. Our baby was alive, though not because of divine intervention. This made me think about what Mark Twain must have meant when he said: “Under the circumstances, swearing seems more apt than prayer.” Some might have called this incident a miracle. We called her Ruby.

The historian Paul Veyne calls himself an "unbeliever," and yet he extols the message of human dignity that we find in the sacrificial love and death of Jesus. Veyne writes:

[In the gospel, a person's life] suddenly acquired an eternal significance within a cosmic plan, something that no philosophy or paganism could confer ... The pagan gods lived for themselves. In contrast, Christ, the Man-God sacrificed himself for his [people] ... Christianity owed its success to a collective invention of genius ... namely, the infinite mercy of a God passionate about the fate of the human race, indeed about the fate of each and every individual soul, including mine and yours, and not just those of the kingdoms, empires and the human race in general.”

When Hunter Shamatt lost his wallet, he had little hope he’d get it back, certainly not with interest. But he did. Hunter was on the way from South Dakota to his sister’s wedding in Las Vegas when he left his wallet on the airplane. It held the 20-year-old’s ID and debit card, as well as $60 and a signed paycheck. Hunter was “fearing the worst that everything was gone,” his mother Jeannie Shamatt wrote in a Facebook post.

Luckily, Todd Brown, the man who found it, is a believer in paying it forward. He mailed everything back, and then some. Brown included a note that read: “Hunter, found this on a Frontier flight from Omaha to Denver—wedged between the seat and wall. Thought you might want it back. All the best … PS. I rounded your cash up to an even $100 so you could celebrate getting your wallet back. Have fun!!!”

That’s right. While others may have snatched the cash, Brown gave the kid some more. “I saw he was just a kid, 20 years old, he had a paycheck in there, so I figured, ‘Well, he’s doing his best to make ends meet.’ I was 20 once, and that’s a lot of money for a kid,” Brown reasoned. He decided not to give the wallet to the flight crew. “I thought about it, but I just wanted to make sure he got it back,” Brown told Yahoo Lifestyle.

Jeannie posted again on Facebook to gush about Brown. “I personally want to thank Todd Brown … for restoring faith that there are amazing people out there, the world is not as grim as it’s being made out to be,” she wrote. Brown never expected to get so much attention. “I just wanted to do the right thing, it always feels good to do the right thing,” he said.

Possible Preaching Angles: 1) Grace of God; Restoration; Salvation, gift of - God not only restores what we've lost through our own fault; by grace he lavishes us with more gifts than we could ever imagine (Eph. 1:7). 2) Generosity; Loving others – As we have experienced God’s amazing grace, His light should shine through us to others to the glory of God (Matt 5:16).

Local police are convinced that a driver owes his recent good fortune to divine intervention after a pigeon prevented the person from being cited for speeding. In this particular area of western Germany, offenders are typically identified by the speed cameras installed at traffic lights. But when police reviewed the photo of one particular offender, the driver’s face was obscured by the image of a spread-winged pigeon that happened to swoop in at just the right moment. Referencing Ascension Day on the church calendar, police were quoted as saying “the Holy Ghost must’ve had a plan.”

The driver was spared a fine of 105 euro (about $117) thanks to the pigeon that police referred to as “the feathered guardian angel.” Nonetheless, they hope the driver will take it “as a sign from above” to slow down on the roadway.

Potential Preaching Angles: Sometimes God provides at just the right moment in order to send an unmistakable message of hope. Sometimes an act of mercy is what we need to change our behavior.

The beaches of the small island of Langeoog experienced a surprise—thousands of colored plastic eggs. Photos of the beach show the eggs scattered on the sand, with more riding in on the approaching waves. Local children were allowed to go investigate the eggs, which were found to have toys inside, "much to [the children's] delight."

But where did these mysterious eggs come from? Local police forces "suspect the eggs came from a freighter that lost part of its cargo during an intense storm." Not everything about this surprise from the sea proved to be fun and games, however. Uwe Garrels, the local mayor, said, "At first I thought this was a wonder, because everything was so colorful and so on, but then we realized that this is a huge mess in the end."

Another addition to the "mess"? The notes tucked inside the toys, which had so excited the children, were in Russian.

Potential Preaching Angles: (1) Gifts from God; God, goodness of—Unlike the mixed blessing of the eggs, we know that our good God only gives "good and perfect" gifts (James 1:17). (2) Sin, power of; Temptation—The things that sparkle with delight and promise, may lead us into more messes than we ever imagined.

Steve Brown writes:

I once asked a Jewish friend to forgive the church and me for [how the church has sometimes hurt] Jews in the name of Christ. I waited for him to tell me to get lost or, maybe, to forgive me. Instead, he started weeping. I had no idea why and asked him. "Steve," he said, "I didn't hear a 'kicker' in your remarks. Often people will say something like what you said to me but there is always a kicker. You guys want me to receive Jesus, get saved, or to ask for forgiveness for what 'we' did to Jesus. I waited for the kicker and there wasn't one. Thank you."

That conversation is one I've thought about a lot. One of the most tragic things about the church is that we have become, as it were, a "church of kickers." It's the "Of course God loves you … but don't let it go to your head," "God will forgive you … but don't do it again," "God's your loving Father … but don't forget about the discipline," or "God loves you … but that should make a better person." I can't tell you the number of times I've brought up Jesus and the woman caught in adultery, his love and forgiveness given to her (John 8:1-11), and people will bring in the kicker: "Yeah, but don't forget that Jesus told her to 'sin no more."' It's not that there isn't some truth in those statements. But they sometimes make God's love and forgiveness so conditional that, frankly, I can't deal with it. What was meant as good news very quickly becomes bad news because of the kicker.

His mercies never come to an end; they are new every morning. The English word new is the Hebrew word hadas … It means never before experienced. Today's mercy is different from yesterday or the day before or the day before the day before. Just as the seasonal flu vaccine changes from year to year, God's mercy changes from day to day. It's a new strain of mercy. Why? Because you didn't sin today the way you did yesterday!

Try this little exercise: Figure out how old you are—not in years but in days. That's the sum total of different kinds of mercy you've received life-to-date. By the time you're twenty-one, you've experienced 7,665 unique mercies. When you hit midlife, it numbers 14,600. And by the time you hit retirement, God has mercied you 23,725 times.