The Mercy of God

Sunday Sermon with Apostle Chisale

Greetings beloved nation in the name of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.

God by his divine wisdom created a system of bailing out men, a system called mercy.

When we talk about bailing out a person, it means “to help someone out of a difficult situation/ to rescue.”

As believers many of us have been taught that mercy is for sinners.

Yes, it is for sinners because the salvation of men comes through the mercy of God.

But ladies and gentlemen, God’s mercy goes beyond just the pardoning of sin.

The mercy of God is not just extended to sinners alone, but it also alleviates the pain and suffering of men.

It is a system that was introduced by God to bail us out, meaning to help us or rescue us in the face of difficult situations.

Many believers do not have a true understanding of the mercy of God, as a result they live lives of defeat and end up blaming God when things are not working out in their lives.

God’s mercy means, “the underserved help and privilege man receives from God.”

Mercy is that, “tenderness of heart which inclines a person to overlook injuries or to treat an offender better than he/she deserves.”

So meaning God in his wisdom created a provision in his dealings with men knowing the limitations of men because of their sinful nature.

The mercy of God is how men obtains help from God.

Mercy places us in a position where in spite of what wrong things we have done, God overrules everything by his mercy.

Ladies and gentlemen, we all need God’s mercy for us to make it in life.

In our journey of life we face difficult, challenging and painful situations.

It is not the strongest or the most cunning or the most intelligent who survive such times, but it is by God’s mercy because the scriptures tells us in 1 Samuel 2:9 that, “It is not by strength that one prevails.”

Mercy is a distinctive attribute of God meaning it is in his nature to be merciful, just as the nature of God is love.

The Bible tells us in Exodus 34:6, “And the Lord passed before him and proclaimed, ‘The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abounding in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgressions and sin, by no means clearing the guilty . . .’”

We will discover that the foundation and basis for mercy is compassion.

It is impossible to administer mercy without compassion and love.

The reason why God is merciful is because He is love.

Many a times we read in the Bible where Jesus was moved by compassion when he saw the suffering of the people who were following him and he acted on their situations.

So his compassion and his love led him to act and alleviate the pain and suffering of the people.

This is mercy at work.

 

We see in the Bible the story of blind Bartimaeus in the book of Mark 10:46 where the blind man heard that Jesus was nearby, he began to shout, “Jesus, son of David, have mercy on me.”

He did not cry out for Jesus to heal him.

No, he cried for mercy. When Jesus was passing by and heard his cry for mercy, Heaven stood at attention to assist him, restoring his sight instantly.

This man had a revelation that it was only mercy from God that could rescue him from his infirmity.

This is a mystery that the nation of Israel understood and used to turn around battles.

Every time the children of Israel would sin against God by worshipping other gods and by disobedience, God would turn them over to their enemies.

In their suffering they would turn back to God, repent of their sins and invoke his mercy and God, being a merciful God, would deliver them.

One man who had a revelation of God’s mercy was David.

We read in the Bible that every time he sinned in the sight of God, he would remind God of his mercy.

One such time is in 2 Samuel 24 where King David counts the fighting men and this triggered the anger of God, and his anger burned against the nation of Israel.

In verse 10 when he realised his mistake, David pleads with God to take away his guilt.

In his judgement God through a prophet offers David three options; 3 years of famine, 3 months of being pursued by his enemies or 3 days of plague.

David in his response says in verse 14, “I am in great distress.

Please let us fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great, but do not let me fall into the hand of man.”

When the plague had destroyed 70 000 people and the angel was about to destroy Jerusalem, the Lord was grieved and stopped the angel from killing more people.

David understood that in the hand of God, his mercy would rescue them.

David knew how to invoke the mercy of God, this was through a broken and contrite spirit.

Brokenness gives us access to God’s mercy as we see in Psalms 51:17.

To activate God’s mercy you need brokenness.

This is the posture we need to take in order to access God’s mercy.

Arrogant people are not benefactors of God’s mercy.

The Bible tells us in Lamentations 2:22-23, “Through the Lord’s mercies we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.

They are new every morning. Great is your faithfulness.”

Ladies and gentlemen, were it not for God’s mercies, we would have been consumed by sin and wickedness.

When we look back at our lives, the situations we have been through, situations that were supposed to kill us, wrong decisions we took, wrong things we did, where the judgement of God would have killed us, but his mercy rescued us and bailed us out.

In life when we see a fellow brethren down and going through difficult times, or having fallen into sin, let us not be too quick to conclude that all is over for him or her, let us not be too quick to write them off, because anything can still happen to that person.

When God deals with men according to his mercy anything is possible.

A person whose life you had concluded was over, God can turn that situation around and you see them in a palace, the story of Joseph, from slave to jail to palace.

From an orphaned village girl to a queen, the story of Esther.

It is God alone who decides who he will have mercy on.

It is not by educational background, by connections or by popularity, it is purely by God’s mercy.

I want to encourage you ladies and gentlemen, let us learn the prayer of mercy, learn to invoke the mercy of God over your life, your family, your business, because we need it on a daily basis because of our limitations as men.

Supplication for mercy should remain a top priority in our prayers.
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