Mercy of God, Father, Son and Holy Spirit Zion Fellowship 15/6/25 []= not spoken in sermon
https://youtube.com/watch?v=v4jFcYkAzA8&si=0nZaQPqQptBI4nPi
““Therefore, the kingdom of heaven is like a king who wanted to settle accounts with his servants. 24 As he began the settlement, a man who owed him ten thousand bags of gold[h] was brought to him. 25 Since he was not able to pay, the master ordered that he and his wife and his children and all that he had be sold to repay the debt. 26 “At this the servant fell on his knees before him. ‘Be patient with me,’ he begged, ‘and I will pay back everything.’ 27 The servant’s master took pity on him, cancelled the debt and let him go. 28 “But when that servant went out, he found one of his fellow servants who owed him a hundred silver coins. He grabbed him and began to choke him. ‘Pay back what you owe me!’ he demanded.29 “His fellow servant fell to his knees and begged him, ‘Be patient with me, and I will pay it back.’ 30 “But he refused. Instead, he went off and had the man thrown into prison until he could pay the debt. 31 When the other servants saw what had happened, they were outraged and went and told their master everything that had happened.32 “Then the master called the servant in. ‘You wicked servant,’ he said, ‘I cancelled all that debt of yours because you begged me to. 33 Shouldn’t you have had mercy on your fellow servant just as I had on you?’ 34 In anger his master handed him over to the jailers to be tortured, until he should pay back all he owed.35 “This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart.” ” (Matt 18:23-35)
Introduction
The Spirit often speaks with me these days through a painful personal experience. In the midst of the night, suffering from nagging pain, (cf. 2 Cor 12:1-10), I, uncharacteristically, was moved to kneel at the foot of the bed and plead aloud for mercy. I am sure this was a fruit of my recent repentance about a sense of superiority to others that came during a severe attack of vertigo. The lack of such earnest pleas (Acts 12:5; James 5:17) in my past is sign of conformity not to the Scripture but to the sort of tough father model I had, [who endured multiple public heart attacks and eventually died in front of me without calling out for heavenly mercy]. So much more me, for the crucial question in any teaching on mercy is, “To what degree was Jesus a man of mercy, and how may the people of God grow in the likeness of Christ?”. James’, Christ’s half-brother (Matt 13:55; James 1:1), testifies, “For judgement is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy. (then he turns the tables) Mercy triumphs over judgement.” (James 2:13). Whilst signs and wonders abound in Third World nations they are uncommon amongst us, suggesting Paul’s words to the Corinthians, “[I say this not as a command, but to prove by the earnestness of others that your love also is genuine.] 9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor, so that you by his poverty might become rich.” (2 Cor 8:8-9), have yet to penetrate our hearts. The old saying, “What goes deepest to the conscience goes widest to the world. (x2)” (Luther), is very embarrassing cf. Acts 2:37. [We are more like the Church in Laodicea (Rev 3:14-22), outwardly rich but spiritually poor, than the congregation in Smyrna, outwardly poor but spiritually rich (Rev 2:8-11).] A friend recently returned from Myanmar said, “we have everything materially but little spiritually, whilst these downtrodden believers have little materially and much spiritually.” I was struck by comments made by a mature believer a few weeks ago as wedding guests were sipping champagne and eating rich cake; that whereas there were many gracious prayers for Israel in the circles he knew, there were relatively few for the suffering population of Gaza. Praise God that my circle is wide enough to incorporate the BALM (Believers All Loving Muslims) people. Praise God he is doing a new thing in our time (Isa 43:19).
Tipping Point
A constant theme rings true through Scripture, “But when the kindness and love of God our Savior appeared, 5 he saved us, not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. [He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy Spirit, 6 whom he poured out on us generously through Jesus Christ our Savior, 7 so that, having been justified by his grace, we might become heirs having the hope of eternal life.”] (Tit 3:5-7). Christians like to go on about the stupidity of “wokeness” (I recommend Christoper Watkin’s volume on this) but few are registering what the Spirit is saying today (Rev 2:7 etc). It is nonsensical impossible and unsustainable, sheer “madness”, (cf. 1 Cor 14:23 https://www.english-heritage.org.uk/learn/histories/lgbtq-history/the galli/#:~:text=The%20cult%20of%20Cybele%2C%20also,These%20priests%20were%20the%20Galli.), to say that people can choose, [despite all available bodily evidence] to be asexual, i.e. not sexual at all! This has proved a tipping point for the over-indoctrinated gen Z (16-30 year olds https://lausanne.org/about/blog/gen-z-and-the-south-asian-church-a-divine-intersection) and beyond. What is happening in these cohorts, including in the UK [and Europe], bears the hallmarks of what the Bible Society calls a “quiet revival” (https://www.biblesociety.org.uk/research/quiet-revival). There are now over 2 million more people attending church, [especially the more conservative styles], than there were six years ago. It is not that this age group are more sensible than those before or after them, it is that the sovereign grace and mercy of Christ has been unprecedently outpoured in fulfilment of the Pentecostal promise that the Holy Spirit be poured out “on all flesh” (Acts 2:17). [For those of you old enough to be there, it is like what happened during the Jesus Movement of the late 60’s and early 70’s (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus_movement).] Part of my purpose in teaching today is to ensure that the mistakes made 50 odd years ago which froze the then “Jesus Revolution” not be repeated in our day.
Mercy Foretold
If grace deals with guilt by forgiving sin e.g. Eph 1:7, mercy delivers from misery (such as depression, phobia and anxiety which are social plagues today). This sovereign mercy first broke into view when the enslaved Israelites groaned so loudly that God, to quote Exodus, “knew their suffering” (Ex 2:23-25; 3:6). The Lord did not know “about” their suffering but that he experienced by grace their sufferings (cf. Gen 4:1; Am 3:2). Through such shared pain the eternal Creator (cf. Gen 4:26) revealed himself uniquely to Israel as “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex 3:14), the God of covenant. Intense revelation always accompanies earnest cries for mercy [for such holy revelations are drawn out from the depths of God (cf. 1 Cor 2:10). Such special revelation exposes the previously hidden character of the being of God.] Whereas the covenants God makes with his people (through Noah, Moses, David, Jesus) are [freely and sovereignly] made from God’s side without any need for an inducing human-initiated sacrifice of atonement, other world religions, of all sorts, [Eastern and Western], all work by offering sacrifice e.g. Hindu offerings on the streets of Bali; sacrifice of monkhood in Buddhism. In Scripture, the sacrifice of atonement is made in the heart of God himself. [Although hidden across most of history (n.b. Gen 4:26),] the “tender mercy” to which the LORD points and the psalmists appeal under the old covenant (Ex 34:6-7; Ps 25:6; 69:16;103:13-14) goes back to “the Lamb slain from before the foundation of the world” (Rev 13:8; 1 Pet 1:19-20).
Pleas for mercy are weaved into the fabric of the covenant people of God. (See the universal illustrations involving man and beasts in the book of Jonah.) In chapter 9 of the book of Daniel, we read “I turned my face to the Lord God, seeking him by prayer and pleas for mercy with fasting and sackcloth and ashes. (v3, 17). Today such earnest pleas are being strikingly repeated. God is moving with power in our time. Sharing with me the other day an Iranian friend told me he so moved about his sin before the Lord that he went into his back yard BBQ in deep remorse and put some ashes on his bald head. And it wasn’t Ash Wednesday!!
The Lord prophesied in Zechariah 12:10; “And I will pour out on the house of David and the inhabitants of Jerusalem a spirit of grace and pleas for mercy, so that, when they look on me, on him whom they have pierced, they shall mourn for him, as one mourns for an only child, and weep bitterly over him, as one weeps over a firstborn.” Debate about whether the S/spirit of grace is the Spirit of God or the human spirit are irrelevant because New Testament in Jesus surely both are involved. Zechariah’s prophecy was fulfilled with the coming of the merciful God in the flesh.
Mercy Incarnate
In the coming of God as a human those touched by the Spirit cry out for healing to….. [Jesus], “As Jesus went on from there, two blind men followed him, calling out, “Have mercy on us, Son of David!” (Matt 9:27). The fact that Christ healed all who came to him was potent evidence that the covenant God indeed is, to quote Ephesians “rich in mercy” (Eph 2:4).
Zechariah’s prophecy about pleas for mercy find their first and highest fulfilment at the cross. John 19 expounds the piercing of Christ by quoting, “[For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken.” 37 And again] another Scripture says, “They will look on him whom they have pierced.”” (John 19:36-37). [Whilst this fulfils at the temporal level the prophecy of Zech 12:10, at the heavenly level] the Father knew that the sacrifice of atonement Jesus made was an answer to the heart felt longing of all humanity for mercy and deliverance. In Jesus becoming one of us and dying as our representative and substitute, he took upon himself the fulness of human misery and distress and took it away in resurrection fulness of life
Paul expresses a deep insight into the scope of God’s “tender mercies” (Luke 1:78) by saying to the Gentiles in Rome, “Just as you who were at one time disobedient to God have now received mercy as a result of their disobedience, 31 so they too have now become disobedient in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God’s mercy to you. 32 For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on all.” (Rom 11:30-32). This worldwide act of divine mercy is clear from a reading in the introduction to Revelation where John offers “grace and peace…from the seven spirits who are before his (God’s) throne …. (recounting that Jesus) he is coming with the clouds, and every eye will see him, even those who pierced him, and all tribes of the earth will wail on account of him. Even so. Amen.” (Rev 1:4, 7). The “seven spirits’ [symbolically] represent the work of the worldwide Spirit of God in fulfilment of the prophecy of Zechariah 12. The death and resurrection of Jesus are both the perfection of the Mercy of God and the catalyst for all God’s ongoing acts of mercy through the ages. From the Day of Pentecost onwards the Spirit makes real the mercy of God in the Church for the world.
Mercy Outpoured
The Church is the primary sign[/symbol/manifestation/sacrament] of divine mercy in this world: “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” (2 Cor 1:3-4). As the fountain and source of all mercy God is an all- merciful Father. Remember James’: “For judgement is without mercy to one who has shown no mercy.” Then he turns things around by preaching the Gospel… “Mercy (God’s “No”! to sin” at the cross) triumphs over judgement (God’s “Yes” to lost miserable humanity in resurrection).” (James 2:13). As the chief witness of the death and raising of the Lord Peter testifies to the Christian exiles of his day; “Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! According to his great mercy, he has caused us to be born again to a living hope through the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead” (1 Pet 1:3).
Mercy Today
In his excellent book on Reconstructing Pastoral Theology Andrew Purves has a simple but profound illustration of practical mercy. As he recovered from anaesthetic from cancer surgery he describes how he was moved spontaneously to call out in prayer for those patients around him. Through the Spirit, not due to any personal virtue or godliness, he was being united with the fact that Jesus was sharing his own deliverance. As it says in Hebrews 7:25; “Therefore he is able to save completely those who come to God through him, because he always lives to intercede for them.” It is the sheer unconditional mercy of God which in the End will give to us eternal life (Jude 24).
[It is a complete tragedy when the power of the Spirit is hijacked to satisfy personal needs only, as has often been the case with the Western Charismatic movement. God’s saving action in Jesus was always directed to the healing of the world.]
Conclusion
Today the voice of Jesus speaks to us, “Blessed are the merciful,
for they will be shown mercy.” (Matt 5:7). Our failure to show mercy cripples our experience of mercy. In mercy the stronger always (x2) descends to the needy as they cry out for mercy. This action of mercy was perfected in the death and resurrection of Christ as the total embodiment of Mercy; a mercy which needs to be replicated in every generation of Christians. The Church exists in the grand sweep of the kingdom of God’s mercy and forgiveness so that degrees of mercy expressed in the Church as Christ’s Body will always be in proportion to out unity with Christ. Becoming more like Jesus means looking beyond our needs and turning towards the pain of a world separated from a holy God and Father. It is past time that the followers of Jesus ceased from taking pity on themselves and called out in the power of the Spirit for the Lord to show mercy through us on a miserable world. Through Christ, PTL, our misery is no longer exclusively our own.
[Whilst this prayer form Lamentations was first uttered by someone suffering acute anguish, it surely was perfected in the outpouring of the Holy Spirit on the dying Jesus in raising him in the power of the Spirit. “The steadfast love of the Lord never ceases; his mercies never come to an end;23 they are new every morning; great is your faithfulness.24 “The Lord is my portion,” says my soul, “therefore I will hope in him.”” (Lam 3:22-24). Mercy, both given and received, is not so much our initiative but something evoked/drawn out of us for others through unsurpassable love and grace.) Let me conclude with an ancient congregational prayer:
“O God, you declare your almighty power chiefly in showing mercy and pity: Grant us the fullness of your grace, that we, running to obtain your promises, may become partakers of your heavenly treasure; through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever and ever. Amen.” (Book of Common Prayer Sept 28)