Mercy
Ron Tovar’s father passed away three years ago. On his death bed, Ron asked his father, “what do you want me to say at your memorial service.” His dad said, “the message for my eulogy is “I surrender all.” Life is more precious the less of it we have upon this earth. It’s precious because it’s rare. Life on this earth is but a vapor… a nanosecond in time.
We’ve been given life because of God’s mercy. Mercy is the nature of God himself. Loving kindness and tender mercy are often-used descriptions of the Lord God Jehovah in the King James Version of the Old Testament. Mercy is God’s forbearance, abstaining from his righteous judgement that we deserve…. not because we’re deserving of his mercy but because love and mercy is the nature of God himself.
Ron is honored to minister to prisoners. He enjoys speaking to a “captive audience.” Prisoners realize that they need mercy and forgiveness through God’s loving kindness and compassion. God is benevolent… his goodness and mercy endureth to all generations.
It’s the goodness, the loving kindness and tender mercy of God that calls people to repentance. (Romans 2:4). Repentance means to turn from sin and toward the Lord Jesus Christ. It’s not the threat of eternal death and judgement that motivates people to turn to God…. He has called us unto himself from the darkness of this world and into the glorious light of the gospel of truth.
According to Ephesians, God in his foreknowledge knew us before the foundations of the earth. God inhabits eternity and there is no time in eternity. He saw the timeline of all history from his perspective outside the bounds of time…. before the foundations of the earth he saw that we would be holy and without blame before him in love. God called us to his righteousness through his grace and mercy
Someone said, “I wish God would give me my just desserts.” Be careful what you pray for. If God gave us what we deserved we’d be dead… for the wages of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ his son. Ephesians 2 says, you who were dead in trespasses and sin hath he quickened (made alive) for by grace are ye saved.
It’s by Gods mercy that we draw breath upon this earth. We were not deserving of the breath in our lungs. However, even though we deserve death, Jesus Christ who was without sin was made the perfect sacrifice for sin on our behalf that we may be made the righteousness of God in him.
Prisoners understand that they have lost everything… their possessions, their families, their loved ones. However, as Mother Theresa said, “God works best with nothing.” You can never understand that God is all we need until he’s all we have. The prodigal son’s point of repentance was when he had lost everything, having squandered away his father’s inheritance with riotous living. Then he got the only job he could find, tending the pigs for a heathen pig farmer. He sank so low that he “feigned did fill his belly with the husks that the swine did eat.” In other words, he craved pig slop. As a Hebrew, this is as far as a good Jewish boy could sink. To a good Jew, if you associate with pigs, then you are numbered as one of these accursed animals. The point of repentance is when he “came to himself” and realized that he was not a pig… he was still his father’s son.
In Matthew 12:13, Jesus said, God requires mercy, not the sacrifice of bulls and goats. He said, Go learn the meaning of mercy. Then when you learn by experience God’s divine forbearance, then go tell others about God’s loving kindness and tender mercy. Go demonstrate God’s mercy as God’s living epistles known and read of all men.
Living in God’s mercy means to present yourselves a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable unto God which is our reasonable act of worship. And be not conformed to this world but be ye transformed by the renewing of your minds that ye may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God.
What brings us together within the church the body of Christ? We’re here because we share in God’s loving kindness and tender mercy.
God gave his righteous laws so that his people would understand how to “walk circumspectly” inside the canopy of God’s protection. Laws are to define the bounds of God’s righteous standards. His laws define our freedom within the framework of his blessings. However, when we trespass and exceed the bounds of his protection, because of God’s mercy and grace, 1 Corinthians 10:13 says, “There hath no temptation taken you but such as is common to man: but God is faithful, who will not suffer you to be tempted above that ye are able; but will with the temptation also make a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”
Why is God merciful? It’s because mercy and grace is the loving nature of God himself. How can you describe the bounds of the love of God? In these immortal words of Rabbi Meir Ben Isaac Nehori…
Could we with ink the oceans fill,
And were the sky of parchment made,
Were every stalk on earth a quill,
And every man a scribe by trade,
To write the love of God above would drain the oceans dry,
Nor could the scroll contain the whole
Though stretched from sky to sky.
Because of God’s indescribable love, what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do justly, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God…
…that we may ever live to the praise of the glory of His grace!
Your brother in Christ,
Michael
