Do you need and want Mercy?

Most people don't feel that they really need mercy. Do you need mercy? I do. Mercy is described as the kind treatment of those that have shown themselves your enemy. It is for the miserable. The mercy of God must of necessity be God not giving us what we deserve in ourselves. We deserve death and wrath from Him as the holy God because we are sinners who have sinned against Him! We have been “enemies in our minds by wicked works.” We have trusted in and relied upon our own works to save us rather than the grace of God in Christ while the scriptures say clearly that it is “not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to His mercy He saved us” (Titus 3:5).

God has said that “it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy” (Romans 9:16). Yet, most are still “going about to establish their own righteousness.” Mercy can never be deserved, earned or gained by the offender in any way. If we receive mercy, it must be at His sovereign throne. From God who has said, “I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy” (Exo. 33:19; Rom. 9:15). The apostle Paul said of himself, that he “was before a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious: but I obtained mercy” (1 Tim. 1:13). How does God show mercy? Only in the crucified Christ! Those who receive mercy from God confess the same thing. We were “by nature, the children of wrath even as others.. But God, Who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved)” (Ephesians 2:3-5).

Grace and mercy are like Siamese twins, inseparable and where God has mercy in not giving us what we deserve, grace is there giving us what we don't deserve! An eternal inheritance. Both in Christ who bore what we deserved for our sins and in whom we receive every blessing of God's grace. Behold the man Christ Jesus hanging on the cross, there is mercy and grace! There He is performing the mercy for those “vessels of mercy which He had afore prepared unto glory” (Romans 9:23). Blessed be the name of the Lord who is plenteous in mercy, who has appointed a people to mercy in Christ through His death for them as their Substitute. They are described by many names in scripture but are also identified by their own confessed NEED - “Lord, have mercy on me...”! This is always our case: “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need.”

-Gospel report by preacher Gary Shepard