Mercy in God’s Grace

Prayer:  Lord Jesus, give me the desire to meditate on Your Word.  Create in me a hunger to fill my heart and mind with the Scriptures.  In Jesus’ name I pray, Amen.[1] – Rob Zinn

Main Scripture: Romans 9:1-33 (NKJV)

For He says to Moses, "I will have mercy on whomever I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whomever I will have compassion."  So, then it is not of him who wills, nor of him who runs, but of God who shows mercy. For the Scripture says to the Pharaoh, "For this very purpose I have raised you up, that I may show My power in you, and that My name may be declared in all the earth."  Therefore, He has mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wills He hardens. (vss. 15-18).

Associated Scriptures:

Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions.  Wash away all my iniquity and cleanse me from my sin (Psalms 51:1-2).

We do not make requests of you because we are righteous, but because of your great mercy (Daniel 9:18-19).

The Lord is full of compassion and mercy (James 5:11).

Correlative Quotes:

They hated Paul intensely; nothing could surpass the malice of the Jews against the man whom they reckoned to be an apostate from the true faith, because he had become a follower of Christ, the Nazarene. Yet note what is Paul’s feeling towards his cruel countrymen; he is willing, as it were, to put his own salvation in pawn if by doing so the Jews might but be saved. You must not measure these words by any hard, grammatical rule, you must understand them as spoken out of the depths of great loving heart; and when such a heart as Paul had begins to talk, it speaks not according to the laws of logic, but according to its own immeasurable feelings.[2] – Charles Spurgeon

If at that moment any man had dared to ask for justice, he would have been cut off immediately. The last thing in the world that any man there could have desired was justice. I wish I could convey to you a feeling of the depth of gratitude which I have toward God because I will never have to encounter His justice. I do not want anything to do with the justice of God. I want nothing but His grace, His mercy, His pity, and His compassion.[3] –Donald Grey Barnhouse

The Bible teaches that His essential nature and character is mercy. Mercy holds back from us what we really deserve. While grace gives us what we do not deserve. There is never a moment when you come to the Lord that He stops being merciful.[4] –David Hocking

Study:

GOD’S MERCY AND HIS GRACE:

1. Make Us Confident: Confident that God’s word will not fail and all the promises of Romans 8 will prove true for me, even in the worst suffering.
2. Make Us Stand in Awe of God: His mercy and grace lead me into the depth of true God-centered worship. I am burdened because the evangelical church in America is so light-hearted. …There’s never any sense of wonder or weight or reverence.
3. Help protect Us: Protect us from focusing on minor things. God wants us to focus on loving others and all of its considerations and ramifications.
4. Help to Keep Us Amazed at Our Own Salvation. …We are amazed by a lot of things. We need to ask ourselves periodically if we are amazed that we are saved. Are we blown away that we are included in the eternal family of the living God? All this in view of all our remaining sin?
5. Make Us Groan: We sign over the indescribable disease of our secular, God-belittling culture. …We must groan with a lot of compassion and a lot of conviction. To not groan in this culture means you are blind to the holiness of God.
6. Make Us Confident that He will Fulfill what He began: The work which God planned and began, He will finish both globally and personally. …If you don’t have a God who is unshakeable when everywhere you look it seems like Christianity is losing, you will be in trouble. You need a theology that reminds us we’re not losing, that God will triumph.
7. Make Us See Everything: in the light of God’s sovereign purposes — that from Him and through Him and to Him are all things, to Him be glory forever and ever.
8. Make Us Hopeful: God has the will, the right, and the power to answer the prayer that people be changed. …If there is any hope for the most hardened sinner that you love, if there’s any hope that that person might be saved, it is God. God can save. God can just stop them in their tracks, take out the heart that’s been rebelling for fifty years, and put in a new heart. That is why we pray.
9. Remind Us that Evangelism is Absolutely Essential: In order for people to come to Christ and be saved and have a great hope for success in leading people to faith, but that conversion is not finally dependent on me or limited by the hardness of the unbeliever. So, let’s go to the nations, to the unreached peoples of the world. World missions will succeed, and we should be about it.
10. Make Us Sure: God will triumph in the end.[5] – John Piper

Summary Statement:

Just like everything else that God does for us, His mercy is a gift.  Mercy is when we don’t get what we do deserve.  We deserve eternal punishment and separation from God, but in His mercy, He has granted us salvation through Jesus. 

Lessons within the Lesson:

How do we define mercy and why is it important in our relationship with God?

What does it mean that God is Sovereign?

Read Deuteronomy 7:6-8.  Wouldn’t this suggest that God has chosen Israel as His personal possession and that they will have eternal life with him as a birthright?

What is the warning in Isaiah 45:8-10 and how does it pertain to the mercy of God?

[1] Rob Zinn, The Gift of Jesus: MyDaily Devotional, © 2015 by Thomas Nelson, All Rights Reserved, p. 169.

[2] Charles Spurgeon, Spurgeon’s Verse Expositions of the Bible, © 2015 Studylight.org, studylight.org/commentaries/spe/view.cgi?bk=ro&ch=9.

[3] Donald Grey Barnhouse, Romans: Expositions of Bible Doctrines © 1966 by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

[4] David Hocking, The Mercy of God,© 2015 Blue Letter Bible blueletterbible.org/Comm/hocking_david /attributes/attributes13.cfm.

[5] John Piper,  adapted from 10 Effects of Romans 9 on My Life, used with permission By John Piper. ©2015 Desiring God Foundation. Website: desiringGod.org.