Never Apologize for God's Mercy!

Never Apologize for God's Mercy!
Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ! In his great mercy(1 Peter 1:3)
THERE ARE MANY IN OUR DAY who seem to hold to an idea that God deals with some people in mercy and with others in justice.
However, the Bible really leaves no room for doubt about this matter - it is plain that God deals with all men in mercy and that every benefit God bestows is according to mercy!
If God had not dealt with us all in mercy, we would have perished before we could have had time to be converted.
I like to think of it in this way - we float on the vast, limitless sea of divine mercy for it is the mercy of God that sustains the worst sinner.
If we have protection, it is according to the mercy of God. If we have food and sustenance, it is of God's mercy. If we have providence to guide us, it is surely in the mercy of God.
David once cried out to the Lord, "have mercy upon me and hear my prayer!"
Was he just using words for the sounds of words? No, of course not, for mercy surely enters into the hearing of prayer. David's cry is a sound, clear, logical statement of theological fact. Mercy must enter into the holiest act that any man can ever perform and it is a constant mercy on the part of God.
The fact that I am sane instead of committed to an institution is an act of mercy on God's part. The fact that I am free and not in prison is due to the mercy of God. The fact that I am alive and not dead is God's mercy over me - and the same for you!
It is true for all men, Jew or Gentile or Muslim, whether they believe it or not. We ought to thank God for some knowledge and some comprehension of this great sea - the mercy of God!
Early in his first epistle the Apostle Peter blessed God, the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because of His abundant mercy towards those who believe and are begotten again.
Now, before we look at that adjective abundant, I want to point out that when Peter broke forth into that doxology he was not simply having himself a "spiritual time." He was not just simply letting himself go as it was said of the little old lady at camp meeting.
The Spirit-led life is a clear, logical and rational life. There were particularly sound theological reasons for Peter saying, "Blessed be the Lord!" He blessed God because He has begotten us again and because it was through His abundant mercy that He did it and through it all that we might have a living hope, not a dead one!
Not according to whim or impulse
I point out that the Spirit-led Christian life is not according to whim or impulse and yet there are Christians who feel that you cannot be spiritual without being capricious and that the more impulsive you are the more spiritual you are.
Years ago there was a popular healing evangelist who boasted that he was too busy running around to plan anything very well. So he just sort of stumbled into the meetings and muddled through them. As a result, he was advertised as a "man of lightning changes." No one ever knew whether the service would open with a hymn, with the offering, or with the sermon.
Personally, I am not sure about "men of lightning changes." It may be a matter of temperament, or it could be a cover-up for laziness and poor planning and lack of thought. My feeling is that men who depend upon capricious action and impulsive whims usually are not much good in the church of Christ and they wouldn't be any good if they worked for Ford or General Motors, either.
Why do I say that? Because I want to emphasize the manner in which the apostles were Spirit-led. They were not known as men of rash and impulsive moods, constantly changing decisions and judgments. Led by the Spirit of God, they wanted always to do what God wanted them to do. As a result, the things that God wanted them to do always seemed to fit perfectly into the total scheme of redemption and the whole will of God in the New Testament!
This allows me to say that Peter was of little use to God until he got the victory over being whimsical and temperamental and impulsive. While he was still temperamental, scolding the Lord of Glory for this or that, he was of very little use to the Lord. He was almost a total loss.
But when Peter was filled with the Holy Spirit and received a divine vision and began to suffer for Jesus' sake, he got leveled down and became the great apostle, second only to Paul in the New Testament. But God had to take those lightning changes out of Peter and stabilize him in the harness where he would work effectively and fruitfully for the Lord.
A logical link
So, there is a clear answer for those who feel that if they are not acting strangely, they are not spiritual and if an action isn't capricious, it cannot be of the Holy Spirit. The answer is this - we always find a clear, logical link between everything the apostles said in the New Testament and their reasons for saying it! That's true, always!
It should be that way in our Christian churches, too. We are not to be victims of caprice, the weather, the state of our health or whether or not we just happen to feel like praying.
We need to assemble ourselves together as believers whether the weather is good or bad. We have to pray and draw nigh unto the Lord whether we feel like it or not. Reading Peter's letter to those early Christians, we realize that they were living for Jesus regardless of circumstances or their mood.
A high level
Actually, there are very few Christians among us who can testify that their spiritual moods are always at a high, sustained level.
A Christian brother will say to me in private: "Brother Tozer, I believe I am a Spirit-filled man. My all is on the altar as far as I know. But I need advice and help about my weakness - I don't always have the same degree of feeling and spirituality. Sometimes I am up and sometimes I am down! What can I do about it?"
I am forced to reply in frankness: "I wish you could tell me because I do not know the answer! I do not know of any truly honest Christian that can get up and say, `I live at a consistently high level! I fly at an altitude of 30,000 feet all the way!' "
If any of you can honestly say that you have never ceased from that high level in your Christian experience, you are blessed and I honor you!
Live according to spiritual truth
Brethren, we are not plugging for the necessity of an up-and-down Christian experience. I mean to say that we are men and women who are to live according to the high logic of spiritual truth, not according to our feelings and moods.
Some of the old fathers in the faith talked about a frame - they would put an entry in their diary: "Was of a very happy frame this morning." Perhaps later there was an entry: "Was of a very low frame this morning. Felt very depressed." Nothing has changed except their "frame." We say it a little differently, for we say "frame of mind." The song writer was actually saying: "I dare not trust the sweetest frame of mind, but wholly lean on Jesus' name!"
So you see, brethren, you and I live for God according to a holy, high spiritual logic and not according to shifting and changing frames of mind or moods. Amen!
Some would not want me to put it like that; they would call it a very unspiritual doctrine.
"You have got to be blessed all the time," they say. Happy, happy, happy!
But if they would just quit fibbing and tell the truth, they would admit that there are days when they are not as "happy, happy" as they were the day before. The great remedy for us all is to remember the abundant mercy of God, read God's Word and pray, sing a song and take the means of grace and we will find ourselves satisfied in the Lord, as we ought to be!
So, all that He is doing for us is according to His mercy, His abundant mercy.
This word abundant comes from a Greek word which means very large, very great, the largest number. It means much and it means many - it can mean all of these things. According to His largest number, His very large, very great, many mercies, God has begotten us again.
The word abundant is not really sufficient because everything God has is unlimited. Because He is the Infinite God, everything about Him is infinite which means that it has no boundary in any direction. I know that is hard for us to comprehend.
I remember preaching an entire sermon on "The Infinitude of God" and I recall that only one man ever spoke to me about it and told me that he had gotten the point of my sermon. So far as I know, everyone else just wrote that one off. But this concept is something that we must recognize even if it hurts our heads. We must come to this knowledge that God is infinite, unlimited, boundless, with no sign post anywhere in the universe saying "this is the end."
No need to enlarge adjectives
We do not need any enlarging adjectives when we speak of God, or of His love or mercy. God Almighty fills the universe and overfills it because it is His character - infinite and unlimited!
We do not need to say God's great love, although we do say it.
When we say God's mercy we do not need to say God's abundant mercy, although we do say it. The reason we say it is to cheer and elevate our own thoughts of God - not to infer that there is any degree in the mercy of God.
Actually, when we use the expression, "the mercy of God," we are referring to that which is so vast that the word vast does not begin to describe it for we are talking about that which has no limits anywhere, that which has its center anywhere and its circumference nowhere.
Our adjectives can be useful only when we talk about earthly things - when we refer to the great love of a man for his family or we talk about little faith or great faith or more faith or much faith.
We talk about wealth and we speak of a man who has considerable wealth. Another man may represent very great wealth and a person who really made it is a man of fabulous wealth. So we can go up and down the scale from considerable to fabulous because men have ways of measuring what they hold in material things.
But then we come to God - and there can be no such measuring point, no such evaluation. When we speak of the riches of God we must include all the riches there are. God is not less rich or more rich - He is rich - He holds all things in His being!
So it is with mercy. God is not less merciful or more merciful - He is full of mercy, for whatever God is, He is in the fullness of unlimited grace.
So, the word abundant is not used here for God - it is put in here for us! It is used to elevate our minds to the consideration of the unlimited vastness of the mercy of God.
Brethren, this all boils down to a simple statement: "God's mercies are equal to God Himself." For that reason alone all comparisons are futile. If you want to know how merciful God is, discover how great He is and you will know!
I recall a true story told us by Rev. D.C. Kopp, missionary to Africa, on one of his furloughs from the Congo. He described the office of deacon in the national church and told of a fine stalwart Christian brother who had the job of disciplining the converts.
One young convert was proving to be a source of real trouble in the church because he was inclined to break the rules and do the things that a Christian brother should not do.
After he had been disciplined many times, this concerned deacon called in the erring brother once more and told him frankly,
"Now, brother, you have been failing us and disappointing us and disgracing your Christian calling and it is about enough! When we started dealing with you we had a bottle of forgiveness, but I am here to tell you that that bottle is just about empty! We are just about through with you!"
The missionary got a chuckle out of that incident for he thought it was a quaint and picturesque way to let the brother know that he was no longer passing inspection. But, on the other hand, it is far from being a demonstration of God's dealing with us for the bottle of God's forgiveness has neither top nor bottom!
God has never yet said to a man, "The bottle of my mercy is just about empty!"
God acting the way He acts
Let us be thankful that God's mercy does not run out of a bottle. God's mercy is God acting the way He acts towards people - therefore, we can say it is abundant mercy.
Now, when does a person really become aware of this great sea of the mercy of God?
When by faith we come across the threshold into the kingdom of God we recognize and identify it and God's mercy becomes as sweet and blessed as though it were all brand new. It is through His abundant mercy that we are begotten again, but it is that same broad stream from God that kept and preserved the sinner, even through fifty or sixty years of presumption and rebellion.
My father was sixty years old when he bowed before Jesus Christ and was born again. That was a near lifetime of sixty years through which he had sinned and lied and cursed. But when he gave his heart to the Lord Jesus Christ and was converted, the mercy of God that saved him and took him to heaven was no greater than the mercy of God that had kept him and endured him for sixty years.
There is an old story that fits perfectly here about the Jewish rabbi centuries ago who consented to take a weary traveler into his house for a night's rest.
After they had eaten together, the rabbi said, "You are a very old man, are you not?"
"Yes," the traveler replied, "I am almost a century old."
As they talked, the rabbi brought up the matter of religion and asked the visitor about his faith and about his relation to God.
"Oh, I do not believe in God," the aged man replied. "I am an atheist."
The rabbi was infuriated. He arose and opened the door and ordered the man from his house.
"I cannot keep an atheist in my house overnight," he reasoned.
The weary old man said nothing but hobbled to the door and stepped out into the darkness. The rabbi again sat down by his candle and Old Testament, when it seemed he heard a voice saying, "Son, why did you turn that old man out?"
"I turned him out because he is an atheist and I cannot endure him overnight!"
But then the voice of God said, "Son, I have endured him almost 100 years - don't you think you could endure him for one night?"
The rabbi leaped from his chair, rushed into the darkness and, overtaking the older man, brought him back into the house and then treated him like a long lost brother.
God's mercy has endured
It was the mercy of God that has endured the atheist for nearly 100 years. It was the mercy of God that endured my father as a sinner for sixty years. The mercy of God endured me through the first seventeen years of my life and has brought me through all of the years since. The Bible plainly declares that God deals with all of us in mercy and that He never violates mercy, for David testifies that, "The Lord is good to all: and his tender mercies are over all his works!" (Psalm 145:9, KJV).
Any idea people may have that God works according to one facet of His nature one day and according to another facet the next day is all wrong. I repeat again - God never violates any facet of His nature in dealing with men.
When God sent Judas Iscariot to hell He did not violate mercy and when God forgave Peter it was not in violation of justice. Everything that God does is with the full protection of all of His infinite attributes. That is why a sinner may live to be 100 years old and sin against God every moment of his life and still be a partaker of the mercy of God. He still floats on the sea of mercy and it is because of the mercy of God that he is not consumed.
However, brethren, we know there will be a day when the sinner will pass from this realm where God's mercy supports him. He will hear a voice saying, "Depart from me, you that work iniquity, for I never knew you!" Hell will be the justly apportioned abode of those who refuse redeeming mercy even though there has been a providential mercy at work on their behalf throughout their lives.
We Christians should realize, also, that we do not come through the door of mercy and then expect to live apart from the door. We are in the very room of mercy and the sanctuary is a sanctuary of mercy. We must not become self-righteous and imagine we are living such wonderful lives that God blesses us because we are good. That is not so!
God blesses us because of His abundant mercy, the mercy which He has bestowed upon us, and not because of any of our goodness. I do not believe that heaven itself will ever permit us to forget that we are recipients of the goodness of God and for that reason I do not believe that you and I will ever be permitted to forget Calvary.
Another thing in this regard is that although God wants His people to be holy as He is holy, He does not deal with us according to the degree of our holiness but according to the abundance of His mercy. Honesty requires us to admit this.
Believe in justice and judgment
We do believe in justice and we do believe in judgment. We believe the only reason mercy triumphs over judgment is that God, by a divine, omniscient act of redemption, fixed it so man could escape justice and live in the sea of mercy. The justified man, the man who believes in Jesus Christ, born anew and now a redeemed child of God, lives in that mercy always.
The unjust man, however - the unrepentant sinner - lives in it now in a lesser degree, but the time will come when he will face the judgment of God. Though he had been kept by the mercy of God from death, from insanity, from disease, he can violate that mercy, turn his back on it and walk into judgment. Then it is too late!
Let us pray with humility and repentance for we stand in the mercy of God. I heard of a man who had learned the Ten Commandments so when he prayed he said, "Now, God, I admit I have broken Number One and Number Three and Number Four and Number Seven, but remember, Father, I have kept Number Two and Number Five and Number Six and Number Ten!"
How unutterably foolish - that as men we should appeal to God and try to dicker with Him and portion out our goodness like a storekeeper! What an example we have set for us by the life and faith of the old Puritan saint, Thomas Hooker, as his death approached.
Those around his beside said, "Brother Hooker, you are going to receive your reward."
"No, no!" he breathed. "I go to receive mercy!"
What an example for us, because Brother Hooker rated very high in the ranks of holy men in the Body of Christ, yet he did not leave this life looking for a reward but still looking for the mercy of God!
Look away to the Lord
Brethren, may I just say that if you have been looking at yourself - look away to the Lord of abundant mercy. Fixing yourself over and trying to straighten yourself out will not be sufficient - you must come as you are!
Paul Rader once told about the artist who had an idea for a powerful painting, depicting the plight of a tramp, a human derelict off the street.
He went to the Skid Row district and found just the subject he had in mind - a man who was dirty, disheveled, rundown at the heels, in rags, and completely at home among the disreputable elements of the city.
"I will pay you a fee if you will come to my studio tomorrow morning," the artist told him.
The bum's face brightened and his eyes took on a new light and he said, "You mean you want to put me in a picture?"
"Yes, I want to paint you into a picture and I will give you fifty dollars right now," the artist said. "Just show up at my house tomorrow morning and I will tell you what to do."
But when the artist's doorbell rang the next morning, the painter hardly recognized the man who stood there. He had been shaved, he had on a white shirt and his pants had a reasonable facsimile of a press.
"I don't want to come to your fine place looking like a bum, so I spent the money getting myself cleaned up and fixed up," the man said with pride.
"But I cannot use you now for the painting I had in mind," the artist told him. "I thought you would come just as you were."
Jesus told about two men who went up into the temple to pray.
One said, "God, here I am. I am all fixed up - every hair is in place."
The other said, "Oh God, I just crawled in off Skid Row. Have mercy upon me!" God forgave the Skid Row bum, but sent the other man away, hardened and unrepentant and unforgiven!
We come to Him just as we are but in humble repentance, for when the human spirit comes to God feeling that it is better and more acceptable than others, it automatically shuts itself away from God's presence. But when the human spirit comes to God knowing that anything it receives will be of mercy, then repentance has done its proper work! God promises to forgive and bless that man and take him into His heart and teach him that all of God's kindnesses are due to His mercy.
What more can a sinner ask?