Okay, let's begin by reading from Exodus chapter 34. Exodus 34, 1 through 8. And the Lord said unto Moses, Hew thee two tables of stone, like unto the first. And I will write upon these tables the words that were in the first tables, which thou breakest. And be ready in the morning, and come up in the morning unto Mount Sinai, and present thyself there to me in the top of the mount. And no man shall come up with thee, neither let any man be seen throughout all the mount, neither let the flocks nor herds feed before that mount.' And he hewed two tables of stone like unto the first. And Moses rose up early in the morning and went up into Mount Sinai, as the Lord had commanded him, and took in his hand the two tables of stone. And the Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children and upon the children's children unto the third and to the fourth generation. And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped Let's pray. Glorious and great God of truth and mercy and grace and long-suffering and who will by no means clear the guilty, we bow before Thee in all Thy awesomeness and beauty this morning, thanking Thee once again for these glorious attributes we are considering. And Lord, as we take up two or three of them again this hour, We pray that we may stammer just a little about them, recognizing that as we divide them asunder, as it were, as we study Thee, that in Thee they are all one unity, far above and beyond our limited human vocabulary and our finite understanding. Please, Lord, Help us to leave this class this morning once again overwhelmed and touched and moved by Thy wonderful attributes, by Thy wonderful character. Oh, that we would love Thee more, that we would meditate more on the attributes of the Most High. Be with us now, we pray, and bless us this day. In Jesus' name, amen. All right, today we want to look at God's grace and mercy. I've got the original words for them on the board, and perhaps we'll get to God's long-suffering as well. I would hope so, but one never knows. Scripture depicts God as a God of grace. Hebrew words for grace come from the same basic word group. The verb hanan means to be gracious or to deal graciously. And the noun, which is hen, means grace or favor. Hanan depicts a heartfelt response. a heartfelt response by someone who has something to give to someone in need, by someone who has something to give to someone in need. Most of these occurrences in the Old Testament, 41 of them to be exact, are used in relationship to God. For example, the plea be gracious to me, or be merciful to me, occurs 19 times in the Psalms alone. And the noun, hen, occurs 69 times in the Old Testament, including 43 as part of the phrase, to find favor in the eyes of. So to be favorable toward, or to be gracious, or to act in a kindly manner is a common usage of this family of words. Psalm 51 is a really classic case. David appeals to God for forgiveness based on God's own character. He says, have mercy upon me, O Lord, according to thy loving kindness, chesed, according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies, blot out my transgressions." You've got a similar approach in Psalm 119, verse 132. Look thou upon me and be merciful unto me. Be chanan, unto me, as thou usest to do. That is, as is customary for thee to do, as is normal for thee to do, in accord with thy character, as thou usest to do unto those that love thy name. The more theological passages where this word is used, it's typically used in the sense of God's grace being either given or being, sometimes the picture is of being poured out upon someone to signify its abundance. Now the noun, the noun, hen, is largely focusing its attention on the recipient. The verb, hanan, focuses more, this is a generalization, but focuses more on the giver. A second word of wide influence in the Old Testament revelation is chesed. It's often translated mercy in the King James Version, but sometimes it's translated as grace as well. And sometimes it's translated kindness. loving kindness and even sometimes goodness. So really chesed is a word we could place under several attributes because it brings several together. Many modern translators prefer the phrase steadfast love. The idea here is that God is faithful, faithful to his covenant. And so Chesed really involves truth, it involves faithfulness to that truth, it involves mercy and grace and kindness. It's kind of a collective term of intimate fatherly manifestation. of the attributes of God. In Chesed, God's grace and God's righteousness meet together as we read in Psalm 85, verse 10. If you wanted to do an interesting paper for this class on any word that depicted the attributes of God, certainly this would be one of the most important words, if not the most important word. You could do your whole paper just on the meaning of the word chesed in the attributes of God. Now the study of Old Testament vocabulary reveals that most of the time this word chesed, and that's why we put it under grace, corresponds to the New Testament idea of grace. Grace in all its redeeming aspects. It's aspects of salvation more than any other term. And then there is a third expression of delightful meaning, and that is rason, razon, conveying the idea of acceptance or pleasure or goodwill. David uses it, for example, in Psalm 106, verse 4. Remember me, O Lord, with a ratzon, that Thou bearest unto Thy people. King James says, with a favor that Thou bearest to Thy people. You could also read it, with a grace that Thou bearest to Thy people. But we must hasten to add that an understanding of the Old Testament conception of grace is not adequately gained by a mere analysis of the language. Its revelation is not simply by vocabulary, but more so by action. So when we think of grace in Old Testament history, We have to think of God's actions enshrined in history. That's the way the psalmist often looks at grace. He says, he made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel. So, the doctrine of grace is found, painted, painted in the broad landscapes and the deep vistas of Old Testament history. And one of the outstanding historical exemplifications of grace is seen in God's choice of Israel to be his people. God everywhere says, this was just my grace. I had no need of you, Israel, for all the earth is mine." Exodus 19, 4 through 6. But I have chosen you, I've chosen you graciously for myself of my own free will. By my own arm I redeemed you, I ransomed you, I delivered you. And on this gracious act of deliverance, My whole relationship of salvation to you is based. That's why Israel had such a historical religion. That's why they had to look back at these great acts of redemption in their various feast days. God wanted to show grace, not just define grace, by his acts among the children of men, and particularly his chosen people, Israel. So the choice of Israel is no way due to any righteousness in which the nation can boast or anything that entitles them to preference. And Moses addresses the nation, he says, Thou art an holy people unto the Lord thy God. The Lord thy God, this is Deuteronomy 7, 6 through 8, The Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people unto himself above all people that are upon the face of the earth. The Lord did not set his love upon you nor choose you because you were more in number than any people, for you were the fewest of all people, but because the Lord loved you. And because he would keep the oath which he had sworn unto your fathers, that the Lord brought you out with a mighty hand and redeemed you out of the house of bondmen from the hand of Pharaoh, king of Egypt. You see the same language in Deuteronomy 8, 14 and 18, and again in Deuteronomy 9, 4 through 6. It all depends on God's grace. Exodus 33, 19. So this grace is demonstrated in the redemption of the people from Egypt. It's demonstrated in their occupation of the promised land. It's demonstrated in the establishment of the kingdom. And in some ways, perhaps most of all, in the restoration. The restoration of the nation after their exile in Assyria and Babylon. and that really is an answer to the prayer of Solomon when he dedicated the temple you remember his prayer that if the time should ever come that the Lord would need to hand over his people to their enemies to chastise his own people that if that people should think again of God and repent that the Lord would hear them and graciously restore them which of course is exactly what happened So grace is not only manifested in the words we use for grace when it comes to God, and in the actions of God, the history, but also in the worship of God. The worship of God. All the divine institutions of worship given to the people, given to Israel in the Old Testament, are really means of grace. Israel not only had the law, but they had a holy priesthood. They had sin-bearing sacrifices. They had the covenant of grace. And through all the ceremonial laws, grace was pictured. Remission of sins was pictured. Restoration to communion with God was assured through the pictures pointing to the Messiah to come. And the whole panorama, the whole institution of worship, was all dependent on the fact that God's character, despite the fact he was holy and sovereign, It would by no means clear the guilty. It's based on grace. Jesus Christ was going to come and take the place of the guilty. So God could have mercy upon the guilty. Because the guilt is removed by Jesus. So all these Old Testament forms of worship are built on the concept of grace. But so is grace manifest in Old Testament prophecy. God sent his prophets, particularly in the course of Israel's later history. They were his voice to the people. They had many harsh things to say, many judgments to announce. But they also announced inevitably a call of grace, a call to repentance. God kept graciously saying to them, didn't he? If the wicked would forsake his way, return to the Lord, he would have mercy upon him, and he would abundantly pardon. Isaiah 55, verse 7. And perhaps Micah is privileged to sound one of these gracious notes at its highest pitch. Micah 7, 18 and 19. Who is a god like unto thee that pardons iniquity and passes by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage? He retaineth not his anger forever, because he delighteth in mercy. Could also translate it as grace here. He will turn again. He will have compassion upon us. He will subdue our iniquities. And thou wilt cast all their sins into the depths of the sea. So, in some ways, the entire ministry of the prophets, though they had their own emphases, the entire ministry of the prophets is a commentary on the meaning of grace. Now, of course, running throughout this entire Old Testament economy is also the Abrahamic covenant of grace. The Old Testament revelation of grace uncovers the foundation which lies deep beneath God's gracious actions and His commands of worship and the prophets He sends. In fact, the very hour that mankind fell into sin, God comes to the garden and graciously pledges to send a deliverer In fact, that first promise is sometimes called the protovangelium, the first announcement of the gospel, the promise of the seed of the woman who should bruise the head of the serpent, Genesis 3.15. Now, that purpose to save sinners is given its first formal expression in the covenant of grace. covenant of grace God made with Abraham. Genesis 12, 1 through 3 and again Genesis 15, 5 and 6 and 17, 1 and 2. 12, 1 through 3, 15, 5 and 6, 17, 1 and 2. So the gracious blessings that God would give to Israel have their roots in this free act of God's grace in calling Abraham out of the Ur of the Chaldees where he was worshiping idols and also in promising Isaac and in choosing Jacob this is all grace and the prophets in their sermons are always pointing back to this, aren't they? that Israel has at its founding a God of grace, God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, God of Jacob. They appeal to God in prayer on the basis of this covenant, and they urge others to do so as well. This is God's chesed, His faithfulness to His covenant that assures a penitent nation that divine mercy is always available, divine grace is always available. So we can summarize this whole Old Testament teaching of grace perhaps in this way, that it's God's favorable regard towards sinners, issuing itself or making known itself, that's better, making known itself in God's favorable actions. Sovereignly administered. Being in no way influenced by favorable conditions from outside of God. And you see, that's why even notorious sinners like Manasseh And deceitful sinners like Jacob can be saved. John Murray puts it this way in his Collected Writings, Volume 1, page 123. The mansions of glory will eternally resound with the praise of God's grace. It is not the minimum of salvation that the saints will enjoy, but salvation the highest conceivable. No higher destiny could be appointed for them than to be glorified with Christ and conform to the image of God's own Son. Nothing but sovereign grace at the zenith of its counsel and exercise could explain such glory, for it must be placed against the dessert that is ours, the blackness of darkness forever. The contrast God's grace alone can explain. Now in the New Testament, the dominant word for grace is charis. Charis has the basic meaning of good. and favor in secular Greek. But in New Testament Greek, it's almost always connected with salvation. And no one uses this word more than the Apostle Paul. And Paul does so in a variety of ways. He speaks of God's grace in the gift of salvation, most of all, Ephesians 2, verse 8. But he also speaks of other usages, showing that that grace can be reflected among men. He often begins his letters with salutations or closes them even more commonly with salutations, in which he wishes grace to others. For example, Romans 1, verse 7. and a closing salutation, 1 Thessalonians 5.28. He also speaks of God's gift to himself in his apostolic office as a gracious gift, Romans 1.5. But again I say, most commonly The New Testament is referring to the whole Ordo Salutis, the whole doctrine of soteriology, and we'll look at that in just a moment. Let me just note here that there is a distinction, particularly in the New Testament, but already in the Old, in God's gracious activities that theologians have picked up on over the centuries and have come to describe in two broad categories, one called common grace and the other called saving or salvatory grace. Now God's common grace refers to God's gracious activities in sustaining all creation sustaining creation in life, but also restraining evil and wickedness so that societies can develop and function and don't collapse and self-destruct. Now this grace is called common because it falls on all members of the human race, some to more degree than others, but it's only called common because it doesn't reach the depth of what we call saving grace. It doesn't bring people, no amount of common grace will bring people to a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ. Now it's important to recognize that neither form of grace, also not the common grace, is owed to us by God. God doesn't owe us life. God doesn't owe us breath. God doesn't owe us health. In fact, there's no obligation on God's part to even create a world, even to bring us into existence, much less to sustain that world. that sinful world. So it's God's graciousness that He provides for all His creatures. In Colossians 1.17 Paul says of Jesus Christ that He is before all things and in Him all things consist. They all are held together in Him. And see, we're constantly taking all these things for granted, aren't we? The fact that our planet retains its orbit and does not collide with other planets is God's grace, but we never think about these things. The fact that we had air to breathe this morning, that you had food to eat for breakfast, that you had water to drink flowing out of the tap, by which you can brush your teeth and get sustenance. The fact that you have strength to work when you come here today, the fact that you have a mind to think, the fact that you have hands to move, fingers to write or type, the fact that you have eyes to blink, it's all God's common grace. So we're taking thousands of things for granted every day, aren't we? Every day. not recognizing how good God is to us. You know, when I was a young man, there was a middle-aged man in Kalamazoo, Michigan, where I grew up, who had some kind of disease, MS or something, but he was in a pretty bad way. The sweetest man, never complained, but he was always in a wheelchair, and his head was held in with a brace he couldn't hold up his head. His head was held sort of back like that for some reason. But he no longer had the reflexes to blink. And I went over to visit him one time. I remember after the Lord converted me when I was 14, I went to just pay him a visit and get to know him and his parents who were already then in their 70s, and they were still taking care of him. He was in his 40s, I suppose. I'll never forget his mother taking a Q-tip, and it's gross, but she had to clean out his eye every night because junk collected in the day because he could never blink. I just remember how it struck me that never in all my life did I even realize, did I even give it a passing thought, how important it is that you can blink Now you start taking simple things like that and you start multiplying them. How much we owe to God's common grace as a human being is phenomenal. So we ought not minimize common grace. Oh wow, that's just common. Yes, it's insufficient for salvation. So we absolutely need saving grace. But common grace is a big thing too. You may have heard me tell the story before of my father when he came out of surgery, and I went to see him, serious heart surgery, and he was crying, and I asked him why he was crying. I thought maybe he was in great pain, and he said, no, no, no, no pain. But he was so thirsty after surgery, and a nurse had just come just a couple minutes before I arrived, and she'd taken an ice cube, and she ran it over his lips, and just that moisture, Felt so good. And then he started thinking about the rich man in hell, that he didn't receive one drop of water to cool his tongue. And he said, who am I? Who am I to get this ice cube on my lips? He was weeping out of gratitude to God for a little moisture on his lips. See how much we take for granted. Psalm 145 puts it this way. The Lord is good to all. His mercies are over all his works. Acts 17.28 puts it this way. For in him we live and move and have our being. Luke 6, verse 35 teaches us that God is even kind to ungrateful and evil men. So God is kind to us in so many ways, in everything He gives us, in terms of our own body, our possessions. But God is also kind, this is an important part of common grace as well, God is also kind and gracious in restraining evil so that society, which may often seem to be on the verge of turmoil and collapse, can continue. And the fact that society doesn't collapse more badly, it's amazing. That's due to the common grace of God. I don't know how many emails you get along these lines, but I don't know if my name is just getting out there more than other people's. I've never even talked to anybody about this, but I average 15 to 20 spam emails every single day from somebody is telling me if I just give them my name and my information and so on, they're going to enter in this deal. If I can just send some money to them, I'm going to reap millions or hundreds of thousands over a period of time. You've all seen these emails. I just marvel. These emails have been coming now to me for, what, seven years, six years, something like that. Say it was only ten a day. I'm sure it's at least ten a day. What is that? That's 3,650 a year. I've got 20,000 people who've written me who want to take me for a ride. This is amazing. My friends, there are hundreds of thousands of people. in this world who don't have any sense of morality. They would steal, plunder freely. Isn't it amazing that society can exist with all these people walking around, all these depraved people? Isn't it amazing when people can function? There are people that would murder you to have your shoes. And yet here you are, you've been in this world 30, 40 years, and here you are. You've probably been close to death a half a dozen or more times in your life. Maybe you were in an accident, maybe you, well, you just missed being robbed in this situation, and killed, and God somehow restrains people. Now, sometimes He does that in ordinary ways. He does it through the institution of government, of course, and judges. In some lands that hardly functions. Yet he keeps you. He keeps you in times of great need. You know, when I was in Latvia and I got mugged and my assaulters wrapped Bedsheets, strips of bedsheets around my eyes and my hands and my feet and had me down on the ground and were rubbing a knife up and down my back and shouting out that they were the mafia. I thought I was as good as dead. I never dreamed I'd come out of that alive. And here I am today, talking to you. It's a miracle. That's an extreme case, of course, but this is all God's common grace that our lives are preserved. Now in contrast to that common grace, then there is saving grace. By this we mean grace that God extends to us to enter into a spiritual relationship with God through Jesus Christ. And that grace grows believers in that relationship. over and over again. In the Old Testament, but particularly in the New, we find that saints believed in God. You find it already in Genesis 15, don't you, 5 and 6, that Abram believed God and he counted it to him for righteousness. And so what God does in His grace is He makes provision already in the Old Testament for a substitute for our sinfulness, the soul that sinners must die, so that He's pointing to the Messiah to come and in the fullness of time He sends this Messiah to die on behalf of sinners. So the animal sacrifices that couldn't really pay the price, suspended God's judgment temporarily and pointed to the Messiah to come, and anything that men or women attempted to do, nothing could satisfy an infinite God, only an infinite Savior, only Jesus Christ could do that. Well, this is all God's grace that He gives His Son, so that we can be saved. Grace really ultimately is that acronym, God's riches at Christ's expense. That's not all that grace is, but that's an important part of grace. God's riches at Christ's expense. So Christ pays the full price that we might have grace saving grace, to be brought into a saving relationship with the Most High God. And that means, of course, then, that grace does everything for us. In fact, you can go through Paul's epistles and look at every part of the Ordo Salutas and discover that there are proof texts for every part that it comes to us through grace. God calls us to grace. Paul says, He called me by His grace to the Galatians. He regenerates us by grace. Paul writes to the Romans, It's not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God, who showeth mercy. He justifies us by grace. He writes to the Ephesians, being justified by His grace. We're sanctified by grace. We're preserved by grace. His grace makes us heirs according to the hope of eternal life, Paul writes. And salvation itself, all the way to glory, is of grace. We believe that through the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, we shall be saved. But not only does grace do everything for us, grace also gives everything to us. Paul writes to the Philippians, but my God shall supply all your need according to the riches of his grace in Christ Jesus. Now really what are all these needs? Well, the needs are pardoning grace, pardoning grace to forgive us, restoring grace to bring us back, consoling grace to heal our broken hearts. In short, what our forefathers called preventing, accompanying, and following grace, preventing us from sin, accompanying us every moment of our lives and following us all the way to the grave. So really what we have here is just grace, as John puts it, in John 1 I believe, grace upon grace, and the original Greek has it, grace laminated to grace, or grace following upon grace, grace piled on top of grace. And so God is just a God of super abounding grace. Grace is coming, breaking into the beach head of our life every moment. Have you ever been all alone at the ocean or at a large lake like Lake Michigan where there's a lot of waves coming in? And you laid your head back on the sand and all you could hear were these waves. every second. And then you sat up and you watched those waves and just kept hitting that beachhead. And you thought, that's like God's grace to me. It just keeps coming in, coming in, coming in. And you look out at the waves and sometimes You think that these waves are going to overwhelm me. Look how big they are. But they just break in. They lay themselves at your feet without fear. That's what the life of God's people is like. You look around and you see all these things to worry about, like huge waves coming in. But when God actually beachheads them at your feet, You see that it was all grace after all. That all your troubles and trials are just designed to make you appreciate His saving grace all the more. So that the waves, as fearful as they look, are actually a blessing for you. Much better than the calm sea, where there would be no life, no stirring, His waves are waves of grace. All things work together for good to them that love God. So for a believer, you see, yes, a believer too gets common grace, but a believer looks higher and sees that everything's coming to him as part of this whole package of God's saving grace. God does everything to save me. And every wave is part of the whole picture. Praise God for His grace. The New Testament alone speaks of grace 169 times, with its derivatives 204 times. God is an amazing God of grace. Thank Him for His sanctifying grace, for His strengthening grace, for His serving grace, for His suffering grace, for His sufficient grace. So what is all of this grace? Well, the definition you'll find in most textbooks is that it's the unmerited favor of God. The unmerited favor of God. And I suppose it is that, but I think that's a little too shallow, because if you don't merit something, you can still be neutral. The problem is we've sinned against God, so I like to call grace the demerited favor of God. That is to say, we haven't just not merited it, we've done the opposite. So if I came along and said to Matt Delias, here's a thousand dollars for you. You did nothing to earn it. I think I'd get a smile on your face and you'd say, thank you very much, I appreciate that. But now if I gave a thousand dollars to Seth, who had broken into my home this morning and robbed everything in sight and trashed my home and took away our computers, and said, it's all right, Seth, here's $1,000. That would be astounding. But you see, that's exactly what God does in Jesus Christ. On the grounds of justice, he gives us the opposite of what we've merited. And that's grace. God doesn't give grace to neutral people. We don't believe in plagianism, brothers. God gives grace to sinners. He justifies the ungodly, Paul says to the Romans. That's the amazing thing about grace. I mean, it would already be amazing if God gave His grace to those who believed in plagianism, that were just neutral pieces of paper, that already would be amazing. But that he does it to sinners is overwhelming. That he does it to me is the most overwhelming of all. When I know that I have deserved hell and death and nothing else, Recall to mind that story I've told you before about the woman on the elevator who I was going to evangelize as we went up from floor one to floor seven on Butterworth Hospital. I started to try to evangelize her and said something about the weather and, well, we don't deserve anything better. People complain, we don't deserve anything better. I thought I'd try to start to evangelize her and she looked at me and she said, that's right. My mama always told me, anything above death and hell, it is the mercy of the Lord. I was like, wow, she's evangelizing me. But that's exactly what it is. Anything above death and hell is grace. And then that God showers us with all these blessings in Jesus Christ and gives us joy unspeakable and peace that passes understanding. Well, grace is everything, everything to a believer. It's my whole salvation. That's why this little, I first came across this little monomic device when I was My second ministry was maybe 29 years old, 30 years old, I'll never forget it. It was on a little 3x5 index card, taped with scotch tape to one of my parishioners' walls in a nursing home. It was the only thing she had on the wall. And I was on the other side of the bed, and I kept trying to read across the bed, that little thing on the wall, typed up, just with a regular typewriter. And I couldn't read it, and she noticed that I was trying to look at it. So she said, you can go ahead and go over and look at it, Pastor. It's my whole life. Wow, of course I was going to look at it then. If it's her whole life on an index card, that's kind of interesting. So I walked over, and this is what I read. This is grace to realize it's grace. This is grace to know grace. This woman was a very God-fearing woman, lovely woman to talk to. And whenever you meet someone who really realizes that everything in their lives is the grace of God, common grace, saving grace, that everything they have is due to grace, you know what? You meet a very happy person, You meet a very content person. You meet a very submissive person. You meet a very peaceable person. You meet a very humble person. You meet a very prayerful person. Because you can't realize that without having all these effects flow out of it. Grace just breaks us down. It makes us humble. It makes us more like Christ. Jerry Packer said, the grace of God is love freely shown towards guilty sinners contrary to their merit and indeed in defiance of their demerit. It is God showing goodness to persons who deserve only severity and have no reason to expect anything but severity. By the grace of God, I am what I am. This concept of grace lies at the heart of both the Old Testament and the New Testament, of all our Christian theology brothers, but also of all our genuine Christian experience. Amazing grace, how sweet the sound, That saved a wretch like me. O to grace, how great a debtor, daily I'm constrained to be. Let that grace now, like a fetter, bind my wandering heart to Thee. Prone to wander, Lord, I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love. Take my heart. Oh, take and seal it. Seal it from Thy courts above. Well, this grace ought to humble us. And we need to hear the exhortation of Charles Bridges. who wrote this wonderful sentence, a challenging sentence, to the extent that you are clinging to any vestiges of self-righteousness or are putting any confidence in your own spiritual attainments to that very degree you are not living by the grace of God in your life. All right, let's then just have a summary comment on this, a summary of a few scriptural usages then. I've got six of them outlined. I'll just mention them briefly. The first is then that grace is often spoken of in the Bible as simply an attribute of God. That's what I read to you from Exodus 34, that the Lord passes by and says, I'm the Lord, the Lord God. who is gracious. And there are many other texts. Psalm 145, verse 8, the Lord is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, etc. Secondly, there is this usage then of divine benediction. When God gives some blessing to someone, which can be common or saving. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord and he and his family were spared. All kinds of other examples of that too. the days of Ezra and Nehemiah and Jeremiah. The scriptures always refer to grace for the sparing goodness of God from danger and from enemies. Third, there's divine forgiveness. Forgiveness of sin upon repentance. Nehemiah 9.17 says that thou art a God of forgiveness, gracious and compassionate. Same thing in Joel 2.13. Fourthly, divine ministry. The ministry itself is often called the gracious gift of God's blessing. That's the way Paul speaks in Romans 1.5 and Ephesians 3.2. And then grace is sometimes used of divine gifts, also material gifts. Paul speaks of being blessed by the offerings of the churches in Macedonia. He speaks of it as grace in 2 Corinthians 8, and then divine sustenance. Grace is given in the midst of affliction to believers so that they are sustained Paul uses that quite often, so does James, 2 Corinthians 12, verse 9. Paul speaks of God not removing physical infirmities, but giving him grace so that his strength is made perfect in Paul's weakness. So, once you grasp this whole concept of God's attribute of grace, you see, really, you can almost do an entire systematic theology out of the concept of grace. I mean, this is really the heart of theology. It's the heart of God. It's the heart of the Bible. It's the heart of salvation. God's grace. Any questions on grace? Yes, yes. I know you may, just looking at this, you may answer this question. or am I confusing things? Grace and mercy are so close to each other, and I'm going to talk about the relationship between grace and mercy in just a moment, but they're so close to each other that it's like the same debate of faith and repentance. Why do you put one first and why do you put the other? There are two sides of one coin. I could have done mercy first. I don't think it's a big deal, really. Well, in a few minutes I'll talk about their relationship together, and if it still is a question for you, then ask it again. Any other questions? All right, let's look a little bit then at mercy. Mercy. There are a series of Hebrew terms used in Scripture for mercy as well, and one group stems from the verb, Raham, to love, to be, to show pity, sometimes translated to be merciful. This term actually speaks of a very deep inward feeling of loving compassion. fatherly pity. It's frequently used of God and it tends to be used in the Bible in two ways. The first way is the way of a strong tie, a strong tie between God and his children. You find that kind of language in Psalm 103 verse 13. As a father pities his children, so the Lord pities them that fear him." Well, if you're a father, you can identify with that right away. The second usage relates to God's unconditional choice. That, too, is a common theme in the Bible, beginning in Exodus 33, verse 19 already. It's a prime example, probably before that, too, but that's a prime example. And, of course, Romans 9, that God exercises His mercy on whom He chooses. He will have mercy upon whom He will have mercy. Now closely related to this verb is the noun, Rahaming. Rahaming actually is often translated bowels, bowels and mercies, plural. Abundant mercy being the idea. And the whole concept of bowels, which seems so foreign to us and almost a little bit strange to the Hebrew mind, of course, was not strange at all because they believed if you feel a strong emotion, say a great fear, you feel it in your gut, don't you? It affects you inside, right in here somewhere. You know, it can affect you so much that you actually do have to go to the bathroom because you're so uptight or you're so overwhelmed. Emotions can affect your bowel system. And in the Hebrew mind, you see, because that was true, instead of saying our emotions are up here, they said our emotions are here. our emotions are connected with our bowel system. And so they even spoke, God even spoke to relate to his people in anthropomorphic terms, that he had his bowels removed within him. Now this whole concept of this feeling, this not just feeling of fear, but this feeling of pity now, this is God's mercy. Maybe a better example than fear would be pity, because that's what we're dealing with here. So, you know, if you just think of something traumatic. I'm trying to think of something. Oh, let's think of 9-11. You remember those pictures of people actually jumping out of 40 stories high to their own death just to escape the flames. I remember seeing one of those pictures in the newspaper of this guy jumping out. I think it was floor 43 or something. You see his arms and legs going in. I just saw that picture and I just felt it right here. The pity you feel. It's amazing. Imagine if that were you. That's what we mean by God's mercy. His bowels are moved for the objects of his mercy. Now, this word can also have the meaning of just a very intense kindness, a very intense kindness gracious kindness particularly when it's associated or combined with the word chesed now we just talked about chesed when it's combined with chesed you might translate it merciful kindness or sometimes in some translations it's steadfast love steadfast love Well, there's also a word, a verb, kafar, that is usually translated mercy as well. But this term mercy refers more to God's pardoning mercy, to his covering of sin, making atonement for sin by covering. The idea here is that since a person who's bringing the sacrifice is guilty of sin, and God doesn't owe anyone a pardon because God hates sin, and no one has deserved a pardon, the fact that God covers that sin and hides it, puts it away, or throws it behind his back, as the Old Testament also calls it, into the sea of eternal forgetfulness, that is an act of mercy. It's an act of kaphar. Now, kaphar is not the usual word for mercy, but it is an appropriate usage for the word mercy. And then you have the word chemlah. Chemlah. And that connotes the emotional response that results from removing an object, or a subject for that matter, from some impending great difficulty. It too is not the most common word for mercy, but God uses it from time to time when he speaks about rescuing people, rescuing his Israel. from great danger. That is God's mercy. Now the Greek word, the Greek word used to speak of God's mercy is eleos. In Greek, this word is referring to an emotion that provokes pity. And in Greek, it's particularly used of a situation in which you see someone who is undeservedly afflicted. And you have this sense of mercy. You want to help that person. A good example of this would be in the Grand Rapids Press right now. They're running a series of articles about homeless people. Now, two nights ago, they ran an article about a woman. It's a big picture of her on the front page, holding a baby. And the caption beneath the picture says that she said, I would do anything. I wish anything. I could have a home to live in with my baby. Wow. That provokes a feeling of pity in the heart of everyone. And when I read that caption, my first thought was, I wonder how many offers this woman's going to get in the Grand Rapids area to come and live with so-and-so, or come and live with us, or here's a home you can live in free of charge, or whatever. It wouldn't surprise me to pick up tomorrow's paper and say that this woman is now living in a home because this, you see, never mind the history, maybe, we don't know, I don't want to sound hard here, but maybe she's been on drugs for a long time, maybe she's done things that have brought herself in this condition, but when you just see it, she seems so innocent, she looks so sincere. It looks like she's undeservedly afflicted. And when you see that, your heart goes out. Well, God sends this pity out to people who actually are deservedly afflicted, but He treats them as if they're undeservedly afflicted, because His Son has paid the price of that undeservedness, or that deservedness, rather. When this word is used of God, it refers to his faithfulness in having emotion of pity for people who really don't deserve it, but who are in predicaments and who are in need. All right, then. Well, how does mercy and grace relate to each other? Actually, their concepts are pretty close. And you can actually read a number of books and get very confused on this, quite frankly, because there's such an overlap, and people are trying to make so many distinctions, and often the distinction is a bit artificial, and people come up with different distinctions. I think we can say this. Both grace and mercy involve what we're calling demerited favor. But there is some difference in this area, that whereas grace may be given to those who are miserable and desperately in need of help, grace can also be given to those who have no particular need. If I give my thousand dollars to Seth, I was talking about a moment ago, and he's already pretty wealthy. He doesn't have any particular needs. That would be gracious, wouldn't it? I'd still be gracious giving him a thousand dollars. I mean, anyone can always use, I suppose, an extra thousand dollars. But you wouldn't say it's an act of mercy, because there's not a real need there. Mercy is given specifically to those whose condition is miserable. They're in great need. So when I think of mercy, I like to think of the word misery. Compassion upon the miserable. The point is in scripture that God does both. God is both a God of grace and a God of mercy. With respect to our need to pay for sins and be forgiven, the whole human race is in great need. So what God did for us in Christ on Calvary is an act of great mercy. See, if you're accused of a crime and the case is about to come to trial, you need a good defense lawyer. On the other hand, if the trial is over and you've been convicted and sentenced to death, you don't need a defense lawyer. What you need now is a pardon. The human race without Christ needs a pardon from sin. A defense lawyer won't help us because we have no defense. We're just all guilty. So we can't plead no contest. We are guilty. We need a pardon. We're on death row. If we don't get the pardon, we're going to spend eternity in torment and separation from God. Well, God recognizes, this is what mercy says, God recognizes our pitiful condition, our pitiful situation. And instead of saying to us, work it out for yourself, you guilty sinner, he sees our need, he takes upon himself to provide the solution. Now, like grace, this mercy can function at different levels, different ways. I've listed three of them for you on the outline there. pure essential sense of mercy, a general common sense of mercy and a special saving sense of mercy. What do I mean by these? Well, the pure essential sense of mercy, I mean God himself is mercy with a capital M. This is God's attribute. God is merciful. Oh give thanks unto the Lord for he is good, for his mercy endures forever. His mercy is from generation to generation toward those that fear him. And of course Exodus 34.6 calls him mercy. He's merciful. He doesn't just have mercy, he's full of mercy. That's who he is. You know there was a young man who once came to Rabbi John Duncan and he said at a meeting that mercy could not be a proper attribute of God because a proper attribute of God had to be something from everlasting to everlasting in God that would function even if God didn't create the world and since mercy can only relate to sinners If God hadn't created the world, there would be no display of his mercy, therefore God is not merciful. So his argument, the young man's argument, was there could not be mercy until there was misery. And the Scottish theologian, Rabbi John Duncan, responded to that this way. This young man is confounding mercy with the exercise of mercy. There indeed could not be the exercise of mercy till there was misery, but God was always a merciful God, for He is mercy. You might as well say there could not be justice in God till there were creatures towards whom to exercise punitive justice. See, mercy is the very heart of God, is what he's saying. And then, you prove that, of course, from Scripture itself, ultimately. Let me give you a couple texts here. God's mercy is great, 1 Kings 3, verse 6. God's mercy is plenteous. Psalm 86, verse 5. God's mercy is tender. Luke 1, 78. It's abundant. 1 Peter 1, verse 3. And it's from everlasting to everlasting. Psalm 103, 17. So that is pure, essential mercy that is in God himself. But then secondly, there is this general and common mercy, sometimes called common goodness, sometimes called common grace. We mean pretty much the same thing here. In this common mercy, the focus is on God extricating people from difficult and disastrous situations. Sometimes it's individuals like David. David said to Gad, I'm in great distress. Let us now fall into the hand of the Lord, for his mercies are great. But don't let me fall into the hands of men. to Samuel 24 verse 14 but this is not only for individuals this can be for a whole nation a whole nation like the nation of Israel as a whole pleads for mercy Deuteronomy 4 verse 31 or think of Isaiah 49 verse 13 Sing, O heavens, and be joyful, O earth, and break forth into singing, O mountains, for the Lord has comforted his people, and the Lord will have mercy upon," who? His afflicted. His afflicted. Another dimension of this common mercy is not only extricating individuals and extricating nations, but focusing on the one giving it. Jesus Christ in the flesh portrays himself in a peculiar way as a savior of mercy. He heals the blind. He raises up the infirm. He delivers the demon-possessed. He's a savior. of mercy. People would come to him and cry out, we're told. The blind man said, have mercy on us, son of David. And then finally, and most importantly for our purposes, mercy comes to us in a special saving sense. And here it's very closely related to grace, isn't it? God will forgive because he's a God of mercy. And so this comes to the whole nation of Israel, that they may flee to God as a nation but also as an individual. Numbers 14 verse 18 says that the Lord is long-suffering and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression. So as a result of God's mercy in forgiving sinners, David pleads for mercy in forgiving his sins. Lord, I have sinned against thee, heal me. Psalm 51. Now, God not only extends mercy for forgiving sin, but Paul also shows that God's mercy is the ultimate ground of his electing individuals to salvation. In Romans 9, Paul argues that God's choice of the elect does not depend on their merits, but rather on God's mercy. Speaking here, of course, of God's saving mercy now. In fact, Paul even goes so far in Romans 11 to say that the ultimate reason God allowed the human race to fall, to fall into sin, was that so he could extend mercy to it in providing salvation Romans 11 verse 32 and so we think of God's mercy we must think of an act of sovereign mercy in the exercising of divine compassion towards the elect the elect but miserable sinner Therefore, as one of the Puritans wrote, to set up merit is to destroy mercy. If God were to show mercy to such as are worthy, He would show mercy to none at all. Say not, then, I am unworthy, and therefore I cannot have mercy. Nay, for mercy is to the unworthy always, and mercy is always free. So mercy makes things right in the souls of God's people. It saves their souls and it keeps things right within God's people. It keeps them close to the Lord. Mercy pities us in misery. It relieves us in affliction. It pardons sin. It counsels us in difficulty. And it enlightens us in darkness. And this mercy of God is overflowing and ever flowing to sinners like you and me. As another Puritan put it, his vial of wrath drips, his fountain of mercy runs. His vial of wrath drips. His fountain of mercy runs. His anger lasts a moment, says the Bible, but His mercy endures forever. So despite our poor prayers and our poor thanksgivings and our poor sanctification, God's mercy endures forever through the mercy full, full of mercy, High Priest Jesus Christ to sinners like us who put their trust in Him. And one day we will bathe ourselves in God's ocean of mercy. We will never grow weary of that mercy. Mercy is fresh and precious at all times. When I was a boy, I used to think that Psalm 136 was very repetitive, for His mercy endures forever, 26 times in a row. I thought, huh, that's all unnecessary. David could have said it just once. and said, here are all the things in which God displays mercy. But as I got older, I realized, no, no. What the psalmist is saying is, this is not just a poetic device. He's saying, here's an event. This is mercy. Here's an event. This is mercy. Here's an event. This is mercy. So throughout my entire life, I realized more and more the mercy of God. I never get tired of that mercy. I'm always amazed by that mercy. So I live out of mercy. Well, let me conclude this lecture and conclude our discussion of mercy by quoting Thomas Watson. I just think Watson is the most amazing writer I've ever read on mercy. I'm just taking extracts here of his writing. I'll just give you one paragraph in conclusion. It is the great design of the scriptures to represent God as merciful The scripture represents God in white robes of mercy more often than with garments rolled in blood, with his golden scepter more often than his iron rod. Mercy is his darling attribute, which he most delights in. The bee naturally gives honey. It stings only when it is provoked, so God does not punish till he can bear no longer. Mercy is God's right hand that He's most used to. Inflicting punishment is called His strange work in Isaiah 28, 21. Now there is no condition, but we may spy mercy in it. In all our afflictions we may see some sunshine of mercy, but outward and inward troubles do not come together as mercy. Mercy sweetens all God's other attributes. It makes His Godhead appear amiable and lovely. God's mercy is God's glory. His holiness makes him illustrious, but his mercy makes him propitious. His mercy in election makes him justify, adopt, and glorify. One act of mercy always engages God to more acts of mercy. Our God is a merciful God. I hope you find that rich material like I do. Any questions about the mercy of God? Okay, next time then we're going to start with God's long-suffering. I don't think we have enough time to really develop that here, so I'll let you out a few minutes early today. Whose turn is it to pray?