God's Mercy and Love

The point: Listen carefully to the exposition of God's mercy and love, recognizing your personal interest in verses 4-10 as a picture of your transformation from spiritual death.

Compares God's truth to a camera lens capturing an image; just as a photo reveals what was truly in front of the lens, God's word reveals our true spiritual state (Ephesians 1-3), regardless of our self-perception.

And if you don't like the cameras that we use that will reflect on the print that we send to the developer, whatever came through the lens, whatever image came through the lens and touched that sensitive paper, that's what comes out when we pick up our pictures at the photo shop. And if it was your face coming through the lens, that's the image that was captured and your face will be in the photograph. If it was my countenance, someone else's. And the pictures will be as diverse as the images that came through the lens.

8:09 - 8:43 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Mercy is pity joined to action, but it is action suitable to the need of the one pitied.

Recounts Moses' prayer to see God's glory and God's response in Exodus, where God proclaimed Himself as 'merciful and gracious,' illustrating mercy as an unavoidable excellence of God.

2. It's an exercise of his other attributes. You remember that in Exodus, Moses prayed, God, show me thy glory. And God said, I will only give you a glimpse of my glory.

12:07 - 12:21 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Mercy is pity joined to action, but it is action suitable to the need of the one pitied.

Uses the example of a blind beggar crying 'Son of David, have mercy upon me' to show that mercy is not just pity but pity joined with appropriate action (giving sight and sustenance).

8. For instance, in the Gospels, you remember in Matthew 9 and verse 27, a blind beggar cries out, Son of David, have mercy upon me. 9. A blind beggar cries out, Son of David, have mercy upon me.

13:50 - 14:01 Read in full sermon

Driving home: Mercy is pity joined to action, but it is action suitable to the need of the one pitied.

References Jesus' parable to illustrate that mercy involves not just pity but the appropriate action of forgiveness and cancelling debt, as the master did for his servant.

33. Our Lord is giving a parable to teach the necessity of forgiveness. You remember the instance the man who had a great debt and his master forgave the great debt? Then he comes to his own servant who has a lesser debt and he will not forgive him. Shouldest not thou also have had mercy on thy fellow servant even as I had mercy on thee? You see mercy was not just pity. He did not say to the man I have pity for you. I feel badly that you have a debt. Sorry. Go to the debtor's prison. No, no. Mercy was pity upon the man in his need with the appropriate action to that need. He forgave him. Now h...

14:41 - 15:40 Read in full sermon

Driving home: For God is love. Now love is not God. You can't reverse the statement. God is love.

Uses the metaphor of 'semantic magic' to 'scrub' the word 'love' clean of its worldly connotations, aiming to restore its biblical richness and weight.

Why did God forgive the guilty and bring them into acceptance? The apostle says it's bound up in the fact that he's a God of mercy. The God whose pity moves into action perfectly suited to the needs of the one pitied. And so for our death he quickens us. For our bondage he liberates us. For our guilt he freely forgives us in Christ Jesus. Well then what about the word love? One almost wishes that we could perform some kind of semantic magic and scrub the word love from people's minds and then come to men with that word as though they had never heard it before and seek to pour into it its bibli...

16:06 - 17:18 Read in full sermon

Driving home: For God is love. Now love is not God. You can't reverse the statement. God is love.

Compares defining God's love to defining the sun; just as the sun is known better by its effects (warmth, light, life-giving power) than its naked essence, God's love is known by what it does.

God is light. In other words, holiness is essential to his very being. John goes on to say in 1 John 4.8, God is love. How should we attempt to define it? Well we could make some efforts and speak of that selfless purpose to will and seek the good of its objects. But defining love is like trying to define or describe or dissect or analyze the sun. You know what the sun is far better by what it does. You know what the sun is far better by what it does than by trying to understand it in its naked essence. You know what the sun is by the warmth of its rays upon your body. The light that your eye ...

17:43 - 18:42 Read in full sermon

In this part of the sermon: He explores four aspects of God's love: its 'great' measure, its source in God's free and sovereign heart, its 'everlasting' duration, and its objects being all of God's people…

An anecdote about people overusing superlatives like 'great' and 'fantastic' to highlight that the apostle Paul's use of 'great' for God's love is rare and therefore carries immense weight, unlike common speech.

But when it's used with a noun such as love, it speaks of measure and degree. Now you meet some people, they're always tossing off superlatives left and right. Everything's great. Thank God we've gotten beyond the terrific stage.

28:32 - 28:46 Read in full sermon