Confident in Mercy

Read Hebrew 4:14-16

This following Jesus stuff is pretty simple, even a child can do it.  God loves you. Love one another.  How much more can there be?

Love is a big-ticket item for sure.  Loving God and each other is the command that Jesus said all law and prophecy was anchored upon.  He went on to raise the bar for his disciples saying that we are to love each other as much as he loved us.  The old standard was to love your neighbor as much as you loved yourself, but now we are to love each other as much as Christ loves us.  Christ loved us unto death, even death on a cross.

We know love to be extremely important for through it we fulfill the law. How much more can there be?

There is, of course, living by faith not by sight.  You know, trusting in the Lord with all your heart and leaning not on your own understanding.  We should live by faith.  We know faith to be the substance of things hoped for and the evidence of things not seen.

And certainly, we should live in obedience to God.  We know what God says by his word and by the Spirit that lives within us.  Obedience is a tough word for Americans.  We were born in rebellion and even included provisions in our Constitution to discard our own government if it no longer represented us.  But come Sunday, we sing Trust and Obey for there’s no other way.

Okay, so we love and trust and obey and have faith.  I guess that’s not too much.

Then there’s living in the truth, walking in the truth if we use John’s words.  The truth will set you free if we just stick to what Jesus had to say.

Let’s not forget hope.  Where would we be without hope. Those who hope in the Lord will renew their strength.  Besides, we have already talked about faith and love and we need hope to fill our Paul’s thirteenth verse of his thirteenth chapter in his first letter to Corinth.  Faith, hope, love, abide these three but the greatest of these is love.

That about covers it, except for rest.  We all need rest.  We all need Sabbath rest.  Jesus beckons all who are weary and heavy laden to come to him and he will give us rest.  Our rest lies in Jesus himself.

We get more on resting in the Lord in the part of this morning’s chapter that precedes what I read.

And if we continue what Jesus had to say, we all need a teachable spirit.  Take my yoke and learn from me.  My yoke is easy and my burden is light.

And since we are talking about burdens, every person is to carry his own load, unless he needs help then we should help him.  I thought about doing a solo special and sing He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother, then I remembered that our insurance is void if I come within 5 feet of the choir microphone for fear that people will be injured rushing the exits. 

Usually when I use this little bit of levity, I get a few laughs but I also get a few nods of affirmation. 

That about wraps it up except for peace.  Where would we be without peace in this troubled world.  The world tells us that we can only have peace after we finish the two-thousand-piece puzzle of the snow-covered landscape.  We can’t have peace until we solve all of our problems, pay all of our bills, and finish the puzzle.

God grants us a peace that goes beyond our understanding.  For those who know this peace , it is something that you never want to be without again.

Oh, and there is thanksgiving and gratefulness.  These lead to our giving and generosity and are tied to our peace, and that surely wraps up the list of what it takes to follow Jesus.

Unless we go back to love and remember that we are people of love in action. Love is not some amorphous concept, love compels us to action.  Of course, faith compels us to action.  Faith without works is dead.  Faith and works work together.

We haven’t even touched on redemption and salvation and renewal.  And I will not cover everything we should be doing in what seems like a gallimaufry—now there’s a word for you that means hodgepodge, jumble or confused medley—of things we need to do to follow Jesus.

But we know that God is a God of order and not disorder so there must be order in what appears to be a compendium of related directions and guidelines.

Maybe I should stop there and let you take a week to try to put a taxonomy or hierarchy to all of these directions.  Love, action, trust, obedience, faith, hope, peace, rest, compassion, forgiveness, to get you started.  More will come to mind once you begin.

We should need psychiatric help trying to keep up with all of those, but instead of going bonkers, we have confidence.  Our minds should be spinning out of control but we have confidence.

Confidence in what?

In God’s mercy and his grace.  When we are running our race of faith and we make a wrong turn, we are told to approach God’s throne of grace with confidence. 

When we miss the mark, we are told to confess.  We don’t do this wondering if this time I went too far.  We approach his throne of grace with confidence—with confidence.

God does not want to kick us to the curb, send us to hell, or give us a life in which he is not part of anymore.  God loves us.  He has forgiven us.  We are his and he wants us to come home when we stray.

If you read Luke 15, you find three stories about lost and found and the joy of being found after being once lost.  Heaven rejoices when the lost come home.  Heaven rejoices when we who know God through Jesus but somehow wandered off, come home.

This coming home stuff is a big deal even if he has to go looking for us first.  It’s a big deal!

You are sons and daughters of the King.  You are brothers and sisters of Christ.  You are called friend.  You were fearfully and wonderfully made.  You are called to be a Royal Priesthood.  You are chosen.  This is a big deal.

We may and will do things that we know do not please God but God is always pleased when we come home.  Unlike the Prodigal Son, we must come home with confidence.  We come with confidence from wherever it is that we regain our senses.

We can be penitent and confident at the same time.  We long to leave our sinful ways behind us and know that we have a Father in heaven who rejoices when we come back to him and seek his will above all else.

We should never come before God’s throne of grace doubting that he will be faithful and just to forgive.

Our caution is that we must not make God out to be a liar.  This is where we run astray.  This is where we don’t have peace.  Sin is sin and the world doesn’t get to vote on that.

Most of us understand this.  Most of us have not succumbed to the thinking of the world but the world wants the final say on what is sin and what isn’t and if the truth be known, there is not much that the world wants to call sin anymore. 

We serve a way, the truth, and the life Jesus in an anything goes world.

I like to put it this way.  We are people of whosoever will not whatsoever goes.

So how do we help people with the whosoever will part in this whatsoever goes world?  I should just leave that as a take home essay assignment.  Ten pages, double-spaced, twelve font with bibliography should do the trick.

How do we help people move from whatsoever goes to whosoever will?  We must introduce them to the God of mercy and grace that we know.

We don’t condemn people.  The Law will do that.  The law will show the futility of their thinking and their living.  So let the law condemn and the Spirit convict so we are free to fulfill our commission.

Our part is to convey that once you repent of your worldly lifestyle and receive Jesus, you will not only come to know this God of love but will approach his throne of grace with confidence.

The world has mantras for the way it lives.  Heaven won’t take me and hell is afraid I’ll take over.  It sounds cool but it’s not true.  It is sometimes just enough to keep some people from seeking the truth and living in rebellion against God who is full of mercy.  So many people who have rejected God are afraid that they are too far gone.

It’s sort of like Star Wars and embracing the dark side.

Fight or flight is what the world tells them.  Stand and fight for what you believe even if you know in your heart that it’s wrong.  Once you have made a stand for what you believe, then not only do you have an intellectual investment in your position, now you are emotionally tied to it.  You are anchored to it.

If you don’t fight, then run away and crawl in a hole.   Usually this is not a physical hole. Depression works well and sometimes leads to suicide but always reduces the quality of life—life that God gave us to live to the full.

Retreating from life itself is flight.  We are made to fully live and anything sort of thing that involves running the other way is flight.  And of course, there is the passive-aggressive combination of the two.  Retreat in public and fight in private.  This is what I should have said.  Today those comments can be posted on Facebook from the perceived safety of your home.

Fight or flight sounds official.  According to the world, it is.

But there is a third option.  It is forgiveness.  God is full of forgiveness.  He is a God of mercy and grace and he longs for all of his children to come home.

Seeking his forgiveness should be preceded by repentance.

Once someone comes home, he can come to that throne of grace again and again and do it with confidence, without doubt that the One who sits on it is faithful and just to forgive.

So, for those of us who know God through his Son, let’s not comfort people who live in sin by saying, that’s okay.  It’s not okay but trying to comfort them with those words might be worse than doing nothing or offending them with the truth for we become a stumbling block for them to receive the grace of God.

We do not need to be—in fact we must not be condemning—but we must speak the truth in a spirit of love with the heart of the message being we serve a God of love who is full of mercy and grace.  Did you know that this is a sign of our Christian maturity?

Our focus is not the sin of others.  Our focus is calling all to come before God and receive his mercy and his grace, and to know once you have done this, we can come before him with confidence.

It’s hard to come before him with confidence until we come in repentance seeking his promise of life.  Once we have done that, we know he is a loving Father who delights in mercy and wants us to know his grace.

Why would we want to deny anyone grace by telling them that sin is not sin?

We come before God confidently to receive his mercy and grace.

So here is the dichotomy: Denial or confidence.

We can deny our sin is sin or we can be confident that God will be merciful.  Let’s not comfort people in their sin by saying, it’s not sin anymore.

Let’s comfort people that we serve a God of love who is full of mercy and grace and he is waiting on them to come home to him. 

Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need.

Let us lead people who do not know God’s rest and peace to this same throne of grace so they too may come with confidence all the days of their lives.

This following Jesus stuff is pretty easy, even a child can do it.  We must come as a child, trusting fully in our heavenly Father that he will always love us and always forgive us.

Don’t we want everyone to know this special relationship that we have.

God loves us.  We are to love one another.  At the top of that love one another list needs to be calling people to come home to their heavenly Father through Christ Jesus—calling them to receive his mercy and grace.

Come home. 

Amen.