Good morning friends and welcome to another edition of the 5 minute challenge. The 5MC is a challenge to spend 5 minutes in God’s Word every day for 30 days in a row. Are you up for the challenge? If you’d like to know more about the challenge and how to afford yourself the best opportunity for success, check out the ‘what is the 5MC’ tab at the top of the 5MC home page. Daily time spent in God’s Word is one of the single most impactful daily regimens you could ever implement into your life. I hope and pray that you accept the challenge!
Wow, how about this cool weather? This is some of the coolest weather I’ve experienced in the last server years and it’s kind of a shock to the system. While we were on Maui for 2 years, it could have its cool spells but it never got into the 50’s. (unless you went to the top of the volcano) It’s nice though, since we grew up here, the coolness somehow sparks memories of years past and the experiences to come in the new season. Our new home has a wood burning fireplace and we’re so excited to have some fires for the first time in a few years. I think the fall and spring ‘mild times’ in Texas are very similar to what Maui was like year round. Highs around 80 and lows around 70. I have a little Miata and I love this time of the year where you can hop in any time and cruise around in the coolness with the top down!
Well, we continue to cruise right along in Romans (nice segway?) and today we’re looking at chapter 9. This starts the second of three divisions in Paul’s letter to the church at Rome. If you look at Romans you can bust it up into three parts. Chapters 1-8 emphasize faith, 9-11 emphasize hope and 12-16 emphasize love. When you really dig deep, God’s Word has an amazing, structure, rhythm and pattern to it, doesn’t it? Remember, Paul hand wrote this letter to the church at Rome but he was explicitly guided by the Holy Spirit. This is not the words of a man but the words of God as given to a man. Listen to God speak to the creation of His Word. “Above all, you must understand that no prophecy of Scripture came about by the prophet’s own interpretation of things. For prophecy never had its origin in the human will, but prophets, though human, spoke from God as they were carried along by the Holy Spirit.” (2 Peter 1:20-21) So you see, God’s Word came from God through the power of the Holy Spirit and ultimately written by the hands of His chosen people, in this instance Paul.
So today I want us to look specifically at a few verses on God’s mercy and how and why He dispenses it. Romans 9:15-16, “For he says to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I have compassion. So then it depends not on human will of exertion, but on God who has mercy.”
First let’s look at the word mercy. Mercy is defined as “not getting the punishment that you truly deserve.” You see, we are all born with a sin nature, we are all unrighteous and imperfect before God and since God cannot tolerate and be in the presence of sin, we therefore cannot be in the presence of God. We deserve separation from God because of this. But because God is a God of love and desires a relationship with us, He made a way. He sent his Son Jesus here to this planet as a perfect sacrifice for the sins of the world, to die and rise again, to once and for all triumph over sin. Because God is a God of mercy, He made a way. You see we deserve death, but God has offered us life through Jesus Christ. God has mercy on us.
Let me tell you a personal story about mercy. While serving on Maui I would volunteer at the Malama Pregnancy Center, a faith-based operation that would offer counseling and support services to women who were experiencing unplanned pregnancies. It was based in an old house that was in Wailuku on the east side of the island opposite from Lahaina, so we would call it, ‘the other side’. I would go over and basically do honey-do’s. Hang shelves, fix doors, paint, move furniture, etc. One day after volunteering on my day off, I was heading home and using my phone’s GPS to get me back to Lahaina. At the time I wasn’t aware that you could not touch your phone while driving so I got pulled over and issued a ticket for holding my phone. A $325 ticket. Ouch. I had some friends tell me that it was easy to fight tickets on Maui and I should protest it and I could probably beat it. That wasn’t what I was going to do. I was guilty, I broke the law, got caught and would accept the punishment. As I was getting ready to mail in the payment, I noticed there was an option to write a letter and explain your circumstances. I was currently reading about God's mercy in the Bible, so I decided to do something crazy. I wrote the judge a nice long letter and told him who I was and what I was doing on Maui. I told him that I was guilty and would not contest the ticket. I then told him about mercy. That my God describes mercy as not getting the punishment you deserve. It’s an act gifted from one to another. A forgiveness of wrongs that has to be given away. I then told him I was simply writing to ask for mercy. I mailed the letter off, anxious to see what he might do with such a crazy request. I got a letter back in a few weeks….offense dismissed. Wiped clean, forgiven and forgotten. That my friends is a worldly picture of mercy. I was guilty of a crime, but am now forgiven, and none of it was by my own doing. Mercy is a gift.
God’s mercy is a beautiful thing to behold, but who qualifies for God’s single acts of mercy? I’ve seen some benefit from God’s mercy but I’ve seen others yearn for it but come up empty handed. So how does God determine recipients of acts of mercy? Here in these verses we get our insight.
He says that He and He alone determines the recipients of mercy so that “it depends not on human will or exertion.” You see, God’s mercy is not extended as a recognition of human will nor is it a reward of human work. Human-willing and human working are not motivating causes of God’s actions. Man thinks that his decisions and his efforts cause God to look with favor upon him. God extends mercy and he does it because he is God. God extends mercy out of His love for us.
Today, we are all the recipients of the greatest mercy that the world has ever seen. We are all sinners, unrighteous before the Holy God of creation. But praise God for His Son Jesus Christ. Because of Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross we are all afforded an opportunity to accept Him as our Lord and Savior and secure a home in Heaven to worship God eternally. By doing this, we will not get the punishment that we truly deserve. That my friends is mercy. Praise God for His mercy towards us all.
I pray today that your 5 minutes in God’s Word speaks to your heart and you carry it close to you all the day.
Grace be to you all.
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