God’s Will – Mercy

God’s Will – Mercy.

“The root of all of God’s activity in this world, beginning even with the world’s creation, is Mercy… Mercy is the cause and reason of all that God does. God does nothing, absolutely nothing, except as an expression of His Mercy.” (Rev. Patrick Henry Reardon, from his book, Christ in the Psalms).

“I will (“thelema”) mercy, not sacrifice.” (Hosea 6:6, Matthew 9:13 and 12:7). In other words, hear the word of the Lord… I delight in mercy; I vastly prefer mercy; My desire is that you show mercy; My heart takes pleasure when I see mercy in this world; My will is that mercy is demonstrated before religious duties; My will is mercy.

‘You may expend your whole life in search of the Will of God, His “perfect will,” but you will not find any other perfect will of God than that which God has revealed in Christ Jesus. And that will is mercy, a mercy which involves giving your life for others as an offering to God.” (Brother Rex Andrews, from his book, What the Bible Teaches About Mercy).

God’s Will, Beyond our Understanding. “O the depth of the riches and wisdom and knowledge of God! How unsearchable are His decisions! And how mysterious are His ways, His methods, and His paths! For who has known the mind of the Lord, who has understood His thoughts, or who has ever been His counselor? For from Him and through Him and to Him are all things. For all things originate with Him and come from Him; all things live through Him, and all things center in and end in Him. To Him be glory forever! Amen. That’s the truth.” (Romans 11:33-36).

“Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.” (Matthew 5:7). In other words: Congratulations! You are so fortunate! God loves it when you graciously show the undeserved favor and acceptance, when you allow God’s grace to then move you with compassion to reach out and be willing to bear another’s burden even if it means personal suffering, and then finally to put that love into action by relieving the misery of someone in need. You are to be envied! You will experience great happiness, because showing God’s lovingkindness towards others puts His love into action for you!

MERCY: God’s will to satisfy all mankind with His goodness; to strongly desire what is best for someone, especially for those in need; to graciously treat someone in distress with compassion, especially when one could ignore that needy person if he wanted; to have a readiness to show practical love to someone in any type of trouble or need; to have an eagerness to put  love into action; to personally relieve the suffering of someone; to demonstrate an act of good will towards someone who needs it; to show a lovingkindness that is way beyond the call of duty; to demonstrate to a complete stranger the same type of compassion one would reveal to a friend or family member. Mercy is the most active aspect of Love, which also includes Grace and Compassion.  These three aspects of Love are distinctive, but each is a part of the other. Grace is full of compassion and mercy; compassion is full of grace and mercy; mercy is full of grace and compassion.

Grace: God’s welcoming face of God’s favor and acceptance to the undeserving;

Compassion: the willingness to reach out and suffer with another and bear that person’s burdens;

Mercy: the actual doing of the love that grace and compassion has started; Love-in-Action.

1. Greek word for Mercy in New Testament is “eleos,” which is usually translated mercy, pity or compassion. Eleosis derived from the word for olive oil, and so is understood in the context of something healing, soothing, comforting. Eleos is a noun, but it is often used as a verb with the word eleeson, with phrases like “Have mercy on me!” The actual translation with that phrase is “Mercy Me, Lord!”
2. “Chanan”= Hebrew word for mercy in terms of gracious, generous, joyfully compassionate, quick to forgive and quick to show favor, especially to someone who is in need. Verses with “chanan” in it are Exodus 34:6, Ps. 86:15, Ps. 103;8, and 2 Chronicles 30:9.
3. “Rachem”= Hebrew word for mercy rooted in the “womb,” a tender compassion that is warm and affectionate, a strong desire to relieve suffering and cherish the sufferer. It has been said that this word for God’s mercy implies a tender, protected place where life springs forth, and that living in God’s mercy is to live in the womb of God’s love. Passages with “rachem” include Isaiah 14:1, 30:18, 49:15 and 60:10; Jeremiah 12:15 and 3:20; and Lamentations 3:32; Ps. 106:46.
4. “Hesed”= Hebrew word for mercy that is often translated as lovingkindness, indicating a steadfast love, a compassionate faithfulness and loyalty to covenant love. It is used 26 times in the classic Psalm 136in order to focus on God’s continued and unwavering forbearance and patience because of His faithful lovingkindness, His remaining true to his promises out of sheer love. “Hesed” is used over 120 times in the book of Psalms alone, but here are a few passages:  107:1 and 43; Ps. 108:4; Ps. 98:3.

“Rend your hearts rather than your garments, and turn back to the Lord your God. For He is gracious and merciful, slow to anger, abounding in kindness, and renouncing punishment.” (Joel 2:13).

Mercy is the Centerpiece of God’s Self-Identity. When at the base of Mt. Sinai, Moses asked God if he could see God’s glory. (Exodus 33:19). The Lord Yahweh responded by saying that He would pass before Moses, but he would not be allowed to see His “face,” only His backside. The Glory is too overwhelming for humans who are not equipped to experience a consuming fire quite yet. Yahweh told Moses that He will cause all His “goodness” to pass before Moses, and that in Moses’ presence He will pronounce His holy Name. Goodness is usually a synonym for mercy, because God’s goodness is revealed through His mercy. So Moses ascended Mt. Sinai to meet God at the top, and Yahweh descended in a cloud and stood there with Moses. Only God can accurately name Himself, and here we see the Lord pronouncing His sacred Name… “God passed before Moses and proclaimed, “I AM Yahweh! I AM Yahweh! A God who is compassionate (rachem) and gracious, longsuffering and slow to anger, abounding in mercy (hesed) and truth, preserving mercy (hesed) for thousands of generations, forgiving wickedness, rebellion and sin, but by no means clearing the guilty or allowing sin to go unpunished.” (Exodus 34:6-7). What a singular moment! The Almighty God, the Great I AM, describes His Name, His identity. He is revealing to Moses how He sees Himself in His Essence. What a turning point in history! The Lord of the universe chooses to reveal Himself in utter transparency to a human being! ‘You want to know what I am made of, Moses, the Lord is saying, then this is how I describe my character, these are my core attributes. Yes, I am the great LORD, and this is Me in a nutshell… rich in mercy, compassion, grace, forgiveness. That is truly who I am, Moses!’ At the very end of this historical self-description, God reminds Moses (and all of us) that He is Lord of a moral universe, that there is such a thing as right and wrong, and He has established an ultimate system of justice. God’s statement about justice and moral accountability, interestingly enough, seems to have been made in the context of mercy and forgiveness, of compassion and grace. So it appears that if God’s will springs out of God’s core character, His will must be mercy.

“‘I beseech you, Lord,’ he prayed, ‘is not this what I said while I was still in my own country? This is why I fled at first to Tarshish. I knew that you are a gracious and merciful God, slow to anger, rich in kindness, loathe to punish.” (Jonah 4:2)

Mercy is the Sign of God’s Presence. It is telling that God instructed Moses to make the gold lid on the Ark of the Covenant to be called the Mercy Seat, the “Kaporet,” situated between two cherubim in the Holy of Holies (Numbers 7:89). Yahweh demanded that the cloud and fire of His Presence be identified with His mercy. The weight of God’s glory rested on the Mercy Seat, where it always rests. The kaporet was the lid over the Ark of the Covenant, God’s Testimony. The Mercy Seat was in the center of the Holiest Place, which was in the center of their camp, and so the Mercy Seat was literally the center of everything in the wilderness journey. The Mercy Seat was the center of everyone’s attention, and mercy was the very point of the center. When God revealed His mercy, whether through manna, quail, permanent clothing, or during Yom-Kippur, it is like the king in all His glory. “Once a year on Yom-Kippur, in the Tabernacle’s most sacred place, the Holy of Holies, the high priest would enter and drench the Mercy Seat with the blood of the animal sacrificed to make atonement for the people. This is the physical place where Yahweh met the high priest and where He forgave the sins of the people of Israel. The Mercy Seat prefigures the eternal mercy, grace and hope that alone came through Jesus the Messiah, through His shed blood, making atonement once and for all, placing the weight of humanity’s sins on Him.” (notes from the Complete Jewish Bible, Dr. David Stern). Directly above the Mercy Seat, God chose to present Himself, letting His voice be heard by Moses or the high priest. He identified Himself with mercy by His choice of resting place, sitting on His royal throne of Mercy. The kaporet was not an impressive royal throne of power. Yahweh’s power was exercised in His mercy. God’s mercy was what His power looked like, and His glory is reflected in His will of mercy. In so many ways, the Mercy Seat was a foreshadowing of the Cross, drenched in the blood of the sacrifice of Jesus to cover over, to conceal, to atone for the sins of the people. On His Cross, we see Jesus on our Day of Atonement. The Mercy Seat and the Cross revealed a judgment of mercy. St. Paul brought this together in his letter to the Romans, “God put Yeshua (Jesus) forward as the kapparah for sin through His faithfulness in respect to His bloody sacrificial death…” (Romans 3:25-26).

Mercy is Closer to the Heart of God than Empty Religion. God’s preferences are made very clear in Isaiah 58:4-7. Yahweh is much more pleased with the self-denial it takes to show mercy, than whatever self-discipline is revealed in insincere obedience to religious obligations. “Your kind of fasting is pointless! On a day like today, fasting like yours will not make your voice heard on high. What kind of fast do I choose? Is a true fast simply some religious exercise for making a person feel miserable and woeful? Is it about how you bow your head, like a bent reed, or how you dress in sackcloth, or where you sit in a bed of ashes? Is this what you call a fast, a day the Lord finds good and proper? No, what I want in a fast is this: to liberate those tied down and held back by injustice; to lighten the load of those heavily burdened; to free the oppressed and shatter every type of oppression. A fast for me involves sharing your food with people who have none; giving to those who are homeless a space in your house; giving clothes to those who need them; fulfilling your duty to your own family and not neglecting their needs.”

A Foundational Truth to Consider. God’s will is based on His character, and so His will shall always reflect His essence and divine identity. His will is always going to be a revelation of His authentic Being, and it will not compromise His nature. To be in the center of God’s will then, we need to live in the center of who God is, what His character is through His Holy Spirit with Jesus. God’s character determines the substance of His will. His ultimate intentions and plans will unfailingly line up with His character. It appears from Scripture that God’s will is mercy. God’s bottom-line will is mercy. What God wants for the world to experience is His mercy and goodness, and His desire is to demonstrate the essence of His character.

“Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of his inheritance? You do not stay angry forever but delight to show mercy. You will again have compassion on us; you will tread our sins underfoot and hurl all our iniquities into the depths of the sea.”  (Micah 7:18-19).

What Mercy looks like. “Our Father in heaven…. Your will be done…” (Matt. 6:10). All it takes is one reading of the Gospels, and can there be any doubt as to the mission of God’s Son on earth? Mercy. Jesus is mercy with flesh on. Mercy was clearly the marching order from the Father, inviting all of mankind into the arms of God, the Father of Mercy. “I have come down from heaven, not to do my own will, but the will of Him who sent me.” (John 6:38). And the mission of the Son was to reveal the will of the Father. Literally, Jesus is God’s will.

1. Christ’s mission of mercy as described in Luke 4:16-17and Isaiah 61:1-2, was all about mercy: To preach Good News to the poor; to proclaim liberty to the captives; to heal the brokenhearted; to proclaim recovery of sight to the blind; to set free those who are oppressed.
2. The merciful proofs of the Messiah in Matthew 11:1-6: The blind see, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the poor have the gospel preached to them.
3. The fact that, anointed by the Holy Spirit, Jesus “went about doing good, including the casting out of demons” (Acts 10:38). Jesus wrapped up His section in the Sermon on the Plain with, “Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.” (Luke 6:36). Maybe that gets to the heart of the matter. The following “Works of Mercy” are based on Jesus’ parable of the Sheep and the Goats in Matthew 25:31-46, and are a good place to start when thinking about how to go about “doing good.”1. Feed the hungry; 2. Give water to the thirsty; 3. Shelter the stranger; 4. Clothe the naked; 5. Comfort the sick; 6. Visit the Prisoner.
4. Of course, let’s not forget that Calvary, the sacrifice of Christ for our deliverance from sin and Satan into eternal life with Him, is undoubtedly the greatest act of mercy ever performed. The Cross is the greatest proof we can find that reveals God’s will of mercy. “Calvary is the Great Central Fact of all that has been made known of the Will-of-God, His will of Mercy, His divine passion to show mercy.”(Rex Andrews, What the Bible Teaches About Mercy). So Jesus, God’s Son, is what mercy looks like. Christ is the full expression of the mercy of the Father, and reveals God’s supreme will of mercy in the world. Jesus is God’s Will in-the-Flesh.
5. Perhaps the supreme example of Christ’s obedience was in Gethsemane. One of the most heart-breaking scenes in the Gospels reveals a full prostration… Jesus praying in the Garden of Gethsemane fully flat on the ground in utter agony. “And He took with Him Peter, James and John, and began to be very distressed and troubled; and He said to them, ‘My soul is deeply grieved to the point of death; remain here and keep watch.’ And He went a little beyond them, and fell to the ground (pipto), and began to pray that if it were possible, the hour might pass Him by. And He was saying, ‘Abba! Father! All things are possible for You; remove this cup from Me; yet not what I will, but what You will.‘” (Mark 14:33-36; also refer to 26:36-39). We see here that Jesus is in desperate distress, and He literally threw Himself to the ground, fully prostrating Himself in prayer to His Father. Jesus is humbly submitting to the Father as He opens His heart to Him. He is fully on the ground, in total privacy, stretching out and remaining vulnerable to whomever might come to Him there. But that is not all he is doing on the ground like that. According to many biblical scholars, Jesus is also identifying Himself with the fall of mankind, kissing the dust of the earth. Jesus “let’s Himself fall into man’s fallenness.” (Fr. Ratzinger). With a tormented soul, Jesus collapses to the ground and assumes a servile position before the Father as well as a position of solidarity with His fellow human beings in the flesh. Here is a case when the Father’s will of mercy was intended for our salvation, and thus Jesus’ will was rejected. The Father permitted His Son to suffer and die for us.

God’s Will of Mercy for Us. When we live into Christ’s words in Gethsemane, “not my will but yours O Lord,” we may not get specific answers, such as this job or that job, this person or that person, this church or that church, this school or that school. There are times when all the alternatives could just as well be God’s will for that particular situation. Ask God for wisdom and discernment, and prayerfully make your decision, and go in God’s peace. No matter what one chooses, we know that God will be at your side regardless. And we also know the most important aspect of God’s will: Mercy. Whichever choice one makes, we need to remember that in His heart of mercy, God wants what is best for us. He wants us to flourish, to reach the pinnacle of health and well-being, to fulfill the potential of mankind as He invented us at creation. When the Lord says in Scripture what His will is for us, He is saying that out of His mercy He wants to transform us into the likeness of Jesus, who is in fact God’s will of mercy. We do know what His will looks like for us as we read the gospels of Jesus. As we do God’s will, we will continue to grow from glory to glory to look more like Christ. As John said in 1 John 2:17, “Those who do the will of God will abide forever.”

Mercy is the chief attribute of God, and seems to be the main way he shows his power. And so if we were made in his image, mercy is meant to be our main attribute as well. Mercy: Such is God with us, such are we to be with others.

What is so unlikely about mercy? Take a look around you in this world. What do you see a lot of… cruelty, revenge, unforgiveness, injustice, hard hearts. That’s right, the opposite of mercy. And yet, and yet, Scripture says that the whole earth is full of God’s mercy (Psalm 33:5, 119:64). Really? Yes! Creation was motivated by mercy, and is sustained by mercy. There is mercy shown every day by God and by people all around us. On the one hand, the world is filled with violence and hatred. On the other hand, it is saturated with the faithful, unfailing lovingkindness of God. In a rough and tumble world, God demonstrates that tender is the new tough. It may seem unlikely at times, but as light conquers darkness, mercy overcomes unmercy, overshadows it at every turn. Every breath is a mercy, every thought, every joy. In fact, it is God’s mercy that enables us to enjoy anything at all. Let faith open your eyes to see God’s mercy in every step, every sunrise, around every corner. Acknowledge the omnipresence of mercy every day. Mercy abounds. The whole earth is full of His mercy.

“Practice mercy, justice, and righteousness in the earth. For in these things do I delight.” (Jeremiah 9:24).