"God Be Merciful to Me" -- Tim Phillips
This past Lord's Day, I began preaching a new series of sermons on Romans 12 and 13 during our morning worship service. These are, of course, well-known chapters in Paul's letter, and in particular the first two verses of Romans 12 are favorites for many: "I beseech you therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, that you present your bodies a living sacrifice, holy, acceptable to God, which is your reasonable service. And do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you may prove what is that good and acceptable and perfect will of God." Our presbytery hosts a youth camp each summer, and in 2019 these verses were the theme for camp that week. My oldest daughter (who turns 11 tomorrow!) still has the t-shirt from that camp, which serves as a reminder of Paul's admonition to the Roman Christians.
Yet it's the phrase near the beginning of verse 1 that is so striking: "by the mercies of God." Verses 1 and 2 form a transitional passage where Paul moves from the "teaching" portion of Romans (chapters 1-11, the "indicatives") to the "practical" portion of the letter (chapters 12-16, the "imperatives"). It is like Paul is saying to his readers, "In light of everything God has done for us in the gospel of His Son Jesus Christ, here is how you should be living. Nothing else would make sense." But Paul refers to this as God's mercies -- not mercy, but mercies. It is like he is telling us that God's mercy is so rich and full and abundant toward us, he has to express it in the plural just to capture that. Indeed, God is rich in mercy (Ephesians 2:4) and great in mercy toward us (1 Peter 1:3). He is the Father of mercies (2 Corinthians 1:3).
When you think of the mercies of God, what sort of a response does that produce in you? A few years ago, Phil Williams served as Moderator of Synod, and his challenge that year was on the subject of evangelism. When I returned back home (I was in Louisville, Kentucky, at that time), I interrupted my current sermon series to preach a series of sermons on the topic of evangelism. I decided to preach through Luke 5. Several times in that chapter, when individuals meet Jesus, the need for repentance and the forgiveness of sins becomes paramount (see vv. 8, 20, 24, 32). For example, when Peter meets Jesus (not for the first time; see Luke 4:38) and witnesses the miraculous catch of fish (not the first miracle of Jesus he had seen; see Luke 4:39), his response is "Go away from me Lord, for I am a sinful man" (v. 8). When the paralytic man is healed and has his sins forgiven by Jesus, he "went home glorifying God" (v. 25). It seems to me these are entirely proper responses to the gospel: acknowledgement and confession and repentance for our own sins, accompanied with praise in knowing that our sins are forgiven in Jesus Christ (I thank my good friend Nick Napier here for reminding us of the sweet promise found in Romans 8:1).
When I finished Luke 5, I decided to preach one more sermon, seemingly unrelated, from Luke 6, on the topic of the Sabbath. During that sermon, I read from the parallel text in Matthew 12:11-12: "And He said to them, “What man is there among you who has a sheep, and if it falls into a pit on the Sabbath, will he not take hold of it and lift it out? How much more valuable then is a man than a sheep!" I believe this is the only time this has happened to me in 16+ years of gospel ministry, but as I was reading those words during the sermon (words I had read and studied many times throughout the week in preparation for the sermon), a crushing thought hit me, and I stopped for a moment to contemplate what I had just read. I was just like that sheep, I had fallen into a pit, I had no way out, and the Good Shepherd came and reached into that pit and took hold of me and lifted me out. Of course, I preached that glorious truth, along with the not-so-pleasant (but entirely necessary) truth: like Peter, and Matthew, and the paralytic man, and many others, I am a sinful man. The Lord Jesus Christ, by every right, should have departed from me. And yet He didn't. He saved me, just as He saves any who trust in Him and call upon Him. And this salvation came about, not because of anything I have done, but by the sheer mercies of God. "And He Himself bore our sins in His body on the cross, so that we might die to sin and live to righteousness; for by His wounds you were healed. For you were continually straying like sheep, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Guardian of your souls" (1 Peter 2:24-25, drawing heavily on Isaiah 53).
We finished the service this past week by singing the wonderful hymn, based on Psalm 51, "God Be Merciful to Me." God was merciful to David, an adulterer and murderer. He was merciful to the religious terrorist and chief of sinners, the Apostle Paul. He was merciful to that sinful man named Peter, who seemed to fall short of the mark so many times. The Lord is full of mercies, and these mercies are found in Jesus Christ.
What about you, dear pastor? Do you preach the mercies of God in Jesus Christ to your people? Or are you so focused on preaching the "imperatives" that you forget to "indicatives" that make them possible? "What would Jesus do?" and "We need deeds, not creeds" were slogans of liberal Christianity in the 19th and 20th centuries (and they have not gone away in the 21st). But in the process of looking for what we should be doing, we must not forget (or neglect to preach) what God has done for us through the gospel of Jesus Christ. "For what the Law could not do, weak as it was through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and as an offering for sin" (Romans 8:3). "He saved us, not on the basis of deeds which we have done in righteousness, but according to His mercy, by the washing of regeneration and renewing by the Holy Spirit, whom He poured out upon us richly through Jesus Christ our Savior, so that being justified by His grace we would be made heirs according to the hope of eternal life" (Titus 3:5-7). Pastor, make sure you are proclaiming the mercies of God.