Coming soon to a couch near you! We’ve been booking some intimate home shows in the Portland area this summer and are looking for some more homes to invade. So if you would like to host an Acoustic Living Room Concert please let us know!
Our God Delights to Show Mercy
I was reading in Micah 7 today and several of the verses leaped out at me. So often this world tries to paint God as a vengeful dictator shaking his finger at us and telling us what not to do and then casting down judgement. Yes, our God is a just God and the wages of sin is death, but he is also a loving and merciful Father who cared enough to sacrifice his only Son on our behalf, to pay the penalty that was rightfully ours to pay. Now we are justified freely by his grace!
This righteousness is given through faith in Jesus Christ to all who believe. There is no difference between Jew and Gentile, for all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and all are justified freely by his grace through the redemption that came by Christ Jesus. God presented Christ as a sacrifice of atonement, through the shedding of his blood—to be received by faith. He did this to demonstrate his righteousness, because in his forbearance he had left the sins committed beforehand unpunished—he did it to demonstrate his righteousness at the present time, so as to be just and the one who justifies those who have faith in Jesus.
—Romans 3:22-26
Is this the action of a wrathful God without mercy and compassion? Sending his one and only Son to die a horrific death on the cross for my sins and your sins? God forbid! No, these are the actions of a loving God redeeming us back and paying the ransom on our behalf. These are the actions of a God who truly delights in showing mercy and not condemnation.
For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because they have not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son. This is the verdict: Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness instead of light because their deeds were evil. Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed. But whoever lives by the truth comes into the light, so that it may be seen plainly that what they have done has been done in the sight of God.
—John 3:16-21
But now we have this blessed hope, the forgiveness of sins now that Jesus has come down and done the will of him who sent him! If we believe in the name of Jesus we are saved from the darkness of our sin. Though we fall and fail, he will lift us out of the darkness and into his light and righteousness.
But as for me, I watch in hope for the Lord, I wait for God my Savior; my God will hear me. Though I have fallen, I will rise. Though I sit in darkness, the Lord will be my light. Because I have sinned against him, I will bear the Lord’s wrath, until he pleads my case and upholds my cause. He will bring me out into the light; I will see his righteousness.
—Micah 7:7,8b,9
I love how this passage in Micah 7 goes on to show that God forgives our sins and won’t stay angry forever, but “delights to show mercy”! He’s not just doing it out of some sense of obligation, or offhandedly and flippantly “Ok, I guess I will forgive you.” No! He delights to show us mercy! Let that sink in and feel your burdens lifted today. You are forgiven and he has “hurled all our iniquities into the depths of the sea!”
Who is a God like you, who pardons sin and forgives the transgression of the remnant 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
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