That We May Receive Mercy<title> <link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="../../sermon.css"> <style fprolloverstyle>A:hover {color: #FF0000} </style> <style type="text/css"> p { font-family: sans-serif; font-size: small; text-align: justify; } cite { font-variant: small-caps; font-size: smaller; } </style> <link rel="STYLESHEET" type="text/css" href="../2002/sermon.css"> </head> <body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" vlink="#0000FF"> <table BORDER=0 CELLSPACING=0 CELLPADDING=4 > <tr VALIGN=BASELINE BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF"> <td COLSPAN="2" BGCOLOR="#000080"> <b> <font color="#FFFFFF"> <span style="mso-bidi-font-size: 12.0pt; mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">  That We May Receive Mercy </span> </font> </b> <font color="#FFFFFF"><br>A Sermon based on </font> <a target="_blank" href="http://bible.gospelcom.net/cgi-bin/bible?language=english&version=NIV&passage=Hebrews+4:12-16"><font color="#FFFFFF"><span style="mso-fareast-font-family: Times New Roman; mso-ansi-language: EN-US; mso-fareast-language: EN-US; mso-bidi-language: AR-SA">Hebrews 4:12-16</span></font></a> </td> </tr> <tr> <td COLSPAN="2" width="640">  <p>One week ago last Tuesday, a young couple who are members at Wilshire Baptist Church, Amy and Cory Anderson, awoke to discover that their three-month old son, Zane, had died during the night from SIDS, sudden infant death syndrome. Zane was also the grandson of Tom Newsome, who grew up here at Cliff Temple.</p> <p>I was deeply touched by what their pastor, George Mason, told the family at the funeral service. May I share a brief passage of his comments with you? "We offer our broken hearts to the God whose heart was the first to break at the moment of this child's death. Only this brokenhearted God can bear our grief and carry our sorrow. We have not come seeking answers to questions that will not bring Zane back to us. We have come to find rest for our souls in the arms of the same Savior who knew how to receive little children and who has now welcomed Zane to himself" <cite>(George Mason, Memorial Message for Zane Thomas Anderson, Wilshire Baptist Church, Dallas, Texas, October 7, 2006)</cite>.</p> <p>What a wonderful image of God, as the one brokenhearted before we are! Especially in times of personal sorrow or shame or disappointment or moral failure, it is so hard to keep a balanced perspective of God and so easy to ask questions for which Jesus himself found no answer in the midst of his greatest personal agony. The Jesus who cried out, <strong>"My God, my God . . . why?"</strong> <cite>(Matthew 27:46, NIV)</cite>. If you ever wonder if it is OK to ask God why, think of Jesus. Just be sure to remember this. Even for Jesus, heaven was silent.</p> <p>In this morning's text from the book of Hebrews we are least given this much from the God who is more often than not silent in response to our questions. Indeed, it is a perfectly balanced image of God. A God of judgment and mercy. That's because both are a function of each other. Judgment means there are no secrets with God. Mercy is what we receive when there is nothing left to hide.</p> <p>Before Creator God, we are naked, laid bare. His revealed and written word exposes us. That may well be one of the main reasons we don't read the Bible more than we do. It is a reflection, not just of God but of ourselves. Sometimes, the hardest person to look at is the one we see staring back us in the mirror of God's word.</p> <p>The word of God is referred to as a sword whose razor edge is capable of separating the parts of our being at the deepest level. Because I've never a seen a real sword, except in a museum or in the movies, it's a hard image for me to appreciate. A more understandable image is that of a laser. The word of God is like a laser beam, capable of cutting through the steel plates of our moral pretense and exposing us for who we are at the deepest level of our being. Before God, exposed, there are no excuses. We are just seen as we are for what we are.</p> <p>There is actually hope and comfort in knowing that. Answering to God means that we matter. That our lives do count, perhaps more than we were aware. Think of a life where we didn't answer to anyone, especially God. Yet, at the same time, in our moral nakedness, we receive mercy. Indeed, there is no other way to get mercy than to receive it for what we are. We only receive mercy when we come as we are. Otherwise, we are still relying on something other than God's mercy.</p> <p>Two images of mercy-receiving presented themselves to me this week. One, from my own life, was an image of how to fail at receiving mercy. The other, from Don and Susie Caldwell, was an image of what it is like to receive what only mercy can offer.</p> <p>I serve on the national Coordinating Council for the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship, the fellowship of believers and churches through which we fund most of our international mission work. I was attending a Council meeting this past week in Atlanta. The meeting was held in the conference room of a hotel. It was a multi-level, crescent-shaped high-tech media room. The meeting had already started when I arrived and, since I was one of the last to enter the room, the only seats left were, of course, at the very front of the room, down at the bottom. The front pews, if you will. I had to go down several steps to get to my place. My hands were full of registration stuff and as I made my way down the steps I failed to watch carefully. About halfway down, I put my foot out where there was no step. A 747 couldn't have made a louder noise crash landing than I did falling. It was one of those truly humiliating moments as the conference room fell dead silent.</p> <p>Time stalled as I fell. Somehow, in that split second disaster, my brain had time to process these thoughts. "I'm going to fall. I can't stop it. It's going to hurt and the main thing everyone will be thinking is, 'Boy! I'm glad that wasn't me!'" Of course, people rushed to help. But, I also had already decided that the only way to retain any dignity was to jump to my feet unattended. With an athletic prowess I didn't know I had, I cleared myself from the floor before one hand could help me up. I would have received mercy from those nearby. But, I didn't allow mercy. I was too interested in proving I could handle things myself.</p> <p>From another perspective, Don and Susie Caldwell were telling me this week about their family's love for the farm they bought some thirty years ago, where Kayse learned her love of the outdoors and for horses. The drought has taken its toll and one of the watering tanks had all but dried up. In search of water, a calf had wandered from its mother and out onto the dried cake of soil that used to be the tank's bottom. Just before it reached what was left of the water it had gotten stuck in mud. Don and Susie knew they had to rescue the calf. Despite the mother cow's protests, Don started out on the dried mud and soon became mired himself. He was stuck and yelled to Susie that he couldn't even pull his feet out. Together, they found a way of getting Don free. Susie said that, if she had not been there to help Don, he would still be stuck and what is now a funny story would not have had a happy ending. Don was able to walk free from what might have been a life-threatening disaster because Susie showed mercy and because Don had no choice but to receive it.</p> <p>Again, mercy is what we receive when there's nothing left to hide and we can't help ourselves. It's what we receive from God when we've fallen so far and so hard we can't get up anymore. Mercy is what happens next when we are honest with God about our falling. In fact, if this text reveals anything to us it is that we were created for honesty with God. A life without honesty with God is a life without life. When we are honest with God, we find him to be, as this scripture says so well, a sympathetic savior. A sympathetic relationship is one in which two people share common experiences. One in which what affects one also affects the other.</p> <p>Someone said something recently that has given me new hope about how mercy does its work, especially how people might receive God's mercy even through me, this broken, frail, sinful human being. It has something to do with things that God uses in our lives to help us become agents of sympathy ourselves. He said that people learn more about God from us through our humanity than through our perfection (Thanks to Don Guthrie, Pastor, First Baptist Church, San Antonio, Texas).</p> <p>We see this kind of thing at work in the life of the apostle Paul. Listen to his words of confession. <strong>"Our hope for you is firm, because we know that just as you share in our sufferings, so you also share in our comfort. We do not want you to be uninformed, brothers, about the hardships we suffered in the province of Asia. We were under great pressure, far beyond our ability to endure, so that we despaired even of life. Indeed, in our hearts we felt the sentence of death. But this happened that we might not rely on ourselves but on God, who raises the dead"</strong> <cite>(2 Corinthians 1:7-9, NIV)</cite>.</p> <p><strong>"Pressure,"</strong> he said. Like, stress to the breaking point kind of pressure. Like grapes being crushed beneath feet in a wine press, all the life juices squeezed out on every side. All of life being crushed away. Fallen, down, hard. Despairing of life. Fallen too far, too hard to get up on his own. All of this confession from the one to whom we look as the hero of heroes of the Christian faith, the giant of faith from whom we gain a substantial portion of our knowledge about the Christ who redeems. His hope, in his confession, was that he and the Corinthians, in sharing a common experience of life suffering, might also together find the comfort that only God can give.</p> <p>Sympathy. Mercy. Something we can truly find only in the company of those with whom we have shared a common experience of suffering and loss. My guess is that Zane's parents will not be comforted by anyone as much as by others who have suffered as they have and have been willing to lay themselves bare about the silence of heaven in the face of unresolvable and mysterious suffering.</p> <p>Do you remember B.B. McKinney's old hymn, "Let Others See Jesus in You"? We sang it so often when I was growing up I'm certain I could sing it solo from memory this morning, though I'm equally certain you'd prefer I not do that. Listen to these words from one of the lines in the hymn. <em>Your life's a book before their eyes, they're reading it thro and thro. Say, does it point them to the skies, do others see Jesus in you?</em></p> <p>As a child and even young adult, I thought of that sentiment as a challenge to live a life of perfection, no moral flaws visible, a life perfectly in control. Maybe McKinney meant it that way. Yet, as life offers me more and more opportunities to become sympathetic with more and more people, I'm coming to see the sentiment to let others see Jesus in me not as a challenge to live a life of <em>perfection</em> as much as to live a life of <em>confession</em>. People don't learn as much about Jesus from me when I'm standing strong as when I have to confess, "I've fallen and I can't get up!" When others see us fallen, then see us turning to the God who raises the dead as our only hope of ever standing again, that's when Jesus shows through most perfectly. It is not in our perfection that others see Jesus in us. It is when we live lives that are demonstrably and totally dependent on God's mercy that others will see Jesus in us.</p> <p>Our primary model, even beyond Paul, is the son of God himself, the <em>sympathetic</em> Jesus <strong>"who is</strong> [not unable] <strong>to sympathize with our weaknesses, but . . . who in every respect has been tested as we are."</strong> That means that Jesus is the only one who can say to us, no matter what we are experiencing, especially in what we are suffering, "I know how you feel." The Jesus who fell hard into death himself, and couldn't get up, wouldn't have gotten up, had it not been for his Father who raises the dead. He can even understand and even sympathize with our darkest, most secret temptations. That means that, whether we can believe it or not, we have something in common with Jesus, and he with us. Whatever breaks our hearts, has already broken God's.</p> <p>So, here is the invitation. Believing that we will find sympathy and mercy, even in God's judgment, <strong>"Let us . . . approach the throne of grace with boldness, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need."</strong></p> <p>Until two summers ago I'd never seen a real throne, before my eyes. When we passed through London on the way to Latvia and Russia to work with the orphans, in one museum after another, I saw real thrones upon which very human kings and queens once sat and from which they ruled vast kingdoms, sometimes very ruthlessly. Then again, in St. Petersburg, Russia, at the Winter Palace, more thrones. They were rather intimidating. They spoke of power, wealth and control, almost always exercised by people who had no concept what the lives of the people they ruled were really like. Like the politician who makes farm policy but doesn't know the price of a gallon of milk and how hard it can be to earn it.</p> <p>The throne of God, before which we are invited to come when we are most in need, is a throne of mercy. A throne occupied by one who once left it, in the person of Jesus, to taste life as it really is in human flesh and who, unlike human royalty, can sympathize with our greatest temptations, our greatest sorrows. When Zane died in the night, by himself, nobody knew how much that hurt more than the God whose own son died.</p> <p>Whatever is breaking your heart right now, has already broken God's. Won't you come to him, crawl to him, fall hard to him, die to him, that you may find in your crawling, stumbling, falling and dying, a mercy you might never could have imagined God was capable of offering? Won't you come? There's nothing but mercy waiting. Nothing but mercy. Mercy!</p> <hr WIDTH="100%"> </td> </tr> <tr> <td> Glen Schmucker, Pastor </td> <td> <div align=right>  October 15, 2006 </div> </td> </tr> <tr> <td COLSPAN=2> Copyright © 2006, Glen Schmucker </td> </tr> </table> </body> </html>