A Gracious and Merciful God
August 26th, 2009We’ve talked a good bit about the consequences of rebellion and disobedience over the past few weeks – and there certainly are such consequences – mainly brought upon ourselves by ourselves. And, while we have studied instances of God’s wrath in this past quarter, by far and away the God of the Old Testament is, as portrayed in today’s lesson scripture, “slow to anger” and “ready to forgive”.
The context of today’s scripture is the national confession of the nation of Israel upon the return from exile after 539 B.C. during the reconstruction of Jerusalem and its walls. After recounting all the great and wonderful things that God had done for the people – beginning with freeing them from bondage in Egypt – a recitation of what went wrong was given:
16 ”But they and our ancestors acted presumptuously and stiffened their necks and did not obey your commandments;
17 they refused to obey, and were not mindful of the wonders that you performed among them; but they stiffened their necks and determined to return to their slavery in Egypt. But you are a God ready to forgive, gracious and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and you did not forsake them.
18 Even when they had cast an image of a calf for themselves and said, ‘This is your God who brought you up out of Egypt,’ and had committed great blasphemies,
19 you in your great mercies did not forsake them in the wilderness; the pillar of cloud that led them in the way did not leave them by day, nor the pillar of fire by night that gave them light on the way by which they should go.
20 You gave your good spirit to instruct them, and did not withhold your manna from their mouths, and gave them water for their thirst. Neh 9:16-20 (NRSV)
Once again we come across the term “steadfast love” – a translation of the Hebrew chesed. Can you recount a time in your life when it first dawned upon you that this was fundamental to our understanding of the nature of God? I remember sitting in the bleachers in the gym at Tupelo High during a meeting of Campus Crusade in the early ’70’s and it hit me with considerable force that: (a) I wasn’t ever going to merit salvation on my own; and (b) God was going to accept me anyway. It was both a quieting and stunning realization.
It was a typical Sunday evening service, singing, hearing the gospel preached, more singing, collection of the offering…then…the invitation to come forward and accept Christ into our hearts…my heart. I was ten years old and up until that night, I had attended those Sunday night services somewhat reluctantly. This night was to be very different for me.
As I sat in the hard wooden pew (I’m sure I was fidgeting like always) listening to “Just As I Am” with the preacher calling out to those in the congregation…I felt something, a soft touch lifting me up out of the pew and gently nudging me to make that long and scary walk to the front of the sanctuary in front of everyone. I recall standing perfectly still, not knowing what the preacher would say or do with me. I wasn’t even sure why I was there! I just knew I did not make that walk alone.
I remained after the service to receive instruction to come to the Wednesday night service to receive my baptism…I was driven home and there I told my family what I had done. Wednesday rolled around and I was there, waiting my turn to walk down into the water where I received the Holy Spirit through baptism, by full emersion. Still, I was not sure why me, or why then. God’s timing is perfect and His amazing grace (steadfast love) became blindingly apparent to me later in my adulthood years. – Karen