August 10, 2025
Greetings and blessings to all of you. God is a Merciful God. Psalm 103:8-17 “The Lord is merciful and gracious slow to anger and plenteous in mercy. …but the mercy of Lord is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children’s children.” There has been a lot of careless teaching that implies that the Old Testament is a book of severity and law, and the New Testament is a book of tender and grace. The word mercy appears in the Old Testament over four times more often than in the New Testament. Recall that God is immutable…. Jesus Christ is the same yesterday, today and forever... Heaven and earth were yet unmade and the stars were yet unformed and God was as merciful as He is now. God‘s mercy is enough to enfold the whole universe in His heart. His mercy never began to be…it always was. The mercy of God is infinite. Do not imagine that when the day of judgement comes God will turn off His mercy as you turn off a spigot. Nothing that occurs can increase the mercy of God or diminish the mercy of God or alter the quality of the mercy of God. It has been said “when Jesus died on the cross the mercy of God did not become any greater. It could not become any greater for it was already infinite. We get the odd notion that God is showing mercy because Jesus died. No, Jesus died because God is showing mercy. It was the mercy of God that gave us Calvary, not Calvary that gave us mercy. If God had not been merciful there would have been no incarnation, no babe in the manager and no open tomb.” The mercy of God is so wonderful to a sinner because it is what we needed so desperately at the moment. The fact is sometimes we need certain attributes more than others. God’s mercy had been operating all the time. In Lamentations 3:22 it reads, “It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not.” All men are recipients of the mercy of God but God has postponed the execution. The blackest heart is the recipient of the mercy of God. That does not mean he will be saved or converted and finally reach heaven; but it means that God is holding up His justice because He is a merciful God. “The Lord…not willing that any should perish” (2 Peter 3:9) We go to heaven on the mercy of God in Christ. By showing mercy to others, we give genuine evidence of having received God’s mercy.
With the Love of Christ
First Lady Vivian C. Currie
Pastor ALC