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Mercy


Have mercy on me, O God, according to your unfailing love; according to your great compassion blot out my transgressions (Psalm 51:1)

            You know the story. God took David from obscurity to kingship. God granted him victory, fame, power and wealth. One evening, he lusts and commits adultery with the wife of one of his soldiers. She ends up pregnant so David tries to arrange to have Uriah spend time with her. Uriah innocently failed to cooperate, so David arranged to have Uriah killed. Lust, adultery, deceit, murder. We could probably throw pride and anger in there, too. David messed up in major ways. Some of these were capital offenses. He didn't even confess or repent until he was confronted. According to the world, my sins don't begin to measure up to David's.
           There's another guy you have heard about. He was on the fast track to power and position, a legal expert who sought to bring down a group of people who were breaking the Law. He was granted the warrants he needed to arrest and try them by what amounted to the Supreme Court and he meant business. These people were guilty of a capital offense. He got confronted, too.
           David is considered one of the greatest men of the Old Testaments. A man after God's own heart. Paul wrote more books of the New Testament than anyone else. Their sins didn't disqualify them. They were still able to go to God, on God's terms, and they both received mercy. They got a second chance. David committed other sins, and I suspect Paul did, too. They got more than one second chance. That doesn't mean there weren't consequences. There were: hard ones.
          As I said, I've never done anything that would result in capital punishment in our culture. I've committed spiritual treason. I do it without a second thought. I know other people who have done much "worse" and they still found mercy. They are alive and well and being effective in ministry to others - often because of their failure.
            God doesn't have any limits to His mercy. We want Him to. We think that pedophilia, or genocide, or mass or serial murder should bar one from Heaven. I'm convinced that it Hitler, Stalin, Mao, the men who flew the planes on 9/11 or someone who has used a thousand children as sex toys turned to God in their last moments of life, after decades of shaking their fists in God's face and denying His existence, they will be in Heaven with Him. The good person who spends a lifetime being altruistic, but who therefore never seeks God's mercy will not. It's not that God's mercy isn't there, but that they never received it. You can't use up God's mercy. You can only reject it.

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