In this enlightening episode, we journey into the heart of God’s merciful nature as depicted in Psalm 103. Dave Hawking brings us into a deeper understanding of how mercy and truth are intertwined, a blend that provides the basis for a life filled with grace and forgiveness. We explore the intricacies of God’s character and how His mercy extends beyond mere pardon, offering healing, satisfaction, and redemption.
Dear friends, we know what mercy is, and it’s such a delight to be around people who are merciful and kind and compassionate. And we often need that sympathy and that encouragement. But let me tell you something, even the best of us in that area often don’t care. But there is one who is in heaven whose throne is there, who rules all the affairs of men and sees everything that we do, who is not sometimes merciful and sometimes judgmental. Our Heavenly Father is always merciful. And the Bible even calls His throne the throne of grace where we may obtain mercy.
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This is Hope for Today, the Bible teaching ministry of David Hawking. Someone listening right now knows what it is to need mercy. Mercy, not a theory, not religion. Mercy, the kind you need when you’ve failed, when you’ve strayed, or when you know you cannot fix what sin has broken. And that is where the God of the Bible meets us. Not with empty sentiment and not by ignoring sin, but with mercy that’s rooted in his own holy character. Today, as we continue our series on the attributes of God, David begins a message called The Mercy of God. Stay with us as we open the scriptures and behold the God who is holy, righteous, faithful, and rich in mercy. First, we want to point you to a free download available on the homepage at davidhawking.org. It’s called Does God Truly Love Me? Nothing to sign up for. Click download and you’ll have it. If you or someone you know needs to be assured that the God of the Bible truly loves you or loves them, this resource will help point you back to what God has said in his word. And here’s David with today’s study. Psalm 103
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Our theme today is the mercy of God. Psalm 103, the mercy of God. In Proverbs 3, 3 and 4, it says, Let not mercy and truth forsake you. Bind them around your neck. Write them on the tablet of your heart. And so find favor and high esteem in the sight of God and men. Interesting verse that blends truth. And mercy, and God says, make sure they’re always with you and never forsake them. Truth needs to be spoken and we need to be right. But mercy needs to be combined with truth. They go together. Truth without mercy becomes calloused, hard, cold, often legalistic. And mercy without truth becomes sentimental and wishy-washy and doesn’t really take a stand and isn’t courageous and has no holiness to it. Mercy and truth. In Psalm 103, it says, Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me. Bless His holy name. Bless the Lord, O my soul, and forget not all His benefits. Who forgives all your iniquities. Who heals all your diseases. Who redeems your life from destruction. Who crowns you with loving kindness and tender mercies. Who satisfies your mouth with good things so that your youth is renewed like the eagle’s. He says, For as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward those who fear him. As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. As a father pities or has mercy on his children, so the Lord pities or is merciful toward those who fear him. For he knows our frame, he remembers that we are dust. As for man, his days are like grass, as a flower of the field, so he flourishes. For the wind passes over it and it is gone, and its place remembers it no more. But the mercy of the Lord is from everlasting to everlasting on those who fear him and his righteousness to children’s children, to such as keep his covenant and to those who remember his commandments to do them. The Lord has established His throne in heaven, and His kingdom rules over all. Bless the Lord, you His angels, who excel in strength, who do His word, heeding the voice of His word. Bless the Lord, all you His hosts, you ministers of His, who do His pleasure. Bless the Lord, all His works, in all places of His dominion. Bless the Lord, O my soul. The mercy of God involves the following seven things. One… Of course, His person, who He is. When the text opens up in Psalm 103, it says, Bless the Lord. Bless His holy name. And notice what verse 8 says. The Lord is merciful. Now, the Lord does show mercy. The Lord has acts of mercy. But the Bible says the Lord is mercy. The Lord is merciful. So it involves this person, who he is. Psalm 111.4 says he is full of compassion. It’s interesting how often when we relate to God, we’re not really sure who he is. We think we know. But let me tell you something. God isn’t part mercy. God is mercy. God is everything mercy could ever hope to be. And he is that kind of a Lord to us. And I sure am glad. I hope you are too. He’s full of compassion. Psalm 116, 5. Gracious is the Lord and righteous. Yes, our God is merciful. It refers to who he is. Psalm 119, 64. The earth, O Lord, is full of your mercy. Psalm 119, 156. Great are your tender mercies, O Lord. Psalm 145, verse 8. The Lord is gracious and full of compassion. Great in mercy. And also in the New Testament, Ephesians 2, 4 says that he is rich in mercy because of his great love. I think a lot of people believe that they have blown it so bad in their life that there’s no hope for them. I hear that so much. I hear people who say, well, if you only knew what I was really like and what I’ve done, there’s no way that I could possibly be what you’re asking me to be. God never is asking you to be anything apart from who he is. He provides for you all that you need. He is not trusting you to perform. That could be good news to a lot of people today. Just take a heavy burden right off of you. The good news of the gospel is who God is. We already know what stinkers we are. Amen? We already know that if we knew, as we often like to say, what was in the heart of the person next to us, we would move. Hey, we don’t want to know about depravity. We want to know about God’s grace and God’s mercy. And mercy is what God is. When you come to the Lord, you’re not coming to somebody who’s sitting with a baseball bat ready to club you for every false move. The Bible teaches that his essential nature and character is mercy. Mercy holds back from us what we really deserve, while grace gives us what we don’t deserve. How wonderful it is to know that it involves his person. That’s what his character is like. There’s never a moment that you come to the Lord that he stops being merciful. Now that is true of people. Every now and then you run into somebody you say has real compassion and care. They’re very merciful. And what a shock when you see that on a certain occasion or two, they are not merciful. Even the best among us who major in compassion can at certain moments not have it. There’s a gift, a spiritual gift, the Bible says, of showing mercy. We believe it’s compassion on the sick and suffering. And how delightful it is, especially for those who visit folks who are sick, to come in and know that they are full of compassion. When you are sick and lying on your bed, you don’t want somebody coming in and discussing 32 reasons why you deserve what you’re getting. I mean, at that moment, you want somebody to say, I love you, and exercise mercy and care, and you want a few strokes. God has a spiritual gift of showing mercy, compassion on the sick and suffering. One of my favorite stories is my own mother. When she had open heart surgery, four bypasses, I was sitting like a good son, also her pastor, by the way, but I was sitting as a good son in the recovery room waiting for her. And the doctor let me sit in there waiting for her to wake up. And as soon as she finally just started to wake up after several hours, I walked over to her and she took one look at me. Before I could even say anything, she said, where’s Pastor Lloyd? She was referring to my good friend, Pastor Lloyd Rinks, who works in hospital visitation. And I said, mother, this is your son. She said, well, I know, but I need somebody with compassion. Dear friends, we know what mercy is, and it’s such a delight to be around people who are merciful and kind and compassionate. And we often need that sympathy and that encouragement. But let me tell you something, even the best of us in that area often don’t care. But there is one who is in heaven whose throne is there, who rules all the affairs of men and sees everything that we do, who is not sometimes merciful and sometimes judgmental. Our Heavenly Father is always merciful. And the Bible even calls His throne the throne of grace where we may obtain what? mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Isn’t it wonderful to know that that’s the Lord we come to? He’s merciful. He knows what we’re like, and He knows we aren’t worth much, but He invites us to come to Him and wants to do these wonderful things for us. How wonderful is the mercy of our Lord. Number two, it not only involves his person, but it involves his provision. It’s mercy that makes all his benefits possible. Verse two says, bless the Lord and forget not all his benefits. And then if you like to just underline your Bible, you don’t have to, but if you like to do that, if that’s a practice, you can just see the flow here. Look at verse three, who forgives. who heals. Verse 4, who redeems, who crowns. Verse 5, who satisfies. It’s just one verb after another telling you about the benefits of our Lord. It is God who is merciful that provides forgiveness, healing, redemption, crowns us, satisfies us. God does it all because He’s a merciful God. The third thing that is involved in the mercy of God is His patience. His patience. Look please at verse 8 and 9 again. It says, “…the Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger.” That’s the word patient. By the way, in the New Testament when you read patience, sometimes it’s translated long-suffering, depending upon the English translation, but it means taking a long time to boil. slow to anger. Aren’t you glad God doesn’t fly off the handle? Have you grown up in a home where maybe one or more of the parents had a temper, and you did something wrong as a kid, and all of a sudden, wongo. I mean, it’s National Wipeout Kids Week. That’s not easy to experience that. Now, there’s a time to be angry. There is a righteous anger. And we need to be angry at what is wrong. But sometimes that goes over to people. Have you noticed that? And so sometimes parents can be angry with their kids because they’re not living up to their expectations. Hey, that’s not the character of God. God’s never angry at people. He’s long-suffering. He’s angry at what they do. There’s a difference, folks. We’re to be angry at sin, but we should be loving towards people, no matter how sinful they are. And it’s kind of a struggle that we all face. In the mercy of God, it involves patience. Look at verse 8 again. Slow to anger and abounding in mercy. There’s more than enough to go around, and there’s more than you need. It says in verse 9, in explaining that, he will not always strive with us. Now that’s a true statement. Let’s take, for instance, the long-suffering patience of God in the days of Noah. The Bible refers to it in 1 Peter 3.20 and calls it patience. In the days of Noah, Genesis 6, 3, God said to that corrupt, violent society, millions on the planet, whom he was going to soon destroy with a flood, God said, my spirit will not always strive with man, and his days will be 120 years. God gave them, however, 120 years. That’s what I call mercy. You see, his spirit will not always strive. So verse 9 says that we would understand patience from God is that he won’t always, he will not always strive with us. He won’t continue to give us all these opportunities, nor will he keep his anger forever. God one day will reveal it. There is payday someday. There’s a judgment to be faced. Unless we turn to the mercy of God. But when you read this, you see God’s patience in it. He’s slow to take action. He’s abounding in mercy. And I like to say he gives you a long rope. A lot of times we think that we’re, you know, not experiencing any judgment from God. We’re just living up whatever the world says. It’s national party time for us. And we’re just doing everything we possibly can do that we believe the world and unbelievers do. We live like them, act like them. We’re miserable inside, but we don’t want anybody to know it. And a lot of kids do this. And as a result, they’re really messing up their lives. And they say, well, I didn’t get zapped. Wait a minute. The reason you didn’t get zapped, even though you deserve it, is because the Lord is merciful. But don’t you presume upon his mercy he will not strive with you forever. He won’t keep his anger back forever. But when we understand the mercy of God, what a wonderful thing to know that God is patient with us. He is merciful. By the way, our next message is on the patience of God. So we’ll say no more at this point. Number four, when you say, what is involved in mercy? It also involves His punishment, believe it or not. I love verse 10. When God does punish us for our sins, understand that it’s done in mercy. If God would punish you according to what you really deserve, you’d be in big trouble. The Bible says in verse 10, he has not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities. Aren’t you glad of that? God knows exactly everything that you have ever done, said, or thought. Even when you think nobody knows. Even when you’ve lied, you’ve shined in front of somebody, you’ve put on a big act. But let me tell you something. The Bible says in Hebrews 4.13 that all things are naked and open under the eyes of him with whom we have to deal. By the way, the truth of the Bible is that you don’t even know yourself. You think you’re hiding? What are you hiding from? You don’t even know what you’re hiding from. You don’t even know who you really are. In Jeremiah 17, 9, it says the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately wicked. Who can know it? Says verse 10. It is I, the Lord, that searches the reins of the heart. God knows us in a way we don’t even know ourselves. And all things about us are naked and open under the eyes of him. with whom we have to deal. Now that’s an interesting verse in Hebrews 4.13, because the idea of being naked and open is referring to a sacrificial animal. When the priest holds the animal and exposes the neck, and we’re getting ready to slice the neck and kill the animal. All of us before God are like the animal with an exposed neck, ready to be judged. Aren’t you glad for the mercy of God? God will not punish us, the Bible says, in direct proportion to what we deserve. It is not according to our sins. It is not according to our iniquities. And God is gracious and He is loving. Lamentations 3.22 says, It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. Turn to Psalm 106 and look at verse 44. When you examine the mercy of God, it involves His person, who He is. It involves His wonderful provision, all of His benefits. It involves His patience. He’s slow to anger and abounding in mercy. And it involves His punishment. The fact is, He does not punish us according to our iniquities. In Psalm 106, verse 44, Nevertheless, He regarded their affliction when He heard their cry, and for their sake He remembered His covenant, and relented… According to the multitude of his mercies. He also made them to be pitied. That’s mercy again. By all those who carried them away captive. Now, they’re reviewing the history of Israel. Israel’s carried away captive. They deserve what they got. And it wasn’t even as severe as they thought. At least they were alive. Many of them in captivity were crying and weeping and lamenting what had happened. But in fact, they were at least alive. Life continued. But God heard their cry, the Bible says, and for their sake he remembers his covenant. And the reason he relented and didn’t let it go on while he changed and restored them back is because of tender mercies. Now look, folks, a lot of times we mess up our lives. You know that and I know that. We get involved in something we shouldn’t and we just keep going on. It’s like it gets worse. It may be difficult to sin the first time, but it gets easier the second time and easier the third time. Before we know it, we’re slaves. We’re in bondage to some trap, some habit, some desire, something. We’re in bondage and we need to be set free. My friends, it is God’s mercy. That moves in at a time like that. When we deserve to suffer the consequences of our actions, the Lord relents because he’s a merciful God and actually will save us and restore us. And I say hallelujah for that. Aren’t you glad of that? That’s who God is. It does involve his punishment. But according to the Bible, his mercy in the midst of that punishment is one of the reasons that there’s hope even when we’re being judged for what we have done. Wow. That’s tremendous. The mercy of God. Back to Psalm 103, the fifth thing that is involved is His pardon. There are probably no two verses in the Bible that so clearly demonstrate what God does with our sin than these two verses. Verse 11, “…for as the heavens are high above the earth, so great is His mercy toward those who fear Him.” As far as the east is from the west, so far has he removed our transgressions from us. Boy, I tell you, I read that and I say, praise the Lord. They’re gone. Now, there are always folks around who remind you of them. Have you noticed that? But according to the Bible, they’re gone.
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That’s Bible teacher and author David Hawking. And David’s back in just a few moments to wrap up today’s study. So do stay right there. First, Matt’s here. Matt Hawking, that is. And we have something that may just change the way you think when it comes to how our world and how our universe came into being.
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Matt? This month, we are offering our book, The Beginning. It’s 150 plus powerhouse pages of teaching through Genesis 1 through 11. Again, this is David’s book, The Beginning, From Creation to the Flood.
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It’s quite popular with our listening family, Matt, and it’s a study with vital and encouraging insights into God’s power, His faithfulness, righteousness, and love through the earliest days of history. But also insights to govern and direct our lives today. Exactly. And Matt, with the with a proliferation of confusion today. And we see so much of that around us, don’t we? Big time.
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It is so vital that we understand the whole counsel of Scripture and anchor ourselves in its power. Starting with the essential first 11 chapters. Exactly, exactly. And the matter of origins, as we see dramatically and miraculously unveiled in Genesis, is vitally important for our sense of purpose, worth, and meaning in life. Amen to that, Matt.
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while the beginning from Creation to the Flood by David Hawking is just $15. And friend, your purchase or a donation, if you choose that, helps the ministry of Hope for Today. And please pray for Hope for Today. Amen to that. Amen. Matt, we also want to mention that our current radio series on the attributes of God is available, the complete series on MP3, for just $20. You can also order David’s original sermon notes for this series, the complete set of notes for all the messages in the Attributes of God radio series, and that resource is just $10. These resources can help you continue studying along with us and keep these great truths about God, the God of the Bible, close at hand. To order any or all of these Bible study tools, you can visit us online at davidhawking.org or call 800-75-BIBLE, that’s in the U.S., or 888-75-BIBLE in Canada. And Bible, spelled out on your phone, is 24253. And before David returns, we want to ask you to tell us where and how you listen to Hope for Today. Are you listening on the radio, online, through the website, in your car, at home, at work, or maybe somewhere else? We would be encouraged to hear from you. Let us know how this broadcast is reaching you and how the Word of God is ministering to your heart as you study it with us. This helps us to be the best stewards of God’s finances when we are prayerfully deciding which stations to add to our network of radio broadcast affiliates and where to place it online. And if you’d like to send a special donation to help us keep Hope for Today on the air and online, We’d be truly grateful. We are a listener-sponsored broadcast. Write to us in the U.S. at Hope for Today, Box 3927, Tustin, California, 92781. In Canada, write to Hope for Today, Box 15011, RPO Seven Oaks, Abbotsford, B.C., V2S 8P1. Or again, call us at 875-BIBLE to donate in the U.S., 888-75-BIBLE in Canada. Donate online at davidhawking.org. Let’s get back to David.
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Often we’ll read in our New Testament in the greetings, it’ll say, grace and mercy from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ. Now, grace is a beautiful word. It gives us what we don’t deserve. But mercy is also a part of the character of God that holds back from us what we really do deserve. We deserve to be punished and judged for our sins, our ignoring of God and forsaking Him. The Bible’s clear about it. But God’s mercy is there. Titus 3.5 says it’s His mercy that saves us. That is a wonderful truth. In the book of Lamentations, we have the crying and wailing and mourning of the Jewish people over the destruction of the temple and the city of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon. In chapter 1, you hear their cry when they say, Is it nothing to you, O you that pass by? I mean, look at this mess. But in chapter 3, we read these words, It is of the Lord’s mercies that we are not consumed. His compassions fail not. His mercies are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness. Our last study was about the faithfulness of God. It is also behind the mercy of God. God is spoken of over and over again as being the merciful God whose abundant imparting and ready to forgive. What a wonderful Lord! I hope you have that personal relationship with the God of mercy who holds back from us what we really deserve. God bless you. I hope you can be with us for every one of these studies.
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Well, thank you, David. Well, friend, mercy is not God looking the other way. It’s God revealing his heart to sinners who could never, ever rescue themselves. Join us next time as we bring you day two on the mercy of God, right here on Hope for Today.
