Bro Gary Sunday Morning 9/11/11

Bro Gary Sunday Morning 9/11/11

Mercy – Old Testament – beautiful kindness.

                -New Testament – Divine compassion

When did mercy begin?  At the creation of the world? When Adam and Eve sinned?

Way back in eternity before time, God was a God of mercy.  It was not an afterthought for God to be a God of mercy.  God knows everything.  He knew all about Adam and Eve, He knows all about man.  He knows all about everything yet He chose to be a God of mercy.

God is a God of mercy in this time world.  As long as time exists, God will be a God of mercy.  God’s mercy doesn’t end at the end of this time world.  It is from everlasting to everlasting.  When time is no more, when the last song has been sung, the last baby born, the last wedding performed, the last celebration celebrated, when Jesus steps through the eastern skies and all the saved rise to meet him in the air, God will be a God of mercy. 

God will look at all of us that have been redeemed by the blood of the Lamb and we’ll know that we have eternal life because of the great mercy of God.  I don’t know how many are in heaven, a great number.  Each that is there is there because of the great mercy of God.  Every baby that dies goes to heaven. 

Psa 90:1  A Prayer of Moses the man of God. Lord, thou hast been our dwelling place in all generations.

Psa 90:2  Before the mountains were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou art God.

Psa 90:3  Thou turnest man to destruction; and sayest, Return, ye children of men.

I’m glad that I serve a God that was through all eternity and is today and will be for all eternity.

Psa 90:14  O satisfy us early with thy mercy; that we may rejoice and be glad all our days.

Psa 103:17  But the mercy of the LORD is from everlasting to everlasting upon them that fear him, and his righteousness unto children's children;

Among the things that are so wonderful about God is that He is very individual.  He looks at us as individuals and deals with us that way.

Exo 34:6  And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth,

Exo 34:7  Keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon the children's children, unto the third and to the fourth generation.

God told Moses that He was the Lord God, merciful and gracious.

God showed mercy in creating Adam and Eve in His own image.  He knew what He was doing. 

You may wonder what God is trying to tell you.  Why are there certain things transpiring or certain moves being made? 

God knew about Adam and Eve and knew that they would need mercy. 

God chooses to tell man what He wants.  Even if we didn’t have the Bible, we have a conscience.  God was good to Adam and Eve.  He created them in His own image and drew a line of what He wanted them to do. 

He didn’t give a lot of commandments, but told them they couldn’t eat of the forbidden fruit.  They had a wonderful place to live and they had each other so were not alone.  They not only had each other but God Himself came down and visited with them in the cool of the day. 

If you are saved by the blood of the Lamb, there is someone that plans to come and visit you and be of a great enjoyment to you.  Many have the wrong idea of God they see Him as someone that is coming with a baseball bat to straighten them out.  If you have it in your heart to serve God He will come and visit you. 

In 1 Corinthians the laborers watchers, God is coming to visit you and I and we want to be watching, our mind-frame right, our schedule to be right, our life to be right for this visit.

The eternal God is not like our president or governor that never comes to visit those that pay taxes.  The eternal God of heaven visits those that are redeemed by the blood of the Lamb.

God can come to visit in the morning or the even or any time of the day.

Think of the mercies of God that He showed to Adam and Eve after they sinned.  God could have said, “I’m done with man.  I created a man and a woman and they both messed up.”  God came down and showed mercy.  He knew that it required a blood sacrifice to forgive sin.  He took and clothed them out of skins. 

There is a vast and marvelous connection between the mercy of God, the blood that was spilt, and the cloths that He gives mankind after they are saved. 

We are clothed with the garments of salvation.  Sin leaves us without any covering from God.  When we confess and repent and turn from our sin, God says, “Bring the best robes.”  The garments of salvation are the very best robes.

God had great mercy in teaching Adam and Eve how to teach their children to worship God.

The mercy of God in protecting Moses as a baby, and in the king’s palace.  He was never able to forget God’s plan and the good teaching that he’d had as an infant. 

Moses had a hungering to worship.  People get all messed up in what God they choose to worship.  Some worship self, others the world, or pleasure.  Moses had a hunger to worship God.

One day Moses was on the back side of nowhere and God spoke to him from a burning bush.  God told him to take his shoes off because he stood on holy ground.

You didn’t come here because I’m such a great preacher; you came because you hunger for God.  It is the mercy of God that causes us to have a hunger for God. 

David prayed, “Keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins.”  Don’t always presume that you can get right with God later; today is the day of salvation.

God used Moses to lead his children out of Egypt.  It was not always God’s plan that they spend 40 years in the wilderness but for 40 years they lived in tents in the Wilderness.  God gave Moses the plan to make the Tabernacle, the Tent of Jehovah: a tent because they were moving.

David hungered to worship God.  He sat in his cedar house and said, “I live in this house and God dwells in a tent.”  It was in David’s heart to build a temple and he was not able to do this but he provided much so that his son Solomon could do that. 

It faced east because the sun comes up in the east.  The mercy of God, start out your day facing God, “I want to think right, talk right this day.”

The temple was huge in comparison to the tent.  90 feet long, 45 feet tall, 35 feet wide.  It stood for about 400 years.  God looked down from eternity and saw from day one to the end of time that He had a desire not to dwell in buildings but in the heart of man.

Think of the mercy of God from eternity.  God showed Adam and Eve that their sins could be forgiven even after they’d failed.  He in his mercy established this early in time and this pattern will be as long as time stands.  Man can confess their sins to God and allow the blood of Jesus to cleanse them from all sin.  There is no other way to be saved.

God dwelt in the tents, and in the temple: Solomon’s then Herod’s.  Anna and Simeon were there when they brought Jesus into the temple.  God is not pleased to dwell in a building.  The only God that is here in this building is the God we bring with us.

God is not in any secret place that only some, whatever act it might be, will let you in.

Act 7:46  Who found favour before God, and desired to find a tabernacle for the God of Jacob.

Act 7:47  But Solomon built him an house.

Act 7:48  Howbeit the most High dwelleth not in temples made with hands; as saith the prophet,

Act 7:49  Heaven is my throne, and earth is my footstool: what house will ye build me? saith the Lord: or what is the place of my rest?

Act 7:50  Hath not my hand made all these things?

God knew that one day in His mercy He would redeem mankind and give him a new heart and a new spirit.  The question was asked by God, “What will you build me to worship me in?” 

We cannot build anything to contain God in.  God will not rest in a building.

1Co 3:16  Know ye not that ye are the temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwelleth in you?

Rev 21:3  And I heard a great voice out of heaven saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is with men, and he will dwell with them, and they shall be his people, and God himself shall be with them, and be their God.

The greatest mercy God has ever shown is when He sent Jesus to be our savior.  He wants to forgive us and free us from all sin.  He wants to dwell with us.

It is marvelous to have God dwell with us.  God wants to, as He did with Adam and Eve, spend time with us.  God has a plan that originated in eternity of showing great mercy in taking a life that has been wrecked by sin and making it over again. 

I’m happy for the children that are here and being taught the gospel.  Sin wrecks lives, it wrecks minds.  People may say that they are really a wreck.  That is what sin does.  However far in sin you go, is how far you go.  If I had not gotten saved, sin would have destroyed me.  That was the plan of the enemy. 

Being a drug addict or alcoholic may have been only the beginning of my story.  If you don’t serve God you don’t know what you will be tempted with.  Without the power of God people are shocked with what they will yield to. 

There are people that wake up to a nightmare every day.  Think of the prodigals waking up to the night mare, “I’m lost.”  Think of children that are not taught of the ways of God and the snares that are out there to draw them into whatever it might be that will draw them down the broad road of sin.  Then the glimmer leaves and then it is dark.  There is only one hope and that is Jesus.

It is marvelous that way back in eternity God knew that I would be born.  God knew that you would be born.  He showed mercy. 

I emphasize David prayed, “keep back thy servant from presumptuous sins.”  If you know that God wants you to do something and you procrastinate then you are presuming that there will be another time.

Let us come boldly unto the throne of grace that we may obtain mercy and find grace to help in the time of need.