Father of Mercies
Gentle and Lowly • Sermon • Submitted • Presented
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· 4 viewsThis sermon deals with the character of the Father.
Notes
Transcript
What is your mental image of God?
It is important for you to get an accurate and balanced understanding of who God is, for it tells much about you. A.W. Tozer in his book, Knowledge of the Holy, states:
“What comes into our minds when we think about God is the most important thing about us.” (Gentle and Lowly, 127).
Having an accurate image of God is important. We cannot trust our feelings or lack of knowledge. In order to understand God, we must rely on the Holy Spirit and consult His word, the Bible.
I’m doing a funeral for a dear friend tomorrow evening in Kansas. This is a man who raised three children. He taught his kids valuable things like hard work, faith in God, and that mediocrity is unacceptable.
Now that sounds like a pretty good dad. And we can appreciate those qualities. But in some ways, my friend was too harsh with his kids. For instance, when his son needed some money to pay a bill, my friend turned down his request and took it as begging. He said: “I didn’t raise you to be a beggar.”
Moreover, he was a workaholic in many ways. And so his son is left with mixed feelings of sorrow and resentment.
How we feel about our earthly fathers can be transferred to God if we’re not careful.
We are not to think of God with resentment. He is a God of comfort and the Father of mercies.
Dane Ortlund states:
“Who is God the Father? Just that: our Father. Some of us had great dads growing up. Others of us were horribly mistreated or abandoned by them. Whatever the case, the good in our earthly dads is a faint pointer to the true goodness of our heavenly Father, and the bad in our earthly dads is the photo negative of who our heavenly Father is. He is the Father of whom every human father is a shadow. (Ephesians 3:15).”
And the Scriptures have much to tell us about God the Father. And so let’s be reintroduced to Him this morning in Paul’s words found in 2 Corinthians 1:3 and following.
We first learn that...
Mercy is a chief characteristic of God the Father.
Mercy is a chief characteristic of God the Father.
Dane Ortlund writes:
“A common perception among Christians is that, to some degree anyway, the Father is less inclined to love and forgive than the Son.”
But notice how Paul corrects this thought by what he tells us in verse three:
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.
What does it say? He is the “Father of mercies and the God of all comfort.” The word that we understand for mercy is the Greek οἰκτίρω which means: “to display of concern over another’s misfortune, pity, mercy, compassion.” (William Arndt et al., A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000), 700.
The term is used elsewhere like in Colossians 3:12 where Paul instructs Christians to
Colossians 3:12 (ESV)
12 Put on then, as God’s chosen ones, holy and beloved, compassionate hearts, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience,
And we should not forget that it was the Father and the Son that made the covenant of redemption. That is the Father sent the Son, out of mercy. John 3:16-17
16 “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
Dane Ortlund reminds us what is at the very heart of God.
“He is the Father of mercies. Just as a father begets children who reflect who he is, the divine Father begets mercies that reflect him. There is a family resemblance between the Father and mercy. He is (quoting Thomas Goodwin), ‘more the Father of mercies than Satan is said to be the father of sin.’”
God’s mercy shown to you, enables you to minister to others.
God’s mercy shown to you, enables you to minister to others.
And this mercy has special application to adversity. God especially shows mercy and comfort to us, so that we can minister to others.
Paul then mentions how he and his comrades were put in great discomfort and trial, and even despaired for life in Asia. Paul’s deliverance was cause for greater hope, as he wrote in 2 Corinthians 1:9-10
9 Indeed, we felt that we had received the sentence of death. But that was to make us rely not on ourselves but on God who raises the dead. 10 He delivered us from such a deadly peril, and he will deliver us. On him we have set our hope that he will deliver us again.
He may have been referring to the experience we read of in Acts 16, where he was imprisoned for preaching the gospel. He and Silas were also beaten and put in the “inner prison” in stocks, until an earthquake occurred, setting them free and allowing them to minister to the jailer in Philippi. You can read about this in Acts 16:22-30.
Furthermore, Jesus certainly knew adversity and knew that His disciples would encounter such things. So He told them in John 16:27:
27 for the Father himself loves you, because you have loved me and have believed that I came from God.
Remember how God introduced himself to Moses in Exodus 34:6-7
6 The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, 7 keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
And James echoes this in James 5:11:
11 Behold, we consider those blessed who remained steadfast. You have heard of the steadfastness of Job, and you have seen the purpose of the Lord, how the Lord is compassionate and merciful.
So we ought to be very careful not to take our perceptions or theological lessons from the world. We must take them from Scripture. Our feelings can be deceptive.
And we must allow a true picture of God dictate how we minister to others. Ortlund states:
“If your heart be hard, his mercies are tender.
If your heart be dead, he has mercy to liven it.
If you be sick, he has mercy to heal you.
If you be sinful, he has mercies to sanctify and cleanse you. As large and as various as are our wants, so large and various are his mercies. So we may come boldly to find grace and mercy to help us in time of need, a mercy for every need.” (Gentle and Lowly, 131).
We must not make the mistake of thinking Jesus is a kinder, gentler version of God the Father. They are unified in their love and mercy! And if you see compassion out of Jesus, you can trust that God the Father is compassionate!
9 Jesus said to him, “Have I been with you so long, and you still do not know me, Philip? Whoever has seen me has seen the Father. How can you say, ‘Show us the Father’? 10 Do you not believe that I am in the Father and the Father is in me? The words that I say to you I do not speak on my own authority, but the Father who dwells in me does his works.
Prayer is an instrument of God’s mercy.
Prayer is an instrument of God’s mercy.
What got them through? None other than God’s grace, acting through the prayers of their friends in Corinth. Paul concludes his comments by sharing that there is help through prayer. 2 Corinthians 1:11-13
2 Corinthians 1:11(ESV)
11 You also must help us by prayer, so that many will give thanks on our behalf for the blessing granted us through the prayers of many.
12 For our boast is this, the testimony of our conscience, that we behaved in the world with simplicity and godly sincerity, not by earthly wisdom but by the grace of God, and supremely so toward you.
We have all heard that statement: “prayer changes things.” But I would argue that it is a God of mercy and comfort who changes things, but allows our prayers to be a part of the process. Your prayers and mine would be empty statements if it were not for a Father of mercy and God of comfort.
One commentator states:
“Prayer has real results. God has ordained His relationship to the world in such a way that He will respond to our prayers, and even Paul needed the prayers of others.” (NGSB, 1829).
It will be interesting to see in heaven, how God did mighty things at the instigation of our prayers.
That’s why we must boldly approach His throne, as Hebrews 4:16 tells us.
16 Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.
Conclusion
Conclusion
The late Colonel Sanders (of Kentucky Fried Chicken) was on an airplane when an infant screamed and would not stop even though the mother and flight attendants tried every trick they could think of. Finally the Colonel asked if he could hold the baby. He gently rocked it to sleep. Later a passenger said, “We all appreciate what you did for us.”
Colonel Sanders replied, “I didn’t do it for us, I did it for the baby.”
What God does, He does for everyone involved. And the mercy that the Father shows you is meant to equip you for ministry to others. 2 Corinthians 1:3-4
3 Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies and God of all comfort, 4 who comforts us in all our affliction, so that we may be able to comfort those who are in any affliction, with the comfort with which we ourselves are comforted by God.