The following student report was submitted by Ambassador League Agent Sarah K. during the 2007-2008 League.
Bible Study: God's Mercy
According to the dictionary Mercy is, "Kindness or forgiveness shown especially to somebody a person has power over." In Nehemiah chapter 9 there is a picture of this kindness and forgiveness that God extended to His people. The Israelites were gathered together and confessing their sins when the Levites recounted what the Lord had done for them. He had been faithful to them, blessing them and performing many signs and wonders on their behalf, and yet they acted haughtily, becoming stubborn and refusing to listen. (verses 5-17.) Through all of this it seems that God would have brought down His wrath upon them and ruined them. Instead we see in the last part of vs. 17 that the Levites declared, " But you are a God ready to pardon, gracious and merciful, slow to anger, and of great steadfast love, and you did not forsake them." Throughout the Old Testament we see the Israelites becoming disobedient and rebellious until God gave them into the hands of their enemies . However in Nehemiah vs. 31 it says, "yet in your great mercies you did not utterly consume them, or forsake them, for you are a gracious and merciful God" This is mercy; that God, who has created this earth and the people on it, can find forgiveness and compassion towards His creation even though we turn our back on Him and spit in His face. We read of this mercy over and over throughout the scriptures. In Psalm 106 the Psalmist speaks about mercy when it says " nevertheless He regarded their distress, when He heard their cry, and He (earnestly) remembered for their sake His covenant, and relented their sentence of evil comforting and easing Himself according to the abundance of His mercy and loving-kindness (when they cried out to Him.)" (Amplified Bible, Zondervan) Interestingly enough, in Romans chapter 9 vs. 15 we see that God "will have mercy upon whomsoever I CAN have mercy. (The Emphasized Bible, Rotherham) Here it is clear that God can have mercy upon those that He can-and that there are those whom He cannot have mercy on. It goes on to say in vs. 16 " So then [God's gift] is not a question of human will and human effort, but of God's mercy. It depends not of one's own willingness nor on his strenuous exertion as in running a race, but on God's having mercy on him (Amplified Bible, Zondervan) Here it is saying that mercy is a gift from God to us, all we have to do it accept it! Just as God has mercy on us, so we need to have mercy on others. In Matthew 5 vs. 7 it says, "blessed are the merciful, for they shall receive mercy". As we have mercy on others, God will bless us with it as well! It says in Micah 6:8 He has shown you, O man, what is good; And what does the Lord require of you, But to do justly, to love mercy, And to walk humbly with your God?(New King James Version) Although these are three things that God requires of us, thankfully we can know HIS mercy when we fall short. It says to LOVE mercy; what exactly does loving mercy mean? Think about people that we love; we think about them quite a bit and we really enjoy being around them-that is what God wants us to do with mercy. He wants us to be constantly thinking about it, and to carry it out in our daily walk!! It talks about this in Proverbs 3:3 when it says "let not mercy and truth forsake you; Bind them around your neck, Write them on the tablet of your heart. (New King James Version) It is very clear in this verse that mercy is extremely significant to God. He wants us to bind it about our necks, to write it on the tablet of our hearts-in other words, to keep mercy on our being at all times! We never know when we'll need it!! In Luke chapter 1 vs. 50 it says "And his mercy is upon generation after generation." As I have studied the subject of mercy throughout the Scriptures I have seen from day one of creation that God's mercy is towards His people if we only cry out for it. Even now as we go about our lives, this verse is definitely played out in our day by day walk! God is SO merciful to us, even when we don't deserve it, Thank-you Lord God!
