Christmas 1971 was on a Sunday. I was on a holiday break from my job at the Mount Alverno Convent in Redwood City, CA. My parents, my sister and five brothers and I were together at Christmas Mass that morning in Terra Linda. After the service outside the church, I ran into Michelle, a friend from past church activities. She told me about a Biblical Research and Teaching ministry. Five days later I went to my first home-fellowship meeting. Since that Friday night in Novato I have remained a student of the Bible.

 

     For the past year or two, one particular truth in the Scriptures has held my attention and study continually. Understanding it has changed me. It is God’s mercy.

 

     God says He is a God of great mercy. He is plenteous in mercy, rich in mercy, His mercy is everlasting and His mercy is compared to the heavens.

 

     What is mercy? Mercy is active compassion. In other words, it is compassion that takes the action that is needed to meet someone’s need. When God, by His mercy, acts to meet man’s need His ways of doing what is needed are much greater than man’s ways. “For as the heavens are higher than the earth, so are My ways [God’s ways] higher than your ways [man’s ways].”

 

     God put man, Adam, in the garden of Eden. All that God had created and made was very good, and Adam was given dominion. When Adam chose to disobey God’s warning, the sin-nature entered and, because of it, death.     

 

     Man had a great need—an answer to death. It is written that then, at the time of man’s need, God promised—by His mercy—a redeemer, a promised “seed.” This seed of God would be born of a woman.

 

     Generations later the angel Gabriel was sent by God to deliver a message to Mary, a woman espoused to be married to Joseph. “And the angel said unto her, Fear not, Mary: for thou hast found favour with God. And, behold, thou shalt conceive in thy womb, and bring forth a son, and shalt call his name Jesus. He shall be great, and shall be called the son of the Highest.”

 

     God—by His mercy—took the action needed to meet man’s need. He created His “seed” in the womb of Mary.

 

     Nine months later: “And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David) To be taxed with Mary his espoused wife, being great with child. And so it was, that, while they were there, the days were accomplished that she should be delivered. And she brought forth her firstborn son, and wrapped him in swaddling clothes, and laid him in a manger; because there was no room for them in the inn.”                          

 

     Joseph was of “the house and lineage of David.” This lineage of David was of the lineage of Judah, one of the twelve sons of Jacob (whom God gave the name Israel). Israel’s sons and the offspring that followed are aptly called “the children of Israel.”

 

     Because of man’s need for a redeemer, God—by His mercy—made a covenant with the children of Israel. He spoke of them to the prophet Moses, “I have also heard the groaning of the children of Israel, whom the Egyptians keep in bondage; and I have remembered My covenant. Say unto the children of Israel, I am the Lord, and I will bring you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians, and I will rid you out of their bondage, and I will redeem you with a stretched-out arm, and with great judgments. And I will take you to Me for a people, and I will be to you a God: and ye shall know that I am the Lord your God, which bringeth you out from under the burdens of the Egyptians. And I will bring you in unto the land, con-cerning the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob.”  What GREAT mercy!

 

     About 970 years after God delivered His covenant people out of the bondage in Egypt they were again in great peril. The prophet Jeremiah was warning them that they were in imminent danger of being taken captive by the Babylonian nation.  But wait…had the Lord God forgotten His covenant agreement to be their God? On the contrary, He told Jeremiah, “They have forsaken the covenant of the Lord their God, and worshipped other gods, and served them.” God could not help them if they were looking to “other” gods. Jeremiah exhorted them daily to turn back to God, but they ridiculed him and were indeed defeated and taken captive to Babylon. 

 

 At this time of great need, because the people had forsaken their covenant agreement, God—by His mercy—acted in a most remarkable way. He revealed He would make a new covenant! His promise of the new covenant: forgiveness. “I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more.” This new covenant would not be ratified by the blood of an animal as the former covenant. This would require the blood of a man, but not just any man—the only-begotten son of God, the promised seed, man’s redeemer. Unlike Adam who chose to disobey, this man chose to obey, and offered himself as the sacrificial offering of the new covenant. He gave his life, but God raised him from the dead and accomplished the victory over death that man desperately needs.

 

     Finally, God—by His mercy and grace—made this covenant promise of forgiveness available to all nations (Gentiles), not only the children of Israel. Both Judeans and Gentiles are one body in Christ.  By the work of His son we have forgiveness, we are redeemed, we are justified. We have peace with God through our lord Jesus Christ. Thank God for His great mercy!