Of all the things that men might wonder, none is more important than the inscrutable wisdom and ways of God. There are, to be sure, characteristics of God that are truly beyond human comprehension (we will examine some of these in the sermon this morning), for they are inherent in the Divine nature; we can never know of them, for we are finite, creatures of His handiwork, and are limited in our knowledge of God by those things He has chosen to reveal of Himself.
Among the things we can know of God is His ultimate concern for the eternal well-being of His creatures. For example, Peter (the apostle) informs us tells us that God is not willing that any should perish, but that all come to repentance (2 Peter 3:9). To that end, God has revealed Himself – and certain characteristics of His nature, and has given assurance to all men of His willingness to raise all to everlasting life. He did this by raising Jesus from the dead as the "firstfruits" of those who are raised. We extrapolate from the nature of God that His love has inclined Him toward mercy concerning those who will repent.
We who are God’s people are the beneficiaries of His mercy. In fact, it is the clearest fact of all in the scripture that His goodwill is particularly inclined toward those who have entered a covenant relationship with Him. He love all men and earnestly desires their salvation, but His love is perfected and His merciful desires are accomplished only in respect of His people, the saved.
Corresponding to the blessing of His forgiveness are several attributes of God’s character that are to be found in our own lives. For example, because He is holy and we are His people, we are to be Holy (1 Peter 1:15-16):
"…but like the Holy One who called you, be holy yourselves also in all your behavior; because it is written, ‘You shall be holy, for I am holy.’"
The term "holy" is from a primary root in the Greek that simply means, "sacred" or as Thayer puts it "most holy thing." I’m always amused when I hear any Christian speak of his own acknowledged shortcomings, saying, "Well, you know, I’m no saint," as though being a saint implies being without fault. It is true that God is, by His nature, without fault or failing, but those who are His are, in fact, holy ones. We are separate, sacred and devoted by our reception of grace to His service. That is why Peter speaks of a stewardship of grace, in the following words (1 Peter 4:10):
"As each one has received a special gift, employ it in serving one another as good stewards of the manifold grace of God."
We must be truly blessed to be the recipients of God’s forgiveness, and that imposes upon us certain clear and unmistakable obligations. Chief among those obligations is our stewardship of grace: Because we are forgiven, we have an obligation to live as forgiven people.
This suggests another thought, also mentioned by our Lord, when He confronted the hypocritical self-righteousness of the great religious leaders of His day. On two different occasions, radically separated in context and purpose, Jesus drew a sharp lesson from the harsh lesson learned by the disobedient King Saul, as related in 1 Samuel 15:22. In the first of these examples, Jesus saw how self-righteous people look down on others, and He applied the scripture that unfavorably compared these hypocrites to Saul:
10Then it happened that as Jesus was reclining at the table in the house, behold, many tax collectors and sinners came and were dining with Jesus and His disciples. 11When the Pharisees saw this, they said to His disciples, "Why is your Teacher eating with the tax collectors and sinners?" 12But when Jesus heard this, He said, "It is not those who are healthy who need a physician, but those who are sick. 13"But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire compassion, Łand not sacrifice,’ for I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners." (Matthew 9:10-13)
In the second of these cases (and one that is more difficult to understand), Jesus noted how the hypocrisy of the Pharisees toward His disciples was not consistent with their mercy toward their ancestor, King David:
"1 At that time Jesus went through the grainfields on the Sabbath, and His disciples became hungry and began to pick the heads of grain and eat. 2 But when the Pharisees saw this, they said to Him, "Look, Your disciples do what is not lawful to do on a Sabbath." 3 But He said to them, "Have you not read what David did when he became hungry, he and his companions, 4 how he entered the house of God, and they ate the consecrated bread, which was not lawful for him to eat nor for those with him, but for the priests alone? 5 "Or have you not read in the Law, that on the Sabbath the priests in the temple break the Sabbath and are innocent? 6 "But I say to you that something greater than the temple is here. 7 "But if you had known what this means, ‘I desire compassion, and not a sacrifice,’ you would not have condemned the innocent." (Matthew 12:1-7)
It is not that His disciples were violating the Sabbath (for they were not), but that the Pharisees condemned the innocent while exonerating their ancestor. One wonders if the Pharisees ever understood that principle.
It is not enough for us to proclaim our love for God, if we are treating one another in any way other than the greatest of respect. Too often, we are critical or harsh of the failings in others, even as we diminish our own failings and weaknesses. It does little good to find fault in others, even as we ignore our own sins. Thus it is that Jesus implores us to remove the log from our own eye before we worry about the speck in the eye of another (Luke 6:41-42).
What is particularly of note is how God is completely disrespectful of sacrifice (however obedient it may be) that is not accompanied by mercy. One might say, "God has required my sacrifice, so I will make that sacrifice even though another might be blessed by my immediate action in his behalf." It is a strange religion that proposes to honor God even as it dishonors His creatures. Thus it is that Jesus requires us to leave whatever gift we would bring to God, going first to a brother against whom we have sinned (Matthew 5:23-24).
Never miss the point: We may loudly proclaim our obedience to the will of God, but we put the lie to our boastful pride when we neglect the weightier matters of justice, mercy and faithfulness (Matthew 23:23-24).