The Covering of Mercy

Rev. Raymond Woodward

Psalm 5:1-7 To the chief Musician upon Nehiloth, A Psalm of David. Give ear to my words, O LORD, consider my meditation. Hearken unto the voice of my cry, my King, and my God: for unto thee will I pray. My voice shalt thou hear in the morning, O LORD; in the morning will I direct my prayer unto thee, and will look up. For thou art not a God that hath pleasure in wickedness: neither shall evil dwell with thee. The foolish shall not stand in thy sight: thou hatest all workers of iniquity. Thou shalt destroy them that speak leasing: the LORD will abhor the bloody and deceitful man. But as for me, I will come into thy house in the multitude of thy mercy: and in thy fear will I worship toward thy holy temple.

• “meditation” – the spirit of prayer is better than the mere habit of prayer
• “direct … look up” – the act of aiming and shooting an arrow, then looking to see where it has gone; words used for arranging sacrifice on altar and describing actions of the city watchman (“look out”); they are two military words, used for “setting in battle array” and “spying upon his watchtower”
• Thomas Brooks: “He is either a fool or a madman, he is either very weak or very wicked, that prays and prays, but never looks after his prayers; that shoots many an arrow towards heaven, but never minds where his arrows alight.” (God answers the prayer of faith!)
• Two steps in prayer: (1) Prayer Directed, (2) Answer Expected
• God will not allow evil men to dwell (“sojourn, walk”) with Him; to be hated of God is an awful thing!
• “Christ will not live in the parlour of our hearts if we entertain the devil in the cellar of our thoughts!”
• Every sin is a “work of iniquity” but only some make sin their business (“workers of inquity”).
• God works against those that work iniquity! In the battlefield where Absalom fought David stood the oak that was his gallows. His mule was the hangman and his hair was the rope! Everything the wicked have will be a snare to trap them in the day of judgment.
• BUT AS FOR ME! I should have belonged in this number, BUT GOD intervened!
• 1 Corinthians 6:9-11 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind, Nor thieves, nor covetous, nor drunkards, nor revilers, nor extortioners, shall inherit the kingdom of God. And such were some of you: but ye are washed, but ye are sanctified, but ye are justified in the name of the Lord Jesus, and by the Spirit of our God.
• God’s judgments are numbered but His mercies are without number:
• Numbers 14:29 Your carcases shall fall in this wilderness; and all that were numbered of you, according to your whole number, from twenty years old and upward, which have murmured against me,
• Psalm 40:5 Many, O LORD my God, are thy wonderful works which thou hast done, and thy thoughts which are to us-ward: they cannot be reckoned up in order unto thee: if I would declare and speak of them, they are more than can be numbered.

WHAT IS MERCY?

• Mercy is condescending love, reaching out to meet a need without considering the merit of the person receiving the aid. Our closest modern word is probably “compassion.”
• Vine’s: “the outward manifestation of pity; it assumes need on the part of him who receives it, and resources adequate to meet the need on the part of him who shows it”
• In apostolic salutations GRACE precedes MERCY, for grace describes God’s attitude toward the lawbreaker and rebel, while mercy is His attitude toward His children who are in distress. In all but one instance (Galatians 6:16), MERCY precedes PEACE, for mercy is the act of God and peace is the resulting experience in the heart of man.
• The best definition of MERCY is found in a piece of tabernacle furniture, the MERCY SEAT. The Hebrew word is “kapporeth” which means “to cover.” Connected with the ark, it is spoken of as the footstool of God (1 Chronicles 28:2). God promised to be present on the mercy seat to commune with Moses (Exodus 25:22). The Holy of Holies is referred to in Scripture as “the House of the Kapporeth” (1 Chronicles 28:11). The word “propitiation” became another word for “mercy seat.”
• In the New Testament, Jesus has become our MERCY SEAT!
• Romans 3:25 Whom God hath set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood, to declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God;
• Nehemiah 9 (worship led by 8 Levites after the completion of the wall and the reading of the Law) is a long litany of God’s mercy to Israel (verses 17, 19, 27, 28, 31)
• Lot was about to yield to temptation, but God delivered him by His mercy.
• Genesis 19:16 And while he lingered, the men laid hold upon his hand, and upon the hand of his wife, and upon the hand of his two daughters; the LORD being merciful unto him: and they brought him forth, and set him without the city.
• Israel had made a false God, but God revealed Himself to Moses once again by His mercy.
• Exodus 34:6-7 And the LORD passed by before him, and proclaimed, The LORD, The LORD God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, 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.
• When Joseph had been wrongfully enslaved, God made a way of deliverance by His mercy.
• Genesis 39:21 But the LORD was with Joseph, and shewed him mercy, and gave him favour in the sight of the keeper of the prison.
• David knew what it was to cry unto God as a sinner and be delivered by His mercy
• Psalm 51:1 To the chief Musician, A Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba. Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.
• 2 Samuel 24:14 And David said unto Gad, I am in a great strait: let us fall now into the hand of the LORD; for his mercies are great: and let me not fall into the hand of man.
• When Jerusalem was destroyed, Jeremiah found his only hope in the mercy of God.
• Lamentations 3:22-23 It is of the LORD’S mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness.
• The Psalmists emphasize God’s mercy over and over again:
• Psalm 89:1 Maschil of Ethan the Ezrahite. I will sing of the mercies of the LORD for ever: with my mouth will I make known thy faithfulness to all generations.
• Psalm 23:6 Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life: and I will dwell in the house of the LORD for ever.
• Psalm 94:18 When I said, My foot slippeth; thy mercy, O LORD, held me up.
• Psalm 100:5 For the LORD is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.
• Psalm 103:11 For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him.
• You can’t make God have mercy on you, but you should thank Him that He does!
• Romans 9:15-16 For he saith to Moses, I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy, and I will have compassion on whom I will have compassion. So then it is not of him that willeth, nor of him that runneth, but of God that sheweth mercy.
• WE ARE LITERALLY SURROUNDED BY A MULTITUDE OF MERCIES AS WE WORSHIP GOD! EACH SINFUL OR HARMFUL EVENT OF LIFE SHOULD PREVENT US FROM ENTERING HIS PRESENCE, BUT EACH ONE IS COVERED (MERCY-SEAT) BY HIS MERCY, EVEN THE ONES THAT STILL HAVE AN EFFECT ON US! (Mephibosheth was a cripple – in the King’s Court!)
• Publican’s Prayer: “God be merciful (“mercy-seated”) to me, a sinner.” (Luke 18:13)
• There are only two ways to “short circuit” God’s mercy in your life: UNCONFESSED SIN (Proverbs 28:13 – He that covereth his sins shall not prosper: but whoso confesseth and forsaketh them shall have mercy.); and UNFORGIVENESS (Matthew 5:7 – Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.)
• One of the most common prayers is “Have mercy on me!” We are saved and kept by mercy:
• Titus 3:5 Not by works of righteousness which we have done, but according to his mercy he saved us, by the washing of regeneration, and renewing of the Holy Ghost;
• Hebrews 4:16 Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need
• No wonder the Psalmist repeats “for His mercy endureth for ever!” (26 verses of Psalm 136)