From The Study

From the study is a devotional taken from the pages of the Highland Highlights, a bimonthly news letter of the Highland Baptist Church.

"Glory and Praise to the name of Jesus"

When the old Puritan preacher, Thomas Hooker, lay dying, those around his bedside attempted to provide comfort by saying, “Brother Hooker, you are going to receive your reward.”  It is reported that Hooker responded, “No, no! I go to receive mercy.”  Hooker had it right! It is all about God’s mercy.  Our salvation, through Christ, is nothing less than a pure act of mercy.  The ability to know God and to live each day in His personal presence is the fruit of His mercy.  The promise of His comfort at death, His welcome into heaven, His blessed rewards for how we lived out His holiness in this life, are all to be credited to His mercy, none of it to our merit, for we have none.

A.W. Tozer wrote: “Although God wants His people to be holy, as He is holy, He does not deal with us according to the degree of our holiness, but according to the abundance of His mercy.” (Renewed Day By Day, June 9)  Good thing!  For too many of us our “degrees” of holiness register somewhere down near the freezing mark - Celsius that is!  But certainly, some may argue, we must earn what He would give.  Our salvation, for example, must depend upon the worthiness of our efforts to show ourselves deserving of His rewards.  In other words, we don’t need His mercy, just His sense of justice. Oh, my friend, do not seek His justice. “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God!” (Romans 3: 23); and the “wages of sin is death!” (Romans 6: 23)  Cry out for His mercy!  His justice will damn your soul forever for He must rid Himself and His creation of what deserves justice.  But in His mercy, He offers to expiate your justice upon His own son. He offers to place His son on the scaffold that justice demands in your place, to exercise His holy right to your sentence of death, upon His Jesus - and that is pure mercy.

While canoeing along a stream, a man was suddenly attacked by a flying insect of extraordinary size and ugliness.  While the bug buzz-bombed the canoeist’s head, the man struggled to fend it off, nearly capsizing his canoe in the process. Greatly annoyed, he finally swung his paddle over his head in a blind attempt to defend himself, and in doing so struck the fiend, knocking it into the water, where it began to flutter its wings in a desperate attempt to rise.  “Ah”, the canoeist said, as he relaxed, enjoying the sweet delight of victory.  “Trout food.  Serves you right!  That’s it, keep fighting.  Sooner or later a brookie will take notice.  Mess with me will you!”  With a keen sense of satisfaction he sat back and waited for justice to take its course.  However, justice was slow in coming, and, to complicate matters, the man possessed a tenderness of heart that extended even into the animal world.  He found himself feeling sorry for the struggling insect, imagining its state of helplessness as well as the sudden death that was probably even then lurking in the cool dark depths below.  Extending his paddle, the canoeist fished up the fly and dropped him on the stream bank, setting him on a large sun-baked rock to dry, the course of justice now interrupted by mercy.

No, do not seek from God what you deserve, the consequences are frightfully horrific.  In true humility, seek what He desires to give , what is of His great nature, the mercy we need - a gracious deliverance from our own evil works.  Though He is holy, He is not hindered from being merciful.  As Jonathan Edwards wrote, “… God can bestow mercy upon you without the least prejudice to the honor of His holiness, or His majesty, or His justice, or His truth, or any of His attributes which you have offended.”  (Devotions of Jonathan Edwards, pg. 32).  Indeed, “Thy mercy is great!”