Chapter 3

Psalms 136:21-26. "And gave their land for an heritage, for His mercy endureth forever. Even an heritage unto Israel, His servant, for His mercy endureth forever. Who remembered us in our low estate, for His mercy endureth forever. And has redeemed us from our enemies, for His mercy endureth forever. Who gives food to all flesh, for His mercy endureth forever. Oh, give thanks unto the God of heaven, for His mercy endureth forever."

Isn't the 136th chapter of Psalms a fantastic chapter? The entire chapter is devoted to the subject of Divine Mercy : an attribute of God's Divine Person. Praise God forever.

Now, let us turn to Romans 9:14-19. "What shall we say then. Is there unrighteousness with God? God forbid. 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 showeth mercy. For the Scripture saith unto Pharaoh, even for this same purpose have I raised thee up, that I might show my power in thee, and that My Name might be declared throughout all the earth. Therefore, has He mercy on whom He will have mercy, and whom He willeth He hardens. Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth He yet find fault? For who hath resisted His will?" In other words, someone might say, If I happen to be one of those on whom He's not going to have mercy, how can He 'pick on me'? And a lot of people argue like that.

Verses 20-26: "Nay, but O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say unto him that formed it, why hast thou made me thus? Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honor, and another unto dishonor? What if God, willing to show His wrath, and to make His power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction?"

Who did the fitting? They did! "And that He might known on the vessels of mercy, which He had afore prepared unto glory, even us, whom He hath called, not of the Jews only, but also of the Gentiles. As He saith in Osee, I will call them My people which was not My people, and her beloved which was not beloved. And it shall come to pass, that in the very place where it was said unto them, ye are not My people, there shall they be called the people of the living God."

Some people 'hang up' on this passage, because they say: "See there, it says right there, God's going to have mercy on some people, and some people He isn't". Some people teach the doctrine of Predestination. That's one of the verses that they use, because it says right there, in black and white, that God will have mercy on whom He wills, and whom He wants to, and whom He wants to He will harden.

However, let's ask the question: Who would God have mercy on? The answer is easy! "Whosoever shall call upon the Name of the Lord shall be saved." Romans 10:13. In the New Testament ispensation, He will have mercy on anyone who calls upon Him for His mercy in salvation. Anybody can get mercy from God, according to that. Whosoever means anybody, doesn't it?

But those who refuse to obey, He hardens. How is that? Because men harden their heart first, and resist God's mercy, just like Pharaoh, the king of Egypt did. When they do that, then afterwards God hardens their heart. In the first instance God said to him, through Moses, "Let My people go...". Pharaoh's response was "No".

Pharaoh, on his own, inclined his heart like that. As a matter of fact, Pharaoh rejected God three times before God did anything to harden his heart. God chose a man of that disposition and put him on the throne. Yet he had an opportunity: he could have said obeyed. "Yeah, but Brother Poole, God said He would harden his heart, and He knew that he would not yield." Well, God, Who knows the hearts of all men, picked a man of Pharaoh's disposition, set him on the throne of Egypt, and allowed him to do his thing. God knew that he would act like he did, and gave him the leeway to do it. But it was Pharaoh's choice of his own accord to do so. After he did, then God hardened his heart so that he would not back out of God's assignment.

And so Pharaoh initiated the process and hardened his heart. Finally it got to the place where he couldn't help it; God hardened his heart and he couldn't back out. And in the overall sense of course, he couldn't have backed out in the first place because God picked that kind of a man; God knew he wasn't going to back out. Even so, it seems that, on occasion, Pharaoh toyed with the idea of consenting. I mean, when things got real tough-- but then, "nah!"

The Bible talks about rightly dividing the Word of truth. 2 Timothy 2:15: says, "Study to shew thyself approved unto God a workman that needeth not to be ashamed, rightly dividing the word of truth."

Well, people read this passage in Romans 9, get confused because they don't rightly divide it. They say "See there, there no use in me trying to get saved, I'm so bad,...you know". But the Son of God stood on the earth and said, that: "...whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life." John 3:16. And finally, in His resurrected, glorified state, He said, Whosoever will..may come and take of the water of life freely. Revelation 22:17. The invitation is out. Anybody that believes on Jesus Christ can get mercy from God. There is no legitimate excuse for anybody going to hell because, as they suppose, God didn't want to save them.

Outside of Christ, my brother and sister, there is no case of predestination for some to be saved and some to be lost, as far as God is concerned. Sinners ARE already LOST! They don't have to do anything to become lost, they already are lost! But IN Christ, there is predestination for those who accept His free gift of salvation. And so as we look at this text in Romans 9:14-26, we're talking about God's disposition towards mercy. The focus is not grace, but on mercy, although of course, God's grace IS involved in the actual saving of our souls, Ephesians 2:8-9. Praise God. Thank you Jesus.

Now, let's look at another instance of God's mercy. John 8: 1-11. The story is the case of when the Pharisees brought a woman to Jesus who had been caught in the very act of adultery. They brought her to Him to tempt Him, to get Him in trouble. They said: "Moses in the law commanded us, that such should be stoned. This they said, tempting Him, that they might have to accuse Him. But Jesus stooped down and with His finger wrote on the ground as though He heard them not. So when they continued asking Him, He lifted up Himself, and said unto them, He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her. And when they which heard it, went out one by one, beginnng at the eldest, even unto the last: .... When Jesus had lifted up Himself, and saw none but the woman, He said unto her, Woman, where are those thine accusers? hath no man condemned thee? She said, No man Lord. And Jesus said unto her, Neither do I condemn thee: go, and sin no more."

Listen to me. That adulterous woman didn't ASK Jesus for anything! Because she was a Jewess she probably knew what the Law said. She had no grounds for any redress. She was guilty. She had no grounds for asking for anything, because the Law said she should be stoned.

So Jesus exercised mercy: God's attribute that is higher than His grace. Grace would have had to defer to the Law because she couldn't exercise faith for grace. But Jesus exercised mercy. Notice that in the Book of James, the Scripture states that MERCY rejoiceth against judgment. Jesus did that for that woman. She couldn't ask, "Lord, help me" according to the Law. Even so, at the Judgment of sinners in the time to come, sinners there will not have grounds to ask for either mercy or grace, because it is appointed once to men to die, but afterward, the judgment. They shall have entered eternity as lost sinners, without God, without Christ, and without mercy or grace. The Scripture insists that NOW is the time, behold NOW is the day of salvation. When one dies lost, it is too late to obtain mercy or grace.

Take the case of Adam and Eve. I used to wonder why Adam didn't just say, "Lord, I did do that, Please forgive me". You know why he didn't? Because God had to teach the concept of forgiveness to man. Heathen have no concept of Divine forgiveness. God has to teach mankind the concept of forgiveness.

In the world, sinners will say to people that have offended them, but ask to be excused: "Ah, that's all right", and then go away boiling and seething over it, maybe for years afterwards. They have no concept of true forgiveness. So Adam had no grounds to ask God for it. He was already dead in his sins; it was too late. No grounds for it; no concept of it. How's he going to get it? He can't get it from God because he's separated from God by his sin.

And so in the mercy of God, He took the skins of animals and made them clothes and put them out of the garden of Eden. But in this case, the adulterous woman didn't dare ask for anything. She stood before this Man, Jesus, Who was also a Jew; He also knew what the Law said, and she didn't know what He could do.

He said, "Has no man condemned you?" (He didn't have to say anything to her, but in His mercy, He made it possible for her to obtain mercy and grace) She said "No man, ...LORD!" When she said that, she entered into God's grace. According to Romans 10:9, any sinner can be saved by confessing with his mouth the Lord Jesus, (just like the woman did, and on the same grounds of God's MERCY and grace)

Understand something: Rahab the Harlot did the same thing. She heard about God, and she believed in God. She acted on that, and she got her name in God's Hall Of Fame (Hebrews chapter 11), even though she was a harlot. Even though she lied about the spies. Can you see how mercy and grace sometimes work together? Oh, Glory to God! How could people help from getting saved, if we receive both mercy and grace. Can you say amen? OOOOH, glory to God!

For His mercy endures forever, praise God. The prophet Jeremiah, in Lamentations 2:22, said that it is of the Lord's mercies that we are not consumed. And he said that God's mercies are new every morning. Great is thy faithfulness, Oh, God, thy mercies are new every morning. Every morning. The sun comes up every morning, without fail, because His mercy endures forever. The moon and the planets, the stars, all function in their course, because the mercy of God endures forever.

Behold that the mercy of God recorded promises and statements for the Messiah, a thousand years before His death on Calvary, so that Jesus Christ might hold to them in faith when He was in hell. By faith in those promises, He was resurrected by God The Father and came out of the tomb the victor! The mercy of God endures forever.

We need to understand something. When Jesus died, He died totally alone. He asked why God had forsaken Him. He died, being made SIN. He died being CURSED. And he died the same as any other sinner would have died. When He left His Body, He went down into hell. He "was sin down in there, He was a curse down there, He was cut off from God down there."

But by faith in His heart, HE held the promise of God even while He was hell. For that reason, the Bible says, it was impossible for death to hold Him. OOOH! Glory to God! HIS MERCY ENDURES FOREVER!

Since Jesus arose from the dead, there is no possible extremity in those who come to Him, where faith in God's Word CANNOT prevail. Faith worked in Jesus Christ and burst asunder the bonds of hell and of death. Through faith Jesus came out of there by the glory of the Father. When He came out, He was no longer sin, He was no longer cursed, He was no longer cut off, He was back in favor with God.

That's exactly how sinners come to Christ. When they call upon the Name of the Lord, their faith reaches out and God springs the bars of their prison, and they come out not sinners, not harlots, not liars, not thieves, but sons and daughters of God, SPOTLESS. OOOOH! Glory to God! Oh, hallelujah, there's no need for 'inner healing' for a believer if he knows what belongs to him. When he comes out of the 'tomb' of his sins, he is spotless, he is a new creature, and he has a new mind.

The Bible says that God has not given us a spirit of fear, but of power and of love and of a sound mind. And it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference what he was before. When he comes up out of that tomb of death (sin) he's a child of God. Behold, John says, what manner of love the Father has bestowed, (just bestowed, just dropped it on us) upon us that we should be called the sons of God. Glory to God forever. Saints, we really ARE, we REALLY ARE redeemed by the blood of the Lord Jesus Christ. Hallelujah.