BURUBURU COMMUNITY CENTRE CHURCH OF GOD NAIROBI THEME OF THE YEAR: MADE ALIVE IN CHRIST TO DO GOOD WORKS. TOPIC OF THE QUARTER: BY GOD’S GRACE WE WERE MADE ALIVE TOGETHER WITH CHRIST. SERMON TOPIC: THE GOD OF MERCY TEXT: EPHESIANS 2:4-7; LUKE 10:25-37 Sermon Preached by Rev. Bonface Nyangolo on 2nd April 2023 I. Introduction
There has been a lot of bad news recently. Hasn’t there?
Businesses closed
Churches struggling
Unemployment
People starving to death, and accidents-the more recent one on Thursday 30th March 2023 in Naivasha leaving 14 people dead
Police brutality
Riots, looting, and mayhem and demonstrations in the streets
Supreme Court decision on LGBTQ
High cost of living
Our government owing million dollars to its lenders etc.
No one likes bad news. Can the news get any worse? Yes, this brings us to the first 3 verses of Ephesians 2. Let me read it again.
Ephesians 2:1–3 (ESV) And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. We see three things here:-
We were dead
We were enslaved to the flesh, the world, and the devil
We were objects of God’s wrath.
It does not get much worse than this, does it? But the story does not end in verse 3. There is incredibly good news in verses 4-7.
Ephesians 2:4–7 (ESV) But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ. By grace you have been saved and raised us up with him and seated us with him in the heavenly places in Christ Jesus, so that in the coming ages he might show the immeasurable riches of his grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus.
The point of these four verses is clear. When we were spiritually dead, God made us alive. This was a miracle.
To help us understand this, I want to look at three things:-
God’s motive for making us alive: Mercy and love
God’s means for making us alive: He united us with Christ and raised us in Christ
God’s purpose for making us alive: To display his grace for all eternity
Case study of mercy (Luke 10:25-37)
When a lawyer asks Jesus about eternal life, Jesus turns the question back to the lawyer, and the lawyer answers, citing scripture in Deuteronomy and Leviticus. The lawyer circles around one more time, this time asking a question with a history of interpretation: who is one’s neighbor? Jesus responds by telling the story of the Good Samaritan. Jesus describes a man who’s been stripped and beaten and left for dead; he names two men who pass by on the other side of the road as a priest and a Levite, and he names the rescuer as a Samaritan.
Then Jesus turns to the lawyer and asks him, “Which of these three, do you think, was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of the robbers?” When it’s the lawyer’s turn to speak, the name of the one who’s become the focus of the story isn’t on his lips. Jesus has named the Good Samaritan as the main character, but the lawyer doesn’t say, “The Samaritan.” Perhaps it’s because the lawyer doesn’t want to have the word in his mouth. After all, for the Jews the Samaritans were the unclean ones from the north.
Instead the lawyer answers, “The one who showed him mercy.” That answer cannot be all bad, for Jesus’ response is “Go and do likewise.” There is a tidiness between the original question, “What must I do to inherit eternal life?” and the directive, “Go and do likewise.” In the end the answer is about mercy.
Some have called this story the parable of the merciful Samaritan. Mercy is different from goodness. The Samaritan who acted with mercy is a depiction, an example of mercy. The word eleos implies something broader than the juridical sense we often bring to the concept of mercy, and it means something more than forgiving a debt or an offense. Eleos suggests blessing and unwarranted
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compassion as well as leniency. It is about pardon, kindness, strength and even rescue and generosity. It is a word that can hold a lot.
It is a word at the heart of many prayers. Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner. These are the words of the ancient Jesus Prayer, prayed in silence, prayed with the rhythm of breathing or prayed aloud as a mantra with others. Have mercy, say congregants who pray intercessions.
Mercy is at the heart of the church’s prayers. Mercy is our intercession before God when we call upon God’s covenant loyalty, God’s faithfulness, God’s steadfast love.
I believe that what we pray gets into our bones. Time after time, Sunday after Sunday, prayer after prayer: Lord, have mercy gets into our bones. Have mercy on us, O God gets inside of us. Standing alongside family and friends and strangers petitioning God and calling down God’s mercy, we begin to see ourselves linked as the mercy-needing ones. All of us with our hard lives, all of us with sins and regrets, all of us in need of strength and blessing and rescue. All of us at the hands of robbers and as the robbers, all of us on the road, all of us made neighbors in Jesus Christ. Have mercy, O God. Make us merciful. Make us mercy bearers. Make us bear the fruit of mercy. Make us more than good, make us merciful. Beyond bloodlines and country: make us mercy to all we meet.
Conclusion
After all these bad news surrounding humanity, God has come with mercy and love, offering salvation. He made us alive; he has taken care of our greatest problem-sin. If he has taken care of our greatest problem, we can trust him for all the other problems we face. It is because of this gift of salvation that:-
Addicts quit their drugs
Spouses forgive each other
Thieves stop stealing
Gossipers stop gossiping
Slanderers stop slandering
Adulterers repent of their adultery
Tribalists and clanists repent of their tribalism and Clanism
People change, they don’t stop sinning because they have to, and they stop sinning because they want to. They realize that joy is found in relationship with a merciful God.
Shalom