Inspire Ohio 2012

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Advent HOPE Kettering

Chester Clark

Love Mercy

And I just want to say how much I enjoyed this afternoon's meeting, Shane.

It's amazing to me also to see how God interweaves our thoughts so that I really felt like the material that Pastor Shane presented complimented and left, it sort of filled in voids that I had left in my message.

And I'm just so thankful that Holy Spirit works.

I think when you go to prepare for a meeting like this, at least my personal experience is, you know, sometimes you just don't know.

You don't know the people, you don't know the needs, and you feel a little bit of, at a loss.

There's a little bit of, from my, at least, experience, there's a little bit of an insecurity going in to know if this is going to be something that's going to touch a core, that it's going to be meaningful.

And when you see the way the Holy Spirit has led the other participants and the attendees and so forth along similar veins, it is just affirming to know that the Holy Spirit is in charge of a meeting like this.

And once again, I just want to mention that, you know, this really is a series that we're looking at from Micah 6 and verse 8.

And so if you weren't here for the other parts, I'd encourage you when you have the luxury of time to look them up on AudioVerse and listen to the others.

Because I think that the whole verse is a package.

And I might add that this whole weekend's a package so look up the other presentations by Pastor Shane Anderson and and and and see how the Holy Spirit can bless you whether you're listening on audio verse or whether you're here in person.

So tonight we're wanting to once again open God's Word.

We want to we want to see what the Holy Spirit can speak to our hearts tonight and we want first of all to to comply with 1 of those conditions for the Holy Spirit, right?

And so I just invite you to, once again, bow your heads for an additional word of prayer.

Father in heaven, we come before you this evening as the wonderful, blessed hours of this Sabbath draw to a close, confessing our need for yet additional grace from your throne, asking for a greater blessing from on high.

Lord, we come Not because there's anything good that we've done, not because we deserve it, not because, not because of anything we can commend ourselves to You with.

We come simply because Jesus has invited us to come boldly, to ask for grace to help in time of need.

We come because of His blood, we come because of His righteousness, and we ask that He might present our request tonight, that we might receive the gift that He is waiting to bestow to us this evening as we open your word.

We thank you for this promise and we ask it in his name.

Turn with me again to Micah chapter 6 and verse 8.

Maybe you have this text memorized already and it's just an exercise in finding the minor prophets for you to be turning there each time.

How many of you know this passage as a scripture song?

Anyone know Micah 6, 8 as a scripture song?

As this past week I've been meditating on it and thinking and studying it and you know throughout the day as I was working on different things even when I wasn't studying I was finding myself singing this scripture song repeatedly over and over and over.

And that's the beauty of scripture songs, really.

You know, we all have songs stuck in our heads sometimes, right, even if we're not very musical at all.

We, I think, find the catchiness of some song that sticks in our heads, and what a blessing it is when a scripture sticks in our heads, right?

And we find it coming to our consciousness over and over again.

And we notice here as we look at this passage, what is it that God wants of His people?

How can we have this revival and reformation, an awakening that we need today in Laodicea?

And the Bible here says in verse 8, Micah chapter 6, He hath showed thee, O man, what is good, and what doth the Lord require of thee, but to do what?

Last night we looked at how He has shown thee.

That is the most trustworthy form of revelation that God uses to show us his will.

And if we're not listening to his word, we can't be expecting him to be speaking to us through the other means.

The primary way in which God communicates with man is through His words.

We looked this morning at what it means to do justly.

To do justly is not just an external experience.

It's not just a matter of checklist dos and don'ts that we cross off every day.

As important or unimportant as some of those may be, to do justly begins with being made just in the beginning, right?

It begins with what we call justification, which is God looking upon us just as if I had not sinned.

It's God forgiving my past and then filling me with His Spirit so that I can walk in newness of life.

As we have received Christ Jesus our Lord, which is by grace through faith, right?

So it's not just those 2 little words in the English, to do justly, seems very, you know, very small and very insignificant, but there's a lot packed into it, isn't there?

In order for us to do justly, we need to be converted, right?

The next step of what God requires of us is that we should love mercy.

And I would propose to you tonight that these steps are actually sequential.

That is, first we have to do justly before we can learn to love mercy.

Now some are going to say, wait a minute, I know plenty of people who love mercy.

I know plenty of people who are very accommodating, very merciful, you know.

They're very generous in their views of everyone else.

You've probably known some atheists even, right?

Some agnostics, some people who didn't have any Christian religion.

Or maybe they were, had some other religious leanings.

And they were very generous towards other people, right?

Well, in a sense I understand that that is true.

And in a sense we can see the Holy Spirit working out the character of God in other people even though they don't have a real personal relationship with Him, right?

We do see positive traits in other people.

But I want to propose to you this evening that in order for us to love mercy, we must first do justly for this reason.

That is, it is not an evidence of greatness for us to be merciful towards those who are like us.

It's not an evidence of greatness for us to be merciful towards those who are like us.

It's not an evidence of greatness for us to be merciful towards those that are like us.

Now if I love sin and I am attached to my sins, is it any great show of mercy for me to be accommodating or generous or merciful towards those who also are living in sin?

It's probably more camaraderie than it is mercy.

And now, well, you may say those are, you know, we have different sins.

But sometimes we're accommodating towards other people's sins because we don't, we want them to be accommodating towards our sins.

I mean, in many churches, I hate to say it, it's a sad testimony, but in many churches, many Christian churches, maybe even many Adventist churches, there's a lot of things going on that nobody speaks up about because they have their own dirt they don't want to have spoken up about.

And so everyone leaves everyone else alone because no 1 wants their pet projects to be messed with.

That's being accomplices in the crime, right?

The test of mercy is when God begins cleaning up our own life, when we experience justification, when we begin making changes in our own life and all of a sudden we are faced with other people around us who are living differently than we're living now.

And then we find out whether we love mercy or not.

And I think there's a sequential growth in grace here, sort of like, you know, Peter's ladder in the New Testament, sort of like we mentioned in the 3 angels' messages.

I think there's a sequential growth in grace as we come to Jesus, as we are converted, as we surrender our lives to Him, as He begins to work in us, both to will and to do of His good pleasure, there comes a natural tendency, and I've seen it in many, many new converts, many whose have the first love, who are on fire for Jesus, right?

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Love Mercy

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