The Wideness of God’s Mercy

Psalm 29; John 3:1-17

Dr. Fisher Humphries was interim pastor here a couple of decades ago. He’s actually the one who recommended me as pastor of this church, so you have him to blame! He is one of the finest theologians Baptists from the south have produced. He wrote a little book titled, The Death of Christ. It includes this fictitious parable to explain why Jesus died.

An imaginary man whom he names Bill seizes control of a small South American country. He systematically begins to kill all the non-white people in his country. He justifies his actions by proclaiming that only white people are fully persons, and non-whites, since they are not fully persons, ought to die. He is matter-of-fact about his position and believes that his actions are moral. His critics? They’re all just sentimental, he says.

When Bill’s father learns what his son is doing, he is deeply disturbed. Indeed, he is horrified to know that his own son, his own flesh and blood, has become a vicious racist and is carrying out this atrocious genocide. He didn’t rear his son to be that kind of person.

The father leaves his home in Europe and flies to his son’s country. There he begins a public campaign, denouncing his own son’s actions, publicly calling for him to end the carnage.

Bill responds by having his father tortured, hoping that will silence him. However, the father continues his public campaign opposing his son’s horrible, racist actions. Finally, Bill concludes that he has no other option and has his father executed, along with all the others who oppose him. The father faces death with courage, knowing that it was inevitable. His last words are these: “Tell my son that I died for him.”

When Bill is told his father’s dying words, he tries not to think about them. He tries to put them out of his mind, but he cannot. He is overcome by his father’s deep love for him. “How could it be?” he wonders. “What does it mean: he died for me?” As he ponders what has happened—that one person

could love another person enough to suffer and even die to reclaim that person—Bill finally begins to realize how horrible his actions have been. He is finally convinced that what he has been doing is wrong and has a complete change of heart. The result is that he changes his policies, becomes a more humane leader, and his country becomes a better place to live for all people (The Death of Christ, pp. 180-181).

It is a story about the power of mercy. Not the brute force of Bill, but the greater power of sacrificial love demonstrated by Bill’s father. If Bill’s father had met his son’s aggression with stronger aggression, had he met his guns with larger guns, if he had confronted the son’s red-hot anger with even hotter anger, he might have stopped his son, but he would not have converted his son. The most powerful force in the world for changing the human heart is sacrificial love. That is what the Bible calls mercy.

For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.

There is no brute force in those words, no aggression, no guns, no red- hot anger. John 3:16 is about the greater power, the only power that can convert the human heart, the power of mercy.

Ironically, Nicodemus was the trained theologian in our text, not Jesus, but he was still learning this lesson about mercy. Nicodemus was a Pharisee and a ruler of the Jews, John says, both very respected roles in their culture. John notes that Nicodemus went to see Jesus at night. That’s interesting because we are left to wonder exactly what John meant. Did John literally mean that Nicodemus went at nighttime, suggesting by stealth, under the cover of darkness, perhaps so others would not see him? Or was John using the word “night” symbolically, suggesting that the trained theologian was really in spiritual darkness?

Both may be true, but I think that the latter is certainly true. Nicodemus was in spiritual darkness. He may have been a Pharisee. He may have been a ruler of the Jews. He may have filled other respected roles in their culture. But Nicodemus was still learning about the mercy of God. He stumbled over Jesus’ teaching about being born again, born anew the newer translation read.

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In Jesus’ attempt to explain, Jesus reached back into Nicodemus’ theological training and pulled out a story about Moses from the Hebrew Scriptures. “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” Jesus told him, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

Are you familiar with that story about the snakes from the book of Numbers? If you are skittish about snakes, you will not like this story. It makes me think of the scene in the movie Raiders of the Lost Ark when Harrison Ford drops into the pit with the snakes. The people of Israel were near the end of their forty years of wandering in the wilderness. They had spent hundreds of years in slavery in Egypt. God used Moses to deliver them from the hands of the Egyptians. In the text from Numbers, they were near the Promised Land, but the text says that they complained. “The people spoke against God and against Moses,” the text reads, “‘Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we detest this miserable food.’”

The text says that God responded to their complaints with a harsh and unusual judgment. God sent poisonous snakes among the people, the ultimate nightmare for many. The text calls them fiery serpents because, when the snakes bit, it burned. The people were dying. All around people were being bitten by the snakes and dying. So Moses prayed on their behalf, asking God for mercy. God told Moses to fashion a snake out of bronze and lift it up on a pole. Then anyone who had been bitten could look up at the bronze snake and be healed. Notice that God did not take away the snakes. Instead, God used a snake as a means of healing. Moses did as the Lord instructed, and it worked. Anyone who was bitten could look up at the bronze snake, and he or she was healed.

Surely Nicodemus remembered that story. He was trained. He was educated in the scriptures. “How can anyone be born after having grown old? Can one enter a second time into the mother’s womb and be born?” he asked from his darkness. Jesus enlightened him, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.”

The Son of Man, Jesus, was lifted up. One a cross. Sacrifice. Not brute force. Not aggression or red-hot anger. Only love and the power of mercy. Jesus’ teaching is about a God-kind-of-power that is able to change not just behavior, but the human heart. Jesus was telling Nicodemus about the power

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of sacrificial love. Jesus knew it was inevitable too. Another pole would be lifted up, this one just outside Jerusalem. It would be on a hill they called Golgotha, so named because it was shaped somewhat like a skull. I saw that hill when I was there. It does resemble a skull. We had Communion and sang a hymn in a garden beside it. Jesus would be lifted up on a pole on that hill, and there he would die. He was not forced. It was not done by the power of Pilate or the Sanhedrin. Jesus could have gone free if he had wanted. They did not take his life; he laid down his life. He could have been Jesus Christ, political superstar, but he did not choose that kind of power. He knew its limitation. He chose instead the most powerful force in the world. He chose sacrificial love, a power that converts the human heart.

People left Golgotha that day beating their breast. And even today, more than 2,000 years later, we who look upon the cross of Jesus find power that is healing. Something is touched within when we believe that on a day in history a man died for us.

The old hymn got it right. There is a wideness in God’s mercy. It is like the wideness of the sea. There is a kindness in God’s justice, which is more than liberty. For some reason this next verse was left out of our hymnal. Its omission suggests that we, like Nicodemus, are still learning about the mercy of God. It goes this way:

But we make His love too narrow by false limits of our own; And we magnify His strictness with a zeal He will not own.

Remember Bill’s father’s last words? “Tell my son I died for him,” his father said. Bill responded, How could it be? What does it mean: he died for me?

When you answer those questions, you will understand mercy and why Jesus died upon the cross.

Closing Prayer

We open our hearts, our minds, and our wills to your costly forgiveness born out of amazing mercy. Amen.