Our Need For Mercy

“Shew us thy mercy, O LORD, and grant us thy salvation.” (Ps 85:7 AV)

Psalm eighty-five is a psalm of the penitent nation of Israel.  We don’t know the writer nor the specific circumstance that gave inspiration to this psalm.  And, in reflection, it doesn’t matter anyway.  Psalm eighty-five is the way of the child of God.  He fails.  God chastens.  He repents. God saves.  It may be this was written during the history of the Judges.  Who knows?  This psalm is a special one to me.  Particularly because I fail God a lot.  The flesh is a constant bane in my life.  It gives me fits and I yield to it far too much.  When I read this psalm and the pleading of the writer, I cannot help but feel that I, nor anyone else, is entitled to the mercy of God.  If it was written during the period of the Judges, it would be easy for the child of God to understand this struggle.  Paul described it in Romans chapter seven.  What must settle in the heart is our need for God’s mercy and the humility to accept it.  Sometimes, we are too proud.  We want to chasten ourselves.  Yet that is not on the table.  Pride is what caused us to fall and if we do not allow the mercy of God to have its work, pride will continue the fall.  Mercy is an important need of the human soul.  Without it, we could never succeed. 

One of the required classes for graduation from Bible college was Speech class.  Among other projects, we were required to amass a speech file.  This would be clippings from newspapers, articles from magazines, or typed-up illustrations or anecdotes.  A joke or two didn’t hurt.  This speech file was compiled over sixteen weeks and was actually quite significant.  At the time of this class, my wife was pregnant with our first child.  I was working two jobs and going to school full time.  Towards Lisa’s third trimester, she developed problems.  One of those complications demanded complete bed rest.  I can’t remember what that condition was called, but it was a rather common one.  What that meant for me was running the house and caring for a patient among working two jobs and going to school.  I dropped the elective classes but still took the required courses.  Speech class was one of them.  Compiling a speech file is not hard.  It is just time-consuming.  There is a lot of reading and organizing.  I started with good intentions.  But as my duties became more demanding, I found myself unable to complete the task.  So, I took my wife’s speech file from High School, required by the same instructor, and relabeled it as my own.  Sure, it was hers.  But we are talking about a collection of illustrations.  The words might be copyrighted, but the collection was not.  Technically, I did the task.  I just chose to go to one source rather than spend hours at a time at the library retyping news articles or passages from a book.  The instructor remembered my wife’s work of five years prior.  However, she was merciful to me and wrote a note that she knew where the file came from, and due to my circumstances, she accepted the work as a pass mark.  Did I need that mercy, or what?

Effective mercy depends on the humility of the receiver.  One needs to be humble enough to admit the need for mercy.  But he also needs to be humble enough to receive it.  And herein is the rub.  We fail so much that part of us desires to punish ourselves.  We want to be the executer of judgment when we fail to please God.  We refuse mercy in an attempt to please God by punishing ourselves.  We cannot understand the balance between justice and mercy.  Our crimes are hideous.  We deserve a devil’s hell.  And if we could send ourselves there, we would.  Yet this is not humility.  This is pride.  Our psalmist has no reservations that stop him from crying out to God for mercy.  He has no reluctance in accepting the mercy for which he cries.  He knows he and the nation stand in need of God’s mercy.  Without it, they will be defeated by their enemies.  So, he cries out.  He needs the salvation of God.  Because the old man is with us until we die, we too need the continuous salvation of God.  Not from hell.  That was settled once and for all.  We need salvation from sin.  For that, we cry.  This is our need for mercy.  This is our cry.  It is up to accept it.