“Yet I will rejoice in the LORD, I will be joyful in GOD my Savior.” Habakkuk 3:18.

When we think about God, we can't help but think about pure and whole and upright in every way. A Bible passage that illustrates this marvelous quality of our God. Isaiah 6:3, we have this grand throne room scene where Isaiah is at, and as you're going to recall, Isaiah doesn't feel worthy to be there. Listen to what one of them around this throne cries out. "And one cried to another and said, 'Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts. The whole earth is full of His glory.'" That threefold epitaph, holiness is the very quality and nature of who God is. God is not One who can be stained with sin. God is perfect in every way. He cannot lie, Titus 1:2, He cannot commit sin, 1 Peter 2:22, and He does not change, Malachi 3:6. He is the same yesterday, today, and forever. As we think about God, how wonderful it is to know God is the absence of everything that is wrong and bad and ugly that we think about today. Another Bible passage is found in 1 Samuel 2:2. "No one is holy like the Lord, for there is none beside You, nor is there any rock like our God." Nobody even compares. I know good people in this life, you know good people in this life, and there are a host of good people who are trying to live right and do right. We respect them for that, but no one even begins to compare. Ecclesiastes 7:20 says this. "There's not a righteous man on the face of the earth who does good and does not sin." Except our God is the unique. He's the one who never has to face any of that. God is the epitome of holiness. How does that affect someone who believes in God? Well, here's the natural application from Scripture. Two passages. Leviticus 11:44, "For I am the Lord your God. You shall therefore consecrate yourselves and," listen now, "you shall be holy, for I am holy." The Holy Spirit must have had this in mind when Peter penned these words in 1 Peter 1:15 when he says, "But as He who called you as holy, you also be holy in all your conduct." The natural application is, I want to be like God. I want to imitate Christ, 1 Corinthians 11:1. I want to have the mind of Christ, Philippians 2:5. I want to be that example to the world that I can be, and part of that is I want to try my best to live a holy life.

 God is not only holy- God is merciful. How thankful we ought to be for the mercy of God. Grace is when God allows us to receive what we don't deserve. Mercy is when He allows us to escape what we do deserve. Isn't that a beautiful picture? What do I deserve? Psalm 103:10, the Bible says, "The Lord's not dealt with us according to our sins, nor punished us according to our iniquities." Ezekiel 18:4, here's what we deserve. "The soul who sins will surely die." And yet, it is the mercy of God that intercedes. If I had a top 10 list of my favorite verses, this would be really close to the top. Lamentations 3:22-23 says this so beautifully about the mercy of God. The Bible says, "Through the Lord's mercies we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They are new every morning. Great is Your faithfulness."  Another beautiful passage that I think of about the mercy of God is found in Psalm 86:15. The psalmist says, "But you, O Lord, are a God full of compassion, and gracious, long-suffering, and abundant in mercy and truth." What do we know about God and His mercy? It isn't as though God has a little bit in a cup or God has a little bit in a bowl, God is abounding, He's overflowing with mercy. Yes, God's to be feared. Yes, God is a God who doesn't want anybody to be lost, 1 Timothy 2:4, but is going to punish those who don't obey His will. But for His child, who's trying to walk in the light and live right- how thankful we ought to be for the mercy of God! Then there's the beautiful words of Hebrews 8:12 that help us to make application to the mercy of God. God said this, "For I will be merciful to their unrighteousness, and their sins and their all his deeds I will remember no more." When I think about God's mercy, it's because of that mercy that I have forgiveness. It's that God said ‘I'll be merciful.’ God didn't have to be. God could have punished man according to his sin, but God said, "I'll be merciful to their sins," and listen to this, "and their lawless deeds I'll remember no more." How wonderful it is. This is what we're trying to really illustrate and show today. Our God is so good. He is an awesome God, and His mercy so beautifully illustrates that. 

(Ben Bailey excerpts from the Gospel of Christ bulletin)