Road to Damascus

When I was growing up, I had a family member named Uncle Henry. Now, truth be told, wasn't my uncle, it was my dad's uncle, but we just referred to him as Uncle Henry. Not great Uncle Henry. It was just Uncle Henry. My dad would sometimes call him Hank. And my dad had the highest respect for him 'cause it was my dad's mother's brother and he looked out for my dad quite a bit just growing up. So my dad thought the world of him, but there were, there was like a mythology around Uncle Henry. He was like a mythical figure to me and my brother and my sister when we were growing up because my dad would tell tales of all of these incredible exploits of Uncle Henry, many of which had to do with some rough and tumble types of exploits, maybe a little bit on the fighting side. But nonetheless, they would tell all of these stories and they were eye witness accounts. They weren't just, you know, kind of fantastical fictional lore. They were actually people who saw him do these things. And so we grew up, you know, understanding Uncle Henry's really tough and he kind of scares us a little bit when we go to family gatherings and, but he's awesome. And my dad loves him and we love him and it's great. So I remember on one Christmas Eve when we were all gathering, and I was probably an early teenager at this point, we were all gathering at one of the homes of our family on my dad's side. And I don't know if it was my dad putting a little thing in my ear saying, Hey, you know what, you're kind of, you know, you're getting a little bigger and stronger now as a teenager. You might wanna, might wanna challenge Uncle Henry. I don't know if it was that or if it was just my teenage hubris at the time, but I remember going up to Uncle Henry and kind of giving him a little poke like that and kind of looking at him like, what's going on Uncle Henry? Looks like you're a little older at this point. I'm feeling pretty good. And before the words got outta my mouth, that man had my arm in a vice grip and started twisting it like an Auntie Ann's pretzel to the point that I am screaming and just yelling the word mercy Mercy. And then he wryly smiles and just lets my arm go. And he just goes about being Uncle Henry. And I go about being an idiot. Because what happened in that moment is the word that came out of my mouth. Mercy, was a reminder that I did not want what I deserved. I was begging my Uncle Henry not to give me the full measure of what my idiot pride actually deserved in that moment. Now I've grown up around the game of baseball, as you guys know, and had a couple sons that played ball, you know, at a pretty high level, one that's still playing. And so we've got like baseball in our blood and in the game of baseball, the idea of mercy is actually baked in. So when you're young, what they have is they have this particular rule, like if you are losing by 10 runs after five innings, they call it the mercy rule and they just shut it down. It's good for little kids, but the truth is both as a player and as a coach, I've been on both sides of that. And so when you're on the side where you're getting blasted that day and nothing's going right and you're losing like 25 to two in the fifth inning, they just shut it down and just, hey, everybody shake hands. The truth is, I'm really glad that that exists because without it, we would've gotten what we actually deserved. And right now, right now, I would still be out coaching 12 year olds in a game that wasn't over because it was 400,000 to two, right? So I'm really grateful for the mercy rule in baseball because there are times where your team, you're just hoping you don't get what you really deserve when you show up because you're playing awful, everything's stacked against you and you get mercy. Now, as we finish our series today, maybe not finish, we're gonna do it again next week. But as we're coming close to the the end of our series today called Roadmap, what we're going to do is we're going to look at Acts chapter nine. We've been looking at the road to Jerusalem and we looked to the road to Calvary, and we looked at the road to Emmaus, and now we're looking at the road to Damascus where Saul is on a journey toward Damascus. And we're going to look at that. Now, before we get there, and you can find your place in Acts chapter nine here, any of our campuses, you can open up your Bible, take out your phone, whatever it is you need to see it. But in Acts chapter nine, if I was going to describe the story that we were looking at with Saul on the road to Damascus, I would simply remind you today that this is a, it's a story about mercy. That's what this story is about. It's a story about the great and overwhelming mercy of God. And maybe if I wanted to really specify it, I would say this about the mercy of God that Christ's mercy is wide and purposeful. That's really the summary of the story that we're going to look at today is that Christ's mercy is wide and it's purposeful. Now, we're going to be in Acts chapter nine and pick up this story in verse one in just a minute. But let me see if we can set the story up just for a moment in the context of scripture. We'll start at the point where Jesus has shown up and he has died on a cross for the sins of the world, and he has risen from the dead. Some 50 days after that time, the spirit of God is sent by the Lord Jesus to what is called the Feast of Pentecost there that is happening in Jerusalem. And the spirit is poured out on believers, so much so that there are 3,000 people in a day that are added to the family of God. It is a remarkable occurrence where God is adding and saving those people. And so as the church begins to grow day by day and serve the Lord and become a witness, and the apostles are there in Jerusalem and they're a witness to Jesus Christ. But now persecution begins against predominantly the apostles, but also the associates of the apostles. And you're reading about all of this, as the book of Acts begins to unfold. And as they're experiencing great persecution, not only are the apostles, Peter and James and John, not only are they facing persecution and sometimes jail is a result of that, but those that are spending time with them, maybe even deacons or other colleagues or associates, they're also facing significant persecution. One of them who was a man by the name of Stephen, and Stephen began to preach and preach and preach. And then he was taken by the Sanhedrin and the Sanhedrin was saying, you can't do that. And he was preaching Jesus and his face was like that of an angel. And they were watching what was happening, and then they basically condemned him to die by stoning. And there were lots of people that were witnessing this. In fact, here's, here's what it says in Acts chapter seven, beginning in verse 58, it says, meanwhile, the witnesses laid their coats at the feet of a young man named Saul. And while they were stoning him, Stephen prayed, Lord Jesus receive my spirit. Then he fell on his knees and cried out, Lord, don't hold this sin against them. And when he had said this, he fell asleep. Stephen was condemned to die by stoning. And there were many people that were there to witness this stoning that Stephen was condemned to die by. And there was one young man, it says that was there witnessing all of this, and his name was Saul. People were putting their coats down in front of him while the stoning was going on. And young Saul is watching as this particular martyr of the faith, this follower of Jesus Christ, is preaching the gospel, is condemned to die by stoning and whose calling out Lord, forgive them for what they're doing. He sounds just like the master he's following, right? Don't hold this against them. He sounds just like Jesus from the cross. And Saul's watching all of this. And Saul doesn't just pick up on this and just watch it and then go about his life. No, no, no, no, no. Saul decides that he's going to increase the persecution that's happening against the believers who are following Jesus. In fact, it says this in the beginning of Acts chapter eight, it says, and Saul approved of their killing Stephen. He didn't just watch it, he approved of it. And on that day, a great persecution broke out against the church in Jerusalem. And all except the apostles were scattered throughout Judea and Samaria. Godly men buried Stephen and mourned deeply for him. But Saul began to destroy the church. Going from house to house, he dragged off both men and women and put them in prison. This is what Saul is doing, this is what he's going after. And then a little further into Acts chapter eight after Luke records some about the apostle Peter and records about the deacon evangelist named Philip. Then he finally comes back to, at the very beginning of chapter nine, picking back up with what Saul was doing and here's what it says in verse number one of Acts chapter nine. Meanwhile, Saul was still breathing out murderous threats against the Lord's disciples. And he went to the high priest and he asked him for letters to the synagogues in Damascus so that if he found any there, who belonged to the way, whether men or women, he might take them as prisoners to Jerusalem. So watch what Saul's doing. Saul realizes that through this persecution where he's been rounding up people and seeing many of them killed, some of them put in prison, he realizes that they've scattered all over the place. So he determines, hey, some have scattered to Damascus, I'm gonna go track them down. You see, what you don't maybe know from history is that in the time of Julius Caesar, which was in the mid-40s BC so roughly about 40 some odd years before Jesus was born, that there was an agreement between Rome and between Jerusalem, basically, between Israel and their religious leaders. And that was this, that if the religious leaders needed to extradite people from other Roman territories, that they were given permission to be able to do so. So what Saul does is he requests a letter from the high priest, which is in agreement with what the agreement was with Rome and says, I need some letters of extradition to be able to go to Damascus and I wanna be able to get some of those believers who've left here and I wanna bring them back to Jerusalem to stand trial. And obviously that also meant that they could be put to death as well. So that's what Saul's doing, still bringing out his murders threats and wanting to track everybody down. And then here's what it picks up saying in verse number three. As he neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and heard a voice say to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Who are you? Lord? Saul asked. I am Jesus whom you are persecuting, he replied. Now get up and go into the city and you will be told what you must do. And the men traveling with Saul stood there speechless. They heard the sound, but they didn't see anyone. Saul got up from the ground, but when he opened his eyes, he couldn't, he could see nothing. So they led him by the hand into Damascus and for three days he was blind and did not eat or drink anything. You see some people have tried to explain occurrence of what happened to Saul by saying, well, it was a, it was a physical issue that happened to him, this light, you know, he had a tremendously bad migraine. There are literally people who've tried to explain it this way. He had a tremendously bad migraine or they might have said no, no, he had, he had a physical malady and had a seizure. And sometimes you see light when you have a seizure. He must have had a seizure at this moment. So this may have been a figment of his imagination. But Luke, the doctor makes it, goes to great pains to articulate it was a light from heaven. This wasn't a migraine, this wasn't a seizure of some kind. This was a light from heaven. Luke is trying to remind us that this is an occurrence that is outside of the norm. This isn't just the sun was shining bright, he was walking in the shade and then the sun shine bright and all this was a light given supernaturally from heaven that was going to accost Saul in that moment. And Saul is blinded by this light and then hears this voice that says, Saul, Saul, isn't it interesting that he repeated his name? By the way, that is not an uncommon thing when there is a divine directive in the scripture given to someone who God is going to change their role. Sometimes he repeats their name. Abraham, Abraham. Jacob, Jacob. Moses, Moses. Samuel, Samuel. It happens over and over in scripture. And here, we have Jesus who has shown up in this blinding light and he says, Saul, Saul and Saul is trying to figure out exactly who he is, and he asks the question, who are you Lord? Now that sounds hilarious, doesn't it? That's like, that's like me coming up to you and you're like, who are you Jerry? And I'm like, Jerry, right? Who are you Lord? Now some of the translations that you read might say, who are you sir? So it's not that Paul necessarily, or Saul at this point necessarily understood or knew exactly who he was talking about. He may have had a pretty good idea that it wasn't just somebody he had run into, but here he is saying, who are you Lord? And Jesus replies back, I am Jesus whom you are persecuting. Now you and I might think to ourselves, wait a minute, he wasn't persecuting Jesus, he's persecuting all these followers of Jesus. Jesus so identifies with his people, that persecution of his people is persecution of him. Isn't that a staggeringly encouraging thing to think about as his people? That Jesus actually understands and notes our own persecution as his own persecution. And so he actually says to Saul, it's Jesus, the one you are persecuting. And he identifies himself with the people of Jesus so strongly in that moment. And then what he does is he commands Saul, he says, I want you to go to Damascus and I want you to wait there in Damascus. And Saul who when he gets up, cannot see anything, realizes that his colleagues are there and they have to lead him into Damascus. And his colleagues were there who heard something that was going on. It's maybe not that they could hear exactly what was being said, but they heard the noise but they didn't see anyone like Saul did. Some of you're going, wait a minute, the text doesn't say that he saw anyone. It does just a little bit later. It doesn't in this part, but he actually saw the Lord Jesus and heard from the Lord Jesus in whatever form that was post Jesus resurrection and then he's being now led to Damascus even though he can't see. Here's what it goes on to say in verse number 10. In Damascus there was a disciple named Ananias. And the Lord called to him in a vision, Ananias, yes Lord, he answered. The Lord told him, ain't it great that Ananias knew it was the Lord? Right? But I'm guessing if it's just the middle of the night and you hear an audible voice and you're by yourself and you just hear Jerry. Yes Lord, right? That'd be the right response. And here's what the, here's what the Lord says to him. Go to the house of Judas on Straight Street and ask for a man from Tarsus named Saul, for he's praying. In a vision he has seen a man named Ananias come and place his hands on him to restore his sight. Lord, Ananias answered, I have heard many reports about this man and all the harm he has done to your holy people in Jerusalem and he's come here with authority from the chief priest to arrest all who call on your name. But the Lord said to Ananias, go, this man is my chosen instrument to proclaim my name to the Gentiles and their kings and to the people of Israel. I will show him how much he must suffer for my name. Then Ananias went to the house and entered it and placing his hands on Saul, he said, brother Saul. How beautiful is that statement? Brother Saul, the Lord, Jesus who appeared to you on the road as you were coming here has sent me so that you may see again and be filled with the Holy Spirit. And immediately something like scales fell from Saul's eyes and he could see again. And he got up and was baptized. And after taking some food, he regained his strength. This is an absolutely remarkable thing, you see he makes it to Damascus. He's on a street called Straight because he had been on a street called crooked life. And now Jesus told him to go to the street called Straight in a man's house named Judas. And then as he's there and he's praying, he has a vision that a man named Ananias is going to show up and it's going to come to him, right? Paul's getting the full meal deal here, right? And Ananias then gets the voice from the Lord that says Ananias, And he says, yes Lord. And he says, I want you to go to this particular place. There's gonna be a guy there named Saul, and I want you to go and I want you to see him and I want you to pray for him and I want you to bring him a message. And you know, and Ananias is like, Hey, wait, I know who Saul is. Saul has been given authority to come here to arrest people like all of us who are followers of you, Lord Jesus. And like he's bad news, like Ananias is having a conversation with Jesus who died and rose from the grave and ascended to the Father and is now speaking to him and he's having a conversation trying to fill Jesus in on who Saul is. There's some things that are funny in scripture, right? And he's saying, he's basically saying, Jesus, do you know who Saul is? Or is this like another Saul that we're talking about? And Jesus calms him, reassures him, and then Ananias goes, what faith that must have taken from Ananias? How scary must that have been? He's thinking, okay, I'm gonna get arrested and die. And he goes, and there's Saul just in there praying, blinded, and Ananias places his hands on him and his first words to him are brother, brother Saul. What a remarkable thing because Jesus reassured Ananias, no, this is my chosen instrument, this is who I'm going to use. And Ananias just says, okay, well then okay. And then as he prays for Saul, scales fall from his eyes, he's able to see again. And then he's baptized into Christ, presumably by Ananias. What a remarkable story this is, what a supernatural story this is. But maybe what takes our breath away about this story is how upside down it is, because the primary persecutor of the people of Jesus becomes Jesus' chosen instrument to reach all kinds of people. What? The primary persecutor of Jesus and his people becomes Jesus' chosen instrument to reach so many people. Do you know what I call that? Mercy. That is extraordinary mercy. Now, I told you a few moments ago that Christ's mercy is wide and it's purposeful. Let's talk about those two pieces for just a moment, can we? Christ's mercy is wide, the mercy of Christ is wide. Let's remind ourselves back in verse number three, what Luke writes for us. It says, as Saul neared Damascus on his journey, suddenly a light from heaven flashed around him. He fell to the ground and he heard a voice say to him, Saul, Saul, why do you persecute me? Who are you Lord, Saul asked. I'm Jesus whom you are persecuting, he replied. Now, get up and go into the city and you'll be told what you must do. Saul was a killer. Saul was breathing out murderous threats to the people of Jesus. Saul was literally heading to Damascus on a mission to grab up as many followers of Jesus as possible, bring them back to Jerusalem so that they would stand whatever trial that might be, where they would either be put to death or put in jail or flogged or whatever it is that they would do in that sham trial, just like they did with the Lord Jesus. 

And what's inspiring about this is that Jesus appears to this killer and doesn't kill him. Would you have blamed Jesus? This is the great persecutor of Jesus and his people, and Jesus shows up to him, stops him dead in his tracks, and if the story just read and then he zapped him, we might just go, sounds right. I think that's correct, right? He doesn't show up to kill him, he shows up to rescue him. Well, mercy is astounding because of how wide it is. Saul deserved death and Jesus gave him mercy, which begs the question, why is Jesus so merciful? Why is he so merciful? Two quick reasons that I caught it. There's a bazillion reasons, right? Here's two quick ones to think about. The first is because Jesus is not intimidated, he's not intimidated by Saul. Jesus is the alpha and the omega, the beginning and the end. Jesus is the lamb who was sacrificed and the lion who roared back to life. Jesus is the word that is made flesh, who has always been with God from the very beginning, but then became flesh and made his dwelling among us. Why would he be intimidated? Jesus is the agent of creation. Everything that has been made has been made through him. Whether listen to this, whether in heaven or on earth, whether thrones or powers, whether invisible or visible or thrones or powers or authorities. Everything is made by him and for him and to him and in him, all things are held together. Those are Paul's words in Colossians. But nonetheless, they're coming quickly to me. Why would he be intimidated? And by the way, he's not intimidated by what people think about his actions. He's not only not scared of those who persecute, he's not worried about what people think, about their perception of him showing mercy to somebody like Saul. Because in our day and age he'd probably be called soft. People be all over him on Twitter because he'd gone soft or maybe because he's unjust or he's just stupid. He should have blown that guy up. What's he thinking? That's the world that we live in. Jesus unconcerned and unintimidated by any of that. He's not worried about what anybody thinks. He's not worried about what anybody's doing. This is the son of God who's got it all in his hands and his mercy is as wide as he is and that's wide. So he is not intimidated. That's one reason he's so merciful. But lemme show you the second reason. It's because of his nature as God. This is why he's not intimidated to be merciful. This is why he is so merciful. Jesus is God the Son. He is a part of the eternal Godhead, father, son, and spirit that has existed from eternity in the past. And this God who we know as the Godhead, God, the Father, son, and spirit has been revealed to us as love. God is love and from God's love flows God's necessary and natural mercy. This is an extension of the very love of God. And we see God's nature all through scripture demonstrating his love through mercy. We see it in the Garden of Eden where Adam and Eve have sinned and although they do get cast from the garden, they also get clothed by the God who cast them out. And they didn't get all that they deserved. God showed them mercy. God showed mercy all through scripture. He showed mercy to a world that was violent and hateful and murderous and treacherous. And he renewed it through Noah and his family because he showed mercy to the world. God showed mercy as he called a people to himself, a people for himself that would demonstrate to the gentile and pagan nations that God alone is God, that there's not a bazillion of them, only him. And he did that by calling one man named Abraham who was the son of a pagan idol maker. And he showed him mercy because he was demonstrating his mercy to the world by calling a people named Israel who would be like sands of the seashore coming from Abraham, like stars of the sky coming from Abraham. And as that people began to grow and develop, God showed his great mercy when that people started to abandon God and then they ended up in a place where they were under the oppression of Egypt and in captivity in Egypt. And God raised up in his mercy a man named Moses to speak to the Pharaoh and he delivered his people from ******* in Egypt. And in that story, here's what we learned that God said, he said this about Pharaoh, that he will harden whom he will harden and he will have mercy on whom he will have mercy. Because the very God who is in charge of all of this gets to decide how and when mercy is handed out. He continues to show mercy through the scripture. We could go into the prophets and we could look at Jonah if we wanted to and demonstrate that even though Jonah didn't wanna see it happen, he went and preached the message to Nineveh. And Nineveh turned and repented, even though Jonah wasn't looking forward to that kind of mercy. But God shows mercy even through a prophet that wasn't merciful. Why? Because he is this. And then God demonstrates it perfectly through the very son of God, the Lord Jesus. As the old creed says He is very God of very God, the Lord Jesus Christ who came to die for the sins of both Jews and Gentiles so that they could know the mercy of God. Friends, it can shock us when really bad people are shown mercy. When really evil people are shown mercy, it can shock us. But here's the only reason that it can shock us, because we've forgotten the greatness of God's mercy. We've forgotten the greatness of God's mercy. I mean, Paul described his own life a little bit later, his own story, his own testimony when he is writing to Timothy. In first Timothy chapter one, verse 13, he says, even though I was once a blasphemer and a persecutor and a violent man, I was shown mercy because I acted in ignorance and unbelief. You see, friends, what we have to remember is this, is that when we understand the greatness of God's mercy, we will remember that we too were those people. We too were those people. Remember how Paul actually wrote about this in a few other places a little bit later on in his life, like in Ephesians chapter two, he said, all of us also lived among them at one time gratifying the cravings of our flesh and following its desires and thoughts and like the rest, we were by nature deserving of wrath, the wrath of God, but because of his great love for us, God, who is rich in mercy made us alive with Christ even when we were dead in transgressions. It is by grace you have been saved. We need to remember what Paul wrote in Titus chapter three, but when the kindness and love of God our savior appeared, he saved us not because of righteous things we had done, but because of his mercy. And what he said in the book of Romans, when he's writing about the nature of Israel and how Israel relates to the Gentiles and the rest of the world, he said, just as you the Gentiles were at one time disobedient to God, you've now received mercy as a result of their, Israel's, disobedience. So they too have now become disobedient, Israel, in order that they too may now receive mercy as a result of God's mercy to you, Gentiles. For God has bound everyone over to disobedience so that he may have mercy on them all. God has a heart of mercy. And I'm here to tell you real quick this morning, Christ's mercy is wide. It is wide, but it also the mercy of Christ has purpose. I told you that too, right? The mercy of Christ has a purpose. Now, if we kept reading the story that transpired after what we just read in the book of Acts, and we picked up in verse number 19, it would say this, Saul spent several days with the disciples in Damascus, and at once he began to preach in the synagogues that Jesus is the son of God. Could you, could you imagine that? He was going to Damascus to arrest all of these blasphemers in his mind, and now he's in Damascus preaching the message that he wanted people dead for. All those who heard him were astonished, you think? And they asked, isn't he the man who raised havoc in Jerusalem among those who call on this name and hasn't he come here to take them as prisoners to the chief priest? Yet Saul grew more and more powerful and baffled the Jews living in Damascus by proving that Jesus is the Messiah. Christ is going to use Saul in a tremendous way. The mercy that Christ has shown the great persecutor of Jesus and his people now becomes the great instrument that Jesus is going to use, not just in Damascus, but all over the known world there. He would take multiple missionary journeys, he would face heartache and shipwreck and near death and beatings and stonings, and he would face all of these things for the sake of the gospel of Jesus Christ and would end up by inspiration of the Holy Spirit writing two thirds of the New Testament. The great persecutor becomes the great chosen instrument because Christ's mercy always has purpose. But I wanna remind you of something else Paul knew. Paul knew that the purpose in this, and in case I lost any of you, Saul, is Paul. Paul is Saul. If you're new to the Bible, and you may not have realized that, that's the same person. Okay? One is his Jewish name, Saul, one is his Greco-Roman named Paul. Alright? Paul recognized that his transformation had a personal impact on people as well, that its purpose was personal. In fact, listen to what he said in I Timothy chapter one beginning in verse number 15. He said, here's a trustworthy saying that deserves full acceptance. Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners of whom I'm the worst. But for that very reason, I was shown mercy. For that very reason, I was shown mercy. So that in me the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his immense or unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe and receive eternal life. Now to the king, eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be glory and honor forever and ever. Amen. You see, Paul knew that his life example, that no matter how bad somebody is, no matter what you bring to the table, oh I just don't know if I, Paul's like, let me talk to you, take a look at my life. I was literally killing people who followed Jesus and he rescued me. What are you bringing to the table? You think he can't do that for you? You think his mercy doesn't have purpose, it has purpose. Sometimes we forget just how merciful God has been, don't we? And we need to be reminded from His Word just how merciful God has been. You see, maybe, maybe the reason we forget is because we've been living for him for a period of time and we've been walking with him faithfully for a period of time. But what happens if we're not careful is that we can begin to look at others who don't follow him, who haven't experienced the mercy of God yet. And we begin to look down on them with disdain. Look how awful they are. Look at these gross things that they do. I don't wanna be around these types of people and I understand to the degree that sin should turn our stomachs because we've been transformed and we've been changed. But sometimes we forget that we were on the same trajectory they were, headed straight to hell. Can I say that clearer? Headed straight for an eternity separated from God in a place the Bible describes as hell. That was our trajectory. We were enemies of God. We were given over to disobedience, we were cursed, we were condemned already the scripture says. That's where we were headed, but he showed us mercy. And it wasn't some weak, lily-livered mercy. It was a strong mercy through a blood soaked cross that took upon himself the wrath of God against our sin so that we could experience the mercy of God and walk in righteousness. This wasn't a scenario where Jesus came alongside of us and just gently grabbed our hand and guided us toward heaven because we were already pretty good people. This was a strong and severe mercy, where he violently ripped into your chest and removed your heart of sinful flesh and placed in you a regenerate heart that could now love and follow and know him. That is the glorious nature of his mercy. So Christian, don't forget about his mercy, not just in salvation, but every day. His mercies are new, what? Every morning. That's not a, that's not a way to just say His mercy is only good up until they stop serving breakfast at Tim Horton's. New every morning means every day, all day. Like it never runs out. It returns, it refreshes, his mercy for believers is always available to us and sometimes we forget it even as Christians. You may not know the name Richard Robinson. You probably don't, unless you just happen to have a friend that's, has that name. This was in the 1700's And Richard Robinson came to faith in Jesus when the preaching of George Whitfield, who was one of the great revivalists during the the time of the the Great Awakening. Richard Robinson was called to ministry, radically changed, radically transformed, would write sermons, would write hymns, was just a remarkable, remarkable man being used by God and then he strayed from God. He started walking in his carnal nature. He stopped pastoring. He just kind of walked to some degree away, dealt with a whole bunch of stuff. Later on in his life, many years down the road, he was in a stage coach and he was sharing a stage coach, much like we would share a taxi or an Uber. And that's what they did in those days. People headed to the same place. And there was a woman sitting next to him who was reading out of a hymnal. And as she was reading, she just began to sing. ♪ Come thou fount of every blessing ♪ ♪ Tune my heart to sing thy praise ♪ ♪ Streams of mercy ♪ ♪ Never ceasing ♪ ♪ Call for songs of loudest praise. ♪ Richard is sitting right next to her and she puts the hymn book in front of him and says, what do you think about this hymn? And through tears, he said, I wrote it. I wrote it. And he realized that the mercy of God met him in that moment. And he can meet you in that moment as well. What do you do when you contemplate the mercy of God? You worship. And what I want us to do before we wrap up, I want us to take a moment and I want us to worship and then I'll wrap up here and our campus pastors will wrap up there. So our bands on every campus are coming out right now and they're going to find their place. And what I'd ask you to do is I want you to stand with me because I wanna pray for us as we take a moment to worship. So just stand with me on every campus, everywhere. Father, in the name of Jesus, we come to you because we are a people in desperate need of mercy. We are a people who recognize that had it not been for your grace to us and showing us your mercy, we would never be free from our sin. We would never have life. We would be on a trajectory toward hell. And this testimony of the apostle teaches us that. So may we worship with our whole hearts as we proclaim the beauty of your mercy. And would you write this on our hearts that we would ever be grateful. In Jesus' name, amen. ♪ Praise the Lord ♪ ♪ His mercy is more ♪ Stronger than darkness, new every morn Our sins they are many, His mercy is more

- Come on, let's respond today. What love could remember no wrongs we have done. ♪ What love could remember no wrongs we have done ♪ Omniscient, all knowing, He counts not their sum Thrown into a sea without bottom or shore Our sins they are many, His mercy is more ♪ Praise the Lord, His mercy is more ♪ Stronger than darkness, new every morn Our sins they are many, His mercy is more What patience would wait as we constantly roam What Father, so tender, is calling us home He welcomes the weakest, the vilest, the poor Our sins they are many, His mercy is more Praise the Lord, His mercy is more Stronger than darkness, new every morn Our sins they are many, His mercy is more What riches of kindness He lavished on us His blood was the payment, His life was the cost We stood 'neath a debt we could never afford ♪ Our sins they are many, His mercy is more ♪ Come on church, let's sing together. ♪ Praise the Lord, His mercy is more ♪ Stronger than darkness, new every morn Our sins they are many, His mercy is more ♪ Praise the Lord ♪ Every voice strong ♪ His mercy is more ♪ Stronger than darkness, new every morn Our sins they are many, His mercy is more ♪ Our sins they are many, His mercy is more ♪ Lord, we're thankful today. Yes.

- Stay standing. Three things I'm gonna do real quick before we walk out. An encouragement, a correction, and an invitation. The encouragement is this. You may have people in your life that you're thinking, no way ever. Really? You better back that truck up to Acts chapter nine and be reminded about the wide mercy of Christ and the power to change any life, no matter what you think, no matter how far gone. So you keep praying, you keep showing them the love of Christ because Jesus is great to save and powerful to do so. And nobody has passed his reach. A correction. Those of you who've been walking with Jesus, maybe for a time have learned to look down on people who aren't where you are now, but you've forgotten that you are on the same trajectory that they were on, headed to a Christless eternity. So my encouragement to you is to repent of that heart and ask Jesus to set you free of that so that you can look with love. Those who experience great mercy are merciful. But an invitation, you may be here and have never surrendered your life to Jesus. Here's the bad news. If you die separated from Jesus, you spend eternity apart from him. But God doesn't want that. His son came to die on a cross for your sins to pay the payment for the sins of the world, satisfied the justice of God, rose from the dead, and now offers you new life in him. And this can be your day. There'll be men and women standing right down front who would love to talk to you, pray with you along any of these lines. And if you need to pray with them for anything, you come on down and you pray with them. And we'd be glad to do that. So Father, I pray that whatever it is that your spirit is doing in the lives of people, that every one of us would give you full sway, that we would open our hearts, our hands to you to be reminded of what you wanna say to us and what you wanna do through us in these moments. So have your way for your glory, I pray, in Jesus' name. Amen.