Micah 7:18
18 Who is a God like you,
who pardons sin and forgives the transgression
of the remnant of his inheritance?
You do not stay angry for ever
but delight to show mercy.
As we saw yesterday, the end of the story is pretty bleak for those who refuse to be reconciled to God and have to stand alone, unprotected on the day of final judgment. And that ending is the one that we all deserve, for we - like the nations of Micah’s day - have treated our creator with contempt. If he chose to remain angry for ever, he would be completely right to do so. We would have no grounds to ask for a different verdict. Yet, wonderfully, that is not the whole story.
The God who is the righteous judge is not ONLY righteous. He is also merciful and forgiving. He does not stay angry for ever. If we’ve been Christians for more than 5 minutes, we can easily take this for granted, but it’s good to pause and consider afresh just how extraordinarily good it is for us that our God is a God who delights to show mercy. He doesn’t have to. That’s the point of mercy - it cannot be earned or deserved or demanded, or it wouldn’t be mercy. We can plead for it, but only if we begin by recognising that to receive it would be a blessing far, far beyond anything we had any right to expect.
What good news it is, then, when we discover that God is a God who delights to show mercy. It’s not something he does reluctantly, occasionally, if he’s in a particularly good mood. It’s something he delights in. It’s an essential part of his character. When Moses asked God to reveal his name and his glory, back in Exodus 33, God replied by telling him “ I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy”. God’s mercy is an essential aspect of his identity. And so we can confidently throw ourselves onto that mercy, knowing that it will never fail or be taken away. What a wonderful God we have! No wonder Micah was moved to ask “Who is a God like you?” Our God is good, forgiving and gloriously merciful. There is no-one like him. Let’s praise him for that today.
