Mercy — Carter Conlon

Mercy as the Foundation of Salvation

Glory to God. I know there'd only be one word on my lips when I get there telling the story of how I made it. Mercy. Mercy. Absolute mercy. There's no other way. There's nothing else that would get any of us there, but the mercy and the goodness of God.

Hallelujah. Thank you, Lord. Thank you, Jesus. Thank you, Jesus. I'd like to speak to you today about mercy in light of our up and coming time of prayer. Three days of fasting, September 16th, that's a Sunday, September 17th, Monday, September 18th, Tuesday.

We're going to fast and pray as a church. We're going to meet nightly. We're going to pray for this city. We're going to pray with hearts of faith. We're going to pray in a way as people do who know who they're praying to.

We're not going to just shout into the atmosphere and expect an answer. We have to know the character of the one that we're praying to. That's what this message is about this morning. We have to understand what's in the heart of God.

We have to see his pattern, how he works, what he thinks, so that we can boldly come to the throne of grace to find help in this season of need that all of us find ourselves in, our city is in, and our nation is in.

I, for one, believe that God is willing to be merciful. It's not something I need to see in the natural. I don't need to see it on the streets. I don't need anybody to tell me any reasons why it can't happen.

All I have to know is the character of my God. All I have to do is look in the mirror every day and say, God, surely you are merciful. And I know that you feel the same way as I do today. We're going to talk about that.

We're going to believe the Lord. Ezekiel chapter 37, message title is simple, mercy, just mercy. Now, Father, I thank you, Lord God. I thank you for who you are. I thank you, Lord Jesus Christ, that none of us could stand if you weren't merciful to us and kind.

None of us could boast of our own righteousness. None of us, Lord, could lay anything at your feet and say, for this reason, I deserve to be called your child. None of these things, Lord. You took the initiative to love us before we even knew you or saw you, you loved us.

You haven't destroyed the world as we know it because you love us. You love every person created in your image. Would you please help me today, Holy Spirit, to convey this. Sometimes I feel like I'm scratching the surface of an ocean in trying to describe your love.

But oh God, help me, help my frailty. I simply offer you this vessel and I ask you to flow through it. I ask you to quicken my mind and my body. I ask you, Lord, to speak your heart. God, we need to hear from you.

Lord Jesus Christ, we're not looking just to get excited in your house. It won't suffice for the day we're living in. We need to hear from you, Lord. And we need to hear it deep inside of our hearts. You need to comfort and encourage and enable your people to face these days, Lord, and to make a difference.

And Father, we thank you. God, please bless those that have come to this house today. Those that are listening in Roxbury and on the internet around the world. Father, bless today, God, the hearers. And let something supernatural happen in each of our hearts.

We don't come to you with any merit of our own. We don't come to you, Lord, saying, look at what we have done for we've done nothing. We simply opened our hearts to you and you've done everything. It all belongs to you.

It's all yours, Lord. We ask you to expand the borders of this tent, of our hearts, our lives. Oh God, the ministries you've given to us. Expand the borders, Lord. And God Almighty, bless the city. And Father, we ask it in Jesus' name.

Amen. Ezekiel chapter 37. And I want you to put yourself as we read this in Ezekiel's place. As if God took you today. Ordinary people like you and I are, lifted you out of your seat and carried you into the midst of this kind of a place and asked you a question.

The hand of the Lord was upon me and carried me out in the spirit of the Lord and sent me down in the midst of the valley which was full of bones. And caused me to pass by them round about. And behold, there were very many in the open valley and lo, they were very dry.

And he said to me, son of man, can these bones live? And Ezekiel, of course, gives a political answer and says, and I answered, oh Lord God, thou knowest. Again, he said unto me, prophesy unto these bones and say to them, oh, you dry bones, hear the word of the Lord.

Thus saith the Lord God unto these bones. Behold, I will cause breath to enter into you and you shall live. And I will lay sinews upon you and bring up flesh upon you and cover you with skin and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord.

So I prophesied as I was commanded. And as I prophesied, there was a noise and behold, a shaking. And the bones came together, bone to his bone. And when I beheld, lo, the sinews and the flesh came up upon them and the skin covered them above but there was no breath in them.

Then said he unto me, prophesy unto the wind. That's the ruach in the Hebrew, means the breath of God. Prophesy, son of man, and say to the wind, thus saith the Lord God, come from the four winds, oh, breath, and breathe upon these slain that they may live.

So I prophesied as he commanded me and the breath came into them. And they lived and stood up upon their feet an exceeding great army. Then he said unto me, son of man, these bones are the whole house of Israel.

Behold, they say, our bones are dried and our hope is lost and we are cut off for our parts. Therefore prophesy I and say unto them, thus saith the Lord God, behold, oh, my people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves and bring you into the land of Israel.

And you shall know that I am the Lord when I have opened your graves, oh, my people, and brought you up out of your graves and shall put my spirit in you and you shall live and I shall place you in your own land.

Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it, says the Lord. You know, one time before in the scriptures, God says a nation had come to a place of impending judgment. Society, which really was his own people, a history, a legacy of godliness and at least a measure of faithfulness, they were departing from the Lord.

They become casual, they become immoral, they become government officials in the days of Ezekiel, had become corrupt. Prophet and priest were profane. The scripture says they were prophesying things out of their own minds and weren't hearing from the Lord anymore.

They were simply telling the people what the people, they thought the people wanted to hear and what would enhance their ministries and keep everybody happy and pacified. Judgment was at the door. And the Lord said, I sought for a man among them.

I looked for somebody to stand in the gap so that I shouldn't, at that moment, as it is, judge the nation. He was looking to give a reprieve, a season of mercy. And he said, I couldn't find anybody. Now, folks, it's not that there weren't people there who didn't understand the scriptures.

It's not that that season didn't have men or women of faith, but it had got to the place. As the scripture says, in the last days, iniquity will abound to the point where the love of many will wax cold.

There'll be such evil, there'll be such lawlessness as we walk the streets of our cities. We look around and we somehow form the conclusion that even God himself won't do anything about this now. We've gone too far, we've crossed the line.

And God was searching throughout the nation of Israel, looking for somebody to stand in the gap for the nation. And I don't think he was looking for somebody of a mountainous faith. I don't think he was looking for somebody whose credentials were impeccable.

I think he was looking for a man or woman, somebody in that generation who just simply would agree that God is a merciful God, who simply would see that mercy is at the heart of everything that God is and everything that God does.

Mercy is the reason he didn't destroy humanity in the Garden of Eden, it's mercy. Mercy is the reason why God left a family alive on the earth in the days of Noah, because in the foreknowledge of God, God knew that you and I would be born into this world and to have destroyed it at any point prior to you and I being here today, we would have been lost in a sense to ever having known life, to ever having known God, to ever having been part of that fellowship of the redeemed that is going to be around the throne of God for all of eternity.

And God saw the loss and because mercy is at the heart of all that he is and does, he stayed his hand. I don't have a hard time anymore believing that God can be merciful. I don't have to see anything with my natural eyes.

I simply have to know who God is. I have to study this book and see the patterns of God. I don't want to be a Jonah in this generation who just simply cannot believe that God would extend mercy to a people who don't deserve it.

And if I get that thought ever in my heart, that means that I have lost touch with what God has done in me and the mercy that he's extended to me. For the Bible tells us conclusively that all have sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.

There's not one righteous, no, not even one on the earth. Now, so many people study scripture. They may make a lifetime of studying it, yet seemed to fail to lay hold of the mercy of God. As a matter of fact, many people who study scripture become so hard that they actually lose sight of God.

It's strange what happens to people when they get involved in religiousness that even has a measure of seeming holiness to it. Listen to the psalmist. Let me just read it to you from Psalm 130. The psalmist says, "'Out of the depths have I cried unto thee, O Lord.'".

Out of the depths. I don't know what these depths were, but the psalmist was in a place where he didn't see a way out. I was in the depths of despair. I was down. I was in the depths of failure. I was in the depths of maybe understanding my own insufficiency to represent God and the earth, whatever it was.

The psalmist cried out unto the Lord. He said, "'Hear my voice. Let your ears be attentive to the voice of my supplication.'". In verse three, he says, "'O Lord, if thou, Lord, shouldst mark iniquities, O Lord, who would stand?'.

In other words, if you held each of us to a full accounting of our moment-to-moment failures, then none of us would be left with any hope for the future. If God held us accountable this morning for the thoughts of only this week, we'd be without hope.

Our songs would be in vain, but there is mercy. Verse four, he says, "'But there is forgiveness with thee that thou mayest be feared.'". And that means, but oh God, there is mercy and forgiveness with you that I should stand in your presence literally trembling in awe for who you are, how other you are than anything else that exists in this universe.

I wait for the Lord. My soul does wait. And in his word do I hope. My soul waits for the Lord more than they that watch for the morning. I say more than they that watch for the morning. The psalmist is saying it is miraculous when the sun rises, but it is more miraculous every time I begin to become more and more aware of how merciful, oh God, you are, how you are willing to walk with me.

Even when I behave like the village idiot in the sight of heaven, you still walk with me. You don't flee when I make mistakes. Let Israel hope in the Lord, for with the Lord there is mercy and with him is plenteous redemption.

In other words, there is an incredible depth, an immeasurable depth to the provision that he has made for our failure, our day-to-day failure, our struggles and our trials. I'm amazed, the longer I walk with God, the more if I had a certificate I'd wanna take it off the wall.

Mercy, mercy, mercy. It's the cry of my heart now because I can say in my prayer class, God, you're merciful to me. You've been merciful to my home. You're merciful to my family. You've been merciful.

And I look back over the years that I've served him. I look back over messages I've preached in places and I cringe at how I represented God. And I said, but God, if it wasn't for your mercy, you should have struck me dead, but you're merciful.

It was the Psalmist David after a long, long dark night of the soul in Psalm 23, that he came out the other side of what he described as the valley of the shadow of death. And he also described it as a table, a place where his enemies were surrounding him, literally.

When he came out the other side of this dark night of the soul, he realized it was the goodness and mercy of God, not his own ability that gave him a present and a future assurance of hope. When he came out of the valley, when he came out of that moment of despair and the ones that would subsequently follow it in his life, he had this inner assurance in him that goodness and mercy would follow him all the days of his life and assure his heart that he would dwell in the house of the Lord forever.

David didn't come out and say, my faithfulness has kept me. My battle strategy has protected me. My knowledge of the scriptures has been my mainstay, as wonderful as that is, he said, no, it's the goodness and mercy of God that has kept me all the days of my life and give me a promise of eternity.

Mercy Rather Than Religious Judgment

In Matthew chapter nine, the Pharisees came to the disciples of Jesus and they said to the disciples, why does your master eat with publicans and sinners? Now, in other words, why does this Jesus who claims this incredible proximity to God, why does he waste his time hanging around those who have obviously fallen short of the standards of godliness, which we believe are the tests of those who have the right to call themselves the friends of God?

Isn't that incredible? Now, these are the people who are supposed to represent the heart of God to their generation. And the scripture tells us in verse 12 of that same chapter in Matthew, it said, when Jesus heard this, they weren't speaking directly to him, but to his disciples, but when he heard it, he turned to them and he said these words, go and learn what this means, I will have mercy and not sacrifice.

Now, in other words, I live on the side of mercy, but you pull back from people and you judge them by their ability to live according to your rules. You judge them, you judge the weak, you judge those who might have pondered the things of God, but they walked away considering it too difficult.

You just simply live to judge everybody. And that's what religion without the heart of God in it becomes, a place where everybody feels judged. And you have to taste not, touch not, handle not, you gotta make sure your hair is just a certain way, there's nothing in your ears, nothing on your fingers, all the borders of your garments have to be just right, because you're in a place where you're gonna be judged if you don't live up to the rules.

Now, I'm not suggesting there are not standards of behavior, please don't misunderstand me, that should be followed in the kingdom of God. In Matthew chapter 23, listen to what Jesus said in verse 23, woe to you scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites.

Now, the word hypocrite means actors. You're role playing what God looks like. Woe to you. You pay tithe, it names a few spices that they tithe, and have omitted the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy and faith.

These ought you to have done and not leave the other undone. He said, woe to you scribes, you give to the work of God to a certain point, as representatives of God, but you hold back from the people, the deeper matters, the deeper things of the law, the things that the law or the text of God's law should have taught you.

You should have learned these things. And then he names them, he says, judgment, mercy and faith. These are the weightier matters of the law. Judgment, for example, you should have come to the knowledge that the whole world stands under the judgment of God.

The whole world was judged. The moment Adam sinned in the garden of Eden, judgment came on all of humanity. Paul says in Romans 3, 19 and 20, we know that what swing things, whoever the law says, it says to them who are under the law, that every mouth may be stopped and all the world may become guilty before God.

Therefore, by the deeds of the law, that's by human effort to be holy, to be godly, shall no flesh be justified in his sight for by the law is the knowledge of sin. Verse 23 says, for all have sinned and come short of the glory of God.

Knowing that we are all deserving of judgment, knowing that we stand in the sight of God by his favor, by his grace alone, knowing that there's none one righteous. Folks, I would tell you something that so liberates my heart and my soul.

I've walked with God, I don't know, I guess about 35 or more years now, and traveled and preached and done some things by his grace and I thank God for that. But when on Sunday night, when somebody who's been living out there and they've been doing what people do who are without God, and somebody comes and hears the message of grace and walks down to this altar and says, Lord Jesus, I'm a sinner, I ask you to forgive me.

I ask you God to cleanse me and come into my life and be my Lord and Savior. The moment that happens, we are both on equal ground at the throne of God. Oh, how offensive that is to the religious who work so hard to cleanse their garments and work so hard to get certificates on their wall and to get the big chair in the big office.

Oh, how offensive that is. But that's just the way it is. You see, they don't know. He said, the law should have taught you that you are under judgment, the same as the sinner who walks in the door. Without God, you're under the same judgment.

You and I stand by mercy. And he said, these are the weightier elements of the law, understanding of judgment, understanding folks that we are all in the same burning house and needed the same Savior.

Mercy, having seen ourselves in the true light, it would have opened our hearts to the mercy which God, he said to the Pharisees, the mercy which God would have given you and would have channeled through you to others.

Romans 3, 24 and 25 says, being justified freely by his grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom God set forth to be a propitiation through faith in his blood. In other words, we're justified freely.

We escape the judgment of God through the mercy of God. The mercy of God sent a man into the world, the son of God, who went to a cross, shed his blood and took my place and took your place. That's mercy.

If I had known that I stood by mercy, then I would not, he said to the Pharisees and scribes, and you would not have withheld this mercy. You would not be in there giving these things as it is, which are examples to the people of what is godly and who God is, but withheld from them.

What the law really teaches, that God is a God of mercy, far beyond yours, far beyond mine, what my mind can fully understand. When you and I see that young boy coming home in the gospel of Luke who had taken his father's name and his father's money and run into the world and made a mess of the family name, and you see him coming home, and you see the father running down that road and jumping into the arms of his son and kissing him on the neck and covering his stench and his failure and empowering him to walk with him and giving him shoes and striking up the band and killing the golden calf.

How can you say, or killing the calf, how can you say that God is anything but merciful? Knowing the judgment, knowing the mercy of God, it would have brought you through to faith. If you would have truly seen your own need and understood God's willingness to miraculously supply that which you lack, it would have opened up your heart to believe that what God has done for you, he can do for others also.

What God has done for me, he can do for you. What God has done for you, he can do for the drug pusher on the corner. He can do for the actress on Broadway. He can do for anybody in this city. And folks, that is the gospel of Jesus Christ.

What God has done for me, God can do for you. That is the message. That is what we're gonna pray. That's what we're gonna believe for, which brings us through to a valley full of bones in Ezekiel chapter 37, which looks very much like our society today.

The Valley of Dry Bones and Hope for the City

Disjointed, disconnected, and even the church body in many cases in a similar condition, captivated by the seductions of this world in a season of great trial. Ezekiel was taken out into, and it says there were very many, and they were in the open valley.

Well, that's where we are now. There are very many dry bones, disjointed families, disjointed churches. We're in a mess in America today. We're in a mess in New York City. There's no other word can describe this.

Our finest efforts to shore up this vessel are not working. And just like Acts 27, the thing is falling apart at an ever-increasing scale. Captivated by the seductions of the world in an open valley, that means an open trial.

It's not hidden. It used to be a season where, when Wall Street was hitting the highs, the all-time highs, and everybody's becoming, at least they're doing better than they used to do, and many are becoming millionaires.

At that time, people who were in trial were essentially hidden, pushed to the corners. But now, we're all in an open valley. Now, the grandeur of the mess of America is starting to become known to us and to people all throughout the world.

And they're very dry. Churches have lost the heart of God in many places. They've lost the word of God. They've so long been on a Disney cruise, don't understand the heart of the gospel. And so I'm asking you today, can the church in America live again?

Can it live again? Can New York City live again? Can the church in this city, and I'm talking about the whole body of Jesus Christ, of every denomination, can we live again? Can we become a testimony to the life and the power of Jesus Christ?

It's a legitimate question. You see, if you don't know the mercy of God, you're gonna come out and pray with us in September and just shout into the wind. And you're gonna be swallowed by the impossibility.

All the statisticians are there and all the prognosticators and all the naysayers and all the pessimists are there to tell you all the reasons why it can't happen. But I'm here to tell you the one reason why it can happen and it's called mercy, the mercy of God in Jesus Christ.

Mercy, mercy, mercy will fill our churches. Mercy will touch our pastors again in New York City. Mercy will cause the churches in Christ in this city to start feeding the hungry again. Mercy will bring the presence of God into our prayer meetings.

Mercy, mercy, I'm not saying the city will be, the economy of the city or nation will look like it once did. It's not about that. Kingdom of God is not about saving sandcastles, it's about saving people.

Hallelujah to the Lamb of God. Oh Lord, you know, I feel in my heart when God speaks to me and says, if he called me son of man, can these bones live? Yes, yes they can live. Yes they can live, yes they can live.

God, it looks big to us but it's not big to you. All it requires is your presence in our streets. All you have to come down, do is come down and manifest your glory and there's nobody can resist it. One way or another they have to make a choice and that's been the prayer of my heart.

God, cause this city to make a choice. Then he said, Ezekiel, tell them what I'm willing to do. Prophesy to these bones and say, oh ye dry bones, hear the word of the Lord. I'll cause breath to enter into you and you shall live.

I will give you strength, I'll cause you to be able to rise up again and put breath in you and you shall live and you shall know that I am the Lord. Tell them what I'm willing to do. You know folks, may I encourage you to do something.

Would you tell people around you what God is willing to do in your office, on the streets, everywhere the Lord. Would you just tell them saying, I'm gonna tell you what God is willing to do. Don't hold it back because of what you see with your eyes because the kingdom we speak about is not one you can see with the natural eye.

Don't be caught in unbelief. Don't be caught on the side of those who just have lost heart, they've lost faith. All through scripture we see it. There were a people who claimed to know God but they lost faith because they lost an understanding of the character of God.

They lost this inner desire to see Christ glorified. I know it's in the pastors and elders of this church and it's in my heart. There's a cry in me say, Jesus, your name deserves better than this. In your house and in this city.

And so I'm asking you not for our righteousness because we've not represented you the way we should. Daniel prayed that just before God had a decree issued letting the people go home and rebuild again.

And I pray it with everything in my heart. We have nothing to present. Our schemes and our plans and our make everybody feel good in the house of God, it's all failed. It's all come to nothing. And our society is unraveling quickly around us.

So we don't present it. We say, Lord, we don't have any, we can't present to you any reason that you should do what we asked, but the reason that we know who you are, you are the God who didn't destroy this world and you sent your son into this world to die on a cross.

And Jesus didn't come because he felt some legal obligation to redeem us. He came because he's a God of mercy. He's a God of compassion. Then he said to Ezekiel, prophesied in the wind and say, come from the four winds and breathe upon these slain that they may live.

So I prophesied as he commanded me and breath came into them and they lived and stood up upon their feet an exceeding great army. Now, this is something that we know from the text of the scripture that God is speaking directly to the nation of Israel.

There has been a regathering of Israel in 1948. That's obvious, but there will be a spiritual regret gathering unto the Lord. God is going to bless Israel. Whether or not any nation stands with Israel in our generation, I'm telling you, God is going to bless Israel in a way that will astound the world.

But when we were grafted in as adopted children into this family, you and I became partakers of this inheritance in Christ. And the promises in the word of God are a type of what applies to you and I as well.

Thank the Lord for that. Pray, call out to the Holy Spirit. Call out to the breath of God. There is no other strategy. There is no other plan. There is no other power. There's nothing else that will make any difference.

There's no new superstar going to rise on the horizon. No, no, no, enough of this stuff. Call out to the breath of God, the power of God. God's Holy Spirit to literally invade his house and invade his people and invade his church again.

There's no other strategy, no other power, no other plan. There's nothing else that will take down all of these weapons that have been built against the testimony of Christ in our generation. No, no, no, when we gather, we have one prayer.

Holy Spirit, come. We say, blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord. Holy Spirit, come. Come, come to the Salvation Army, come to the Baptists, the Methodists, the Lutheran, the Catholic Charismatics.

My God, come to the churches in this city. Give us the strength to pray together. Give us the strength to work together. Give us the strength to realize there are no big people and small people in the kingdom of God that we are all equally important.

Give us the strength to drop our banners and leave them on the street where they belong and realize we are the body of Jesus Christ in this generation. God Almighty, give us the grace to realize that nobody can do this alone.

We need the whole body of Jesus Christ. Thank God, thank God, and we are allowed our distinctives. We are allowed our differences of worship style. We're allowed that those things are not consequential.

What is important is that Christ is at the heart of his bride, his church, one more time, and that we stand and make a difference in our generation. I, for one, believe that God intends to visit New York City one more time, one more time before he comes.

From Despair to Faith in God's Mercy

Now, here's what many people are saying, and here's why people have lost hope. They've lost faith. Verse 11 says, these bones are the whole house of Israel. They say, our bones are dried, our hope is lost, and we're cut off for our parts.

Therefore, prophesy and say to them, thus saith the Lord God, behold, O my people, I will open your graves and cause you to come up out of your graves and bring you into the land of Israel. You shall know that I am the Lord when I have opened your graves, O my people, and brought you up out of your graves, and shall put my Spirit in you, and you shall live, and I shall place you in your own land.

Then you shall know that I, the Lord, have spoken it and performed it, says the Lord. This was the testimony of the people. We've lost strength, and there's no living water flowing through us anymore.

We can barely stand and get through our own trials and our own weaknesses. How can we believe for something greater than our own struggles? We're too far away, some would say, to even get back to that place of faith.

He tells Ezekiel these words, he says, to tell them, I will regather you even from the grave, even from places of death, where the stone has been rolled and you've lost heart and you've lost hope, and you've made peace with death.

I will regather you from these places, and the life of Christ will be yours again. It has to start in the church of Jesus Christ. A spiritual awakening is not gonna just simply come to the streets and leave you and I behind sealed graves.

No, it happens in the church first. It's always the pattern of God. I want to be a testimony of the mercy and the glory of God. That's my message, that's got to be your message. There are no how-tos, there are no seven steps, there are no pamphlets to pass out.

I just gotta tell you what God did in my life is going to be what you're going to say to people in this city, and they're gonna start to come. And if they can't get to this church, they'll go to another church.

They'll go somewhere where they're gonna hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. But it starts here. It starts with those who just don't believe. How do you believe for a nation when you can't believe for yourself?

It's ludicrous. It's like the man that says, I'm gonna go off one day. One day my ship's gonna come in, I'm gonna go off to the mission field, I'm gonna be this great missionary for God, but doesn't have the courage to give a dime to the work of God.

Now this is not a message on tithing, don't misunderstand me. But don't think that one day this great faith is gonna come if you don't have faith for now. You and I have to have faith, you have to have faith for your struggle right now, for your prison, for your place of death, for that area in your life where it looks impossible.

You simply have to get up and believe God. What could Lazarus do but just get up? Couldn't even unwind himself. Somebody else had to do it, he just had to get up. Folks, it's time now. It's time we don't have a million tomorrows to do this.

It's time for you and I to, whatever area in my life is dead, it's time to get up and say, God, fill me with your Holy Spirit. You're a God of mercy. I give up. I'm dead, I can't do this. I can't change the way I am.

I can't love these people. I can't forgive that person. I can't stand up and speak, God. I can't do it, I'm dead. I'm done trying and that's when suddenly I think all heaven stands up and begins to rejoice.