Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, which, according to his abundant
mercy, hath begotten us again unto a lively
hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from
the dead.
Last week, I talked on this Blessed be
the God and Father of our Lord Jesus
Christ.
Today, I would speak on According to His
Abundant Mercy.
Now, Peter, just before he said According to
His Abundant Mercy, had blessed God, the Father
of our Lord Jesus Christ.
Now, we find there was a clear reason
for the outbursts.
He blessed the Father because the Father had
blessed us.
If the Father had not blessed us, we
could not possibly bless the Father.
And if we had not been begotten again
unto a living hope by the resurrection of
Jesus Christ from the dead, there would be
no possibility of our blessing the Father.
So he said, Blessed be the God and
Father of Jesus Christ because he hath begotten
us again and he begot us again out
of his abundant mercy.
Now, I have pointed this out in order
that we might see that there is always
a clear link between one truth and another
in the Bible.
That if an apostle breaks out into a
doctology, he wasn't simply having himself a spiritual
time.
Look what went before, and look what follows,
and you will find there were clear, logical
reasons for the doctology.
And it is always so with New Testament
Christians.
The spirit-led life is a clear, logical,
and rational life.
I must repeat what I said last Sunday
night.
In a different context, that you and I
must have the courage that belongs to our
sound Christian faith.
And we must stop this ignoble apologizing and
cease to take this quick spaniel attitude out
in the world.
There is no reason why we should, like
a paddled cocker spaniel, look sad and dreary
and apologetic and cringe and crawl before the
world.
The world has nothing we want.
And we have no cause to apologize to
the world.
We are believers in a faith that is
as well authenticated as any solid fact of
life.
And what we believe and the links in
the chain of evidence are clear and rational.
So that instead of apologizing, we should boldly
assert if we believed in ourselves and in
the faith we hold with the fanaticism that
the Communist believes in his devil-inspired doctrines,
the Church could go off the defensive and
go over to the offensive.
Communists never apologize.
Christians always do.
And that's why we're where we are.
I'm glad that Brother McAfee had the ecclesiastical
courage to announce and join in singing a
song that's an Easter song.
I think that it's time we rescue some
of these great songs from one Sunday a
year.
Give them back to the Church where they
belong.
The Church has a right to rejoice.
Christ the Lord is risen today, and our
Son sets in blood no more.
Marvelous imagery.
Marvelous scriptural imagery that Wesley wove into that
hymn.
And if we had believed it, we'd go
off the defensive and go over to the
attack.
And so instead of crawling before the world
and apologizing in low tones before the learned
world, we would frankly and boldly assert that
Jesus Christ is risen, and what are you
going to do about that great fact?
I say that Peter blessed the Lord God,
but he wasn't simply letting himself go like
an old lady in a cab meeting.
There were particularly sound theological reasons for saying,
Blessed be the Lord.
He blessed him because he had begotten us
again, and because it was through his abundant
mercy that he did it.
And the hope he had begotten us to
was a living hope, not a dead one.
I point out that the Spirit-led Christian
life is not according to whim or impulse
or caprice.
And yet I know Christians who feel you
cannot be spiritual without being capricious, and that
the more impulsive you are, the more spiritual
you are.
I remember years ago, I haven't heard of
him now for a long time.
He petered out the way they all do.
But he was a very popular healing evangelist,
and he just oozed in or tumbled into
his meetings, just tumbled into them, never knew
what anybody was going to do.
And he was too busy running around to
ever plan anything, so he just sort of
stumbled into the meetings and muddled through them.
And because he was like that, they advertised
him as a man of lightning changes.
Why, they said, this brother is just as
likely to get up and take the offering
before they sing the first hymn, or he's
just as likely to get up and preach
the sermon and then have a hymn.
You never know what he's going to do.
Well, brother, I don't know.
These men of lightning changes.
Sometimes it's a cover-up for laziness and
poor planning and lack of thought.
Sometimes it's simply a temperament.
They're usually no good in the Church of
Christ, and they wouldn't be any good if
they were for Ford or General Motors either.
Imagine, if you will, a fellow who would
say to the boss at General Motors, Mr.
Jones, I'm one of these impulsive fellows.
You never know what I'm going to do.
I'm a man of lightning change.
Some day I may be out at seven
in the morning, and other times it may
be three in the afternoon.
Sometimes I may go to my machine, and
another time I may push another fellow off
and take his machine.
I just follow the leading of the Spirit.
You know how long he lasts?
He just lasts long enough to get his
pay and get out of there.
You can't run things on these impulsive, changeable
and constantly changing men of lightning changes.
There was nothing like that among the apostles.
They were Spirit-led, and they were likely
to do always what God wanted them to
do.
But somehow or other, it so turned out,
as it properly should, that what God wanted
them to do perfectly fit in with the
total scheme of redemption and the whole will
of God in the New Testament.
So that there was no place for the
temperamental, whimsical fellow.
Peter was no good to God, and he
got over being whimsical and temperamental.
As long as he was temperamental, scolding the
Lord to glory for this or that, he
was no good to the Lord.
He was a pest.
But when he got filled with the Holy
Ghost and got a visionary tool and got
suffering a little and kicked out of a
few places and leveled down, then he became
the great apostle, second only to Paul in
the New Testament.
But God had to take lightning changes out
of Peter and settle him down into the
harness where he could work for the Lord.
Yet I say there are those who feel
that if it isn't clear, it isn't spiritual.
If it isn't capricious, it isn't of the
Holy Ghost.
But I know there is a clear, logical
link between everything anybody said in the New
Testament and the reason they said it always.
So that we are not victims of caprice,
neither are we victims of the weather.
Nor are we victims of the state of
our health.
Mr. McAfee coughed all night last night, but
he is still around.
Occasionally I feel tired, but I'm still here,
and I don't like sticky weather.
But you have to go right on, brother.
You can't show up at the house of
God just when it's 70 and the humidity
31.
You've got to go to church no matter.
And it's the same with prayer.
You have to pray.
One man said that you're supposed to go
to God and be honest with God.
He said, when you go to prayer, you
go and be honest.
I said, tell God the truth.
One other man said, when you go to
prayer and you feel that the whole thing
bores you, he said, don't hide it.
Tell God frankly, God, I'm bored with this
whole business.
He said, God will forgive you and bless
you and straighten you out and get you
started right.
But the main thing is, be honest and
pray no matter whether you feel like it
or not.
So that was the way Christians did things.
They weren't victims of moods.
If you knew the whole truth, there are
very few Christians whose moods are entirely up
on a high level and sustaining level.
Sometimes people come to me and they say,
Brother Tozer, could I call you up and
say, could I have a half hour with
you?
Usually it turns out to be an hour
and a half to two hours.
And I say, sure, come on over.
So they'll come over.
He'll say to me, Brother Tozer, I believe
I'm a spiritual man.
I've been filled with the Holy Ghost.
I'm all on the altar.
I'm consecrated.
But there's one weakness I'd like to have
you tell me and how I can correct.
I don't always have the same degree of
feeling and spirituality.
Sometimes I'm up and sometimes I'm a little
down.
There doesn't seem to be always that high
a level.
What can I do about it?
And I say, I wish you would tell
me because I don't know either and I
haven't read a biography that I can think
of.
And as it was Francis of Assisi, I
might accept him, but outside of him, I
don't know any honest Christian that ever can
get up and say, I live at consistently
high level.
I fly at an altitude of 16,000
feet all the way.
Now, if any of you would get up
and say, Mr. Tozer, I have lived for
19 years now and never have ceased that
high level.
Blessed art thou, and I honor you, but
I have never reached there.
Pray for your pastor because there are times
when my liver's out of order.
And there are times when I come to
my study with no more desire to pray
than a horse, but a little while with
the scriptures and a little while with the
hymn book and you're back in prayer happy
again.
And you've prayed it and I don't mean
to leave the impression that you are always
up and down because that did not accord
with what I said at first.
But I only mean to say that we
are men and women who live according to
the high logic of spiritual truth, not according
to our feelings.
The old writer talked about what they called
a frame, a frame of meat.
And they would say, they'd put an entry
in their diary, it was a very happy
frame this morning, praise the Lord.
And maybe two weeks later there'd be an
entry with a very low frame this morning.
It felt very depressed.
But nothing had changed except their frame.
And one hymn writer said, I dare not
trust the sweetest frame, but wholly lean on
Jesus' name.
And I have gone before audiences now and
again and said, now please, anybody knows, stand
and tell me.
I'll give you a minute to tell me.
What does the writer mean when he says,
I dare not trust the sweetest frame and
I've never found anybody that knows.
Well, we say, a little differently, we say
frame of mind.
It's the same thing.
We say, oh, he was in a happy
frame of mind this morning, wasn't he?
He said, he was in a very sad
frame of mind.
And the writer says, I dare not trust
the sweetest frame of mind, but wholly lean
on Jesus' name.
So you see, brethren, you and I live
according to a holy, high, spiritual logic, and
not according to either a shifty mind or
the sweetest frame of mind.
Amen?
Now, that's very unspiritual doctrine.
Some people don't like that.
They say, oh, you've got to be blessed
all the time.
Happy, happy, happy, happy.
But if they would just quit lying and
tell the truth, they'll have to admit there
are days when they're not so happy as
they were the day before.
But don't let it get you down.
Just read your word and pray and sing
a song and take the means of grace
and you'll be as happy as you were
yesterday.
Now, it says here, and this is what
I want to really get at, according to
his abundant mercy.
Whatever God did and whatever he's doing is
according to his abundant mercy.
And we have the adjective abundant here to
modify the word mercy.
It describes God's mercy.
And you know that word abundant comes from
a Greek word which at least has these
associated meanings.
It means the largest number, it means the
very largest it means it means very great,
it means much, and it means many.
Now, it can mean all those things.
According to his largest number, his very large,
very great, much, many mercies, God has begotten
us again.
And I'll give you a note here on
that word abundant, that everything God has is
unlimited.
That is, God being infinite, everything about him
is infinite, which means that it has no
boundary anyplace.
Now, that's hard for you to think.
I remember I preached on the infinitude of
God here one time, and only one man,
and that was Brother Kramer, came down congratulating
me and telling me he'd gotten my sermon.
But so far as I know, everybody else
just wrote that one off.
But you and I need to get ahold
of that, and even if it hurts your
head, you need to get ahold of that.
Good for you to know that God is
infinite, unlimited, boundless, with no posts anywhere saying,
this is the end.
There are no such posts in the universe.
God Almighty fills it and overfills it and
he is infinite and unlimited, so that we
do not need any enlarging adjectives.
When we say God's love, we don't need
to say God's great love, although we do
say it.
When we say God's mercy, we don't need
to say God's abundant mercy, though we do
say it.
And the reason we say it is to
cheer and elevate our own thoughts, not to
tell that there is any degree in the
mercy of God.
There are no degrees in the mercy of
God.
But there couldn't be, for God is degree
-less, limitless, and infinite.
Therefore, when you say God's mercy, you're talking
about that which is so vast that the
word vast doesn't describe it, because it has
no limits anywhere.
Its center is any place, and its circumference
nowhere.
Now, these adjectives are useful when we talk
about earthly things.
We talk about the great love of a
man for his family.
We talk about little faith, or great faith,
or much faith, or more faith.
We talk about wealth.
We say he was a man of considerable
wealth.
But if he had a little more tucked
away somewhere, we say he is a man
of great wealth.
But if his bank account is still larger,
we say he's a man of very great
wealth.
And if he really owns it, we say
he's a man of fabulous wealth.
So we go anywhere up and down the
scale from considerable to fabulous.
You know where you belong on this, in
this scale, because wealth, human wealth, is that
which may vary up and down the scale,
from practically nothing at all to so much
you can't count it.
But when we come to God, there is
no such degreeing of things.
When we say that God is rich, God's
riches will include all the riches there are.
God isn't richer, or less rich, or more
rich.
He's rich.
So he isn't more merciful, less merciful, he's
merciful.
For whatever God is, he is in fullness
of unlimited grace.
But you say, then, why does the word
abundant occur here?
Why do they say he has great love,
wherewith he loved us?
Those adjectives are put in there for us,
not for God.
It was in order to elevate our mind
to the consideration of the vastness of the
unlimited mercy of God that Peter said it
was abundant.
Now, God's mercies are equal to God, and
for that reason all comparisons are futile.
God's mercy is equal to God.
And if you want to know how merciful
God is, then you will know, just to
see how great God is, you see God,
and then you will know how merciful God
is.
I remember Brother Clark telling us, missionary to
Africa, telling us about a deacon in the
church in Congo, a great, big, fine fellow.
He, of course, had the job of disciplining
the converts.
One young convert who hadn't gotten all the
devil out of him yet, and he implained
to break the rules and do things he
shouldn't.
And they disciplined him and disciplined him again
and again, and finally this big, strapping Christian
deacon called in his erring brother.
And he said, Now, brother, you have been
failing us and disappointing us, disgracing your Christian
calling about enough.
Now, when we started with you, we had
a bottle of forgiveness.
But I'm here to tell you, young man,
that bottle is just about empty.
And we're just about through with you.
The missionary got a chuckle out of that.
He thought it was a very quaint and
picturesque way of explaining that they were about
done with that fellow.
But you know, that bottle of forgiveness that
God has, has no partner bottle to it.
And God never says to a man, never,
and never has said to a man, now,
the bottle of my mercy is about empty.
God's mercy doesn't run out of a bottle.
God's mercy is God acting the way he
acts toward people.
And therefore, we can say that it is
abundant mercy.
Now, I might point out something here which
you may have overlooked, that every benefit God
bestowed is according to mercy.
You know, there is a sort of pardonable
heresy abroad, that God deals with some people
in mercy and some in justice, but God
deals with everybody in mercy.
If God did not deal with everyone in
mercy, we would all have perished before we
had time to be converted.
We float on a vast limitless sea of
divine mercy, and it's the mercy of God
that sustains the worst sinner.
If we have life, it is according to
the mercy of God.
If we have protection, it is according to
the mercy of God.
If we have food, it is God's mercy
that gives us food.
And if we have providence to guide us,
it is God's mercy.
David said, Have mercy upon me and hear
my prayer.
Was he just using words?
No.
Again, a sound, clear, logical statement of theological
facts.
According to the mercy mercy, hear my prayer.
Mercy even enters into the hearing of prayers.
Mercy must enter into the holiest act any
man can ever perform, and it is a
constant mercy on the part of God.
The fact that I'm sane and
and we identify it and recognize it, and
it's certainly intensified and pointed up, and it's
through his mercy that we're begotten again.
But that same broad mercy of God kept
that sinner through maybe fifty years of rebellion.
My father was sixty years old when he
was born again.
Sixty years!
He had sinned and told dirty stories and
sworn and lied and cursed.
Then he gave his heart to God, to
the Lord Jesus Christ, and was converted, and
he's in heaven.
And the mercy that took my father to
heaven is a great mercy, and we celebrate
the mercy that took him there.
But it is no greater than the mercy
that kept him and endured him sixty years.
I've told this story before, but it perfectly
fits here.
An old Jewish rabbi in Old Testament times,
a man came to his door and asked
to stay overnight.
It was dark, and he was a traveler,
and he said, I've made it to your
house, could I stay overnight?
The old rabbi said, Sure.
He said, You're a very old man, aren't
you?
He said, I'm nearly a century old.
He said, All right, come in, you must
stay overnight.
The old man came in, and they sat
around and talked.
And the rabbi said, What about your relation
to God?
What about your religion?
He said, I don't believe in God.
He said, I don't have any faith in
God at all.
I'm an atheist.
The rabbi rose and opened the door and
said, Get out of my house.
I won't keep an atheist in my house
overnight.
The old man got up and hobbled to
the door, and the door was shut again.
The rabbi sat down by his candle and
his Old Testament, and a voice said to
him, Son, why did you turn that old
man out?
He said, I turned him out because he's
an atheist, and I can't endure him overnight.
And God said, Son, I have endured him
nearly a hundred years.
Don't you think you could endure him one
night?
He leaped from his chair and rushed out,
took the old man in his arms, and
brought him back in and treated him like
a long-lost brother.
It was the mercy of God that for
one hundred years nearly had endured that old
atheist.
And so the mercy of God endured my
father fifty years, and the mercy of God
endured me seventeen years, and then has endured
me all years since.
So let's get away from this semi-heretical
idea that God deals with some people in
mercy and deals with other injustices.
He deals with everybody in mercy.
Everybody is dealt with in mercy.
The Bible plainly declares it.
It says here that his mercies, the Lord
is good to all, and his tender mercies
are over all his works.
145 Psalm.
Now, God never violates mercy.
I can see the more I pray and
read my Bible and think, the more I've
got to write my book on the attributes
of God.
I've got to do it.
I hope God will let me live that
long.
But this idea that God works according to
one facet of his nature one day and
according to another facet another is all wrong.
God never violates any facet of his nature.
When God sent Judas Iscariot to hell, he
did not violate mercy.
And when God forgave Peter, he did not
violate justice.
But everything God does, he does with the
full protection of all the visions and the
attributes.
So when a sinner, though he'll live to
be a hundred years old and sin against
God every moment of his life, he is
still a partaker of the mercy of God.
He still floats on a sea of mercy.
And it is from the mercy of God
that he is not consumed.
And now there will be a day when
the sinner will pass out from the realm
where God's mercy supports him.
And he will hear a voice depart from
me, I never knew ye that work iniquity.
And hell will be the just desert, justly
apportioned of those who refuse redeeming mercy.
But there has been a providential mercy that
has kept the sinning man all his lifetime.
So we Christians, we didn't come in through
the door of mercy and then live apart
from that door.
We're in the room of mercy, and the
very sanctuary is a sanctuary of mercy.
And God has had mercy upon you all
your life, sir.
We must not become self-righteous and imagine
we're living such wonderful lives and God blesses
us because we're good.
That's not so.
God blesses us because of his abundant mercy
which he bestowed on us, and not because
of any goodness, though he's busy making us
good.
And I do not believe that even heaven
itself will ever permit us to forget that
we are recipients of the mercy of God.
The very angels that burn around the throne
are there because of the goodness of God.
The very seraphim with their six wings are
there because of the goodness of God.
So you and I will never be permitted
to forget Calvary.
A little old morbid song says, Lest I
forget Gethsemane, lest I forget dark Calvary, but
there's a modicum of truth in it at
any rate.
We must never forget that we live because
God is merciful.
We are recipients of the mercy of God.
I'm here this morning because God has been
merciful to me, not because I'm a good
man.
Although God wants his people to be holy
as he is holy, he does not deal
with them according to the degree of their
holiness, but according to the abundance of his
mercy.
Honesty requires us to admit this.
I pray that we may all be perfectly
honest and admit it.
Now, the unjust man will soon pass from
mercy to judgment.
A hundred years the old atheist sinned against
his God, and God was willing to bear
with him overnight yet, but the day will
be that he when the old atheist will
die and pass from mercy to judgment.
So I believe in justice and I believe
in judgment.
And I believe that the only reason mercy
triumphs over judgment is that God, by a
divine, omniscient act of redemption, fixed it so
men could escape justice and live in the
sea of mercy.
The judgment man who believes in Jesus Christ
and who was born anew and who is
a child of God, lives in that mercy
always.
The unjust man lives in it now in
a lesser degree, but the time will come
when he will not stand in the judgment.
Nor sinners in the congregation of the righteous,
for the Lord knoweth the way of the
righteous, but the way of the ungodly shall
perish.
For the unjust sinner, though he is kept
by the mercies of God, kept from death,
kept from incest, kept from disease, kept a
lifetime through the mercy of God, yet he
will violate that mercy, turn his back on
it, and walk into judgment.
And then it is too late for the
man, for the ungodly shall not stand in
the judgment.
But in the meantime, you and I stand
in the mercy of God.
So remember when you kneel down to pray,
don't do like the man who went to
the altar and said he got down on
his knees, he was under terrible blistering conviction.
And he was a young man, and he
had learned the Ten Commandments when he was
a younger fellow.
He got down on his knees there and
he began to talk to God about his
sins.
He had them numbered.
I mean the Ten Commandments numbered.
He said, Now, Father, now, God, remember, I
admit I have broken number one, number four,
number seven.
Remember, Father, I kept number two and number
three, number six.
How foolish, how unutterably foolish.
We should go to God and dicker with
him like that!
We should go to God like a storekeeper
and portion out our goodness.
I'd rather follow old Thomas Hooker, the old
Puritan saint.
He came to die and he had been
a man elevated way above the average in
his spiritual life and holy living.
They said, Brother Hooker, you go to receive
your rewards.
No, no, no, he said, I go to
receive mercy.
And Brother Hooker went out, although he rated
high in the level of holy men, he
went out not to look for his reward,
but to look for still more of the
mercy of God.
So, blessed be the God and Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his
abundant mercy.
I think that's about enough.
The sun shines on the just and on
the unjust, and we float along in a
glorious shimmering sea of the limitless, boundless, infinite
mercy of the Lord our God.
How wonderful is God's mercy.
I remember years ago I preached on the
text, Thou, God, forgive us sin.
Thou art a God who forgives sin.
I didn't know it, but a woman was
present, and some long time afterward she told
me.
I got her somehow through a letter, telephone
conversation or some way.
She said, That night, that night, as you
repeated the text, Thou, God, forgive us sin.
That night I believed God, and my sins
were pardoned, and I'm a Christian now.
And what could I say more than this?
Thou art a God of abundant mercy.
So don't look in at yourself, look away.
Penelope said, Trying to straighten yourself up and
fix yourself over?
No, don't do.
Come as you are.
But she said, Paul Rader told about the
artist, he wanted to paint a picture, for
some reason he had an art head, to
paint a picture of a tramp, a real
tramp, a bum off the street.
We're talking about all the time, down here
in Skid Row.
So he went to Skid Row and he
hunted up the most disreputable run down at
the Hill, capacity dirty, disheveled, ungroomed bum that
he could find.
And he said, I'd like to have you
come to my studio.
I want to paint you.
His face brightened up.
His old baggy, bleary eye took on a
new light and said, you mean you want
to put me in a picture?
He said, yeah, I want to paint you
into a picture.
Would you come?
He said, yeah, how much will it mean
to me?
Well, he said, I'll tell you.
I'll give you a good fee.
He said, I want you to come several
times.
He said, I'll tell you what I'll do.
I'll give you $25 now, and here's my
address.
You show up there tomorrow morning, and I'll
tell you what to do.
Next morning, the doorbell rang, and the artist
went to the door.
Here stood a fine-looking fellow with a
white shirt on, clean tie, hair cut, new
hat, and his pants having a reasonable facsimile
of a press.
He said, morning, what could I do for
you?
He said, don't you know me, boss?
He said, I'm just set for my picture
this morning.
The artist said, are you the fellow I
hired?
He said, yeah.
He said, I didn't want to come to
your fine place looking like a bum, so
I spent this $25 getting myself fixed up.
The artist said, I can't use you.
He said, goodbye.
Dismissed him.
He wanted him as he was.
Two men went up into the temple to
pray, and one said, here I am, God.
I'm all fixed up.
Every error's in place.
And the other one said, oh, God, I
just crawled in off a skid row.
Have mercy upon me.
God forgave the skid row bum and sent
the other man away pardoned and unforgiven.
Blessed be the God and Father of our
Lord Jesus Christ, who according to his abundant
mercy has begotten us again.
So come just as you are, friends, and
God will show you what to do.
He'll straighten you out.
There's no contradiction there in the slightest between
what I've said now and all my preaching
on repentance.
For God does require repentance, as I've said
many times.
But that's something else again.
When the human spirit comes to God feeling
that it's better, more acceptable, it automatically shuts
itself out from God's presence.
But when the human spirit comes to God
knowing that anything it gets will be mercy,
then repentance has done its proper work.
God will forgive and bless that man and
take him into his heart and teach him
that all God's kindness is through mercy.
You go out on the sidewalk, mercy lets
you stand there.
You greet your friend with a singing mind
and a clear voice, mercy gave you that.
You go sit down to a good meal,
mercy gave you that meal.
You rest on a nice soft couch this
afternoon and take a little nap, mercy gave
you that.
You get up and go to your work.
Mercy did that for you, for all recipients
of the mercy of God.
The Christian knows it and has taken that
mercy and used it, so to speak, to
assure his abundant entrance into the kingdom of
God.
A sinner is a recipient of God's providential
mercies, too.
But he tramples it under his feet and
prepares himself for an endless hell.
Which are you doing?
Father, we pray, bless thou this truth.
O God, thy mercies are abundant.
Are not thy mercies full and free, and
have they not, O God, found out me?
We thank thee for thy mercies, thy many
abundant, full mercies.
Now we pray that thou wilt help us
to lean back upon thy mercy and trust
and not be afraid, hate sin and love
righteousness, flee from iniquity and follow after godliness,
but always know that in all that we
do, mercy is around us like the air
underneath us, as the earth above us as
the stars, and we live in a merciful
world to serve a merciful God, and live
and swim and move and have our being
in the abundant mercies of the Triune God.
Graciously grant us, we pray thee, properly to
understand this and to apply it to our
hearts.
And we give thee praise through Jesus Christ,
our Lord.
Amen.