Hebrews 4:16b
"Let us therefore come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need."
Alright, so we come into the Throne of Grace that we may obtain mercy. But what do we deserve? Judgment. On the other hand, what do we get? Mercy. Let’s go back to Exodus chapter 33, and it’s the first place that this is really explained in perfect order. This goes clear back into the Levitical Law of Israel. Even under Law, what made it possible for a Hebrew to get right standing with God? His Grace! My goodness, you all know it as well we do. Time after time, what did God have every right and reason to do with Israel? Wipe them off the face of the map. They didn’t deserve His Grace. But it isn’t just Israel. We’re no different. My as much as we love our beloved America, do we deserve another day of our liberty? No, we don’t deserve it, any more than any other group of people. But, oh, we’ve been enjoying it now for several hundred years because of God’s mercy and Grace.
Genesis 33:19
"And he said, I will make all my goodness pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before you; (and now here it comes) and I will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and I will show mercy on whom I will show mercy."
What’s that telling us? God in His Sovereignty can show mercy to whomever He will. Now He doesn’t have to, but He does, because in His Sovereignty that’s just His character, His nature. He is the God of all Grace, and He is the God of Mercy and Love. And so in order for us to come into this Throne room of Grace, vile sinners couldn’t get there, no one polluted with the sin of this world could possibly come in to the Holy presence of God, so what did He have to do? He had to make a provision because we couldn’t do it. Here we come right back full circle to that work of the Lord's Last Supper and the cross. When Christ made provision for the exchanging of the old Adam-Satan nature for the re-birthing of the God-child nature through death, His blood shed and paid the price of our full redemption and proclaimed it as what? Finished. Now what can we do? We can come right in to the Throne room without having joined anything, without having done anything, without having given anything. By faith in this Gospel and nothing more.
You know, somebody was telling me how his pastor was so hung up on tithing. And we said, "Next time you see him, you ask him if tithing is so all important to you people, why is it that 90% of church members don’t tithe?" Have you ever thought of that? Now, we're pulling that number out of the air, we admit. But we get that number from years and years ago - a group of us were just having coffee after an evening church service and we got to talking about church finances and so forth. And it just so happened that our church treasurer was in our midst and we were not the kind of people that ever found out who was giving what.
But as we were talking about our church finances and so forth, our treasurer made this statement. He says, "Fellows do you realize that about 90% of our giving comes from 5 % of our people?" Now you take that into your own church and we’ll bet it’s not very far off in most congregations. Well if tithing is so almighty important so far as eternal destiny is concerned, what are they doing with these 90% that aren’t tithing? That would scare me if I were a preacher and I was depending on that. You know what we’d have to say? We're doing something very wrong. We'd have to examine ourselves and then ask the Holy Spirit to change us, so that we'd preach in the spirit and not in the letter, as the letter kills but the Spirit gives Life and that Life more abundantly.
But see it isn’t on that. We are not boldly coming into the Throne room of Grace because we gave 20% of our income. We don’t come boldly into the Throne room because I’m such a good guy. Every one of us comes in there on the same premise and what is it? The mercy and the Grace of God, through the Blood of Christ. That’s all. And oh, God is so good. My goodness, we have to tell Him every morning, "Lord I don’t deserve all these blessings." And neither do you. We’re all alike, we’re all human. Not one of us can go into the Throne room and say Lord I’m here because I deserve it. No, I’m here because of what You have done and what Your doing in me. So we come boldly that we may obtain mercy and find that benefit especially when? When we need it. When’s that? All the time. That’s all the time. There isn’t a moment that we don’t need the Grace and the mercy of God especially in the world in which we’re living today. We’re bombarded from every direction with everything imaginable and it’s only through the Grace of God we make it through each day.
That reminds us of a verse in Philippians chapter 4. What a basis for prayer.
Philippians 4:6a
"Be careful (or in our present day language we’d say worry) about nothing; (be careful or worry about nothing) but in every thing…"
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