MINISTER'S LETTER >

February 2010

Dear Friends,

The need for mercy is very great.

As we go through Deuteronomy on Sunday mornings and Wednesday evenings we encounter temptation after temptation to mis-take God’s gracious law and his loving promises. Being prone to such temptations is part of our struggle with the ‘flesh’ – that untransformed aspect of our lives in these bodies which has yet to be changed into the likeness of Christ. In one sense the flesh is weak: it is incapable of obeying God without his Spirit’s sanctifying influence. In another it is frighteningly strong: it keeps warring against our spirits, putting up a tenacious, desperate fight for power against God.

We can mistake God’s gracious law as we go through Deuteronomy by taking it as an alternative to faith. We forget that the covenant was made with Abraham 470 years earlier; we let slip from our minds the declaration that the righteous will live by faith; we jettison the gospel of Jesus Christ and grasp hold of the false gospel that the Galatians seized. We find in Deuteronomy ample fuel for the fires of legalism that still smoulder in our flesh. ‘Aha!’ we say to ourselves, ‘So I am expected to live by the law. All this ‘faith-in-grace’ stuff is morally weak; it lets people off too easily.’
But of course Deuteronomy is the book to teach that God knows we cannot keep his law, and that if it were the only way to life, we would all remain in death. So in the opening sections before the exposition of the law God reminds his people of their failures, their falling at the first two fences – the first two commandments. Barely begun upon the race, they career headlong into the double ditch of idolatry. What hope for reaching the eternal finishing line intact? And after he has given the exposition God, through Moses, tells them that they will fail in the future over the same problem. So Deuteronomy hardly encourages the flesh to be confident at gaining righteousness, and it hardly hides the need for faith in the covenant love of God. Deuteronomy, like few other books, tells us that our need for mercy is very great.

How wonderfully heartening therefore that God’s mercy is very great: vaster than oceans, higher than mountains, deeper than gold mines or oil wells. His mercy is more solid than rock and more tender than touch. The Father comes to us with healing mercy when no-one else can reach into the depths of failure, with cooling mercy when nothing else can quench flames of self-loathing, with sustaining strength against the crushing pressures of life. His mercy in Christ silences the accuser; the blood-red mercy of Jesus confounds the false judges and comforts the despairing soul.

Don’t let Deuteronomy drive you to obedience instead of faith. Let it drive you to faith that loves to obey. Let it send you into the arms of God’s mercy as you place all your hope in Christ alone.

Your Minister and friend,
Dominic Smart