Do You Really Know Your God?

If the throne of judgment is founded on mercy, then why do so many of us picture God as harsh? The answer may say more about us than it does about Him.

God has been trying to help His people understand His character the whole time—from the days of ancient Israel down to our own. But there has always been a problem in humanity: we love to look at our God the wrong way. It is fleshly to misread Him, and strangely, it can even feed the flesh.

We Often Make God in Our Own Image

You might assume the only way the flesh distorts God is by imagining Him as someone who winks at sin and lets us do whatever we please. But that is not the only distortion. Some of us are actually drawn to the harsh traits—and we magnify them. We end up viewing God with the very severity we ourselves are prone to. Because we are not merciful, we assume God is not merciful. Because we are quick to anger, we assume God is quick to anger. Because we cannot control our passions, we assume He cannot control His.

The problem is that we are viewing God from our flesh instead of from what His Word says about Him. And His Word says He is altogether unlike us. He tells us not to compare ourselves to Him, or Him to us, for He is on another level entirely. His throne, His judgment seat, is established in mercy.

Israel Had the Symbol and Still Missed It

Even the children of Israel could not grasp this, though an emblem of His grace stood right in front of them. What was the seat of God called in the Most Holy Place? It was called the mercy seat. Yet even with that symbol—a type of the true throne of God—before them, they came to imagine that God was out to punish them, watching for their transgressions, ready to wipe them out the moment they failed. And the reality is this: if you think God is like that, you do not know God at all. You need to relearn the Lord and let Him introduce Himself to you.

How God Reintroduced Himself to Me

I had to let God introduce Himself to me. A few years ago I decided I would read the Bible all the way through again, from beginning to end. And as I began, something happened—the scales finally came off my eyes. I had been caught up in some bad doctrine, and now the Lord was saying, “Go back, and let Me teach you some real, true, clean, pure doctrine.”

So I went to the Bible and read chapter after chapter, and I began to see something I had never seen before: the grace and the mercy of God. I had been preaching and teaching for years, yet I had never truly seen His mercy and grace until a series of events sent me back to reinvestigate everything I said I believed. Then the Lord began to show me His grace and His mercy, and I said, “Lord, I have to preach this from now until Jesus comes, because this is the true picture of who You are. I don’t want to mar Your image anymore. I don’t want people to think You look like something You are not.”

The Last Message of Mercy

Let me share a statement I almost left out, from the book Christ’s Object Lessons (p. 415):

Stop there and ask yourself: what do you think that last message is? The mark of the beast? The close of probation? An exposing of who the beast really is? What is the last message of mercy to be given to the world? Here is how the statement finishes:

That is the last message. Do you hear it? The last message of mercy to be given to a fallen world is a revelation of His character of love. When that settled on me, I said, “Lord, then I have to preach it. This is the message. If I don’t preach this, I’m preaching something—but I’m not preaching the message.”

A Healthy Fear, and a Deeper Trust

Israel missed the symbol; the mercy seat was right there and they missed it. And I am afraid some of us are in danger of missing it too. Now, do not misunderstand—you still need a healthy fear of God. Even Jesus said not to fear the one who can kill the body, but rather Him who can destroy both soul and body. The Bible says in Hebrews 10 that “it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God.” I do not mean mere respect; I mean the kind of reverence that makes you tremble at the thought of standing before Him.

But do not swing too far the other way either. Alongside that reverence, you need to bask in the glory of who He really is. You need to accept His loving grace and mercy, His forgiveness of your sins, His desire to see you saved, His desire to work with you every single day, to help you, to pick you up every time you fall. Does the Bible not say, “The steps of a good man are ordered by the Lord: and he delighteth in his way. Though he fall, he shall not be utterly cast down: for the Lord upholdeth him with his hand”?

This is our God. This is the One who bids you come to Him—not the One looking to wipe you out, but the One looking to help you out. Behold our God. Israel missed the mercy seat and the plan God had to reveal Himself through it, and we could miss it as well. But it is God’s desire to set everything in order, to order it all the way He would have it be.