Mercy in God's House

The house of God is filled with glory, yet man does not enter it by pride. When the temple was dedicated, priests, Levites, and singers stood together in ordered praise, and the cloud of the Lord overwhelmed even the ministers. As Justin says, “and Moses himself could not enter into the tabernacle which he had erected, when it was filled with the glory of God;” If even the servant who built must yield before divine majesty, then our own plans, judgments, and wounded tempers must yield much more.

This is the thread joining temple, proverb, and prophet: the Lord weighs the spirit, while man excuses himself. Jonah was angry at mercy. He wanted judgment for Nineveh, but not the mercy by which he himself still breathed. Proverbs warns against this blindness: “there is a way which seems right to some, but the ends thereof look to the bottom of hell.” A man may defend his resentment, call it zeal, and yet be far from God.

Solomon prayed toward the place where God set His name, asking that sin confessed might be forgiven, that drought, defeat, and exile might become occasions for repentance. The true worshiper is not the man who speaks many words in God’s house, but the man who turns. And God, who cared for Nineveh and even for the cattle, shows that His mercy is not narrow, nor is His patience given to feed our hardness.

Therefore let us come before God with reverence, confessing sins without excuse, seeking wisdom rather than self-vindication, and learning to rejoice when mercy is given to others, even to those we would rather see punished.