Frankie Mazzapica - Echoes of Mercy
Thank you for tuning in today. My name's Frankie Mazzapica. The title of today's message is "Echoes of Mercy," echoes of mercy. I'm speaking on this because oftentimes, the sins of our past, like David said, are ever before me. Something we did last week, something we did last month, something we did years ago, 10, 20 years ago, we still feel guilty about right now. "I can't believe I said that," "I can't believe I did that," "I can't believe it. This is insane," and oftentimes it's like a little pebble in our shoe, where you can kinda sometimes kick that pebble to the front of the shoe where it's in that place between your toes and the front of the shoe.
And then you can walk and forget about the pebble, and you forgot, and then it starts creeping back down into the shoe and you gotta walk in pain again. And a lot of times, our regret is just like that. Sometimes you can kind of push it back, suppress it, and you don't think about it. You don't beat yourself up over it. But then there are times where it just comes back and it's like a flash of a thought and you just wanna go stick your head in a hole, you know. You just, "I cannot believe that".
And the enemy will come and just condemn you and punish you and tell you, "Why don't you just quit trying to serve God? You know you'll never be consistent anyway. Stop trying. The things in your past will not be forgotten by God". And the enemy will say that over and over again, and I wanna just take the next few minutes to talk about the mercy of God echoes from heaven into your life over and over again. And so, I've got three major points. The first point is needing to recall the mercy of God, we gotta keep playing it in our mind, and then we got to remember that we can't earn that mercy, and then the third point is going to be there is a key to receiving this mercy. Not everyone receives the mercy of God, there is a key to it.
So, let's just dive right into the first one. It's recalling, it's remembering, the mercy of God. Now, if you try to just remember it and you tell yourself, "God's merciful, God's merciful, God's merciful," that will help you. However, if you grab a promise that he said, that's written in black and white just for you in the scripture, and say that out loud, the Spirit of the Lord will rise up and give you confidence in the mercy because you're quoting his Words. If you're a parent and your kid comes up to you and says, "Do you remember when you said," and you hold your breath? Or if your kid says it in front of another person, "Hey, you remember when you said," and you're like, everything is slow motion at that moment, you have no idea what they're gonna say. But when they quote you, those are your words that you have to fulfill.
And so, when you quote the Lord, these are the ways that your faith builds within you. And so, on that first point of recalling what God has done, I want to emphasize this scripture where it's in... let me think. It's in Psalms 147, verse 11 where the Lord says this, "I take pleasure in those who fear me and take hope in my mercy". When we come before him and he sees us saying, fear means awe, A-W-E. "I am coming to you and I am so at awe of who you are and I'm depending on you being merciful," the Lord looks at you and he says, "Oh yeah, I'm taking pleasure in your countenance because your chin is lifted, even though you're discouraged. I'm taking pleasure in you because you're reaching for mercy, having faith that it's there".
You gotta remember these verses. I wanna give, kind of, an illustration here. And every time I have played "Win, Lose, or Draw," my team loses, okay? So, let me just lead with that. All right, so let's just imagine a person, I was about to say you, but after I get to driving, drawing, you're gonna be like, "No, no, no, that looks like you". And so, here we go. Let me see how well I can do here. I gotta concentrate. All right, so this is a person. How am I doing so far, okay? I got me some eyes, got me some eyes. All right, let's just, I gotta color them in tight just in case this person is Italian. You've never met an Italian with blue eyes before, I can promise you that.
All right, so there we go. All right. So, this is a cap to my marker. All right, so let's see how I can do it. I really, really practiced this. I don't know how good I'm gonna do here. Okay, yeah. Work with me, work with me. Real nice here. I watched a YouTube video this morning to try to do this, okay, and I think this goes inside, right? You see how that goes? All right, all right, I should just stop there but I'm going for all the marbles, okay? I should just stop there, so let's just make this person happy, okay. And we're gonna give him just a little small chin right here, okay. Ah, is this pretty good?
Okay, all right, all right, okay. I practiced the eyebrows. It's just a dark line there and then it comes down like that. It's like a dark line there, it comes down like that. All right, but then, just to make sure is a bright eyed person. All right, are we doing okay? All right, okay. Have you ever seen that... we're all gonna age ourselves. Who was that guy that was, like, painting with the afro? Bob Ross. And then all of a sudden everything's looking good and he just like goes and you're like, you just mess up your whole painting, and then it's like a tree and it looks awesome. All right, let me just, all right, let's see here. We're not gonna be fancy here, okay. We're not gonna be fancy. All right, okay. It's a moon face, right? Like, when you look up and you see a moon, okay?
Now, let's see how we can do here, all right, how are we doing? Uh-oh, there we go, there we go. Here we go, I remember it's supposed to be like a C. All right, we doing okay? Hold on. Not bad, huh? Not bad. All right, there we go. This is the person. I'm actually really proud of myself right now. Oh, yeah. Come on, not bad, huh? All right. So we got this person and he's happy, he's good. He's good with God, everything's fine. And then all of a sudden it's like he start, it's almost like, when you do a regret, you're like, I didn't plan on being stupid, right? I just kind of said it and... okay, so what we got here is, let's see, how does that go? It goes like this, right?
And then like that, that, that. Oh, how are we gonna do this? That. That close to a megaphone? And what is he saying here? I don't know how to spell this. Bad words, okay. And what is he listening here? He's like... That's music, okay. Music, okay. And then, what's he got going up in here? He's got like some, you know, how do we do this? Like okay. And this is not good up here, okay. That's what he's thinking. And so, now I'm having too much fun now. Okay, so this goes down like this, it goes up, it goes down. Then over here, it's supposed to go higher than that first line, but it goes in and then out. That's lightning, okay. I gotta practice that between services.
And so, what we're seeing is this guy is just, he's just going nuts and now to live like this, because now he knows how he's been talking, he knows what he's been thinking, he knows what he's been listening to, and not just that he's got Bob down here that is saying this kind of stuff, and it's going straight to that ear. And so, now he's got the ear thing going on, the thought thing going on, he's cursing. And so, now he's just full of regret. Everything was good until he started doing all this kind of stuff. He doesn't tell people, but he just feels really distant from God.
And so, how do we operate through this? Is this person right here the only way to quiet, like ear muffs, the only way to quiet this, those are ear muffs, those are apple beats, right? The only way to quiet it is to replay a scripture that has the word "mercy" in it. So, if you have to Google, "scripture mercy" and memorize that verse, this is how you quiet what's happening and quiet the guilt that has come through it. That's how you do it.
If you're taking notes and you need the verse, let me just give you one of them. This is in Lamentations chapter 3, verses 22 and 23 where it says this, that "the love of God never ceases, his mercy endures forever". Every morning you wake up, it is new and fresh as if you have never needed mercy before. Is God good? Come on. He's good. Now, let me, where'd my cap go? All right, there it is. I'm gonna need it for the second service. All right. Maybe I should just use this one, not draw it again, just, I'm doing okay. So, now we gotta just think about how it's unearned, like you cannot earn it.
In 1 Timothy chapter 1, verse 14, Paul says this, he says, "I was flooded by his grace. A flood, like a river, this unending river, that overcame me with mercy". There's this river, it does not stop. It's like this river that just keeps pouring, it doesn't stop. You can't make mercy and you can do nothing to merit, to deserve, mercy. In Luke chapter 23 we read about how Jesus is on a cross and on this cross, there's one guy to his left and then there's one guy to the right. This guy looks at Jesus and says, "If you are who you say you are, get off the cross". With his last breath he's condemning Jesus.
Now this guy over here in the Frankie International Version says, "Yo, shut up," and he looks at Jesus and he says, "Will you remember me in paradise"? Jesus says, "Today, you'll be with me in paradise". Why is this guy on the cross? Cause he's a criminal. Jesus doesn't say, "I can't give you any mercy, because you don't have the time to do anything good". You don't, come on. You can't do it. This is what you've been doing your whole life, and then with your last breath you're saying, "Please don't forget me". Jesus doesn't say that. He doesn't look at you, he doesn't look at me, and say, "Okay, you know what? I will be merciful, but can you at least start doing good before I give you some mercy"?
That is not how God works. Don't you love him? That's not how he works. Now, Peter came before Jesus in Matthew chapter 18, verse 34, 18:34? Yeah, I think it's 34. It's in Matthew 18, for sure. Peter comes to Jesus and he says, "How many times should I give someone mercy"? Now, if you read the theologians commentary, many of the theologians say this, that the person that Peter was referring to when he said seven times, they did the same offense seven times in a row. So, Peter is saying this, "How many times do I gotta say, 'Hey, it's okay.' 'Hey, it's okay, pretend like it never happened.' Third time, 'Hey, don't worry about it. Let's pretend like it didn't happen. Hey, you know what?'"
So, he goes back to Jesus and he's like, "How many times do I gotta tell this guy it's okay"? And then he thinks he's doing good, right? He's like, "I'll forgive him," then he goes, "Jesus, what if I forgive him seven times? What do you think about that"? It's just like he's proud of himself. And so, Jesus looks back at him and he goes, "How about 7 times 77 times? How about that, for the same offense"? That's innumerable. For the same offense, that many times. That number is nowhere close to how often he's forgiven you and I, but Peter isn't the Son of God. He's a man. But he says, "Just so you know, you can never forgive that person for the same offense enough". This is unmerited mercy.
Now, let me dive into the very last point. Not everyone receives mercy. There are certain keys to receiving mercy, there's keys to it, and we think that we need to have the right key to unlock that that massive door from heaven to receive mercy. And so, we use one key and we say, "Okay, God, I am going to withdraw from church. I'm gonna withdraw from you because I feel so guilty and I feel so bad, that I'm withdrawing," and deep within our heart we're hoping that that's the key because the Lord will look back at you and say, "Now I know you're sorry and now I know that my mercy can go in your direction because now I know you're sorry".
That is not the right key and these kind of people that try that, "I'm just gonna withdraw. I'm gonna just pull back. I can't do this Christian thing anyway," these people, that is not the key. If you back up and you say, "You know what, I'm just gonna beat myself up for the rest of my life". These condemning thoughts, I'm this, I'm that, I'm horrible, I'm disgusting. That is not the key to open the door to receive mercy. That's not the key. What it is, is a key to open up a door for Satan to come tromping into your life and whisper into your ear. You haven't opened up the key to mercy. You've opened up the key for the devil with all of his imps to swoop in like a spirit, like wind that you cannot see but you can feel it, and it pulls you down and you can't get out of it.
You stay in that state for years and decades, beating yourself up, pushing your face in the pillow, convincing yourself you can't forgive yourself, they can't forgive you and God can't forgive you. And these are the keys that we think God will say, "Whoa, they're really sorry. I'm gonna come give them mercy and make them feel better. I'm gonna come to the rescue". Those are not the keys. But the good news is, is that in his Word, he gives the key to mercy. There's one key that opens up that door to mercy, one, one.
In Psalms 51:17 it says this, that "he will not reject a broken heart, nor reject a repentant spirit". When we come before the Lord and we just say, "God, my heart is broken for what I did. My heart is broken for the things I've said, for the doors that have opened. I need you to forgive me," this golden key, snatch, boom, angels come in with the blessings of God, and you begin to receive that mercy. You receive the mercy before you believe you've received the mercy. You are actually catching up to what God has already done. That door opens, it opens. Come on, put your hands together for that. The way you convince yourself is you keep repeating a scripture over and over.
I thank you Jesus that you take pleasure, Psalms 149:11, you take pleasure when people come before you, you love it. And as you quote those scriptures over and over again, the guilt that is on your shoulders begins to fall off and then you realize exactly what's happening at that moment, is you have a clean canvas as if nothing has ever happened before, nothing has ever happened. This is what you repeat to yourself, and every single time the enemy tries to remind you what you've done, you say to the Lord, "I thank you".