Port City Faith Church
Sunday Morning - January 11th, 2026
  • Holy Is The Lord
  • Holy Forever
  • I Surrender
  • How Deep The Father's Love For Us

      • 1 Corinthians 11:23–26ESV

  • I want to start out this year by Digging into who God is, and Specifically who God says He is.
    And there are numerous ways to describe who God is, but i think there is something special about recognizing how God sees Himself.
    And You might be asking How do we know what God says about himself?
    Well he tells us.
    At one point while Israel was at Sinai, Moses asks to see God’s face,
    and God tells moses that is a bad idea - as sinful people cannot look on the face of God and live,
    So God says I am going to put you in a rock, cover you with my hand, and let you see me from behind.
    And We pick up this story in Exodus 34:5-7
    Exodus 34:5–7 ESV
    The Lord descended in the cloud and stood with him there, and proclaimed the name of the Lord. The Lord passed before him and proclaimed, “The Lord, the Lord, a God merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and abounding in steadfast love and faithfulness, keeping steadfast love for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin, but who will by no means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children and the children’s children, to the third and the fourth generation.”
    So Moses is hiding in the cleft of the Rock, God arrives, and while he is there, Moses not only sees what God is like, but also hears how God Names himself,
    and there are several attributes that God lists here:
    Gracious and Merciful
    Slow to Anger
    Abounding in steadfast love - or Loyalty
    Abounding in faithfulness - or truth
    Forgiving the sinful
    and not clearing the guilty
    This description of God is one of the most quoted passages of the Bible within the Bible,
    These verses are quoted dozens of times throughout scripture.
    Over the next several weeks we will look at these attributes of our God,
    and we are going to start with two that are very similar:
    Gracious and Merciful.
    In Hebrew Rachum and Chanun
    Grace: Receiving a gift you do not deserve.
    Mercy: Not receiving a punishment that you do deserve.
    God gives good gifts to people who do not deserve it
    And God withholds punishment from people who deserve it, to give them another chance.
    And We can see time and time again that God is Both Merciful and Gracious
    Famously we see God Mercy in the book of Jonah
    After Jonah runs away from God’s will,
    God told Jonah to preach disaster upon Nineveh
    Fleeing to Tarshish - probably modern day Spain - rather than going to preach to Nineveh.
    And God has Jonah swallowed by a great fish, and then he is spat up on dry land three days later.
    and then Jonah goes to Nineveh and warns them of God’s coming destruction.
    Jonah 3:3–10 ESV
    So Jonah arose and went to Nineveh, according to the word of the Lord. Now Nineveh was an exceedingly great city, three days’ journey in breadth. Jonah began to go into the city, going a day’s journey. And he called out, “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown!” And the people of Nineveh believed God. They called for a fast and put on sackcloth, from the greatest of them to the least of them. The word reached the king of Nineveh, and he arose from his throne, removed his robe, covered himself with sackcloth, and sat in ashes. And he issued a proclamation and published through Nineveh, “By the decree of the king and his nobles: Let neither man nor beast, herd nor flock, taste anything. Let them not feed or drink water, but let man and beast be covered with sackcloth, and let them call out mightily to God. Let everyone turn from his evil way and from the violence that is in his hands. Who knows? God may turn and relent and turn from his fierce anger, so that we may not perish.” When God saw what they did, how they turned from their evil way, God relented of the disaster that he had said he would do to them, and he did not do it.
    Jonah preaches in Nineveh giving them 40 days before God will destroy them.
    And the people of Nineveh have it coming to them,
    If you read Nahum You get a list of some of the evils that Nineveh has committed
    It is called a bloody city, piled with so many corpses that people cannot walk without stumbling over them
    they practiced witchcraft and sorcery , idolatry, and violence
    and there are historical records that they would torture their captives, flaying them - peeling their skin off their flesh while they were alive, or gouging out their eyes.
    They were horrible people!
    But they hear Jonah’s warning, and they repent! and the King of Nineveh repents, and fasts, and puts on sackcloth.
    And God has mercy, and spares them punishment.
    And Jonah is not happy with this.
    Jonah 4:1–2 ESV
    But it displeased Jonah exceedingly, and he was angry. And he prayed to the Lord and said, “O Lord, is not this what I said when I was yet in my country? That is why I made haste to flee to Tarshish; for I knew that you are a gracious God and merciful, slow to anger and abounding in steadfast love, and relenting from disaster.
    Jonah knew! He knew that God is Merciful and Gracious, slow to anger, abounding in steadfast love, and so he tried to run away, not because he was scared of the people of Nineveh, but because he knew that if they repented God would have mercy on them. And he hated the Ninevites so much that he would rather God just destroy them without warning.
    Church, let us never become like Jonah.
    So God is Merciful, and he is also gracious
    One of the first moments where we see God’s Grace at play is actually with Noah
    Genesis 6:5–8 ESV
    The Lord saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every intention of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually. And the Lord regretted that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him to his heart. So the Lord said, “I will blot out man whom I have created from the face of the land, man and animals and creeping things and birds of the heavens, for I am sorry that I have made them.” But Noah found favor in the eyes of the Lord.
    At the time of Noah every person had their thoughts constantly on evil things, and it Gets so bad that God regrets ever making mankind. And Just as he is about to blot them out, he sees Noah, and Noah finds favor.
    that word “favor” is Chen, the root of the word Chanun - Grace. Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord.
    Noah is given a gift he does not fully deserve, he gets a chance to save his family, and the world,
    Why?
    Genesis 6:9 ESV
    These are the generations of Noah. Noah was a righteous man, blameless in his generation. Noah walked with God.
    Because Noah walked with God, in a world where everyone thoughts were selfish and evil, Noah trusted in God.
    God did not have to save Noah, Noah may have walked with God, but he was still an sinner, and he was still guilty along with all of mankind,
    But because he walked with God, God gave him Grace.
    God is Merciful, to those who repent, and Gracious to those who follow him.
    And we see these same attributes in the Life of Jesus.
    John 8:2–11 ESV
    Early in the morning he came again to the temple. All the people came to him, and he sat down and taught them. The scribes and the Pharisees brought a woman who had been caught in adultery, and placing her in the midst they said to him, “Teacher, this woman has been caught in the act of adultery. Now in the Law, Moses commanded us to stone such women. So what do you say?” This they said to test him, that they might have some charge to bring against him. Jesus bent down and wrote with his finger on the ground. And as they continued to ask him, he stood up and said to them, “Let him who is without sin among you be the first to throw a stone at her.” And once more he bent down and wrote on the ground. But when they heard it, they went away one by one, beginning with the older ones, and Jesus was left alone with the woman standing before him. Jesus stood up and said to her, “Woman, where are they? Has no one condemned you?” She said, “No one, Lord.” And Jesus said, “Neither do I condemn you; go, and from now on sin no more.”
    Here Jesus is presented with a woman who was caught in the very act of adultery, she is being accused by a group of pharisees, multiple witnesses, and the Old Testament law calls for her death.
    And Jesus doesn’t seem to be paying attention at first, he is busy writing in the sand.
    and when the Pharisees finally do get him to talk he simply says “Let him without sin cast the first stone”
    and they all drop their stones and walk away, until there is no one left to accuse her.
    Except Jesus, the only one without sin, but with her accusers gone he simply says - I do not accuse you, go and sin no more.
    Lets get one thing clear, this woman was guilty. she deserved to be stoned,
    the only reason she isn’t is because all of the pharisees are also guilty in this manner,
    as they brought only the woman, and not the man that she was committing adultery with - perhaps because he was one of the pharisees, or at least someone they didn’t want to offend
    According to the law both the man and the women were to be stoned together.
    And Jesus gives the woman a chance to repent - to sin no more.
    Showing her mercy.
    As he does for all of us sinners.
    We who follow Jesus, who seek to walk with him, we are saved from our sins by his grace
    Ephesians 2:8–9 ESV
    For by grace you have been saved through faith. And this is not your own doing; it is the gift of God, not a result of works, so that no one may boast.
    The entire reason Christ came to earth was to die in our place, for our sins, this is a gift of Grace, we cannot earn it, we can only accept it or reject it.
    If we reject his Grace, then it would be like Noah saying “Nah - I don’t really want to build a boat, and deal with all those animals, just allow me and my family to be wiped off the face of the earth with everyone else.”
    But if we accept it, then we must follow him, and learn to walk with him, and become more like him.
    And how can we become more like Christ?
    By becoming Merciful and gracious.
    Not bringing punishment on those who deserve it, but helping them repent of their mistakes
    Giving gifts to those who do not deserve them, so as to point them to Christ.

      • Exodus 34:5–7ESV

      • Jonah 3:3–10ESV

      • Jonah 4:1–2ESV

      • Genesis 6:5–7ESV

      • Genesis 6:8ESV

      • Genesis 6:9ESV

      • John 8:2–11ESV

      • Ephesians 2:8–9ESV

  • Goodness Of God
Port City Faith Church
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