His Mercy Is More

Have you ever heard the phrase, “it’s just a song”?

When it comes to corporate worship, that’s a really dangerous phrase. As God’s people, music has always been an integral part of our corporate worship. The songs we sing have lyrics. And those lyrics have meaning. With our song lyrics, we are simultaneously learning and proclaiming something about God. The question is, what are we learning and what are we declaring?

Colossians 3:16 tells us, “Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly, teaching and admonishing one another in all wisdom, singing psalms and hymns and spiritual songs, with thankfulness in your hearts to God.” 

It is important that we analyze the lyrics we sing. Are we faithfully admonishing each other in truth with the words we sing? Do the words we sing evoke in us awe and reverence for the God of the universe? Do they convey the gratitude in our hearts for the grace God has extended to us in the gospel – the person and work of Jesus Christ?

Questions like these are good starting points when considering a song for the King’s Chapel catalog. Let’s take a look at the newest addition to our repertoire, “His Mercy Is More” co-written by Matt Boswell and Matt Papa, and performed by Shane & Shane.

“What love could remember no wrongs we have done
Omniscient all knowing He counts not their sum
Thrown into a sea without bottom or shore
Our sins they are many His mercy is more”
I absolutely love the message of this verse. The God of the universe, who knows all – the very number of hairs on our head, the very depths of our hearts – looks at our sin. And if we are in Christ, he doesn’t remember our sin (Hebrews 8:12), that is, he doesn’t count it against us (Romans 4:8). In fact, he casts it away completely (Micah 7:19). If anyone has the right to hold these things against us, it is the holy God whom we have rebelled against. But because Christ on the cross bore the wrath that we deserved (1 John 4:10), we get to experience forgiveness for our sins and the blessed results of that forgiveness as listed in the verse quoted above. We can confidently say, “Our sins they are many His mercy is more.”
“What patience would wait as we constantly roam
What Father so tender is calling us home
He welcomes the weakest the vilest the poor
Our sins they are many His mercy is more”
Robert Robinson put it perfectly in his song “Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing.” “Prone to wander Lord I feel it. Prone to leave the God I love.” We are wanderers. Sinners prone to straying from our Creator and actively seeking fulfillment elsewhere. We are like children who ditch their parents and wander through the aisles of a grocery store. We explore the endless possibilities in front of us. And what does God do in response? He’s patient with children as we roam (2 Peter 3:9). He calls us to come home (John 10:3). And his incredible patience is not based on anything that we have done or earned (Romans 5:6). So again we can say, “Our sins they are many, His mercy is more.”
“What riches of kindness He lavished on us
His blood was the payment His life was the cost
We stood ‘neath a debt we could never afford
Our sins they are many His mercy is more”

“And you were dead in the trespasses and sins in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience—among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ—by grace you have been saved” (Ephesians 2:1–5).

That passage of scripture sums this verse up perfectly, doesn’t it? We were dead in our sin and in the greatest of debt. But God who is rich in mercy, love, and kindness makes us alive and debt-free because of Christ. Because he died and paid our debt in full, we have everlasting life. Once again we rejoice and say, “Our sins they are many, his mercy is more.”

Let that gospel truth encourage you.