Be honest, most of us are stiff-necked people. Yet God still gives us the opportunity to go to a better place. That's mercy.

Exodus 33:1-6 Bible Gateway link

The Lord said to Moses, “Depart; go up from here, you and the people whom you have brought up out of the land of Egypt, to the land of which I swore to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, saying, ‘To your offspring I will give it.’I will send an angel before you, and I will drive out the Canaanites, the Amorites, the Hittites, the Perizzites, the Hivites, and the Jebusites.Go up to a land flowing with milk and honey; but I will not go up among you, lest I consume you on the way, for you are a stiff-necked people.”

The Schrodinger's Dragon
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When the people heard this disastrous word, they mourned, and no one put on his ornaments.For the Lord had said to Moses, “Say to the people of Israel, ‘You are a stiff-necked people; if for a single moment I should go up among you, I would consume you. So now take off your ornaments, that I may know what to do with you.’”Therefore the people of Israel stripped themselves of their ornaments, from Mount Horeb onward.