Turn with me this morning to Psalm 103. I want to begin in verse 10. Let me say by way of introduction that the Word of God plainly declares in Romans 9 that God has mercy on whom He'll have mercy, and whom He will, He hardeneth. That upsets a lot of folks. Not so much the first part, even though they don't like the idea that He has mercy on whom He will have mercy. They think He should have mercy on everyone. But when you add, in whom He will, He hardeneth, they get upset. And in verses 19, Paul added, Thou wilt say then unto me, why doth He yet find fault? Now, I'm reading from Romans 9. You can just say where you're at. For who has resisted His will? In other words, if God has mercy on whom He'll have mercy on whom He wills, and if He hardens whom He wills, and none can resist His will, how then can He find fault with them? And what the apostle Paul is anticipating men and women to say is, that doesn't seem fair. In verse 20 of Romans 9, Paul said, Nay, but O man, who art thou? Who are you that replies? And in the marginal reference, that word replies means dispute. Who are you to dispute? Who are you to argue against God? Shall the thing formed, that being you and me and all men and women, we're the things formed, we're that lump of clay that God takes and molds however He pleases. And shall the thing, you and I, the clay formed, say to Him that formed us, why hast thou made me thus? God, the sovereign potter, has the right over the clay, doesn't He? If I handed you some play-doh this morning, and I said, here, make something out of this play-doh. Whatever you made would be at your discretion. Well, you're the potter of the play-doh, and God is the potter of the clay. He has the right, He has power over clay. He can mold us, and He can make us who are that lump of clay whatsoever He desires, right? Well, the title of my message you may already have deducted is, Is God Unfair? Or, Lord, don't give me what is fair. Have you ever thought or said, I just want what's fair? I have. Or I just want what I have coming to me? Sure, I've said that. More than likely, you have too. And a lot of times we say it when we're frustrated. By nature, we want what's fair. We want justice when feeling wronged. We want people to give us what we think we deserve and what we have coming to us, and that includes God. We question God, just like Paul anticipated here in Romans 9. You will then say to me, if I tell you God has mercy on whom he will, because he's the sovereign potter, and he'll harden whom he wills, because he's the sovereign potter, you're gonna say, well, why did he make me that? That's not fair. And it's a sense of entitlement. We live in a world today that is prevalent in self entitlement. But as sinners who have offended God, as men and women who are dead in trespasses and sin, we're entitled to one thing, and that's eternal death, wrath, and condemnation. Now look at our text here in Psalm 103. As I said, I'll begin in verse 10. But look, my first point is if God was to give us, what is fair? He condemns us. So do you all. What's fair? God's mercy restrains His justice. Look what He says. He, God, hath not dealt with us after our sin. Fairness is justice according to what we've earned. What have we earned from God? Well, nothing but judgment. Lord, don't give me what's fair. Don't give me what I deserve. Give me mercy. Show me grace. God does not deal with one in Christ after their sin. That is such good news. If you're in Christ, it's not good news to one who's not. God doesn't treat us according to what we deserve. And I don't want him to because I deserve eternal condemnation. The eternal torment of hell is what I deserve. Where the fire's never quenched and the worm dieth not, that's what I deserve. I don't want that. In Christ, God withholds the punishment due to us. Why? Because He puts all that punishment on Him in our room instead. And that's why the believer loves substitution. David continues by saying, God has not rewarded, that word means treated or recompensed, to us according to our iniquities. Aren't you so glad? But we drink iniquity like water. Iniquity is not just what we do, it's what we are. Instead of repaying us with wrath, God extends grace and restrains His hand of judgment to show us compassion. Only in Christ. And that's the difference in divine justice and divine mercy. Justice gives us what is deserved. Mercy withholds what is deserved. Now which do you want? You want what's fair? You want what you've got coming to you? The psalmist, along with every other believer, he rejoices here and he marvels that though man's sins are great, God's mercy is greater still. Greater still. That's the gospel, dear friends. Condemnation would be fair. Eternal damnation would be fair. Eternity in hell would be fair. And here, David assumes his guilt and he declares God's grace. In Christ, God doesn't give us what is fair. He gives us mercy. He rewards us with love and with grace and forgiveness. Do you know what it took to forgive your sin? It took God Himself to die in the room instead and take your punishment. That's nothing to make light of. Mercy is God withholding rightful punishment. Left to ourselves, God should deal with us according to our sin. So you see what David is saying? He hath not dealt with us according to our sin. He shouldn't have. He would have been right. He would have been just. He would have been justified to do so. That would be fair. That would be just. That would be right. So is God unfair? No. God's merciful. Our sin is not ignored or excused. A lot of people think that. Well, God's too good to look at our sin. God's too good to punish us of our sin. No, He's too just not to. Our sin is not ignored or excused. God provides a way to satisfy His justice. God makes a way that the sinner can be spared. How? Christ bears what we deserve. Jesus Christ, God the Son, became flesh and blood, came to this earth in the fullness of time, and He took on the form of a servant, and He kept the law perfectly for His people. He had no need to do it for Himself. Well, he had no reason to even come to earth besides the redemption of his people. And that's what he did. He came and he lived a perfect, holy and righteous life. And then he bore the punishment that you and I deserved. Listen, I never grow tired of hearing this message. This is the good news. This is what a Redeemed child of God wants to hear. Tell me the story of Jesus. Tell me once again how Christ came into the world to save sinners of whom I am chief. I find no comfort, no rest, no peace apart from knowing that. I want to hear it every time it's declared. God has not dealt with us according to our sin. He dealt with Christ according to our sin. God charged Christ for our iniquities. To every believer, Isaiah says, the Lord hath laid on Him the iniquity of us all. That's not talking to the whole world. That's talking to God's chosen people that He chose before the foundation of the world and for whom Christ came forth to die. For God has made Him, Christ, to be sin for us so that we might be made the righteousness of God in Him. It's not that there was some righteousness in there and God did a little something to stir it up and improve it and reform us and make us better. No, we had none. We were dead. Sin's what we were. He put our sin on Christ and He gave us Christ's perfect righteousness. There's no salvation apart from Jesus Christ. Through Christ's death, in our room instead, the justice of God was satisfied. And God's mercy flowed free, flowed free, flowed free to His people. The only reason you and I have been shown mercy is because God showed it. He showed it on purpose. We're getting what Christ deserved. That's what we ought to say, Lord, I want what Christ deserves. Not what I deserve. That's a stupid request. That's what mercy and grace is. Is that fair? God made it so. God made it so. And the result is grace beyond deserving. Instead of judgment, we get forgiveness. Instead of damnation, we get adoption. Instead of eternal wrath, we get eternal life. God doesn't merely withhold wrath. That's what a lot of people think. He gives favor, He gives love, and He gives fellowship in return. Secondly, we see that it's God's mercy that saves us. Look at verse 11. For as the heaven is high above the earth, I look at this, so great is His mercy toward them that fear Him. Now, it's here that we see the immeasurable nature of God's mercy in Christ. You know, Years and years ago, there was a little saying, and I heard it a lot, and at first I didn't think much about it, and then it really got to where it bugged me. But people would say things like, how do you know how much Christ loved you? Well, look to the cross. He loved you this much? That's really blasphemous. He loves you a lot more now. Now, if you want to take this as being as far as the East is from the West, okay, but that's not what they meant. It's immeasurable. His mercy, His love, His grace to us is immeasurable. As the heaven is high above the earth. How immeasurable is that? Well, where is heaven? Well, it's beyond this universe. They say 46 billion light years in every direction. There's still no visible end. 46 billion years is a long time, but in light years? That's immeasurable. They haven't found where the universe ends yet. And it's beyond that, the heavens, the third heavens. David uses the vast difference between heaven and earth as a way to describe something that can't be measured. How far is that? I don't know. Far, far. Far, far. God's mercy can't be measured. His mercy is infinitely higher and greater than man's sin. I know that. We can't measure the height of heaven and neither can we measure the height of God's mercy. And we can't reach up to God. God must bring it down to us. And He did in the Lord Jesus Christ. Mercy is directed toward them that fear Him. You see that in verse 11? That doesn't mean that you've got to be terrified of God. It means that we hold Him in awe and in reverence. We take Him seriously. Do you take God seriously? That's a question we ought to ask ourselves. Are we just checking a box and coming to church? Well, I've done my churchly duty this week. Check that box. Do we take Him seriously? Do we strive to honor His Word? Do we truly love His Word? Do we humbly depend on Him for everything? Well, I'm a self-made man. I work hard. You couldn't work if God didn't give you the ability, physical and mental. You see, this mercy that I'm speaking of is the foundation of the gospel. Without it, none would be saved. God's mercy doesn't give us what we deserve. That being justice, judgment, and death, it gives us what we don't deserve. That being grace and forgiveness through Christ. And the cross of the Lord Jesus Christ is the greatest display of God's mercy that there is. You don't have to look any further than the cross to see God's mercy. At the cross, justice demanded the payment of death, because sin's wages is death. At the cross, mercy intervened through Christ's substitution, and all that wrath and damnation was placed on Him so that you and I could go free. At the cross, we see this mercy is costly for God satisfied his own justice at his own beloved son's expense. Now, you may love me enough to sell your house, to pay a debt that I've got. I don't know. Maybe you might, but I doubt if any of you love me enough to give your own child. so that I might live, but God did. Oh, this mercy is costly. At the cross, Christ bore our judgment, therefore the guilty go free. This wasn't just a get out of jail free card. We're spared because we're innocent. And that's hard to fathom, isn't it? Why? Because we live with ourselves. We know what we are. But in Christ, I'm perfect. At the cross, Christ bore our judgment. We go free. At the cross, the heart of God is revealed. Mercy is not just something God does. Mercy is something, is who God is. And at the cross, justice was satisfied so that mercy could be magnified. At the cross, the believer's sin was put on Christ, and Christ's righteousness was put on the believer. That's not fairness. That's mercy. No other act in all history, and you know I'm gonna say this, his story, that's what history is, it's all his story. Shows us so clearly the heights to which God would go to spare those that He chose from the foundation of the world. And let me throw in who didn't deserve it. I don't want what's fair. Do you? I don't want what's fair. On the cross is where the worst of human sin met the best of divine love and God's love and mercy triumphed. Thirdly, we see the broadness of God's mercy. Look at verse 12. As far as the East is from the West. East and West never meet. They extend infinitely in opposite directions. David uses this illustration in truth to show us that when God removes sin and when God forgives sin, He moves it entirely and eternally. It's not partial pardon. If you're in prison for a crime. You want pardon? You don't want partial pardon? What is partial pardon? What is that? You gotta come back every other day to prison? I don't. No, it's a complete cleansing. Our sins are not just covered, they're gone. Gone forever. God himself said, and their sins and iniquities, I will remember no more. Gone. If God don't remember them, they're gone. God didn't forget them. God didn't just, didn't remember them because he forgets. God didn't see them because they're gone. And then fourthly, we see the source of sin's removal. Verse 12. He, God, hath removed our transgressions from us. It's God Himself who acts. Man can't erase his own guilt. Only God can remove it. And He removes that sin from us Mercy doesn't forgive simply, it removes. Our sin is removed from an infinite distance. Fairness would have demanded payment, but grace says, you don't owe anything. Your debt's gone. Check your books again. You sure? It says right here. Paid in full. It was written in blood. Got to be true. A man who's rightly on death row, I'm telling you, you will not argue fairness. You see, if he's rightly there, he knows what he's earned. When God shows us our sin, truly shows us our sin, we know what we've earned. We've earned death. Wages of sin is death. The soul that sins, it shall die. He can by no means clear the guilty. So we're not going to argue fairness. Every soul outside of Christ is under that same sentence. David, after his sins with Bathsheba, according to the law, should have died. But He's King, it doesn't matter. God is infinitely just. The soul that sins, it shall die. But God forgave him, and his life no doubt bore the scars of his actions, but his soul was spared. That woman caught in the act of adultery. She was dragged in front of the Lord Jesus in front of the whole town. What did he say to her? Shame, shame, shame. No, he said, neither do I condemn thee. Go and sin no more. That's mercy. That's mercy. If you're still breathing, God has been merciful to you. I woke up this morning Forgiven. And I lay there in bed just for a little while after I woke up thinking about that. I'm forgiven. In Jesus Christ, I'm forgiven. God doesn't remember my sin anymore. He's thrown them behind his back. He doesn't look backwards. As far as the east is from, east is from the west. I think that's right. God has not dealt with me according to my sin as my sin deserves. You know, sin makes fairness fatal. Lord, I don't want what's fair. Now let me get to the heart of this and I'll finish. Men call God's right to have mercy on whom He wills and His right to condemn who He wills as being unfair because, first of all, they think they deserve better. That's right. The human heart is naturally self-righteous. Fairness from God would mean judgment. Grace spares us from what's fair. People overestimate their own goodness. I have said this, I said this years and years and years ago. I'm not going to, I told my parents, I'm not going back to that church. I'm as good as anybody that goes to that church. Well, in one sense, I was right in the fact that I was as bad as anybody that went to that church. We overestimated my own goodness. We have a tendency to measure ourselves by other sinners, not by God's holiness. When it says that we come way short of the glory of God, that's comparing us to God, not to one another. Someone once said, I told you this before, you can take some maggots, as disgusting as they are, and you can take one of them and you can put a little tuxedo on it. He may look better than the other maggots, but he's still a maggot. Friends, compared to God's perfection, we fall so short of the glory of God that why would we even think that we deserve better than what we have? And folks underestimate the seriousness of sin. Sin isn't just a minor flaw. It's rebellion against the Creator. When a sinner truly begins to understand what the wages of sin is, deserving mercy, that becomes nonsense. Well, I deserve mercy. Well, that's nonsense. You don't deserve mercy. That's what makes it mercy. It's undeserved. It's unmerited. That's what grace is. It's unmerited favor. People misunderstand the nature of mercy. Mercy isn't a payment for good behavior. You'd be amazed how many people think that. It's not payment for good behavior. Like we do our kids. I remember my mom, right next to the dentist there in Henderson where I went was a little department store. Now, if you be good at the dentist, we'll go next door to Baden's, and that was the name of it, and we'll get you a toy. And, oh, I tried to be good until they started working on me and I started screaming. But I still got a toy. See, that's how messed up our thinking is. Mercy isn't just a payment for good behavior. It is God in Christ withholding the judgment that we rightly deserve. Secondly, those who declare God unfair confuse mercy with obligation. People assume that because God is merciful, that He owes mercy to everybody. But mercy is undeserved, as we said. If it was old, then it wouldn't be mercy, would it? People assume God's love cancels His justice. Does God love too much to punish sin? God's love is found in Christ, who had no sin. Our sin was charged to Him. God can't, out of love, overlook judgment for sin. He'd cease to be God. He would cease to be just. God's love is found in Christ. And our sin was charged to Him, and that's the only reason that God loves us. Do you know that? There's nothing in you, precious as you are, there's nothing in you that God loves. It's being in Christ. why God loves you. Divine love doesn't erase divine justice. God's justice was satisfied by Christ on the cross. And declaring God unfair puts man in the judgment seat. It is. Saying, God, I don't think you're fair. So are we making ourselves judge? Clay sets itself up as the potter and judge when it says, why did you make me this way? It's because he did. He's God, he can do what he wants to. Lost sinners call God unfair because they don't come close to grasping how sinful they are and how holy God is. People assume that because God is merciful Well, I can serve mercy too. It'd be unfair for Him not to give me mercy. God has mercy on whom He wills. Here thirdly, we see that those who insist that God's unfair want control over divine justice. by nature's proud, they're self-justifying, and they're unwilling to submit to a God that they cannot control. Ever since the fall, man has wanted to sit on the throne. When the serpent tempted Eve, he said, you shall be as gods, knowing good and evil. Now listen, that wasn't just about gaining knowledge. It was about man declaring the right to control and redefine divine justice. It's all about men justifying themselves. It's all about men avoiding accountability. It's all about men asserting independence. It's all about them rewriting what fairness is. If man can adjust God's standard of holiness, he can excuse his own sin. Man wants mercy in his own terms. Man desires wrath on others who don't line up with their way of thinking. Listen. I told somebody one time, and I shouldn't have said it, but I did. I said, y'all be thankful that I'm not God, because I'd send you to hell. But God has mercy on some. If he sent me to hell, he'd be justified, he'd be right. But he has mercy on some. How much mercy do I have? God helped me to have more. God helped me to forgive more. Because I've been forgiven of much. Do men really believe that their sense of fairness is justice? Yes, because divine justice offends human pride. In short, men won't control because they can't bear to face a holy standard that they don't and can't measure up to. True submission to God's justice requires humility, repentance, and faith. And these three things that human pride resists until and unless God's grace breaks them. Is there unrighteousness with God? You ask yourself that question. Is God unfair? Perish the thought. But this is man's cry when God's justice doesn't align with man's fallen logic. And it's always the result when God chooses to have mercy on some and to harm others. May we always remember that mercy is God's to give. He's the mercy giver. We're the mercy beggars. God claims absolute sovereignty over mercy. Man by nature will always resist being powerless in salvation. It's not of him that will it, it's not of him that run it, but of God that show mercy. We're justified freely by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. We have no say in divine justice or divine mercy. In Matthew chapter 20, the Lord Jesus told a parable about a landowner. I'm gonna close with this. Stay with me if you can. Told a parable about a landowner who hired laborers at different times of the day. You remember that parable? He hired some early in the morning, some in the third hour, some in the sixth hour, some in the ninth hour, and some in the 11th hour. And at the end of the day, he paid them all the same. Same wage. He paid them what he said he would pay them. Those who worked all day complained. I probably would have too. Those who came to work in the 11th hour, the ones that had worked longer said, oh, they've only worked one hour and thus made them equal. They accused the master who in that parable pictures God as being unfair. How did the master reply? His response was, friend, I do thee no wrong. This thou not agree with me for a penny? Take that thine is and go thy way. I'll give unto this last and even as unto thee. And then he asked this, is it not lawful? Is it not right for me to do what I will with mine own? That stops the argument. That stops the disputing. That stops the replying against God. Is it not right for God to do what he will with his own? And then he asked this question. It cuts deep. He said, is thine eye evil because I'm good? In other words, do you resent my goodness because it doesn't fit your sense of fairness? Friends, God's not unfair. God's generous. The early workers received exactly what they agreed to. There was no unfairness there. He did to each what he said he would do. The latecomers received more than they deserved. That's the picture you and me. That was grace. That was undeserved grace. Nobody was wronged. But grace offended those who measured God's goodness by human fairness. When men call God unfair, what they really mean is, He not conforming to my sense of moral Equity. What's moral equity? It's the idea that all human beings have the same inherent moral worth and should therefore be treated with equal respect and consideration. In plain terms, it means that no person's life, rights, or dignity is worth more than another's, regardless of their race, their wealth, intelligence, power, or social status. It also suggests that God doesn't have the right to do what He wills with His own. It's not fair if He saves one and not another. But what that really means biblically is that we are all sinners in need of grace and mercy, and that mercy and grace is given by God and given to whom He determines and chooses. God's kingdom doesn't run on fairness. What's it run on? Mercy. It runs on mercy. If God was fair, we'd all get justice because He's gracious. Some get mercy. Are you on mercy, man? That's who gets mercy. That's who gets the glory. So in closing, I ask you, have you ever said or at least thought that's not fair? Maybe someone got promoted over you A wicked man prospered while a believer struggled. Or maybe tragedy struck someone who always seemed to do good things. The scriptures teach that the rain falls on the just and the unjust. The wicked sometimes thrive and the righteous sometimes suffer. And in those times, does God seem unfair to you? But the truth of the matter is, by nature, our hearts are blind to what fairness truly is and what unfairness truly is. I hope that this helped us to see more clearly as to how just God would be if he sent all of us to hell. Forever. But some, God, who is rich in mercy, For His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins, hath quickened us together with Christ. Thy grace are ye saved. Lord, don't give me what's fair. Show me grace.