Go with me, if you would, back
to Psalm 86. I brought a message to our brethren
in Malawi a few weeks ago. And Psalm 86 was one of my scripture
references that I took them to in the middle of that message.
And I had already read this plenty of times. It was in my notes
to bring it to them. But in that moment of that service,
when I read verse five, it just really, I just, it really hit me. I thought, I want to preach that. Verse five says, four, that means
because. Lord, thou Lord are good and ready to forgive. and plenty
us in mercy unto all them that call upon them. That's good,
isn't it? To every soul that calls upon
him. That's the problem for many,
many people in the world. They're not calling on him. They're
not calling on him, but to every soul that calls upon him, here's
a three point outline. He's good, he's ready to forgive,
and he's plenteous in mercy. Now let's read the first four
verses leading up to that. Verse one says, bow down thine
ear, O Lord, hear me, for I am poor and needy. Preserve my soul,
For I am holy, and if you have a center margin, you see that
means one whom thou favorest. O thou my God, save thy servant
that trusteth in thee. Be merciful unto me, O Lord,
for I cry unto thee daily. Rejoice the soul of thy servant. For unto thee, O Lord, do I lift
up my soul. David made these four requests
to the Lord. He said, bow down thine ear and
hear me. He said, preserve me, save me. You know, I think about Peter
when he was sinking in the water. He had just enough time to cry,
Lord, save me. David said, be merciful to me. And he said, give rejoicing to
my soul. Because, verse five, he said,
you're good, you're ready to forgive, and you're plenteous
in mercy. Now, we can hear the voice of
our Lord Jesus Christ in this from the cross. We see Christ in everything. We see the Lord Jesus Christ
in everything. We hear Christ in all of the
scripture. These are they which testify
of him. I love that story that's told of
that young man who was called on to fill in for the pastor
one Sunday while he was away. And the young man did. And after
the service was over, he walked up to an elder man in the congregation
and said, what did you think of my message? You know, expecting to hear great
things. The elderly man said, I thought
it was a very poor message. Poor? Why did you think it was
poor? He said, did you think my delivery
was unclear? The elder man said, no, your
delivery was fine. He said, do you not think I put
in the time to study? He said, no, clearly your notes
were in order, very well organized. The young man said, then why
did you think the message was poor? He said the message was poor
because Christ wasn't in it. And the young man said, well,
Christ wasn't in the text. And the elder said, young man,
Christ is in every text. You know, it'd be a good thing
for us to really get a hold of this. He said Christ is in every
text. He said in every portion of scripture,
there is a road that leads to Jesus Christ and Him crucified. And our business is to find that
road and get on it. I love that. I love that. In every word that we have right
here in front of us, there's a road that leads to Jesus Christ
and Him crucified. Our business is to find that
road and get on it. Well, here's the on-ramp to that
road. In these words, we hear the voice
of the Savior while he hung on the cross, shedding his blood
and dying for the sins of his people, suffering the wrath of
God. You know, we endure these little
trials and these little tribulations and we have our little sufferings
and we think, oh, poor pitiful me. We've never known suffering. We've never known agony. Oh,
the agony, oh, the suffering. We're never gonna suffer the
wrath of God, never. Not if we belong to Christ. But
he did. He suffered the wrath of God.
I just physically cannot imagine that. Suffering in the place
of his people, crying, literally crying and pleading. for them, in the place of them,
in agony for them. And we hear him crying to his
father in verse one, bow down thine ear, oh Lord, hear me for
I am poor and needy. Hanging in our place, he said,
I am poor and needy. That's proof that he was hanging
in our place because that's what we are. Psalm 40 records this
same cry from our Lord on our behalf. Turn over to Psalm 40. Psalm 40 verse seven, our Lord,
this is our Lord Jesus Christ speaking. Verse seven, then said
I, lo, I come, in the volume of the book it's written of me.
I delight to do thy will, O my God. Yea, thy law is within my
heart. I have preached righteousness
in the great congregation. Lo, I have not refrained my lips. O Lord, thou knowest. I have
not hid thy righteousness within my heart. I have declared thy
faithfulness and thy salvation. I have not concealed thy lovingkindness
and thy truth from the great congregation. Withhold not thou
thy tender mercies from me, O Lord, and let thy lovingkindness and
thy truth continually preserve me. for innumerable evils have
compassed me about. Mine iniquities have taken hold
upon me so that I am not able to look up. They are more than
the hairs of mine head, therefore my heart faileth me. Be pleased,
O Lord, to deliver me. O Lord, make haste to help me.
Let them be ashamed and confounded together that seek after my soul
to destroy it. Let them be driven backward and
put to shame that wish me evil. Let them be desolate for a reward
of their shame that say unto me, aha, aha. Let all those that
seek thee rejoice and be glad in thee. Let such as love thy
salvation say continually, the Lord be magnified. Verse 17,
he said, but I am poor and needy, yet the Lord thinketh upon me. Thou art my help and my deliverer. Make no tearing, O my God. Christ said that. From the cross and his agony,
that's what he became in order to hang there in our place, poor
and needy. Do you know what he called himself
in Psalm 22? A worm. He said, I am a worm. Why would he call himself that?
That's what you and I are. That's exactly what we are. We
are worms. honestly, what our Lord had to
become to take our place. We say he took our place. That's
what we say. He, you know, stood in our stead
as our substitute, what he had to become to take our place.
It's amazing. From the cross, we can hear him
cry, Father, bow down your ear and hear me. And then we can hear his cry. Father, preserve my soul. Into thy hand I commend my spirit. Father, preserve my soul. Look
with me at Psalm 16. Again, this is Christ speaking. Psalm 16, verse one, he said, Preserve me, O God, for in thee
do I put my trust. Preserve me. Look at verse eight. He said, I have set the Lord
always before me, because he is at my right hand, I shall
not be moved. Therefore my heart is glad, and
my glory rejoiceth, my flesh also shall rest in hope, for
thou wilt not leave my soul in hell, neither wilt thou suffer
thine holy one to see corruption. He said, I believe in my soul,
you will preserve me through this, you will preserve me through
the death of the cross and preserve me through the burial of the
grave. Verse 11, he said, thou wilt
show me the path of life. In thy presence is fullness of
joy. At thy right hand there are pleasures
forevermore. Bow down your ear and hear me.
Preserve me. And then we can hear him say,
be merciful unto me, be merciful unto me. Why would Christ ask
the Father to be merciful unto him? because that's what his
people needed. That's what we need. Therefore he cried that for them
as their substitute. Father, for my sake, in my blood,
show mercy. Show mercy. You know, honestly,
I need mercy. That's what I need. I need mercy. He cried, show mercy, Lord, be
merciful to me. And in that mercy that through
him was shown to his people, we can hear him cry, Father,
rejoice the soul of thy servant. In this, in this great transaction
of deliverance, bring great rejoicing to me over this. Bring rejoicing
to me. Turn over to Hebrews 12. Verse one says, wherefore, seeing
we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses,
let us lay aside every weight and the sin which doth so easily
beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set
before us, looking unto Jesus, the author and finisher of our
faith, who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross,
despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the
throne of God. Why did he bear the cross for
his people? The rejoicing. That's the reason why, the joy
that was set before him. Jude verse 24 says that Christ
endured all that he did to keep his people from falling, and
to present them faultless before the presence of his glory with
exceeding joy. Exceeding joy. You know, there's
nothing better than true happiness. Every now and then, I believe
the Lord lets me enter into a message. I've told you many times, y'all
should feel sorry for me. I don't bless me. I don't like
hearing the sound of my own voice. But every now and then I get
to enter into a message. And this morning was a very special blessing
for me. I really did enjoy. I walked out of here just so
happy. I was removed from it. You know what I'm saying? I just
entered into it like everybody else. That joy that's in Christ,
there's nothing better in this world. There's nothing better
in this life. True rejoicing in what we have in the Lord Jesus
Christ, rejoicing in his glory, rejoicing in what we've been
delivered from. And you think about this moment,
this glorious moment when God's people are finally brought to
him and they are presented to the
Father by him. Father, I and the children, all
that you gave to me, I've lost none. Just can you imagine the joy? Can you imagine the joy? Our
hearts are going to explode. It's going to be joy for us.
It's going to be joy for him. Our Lord is a very joyful person. And He endured all of this. He
went through all of this for the joy set before Him. He is
going to present His people before the presence of His glory, faultless
before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy. And because
He did all of that for us, this is our response to Him. All right,
because he endured all of that and he did all of that. Here's
our response to him. Go with me back to Psalm 86. We can still hear the voice of
the Lord Jesus Christ in this, but we can also hear our voice
in this. If we hear the Lord's voice continue
on, he gives the grounds for his request. He cried, Father,
do these things because you're good. You're ready to forgive and you're
plenteous in mercy. That's the foundational reason
why we have received everything we've received in Christ. And
that's our response to everything that we've received in Christ.
That's all we can say about it. This is our response. Lord, you
are good. You're good. We are not. We are not, but you are. Thank God you are. There's none
good, but God. We're glad for it. That's the only reason that a
child of God can have everything that has been given
to him, him or her in Christ. It's the only reason it's because
he's good. You're good. We're so undeserving. We are so unworthy. And it's
because we're so evil. We're so sinful. We're so wretched,
but you're good. You are good. And that's where
our hope comes from. It's in the fact that you're
good and you are ready to forgive. You're ready to forgive. What
a glorious character trait in our Lord. For his own blood's
sake, he is ready to forgive. You know, Christ in his people,
produces that same character trait in his people. If Christ is in us, we will be
ready to forgive. You know that? Ready to forgive
each other because he has so abundantly forgiven us. So abundantly
forgiven us. Where there's no desire for forgiveness,
that's a bad sign because he is forgiveness. And Him in His
people is forgiveness in His people. Ephesians 4 verse 32
says, Be ye kind one to another, tenderhearted, forgiving one
another, even as God, for Christ's sake, hath forgiven you. He is so good. He's so good. And He's so ready to forgive. And here's the reason why. It's
because he's plenteous in mercy. Plenteous in mercy. Because redemption
in his blood was so abundant, he is plenteous in mercy. He has an infinite amount of
mercy. Exceeding abundantly above, I
love that. I've been quoting that a lot
lately because I like it. It's exceeding abundantly above
anything you could ask or think or imagine. And because it brings him so
much joy and so much rejoicing, he said he delights to show it. He delights to show it. Not only will he give it, he's
happy to. He delights too. Now, honestly,
honestly, this is not just a sentence. This is not just a line in the
message. Okay. Honestly, do you need forgiveness? Because I do. I do. Do you need mercy? Really? You need mercy. Approach the throne of God. You
know, I say this with a sincere heart, meaning every word of
it. Approach the throne of God, pleading the blood. Approach
the throne of God in the blood. Lord, I come in the blood. I
come in the blood of my Savior. I plead the blood of my Savior.
I need mercy. I need forgiveness. I am so sorry. I'm so sorry. You come pleading that blood,
you're going to find it. You're going to have it. It is
going to help you. He will remind you all that the
father gives me. They're going to come to me and
every soul that comes to me like that. I'm not going to cast him
out. Come to him like that and he'll
remind you. I'm ready to forgive. I'm plenteous in mercy. and it'll help us in our time
of need. And that's what I want to end this message with. I want us to acknowledge that
calling on the Lord for these things, that's the evidence that
we have received these things from the Lord. Coming to him,
calling on him, begging him. No dead sinner can call on the
Lord for mercy or forgiveness. No dead sinner can do that. A
dead man cannot do that, cannot call on the Lord for grace. The only way that a sinner can
call is if mercy and forgiveness and grace has already been shown
to that sinner. Without a quickening, we cannot
call. So that need is our assurance. That need is our evidence. If
we truly desire these things from him, if we desire mercy,
if we desire help, if we desire forgiveness, and if we cry out
for these things to him, it's the evidence that we've already
received these things from him. It's the evidence he's already
given these things to us. That makes me want to cry out.
That literally makes me want to cry out. More and more, God
be merciful to me. I'm the sinner who needs it.
I'm the sinner who needs it. Because you're good, because
you're ready to forgive, because you're plenteous in mercy, I'm
crying. I'm crying. And I believe, you've
given me faith to believe that you'll show it. And you have
shown it in the blood that I'm pleading. To him be all the glory
for that. Amen.