Well, it's a delight and has
been a delight to be with you these few days, to worship with
you, to think on the things of God, to be with your pastor,
his wife, all of you. I count your pastor one of my teachers, a man who's
taught me over the years with his preaching and has blessed
my heart. I count it a privilege that the
Lord caused our paths to cross and made us friends, and it is
a blessing to me to be here in your presence. This dear church
has meant a great deal to me for many, many years. Turn back with me to Exodus chapter
34. the latter part of chapter 33.
And I'm going to take my text this morning from verse 7 of
chapter 34. Let's begin reading with verse
6. ìAnd the LORD passed by before
him, and proclaimed, ìThe LORD,î notice
the capital letters, all capital letters, that's Jehovah The Lord,
the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering and abundant in
goodness and in truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving
iniquity and transgression and sin, and that will by no means
clear the guilty. visiting the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children and upon the children's children
unto the third and fourth generation. Now, the response of Moses to
this is the response of every child of God when he hears God
speak in such clear and precise language. It says that Moses
made haste and bowed his head toward the earth and worshiped. If you see God in His true capacity
and hear Him speaking His words concerning mercy and grace and
justice, I know this about you. If you hear Him, you will do
what Moses did. You will make haste and fall
down with your face upon the ground and worship God. Now, these first seven verses
of chapter 34 are the record of God commanding Moses to renew
the tables of stone, and then meeting with Him on Mount Sinai. And the words that are here spoken
by God are the fulfillment of the glorious words that He spoke
in Exodus 33, 19 through 23. When the Lord was approached
by Moses to show him His glory, a man who had seen the plagues
upon Egypt, who had seen the Red Sea parted and the children
of Israel go across on dry land, and the armies of Pharaoh drowned
in the sea, sinking to the bottom like a stone, the man who had
seen the fiery pillar and the cloud above them, the man who
had talked to God face to face and seen Him in a bush that was
burning and yet not consumed, and heard God identify Himself
as the One who would send Him to Egypt to deliver the children
of Israel, And when Moses says, Who shall
I tell them has sent me? He says, Tell them I Am has sent
thee. I Am that I Am has sent thee. And yet Moses says, Show me your
glory. Because he knows if you can see
it, the fact is you don't know his glory. God's glory is himself. His person. And God says unto
Moses, I will make all my goodness pass before you. I will proclaim
the name of the Lord before you. I will be merciful unto whom
I will be merciful. I will be gracious unto whom
I will be gracious. And just a little while later,
he stands and appears to Moses again out of a cloud. and does
exactly that, proclaim the name of the Lord, show mercy and show
grace. Here Moses sees God who cannot
be seen and sees what God has said are His hinder parts or
that which He has accomplished as He passes by. And here Moses
sees Christ as truth personified and later would write of Him. Here, Moses is made to understand
how God will make His goodness known. We hear a lot about the
goodness of God. We hear a lot about the love
of God. Not many people understand either one of those things concerning
God. Moses understands. It is made
to understand how God will make His goodness known, how the name
of the Lord is proclaimed, and how mercy and grace is shown
unto whom God will show mercy and grace. These words were promised
throughout Scripture and fulfilled on the cross of Calvary where
mercy and truth met together, righteousness and peace kissed
each other. And here our Lord proclaims His
mercifulness and His graciousness and His longsuffering and His
abundance of goodness and abundance of truth. Now, many would find
no difficulty in agreeing that the first part of verse 7 is
assuredly a proclamation of the goodness of God. For it speaks
of mercy and forgiving, iniquity, transgression, and sin. Most
people would have no part, no difficulty in saying, Yeah, those
are good things. Those are good things. Yet they
may find difficulty in seeing the last part of the verse is
also a proclamation of His goodness. God's not switching horses in
the middle of the stream and saying, I'm good on mercy and
grace, but I'm kind of bad on these other things. I'm kind
of evil on these other things. God's justice and God's visiting
the sins of the Father upon the children for generations is God's
goodness. This is all about God's goodness. The human mind needs to pit justice
against mercy. And when you read some of the
old writers, that's exactly what they do. They say mercy was over
here, and justice was over here. You know, and justice said we
must kill the sinner, and mercy said what shall we do? Those
things are tools of language employed, I think, in kind of
a wrong way. Because justice and mercy are
both revelations of the goodness of Almighty God. They both flow
from the same fountain, and that fountain is the love of God for
His people from all eternity. And as far as the goodness of
God goes, that He will in no wise clear the guilty is just
as much an expression of mercy as the fact that He will keep
mercy for thousands and forgive iniquity, transgression and sin,
which are the three expressions of sin or rebellion against God
as David said so that he was forgiven of all these in Psalm
32. Blessed is the man whom God has forgiven sin and covered
his transgression and forgiven his iniquity. Justice and mercy
are not enemies. They do not need to be reconciled.
They both are demonstrations of the goodness of God. The goodness of God. It is clear
from this divine proclamation that God is not obligated to
show mercy because men seek it. Men are not seen in this passage
as active in any way whatsoever. Men like to think in this day
that mercy is kind of an obligatory handout to men, as if to say
that God is waiting with bated breath to show mercy if someone
will just ask for it. It is common in this day to hear
preachers plead with men to let God show them mercy. Let God show them mercy. Men
believe that if someone asks for mercy, that God is somehow
obligated to show them mercy. Several years ago, when our former
president was caught in a compromising situation with an intern and
was about to be forced to publicly confess his ill deeds, he was
given counsel by the Reverend Jesse Jackson. Mr. Jackson advised the president,
and I quote, ìIf you will respond with a contrite heart that obligates
the public to respond with mercy. That's what he said. Because
that's what he believes about mercy. If you respond with a
contrite heart, that obligates the public to respond with mercy. And this is the general view
of mercy. And there's only one problem
with that view of mercy. It's a lie. It's just not the
truth on any level. on any level. Mercy, no matter
who shows it, is the act of a sovereign. It's the act of a sovereign.
If you show mercy to someone, you're acting in a sovereign
capacity. One does not let anyone show
mercy. You had best pray that God will
not wait on your contrition to show mercy. For if He waits to
show mercy, waits for your contrition, you'll receive no mercy from
Almighty God. Mercy, Scripture says, belongs
to God. He said, I will show mercy on
whom I will show mercy. It is His to give and to withhold. I am thankful that He declares
that He will show it. Now, some people say, well, God
doesn't have to show mercy. Yes, He does, because He said
He would. And if God said He would, somebody in this world
that walks upon the topside of this earth is going to receive
mercy. God is going to show mercy, because
He says, that's what I'm going to do. And what God says He's
going to do, He's already done. He's already done. Mercy belongs to God. Any notion
of obligatory mercy is actually blasphemy. No matter the circumstance,
if you seek mercy from someone, from anyone, the act of seeking
is foremost an attribution of sovereignty to the individual
to whom you are seeking mercy from. Show me any instance in
Scripture or any instance in life where the ruined, the sick,
the halt, the lame, the leprous or the needy came to Christ in
their horrible condition and said to Christ, I'm going to
allow You to be merciful to me. Or I'm here asking, therefore
You are obligated to show mercy unto me. The leper in Matthew
8 said, Lord, if Thou wilt, Thou canst make me clean. Blind Bartimaeus
cried out, Jesus, thou Son of David, have mercy on me. Have mercy on me. The Syrophoenician
woman approached the Lord. Lord, help me. Lord, help me. But when confronted with the
fact that God didn't have to in her case, she said, Well,
I'm going to stick at your table until some crumbs fall off because
I'm your dog. And he looked at her and said,
Woman, I've not seen faith like this in all of Israel. In all
of Israel. The goodness of God. His longsuffering
is the salvation of the elect according to 2 Peter. In these
words we see that salvation is of the Lord. And how it is wrought
out by God and His Son. And it's important to remember
that these words are spoken fast on the heels of the people's
idolatry. The people's idolatry, the blood
of 3,000 idolaters yet drenches the sands at the base of Sinai. The golden calf that the people
made and ascribed the attributes of God to is destroyed. They called that calf Jehovah. Did you know that? Look back
at chapter 32 and verse 5 or verse 4. And he received them at their
hand, that is the earrings and the gold baubles that he made
this calf from. And he fashioned with a graving
tool after he made it a molten calf. And he said, ìThese are
thy gods, O Israel, which brought thee out of the land of Egypt.î
Now look at verse 5, ìAnd when Aaron saw it, he built an altar
before it.î He built an altar before it. And Aaron made proclamation
and said, ìTomorrow is a feast, or a holy day, unto the capital
L-O-R-D. We're going to have a feast and
a holy day and worship this thing that my hand has made, Jehovah
Savior, the existing one, and fast on the hills of that. We
hear our Lord say, I'm longsuffering and I'm merciful. I'm going to
keep mercy for thousands. And yet I will in no wise clear
the guilty. The last phrase of chapter 37
and verse 4 declares that salvation belongs to God. Chapter 34 and
verse 7. visiting the iniquity of the
fathers upon the children and upon the children's children
to the third, fourth, and fourth generation. The question need
to be asked in this day is how does God save sinners? Or can
God save sinners? I was talking with Joe Terrell
not long ago. We were having a discussion because
He had run into some flak that I had run into and practically
every preacher runs into if he preaches the gospel of God's
grace. He runs into folks who came out of Arminianism and believed
that they were saved under the false gospel. And when you declare
the gospel of grace, somehow they hear that you don't believe
that. And he asked the question, ìDo
you believe anybody can be saved under Arminianism?î And I said,
ìNo.î He said, ìWell, do you think thatís the right question?î
I said, ìWhat do you mean?î Joe Terrell is a pretty smart fellow.
He said, ìHereís the question we ought to be asking. Can the
Arminian gods save? Thatís the question that we ought
to be asking. Not were you saved under Arminianism, but can the
Arminian gods save? And by their own admission, he
cannot unless you let him. So that God cannot save. You
remember what the old king, was it Belteshazzar, said to Daniel
when he was down at Lion's Den? Lion's Den, he comes the next
morning and says, Is the God whom you serve able to save you?
Is He able to save you? This God is. Because He declares,
I will have mercy. I keep mercy for thousands. And I will in no wise clear the
guilty. I will forgive transgression
and iniquity and sin. And that's going to happen and
has happened. The first phrase of the text
declares three things. Mercy, forgiveness or grace, and justice. That's three words we all need
to spend some time learning what they mean. mercy. God says, I keep or am
keeping mercy for thousands. He saves sinners by keeping mercy
for them. He keeps mercy for them. Here
it speaks of keeping mercy for thousands. This is actually a
term of distinction. Thousands represent a large number
that does not include all. Mercy is not kept for all. It
is kept for many. It is kept for thousands. It
is kept for the elect, the chosen of God from all eternity. And
the number is sometimes used in Scripture to represent a company
of men under one leader. and His thousands, and the captain
of thousands. That's how it's used often in
Scripture. The word keeping means preserving. In other words, God says that
He preserves mercy for thousands, for that company of sinners who
are under the leadership and the ownership of Jesus Christ,
the captain of their salvation. It may be kept for centuries
before it's shown, or before it's made known, But it is still
as effectual as it was the first time it was shown because it
is God Himself who keeps this mercy and preserves this mercy. The fact that it is kept by God
reveals this. He has control over it. If He
is the One who keeps it and is keeping it, He has absolute sovereign
will and sway over it. We sang a song, Lord, put me
under Your absolute sway. I can't remember the exact words.
Your absolute sway. God is the sole source of it
if He keeps it. And He is the sole arbiter of
who will receive it. It is not Him that willeth, Paul
said, or Him that runneth. But it is God who showeth mercy. Now, some may find that such
arbitrary dispensing of mercy by God to be unpleasant and unfair. However, it is far better, even
perfect, for mercy to be absolutely controlled if it is controlled
by the good and long-suffering hand of Almighty God rather than
subject to some whim of some man. who by nature is depraved
and neither understands nor seeks the Lord in his natural condition. He must be made spiritually alive,
a new creature, else he will never seek the Lord. He will
never seek the Lord. Mercy. What is it? What is mercy? Mercy is keeping back sinners
from what they deserve. From what they deserve. This
being true indicts the recipients of mercy as deserving something
other than what they get. If you receive mercy, it is something
other than what you deserve, than what you deserve. If then
mercy acts in this manner, the thought of deserving mercy is
utter foolishness. Deserving mercy? No, it's giving
you what? or keeping you from what you
deserve. No man deserves mercy because
mercy has to do with keeping men from receiving what they
do deserve. It's impossible to deserve mercy. It's impossible. God saves sinners
by keeping back from them what they deserve. And rest assured,
rest assured that if you have received mercy, if you have received
mercy, you deserve to die in your sins. and perish forever,
separated from Almighty God in eternal damnation. That is what
you deserve. If you receive mercy, God kept
back from you what you deserve. Well, what did you deserve? Eternal
damnation. The next word we see in this
text is forgiveness or grace. God saves sinners by bestowing
grace upon them. Grace. Note that no condition
is placed upon man. The text does not say that God
forgives conditioned upon repentance and faith. God's grace is free. And you don't even know anything
about it until you already have it. You already possess it. It is an exercise of the will
of Almighty God. In both the showing of mercy
and grace, the language sets forth a sense of being in continuance. It says, keeping mercy and forgiving
iniquity. Keeping mercy and forgiving iniquity. And the word is also used to
bear up under and carry. That is the language used. What
God does is forever and since it is forever, both mercy and
grace are eternal attributes of God as well as a continuing
manifestation of Himself in them. If God has ever shown you grace,
He is being gracious to you this hour. If God has ever been merciful
to you, He is being merciful to you this hour. Paul said we
need mercy to preach Christ. We go to the throne of grace
seeking mercy for help for this time of need or just in the nick
of time. In Lamentations, Jeremiah said,
Thy mercies are new every morning. Every morning. He is now keeping and forgiving
because He is always keeping and forgiving. And He always
was keeping and forgiving mercy for His people. And grace is
here expressed in an effectual sense. A complete sin. We call it sovereign grace because
it works. That's what it means. It works. It just absolutely
cannot be stopped. It is inalterable. It is inestoppable. It is powerful. It is effectual. God assures the sinner that all
his sin, all his transgression, all his
iniquity, is forgiven. All of it. And again, this is
not a commodity up for grabs, but it's an ongoing fact of the
goodness of God. All sin. All sin, whether manifest in
missing the mark or crookedness, which is iniquity or inequity,
or in the breaking of the law, is what God is forgiving. All
of it. All of it. Men then cannot deserve
grace, for it is bestowed freely upon the undeserving. If any
man think they deserve God's favor, they know nothing of the
grace of God. Nothing of the grace of God. If you think you
can do something and encourage God to show you favor, you don't
know anything about God's favor. If any presume that they can
obtain grace by personal merit or by decision or by plea, they
know nothing of the grace of God. Grace is either grace or it's
not grace. If it's grace, then it's no more
works. If it's works, then it's no more grace. Scripture declares
that we are saved by the grace of God. By grace ye are saved
through faith, and that not of yourselves. It is a gift of God,
not of works, lest any man should boast. What is the cause of grace? God. He's the cause of it. It's in Him. And He knows why
He did it. And I don't know why He did it,
except to glorify and honor His name. Because He said, This is
my glory. I'll be gracious. I will be gracious. The third thing found in this
text is justice. Justice. God saves sinners by
justice. By justice. Grace and mercy fly
on the wings of satisfied justice. He will by no means clear the
guilty. That's a tremendous statement.
A powerful statement. And it's a singular statement.
And this is an enigma. That's why the Gospel is called
a mystery. That's why men who have preached
it for many, many years stand up and say, I still don't quite
get it. I'm still trying to figure this thing out. I've spent my
life and probably all of eternity trying to figure it out. It is
an enigma wrapped in a riddle. All who are shown mercy and grace
are guilty, aren't they? They're guilty sinners. Yet he
will in no wise clear the guilty." In other words, part and parcel
with the goodness of God is that the guilty will not go unpunished. His goodness demands that the
guilty be punished. Lest any man think that there
might be an exception to this fact, God assures us that that
is not the case with these words. He said, I will in no wise, no
way, Know how. That's how we'd say it. No way,
no how, will I clear the guilty. So the guilty will never be cleared. God won't clear you. If you're
guilty, He won't clear you. That's a wondrous thing. And
yet it says He has mercy and grace. There will be no sin or
sinner that goes unpunished, and yet those who were sinners
are shown mercy and grace and are forgiven their sin. Don't
try to figure this out. Just rejoice in it. Turn over
to Jeremiah 30 for a second. Jeremiah 30, verse 11. God says, For I am with thee,
saith the Lord, to save thee, though I make a full end of all
nations, whither I have scattered thee. Yet will I not make a full
end of thee, but I will correct thee in measure, and will not
leave thee altogether unpunished. If God shows you mercy and grace, your sin must be punished. But if He shows you mercy and
grace, the strange thing is, is because you are not guilty.
Because He will not clear the guilty. He will not clear the
guilty. Now, this flies in the face of
all that is holy to natural humanity and is against the natural law
of God. Look at Proverbs chapter 17. Proverbs chapter 17. Verse 15 says this, Thinking of what we
just read. He that justifieth the wicked,
and he that condemneth the just, even they both are an abomination
to the Lord. And we know what abomination
means, don't we? It stinks. It smells bad. It fills up the
room with odor. He that justifieth the wicked,
and he that condemneth the just, even they both are an abomination
to the Lord." The fact is this, mercy and grace, though undeserved,
is actually shown by God to the guiltless. To the guiltless. Mercy and grace
are shown and besowed to those who have been punished for their
sin and cleared of its guilt. cleared of its gift. Now, there
can be no understanding of this apart from the principle of imputation
and substitution. Several years ago, I was preaching
down in Franklin, Tennessee, and it was a hot June. You might
have been there that year. They turned on the heater instead
of the air conditioner. It got up to about 98 degrees
in that place, and we were all pouring sweat. Scott Richardson
got up to preach, and he preached seven minutes. He said, ìItís too hot. I quit.î
Well, he said, he got down and walked down the aisle, and I
was sitting on the end of the aisle, and he patted me on the
shoulders as he walked by, and he said, ìWell, at least I said substitution.î
And he did. He said substitution. Imputation,
substitution, satisfaction, all these things make up what we
call the Gospel of Godís grace. And this is first revealed in
the Garden of Eden, with God slaying beasts to cover the sinful
pair, and with every blood sacrificed throughout all the old covenant,
and finally being fully accomplished on Calvary's tree by the Son
of God, when He was made sin for His people, and they were
made to be the righteousness of God in Him. In that moment,
they were declared to have never sinned. They were guiltless. They were
guiltless. And that's the chronology this
always follows. When Adam and Eve sinned against
God, before He clothed them in righteousness,
He got blood for Himself with the slain beast. Before you're
clothed in righteousness, sin must be dealt with. One man said,
God must do something for Himself before He ever does anything
for you. Mercy is kept for thousands,
and forgiveness is kept for thousands. They are reserved and preserved
for thousands until the thousands for whom they are kept are declared
righteous, because they are cleared from all guilt by the blood of
the bleeding substitute. Look over at Jeremiah 50. Look at verse 20, ìIn those days, and in that time,
saith the Lord, the iniquity of Israel shall be sought for,
and there shall be none.î You notice that ìthere shall
beî is written in italics. help in understanding. I don't
think it helps in that situation. Iniquity of Israel shall be sought
for, and none, and none. And the sins of Judah, they shall
not be found, for I will pardon whom I reserve, for whom I am
keeping mercy for thousands. keeping mercy for thousands.
How good it is for God to satisfy His own implacable justice and
set the sinner free, because before Him the sinner is not guilty. That's
why you're set free. Not guilty. Before the bar of
justice of the thrice holy God. His people are declared by the work of Jesus Christ,
by His bloody death, to be not guilty. Think about that. Where you are sitting this morning,
as a child of God, as a believer, you are not guilty. Not guilty. So much so, that Paul to the
Hebrews wrote, you have no more conscience of sin. He didn't say you have no more
consciousness of it. He says you have no more conscience
of sin. How is it that you don't have
a conscience of sin? Because the conscience has no
grounds upon which it can accuse you. You're as clean as a whistle
before Almighty God. Mercy and grace flow like a river
when justice says to the sinner, I find neither fault, nor blemish,
nor spot in thee. That's just too good to be true,
isn't it? That's what it meant when it
said the disciples believed not for joy. It just made them so
happy they couldn't hardly believe it was true. It's a mystery. It's a wonder. Because you know
what you are. And I know what I am. I know what's inside me. I know
what goes through my head. I wake up sometimes in the morning
ashamed of my dreams when I remember them. And yet God says, I'm not guilty. God will never accuse you of
sinning. Ever. So if you're being accused, it
ain't God who's doing it. It ain't God who's doing it.
In the substitutionary death of Jesus Christ our Lord, God
does not punish the innocent. When Christ died, He did not
punish the innocent because Christ was made guilty. He was made
to be sin for us. And he does not let the guilty
go free, because they are the righteousness of God in him. So he's kept his word from Proverbs
17. If you and I have received mercy
and grace, it is because we are not guilty before God. That doesn't
seem to make sense at all, does it? And yet, it is so. That's
how mercy and grace comes. You read Romans 3.24, you find
that God first set forth Christ to be a propitiation for sin,
and thereby declared Himself righteous in being just to justify
those that believe on the Lord Jesus Christ. If we are not guilty before God,
it is because we have been punished in our substitute. We didn't
have anything to do with it. We just declared things. We are
made things. We didn't have anything to do
with it. We're righteous. Why? God said
so. God made us so. How did He do
that? He made His Son to be our righteousness.
Why? Because He made His Son to be our sin. He made His Son
to be our sin. We are cleared because we've not been cleared. Isn't that wonderful? That's
sweet mystery, isn't it? That's sweet mystery. Finally,
a word of warning to those who remain in their idolatry. What
is idolatry? Anything other than trusting
Christ completely, wholly, and fully for all of your salvation
is idolatry. For those who remain in their
idolatry, who would manufacture a God of their liking, and then
suspend all rational thought and attribute saving power to
their handicrafted deity. God says, ìYou may see your children
and your childrenís children following your vile and wicked
footsteps.î Thatís what that last phrase means. The Targum
says, ìVisiting the iniquity of ungodly fathers on rebellious
children.î Keeping mercy for thousands.
for giving iniquity and transgression and sin, and that while by no
means clear the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon
the children and upon the children's children until the third and
fourth generation." What is he talking about? Here is what he
is talking about. The Lord descended in a cloud
and stood with Moses and proclaimed the name of the Lord. And the
Lord passed by before him and proclaimed, ìThe Lord, the Lord
God, merciful and gracious, long-suffering and abundant in goodness and
truth.î Godís grace, Godís mercy, Godís justice is His goodness
revealed and proclaimed. Thank you for having me. Thank you for the invitation. Q. Yes, sir.