this morning at Lamentations
chapter 3 in verse 22 and 23, it is of the Lord's mercies that
we are not consumed, because His compassions fail not. They
are new every morning, that is His mercies, great is Thy faithfulness. Now, when I'm looking at this
word mercy, I'm looking at can't remember how it's pronounced,
it's a short word, but this word is probably more often used in
the scriptures, especially in Psalms, then there's two or three
other definitions. But when I say mercy, this means
goodness, it could also mean kindness, but also faithfulness.
So it makes sense because he says that the Lord's mercies
we are not consumed, His compassions fail not, they are new every
morning. Great is thy faithfulness." So he's saying the same thing. His faithfulness, it is of the
Lord's faithfulness, His mercy, kindness, goodness that we are
not consumed. So with the help of Mr. Spurgeon's outline, I've entitled
this, The Lord's Mercies or Some Qualities of God's Mercy. Some
Qualities of God's Mercy. The first thought or first outline,
first point in this outline is His mercy is tender. His mercy
is tender. And I like what Spurgeon said.
He said, God is as gracious in the manner of His mercy as He
is in the matter of it. He is as gracious in the manner
as He is in the matter fact of it. He says in New Testament,
the brews read. He will not break. That's mercy. The smoking flask, he will not
quench. He said to Zacchaeus, as he walked
by him, looked up and said, Zacchaeus, come down. He went to the tomb of Lazarus
and he said, Lazarus, come forth. Back when he was in the Old Testament,
Judas said in Genesis, I will be surety for the lad because
of his mercy, his tender, his kindness, his love for Benjamin,
his concern that his father was going to die because Joseph was
no longer theirs. I will be surety for the lad. And our God still has his poor
Mephibosheth brought to his royal table. He didn't force him. He
said, if you remember, is there any left of the house of Saul that I may
show compassion for Jonathan's sake? And all this to me is sweet
tender mercy. We who know our Lord know Him
as a tender God. So first, His mercy is tender.
Secondly, His mercy is truly great. Our God is no small God. He saves to the uttermost them
who come through Christ come to Him. Great sinners will still
find His grace and mercy ever large and full of saving power. Remember in the book of Exodus
when Moses and all the children of Israel, they were trapped. One side, one behind them was
the whole army, or the army of the Egyptians. And in front of
them was an insurpassable Red Sea. And Moses said, stand back
and see. the salvation. Stand back and
behold the great mercy of God. And what does great mercy do?
As it does, as it always does, it saves His chosen, it saves
His remnant, it saves the people of His choosing. Everybody else
was drowned. Everybody else was drowned. Their
carcasses were seen floating. This great mercy is as wide as
the oceans and is deeper than the seas. It's able to reclaim
every single lost sheep out of no man's land. It's able to recover
the sin sick, leprous man, woman, boy or girl. His mercy is truly
great. His mercy is truly great. Third
thing about this mercy, quality, characteristic to the believer
and in the scriptures, his mercy is undeserved. It's undeserved. People, they think God owes them
something. God owes them, yes, damnation
and hell. That's what he owes them. But
if there's any who are saved, it is because God has chosen
them, not anything according to their works or our works,
sent his son to bleed and suffer and die on Calvary's tree, buried
and rose again on the third day for their sins and for their
reclamation and for our recovery, none deserve, none of us deserve.
We are the sinners. We have offended God. We have
offended his holy character, his righteous attribute. We are
all gone astray, the Scripture says. We seek our own way, our
own righteousness, and our own supposed merits. Look with me
at Romans chapter 3. I just love how this is worded. Romans chapter 3. And if you want to turn to Luke
chapter 7, put your finger in that section of Scripture too. We're going to look at Romans
chapter 3 and starting in verse 23, for all have sinned and come
short of the glory of God. What is the wages of sin? The
wages of sin is death, separation from God. Being justified freely
by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus, whom
God has set forth to be a propitiation through faith in His blood, to
declare his righteousness for the remission of sins that are
passed through the forbearance of God to declare, I say, at
this time, his righteousness, that he might be just and the
justifier of him which believeth in Jesus. Where it's boasting,
it's excluded. By what law of works? Nay, but
by the law of faith. This in verse 20, for being justified
freely. And I've told you this before.
Justified his people freely, that is in the original, the
expanded definition, or the original is without a cause. Without a
cause in the object of mercy, without a cause in us. That's
how he saves God. We're justified freely without
a cause, by His grace through the redemption that is in Christ
Jesus. It's all got to go together.
It's all together. It's the harmony of the gospel.
One thought. Oh, how I adore such phrases
of our King. And a similar phrase is found
in Luke chapter 7. And we looked at this before.
Luke chapter 7 and verse 42 and verse 41, there was a certain
creditor which had two debtors, one owed
500 pence and the other 50. And when they had nothing to
pay, the people that they owed, the person that these two owed,
he frankly forgave them both. He frankly forgave them both. That word frankly means freely. He just, you know, wouldn't,
sometimes I think about this. And I try not to think about
it too much, but somebody came up to me and says, I'm going to
take care of your bills. Just wipe them out. No house
payment, no this, no that, just set it down. And when people do stuff like
that, when believers do stuff like this for one another, the
heart is overjoyed. The heart is The heart weeps
because it's undeserved. What would make a person do that?
To frankly forgive. To freely justify. There's no
cause. Humanly, you may like that person,
or they may be related, or you may feel obligated, but not God. God's not obligated to save.
He is obligated through covenant, through his son, through the
trinity, they're obligated to save his people from their sins.
But humanistically speaking, he is obligated to save no one. He is solitary in that book of
the attributes of God. He is solitary in his existence. He's solitary in his glory. We
don't add any glory to him. He's solitary in all of his attributes
and characteristics. Fourthly, what about this mercy? that he speaks of in, Jeremiah
speaks of in Lamentation. His mercy is rich mercy or that
is abundant or it's liberal. There's enough mercy, kindness
in our God to supply every single solitary need we may ever want. It's abundant, rich mercy. There
is balm in Gilead. There are keys to open the prison
doors. There are exceeding great and
precious promises for every occasion. And our main occasion, our main
need is for total forgiveness of sin and the debt that we surely
owe. Yet in the face, in the person
of the Lord Jesus Christ, our account is paid in full. It's
abundant mercy. Our cup is set to overflow. The
disease of our leprosy is removed and we are free. You remember
that situation Then in John chapter 8, you don't need to turn there,
the woman who was pulled by the Pharisees and the Sadducees from
the very act of adultery. They said, do you accuse them?
The law accuses them. And he just didn't answer them.
He just sat down, kneeled down and wrote. What he said is he
said to the woman after, he says, without sin cast the first stone
and they just all left. It's just him and her. And she's
about to see in the very act of adultery. She's about to see how abundant
and how liberal our God is. Where are those thine accusers? Is there none to accuse thee?
He said, No Lord, neither do I. Neither Do I accuse thee? Well, that would be a nice thing
to put on a headstone. Neither do I. We accuse one another, and brethren
accuse brethren, and believers accuse believers, because we're
sinful, we're of human nature, and the world accuses us, Satan
accuses us, but if God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy
Spirit do not accuse us, I'd say we're free. We're free. We're freeborn. Fifthly, what
about this mercy? It is manifold mercy. There's
mercy to clean and mercy to set us up as kings and priests to
our God. There's mercy to clear the negatives
and mercy to establish the positives. I like what John Bunyan wrote,
and I thought Matt was going to read this, but he didn't,
so I feel a little thunder here. I like what John Bunyan said,
all the flowers in God's garden are double, are double. some of these peonies and things
like that, and when Melinda and I are walking around wherever
it's at, some garden, and she'll note, she'll say, and I'm like,
well, what is that? She said, well, that's, it's a double. I'm like, oh,
because it looks so full. And that's, God's mercies are
not singular. They're not, but they are singular.
They're specific, but they're multiple. They're multiple. Look
at our text, our text said in Lamentations, it is of the Lord's
mercies, plural, that we are not consumed. I need, because
I'm such a vile sinner, I need mercy every day, every day. Sixthly, this mercy is said to
be abounding mercies, abounding mercies. Sinners from the beginning
of time have received it, and yet it is still saving today.
It's still saving today. Oh, if you have not this sovereign
mercy here this morning, cry today for God is able. It's abounding, abundant mercy. It is fresh. It is necessary
for the removal of our great transgressions. We sing of the
boundless grace and mercy found in our Redeemer. And if you are
one of his dear children here this morning, it will find you
and seek you out. and he will cross your path with
him and his gospel truth. And alas, he will find the lost
sheep. He went and left the 99, and
in mercy, through abounding mercy, found that lost sheep. Oh, I
pray God would hem you up so you cannot run anywhere but into
the everlasting arms of this majestic kinsman. His mercy is
abundant. And I like what, I was reading
somebody this week, an old writer, and they said when he calls his
people fisher, he's gonna make you fisher of men, make you fishers
of men, fishing. And he says it's not, it's not
like we normally think of in this country with the hook and
bait. He says, which is scriptural,
they use the net. And I don't know how many times
I've watched the Jeremy Wade, I think it is, of the fishing.
And he'll have something. He's a professional fisherman.
And it'll get away. It'll come up, throw the hook
out. But that's not the kind of fisherman that he asks his
people to be. Because that's not how you do
it with the gospel. The gospel is a net. And you
think about it. When you haul that in, those
fish, they can't escape. They can't escape. And it brings
them in. and He takes them and selects
each one out. That's what the gospel does.
And that's what I pray, is that with our children, and our neighbors,
and our friends, and our mothers and fathers, that the Lord would
just, not cast them, but hem them in. Hem them in to hear
the gospel, and they finally have nowhere to go but to Christ. But to Christ. Seventhly, this
mercy is everlasting mercy. It will not fail you. It will
as the Lord who secures it. It says in Proverbs 18, he sticks
closer than a brother. This mercy will stick closer
than a brother. It's everlasting mercy. Try to
outrun it. Try to exhaust it. Try to empty
it. We cannot do it. His mercy is as he is. It's everlasting. He's there and His mercy is there
in temptation, in trial, loss, hardship, in seasons of plenty,
or in times of distress or peril. It's never ending because we
need it every day. Great is Thy faithfulness. His mercies, we're not consumed,
they're new every morning. Now whether we see it, that could
be the problem. We're too busy doing, we're too
busy living. Well, we have to live, yes, but
In everything the believer does, there should be a thankfulness,
an acknowledgement of who God is. If we go out and do something,
mow the grass, it works. I mean, to the believer, all
things come of God. And so that should be our first.
We get out there, we do things and we just do them on our own
and we don't care what others think and stuff like that. The
believer should stop and praise God because we have everything
we have from Him is a mercy. He's a mercy. He's there just as He was when
Peter started to sink there in Matthew 14. You remember when
Christ was walking on the sea and Peter of course gets up and
says, I'm going to walk on the sea to you. Come on. So he steps
out. He's actually walking on water.
He's walking on the sea. And then he starts noticing what's
going on. And then he starts to fall. He starts to slip. And
then Christ in mighty, gracious, merciful hand of our Lord reaches
out and draws him out. His everlasting mercy draws him
out. So I close. Let us take Peter's
lesson there in Matthew 14. Let us take that to heart. May
the Lord come and make His abode in us, ere we perish, ere we
sink. And if you say, well, Peter was
a believer there. Okay, I'll still say the same thing. We
need to keep our eyes on Christ. We need to say, Lord, save us,
ere we perish. And His everlasting arms of mercy
is there and pulls us out. Because He cannot lose one sheep
for whom he came to lay down his life. Why? A lot of reasons,
but according in the context of this message, mercy demands
it and Christ fulfills it. Bruce, would you close us?